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Looking to bring your students or an educational group to the Aquarium? Whether you are ready to book or just want to research information, this is the section for you. Learn more
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Students visiting the Aquarium as part of the Structured School Program participate in classroom activities that reinforce South Carolina state science standards.
Our programs are free, but we do require all participating K-12th grade teachers to attend a teacher training workshop prior to bringing their class to the Aquarium. Learn more here
Hands-on learning is essential whether your classroom is in a school or at your home. Dive into special resources just for homeschool instructors. Discover how to book a field trip or access education and conservation resources. Learn more | <urn:uuid:3389a0d5-16fb-4e2d-9a74-285b027a4864> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.scaquarium.org/education/default.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946169 | 222 | 1.757813 | 2 |
So here we are with Valentine’s Day chocolate erupting everywhere, and you’re wondering how to sashay that fine line between deprivation (ick!) and overindulgence.
Have I got a treat for you! Here’s a way of – get this – meditating with chocolate. Ladies, how good can that get?
The exercise — or play, as I like to think of it — is to develop mindfulness, awareness of the present moment without judgment. Mindfulness is one of the cornerstones of pleasure, deepening our capacity for it in all its forms. After all, if we’re stressing about the meeting tomorrow, or beating ourselves up for forgetting to return that phone call, how can we relish the grace and pleasure of this moment?
Mindfulness is traditionally developed through meditation. I say, how about developing mindfulness and cultivating pleasure at the same great time? | <urn:uuid:ce1d99f9-9672-4538-976e-b916789c6e81> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.melissagaylewest.com/blog/2008/01/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.931732 | 186 | 1.507813 | 2 |
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In a time long since gone there was a Naga princess - a dragon princess - whose domain was the bottom of a lake; a lake that nestled in the mountains of Northern Burma. And sometimes the villagers would see the gleam of her silver scales as she skimmed near the surface on a sunlight day.
Now this lovely silver dragon was young and curious, and much as she loved her watery home she was curious about the humans who fished and washed in her waters. Finally she felt bold enough to change into a human girl and go up to the surface, but she wasn't so bold that she would go near the villagers; instead she sat on the rocks and watched them at work and play at the lake's edge.
And just as she was a lovely Naga she was a beautiful maiden. So beautiful in fact, that the Sun (who saw her each summer day) fell in love with her, and at last he too took human form. He changed himself into the guise of strong hunter, and entertained her by playing sweet notes on a bamboo flute. Love sprung between them and the Sun could barely pull himself from her arms in order to complete his circuit of the sky.
The villagers complained loudly!! They didn't like the fact that the Sun left early in the evening and was late in coming in the morning.
The complaints grew so loud that the Sun said to his bride, "I must go. But I will return and bide with you a time."
There were tears in the Princess's eyes, and she hugged her swollen belly. But she bravely said, "It is your duty, so I know you must go, even if the days will be long without you."
The Sun kissed her and called his helper, the White Crow, to his arm. "Crow will keep you company," her husband said, "And when our children are born he will carry the news to me."
Their home was a lonely place, even with White Crow to keep her company, and so the Naga Princess returned to her dragon form and slipped back beneath her lake. The days passed. The months passed. And finally the Princess pulled her sleek and silver body out of the lake and gave birth to three fine eggs. She called out to the waiting messenger and said, "White Crow, tell my husband and your lord that his children have been born."
"I will!! I will!!" cawed the Crow, and he flew as fast as he could up to the Sun.
The Sun was delighted, and he choose the largest ruby he had to send to his wife. "Take this to my bride," he told his messenger, "And tell her to buy a kingdom for our children to rule over. Let them want for nothing when they hatch."
"I will!! I will!!" answered the White Crow, and he took the silk bag in his beak for the long flight back to the Earth.
By the time he reached the earth the Crow was tired of carrying the heavy bag, and worse yet, he was hungry. But what he saw in the village was pleasant to his eyes - they were having a festival!! The aroma of food reached his nostrils and the sound of music reached his ears. Surely, he would be allowed to refresh himself here!!! Just for a moment!!
Of course he could!!
The Crow hung the silk bag in a tree and went off to steal some food, and listen to the fine music.
And when he was gone a merchant snuck over to the tree - for the man knew that white crows were messengers of the spirits. The merchant snagged the silk bag from the tree, and almost gave a shout of joy when he saw the ruby, but he clamped his mouth shut and pondered.
Quickly he found some dung and rocks, and tied them up in the bag; then he returned the bag to the tree.
Night was falling when Crow remembered to return to the tree, and he knew he had to hurry deliver the ruby. He did not once look into the sack, but flew directly to where the Naga Princess warmed her eggs.
"For you!! For you!!" he cried as he placed the bag near her.
Great was the Princesss joy as she opened the sack, and great was her sorrow when she saw the insult. Without a word she slipped back into her lake - leaving her eggs to chill in the night air.
And great was the Sun's rage when he learned of the Crow's neglect; as punishment he scorched the bird black and swore that from then on all crows would be so.
As for the eggs..........Some say that the mountain spirits took pity on the neglected eggs, and asked the melting snows to wash the three into the great Irrawaddy.
Of what became of the first egg there is no dispute - it is said that it broke open in Mogok, spilling out rubies and other precious gems.
Of the second egg there is some debate......Some say that it broke in Middle Burma and loosed a great tiger. While others say a young maiden stepped from it, and later became queen of a now-forgotten country.
And there is debate about the third egg.....Of it, some say a giant crocodile slithered forth. Others argue that the future Prince of Sawhti stepped forth, and was raised by a hermit.
Early Spring brings with it the warming sun and the mating dance of the earth's creatures. In February and March we watch murders of crows whirl in the sky; this is their courting time. And for all of the grim myths attached to them, crows are social creatures and devoted parents.
Crows have had many guises in many cultures, since they are known nearly the world over. They have been world-creators, tricksters, and harbingers in our various mythologies; honored and defiled by turn. In the world of science they belong to the Family Corvidae, and have two sub-species: Carrion Crow and Hooded Crow. The Carrion Crow is completely black, while the Hooded Crow is gray, except for a black head and wings. Both are eclectic in their choice of habitat and food.
Nagas are found in both Hindu and Burmese mythology. In the Burmese lore can have the form of either a snake or a dragon. Often, though, they are giant dragons, whose domain is either under the earth or the sea.
Bull, John. Simon & Schusters Guide to Birds. New York: Simon & Schuster. 1978.
Elston, Catherine Feher. Ravensong: A Natural and Fabulous History of Ravens and Crows. Flagstaff: Northland Publishing. 1991.
Ledgard, Edna. The Snake Prince and Other Stories: Burmese Folk Tales. New York: Interlink Books. 2000.
Miller, Candace R.([email protected])
Tales from the Bird
Kingdom. Ohio: Pourquoi Press. 1996. | <urn:uuid:54935718-10bb-44b7-a68e-58c769595d87> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.h-net.org/~nilas/seasons/naga.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00024-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.984709 | 1,467 | 1.789063 | 2 |
Given that much of Greater Minnesota local governments are struggling to deliver basic services, wasting time and money on imposing photo ID --which doesn't address the problems of felons voting--seems like a big misdirection of money better spent elsewhere.
A headline today underscores this understanding. The Winona Daily News' Nathan Hansen reports in Voter ID costs in Winona County could reach $1 million:
If voters approve the so-called Voter ID amendment Tuesday, the costs to implement it in Winona County could reach nearly $1 million, according to estimates by county officials.
But since the amendment doesn’t stipulate the requirements of the voter ID system — the state Legislature would be asked to create them and to decide whether the state or individual counties pay to implement them — many counties can only guess at the final costs.
The Winona County estimate is based on work from the Minnesota Association of County Officers. Winona County Auditor-Treasurer Sue Rivers said costs would be comparable to the similarly sized Stearns County, with estimates ranging anywhere between $435,000 and $965,000.
In Fillmore County, Auditor-Treasurer Shirl Boelter said the county has only been able to guess at what would be required. If electronic pollbooks are needed, for example, costs would be between $76,000 and $180,000, Boelter said. Char Meiners, Houston County’s auditor, has estimated poll books for her county would run a comparable cost, at about $150,000. . . .
Read the whole article. It's an eye opener.
Mankato Free Press: Is it fear or is it real?
In Are Voter I.D. concerns overblown or real?, veteran reporter Mark Fischenich reports:
Amendment opponents and elections officials in Minnesota say that provision could end Election Day registration and dramatically change absentee balloting, possibly impacting voting by soldiers serving overseas and eliminating mail-in balloting by rural townships.
Former Congressman Tim Penny of Waseca has signed on as co-chair of the organization “Our Vote Our Future” because he objects to the amendment for a variety of reasons, including the language to be added to the constitution that isn’t spelled out on Tuesday’s ballot.
“The amendment is a lot more involved and a lot more detailed that you would be led to believe by the wording of the (ballot) amendment,” Penny said. . . .
Spokester for the other side? Serial fabulist Tony Cornish:
. . .Cornish, who is unopposed for re-election to the House, has spent some of his campaign funds this fall on pro-amendment radio ads. He said some Republicans are keeping their heads down in relation to the amendment, saying they just wanted to give voters the right to decide the issue.
“I did it because I believe in it, and I think we need it,” the five-term Republican said. “I support it wholeheartedly.”
Penny, a Democrat while in Congress and now an independent, said he’s bothered by a process where voter rights are determined via a proposed constitutional amendment drafted and enacted solely by one party. And he said the complexity of the questions surrounding the amendment and its potential ramifications only reinforce that the language shouldn’t be enshrined in the state constitution.
“I’ve always said, ‘The more people learn about this amendment, the less they’re going to like it,’” Penny said.
Read Fischenich's entire article.
Fergus Falls: Questionable fraud and access
In Voter ID Amendment a question of fraud, access, Fergus Falls Journal staff writer Darla Ellingson reports:
Minnesotans are being asked to use their vote to determine how they will vote in the future.
The voter ID amendment, coming up on the Nov. 6 ballot, has the state of Minnesota divided. The proposed amendment pushes for stricter requirement of showing a government-issued photo ID. Some say that would limit access to voting and have high costs. . . .
. . .More specific estimates have been done by most local officials, including in Otter Tail County. According to the Windley, implementation costs are estimated at $2,000 for a town of 500, plus two additional precinct staff would be needed. This does not include the cost of new electronic voting machines which could cost $56,800 for the cheaper model or $140,900 for the more expensive model — which could mean anywhere from about $4.60 to $8.80 per local voter. . . .
While other states have already adopted voter ID restrictions, they include automatic and universal exemptions for many types of voters. While these were brought up in the Legislature, they were all rejected.
The news from Winona, Mankato and Fergus Falls echoes earlier reports collected by anti-amendment group, Our Vote, Our Future. Click of the link to read them "below the fold."
After months of controversy and debate, there is consensus among local nonpartisan election officials across Minnesota: they are alarmed about the costs, complications and consequences of the Voter Restriction amendment — and the decided lack of detail and answers.
“When the trusted, nonpartisan local officials who run America’s premier election system tell us they’re alarmed that this poorly-written amendment will be expensive, complicated and lock out eligible voters — and that even they don’t know how we would implement or pay for it — we need to listen,” said Luchelle Stevens, campaign manager of Our Vote Our Future. “Minnesotans should take these concerns to heart and vote No on the Voter Restriction amendment. Let’s send it back to the Legislature to make them get it right.”
The following local nonpartisan election officials, representing 20 counties and cities from across Minnesota, have spoken on the record of their serious concerns and unanswered questions. Even after months of debate, they are still saying:
- “There are just so many unknowns.”
- “The lack of details is troubling.”
- “They’re going to be astonished at what this would cost us.”
- “It’s going to be back on the taxpayers.”
- “How many people simply won’t bother to vote?”
- “Things were not properly planned for.”
Here's a collection of statements that OVOF assembled:
- Becker County Auditor–Treasurer Ryan Tangen: “If the Voter ID amendment passes, it could cost Becker County as much as $500,000 … ‘There are just so many unknowns, like how the provisional ballot process will be handled.’”
- Blue Earth County Elections Director Patty O’Connor: “‘They are not understanding, I think, what they are putting into law.’ A strict reading of the legislation passed last week leaves serious questions about whether some Minnesota soldiers serving overseas will be able cast an absentee ballot, O’Connor said … ‘It’s going to be a whole new ball game.’”
- Cass County Auditor–Treasurer Sharon Anderson: “‘Mailed balloting would no longer be allowed because voters do not vote in person where they can show identification.’”
- Dodge County Elections Administrator Sara Marquardt: “It could soon cost Dodge County taxpayers a lot of money
if the proposed Voter ID Amendment passes, Dodge County Elections
Administrator Sara Marquardt reported to Dodge County commissioners…”
- Fergus Falls Election Administrator Lynn Olson: “That provisional ballot amounts to an unfunded mandate … ‘Who’s going to pick up the cost? It’s going to be back on the taxpayers.’ … Depending on how readily available the government-issued IDs are, Olson is also worried about Fergus Falls’ elderly population … Olson singled out permanent residents of nursing homes as a prime example.”
- Goodhue County Chief Deputy Auditor–Treasurer Amy Hove and Finance Director Carolyn Holmsten: “This eligibility verification section is perhaps the most complicated part of this amendment … As election officials we are not sure how this would work. We also know of no other state that requires their military or civilian absentee voters to meet this type of requirement. This section would also end same-day registration as we know it.”
- Houston County Auditor Char Meiners: “‘I think we're going to go through a lot of expense and a lot of effort for a provisional balloting system where most of the provisional ballots won't even count’ … Who could wind up have their votes thrown out after being placed in provisional ballot envelopes? Military personnel serving overseas, shut-ins and nursing home residents, college students, hospitalized citizens, even ‘snowbirds’ and others who vote via absentee ballot.”
“‘I don’t think this was well thought out and that things were not properly planned for or addressed … I don't know who's going to pay for it but I certainly don't have it in my budget.’”
- Hubbard County Auditor–Treasurer Pam Heeren: “‘I think they’re going to be astonished at what this could cost us … there’s so many unknowns it’s hard for us to put a price on it.”
- Isanti County Auditor Terry Treichel: “I consider Minnesota’s election system as one of the best if not the best in our nation. I will always take great pride in having been a part of Minnesota elections during this time. If adopted, the amendment would require a system of provisional voting. Changes would be made to election day registration and absentee voting. Vouching for residents in our nursing homes will almost certainly end … The added costs to elections cannot be pinpointed exactly but it is obvious that elections will be more complex. With the added complexity comes significantly higher cost, which more than likely will be borne by property taxes.”
- Kittson County Auditor Marilyn Gustafson: “The wording of the amendment could bring an end to mail-in voting, creating an added expense for elections … If the mail ballot is eliminated, it would mean an extra $96,000 in election expenses. Gustafson estimated that building a voting hall for every township that no longer has one would cost $750,000.”
- Mower County Auditor–Treasurer Doug Groh: “‘In Mower County, I do not have a concern in the integrity of our elections … You’re going to have increased cost to implement the election process.’ … Groh speculates the process of mailing a ballot could end.”
- Nicollet County Auditor Bridgette Kennedy: “… it initially might seem like a no-brainer that voters should prove their identity with a state ID card. But the potential negative implications require digging a little deeper. And fixing problems later will be difficult if the requirement is enshrined in the state constitution.”
- Olmsted County Director of Property Records Mark Krupski: “… estimated that the voter ID amendment would cost the county an extra $200,000 per election cycle to cover additional staffing costs and voter education … It is unclear how much of that cost would be picked up by the state.”
- Otter Tail County Auditor Wayne Stein: “‘They haven’t actually laid out a lot of the detail as to how it would be implemented if it actually would get passed.’”
- Ramsey County Elections Director Joe Mansky: “… if voters approve the amendment, the county would have to spend up to $1.7 million to install polling place computers and educate voters about the photo ID requirements. Meanwhile, cities would pay an additional $200,000 for elections judges, ballot boxes and training ... Those costs are not one-time expenses … The county would likely have to pay similar amounts every two-to-four years to replace the machinery and repeat the voter education campaign.”
"Clearly, we do not currently have the ability to do the on-the-spot verification that ... I think would be necessary given the language in this amendment … I think the methodology that they have chosen here will be archaic on the first day that it is implemented.”
- Rice County Auditor Fran Windschitl: “To start up and maintain enforcement of the law, it will cost taxpayers $170,000 initially, and $25,000 on each presidential election day.”
- Rochester City Clerk Judy Scherr: “After 32 years of working in elections, Scherr said, she is concerned with all the unknowns surrounding the amendment … ‘My biggest concern is those people who are eligible to vote actually get to vote. How are disabled people, senior citizens and others going to vote if they can't get to a place to get a government-approved ID?’ Scherr said there are lots of questions about how the change would affect absentee ballots that are mailed in and the potential for election results to be delayed because of a new provisional balloting system.”
- St. Louis County Auditor Don Dicklich: “… the lack of details on how the amendment would be enforced is troubling. He said many hundreds of voters in remote parts of the county will be affected. ‘It will cost hundreds of thousands of dollars just to build accessible polling locations … unless we are able to ask them to drive a long way to another township that has a polling place. In which case, how many people simply won’t bother to vote?’ Dicklich’s office recently estimated the total cost to the county for complying with the voter ID amendment could cost county taxpayers between $500,000 and nearly $1 million for the 2014 primary and general elections.”
- Scott County Auditor Cindy Geis: “As the chief election official in Scott County, Cindy Geis is often asked whether she supports the voter ID question that will be on this fall’s ballot. Her answer: ‘It depends on what laws follow it. They’ve written the amendment, but not the laws that go along with it,’ Geis explained. ‘Sure it’s free to citizens, but is it increasing property taxes? I don’t know,’ said Geis, noting that there is no pot of money identified to implement voter ID and the state versus counties’ roles are still undefined.”
- Steele County Auditor Laura Ihrke: “… the proposed Voted ID amendment could cost the county close to $100,000 … Ihrke said that estimation may be conservative … ‘If it passes, a lot of what will happen is unknown … A lot of things still haven’t been worked out, it all depends on what the Legislature decides … Is the money going to come from somewhere else? That still has not been determined.’”
Our Vote Our Future is the statewide multi-partisan campaign to defeat the voter restriction amendment that will appear on Minnesota’s November 6, 2012 general election ballot. For more information, please visit www.OurVoteOurFuture.org or follow @OurVoteMN.
Photos: Chief author of the bill in the Minnesota House, Mary Kiffmeyer fights a war on voters. | <urn:uuid:f8951d3b-3ebe-4eb8-8c5f-cee975962db3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bluestemprairie.com/bluestemprairie/2012/11/winona-co-1-million-voter-restriction-bill-would-suck-up-money-better-spent-on-real-problems.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00025-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958538 | 3,256 | 1.617188 | 2 |
I actually found it difficult determining exactly where I should post this, because I think their are several different approaches to this question and even as I write this text now, I am not entirely sure what I intend to say
Put simply, my question is about where a person should hold his hands in his "fighting stance". Before people reply with certain answers that skirt the issue, I realize that stances are best thought as transient positions. Most likely if you are in a social situation and someone starts something, you do not go into an impressive, though rigid, front stance and wait for the first attack. I know that its often helpful to practice from a natural stance to get use to reacting from a position you'll likely be in. However, I don't think the question of fighting stance is, therefore, irrelevent. There may very well come a time when the situation does require or results in you assuming a more blatant fighting position. Surely, when you conduct sparring in class, students do use certain positions clearly intended for fighting.
I'd like to expound on my question by explaining the real point of contention in my mind. The instructors of my karate club were never dogmatic when it came to good form. They prefer to allow us to explore and play and figure out on our own how to best utilize our own bodies to be effective tools of self defense. It goes without saying, they never bothered to provide any clear instruction on what a proper "kumite stance" looks like. This lack of information has made us into creative and critically thinking martial artists. From watching videos and attending other classes though, I believe that there exist many other schools who, aesthetically speaking, look better when performing kata than we do. (This is not a point of insecurity, because I believe there is only so much value in looking at "proper" form). One such school, a Shotokan club I attended for a single session, provided very clear instruction on what the proper kumite stance is. All karateka among us know this stance. Its a front stance with the hands protecting the midsection. One hand is forward, one hand is back. One may be slightly higher than the other, but they are generally protecting the area between the solar plexus and the zyphoid process. The contention arises when I think to other arts I have studied. Wing Chun usually has the front hand bent at a forty-five degree angle with the thumb even with your own nose and the back level with the elbow of the front arm. The logic for this position is fairly simple, primarily having to do with the concept of protecting the center line--an idea fundamental to everything in Wing Chun. What really inspired this question was thinking to my limited experience in Krav Maga and MMA. In both of those systems, the hands are held at the same level, hands on either side of your eyes, elbows pointing down. I tend to like this posture, and its equivalent kamae in Ninjutsu, known as Hoko no Kamae, because it resembles a position one might assume when simply trying to pacify someone. The "please-don't-hurt-me" stance, as I call it. Additionally, holding the hands up by the head better protects your skull, and reduces risk of being knocked unconcious.
I have spoken to people who have participated extensively in Full Contact Karate (usually mingled with other styles, most commonly Muy Thai) and other such modern adaptations of karate. They also tend to use the please-don't-hurt-me stance Regardless, the "kumite stance" seems strongly associated with most styles of traditional karate. I vaguely remember seeing old videos and photographs of famous masters who assumed the kumite stance. Should I start my own club some day, I can't say I'd choose to encourage the kumite stance over the please-don't-hurt-me stance. But the kumite stance seems to have tradition attached to it.
Does anyone know where the kumite stance comes from? Is it simply another product of the movement of karate from self defense to school yards and tournaments? Does it go deeper than that? I am vexed. | <urn:uuid:06cc4ea8-b043-4f4f-b6b7-6dfd634ef167> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.iainabernethy.co.uk/content/hands-where-do-they-go | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00042-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969104 | 868 | 1.648438 | 2 |
There are five parts to Rachel's Challenge, and Shaker High School student who follow them will help Rachel Scott's legacy live on.
Rachel Scott was one of the victims of the 1999 massacre at Columbine High School, in Columbine, Colo., in which two students, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold shot and killed 12 students and a teacher while wounding 23 others before committing suicide. Scott was 17 years old when she was killed, and she was the first to be shot in the incident.
Shortly after her death, Scott's father read through her diaries, learning about the qualities Rachel worked on possessing, as well as inspiring others to have. Shortly after her death, her parents began a national movement to teach high school students across the country about their daughter and inspire them to be the model citizens Rachel wanted her peers to be.
According to Mark Kaercher, a math teacher at Shaker High School, the school's character education committee came up with the idea to bring Rachel's Challenge to Shaker this year.
The day of the program, which is March 12, there's going to be three different sessions. We needed to do it in three sessions to be able to accommodate all of the students, Kaercher said.
After the program, several students chosen to be Friends of Rachel, or student leaders, and will meet with the presenter for an extended amount of time after school to train to carry on the movement throughout the school year.
Those students who will become Friends of Rachel will be nominated by their teachers and peers this week.
Lisa Rauche, a health teacher at the high school who is also on the character education committee, explained that the day will start off with all students attending a presentation.
Typically, Rauche said, the representative from Rachel's Challenge that comes to speak is one of Scott's family members, although the representative coming to Shaker this year is not a direct family member. | <urn:uuid:206bf20b-109b-421d-9163-cf796be907e6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.spotlightnews.com/news/2009/feb/25/rachels-challenge-comes-to-shaker/?page=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979974 | 394 | 1.78125 | 2 |
At a recent IDC seminar on cloud computing Chris Morris, associate vice president, cloud technologies and services with IDC Asia Pacific, gave IDC's perspective on how the growth of cloud computing would impact the skills mix in the IT departments of enterprises.
The skills mix, he said, would shift from technical experts to manage in-house IT resources to those with a stronger emphasis on management skills to handle relationships with service providers as the trend to shift IT into the domain of cloud based service providers gathers momentum.
"By 2015 the percentage of enterprise systems that will be managed by third party providers will double and the management an organisation does will be contract management, management of SLAs and the management of those vendors overall," he said.
This shift of IT into the cloud is also likely to have a profound effect on the supply chain: the market for IT hardware and software will shift from the end user organisation to the cloud service provider. An increasing percentage of the dollars will be spent by a few large service providers rather than many thousands of IT departments in end user organisations.
At an informal getting-to-know-you press briefing last week Cisco's recently appointed VP for Australia and New Zealand Richard Kitts said that Cisco was re-aligning its internal organisation to match the changes impacting its partners; namely providing fewer on-premises solutions and instead moving applications into the cloud.
When questioned he was not too keen to explore the ultimate conclusion of this re-alignment: that the vast army of channel partners that sell Cisco gear to an even greater number of end user organisations could shrink to a much smaller number of larger partners selling to a very large providers of cloud services. But this surely is the logic of the move into the cloud for Cisco, its channel partners and those of other IT vendors.
Kitts did concede that the transition was inevitable but was, not surprisingly, reluctant to suggest that it would be rapid or that it might prove traumatic for the IT channel community. | <urn:uuid:7266dba9-5b2a-4e32-8c95-28da9df57f4f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.itwire.com/opinion-and-analysis/cornered/56945-clouds-gathering-over-the-channel | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00022-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953372 | 400 | 1.507813 | 2 |
Theology Professor Dr. Marshner to Deliver Talk in Alexandria, Va.May 11, 2011
Christendom College Theology Professor Dr. William Marshner will give a talk entitled, On Combating Atheism, to young adults on May 16 at 7 p.m. in Alexandria, Va. Part of the Arlington Diocese's Theology on Tap series, the talk will be held at Pat Troys Restaurant & Pub.
Marshner, an eminent Thomistic theologian and ethicist, is a founding professor at Christendom College. He pursued his undergraduate studies at Gettysburg College majoring in Greek. While pursuing a degree at the Yale graduate school, he studied Hebrew, Akkadian, Aramaic, and other Semitic languages. He earned an M.A. from the University of Dallas and his Ph.D. from the Pontifical John Paul II Institute at the Catholic University of America. Marshner has been published extensively in newspapers and academic journals and is an acclaimed speaker and professor.
Theology on Tap originated in the Archdiocese of Chicago and has spread throughout the country as a vital and popular component of young adult ministry. The goal is to provide a forum for young adults to learn about and discuss their faith in a relaxing social setting.
For more information about this program please visit the website of the Catholic Diocese of Arlington's Office for Family Life. Pat Troys is located at 111 North Pitt Street, Alexandria, Virginia 22314.
|Share this story:| | <urn:uuid:0d8c861b-0b05-4cf8-b5b0-348d3e955a2a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.christendom.edu/news/2011/05-11-marshner.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962092 | 306 | 1.664063 | 2 |
Sometimes, the best opportunities are closest at hand.
Renowned for high fashion, rainforests, beaches, and spectacular Carnaval celebrations, Brazil offers a cornucopia of culture – and plenty of opportunity for American small businesses.
Currently the world's 11th largest economy, Canada is the largest trading partner of the United States. Every day, $1.6 billion of trade crosses the U.S.-Canada border. Canada has a top-class infrastructure, a strong consumer base, a highly educated workforce and a strong banking system. Plus, because it's literally right next door, Canada is an ideal market for businesses that are brand new to exporting.
There can be no doubt that China—which means "middle kingdom" in Chinese—is at the center of the world stage. China's two-decade-long market reforms have fostered a wealth of entrepreneurship, resulting in the largest reduction of poverty and one of the fastest increases in income levels the world has ever seen.
India's tourism slogan, "Incredible India," is an understatement. The world's second-fastest growing economy, India is home to nearly 1.2 billion diverse people who speak more than 20 languages. The South Asian sub-continent is also home to some of the world's biggest metropolises, which are international hubs of culture, cuisine, finance, technology and filmmaking.
Nestled in the center of Europe, Poland was the first former Soviet bloc country to shed communist rule, and today, the nation of 38 million people is growing steadily. Since becoming a member of the European Union in 2004, Poland has built a stable market economy and attracted significant foreign direct investment. Its GDP growth rate has consistently outpaced that of Western European countries.
Vietnam offers many opportunities for U.S. small-to-mid-sized businesses. The U.S.-Vietnam Bilateral Trade Agreement and Vietnam's admittance to the World Trade Organization have opened new doors of commerce and sent U.S. exports to Vietnam soaring. Immediately after the country joined the WTO in 2007, U.S. exports to Vietnam grew by an impressive 73 percent to reach $1.9 billion.
For more information on how UPS can help small businesses go global, visit ups.com/international. | <urn:uuid:e155ef0c-3eec-44de-9a47-a3fc1befde11> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://pressroom.ups.com/Fact+Sheets/UPS+Snapshots+for+Small+Businesses | 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 | 0.954269 | 468 | 1.734375 | 2 |
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Paul has lived most of his life in Kennett Square and knows the town inside and out. He lives in what he refers to as a “piece home,” a 1920’s home that was built by adding on over the years. Paul’s back porch which contained a washroom and bathroom was collapsing, the roof falling down making entire rear of the house unsafe.
In his travels Paul said he had noticed the work of the crews at Good Neighbors in and around Kennett Square. He was not sure if he would qualify for help but decided to give the agency a call. “It was amazing. They came to my home and met with me. I pulled together all the information they needed and it was like gift—they told me I was eligible for assistance through Share the Warmth.”
Paul’s roof was fixed and over the next few weeks his windows will be replaced. Good Neighbors didn’t stop at just the initial winterization either. “They listened to me and helped me talk through my hardships. They put me in touch with other agencies that could assist me in different parts of my life. My home is warmer, my house is safer and I have a new outlook on life.”
United Way partner agencies don’t stop providing service at the basic necessities in life. There are agencies to assist folks with financial planning, credit counseling, job training and free income tax preparation. United Way of Chester County’s Financial Stability Partnership continues the work after the individual agencies get the plan started for a person and their family. Visit http://www.unitedwaychestercounty.org/financial-stability-partnership.
Since 2005 United Way’s Share the Warmth program has invested approximately $600,000 in home repairs and winterization. 280 families have benefitted from stucco repair, gutter replacement, siding and insulation. A warm and safe house has a much greater impact on a family’s life than just keeping the electric bills down. It provides them with added security and hope in times of great stress.
Last year readers from the Daily Local News contributed nearly $30,000 to the Share the Warmth program. Because the agencies that benefit from Share the Warmth leverage resources such as donated materials, volunteer man power, and low cost skilled labor, repairs to homes cost well below what an average consumer might pay.
Please help us continue this holiday tradition of giving to those who need it most. Contributions to the program can be addressed to Share the Warmth, c/o Daily Local News, 250 N. Bradford Avenue, West Chester, PA 19382. Attention: Andy Hachadorian, editor.
This year’s Share the Warmth articles are being written by Tonia D. Kulp, vice president of operations for the United Way of Chester County. | <urn:uuid:6a9da397-983f-4e06-b729-b4a9b6a18483> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.dailylocal.com/article/20121127/NEWS/121129741/kennett-man-gets-piece-of-his-1920s-home-back- | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968108 | 600 | 1.632813 | 2 |
|Uploaded:||May 15, 2011|
|Updated:||May 15, 2011|
Hey guys, Dawn here presenting you with another epic Dragon Ball Z tutorial! Today, we'll be learning “how to draw Super Vegito”, step by step in the easiest form. I'm a huge Dragon Ball fan (my votes totally fling to Vegeta), but with that being said, I haven't seen this character “Vegito” in the anime yet. Maybe it's because I stopped right at the Imperfect Cell Saga, which lead me astray from watching the entire series on hand. If you're a fan and you've watched EVERY SINGLE episode, please expose any information about this character as I would love to know more about him. I know that there is folks out there on Dragoart that are die hard fans of anything that has to do with DBZ or the Dragon Ball characters. I had lots of fun with drawing Vegito in his super or Saiyan form, and hopefully you guys do too. Anyways, I've got to go and work more on the DragoArt shop. Thanks for viewing, and stay tuned for more lessons! | <urn:uuid:04265ce5-f433-4bb3-b0d6-0e8605623622> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.dragoart.com/tuts/8105/2/1/54445/how-to-draw-super-vegito,-dragon-ball-z-step-6.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961436 | 244 | 1.773438 | 2 |
April 29th, 2009 by Jared Bothwell
A story came up recently regarding a survey scam which is doing the rounds. I was pleasantly surprised then when I also received the survey invitation supposedly from McDonald’s. Below is the text from the email I received.
Dear McDonald’s Customer,
We are planning big changes for 2009 at McDonald’s New Zealand chain of restaurants and because your opinion is very important to us, we invite you to take a short Customer Satisfaction Survey that will help us improve the quality of our food and services.
We know your time is valuable, so we will give you a $50 bonus just for taking our quick 7 question survey. The entire process will take no more than 5 minutes.
Terms and conditions apply. Click here to take the survey.
You can participate in this survey only once.
© 2009 McDonald’s. All references marked with a ™ or © are trade marks of McDonald’s Corporation and its affiliates except where third party trade mark ownership is indicated. All rights reserved.
While the email is effectively a spam email, there are two reasons why it drew my attention.
- The email purports to be a survey invitation
- The email has received considerable attention by the main stream press.
I thought then it would be useful to issue some guidelines on how to spot a fake online survey by critiquing the McDonald’s attempt.
The following are the key points that highlight the survey invite as a scam.
1. The survey invite ended up in my SPAM folder.
While I get a number of false positives in my spam folder, the fact that your mail client smells something fishy should set your alarms bells ringing.
2. I have never given McDonald’s my email address.
It can be hard to keep track of who you actually have given your email address to. But I was pretty sure that I had not given it to McDonald’s.
3. The survey invite had no unsubscribe
Under NZ email laws all commercial messages are required to enable recipients to unsubscribe from the mailing list. The fact that this email did not have this is a clear indicator of something fishy going on.
4. The survey invite did not have any one’s contact details.
When we send out a survey invite we always include the name of the survey manager and their contact details. This is to ensure that if anyone has any questions regarding the survey they can speak to someone about these.
I would advise that if you receive a survey invite out of the blue and it fails to meet the conditions that have been outlined above – just delete it!
While the survey itself was full or errors (New Zealand was called New Zeeland), the most alarming thing about the survey was the fact that it asked for an incredible amount of personal details.
- Credit card details
- Date of Birth
- Postal Address
- Bank Account Details
The credit card and bank details were supposedly to be used to pay an incentive to the survey participant. Now I think you would have to have you head checked if you ever gave your credit card details in an online survey. But if you must remember one thing, never ever give your credit card details when completing an online survey.
Posted in Online Market Research Tools | Comments Off | <urn:uuid:2fb48fa5-aea7-4803-bdc7-ead276a48d53> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.rockresearch.co.nz/blog/2009/04/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00041-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959755 | 683 | 1.554688 | 2 |
George Romero (b. 1940) is a American-Canadian film director, screenwriter, and editor best known for his gruesome and satirical horror films about a hypothetical zombie apocalypse. Romero attended Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Mellon University. After graduating in 1960, he began his career shooting short films and commercials. He, along with nine friends, formed Image Ten Productions in the late 1960s, and produced Night of the Living Dead (1968). The movie, directed by Romero and co-written with John A. Russo, became a cult classic and a defining moment for modern horror cinema.
books about George Romero | <urn:uuid:1d9d316f-78bd-4454-9b6b-5751af66ce62> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://centipedepress.com/authors/romero.html | 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 | 0.968296 | 121 | 1.789063 | 2 |
The Student Association of Michigan (SAM) was founded in 2007 byrepresentatives of the student governments of its member institutions.
SAM exists to serve the students of its member institutions without taking on excessively partisan behavior
It is a primary goal of the executive board to continue a tradition ofresponsible and cooperative action on behalf of our constituents, thestudents of Michigan's higher education institutions.
Mission Statement: To advance higher education by empowering current and future students to advocate on their own behalf for the accessibility, affordability, and quality of the public institutions of higher education in the state of Michigan.
The University Research Corridor is an alliance of Michigan’s three leading research institutions: Michigan State University, the University of Michigan and Wayne State University. The University Research Corridor's vision is to unite and lead while creating a vibrant Michigan economy, to work proactively to attract knowledge economy businesses, to educate the workforce and to plant the seeds for the industries of tomorrow.
Our Mission is to increase college readiness, participation, and completion in Michigan, particularly among low-income students, first-generation college going students, and students of color.
-College is postsecondary education: MCAN uses the term "college" to refer to the attainment of valuable postsecondary credentials beyond high school, including professional/technical certificates and academic degrees.
-College is a necessity: Postsecondary education is a prerequisite to success in a knowledge-based economy. Everyone must pursue and complete a postsecondary credential or degree beyond high school.
-College is for everyone: The postsecondary education attainment rates among low-income students and students of color are significantly lower than those of other students. MCAN is committed to closing these gaps.
-College is a public good: Postsecondary educational opportunity and attainment are critical to a just and equitable society, strong economy, and healthy communities.
The “It’s MI Life” initiative was was launched in 2009 to help foster a culture of education in our state. Students, parents, teachersand school administrators are invited and encouraged to join in thiseffort.
Michigan Campus Compact promotes the education and commitment of Michigan college students to be civically engaged citizens, through creating and expanding academic, co-curricular and campus-wide opportunities for community service, service-learning and civic engagement.
The Michigan Campus Compact
is an out growth of Campus Compact: the project for public and community service. This national coalition was established in 1985 by a small group of college and university presidents who were concerned over the perception of a general decline in civic responsibility. These presidents formed the compact to create public service opportunities for college students and to develop an expectation of service as an essential part of student life and the college experience.
In 1989, The Michigan Campus Compact began its first phase of development as a three-year demonstration project funded by the W. K. Kellogg Foundation. The founders strongly believed that direct student contact with social problems and voluntary efforts to solve them provide students with experiences that ask them to reflect critically on the world around them. They support this belief by using the resources of institutions to provide students with experiences that ask them to take an active role in the community outside the campuses. These real world experiences introduce students to civic involvement and lay the foundations for a lifelong ethic of public responsibility and community service that will enable them to become committed and caring citizens.
To serve all Michigan public community colleges and universities in their efforts to support student veterans, military service members, and their family members.
The consortium was founded by Central Michigan University in 2010. CMU also created and hosts the website. In 2011 the Presidents Council State Universities of Michigan and the Michigan Community College Association began work to formalize the consortium. In early 2012, Michigan’s 28 community colleges joined with other key partners to create a statewide network to improve the support and services to our active military and veterans populations.
The primary goal of the Consortium of Michigan Veteran Educators is to increase the number of service members, and their families, who take advantage of the educational benefits that are available to them such as the G.I. Bill. As part of this critical goal, the members of the consortium are also focused on ensuring veterans that enroll in Michigan’s public postsecondary institutions receive the support they need to successfully complete a credential that will lead to gainful employment and productive lives. A secondary goal of the Consortium is to serve as a convener of college and university staff to provide for professional development opportunities and sharing of best practices to better support the student veteran population.
The Alliance is a nationally recognized full service higher education consulting firm. The Alliance came together to enable our professional colleagues to make a broader range of services available to clients throughout New England, across the nation and around the world. Members of the Alliance form an interdisciplinary team of experienced and talented educational leaders and management consultants, academic planners, program developers, and accreditors, regulatory merger and acquisition experts, architects and engineers, institutional advancement specialists, communications and distance education experts, executive search consultants, and library and information technology specialists.
The paramount mission of the Alliance is to provide our clients with the shared resources of a world class education consulting firm - a firm which offers its clients a unique combination of consulting excellence, innovation and experience. Alliance colleagues share a special institutional affinity with our clients - an affinity which fosters new strategic alliance, transforming potential competitors to collaborators.
The Presidents Council regularly works with these associations on issues that transcend the public universities.
Intern in Michigan is a groundbreaking initiative designed to connect thousands of employers to the largest pool of talent in the state. This web-based technology is free to employers and students. Utilizing a revolutionary matching algorithm, the system instantly connects both parties to internship opportunities based on skills, interests and requirements. Visit http://interninmichigan.com to get started.
Launched in 2002, NextEnergy is already one of the nation’s leading research catalysts and business accelerators for alternative and renewable energy. Our leadership team offers more than a hundred years of experience working with utilities, alternative fuels, hybrid power trains, business development, venture capital investment and more in the alternative energy industry.
Located in Detroit, we are within an hour of more than a dozen major research universities, and in the heartland of America’s transportation, technology, and manufacturing industries. Fostering dynamic research and innovation, we combine this intellectual capital with Michigan’s legendary manufacturing prowess and entrepreneurial ingenuity to help generate new technologies, viable businesses, solid growth, and industry leadership.
Michigan STEM Partnership Network
The Michigan STEM Partnership is a statewide collaboration of committed leaders from PK–20 education, as well as business and industry, philanthropy, economic development, government, military, and other organizations dedicated to elevating STEM literacy and proficiencies in a way that increases Michigan’s economic strength to retain and attract desirable jobs. | <urn:uuid:27dae004-8950-4951-93b4-467ee70bd448> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://pcsum.org/aboutthecouncil/partnerships/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946077 | 1,398 | 1.789063 | 2 |
Webcam hacker-ogler jailed for four years
Peeping Tom goes down
A middle-aged Cypriot has been jailed for four years after he was convicted of hacking into internet webcams in order to spy on teenage girls.
The unnamed 47-year-old computer technician used Trojan horse spyware to gain remote control of a webcam and take illicit pictures of least one young woman in her bedroom. The teenager's machine became infected after she made the mistake of opening an infected email attachment.
After obtaining photos of the 17-year-old the cyber-stalker attempted to blackmail her into posing naked in front of her webcam by threatening to email earlier images to her friends. The girl refused to comply, and instead contacted local police, who tracked down and cuffed her tormentor in 2005.
"Most spyware is designed to steal your identity, your passwords or your banking information - but it is just as easy for hackers to program a Trojan horse to take over your webcam," said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at net security firm Sophos. "It isn't a huge problem but there is a potential for targeted attacks, since more and more laptops now come fitted with webcams."
The incident is just the latest example of technically minded peeping Toms have hacking into webcams for illicit thrills. In January and February 2005 two unnamed Spanish residents were cuffed for webcam hacking in separate incidents (stories here and here ). In the second case the Spanish computer science student was fined €3,000 for using the Subseven Trojan horse to ogle his victim. ® | <urn:uuid:49349f84-bf42-4d30-afff-c4a72e2447a5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/08/05/webcam_hacker_jailed/print.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00038-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96488 | 328 | 1.5 | 2 |
Student places second at welding competition
After placing second in the nation in June at the Skills USA competition and third in October at the U.S. Open Weld Trials, 21-year-old Jeremiah Garcia of Helper is spending the next five months preparing to compete for a $40,000 scholarship and trip to Japan.
He recently returned from a competition in Atlanta, Ga., where he competed against five other college welders. After 24 hours of welding various projects in four days, Garcia was awarded the bronze medal and an opportunity to compete for the scholarship and international competition in June 2007.
Garcia, who graduated in 2006 with an applied technology degree in welding from the College of Eastern Utah, did not transfer to a four-year college this year and opted to spend every day working on perfecting four types of welds for the competition. He works on a shield metal arc weld (SMAW), gas metal arc weld (GMAW), flex core arc weld (FCAW) and a gas tungsten arc weld (GTAW).
His usual week includes welding eight hours a day in the CEU welding lab.
"One day I got to school at 10 a.m. and welded until 1 a.m. trying to perfect individual welds," Garcia said.
His easiest welds are the GMA welds because he is able to bead better with them. His hardest welds are the 7018 open root.
"It's difficult to stay consistent with this weld."
When it comes to competition, Garcia is a little nervous at first and only likes to drink a power drink before he starts to weld. His mother always wishes him good luck at his competitions, while his father's strategy is for the younger Garcia to focus on what he is doing, relax and concentrate on what weld goes where.
His instructors cannot find enough good words to say about Garcia.
"He's the consummate student," says welding instructor Lon Youngberg. "He's one of the most dedicated students I have ever had. He'll spend 30 to 40 hours a week just practicing his welds. He has great natural ability, talent, effort, perseverance and attitude."
Mike Tryon, head of the welding department, adds, "He [Garcia] practices some the most difficult welds. He can do an open root weld and only a handful of welders can do that weld well. He is really a talented individual."
As a student last spring semester, Garcia helped Youngberg, teach a large class of beginning welding students. "There's a lot of one-on-one instruction in this program and he [Youngberg] needed help."
Garcia's daily routine consists of welding different projects that he sends to the judges each month. His work is compared to two other students who are also in the competition.
The competition has different projects a contestant must complete and mail, no matter how much they weigh, to the judges each month. The students are awarded points for each type of weld they submit.
Two welders will be selected in the spring and travel to Kansas City, Mo., for the final weld-off challenge and the right to represent the United States in the 39th International World Skills Competition in Shizuoka, Japan.
Even though his father Raymond is a welder, the younger Garcia did not start welding until he was a senior at Carbon High School. "When I was a little, I picked up my dad's welding helmet in his garage and tried to look through it. When I couldn't see through the glass, I asked my dad how to wear it. He said that when I got older, he would show me how to use it. I guess that's my first indication that I wanted to be a welder."
He thinks he's a better welder than his father because he's more dedicated to practicing and his dad does not weld every day like he does. He knows this because he and his father took a welding certification class together recently.
He spent his senior year taking classes from Tryon and Youngberg and spent the past two years at the college working on his associate's degree in applied science. He plans to attend Weber State University next fall where he hopes to complete the welding engineering technology bachelor's of science program. | <urn:uuid:43ff76c6-3935-46f5-a74a-4e0cc66f4f7d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sunadvocate.com/index.php?tier=1&article_id=10201&poll=269&vote=results | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.980696 | 880 | 1.578125 | 2 |
If you’ve been buying likes to make your brand look better on Facebook, be afraid. Be very afraid.
Because on December 21 last year, Facebook quietly added the ability to segment fans by region in the API it provides to analytics firms. Which means that social media monitoring companies like Socialbakers are finding all kinds of juicy oddities in the fan counts of major brands.
“We looked at airliners,” Socialbakers chief exec Jan Rezab told me. “For example, Lufhansa does not fly to Indonesia or Bali or Jakarta … but they have a lot of fans from there. And Pakistan is their number four fan country, and they also don’t fly to Pakistan.”
Twelve percent of Lufthansa fans are from Indonesia, Rezab said, and another eight percent are from Pakistan, meaning that a full fifth of the brand’s fans are from places the airline doesn’t serve, and never has.
Which isn’t exactly proof of fraudulent behavior or buying of fans. But it is a little suspicious.
In August 2012, Facebook estimated there were 83 million fake accounts. And the world’s biggest social network has already made attempts to cut back on fake likes and fake users, which resulted in some brands and celebrities losing over 100,000 likes in a single day in November, 2012. Unfortunately, the scammers have gotten smarter too.
Of course, not all regional fan discrepancies are automatically cause for alert.
Over half of global consulting giant Accenture’s 157,000 Facebook fans are from India, but the massive outsourcing multinational also employs 80,000 people in the country. And only 47 percent of Obama’s Facebook fans are U.S.-based — which helped him beat out Mitt Romney in the social media presidential race — but he’s a global political figure and has global fans.
Massive regional oddities can raise eyebrows, however.
Regional fan counts also reveal marketing realities and opportunities. For example, Rezab mentioned that in the overall gaming console fight for fans, PlayStation 3 beats Xbox. But not everywhere.
“PlayStation wins globally,” Rezab said. “But Xbox wins in U.S., Canada, UK, Australia … essentially all the English-speaking countries, while PlayStation win in South America, Russia, France, Spain, and Germany.”
Social analytics firms have only just gained access to regional Facebook data, and not all of the three million Facebook pages that Socialbakers tracks have been updated with the new information yet. But Thursday the company will be unveiling a new social power ranking of brands with the most U.S.-based Facebook likes.
“This is the first time where you can actually see the US ranking,” says Rezab. “Before, it was cluttered with fans outside the U.S.” | <urn:uuid:6cbbec73-696e-4079-adb4-353398bcf3c8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://venturebeat.com/2013/01/09/facebooks-new-regional-fan-breakdown-outs-brands-that-have-been-buying-likes/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941794 | 604 | 1.59375 | 2 |
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Lenten Reflections: The Beauty of God’s Design
Friday, March 1, 2013Judges 16:23-31
By Molly Lauer
Paul, in his letter to the Galatians, writes that “[b]efore this faith came, we were held prisoners by the law, locked up until faith should be revealed. So the law was put in charge to lead us to Christ that we might be justified by faith. Now that faith has come, we are no longer under the supervision of the law” (v. 23-29).
The new life that God offers in this passage makes me feel both incredibly thankful and incredibly scared. On the one hand, what a blessing to be freed from the oppressive, impossible nature of the strict Judean law! In a busy life in which I already struggle to clean the bathroom regularly, get my students’ work graded in a timely fashion, and call my mom as often as she’d like, I can’t imagine a world in which I could also find time to bring the right fowl to the Temple at all the right times! With Paul’s message of freedom from the law, I feel like a teenager on the first day of getting her driver’s license, the world an open road in front of me. It is only because of the grace and forgiveness God offers that this faith is even attainable to me at all.
And yet sometimes the freedom from the law feels like an intimidating unknown. In being released from strict adherence to God’s good law, I feel like a shy small child encouraged to try out the big ball pit at a fast food restaurant for the first time, quietly resisting the prodding to just jump in. I feel like a timid deer on the edge of a wide meadow, wondering which way is safe. I feel like a young adult with a generic degree who is looking for a new job and has no idea where to begin the search. Although freedom offers much forgiveness and relief, it offers minimal direction. A world of opportunities opens up, and yet you don’t know which one is best, or even good.
It reminds me of Derek Webb, a musician whom some of you may remember from the 1990s contemporary Christian band Caedman’s Call, and of his song, “A New Law.” In it, I think he plays with this theme when he sings, rather sarcastically,
Don't teach me about politics and government: just tell
me who to vote for.
Don't teach me about truth and beauty: just label my music.
Don't teach me how to live like a free man: just give me a new law.
I don't wanna know if the answers aren't easy, so just bring it down from the mountain to me.
I want a new law
I want a new law
Gimme that new law
This song has always resonated with me in a world in which so many options and so much freedom. Sometimes it seems that if we could just go back to a world where we were governed by a strict law, and all we had to do was obey it perfectly to do right, then that would be easier. Somehow, that seems comforting. Almost.
And then I am reminded what a sinner I am, even with a simplified law, and I am again ever so thankful. I realize the beauty of God’s design of freedom and forgiveness, and how God opens the world to everyone, literally everyone, with this gracious acceptance (Galatians 3:26-29). And I pray that God will simply guide my feet towards the good path and teach me to live like a free man—not give me a new law.
Prayer: Dear God, please teach us to have child-like faith in You, and not lean on a faith that tries simply to follow the rules. Allow us to feel your forgiveness and grace running over us and your Holy Spirit guiding us across the open meadows.
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Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Lenten Reflections: The Beauty of God’s Design: | <urn:uuid:d0cb2030-261c-4942-8aff-0f0cf23e6a7d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.bread.org/2013/03/lenten-reflections-the-beauty-of-gods-design.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958456 | 873 | 1.65625 | 2 |
The state Department of Education has released its long-awaited list of reward schools. There are 45 schools from metro counties on the list. And the AJC has a story up with the local schools listed.
“Reward” schools represents a new category created by the waiver that Georgia won from No Child Left Behind. The list recognizes schools with large numbers of low-income students who are performing well or showing significant progress in their academic achievement.
The Georgia Department of Education today released the list of Reward Schools as part of the state’s Elementary and Secondary Education Act flexibility waiver. The category is reserved for schools with the highest performance or the biggest academic gains by students in the last three years.
“These schools are shining examples of what we can achieve in public education in Georgia,” said State School Superintendent Dr. John Barge. “I want to take what’s working at our Reward Schools and replicate that in every school in the state. These are the schools making education work for all Georgians.”
Reward School Definition:
A “Highest-Performing School” is a Title I school among the 5 percent of Title I schools in the state that has the highest absolute performance over three years for the “all students” group on the statewide assessments.
A Highest-Performing School must have made Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) for the “all students” group and all of its subgroups in 2011. A school may not be classified as a Highest-Performing School if there are significant achievement gaps across subgroups that are not closing in the school.
A “High-Progress School” is a Title I school among the 10 percent of Title I schools in the State that is making the most progress in improving the performance of the “all students” group over three years on the statewide assessments. A school may not be classified as a High-Progress School if there are significant achievement gaps across subgroups that are not closing in the school.
–From Maureen Downey, for the AJC Get Schooled blog | <urn:uuid:b3b248ce-e68f-460a-9d9f-1ac69c53eb06> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blogs.ajc.com/get-schooled-blog/2012/10/31/check-out-schools-that-made-does-reward-school-list-today/?cxntfid=blogs_get_schooled_blog | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00038-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966418 | 434 | 1.8125 | 2 |
The American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) has been an official sponsor of U.S. Figure Skating , as an effort to raise cancer awareness. The partnership provided a global platform for past champions and current skaters to share their personal stories and cancer initiatives. Cancer.Net is the patient education website of ASCO, providing access to comprehensive information to help patients and families make informed health care decisions.
Read articles from Cancer.Net in SKATING magazine, the official publication of U.S. Figure Skating.
February 2010
December 2009
2010 U.S. Figure Skating Championships
Cancer.Net participated in the 2010 U.S. Figure Skating Championships, which took place in Spokane, Washington, January 14-24. NBC and Universal Sports aired the competition on the weekends of January 16-17 and January 23-24.
2009 Skate America Competition
Cancer.Net served as the title sponsor of Skate America, U.S. Figure Skating's premier annual international event held November 12-15 in Lake Placid, New York. The competition was aired on NBC on Sunday, November 15, 2009.
Resources for figure skating fans
What can you do to join Cancer.Net and U.S. Figure Skating in the fight against cancer? Take care of yourself and learn more!
Read below for information on how you can take an active role in your health.
Talking About Cancer
Support Groups | <urn:uuid:1301cfff-e196-4de1-99f8-31cf472e4556> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cancer.net/print/25102 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00034-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.930331 | 301 | 1.609375 | 2 |
Doctor Who is a British science fiction television programme produced by the BBC. The programme depicts the adventures of a mysterious alien time-traveller known as the Doctor who travels in his space and time-ship, the TARDIS, which normally appears from the exterior to be a blue 1950s police box. With his companions, he explores time and space, solving problems, facing a variety of foes and righting wrongs. The show is a significant part of British popular culture. The show's protagonist, the Doctor, has been played by ten actors over the history of the show so far. The different portrayals are often treated as distinct characters. The Doctor is currently portrayed by Matt Smith. | <urn:uuid:7544679f-4060-4d6e-afdf-aec04541aa03> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.posterrevolution.com/gallery/item.cfm?ID=701546 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.98135 | 139 | 1.84375 | 2 |
Do something good for the community this Halloween.
Trick or Treat for Cans
Student volunteers joined FYE and the Friends of Hoosier Hills Food Bank for the Big Ten Network canned food challenge to take part in the Indiana University tradition of community involvement. 2012 Trick or Treat for Cans was a fun way to spend time on Halloween giving back to the community. The students helped collect 2,046 pounds of food!
How Did Student Volunteers Help on Halloween?
- Put on an appropriate and fun costume!
- Stopped by Wright Quad Circle Drive registration, where they were given a tote bag, a route, and a ride to and from the neighborhood where they went trick or treating.
- Went trick or treating in Bloomington neighborhoods for canned food.
- Free pizza, drinks, and T-shirts were provided afterwards! | <urn:uuid:98616580-7f88-4edc-9847-ce977b4a7bd4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://fye.indiana.edu/programs-events/trick-or-treat.cfm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.945955 | 172 | 1.78125 | 2 |
Palliative Care: Support for Patients and Families at Any Stage of Serious Illness (audio)
In this podcast, Eytan Szmuilowicz, MD will discuss what palliative care means and identify when it should be sought. Palliative care can be helpful in managing symptoms for serious illnesses that are life limiting. Supporting the patient, as well as their families and caregivers, also is an essential part of palliative care.
Eytan Szmuilowicz, MD is director of Palliative Medicine and an internal medicine physician on the medical staff at Northwestern Memorial Hospital and assistant professor of Medicine, Division of Hospital Medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. | <urn:uuid:3d880744-2c94-4454-8dd6-e1b095bc2dac> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nmh.org/nm/ihealth-Palliative-Care | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00021-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943693 | 140 | 1.789063 | 2 |
Unlike trains or buses you can pretty much bank on predictions of Linux’s impending doom, demise and decay arriving almost to schedule.
Coming barely a day after the release of the latest linux kernel, Mike Gualtieri of technology research group Forrester has declared that it’s “game over” for Linux‘s plan of worldwide domination.
“It struggled so hard to dominate the world.” he writes in a blog post assertively titled Mobile Proliferation Killed Linux Hopes For World Domination. “It was the little open source engine that could, but it didn’t.”
He cites the well-trodden sub-2% stat as evidence of its failure, compounded, he argues, by the arrival and subsequent dominance of mobile platforms such as iOS and Android.
Now, we all know that Linux is just a kernel, and that Ubuntu, for example, is an operating system built around it.
Last time I checked that was true of Android, too.
But, just to really demonstrate the noble art of trolling, Gualtieri goes on to state: -
�” Open source never seems to be the innovator. Instead, it seems to disrupt pricing power for established technologies.” | <urn:uuid:26adb7ad-32c6-47c3-9c56-5147dbef202f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2011/10/its-game-over-for-linux-apparently/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00021-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941221 | 263 | 1.78125 | 2 |
May 1938. "Farm family, Scioto Farms, Ohio." 35mm nitrate negative by Arthur Rothstein for the Farm Security Administration.
UPDATE: This is Earl Armentrout and his family, government rehabilitation clients who were relocated by the Resettlement Administration to a new house in a cooperative farming project, a story repeated thousands of times for families who were forced off the land by crop failures during the Dust Bowl era. | Click image for Comments. | <urn:uuid:f3f1c866-048c-4684-a29e-24c7152ec42d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.shorpy.com/node/8860?size=_original&ref=100197 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974404 | 92 | 1.835938 | 2 |
Matthew Heimbach, a Towson University student who is trying to start a “White Student Union” on campus, created a website for the union that further reveals his white supremacist beliefs.
On the newly created site, Heimbach provides links to what he describes are “pro-white” websites. Almost all of the sites listed, however, are actually openly white supremacist, such as those for the Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC), the American Third Position and American Renaissance.
The CCC is a direct descendant of the white supremacist White Citizens Councils that fought integration in the 1950s and 60s. American Third Position is a whites-only political party whose mission is “to represent the interests of White Americans.” American Renaissance is the racist website run by white supremacist Jared Taylor, who publishes a monthly journal by the same title and hosts an annual conference that brings together some of the leading white supremacists in the United States.
Heimbach recently announced that Taylor will speak at Towson on October 2, 2012.
Heimbach also lists “recommended readings” that include books authored by a variety of well-known white supremacists and racists, such as Francis Parker Yockey’s “Imperium,” considered one of the essential works of modern white supremacy. One book recommended by Heimbach is the novel “Camp of the Saints” by Frenchman Jean Raspail. This racist novel portrays a France being invaded by non-whites who are depicted as disease-carrying and sexually aggressive. The list also features two books authored by the late white supremacist Sam Francis: “Essential Writings on Race” and “Race and the American Prospect.” In the latter book, Francis bemoans the “absence of racial consciousness among whites.”
Prior to creating the Web site, the Towson student newspaper, The Towerlight, published a letter by Heimbach advocating for a white student union. Flyers were also placed all over the Towson campus that proclaimed: “love your race, support a white student union.”
Heimbach is a former leader of the Youth for Western Civilization chapter at Towson, a group with racist ties whose motto is “defending the West on campus.”
Heimbach still needs the approval of the University to make the White Student Union an officially-sanctioned university group. His Web site suggests that he will settle for an unsanctioned group if need be. Either way, he has made clear his intention to impose his white supremacist views on Towson students, staff, and faculty.
ADL, right-wing extremism, white supremacist, white student union, hate group, jared taylor, council of conservative citizens, American renaissance, American third position, francis parker yockey, imperium, matthew heimbach, youth for western civilization
Tags: ADL, american renaissance, american third position, council of conservative citizens, francis parker yockey, hate group, imperium, jared taylor, matthew heimbach, right-wing extremism, white student union, white supremcist, youth for western civilization | <urn:uuid:731a711a-c2f7-472b-ab8d-97692e48861a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.adl.org/tags/white-student-union | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00030-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.944859 | 663 | 1.546875 | 2 |
This is a discussion on Pneumococcal vaccinations in Advanced Practice Nursing ... Ok I'm studying like crazy and I still can't get this right. So u can give the vaccine to people...
Ok I'm studying like crazy and I still can't get this right. So u can give the vaccine to people less than age 65 if they have comorbities,immunocomp, or a splenic. Then u can give them another at age 65 and then they can get it very 5 yrs. I'm confused cuz the tapes and questions say that but then u get a question luke...a healthy 50 yr old pt whose diabetic got his pneumococcal vaccine today when should he get another one. Why is it 65 and not 55?
Print and share with friends and family.
Compliments of allnurses.com.
©2013 allnurses.com INC. All Rights Reserved. | <urn:uuid:ad1180bd-3e81-44aa-b1d7-8bd8254f5f32> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://allnurses.com/advanced-practice-nursing/pneumococcal-vaccinations-789847.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.954725 | 187 | 1.835938 | 2 |
Maryland students take Cool School Challenge
Anne Arundel County students raise $100K+ for Polar Bear Plunge
More than 3,000 Maryland high school students will take part in this year's Polar Bear Plunge.
In fact, they'll be the first to jump into the chilly Chesapeake Bay on Friday for the Cool School Challenge.
Students from close to 80 Maryland schools have agreed to take the plunge and a good number of them from Anne Arundel County.
Last year, thousands of high school students took the plunge for a good cause and their numbers are growing for the fourth year in a row.
"Tell me about why you do this? I just feel it's so good for our community just to get out there to do something for and give back," student Alanna Sokoloff said.
Students at Severna Park High School will tell you there's also plenty of competition, from campus to campus.
"I try to raise more money than my friends actually. My friends are saying, 'I have more money than you.' I'm like, I got to get my emails out there and send them out," student Sabrina Douglas said.
And those proceeds support special Olympians.
"He's a freshman here at Severna Park and he loves it, and most of the reason why he loves it's because of the kids who come in and they're buddies. They're able body kids who help them," said Catherine Thomas who's a parent of a special Olympian.
This year, students will plunge on two consecutive Fridays and most say weather won't be a problem.
"It doesn't scare me. I'll plunge in any weather," student Zach Haynie said.
Some Severna Park teachers said they'll continue to lead by example.
"Last year, the faculty went in six or seven times under the water. Were just wild and crazy just like the kids," math teacher Kevin Wajek said.
Doing the math, students from Anne Arundel County have already raised more than $100,000.
Copyright 2013 by WBALTV.com All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. | <urn:uuid:be445f5e-e697-4b79-a07d-10671144bb1b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wbaltv.com/news/maryland/Maryland-students-take-Cool-School-Challenge/-/9379376/18237524/-/view/print/-/yecuz/-/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968855 | 458 | 1.609375 | 2 |
Spitzer Sues Long Island Village For Unconstitutional And Discriminatory Housing Code Inspections Of Latino Homes
Attorney General Spitzer today filed a federal lawsuit against the Village of Freeport, Long Island, alleging that Village housing inspectors violated constitutional "search and seizure" rules and anti-discrimination laws in conducting housing code inspections of Latino residents' homes. The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Long Island, seeks significant reform of the Village's housing code enforcement scheme, including new rules to protect residents from illegal inspections.The lawsuit follows an 18-month-long investigation by the Attorney General's office of complaints from Latino residents that, since the early 1990s, the Village of Freeport engaged in a pattern of unlawful and unconstitutional conduct in its enforcement of the housing codes. The OAG's lawsuit alleges violations of the U.S. Constitution's prohibitions on unreasonable searches and seizures and national origin discrimination, the federal Fair Housing Act, and state law. Specifically, the lawsuit alleges that, as part of a program to stamp out "overoccupancy" problems in the Village, inspectors bullied their way into Latino residents' homes, failed to obtain valid consent from residents or a valid warrant before searching, used deceptive and illegal tactics to gain entry, used the presence of emergency service personnel in Latino homes to obtain access into those homes in order to conduct wide-ranging inspections. The AG's complaint cites a host of examples of this conduct in recent years, including instances where:
- Village housing inspectors pushed their way into Latino homes without cause, without a warrant and without resident consent, in the face of clearly articulated objections by homeowners;
- Village housing inspectors took advantage of the presence of children to gain access to Latino homes without consent, and without an otherwise sufficient legal basis;
- Village housing inspectors entered Latino residents' homes by entering through unlocked doors, without a warrant or consent, as the law requires. In many cases, confronted by residents when already inside their homes, the inspectors informed them that the inspections were "mandatory";
- Village housing inspectors made false statements that they had obtained consent to search, in order to deceive Latino families and thereby gain entry into their homes to conduct inspections;
- After being summoned to Latino families' homes by police officers who were there on emergency service calls (domestic dispute complaints, ambulance calls, and the like), Village inspectors conducted wide-ranging searches that went beyond the areas within which a search would be proper. In one case, housing inspectors called in by police searched the entire home of a Latino family and photographed a young woman who had just emerged from the shower wearing only a towel. | <urn:uuid:95d0859a-07cb-4a6b-94e4-84777c5cf801> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://ag.ny.gov/press-release/spitzer-sues-long-island-village-unconstitutional-and-discriminatory-housing-code | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960336 | 527 | 1.585938 | 2 |
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
The Changemakers: 10 Celebrity Black Philanthropists | The Atlanta Post
The Changemakers: 10 Celebrity Black Philanthropists | The Atlanta Post: As the late, great civil rights leader and educator Mary McLeod Bethune once said, “As I give, I get.” We must remember that it is always better to give than to receive. Charity begins at home and by home I mean the black community. Don’t feel as though you must give a large amount of money; your time is just as valuable. This featured group of entertainers, business moguls and innovators know just that. So let’s take inspiration from the following notable figures and their philanthropy. | <urn:uuid:b4b6cae9-281e-4bea-9854-46dd2366ac5b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://afprc7.blogspot.com/2011/09/changemakers-10-celebrity-black.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956674 | 152 | 1.570313 | 2 |
Have you ever made colcannon? It’s a traditional Irish mashed potato dish with lots of greens. If there’s a heaven for kale, it’s this, mixed in with mashed potatoes and butter. Colcannon cakes, sort of an Irish version of potato latkes, are what you make with leftover colcannon. The only thing is, colcannon is so good, who has leftovers? So, you may just have to make a new batch to make these cakes. Or just make twice as much colcannon as you think you might need, just so you have enough to make these cakes. Oh my these are good. We liked them with a little fresh lemon juice squeezed on top. I had one with a runny egg for breakfast. Yum!
Colcannon Cakes Recipe
You can also add some chopped fresh parsley to the colcannon mix. Here's a fun idea for breakfast, serve the colcannon cakes with a poached egg on top!
- 2 1/2 pounds of russet potatoes, peeled and cut into large chunks
- 5 Tbsp unsalted butter
- 3 lightly packed cups of chopped chard, kale, spinach, or cabbage
- 1/2 cup of green onion greens, chopped
- 1 cup milk or cream
- About 3 cups of colcannon
- 1 cup flour
- 1 egg
- 2-3 teaspoons salt
- 4 Tbsp butter or vegetable oil
- Lemon for garnish
1 Make the colcannon first (see our colcannon recipe.) Put potatoes in a pot, cover with cold, well salted water by an inch, bring to a boil, and cook until fork tender, about 15 to 20 minutes. Drain the potatoes and remove them from the pot. Melt the butter in the still warm pot, add the chopped greens, cook for 3-4 minutes until wilted, then add the green onions and cook for another minute. Add the potatoes, milk or cream to the pot, mash until everything is well mixed.
2 Mix the egg, flour and salt in with the colcannon. You may want to chill the mixture for 15 minutes or longer to make it easier to shape the patties. Form into little cakes of whatever size you want, but make them flat so they will cook through without burning. If the mixture is too wet, add more flour until the mixture is easy to shape.
3 Heat the butter or vegetable oil in a large pan over medium-high heat. Working in batches, place the formed patties in the pan so they are not touching. Lower the heat to medium and gently fry until golden, abou 3-4 minutes. Turn and cook the other side. Let the cakes rest on a paper towel while you cook the others. Serve with slices of lemon.
Yield: Serves 4-6 as an appetizer. | <urn:uuid:7ce416ae-4746-4076-a3fb-de7458eefb35> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.simplyrecipes.com/recipes/colcannon_cakes/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00041-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.933714 | 602 | 1.507813 | 2 |
- The Future of Travel
- Interacting The Interface
- Caroline Wozniacki
- A New Definition Of Comfort
- A City Calling Out From On High
- Traditional Turkish Architecture And Th3 Myst3ry 0f Numb3r8
- Istanbul Capital Of The World
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- Western Civilization’s Last Stop
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A City Calling Out From On High
A City Calling Out From On High
With its rich array of historical, architectural and cultural treasures, Erzurum is a city currently engaged in the pleasant task of renewing itself.
Undertaking the most important investment initiative in its history, the city is emerging onto the international scene. When I recalled at approximately 2,000 meters the last time I had been here, I realized quite a number of years had passed in the interval. Eight to be exact. The most salient difference between Erzurum natives who still live here and those who have scattered hither and yon must be that the latter more keenly sense the transformation.
Although the Erzurum described by novelist Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar has disappeared without a trace, when I asked the driver of the taxi I hailed in my haste to seek out the old Erzurum of the historic skyline, he said, “Sir, these historic sites have risen in value in the last five or six years. Had we known they were going to appreciate so, would we ever have laid a hand them?”. And that was enough to give me some idea about the city’s historic texture. This city, perched so high that when you raise your hand you can almost touch the clouds, is currently engaged in feverish preparations for the 2011 Winter Olympics.
BOTH SELJUK AND OTTOMAN
Rebuilt at the founding of the Republic, Erzurum is now attempting to reconstruct its historic texture in a quest for the old days. Let alone the impression I formed of the graveyard of the Habib Baba Mausoleum and the changing faces of the small businesses around it, I realized while seeking the Habib Baba of my childhood that the architectural and historic texture has succumbed to the winds of change and renewal. The Yakutiye Madrasa, which is being taken over for use as the Museum of Ethnography and Turkish-Islamic Art through restoration and environmental planning, has lost none of its centuries-old glory and splendor. Immediately beyond it, the Tree of Life emblazoned at the left and right of the main portal of the Çifte Minareli Madrasa is known to Erzurum natives both here and in the diaspora to encompass the city’s oldest quarters of Sultan Melik and İbrahim Paşa.
But again along the same strip, and contrary to the popular view that the Seljuks in particular invested here whereas the Ottomans built little, this thoroughfare boasts a number of Ottoman period mosques and hamams. Consider just the first few that spring to mind: Murat Paşa Mosque, Lala Paşa Mosque, Caferiye Mosque, İbrahim Paşa Mosque. Along this same axis, Erzurum Castle was first repaired by Suleyman the Magnificent and again by Sultan Mahmud. Unfortunately, the castle suffered serious damage during the Russian occupation of World War I.
A CITY NURTURED BY TRADE
The Ottomans’ intimacy with Erzurum was due in no small part to trade and the resulting income derived through Tabriz. A major customs entry point in the Ottoman period, Erzurum earned its name in history as a vital commercial capital. As İbrahim Hakkı Konyalı points out in his ‘History of Erzurum’, we know that livestock and leather products were exported from here to many different destinations. And it is Tanpınar again who discloses the secrets of Erzurum’s vital fabric in his chapters on saddlers and tanners.
The splendor of its architecture impresses visitors to Erzurum, and much of that impact is due to the Ulu Cami or Great Mosque. Although the actual name of this mosque, built in the period of the Saltukids, is Atabey Mosque, it is known in common parlance as the Great Mosque owing to its sheer splendor and size. With its quintessential ‘kırlangıç’ dome inspired by the shape of the swallow’s nest, the Great Mosque exhibits all the hallmarks of the regional architecture.
One of the most important indicators of a city’s level of civilization is, without a doubt, its water and water supply system. Erzurum in this sense is a city with the potential to meet any challenge. With the hamams (baths) and fountains located all over the city, each with its own distinctive taste, Erzurum has a serious claim to being a ‘city of water’ with the climate to back it up. Kırkçeşme Hamam, Murat Paşa Hamam, Gümrük Hamam with its nearby mosque and han, Şabakhame Fountain and Dabakhane Fountain are some that immediately leap to mind. On the subject of water and civilization, another related concept is the famous Erzurum Sazlık (Marsh), once a habitat for myriad living creatures.
As old-timers will remember, the Erzurum Marsh is gone today, having been drained in fear of epidemic disease and in a rush to acquire arable land. Changing geography, changing human needs, and modernism’s destructive attitude towards all things human appear to be a significant problem for Erzurum and its inhabitants today. But the erudition and humor the city’s residents have developed in the face of life’s vicissitudes persist with undiminished enthusiasm. Boasting scholars and wits like the poet Nefi, Naim Hoca, the wrestler Teyyo Pehlivan, and Gömlekçi Hatem Usta the shirtmaker, Erzurum has also produced its share of artists and scholars, such as İbrahim Hakkı Hazretleri, Avlarlı Efe, Ömer Nasuhi Bimen, Boyacı İsmail Usta and Solakzade Sadık Efendi, as well as great statesmen like Sadrazam Mehmet Said Paşa and Hüseyn Avni Ulaş, who have shaped Turkish history. Even today, with its contributions to the national government, its university and its position in the world of science and scholarship, Erzurum fills an important need in the country.
THE HEART OF THE HINTERLAND AND BEYOND
Owing to its geographical location, Erzurum has always been of strategic importance, an importance that is evident all over the city. The gates for which the city’s various districts are named - Tabriz Gate, Georgia Gate, Istanbul Gate, for example, all representing its windows on the outside world - are just another indication of the remote realms to which Erzurum’s reach extended. East of the west and west of the east, Erzurum today is busy redefining itself by discovering its own historical and cultural values. And it would not be wrong to say that this process of redefinition is going to be a vehicle for new works, new values and new personalities.
THE COUNTDOWN TO THE UNIVERSIADE BEGINS
The Eyes Of The World Are Going To Be On Erzurum Between January 27 And February 6 When Close To 3,000 Athletes And Officials From 57 Countries Will Participate In The 25th World University Winter Games.
Last things first: The job done at Erzurum for the 2011 Universiade is nothing short of extraordinary. The facilities are ready, the athletes are ready, and Erzurum has been ready since the day before yesterday. You can feel the excitement the minute you set foot in the city, every inch of which is decked with Universiade posters.
There’s a smile on every face. Almost everyone you talk with believes the Erzurum 2011 Winter Games are a step in the direction of even bigger events. They would like to see the city host the winter Olympics in a few years’ time. As for the athletes, they are continuing to train. Turkey, which is entering the competitions in a total of 11 categories, aims to use its host-country status to advantage to collect medals.
TOWARDS AN OLYMPIC CITY
Erzurum is poised to be an Olympic city, not just in heart and mind but with facilities to boot. The 2011 Erzurum Winter Games are going to be held at venues scattered around the city. A pair of facilities by the name of Konaklı and Kandilli have already been added at the Palandöken Snow Sports Center, which was built at a cost of 45 million Turkish Liras. The pistes at the Konaklı Alp Ski Facilities 17 kilometers from the city center total 80 kilometers in length, while the Kandilli Facilities to the west of the city have world standard pistes for cross-country, Nordic combined, and biathlon racing.
There are also artificial snow centers at the facilities, which boast such conveniences as emergency search and rescue, a health center and a ski school, thanks to which the snow season, which lasts until April in Erzurum, can be extended for an extra month. Meanwhile, with two towers and three ramps, the Kiremitliktepe Ski Jumping Facilities are unique in Turkey. Boasting indoor services such as a conditioning salon, a restaurant and an internet room, these facilities also offer the world’s first ski-jumping towers in a city center. Not to mention a total of five indoor ice rinks built from scratch. According to Fatih Çintimar, Director of Construction for Unıversiade 2011, the latest technology has been used at all the venues. The 3,000-seat ice hockey stadium, for example, has everything from a conference hall to a sauna. And the 2,000-seat ice skating rink is on Ebu İshak Avenue right in the town of Palandöken.
The curling rink, which can accommodate a thousand spectators, boasts a total of five sheets. What’s more, two different halls that can be used as multipurpose ice rinks can host up to 500 guests each. Cemal Gürsel Stadium, where the opening and closing ceremonies will take place, has been revamped from head to foot. In addition to a hotel capacity of 3,700 persons, additional lodging for athletes and officials has also been arranged. The 8,000-bed Games Village on the campus of Ataturk University offers a restaurant and media center as well as sports and training areas. In short, Erzurum is ready for the 2011 Winter Games and invites you to join in the excitement. Let’s go! | <urn:uuid:f50fa14b-9c8b-4a88-ab8f-b1a4e0ce54da> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.turkishairlines.com/en-int/skylife/2011/january/articles/a-city-calling-out-from-on-high.aspx | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00024-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948161 | 2,347 | 1.5625 | 2 |
For More Information Contact the Public
Kathryn Forsyth, Director
For Release: Novmber 22, 2005
22 Governor’s Schools of Excellence Winners Recognized
Twenty-two schools were honored today as 2005 Governor’s Schools of Excellence Award winners for the significant improvements they have made over the course of two school years.
“These schools are excellent examples of how we can prepare our students for a 21st century workplace,” acting Commissioner Lucille E. Davy said. “It’s important we honor them today, and we’re sure they will sustain their improvement and keep providing outstanding opportunities for their students.”
Acting Commissioner Davy was joined by Ratepayer Advocate Seema Singh and other officials for the ceremony, held at the Masonic Temple in Trenton.
“These schools have shown they can give their children the best opportunities to succeed because of their marked improvement,” Acting Gov. Richard J. Codey said last month when the awards were announced. “They wanted to get better, and it’s no doubt their students benefited as a result.”
Governor’s Schools of Excellence receive a $25,000 reward. The program, in its third year, recognizes schools that show significant promise and meet five of nine criteria for two consecutive academic years. The criteria are:
- Outstanding growth in literacy measures;
- Improved parental involvement in school matters;
- Improved student attendance, graduation, and retention rates, and/or dropout reduction;
- Fewer violence and vandalism incidents as demonstrated in the annual Violence and Vandalism report and other measures;
- Creative and increased involvement with partnerships and/or the community;
- Increased and creative use of technology as a tool for learning in a school’s curriculum;
- Improved the quality of professional development of teachers;
- Improved learning for special needs and/or specialized populations; and
- Other category: this is an area where a school may submit documentation that shows areas of significant improvement that may not fit one of the criteria above.
Here are the 2005 winners, by county:
Washington Avenue Elementary School, Pleasantville School District: An Abbott school in an urban district that sits outside the borders of Atlantic City, this school of approximately 330 students has demonstrated sustained and impressive growth in test scores at the fourth grade level over the last five years. For more information on the school: http://www.pleasantville.k12.nj.us/schools/washington/.
Lincoln Elementary School, Hasbrouck Heights School District: Despite struggling previously, the school now scores in the top 10 percent of schools in the entire state. The most dramatic statistical gain occurred in mathematics where the percentage of the total population of students scoring advanced proficient more than doubled. For more information: http://lincoln.hhschools.org/.
Ridgefield Park Junior-Senior High School, Ridgefield Park School District: Ridgefield Park Junior-Senior High School implemented new courses and refocused teacher efforts; this has led to an improved school. For more information: http://www.rpps.net/rpjrsrhs.html
Peter Muschal Elementary School, Bordentown Regional School District: The school has been able to increase fourth-grade scores in the proficient range in both mathematics and language arts, as well as significantly decrease the number of partially proficient students. This has allowed the Peter Muschal Elementary School to meet and surpass the NCLB requirements. For more information: http://www.bordentown.k12.nj.us/
Garfield East Elementary School, Willingboro School District: Student achievement, as indicated by their test scores for the past four consecutive years, has improved dramatically. For more information:
Dr. William Mennies Elementary School, Vineland School District: Many students are at-risk; the school has improved by building a strong partnership of parents, teachers, and community.
For more information: http://www.vineland.org/mennies/notes_from_office.htm.
Max Leuchter Elementary School, Vineland School District: The school has the district’s highest number of transient students as well as a large number of families who are homeless. To address these issues, the school has created and sustained a strong partnership with the parents and the community. For more information: http://www.vineland.org/leuchter/index.html.
Holly Glen Elementary School, Monroe Township School District: Over the past two academic years, there has been a significant improvement in academic achievement. Specifically, early intervention, continual review of its curriculum, integration of technology and improved teaching techniques has been the key to its success. For more information: http://www.monroetwp.k12.nj.us/es/hollyglen/hollyglen.htm.
W.C.K. Walls Elementary School, Pitman School District: The school has improved its language arts literacy and mathematics NJASK test scores, which is the direct result of focusing efforts on improving performance in language arts and math. For more information: http://pitman.k12.nj.us/admin/wallsopen.htm.
Hurffville Elementary School, Washington Township School District: The school has focused on improvement by stressing “building a better world, one student at a time.”
For more information: http://www.wtps.org/hurff/.
Washington Township High School, Washington Township School District: Washington Township High School is the largest high school in South Jersey and the third largest high school in the state. Student performance on the HSPA remain on the rise.
For more information: http://www.wtps.org/wths/.
Phillip G. Vroom Elementary School, Bayonne Public Schools: The school has been successful in turning things around and was able to close the achievement gap for its economically disadvantaged students. Consequently, it was also removed from the federal NCLB list of schools that needed improvement.
For more information: http://www.bhs.bboed.org/schools/vroom/index.html.
Dr. Ronald E. McNair Academic High School, Jersey City School District: School has improved achievement in a district that is represented by 31 different languages. For more information: http://www.jcboe.org/mcnhs/.
Jose Marti Middle School, Union City School District: Formerly Christopher Columbus Middle School has exceeded expectations and received numerous accolades for its technology integration across the curriculum. New standards-based assessments and programs, and a focused vision all figure prominently in promoting and sustaining the school’s goals are apparent.
Woodbrook Elementary School, Edison Township School District: The school has been able to increase their performance levels on language arts and mathematics tests by always taking the time to recognize success and then raising the bar higher. For more information: http://www.edison.k12.nj.us/wbrindex.htm.
John F. Kennedy Memorial High School, Woodbridge Township School District: The school fosters an atmosphere that promotes students’ confidence as scholars and their importance as viable members of the community. For more information: http://www.woodbridge.k12.nj.us/SchoolsHS/JFK-HS/high_jfk.htm.
Robert Mascenik Elementary School #26, Woodbridge Township School District: The school’s unique learning environment has resulted in significant improvement in language arts and mathematics test scores.
For more information: http://www.woodbridge.k12.nj.us/elementary_26.html
Marine Academy of Science and Technology, Monmouth County Vocational School District: The school’s mission is to create literate, moral, productive members of society, who are empowered to meet the challenges of a global community and is realized though its unique approach to building a functional community.
For more information: http://www.mast.mcvsd.org/.
Tinton Falls Middle School, Tinton Falls School District: Improvement in language arts literacy and mathematics test scores occurred because of the school’s plan designed to best identify and tailor their teaching to the unique needs of each child. For more information: http://www.tfs.k12.nj.us/tfs/default.htm.
Bedminster Township School, Bedminster Township School District: As a result of a dedicated effort to renew curricula, improve teaching and learning, enhance purposeful professional development, and acquire and retain high quality staff, its students emerged as performance leaders in all areas of literacy. For more information: http://www.bedminsterschool.org
Kittatiny Regional High School, Kittatinny Regional School District: In order to assist their students in improving their GEPA and HSPA test scores, the school implemented a variety of programs that allowed their school to increase their test scores significantly. For more information: http://www.krhs.net/.
Nicholas Murray Butler Elementary School No. 23, Elizabeth School District: A school in an urban district with low-income families, a high mobility rate and two-thirds of its families who do not speak English in the home, No. 23 has improved consistently on standardized tests.
For more information: http://www.elizabeth.k12.nj.us/schools/23/front.html.
For more information, please contact the Department of Education Public Information Office at (609) 292-1126. | <urn:uuid:2394b477-7474-4cd5-9033-03a15ea3e3f2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nj.gov/education/news/2005/1122gov.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948235 | 2,002 | 1.585938 | 2 |
Derek Abbott (born May 3, 1960, in South Kensington, London, UK) is a physicist and electronic engineer. He is a Professor of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at the University of Adelaide, Australia. He is notable for leading theoretical work in the development of Parrondo's paradox, contributions to the field of stochastic resonance, and experimental contributions to T-ray imaging.
- My advice to all students is to question everything! You never know where a "silly question" may lead you.
- Statement in his Introductory profile at The University of Adelaide.
- My advice to prospective PhD students is to follow your passion and pick a topic that interests you — don't do a PhD topic that you hate, but you think will be lucrative. Because the big picture is that it is the fundamentals learned and problem solving skills gained from your PhD that will open the real career doors. Topics come in and out of fashion — it is the investment in yourself and the person you become through your PhD experience that really matters in the end. Of course, if you happen to love a topic that turns out lucrative then great — but this is hard to predict.
- Introdctory profile at The University of Adelaide
On energy supply and solar power
Quoted in Lisa Zyga, "How a Solar-Hydrogen Economy Could Supply the World's Energy Needs", PhysOrg.com, 24 August 2009
- My starting point is as an academic who always thought nuclear was the answer, but who then looked at the figures and came to an inescapable conclusion that solar-hydrogen is the long-term future. I did not come at this as a green evangelist. I am a reluctant convert.
- One can justify solar-hydrogen simply on grounds of economic resource viability without any green agenda.
- The fact that there simply is 5,000 times more sun power than our consumption needs makes me very optimistic. It's a fantastic resource. We have the ingenuity to send man to the moon, so we definitively have the ingenuity to tap the sun's resources.
- The biggest challenge [for solar power] is escaping from the economic effects of vendor lock-in where large investments in nuclear and traditional energy sources keep us 'locked-in' to feeding monsters that will bring us down an economic black hole. It's rather like the play The Little Shop of Horrors where a man-eating plant is initially fed small amounts, but then its voracious appetite sends it into a downward spiral swallowing up anyone that gets in its way.
- Efficiency is not the issue when you go solar. There is so much solar that all you have to do is invest in the non-recurring cost of more dishes to drive a solar-hydrogen economy at whatever efficiency it happens to sit at.
- Mathematics genealogy project: Abbott's scientific genealogy
- Fellow of the IEEE citation
- Abbott's Fellow IEEE biography
- 2004 Tall Poppy Award citation
- 2005 Eureka Prize People's Choice Award for Science list of finalists
- Abbott's COSnet profile
- Nanotechnology network profile
- Teaching philosophy
- Stochastic Resonance
- Quantum Aspects of Life
- Abbott's neurotree profile | <urn:uuid:0eff01ba-396a-49e3-a8c0-12e70736605d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Derek_Abbott | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941138 | 663 | 1.59375 | 2 |
If it were poor electronics design that would show up in SNR tests, but, it doesn't. The 5D Mk III outscores the D800 in that and almost every area except DxOMark tested DR.
No it would not. SNR test is carried out at middle gray where the signal is not affected so much by read noise.
LTRLI is correct
SNR can be measured at various levels and they're not using the dark end of the range or you'd REALLY see the results on a graph!
SNR of Canon's output is notoriously poor at the dark end where read-noise is a significant fraction of the signal level and that's where and why it only shows up in shadow areas.
That's also why total dynamic range results come out as they are.
Canon typically does a little better with highlight headroom but they lose considerable EV range at the dark end where SNR is the limiting factor to what constitutes allowable measurement range.
Because the Exmor sensor has a much lower read noise it can produce acceptable SNR at darker levels than the Canon system by a couple EV or more which adds to the total DR result.
You're free to believe other raw converters can't properly interpret the CR2 file but I believe you're quite wrong about that.
And if that doesn't convince you, just look at real world results of images shot with the latest Nikon sensors vs. Canons.
I have plenty of images from my 5D2 where noise is visible in shadow areas with only +1 EV of push applied, even using DPP. Add +2 EV push and you need to start using noise reduction to get rid of the mess.
You just do not have this low ISO shadow noise issue with the recent Nikons!
After buying and testing my first Nikon body, and comparing it to about 15 Canon DSLRs I've been using over the past 5 years, while using DPP, ACR(LR & PS) and DxO to process my raw files, I DID NOT discover that Canon's performed any better than Nikon in this one critical area. In fact, quite the opposite is true. A sub-$600 Nikon body totally blows away every Canon I've ever used in dark shadow detail retention and lack of noise. And that includes the otherwise well-regarded 5D2, 7D, 60D, 40D, etc. And I'll put it up against the new 5D3 at low ISO as well.
The D5100 performed so well I ordered a D800, a D800e and another D5100.
Now I'm sure you don't know my technical background but do you really think I'd spend $10k on new Nikon gear to get better DR performance by mistake?
For another angle on this, Canon's G11 and G12 use, AFAIK, SONY sensors in them. They also produce CR2 raw files.
Wanna have a look at their low ISO raw dark noise compared to Canon's EOS DSLRs using Canon's CMOS sensors?...www.a2bart.com/tech/allcamdknz.htm
Try explain that one. | <urn:uuid:756b44ba-4bd5-44c4-a024-e59a30f441bf> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.canonrumors.com/forum/index.php?topic=8088.msg149387 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00025-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946018 | 657 | 1.515625 | 2 |
NASHVILLE — Walden, Lakesite and a handful of Southeast Tennessee communities will be receiving funds from $3.8 million in energy efficiency and conservation block grants awarded Thursday.
Gov. Phil Bredesen and Community Development Commissioner Matt Kisber announced the grants in a news release. Funding comes from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and will pay for 42 projects, the release stated.
This is the second round of grants announced under the program. The first round awarded $9.2 million to 100 projects around the state.
The grants will fund projects that improve efficiency and reduce energy expenses in building and transportation projects, according to the governor. The projects are expected to produce more than 27 million kilowatt-hours of energy savings annually, resulting in a cost savings of about $2.5 million per year for Tennessee communities.
The grants also will allow installers and retrofitters to gain valuable training and experience that will serve private-sector companies as they expand their energy efficiency programs. | <urn:uuid:976b315f-a1d4-4b04-ac8b-e03d4c2d2aa3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.timesfreepress.com/news/2010/jul/02/local-towns-share-energy-grants/?Green | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946137 | 205 | 1.625 | 2 |
How to Take the Chill Out of Demographic Winter
A speech by Don Feder to the New Generation Church, Riga, Latvia, November Nov. 15, 2007
….In half-a-century or less, Europe will be populated by strangers — who will wander by the continent’s cathedrals, museums, statues and battlefield monuments wondering what it all meant.
This catastrophe in the making can be most clearly seen in Russia. What Lenin, Stalin and Hitler failed to accomplish, the Russian people are doing to themselves. You might call it auto-genocide.
In Russia, the fertility rate is 1.17 (down from 2.4 in 1990, a decline of over 50%). Russia is losing three-quarters of a million people a year. Its current population of 145 million is expected to be reduced by a third by 2050. In Russia today, almost as many children are aborted as are born alive (1.5 million to 1.6 million)….
In terms of population replacement, Europe is going out of business. Of the 10 nations with the lowest fertility rates worldwide, 9 are in Europe. No European nation has anything approaching a replacement-level birthrate.
Overall, the European fertility rate is 1.3. (Remember, a fertility rate of 2.1 is needed just to maintain stability — no growth and no decline). Italy’s fertility rate is 1.2 — meaning that in the not-too-distant future, absent immigration, Italy will lose almost half of its people in every generation.
The average Italian child born today won’t have brothers or sisters. Most also won’t have cousins, aunts or uncles. Demographic winter is a lonely, as well as a chilly, place….
Update June 7, 2008:
Current total fertility rates (TFRs) for countries in the world – Rank Order. The web page accessible through the preceding link lists the rank order from highest to lowest, with a TFR of about 2.2 indicating a stable population. The TFR required to maintain a given country’s population varies a little from country to country, depending on the life expectancy for the average resident in that country. (Source: CIA World Factbook)
As of June 2008, the CIA World Factbook showed 104 countries (generally the richest and most developed) to have TFRs of less than 2.2. In other words, in those countries the population is in the process of shrinking. (Related Articles at Fathers for Life) | <urn:uuid:e40e5e02-1051-40ee-9821-8668a247cc8e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blog.fathersforlife.org/2007/12/28/demographic-winter/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941451 | 518 | 1.8125 | 2 |
Iran Oil Stabilization Fund
This fund no longer exists.
US$ Billion: 23
Entity Structure: Fund
Iran has created a new fund called the National Development Fund (NDF) that will invest in Iran. The new fund has been created to be an inter-generational national wealth fund. It will replace the existing Oil Stabilisation Fund (OSF). Iran transfers 20% of oil revenues to the National Development Fund.
The original fund (OSF) was created to invest Iran’s oil revenues and act as a stabilizer against fluctuating oil revenues.
The investment arm is the IFIC, the Iran Foreign Investment Company. It was incorporated in March 1998 as a private joint stock company with a mission to manage and expand Iranian holdings abroad.
A holding company, IFIC provides financing and financial services and makes investments around the world. IFIC has interests in energy, telecom and IT, banking, insurance, stock markets, industry, mining, oil, gas and petrochemicals, as well as new and future technologies.
Currently IFIC has ventures in different countries including Germany, Brazil, Egypt, Jordan, Sudan, Yemen, Namibia, Oman, United Arab Emirates and Armenia. | <urn:uuid:852dcc95-5f05-40bc-986c-f4fe6b2f13b0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.swfinstitute.org/swfs/iran-oil-stabilisation-fund/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951862 | 249 | 1.75 | 2 |
How do i allow a user select from a list of players to play a video
I am currently working on a website and would want users to select a player e.g[flash, windows media player etc]..to play a video....I am creating a video gallery so when you click on a player it shows on the page then u can now select the video you want to watch.
While it's possible to allows website visitors to select the video player they want... I really don't know why you would want to do so. Most viewers would not know the difference between players nor would they know whether or not their particular machine has the correct pluggin to display a particular video player. If you are not familiar with how video player browser pluggins work... they won't be either.
And on your part, it would be much more complex to place multiple players on a page... each with playlist... all of which would have different skins and different display sizes to include the playlist.
I take it that you have not done much Web video. For practice you should first place each of these video players on a single page... and use players with playlists so the viewer can choose between multiple videos. Then after you have sucessfully created at least 3 different Web players....say Flash, Windows Media Player, and QuickTime player... and be sure to use players with playlists (and realize how easy/hard that is to find), re-visit your multiple player idea. There are many ways it could be accomplished.
For example... put a different video player on each of the sliding tabs ... as you see here: http://www.exploreolympics.com/index.html
while these are each just a single player with no playlist... it's an example of how it could be done.
Coda slider: http://www.ndoherty.biz/demos/coda-slider/2.0/
Best of luck,
Eye for Video www.cidigitalmedia.com
Thank you very much. yeah am new to the video thing....i fink i would just tab it....by putting each player on each tab...
i saw something like what i asked earlier on this website.... https://www.domi.org
Well that is quite the video player setup!.... but it may not be as clear cut as it first seems. Did you click on all the buttons to see what happens?
There are really only two choices that match what you are attempting to do..
Windows Media and Flash Media achives...
want users to select a player e.g[flash, windows media player etc]..to play a video....I am creating a video gallery so when you click on a player it shows on the page then u can now select the video you want to watch.
The other selections are for Live Streaming video... and I assume the reason for all those choices is NOT to give the viewer a bunch of good choices for viewing the Live Stream, but rather to try find one type of file that will work on their machine.... so if this doesn't work..try this one or that one.
That is certainly one way to try cover all bases.
Anyway, it certainly is possible to provide multiple video file types. But again I warn you that it can be confusing for the viewer and implementation will greatly multiply your development time. I really wonder why you would want to provide 3 file types when 1 would do? Do you have the video editing software to provide multiple file types?
Speaking of file types, Windows Media (wmv) really only play in Windows machine (just a small portion of all video devices)... not Mac or iProducts... Flash plays in nearly all Windows and Macs .... coving a much larger segment of audiance, but not iProducts.
So you really need to add a third type targeting mobile iProducts if enhancing viewer experience is your goal.... using a QuickTime mp4 or m4v....
or just use 1 single mp4 file and a good video player, (like JWPlayer or Flow player... as used on the link you sent) and cover all bases with just one video file.
Here is an example of a video file using JWPlayer which plays on PCs, Macs, and iProducts: http://exploreolympics.com/reports/?p=5522
Anyway, best of luck!
Eye for Video www.cidigitalmedia.com | <urn:uuid:ecf4ba4e-3366-434a-8089-5d66b3ef5f81> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.webdeveloper.com/forum/showthread.php?258289-How-do-i-allow-a-user-select-from-a-list-of-players-to-play-a-video&p=1198303&mode=linear | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947514 | 931 | 1.507813 | 2 |
6 April 2011
IFEX Communiqué Vol 20, No 14
The media is one of the casualties in Côte d'Ivoire's bloody political standoff, as journalists face attacks and threats from both sides and the fate of the state broadcaster remains up in the air, report the Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA), Reporters Without Borders (RSF) and the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). As a result of the chaos in Abidjan, no newspaper has been distributed since 31 March, reports RSF.
The United Nations' top human rights body has abandoned its condemnation of religious "defamation" and instead passed a resolution supporting an individual's right to freedom of belief - a move long awaited by IFEX members.
Thirty IFEX members have come together to condemn the attacks on journalists and free expression in Yemen, where one journalist has been killed and dozens of others have been attacked since political unrest broke out in January.
Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa is asking for US$80 million in damages from the newspaper "El Universo" and three years in prison for its executives for printing a "slanderous" article, report IFEX interim member Andean Foundation for Media Observation & Study (FUNDAMEDIOS) and IFEX members. The members are urging Correa to withdraw the lawsuit.
As change continues to sweep across the Middle East, with citizens seeking democracy and guarantees for their basic human rights, you've got to ask: what got them here? The Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies (CIHRS) seeks the answer to this question in "Roots of Unrest", its third annual report of the Arab world.
The Canadian organisation Rights & Democracy invites nominations for the 2011 John Humphrey Freedom Award, which honours an organisation or person who has made an outstanding contribution to promoting human rights and democratic development. The deadline for nominations is 30 April 2011. | <urn:uuid:3d08d787-5613-46e2-b91f-06e9945e57bd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ifex.org/2011/04/06/comm_20_14/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94982 | 395 | 1.5 | 2 |
Anesthesia and Critical Care ,Hospital & Clinics Administration: Hospital
and Clinics Leadership, Hospitals & Health Networks, Hospitals for a Healthy
Environment,Doctors & Hospitals,LifeCare Hospitals,Hospitals, Nursing Homes &
Other Health Care Faciliti
As part of the initiative to go beyond the four walls of
the institutions students of the colleges collect old clothes and
medicines in the hospital mission office and donate them to the inmates
of the Missionaries of Charity. The home provides care to mentally
challenged patients and the response from doctors and students has been
overwhelming. Coordinated by the chaplains this has indeed been a way of
reinstating the mission of our institution and opening the eyes of
students to realities they would have otherwise ignored. Visits by a
group of Christian and non Christian students as well as faculty are
regularly organised. The outcome of this has begun a process of many
among us who have felt the need to give and reach out. Hence a proposed
mission fund for those who enter CMCH for treatment. Not just community
health but a healthy community is the objective.
The Chaplains have also been involved with the schools and other
organizations to share the Christmas devotions, conduct seminars on
Leadership, conduct retreats and ethics classes for different groups of
school students, college students and other groups in the city.
Mission Office gets in touch with the students who have completed their MBBS
as well as their Post Graduate studies. We have used the office this far as a
platform to prepare various bible studies and the ethics classes for the
medical, nursing and dental students as well as the doctors bible study. It has
also been used as a counselling room for staff and students.
Beyond health care and academic excellence, at the heart of our existence lies
our mission statement. The role of the Mission Office is thus a constant
reminder of our need to reaffirm our values and mission as an institution.
Besides a regular newsletter and being a facilitator for CMAI based seminars and
retreats for staff and students, the Mission Office is in touch with the
students serving their bond, encouraging them to complete their bond and
continue their service to CMC if possible. A number of PG students who have
joined this year are a result of that effort.
The Mission Office serves as that bridge between students, their faculty and the
staff by allowing them to reconcile, to remind them that without a shared vision
it would increase the likelihood of different individuals and groups promoting
different interests. Additionally, once students at an early age are able to be
educated and challenged about an institutional vision, they will certainly be
effective tools in future. With regular meetings and recurrent discussions with
the staff, counseling of the students, (MBBS as well as PG) and faculty, the
Office serves as a centre for reaffirming the need to share a common vision in
order that the mission be engraved in the hearts of the community members in
working towards a common goal.
The Mission Office is also involved with the publication of the Institutional
newsletter called Inside CMC
Fellowship CMC Ludhiana Punjab India, Life Care
Hospital, Hospitals & Health Networks, Hospitals for a Healthy Environment | <urn:uuid:82415a29-cb69-4873-aedd-7a437463dcec> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://cmcludhiana.in/departments/fellowship/mission_outreach.php | 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 | 0.959845 | 690 | 1.773438 | 2 |
The Supreme Court today ruled in favor of a man on death row in Texas who had sought to obtain untested DNA evidence to prove his innocence.
It was the second time the court has found in favor Henry "Hank" Skinner, who is on death row for the 1993 murder of his girlfriend and her two sons.
Skinner had completed his "last meal" of cheeseburgers, catfish and chicken thighs in March 2009 when the Supreme Court stepped in to halt his execution so it could hear his appeal.
The court ruled 6-3 today that Skinner had the right to sue state officials under federal civil rights law. The decision does not free Skinner, but allows him to argue in federal court that Texas state officials should allow him to test some DNA evidence found on the crime scene that was never tested.
Skinner argued that Texas, which allows prisoners to gain post-conviction DNA testing in limited circumstances, violated his Fourteenth Amendment right to due process by refusing to provide for the DNA testing he requested.
For front-row reporting and analysis from the Supreme Court, click HERE.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said the court expresses "no opinion on the ultimate disposition" of Skinner's case, but allows the challenge to go forward in federal court.
"While the test results might prove exculpatory," she wrote, "that outcome is hardly inevitable."
Skinner was convicted in 1995 of murdering his live-in girlfriend, Twila Busby, and her two sons. Busby was bludgeoned to death with an axe handle and her sons were stabbed.
Although some evidence at the crime scene implicated Skinner, he argued that he could not have committed the crimes because he was incapacitated by alcohol and codeine.
Skinner's trial lawyer failed to ask for additional testing during his trial, but after his conviction, Skinner spent years seeking to test some pieces of untested DNA evidence, including knives found on the premises, the axe handle, vaginal swabs, fingernail clippings and additional hair samples.
But, in Skinner's case, Texas officials refused his request, arguing he had been convicted on a combination of DNA evidence, physical evidence, his own statements and numerous witness' testimony.
In court papers, lawyers for the State of Texas said the state had important interests in "preserving the finality of valid convictions" and "avoiding the costs associated with defending successive, meritless challenges."
Skinner had lost all state and federal appeals until today. But the decision by the Supreme Court is narrow.
Like Texas, most states allow some kind of post-conviction DNA testing. Today's decision only applies to an inmate who challenges a state's denial of further testing.
Skinner is also restricted by Supreme Court precedent that limits the federal action a prisoner can bring for DNA testing. Ginsburg wrote that the court leaves "slim room for the prisoner to show that the governing state law denies him procedural due process."
Skinner has offered to pay for the testing.
While Texas argued that if Skinner were to prevail, the federal courts would be flooded with requests by other inmates, Justice Ginsburg disagreed, saying she saw no evidence of "any litigation floor or even a rainfall."
Colin Starger of the Baltimore University Law School has researched post-conviction DNA testing and found that between 2000 and 2008, only 21 prisoners sought to use civil rights laws to get DNA testing. | <urn:uuid:efe56782-f998-4aec-9f8b-eb0aca5f5795> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/supreme-court-rules-favor-death-row-inmate-seeking/story?id=13076788 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699881956/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516102441-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979876 | 702 | 1.625 | 2 |
gave to their vision Being, and set it amid the Void
, and the Secret Fire
was sent to burn at the heart of the World; and it was called Eä
A mysterious power, never explained in detail, that seems to represent the principle of existence and creation. Little can be said of it for certain, though it seems to be identified with, or at least connected to, the Flame Imperishable of Ilúvatar. When Gandalf met the Balrog on the Bridge of Khazad-dûm, he spoke of himself as a servant of the Secret Fire. It has been conjectured that these words referred to his fire-ring Narya, but it seems unlikely that he would reveal this to a bitter enemy. More plausibly, Gandalf's words identify him as a servant of the power of Ilúvatar.
For acknowledgements and references, see the Disclaimer & Bibliography page.
Website services kindly sponsored by Axiom Software Ltd.
Original content © copyright Mark Fisher 2002, 2009. All rights reserved. For conditions of reuse, see the Site FAQ. | <urn:uuid:c35a50a7-14c1-46f3-8a46-865c71a80747> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.glyphweb.com/arda/s/secretfire.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00022-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953791 | 227 | 1.6875 | 2 |
Laurie Lee (1914-1997) is famous for the life he wrote about so engagingly in three volumes of autobiography, but his first love was always poetry, a passion that left its mark on his precise and lyrical prose. Born in Stroud, Gloucestershire, the eleventh of twelve children, Lee moved to the village of Slad, nestled deep in a Cotswold valley, at the age of three. Lee's was the last generation to experience that centuries-old rural isolation which ended with the coming of the motor car. It was an insular world, one of poverty, with overcrowded cottages, no electricity and high rates of infant mortality, but also one of family and community warmth. It's a world Lee captures in the sensual descriptions of Cider with Rosie
(1959), his best-loved book, but his childhood, particularly the lush beauty of the Gloucestershire countryside, was also the inspiration for many of his poems. Lee went to the village school and then Stroud Central School, leaving at fifteen to work as an errand boy. At nineteen he left his native village to seek his fortune, walking to London where he worked for a year as a building labourer. From there he travelled to Europe, spending four years exploring Spain and the Mediterranean, largely on foot, and scratching a living from playing his violin. He recorded these wanderings in his second volume of autobiography, As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning
(1969). After a short period back in London, Lee returned to Spain in 1937 to volunteer for the International Brigade in the fight against Franco's Fascists. His service in the Spanish Civil War was cut short by physical weakness (he suffered from epilepsy) but his time as a volunteer provided the material for his final volume of memoir, A Moment of War
(1991). After his Spanish adventure, Lee settled in London and earned a living as a journalist and scriptwriter. In the Second World War he made documentary films for the General Post Office, Crown Film Unit and Ministry of Information where he also worked as an editor on the Ministry's publications. At this point in time, Lee's creative energies were being poured into poems, his first collection, The Sun My Monument
, appearing in 1944. This was followed by two further collections, The Bloom of Candles
(1947) and My Many Coated Man
(1955), before he turned his attention to prose. His poems show the influence of sophisticated contemporaries like W. H. Auden and Stephen Spender, and also of the Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca, but the vision of fragile rural beauty is Lee's own and, whilst limited in its range, it retains its power to charm and move. Lee married Catherine Polge in 1950 and they had one daughter. Lee was still doing official work - he was chief caption writer for the Festival of Britain, a role which was rewarded by an MBE - but the immediate success of Cider with Rosie
gave him the financial security to write full time. It also enabled him to buy his childhood home in Slad, a return in real life to that lost paradise he visited so memorably in his writing. He died in Slad in 1997 and is buried in the local churchyard. Up to his death Lee continued to write in a variety of forms - travel books, essays, a radio play, and short stories, as well as further volumes of autobiography - but poetry remained elusive. That this loss of inspiration was a cause of regret can be felt in his rueful comment that his poems "were written by someone I once was and who is so distant to me now that I scarcely recognise him anymore."
It was Lee's poetry that helped set the tone and context of his later prose work, as can be seen in this recording made in Bath. Both 'Apples' and 'April Rise' show that gift for sensuous detail, rendered so intensely as to become rhapsodic, which has made Cider with Rosie
, in particular, enduringly popular. Initially 'Town Owl' seems to form a contrast, taking its inspiration from the bombed out houses Lee witnessed during his stay in war-time London. In fact, as he says in his introduction, this poem too is "a message from my valley", the owl colonizing the urban landscape with memories of home. Lee's own music recalls a more melodic bird: as his obituary in The Guardian put it Lee "had a nightingale inside him" which can still be heard singing clearly in these lines. | <urn:uuid:566344ac-e8cc-4269-b86c-7a4637e6acc2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoem.do?poemId=7511 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.988373 | 941 | 1.570313 | 2 |
Just back from Ukraine, I follow TV reports of the election protests in Kiev, the capital. Via e-mail, friends have described the situation in Odessa, where I lived, as much calmer. Odessa is neither in the eastern mining and industrial center nor in the western nationalistic area; its politics are less heady. Situated on the Black Sea, the south border of Ukraine, Odessa is a port city. Once it was the third-largest city in the Russian Empire. Now, with a population of about one million, it's the third-largest city in Ukraine and no more typical of that country than New Orleans is of the U.S. It's young — only 210 years old. It has strong literary credentials. Pushkin, greatest of Russian writers, lived there for more than a year. He's celebrated with two statues, one of which, from the end of the 19th Century, names him "Citizen of Odessa"; the other dates from the end of the 20th Century. Pushkin also has a street named after him. Enough writers have come from or lived in Odessa that street names in one section of Odessa read like a who's who of Russian literature: Gogol, Mayakovsky, Babel. Like other port cities, this one is multicultural, multinational, multilingual. Again, the street names say it all: Polish Street, Greek Street, Jewish Street — which is only a block from Trinity Street.
The many restaurants with menus in English give a deceptive impression. Just because something is on the menu doesn't mean it's available and, perhaps more telling, just because the menu is in English doesn't mean your waiter or waitress understands English. It's symptomatic. Odessa is "almost" ready for tourism. As a consequence, groups fare better than individuals, and high-priced hotels are more apt to have English-speaking staff than moderately priced ones. More visitors arrive by bus than by air tours. The ferry from Istanbul and river cruise boats put in at the sea terminal. But the railroad station is the most-used terminal, always crowded with locals.
The downtown streets, their sidewalks uneven, are tree-lined and bordered by two-storied Art Deco and Classical-styled buildings, many with grapevines climbing and shading them with large leaves. A city park borders one side of Deribosovskaya Street, the main drag and now a pedestrian mall. The street sports casinos and jewelry stores, and there's a McDonald's, a "steak house," and a Georgian (the country, not the state) restaurant, among others. A little farther on is Primorskij (Seaside) Boulevard, not far from the archeological museum. If you stroll this promenade next to a park, you can look down on the Black Sea and the port. Keep walking and you'll arrive at a statue of a man in a toga, Richelieu, the first mayor of Odessa. You are at the top of the Potyomkin stairs made famous by Eisenstein's film in which a baby carriage careens down a long flight to the port below.
I was in Odessa from the end of August until December as a Fulbright Scholar teaching at Mechnikov National University. I lived in a downtown apartment, my wife with me for two weeks. Fortunately, I speak Russian, one of Odessa's two languages (Ukrainian is the other). What follows are accounts of incidents and observations, an attempt to convey some of the flavor of that remarkable city in the early fall of 2004.
Because Odessa is celebrating its birthday, there are free music and dance performances all around town. We go to the Philharmonic for modern Polish music and Dvorák. As we are waiting to enter, a woman decides we must be foreigners or at least non-Odessites and, unasked, starts in on the history of the building, the former stock exchange. "It's without columns," she explains, "so that merchants couldn't concoct secret deals. They stayed at the hotel across the street, which, like so much in Odessa, is being renovated." She says that when the architect was asked what the style of the building was, he replied, "Various; one style per floor." The Philharmonic itself is slightly garish, in mock Florentine style, with lots of curlicues on the façade and, inside, carved-wood ceilings.
Looking for the Ukrainian Theater, I stop a woman for directions. She hears my accent.
"Where are you from?"
"Oh, dear guests, and how do you like our city? And are you comfortable? Are you tourists?" She is full of questions and genuinely excited. Perhaps that is because there seem to be few Americans here. Germans filled the plane we arrived on, and there have been German tour groups around the center of the city. On an outing a bit farther from the center, I stop to consult my map. A dapper man in his 60s asks what we're looking for. I say, "The sea and the monument to the unknown sailor." He, too, gives directions and asks where we're from. When he retired, he started to travel extensively throughout the former Soviet Union, he says, and in Europe as well. "I just couldn't stay at home," he says. When I ask where in Europe, he answers, "Bulgaria and Romania," the extent of Europe available to Soviet citizens before the end of communism. Even today, "East" Europe still makes the best fit for Ukrainian pocketbooks.
Although there are beach areas closer to downtown, Arkadia is the most developed. According to my younger friend Lena, it has a nightlife all its own, but according to Valeria, another friend, it's so noisy that many of her generation, past 60, have sold their summer dachas in the area. It takes 20 minutes by car, a little longer by bus, and a bit longer than that by tram to get there. You walk from the parking area and bus stop past vendors selling beer and sandwiches, hot dogs and shawarma stands, people in various stages of dress or undress, from skimpy bathing suits to business suits with vests and ties. There are private beaches and public ones, resort hotels and a restaurant in the form of a pirate's ship, in which we eat. The fish is fresh, well prepared, and surprisingly tasty. We have a bottle of Moldovan Chardonnay with it. The deck we're sitting on overlooks the Black Sea. Below us, people stretch out on the beach. In the distance we can see a regatta and sailboats strung out for a mile or so. It's an hour to forget the bombings and terrorist acts taking place not far away; an hour to be soothed by the sea. | <urn:uuid:826f3b23-b0df-4fdf-a34b-f07b97b50c76> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sandiegoreader.com/news/2004/dec/30/odessa-impressions/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970229 | 1,425 | 1.601563 | 2 |
Originally Posted by 6up
hey fellow teachers & associates
Does anyone have any creative strategies to deal with high school students that are habitually late and/or absent? I've tried everything...detentions, push ups, calls home and nothing seems to deter it? Looking forward to your ideas.
It's frustrating- are the kids who have issues with being late or absent still fulfilling the state or provincial learning objectives? The fundamental problem is, of course, that carrots and sticks are terrible motivators for changing people's long-term behavior. The issues that things like detentions and push-ups cause seems to me much greater than the seeming short-term benefits they derive. I'm wondering, if you were constantly late to work and your principal made you do pushups during lunch in the staff room, called your wife or kept you in on weekends it wouldn't increase your intrinsic motivation to be a good professional. If anything, it would create either hostile feelings, cause you to consider that staying late at school is a punishment (when in reality putting the idea of 'being in school = bad' or that exercise = punishment).
When I have kids who are habitually late I try to understand why it is they're late. There are hundreds of reasons that we could discuss here, but at the end of the day it doesn't really matter. Do the kids consider your class important? Interesting? Crucial? Are the kids having issues at home? Are they 'fashionably late' for a reaction out of you (which leads to a worse problem- the dreaded you vs. them). Fuck, are they late because mom or dad are shitty at getting them to school on time?
Talk to the other teachers about the specific kids who are constantly late. Are they late to everyone's class? Only mornings? After lunch?
A lot of places really enforce a closed-door policy. To me, that's the complete opposite direction we should be going... Sometimes, however, it might be ok. The admin at our school picks random days to have a bell 'lock down' one period. If you're in the hall after the second bell, you go to the cafe to grab a late slip- their problem. That's their business I suppose (real cognitive dissonance here on my part hmmm). The school I'm at right now doesn't have bells. Teachers dismiss and begin class according to their clocks and prerogative... you know... just like work/university. Kids deal with it fine.
Habitual lates aren't going to suddenly become model students because you're giving them pushups or detentions. Very few kids I know react positively to tough love but somehow it's the first tool on the bench most teachers reach for. Drives me nuts. You don't have to be their friend but looking at the big picture really makes a difference. I spent some time in a connections program (for kids who are on the wrong side of the law, into drugs, been kicked out of the system) and that really forced me to understand that kids showing up a few minutes late for your class, chewing gum, wearing hats, texting and whatever else are really fucking weak ways to 'rebel' or somehow make them better people if they refrain. | <urn:uuid:19f39a1c-39c7-464a-8e66-cd50ef7e383c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.styleforum.net/t/225359/the-teacher-thread/480 | 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 | 0.976803 | 667 | 1.5 | 2 |
When you've chose which kind of registered nurse you would choose to be and completed your nursing training, it happens to be eventually the perfect time to look for a registered nursing perform. When you have made a decision to just take an internship, you shouldn't have any situation securing work at the time you are finished. Most health care services would prefer to use their interns on the lengthy expression foundation when their internship is finished. If you ever opt to forgo the internship component, then you definately may have to pound the pavement, since they say. Not currently being acquainted using the subject of health care may be complicated when wanting to decide which occupation route to acquire. As regards to the healthiness treatment area, and registered nursing specifically, you will find numerous paths one can possibly go can look mind-boggling. The great factor relating to this is at a minimum it's always overpowering inside of a quality way. In conjunction with nursing you can begin out in a single specialized niche, and when you receive bored or just do not like this, it is possible to comfortably go once one more nursing occupation route. internet site for even farther resources on nurse salary.
Centered for the American Affiliation of faculties of Nursing, graduates can start off exercise being an Rn by getting an connect diploma or healthcare facility diploma. Nonetheless deciding on around the registered nursing faculties could possibly be a lttle bit complex. Critical factors to consider are academics to varsity university student ratio, certification, and instructional funding selections. Most registered nursing colleges position this significant information on their websites. Otherwise, a quick call up for their places of work gives you you with this particular material. Previously you select on the software, verify along with your condition to understand its requirements. The help personnel of colleges you could be thinking of could also aid you decide ways to produce your approved nursing diploma on the net within a plan which could satisfy your condition standards. Once you have narrowed your possibilities to a couple educational institutions, ask for every single faculty if it's details about how college students received to the Nclex assessment. Decide on a college that has a significant amount of going scores in comparison towards the quantity of higher education pupils who graduate. This means that whenever you complete, you are going to be perfectly well prepared to simply accept test and be considered a registered nurse. Visit Website for alot more info on nurse salary. | <urn:uuid:b2f7bd75-c02b-4e47-8296-9ed7bfa1d234> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://wiki.designmodproject.de/index.php?title=KeeleyMeeker114 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964493 | 480 | 1.640625 | 2 |
Monday, June 20, 2011
Allen Oberg, Chairman of the CWB, spoke about the future of the CWB at the Western Canadian Farm Progress Show in Regina last week. While reading and listening to his presentation online, I was struck with just how much this debate is now focused on the plight of the reformed CWB, and not about marketing freedom.
This whole process started by the federal government isn’t about the future structure of the CWB – it’s about providing marketing freedom to Western Canadian farmers. Why are we spending so much time on what the CWB will be able to do – or not do – in the absence of the single desk?
The Conservatives main objective is not to reform the CWB into some form of “voluntary marketing agency”; that part of this exercise emerged because it appeared that a portion of the farming community wanted a voluntary CWB. And since this exercise is about giving choices, it makes sense to consider a voluntary CWB as one choice.
But now the debate is about jobs in downtown Winnipeg, whether the port of Churchill will survive, whether the federal majority government has the mandate to provide marketing freedom, and most of all that farmers should get to vote on the future of the CWB. Add that to the drone of more NFU and CWB rhetoric about the value of the single desk – all unproven and, quite frankly, using analysis that is hard to believe that any reasonable person would believe. (The NFU allegation that the CWB is responsible for adding $1.5 billion to farmers’ incomes would be laughable if it weren’t so serious. $1.5 billion works out to about $75/tonne on CWB grains only; do they really think that net returns to farmers would be that much lower without the CWB?)
In Regina, Allen Oberg made his views clear; he said “the CWB cannot survive without the single desk”. He says the CWB is not a grain company yet will be expected to compete as one, relying on its competitors. The CWB has no capital base for borrowing money or financing its operations, it relies on government guarantees; it will be too small; it doesn’t matter how good the CWB is at marketing, it won’t survive without physical assets; even with a large base of farmer support, the CWB won’t survive in a competitive world. What is the business plan of the new CWB? Who are its shareholders? Are they farmers? What are its assets?
None of this has anything to do with marketing freedom; it’s all about the organization.
The CWB has failed to prove its relevance. They argue that the single desk needs to remain because farmers benefit from it. However, they have never proven it. Read back through all the press releases and public comments by the CWB; you will not find one shred of irrefutable proof that the single desk provides a net benefit. Don’t just say “because it’s been good to farmers” – tell us how. When you don’t provide hard evidence, we can only assume it’s because you can’t.
Oberg has stated that, if the “new model” of the CWB cannot provide additional value, then why bother. And he says he can’t think of a better model than the single desk. About the government, Oberg said, “I do not believe they have a vision for how the CWB could function in an open market. They simply want the single desk dismantled.” I think he’s right; the government’s focus is on providing farmers with marketing choice. I think it’s up to those that have an interest in the CWB to put some effort behind making it work.
If those who are in the best position to lead change within a voluntary CWB – the directors and the senior staff – don’t think they can create a meaningful and successful marketing organization for farmers, then I say we should believe them.
Minister Ritz should take this as a strong message, rescind the CWB Act, and move all non-marketing activities to a newly minted Canadian Wheat Commission (CWC). Funded by a voluntary check-off, the CWC could be used to administer cash advances on wheat and barley, support the Canadian International Grains Institute (CIGI), support wheat and barley breeding programs, market development – and anything else its management feels compelled to get involved in – except grain marketing and regulations.
If those wanting the CWB to be remain active in grain marketing in some form, I suggest they work toward creating an organization that – quite frankly – does not market grain nor regulate. The CWB says it can’t compete as a grain company, so take that one off the table; let’s all agree it won’t be a grain company. It would be a mistake to have them regulate anything, so turf that one too.
However, under the right leadership, the CWB could become a very important risk management tool for farmers, providing optional price pooling (yes, through the grain companies), other pricing options and market-based resources to enhance cash flow. It could even administer cash advances (which could be imbedded in other cash management tools).
If those leading the CWB can’t see a future for a voluntary CWB of any description, even one providing risk and cash management, I guess it has no future. But that’s OK - in a free market there will be others willing to step in to offer whatever farmers need and the market can provide.
It’s time to move on.
Posted by John De Pape at 3:46 PM | <urn:uuid:b4d443ca-f796-46da-a89a-49e65de1a663> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cwbmonitor.blogspot.com/2011/06/its-time-to-move-on.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963977 | 1,203 | 1.5625 | 2 |
In January I started a mini-series of reminiscences of my childhood in the 1950s and 1960s in urban Scotland which were times of immense change. Unfortunately the series has become very intermittent, this being only the fourth post. Links to the first 3 posts in the series are listed at the end of the post.
Certainly changes in transport and travel have been extraordinary!
Cars were relatively uncommon in our street. Rarely would our playing be interrupted by a car driving along the street far less a parked car causing an obstruction.
Certainly of those who lived around us we were quite early adopters buying our first car in November 1959 - a Morris Minor 1000 like this one although ours was grey.
How basic cars were: no radio, no seatbelts, no safety equipment, purely functional only. The Minor 1000 didn't have indicators but had trafficators: one small orange arm (about 6inches long) on each side, between the front and back door windows, which flicked out horizontally. We thought they were much better than the new-fangled flashing indicators. Even in 1959 there were very few cars in our street.
Our second car - 1964 - was a dark green Morris 1100 (similar to the one below): the first model with hydrolastic suspension.
Even in these few years there had been quite an advance in design.
From the early 1960s cars lost their novelty value as more and more people could afford them and, as they became more common, they started to affect our street playing. On Friday last I drove along our old street and even at midday there was barely any pavement space available. Back then the whole street, pavement and road, was safely available to us.
This was the start of the car becoming the dominant mode of transport. However as the car became more and more important, famous makes and models started to disappear. Below is a small list, by no means comprehensive,
Baby Austin A30
of names which were common but which were overtaken by time.
Before the car took over though, was the train - steam trains. When we went on holiday we went by train; we went on a Sunday school picnic by train, we went 4 miles to a football match on a football special.
Dr Beeching transformed the railways, unfortunately. Soon we had lost one of our two stations and the line going west. Dirty and grimy the steam trains were and they were on the way out but fortunately I caught the tail-end of steam. I also got the train-watching bug until steam was replaced by those incredibly boring DMUs - diesel multiple units. Trainspotting stopped dead.
Steam trains were alive in a way which no other form of transport is. The steam, smoke, whistle, hissing, spinning wheels and much more. These were the most powerful but wonderful creatures.
Prime time for spotting was 8.15ish and 13.15ish. In the morning the engine which had pulled the train from London to Edinburgh then went onto Perth with the return to Edinburgh passing us at lunchtime. This was our opportunity to see one of the stars - the A4, A3, A2 Pacifics - which didn't normally venture as far north.
The A4s - we called them "streaks" - were our favourites: so sleek, absolutely beautiful even if we only saw them dirty in their black paint-job.
This is the Union of South Africa (60009) after renovation. Gorgeous, absolutely fabulous!
As these wonderful engines were removed and replaced by purely functional diesel trains an era, a golden era ended. I must admit that my judgment that this was a golden era may not be accepted by many who travelled under steam but as a kid these were the most amazing machines and, for me, nothing will ever replace them.
Another bonus of train travel was going over the Forth Bridge. I always got a huge buzz trundling noisily over the Forth safely guarded by this magnificent bridge.
Again as the car took over we travelled less and less often by train. Until the Forth Road Bridge opened in 1964 the normal way of crossing the Forth by car was by ferry. Four ferries criss-crossed the Forth from North Queensferry to South Queensferry.
How small the traffic levels must have been for four such ferries to cope. Then on the 4th September 1964 the Forth Road Bridge opened, the ferries were no more. If you look closely you'll see a steam train on the bridge.
Moving back to the road I still have to cover buses. Lorries I'm going to miss because they weren't important enough in my life. Before buses I must touch upon horse-drawn vehicles. I am far too young (yes, too young!) to remember horse-drawn carriages. Only horse and carts were around in my early days. The one I remember most clearly was a fruit and veg cart although milk too was delivered by horse and cart. This was truly the fag-end of horses being used in transport.
Most of our town buses were double-deckers and their most obvious feature was the open platform at the back. I believe these open platforms remained on London buses long after they had disappeared from our streets. We thought nothing of running after a moving bus and launching ourselves at the platform with one hand outstretched to grab the pole nor of jumping off the platform as the bus slowed down. Today's lawyers would see spinning £ signs at the sight of what went on.
I do wonder who designed some buses, though: the upper deck of one bus had rows of bench seats, each bench seating 4 people. The designer obviously never travelled by bus: getting in and out of these seats was horrendous!
The opening of the Forth Road Bridge gave bus travel a massive boost because now direct buses to Edinburgh were easy and quick and train passenger numbers fell some more.
I feel there is so much more I could have written but haven't found in my memory banks. Any additional thoughts I'll put down in a round-up post at the end of the series. At the current rate of writing that should appear around 2011!
Previous posts in this series | <urn:uuid:4be03846-cefb-4b74-8e6c-091f32421751> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://calumcarr.blogspot.com/2008/10/childhood-reminiscences-no-4-transport.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.988587 | 1,268 | 1.507813 | 2 |
Learn all about castles with this site. You can also find out where you can go on castle tours, find castles for sale, and learn about the architecture of castles.
My favorite part of this site is the country listing on the side bar of the page. It allows you to choose which country and then pick a city (I think) and then you can check out beautiful pictures of the castles and get reviews on them.
The Castles for Kids is another great section because it allows you to find out all about castles. Learn what different sections are in a castle and why they were built in that way. You can even learn about the people who worked and lived inside castles.
This is a very neat site that just needs in-depth exploration because it has many hidden pearls to be found. Which castles did you like best? My favorites were Neuschwanstein and Lichtenstein. I’m a big fan of German castles. | <urn:uuid:404caaea-7071-4262-b27d-32180d05d0f8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.worldstart.com/castles-of-the-world/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964559 | 194 | 1.742188 | 2 |
Mon July 6, 2009
Afghan Sword Needs Ploughshare Part
Kansas City, Mo. – The current U.S. military surge in Afghanistan is "on track" in the mind of Missouri Senator Christopher Bond. But the G.O.P. lawmaker considers it only a partial strategy.
Missouri's senior senator is careful to avoid making parallels with military actions in Iraq. He says the senate intelligence committee, of which he is a member, sent its recommendations to the Obama administration early this year.
Senator Bond says those points seem to be part of the overall military approach in Afghanistan. In his words, "We need an Afghan face, the Afghan army needs to lead the way. What the Missouri National Guard is doing is recognized by everybody as the wave of the future."
Senator Bond says the national guard has been filling a gap left when the US Agency for International Development couldn't or didn't sent agricultural help to the embattled country. Forty eight guards men and women with agricultural backgrounds moved in to teach modern farming methods, converting from poppy growing to vegetables. The senator says, where the opium trade held sway, now there is commercially grown broccoli. | <urn:uuid:d03134fb-9cf9-4f15-9073-055907dcc1b1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.kcur.org/post/afghan-sword-needs-ploughshare-part | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959171 | 235 | 1.585938 | 2 |
Posted on April 29th, 2011 by Admin
If a dog year is like seven human years I'm not sure what the equivalent of a Twitter year would be, but it's probably a lot more. At any rate, in a conversation this morning about our @mayoclinic experience on Twitter I just realized it's April 29, which is the third anniversary of the date we created our account!
It wasn't particularly memorable at the time, and the only way I know this is the right date is through TwitterGrader.com, which includes a "Tweeting since" line in its scoring profile (click to enlarge.)
When we started on Twitter, it was mainly to lock down our @mayoclinic name and to keep an unauthorized person from setting up an account impersonating Mayo Clinic. For the first few months, we mainly were using an automatic RSS feed to send out tweets about news releases.
In the last two years we've been much more active and interactive on Twitter, holding Tweetcamps and also using Twitter to extend the reach of our Mayo Clinic Medical Edge Weekend radio program. This program, which formerly was carried only on a single station in Rochester, Minn. now has a global reach because of Twitter. In fact, one Saturday morning we had questions tweeted from North Carolina, Australia and Indonesia!
This has definitely grown far beyond anything we could have imagined three years ago. Here's a snapshot of our current high-level statistics:
If you work for a health-related organization and would like to join Mayo Clinic (and scores of others) in accelerating the application of social media to improve health care, promote health and fight disease, see the Network tab.
You must be logged-in to the site to post a comment. | <urn:uuid:bc233cb1-9c02-44db-a16e-def9ae5c1fcc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://network.socialmedia.mayoclinic.org/2011/04/29/happy-third-twitter-birthday-to-mayoclinic/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966603 | 359 | 1.578125 | 2 |
A Choice Between Thick Walled Foam Ice Chests Vs Thin Wall Foam Coolers
We Invented The Thick Walled Foam Ice Chest To Replace Thin Walled Breakable Coolers For Good Reason…
In 1967, the founder of our company had endured enough frustration from having cheap ‘styrofoam’ coolers break or leak when he went out fishing off the coast of Destin, Florida. In those days, many fishermen would load their catches into such coolers to take back to the dock, with a high likelihood of suffering a ‘foam cooler disaster’ because they simply were not well made enough to handle that kind of a pounding.
So, Charles Watkins decided to do something revolutionary and create a foam cooler that could be packed full of ice along with fish and seafood or drinks and still handle the rugged workload of charter fleet fishermen without punishing their wallets.
In his own garage, Mr. Watkins built what’s considered to be the first thick walled foam ice chest for his own successful use, and this created instant demand from associates who were similarly frustrated. Soon, he was making so many that he would load them up in his pick-up truck and sell them out of the local grocery store he owned right across the street from the beach in Destin. Demand grew so quickly that a manufacturing plant was opened and the foam cooler industry took note and began falling into line.
This most recent article launched by the LoBoy Team discusses why thick walled foam ice chests are a better choice than weaker thin walled varieties (keeping in mind of course that there are some quality thinner walled types)…Read Read Three Reasons Why Thick Wall Foam Ice Chests Are Better Than Cheap Ones | <urn:uuid:07feda91-2867-4986-8c4d-281f1f484a67> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://loboy.com/the-bear-facts-blog/a-choice-between-thick-walled-foam-ice-chests-vs-thin-wall-foam-coolers/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971892 | 353 | 1.695313 | 2 |
Like many kids of my generation with a geeky slant, I gravitated towards electronics. I’d take apart whatever junk I could get a hold of, and with my next door neighbor being a ham radio operator with lots of junk to get rid of, that was plenty. VCRs, televisions, radios.. They all fell to my screwdriver and soldering iron. Soon I’d amassed a huge collection of components.
My understanding of what I was doing– what all those parts meant. What you could DO with them– was limited, though. I never tried to make anything with them; I just collected.
All my electronics education at the time revolved around the 555 timer. It’s a fine chip, but it’s just a timer, an oscillator. Since that was the only “active” component I’d ever been exposed to, I looked at all problems through that lens, and eventually shrugged my shoulders and followed the path of software.
15 years later, I decided to try picking it up again. I had a project in mind: Making the stars in a painting I had fade in and out. I decided to make a concerted effort to pick up electronics again. What did I do? I picked up “The Art of Electronics” and a 555 timer again. Ugh. Art of Electronics is not for beginners. It’s a text book and it reads like one. Once again, I got frustrated and set down the iron.
7 years later, and I come across “Intro to the Arrr-duino”, a short video from MAKE Blog. It explains that making that light blink is just a simple matter of loading a microcontroller with a short bit of C code! C! I know this! Suddenly, all that pent-up 9 year old enthusiasm for electronics jumps into gear again, as though I never left it. I got the Arduino, I got some parts. I tore through the Arduino Playground, harvested any random piece of hardware from the trash bins at work and tried to figure out how to interface it. Motors! Memory chips! LCDs! Rotary encoders! So much learning. So much fun.
I guess what this blog entry is, is a big thank you to the Arduino team. By making a toolkit that makes electronics accessible with a minimal investment in time and money, they’ve jumpstarted a generation of makers, me included. | <urn:uuid:81ddd8b4-1a95-4038-b44d-946ce602b45c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.laen.org/author/site-admin/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.966619 | 511 | 1.695313 | 2 |
Global Leadership Awards
Fatema Akbari is the owner of Gulistan Sadaqat Company, a furniture manufacturing business in Kabul. Founded in 2003, the business employs close to 100 Afghans, mostly women she has trained as carpenters. A widow herself, she prioritizes hiring women whose husbands have either been killed or disabled in the war, because she is passionate about helping women gain employment and secure their lives.
Vital Voices honors Fatema with the 10,000 Women Entrepreneurial Achievement Award for her work to empower other Afghan women — through the training and employment provided by her carpentry business, and through the literacy and skills training provided by her non-governmental organization (NGO) to women in Taliban-controlled areas.
Fatema, whose family fled to Iran when the Taliban came to power, learned carpentry at a young age and envisioned returning to Afghanistan to start her own carpentry business. She knew that starting a business was a risky venture, but she also knew that success would offer a means of employment to women in her province, and would prove that women could contribute equally to the economic stability of Afghanistan as a whole.
After building her business, Fatema enrolled in the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Women program in 2009 at the American University of Afghanistan. There, she gained the management skills that would allow her to further grow the company.
Sharing a Vital Voices conviction that investing in women is one of the most effective ways to spur economic growth, Goldman Sachs 10,000 Women offered a new opportunity for Fatema. She says the program, “equipped me with new management and business developm | <urn:uuid:695a6bff-8d0e-4b1a-8614-a4af598a53aa> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.vitalvoices.org/vital-voices-women/featured-voices/fatema-akbari | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967854 | 332 | 1.757813 | 2 |
Number 20 | August 24, 2007
The following is a reprint of an article by Hugh Pope, published in the Wall Street Journal on August 20, 2007. Mr. Pope is a senior analyst for the International Crisis Group, which has just published a report on Turkey and the EU. Based in Istanbul for 20 years, he is author most recently of "Sons of the Conquerors: The Rise of the Turkic World" (Overlook Duckworth, 2005).
When a half-century of convergence between Turkey and the European Union last floundered a decade ago, the Turks regrouped and forged forward and the EU met them halfway. The result was a revolutionary period of reform in Turkey. Last month, grateful for their most fruitful period of political stability in many years, the Turkish electorate gave a resounding 46.7% vote of confidence to the ruling, pro-reform AK Party.
Now it is Europe's turn to take a stand. Instead it is stumbling: finding enlargement unfashionable, fearing immigration and mistaking some nonintegrated Turks within the EU for Turkey itself. Governments in France, Germany, Austria, Denmark and the Netherlands are trying to short-change Turkey with the new idea of a "privileged partnership," not the membership promised repeatedly since 1963.
There is no need for Europe to fear Turkey's membership goal. The Turks themselves acknowledge the country is far from ready; the earliest date for joining the EU is a decade away. Turkey has to fulfill the stiffest conditions applied to any candidate. Any EU government can veto its membership, and the French people can vote it down in a referendum. If and when Turkey becomes acceptable to the EU, the Turks, attached to their sovereignty, make no secret that they too may think hard about the last step.
Nor is there cause to fear the Turks' mostly pragmatic take on Islam. The AKP's affable foreign minister, Abdullah Gül, almost certain to be elected president by parliament this month, has highlighted his vow to preserve the secularism of Turkey's political system. Mr. Gül's wife wears the urban-chic headscarf of Turkey's new Muslim conservatives, but in time this symbol is likely to become as unremarkable as the one worn by Recep Tayyip Erdogan's wife, which was equally controversial when he became prime minister four years ago. The secularist mass demonstrations this April and May showed that Turkey's still-powerful Kemalist establishment and vigilant society will be the first to block any real attempt to install a theocratic regime.
Europeans should remember that the EU goal provided the stimulus and motivation for the golden age of Turkish reform in 1999-2005. Ironically, this brought progress in the very same domains that right-wing critics in Europe traditionally cite as reasons why Turkey cannot become a member. The economy, governance and religious and civil liberties have all improved during those years. Additionally, the advances visibly benefited European commercial and strategic interests.
Turkey's average annual economic growth over the last five years was 7.5%, per capita income has doubled since 2003 and, especially in the last two years, foreign investment has skyrocketed. European companies, especially from Germany, have led the way in opening superstores and taking over banks, food companies and insurance concerns. Since the 1995 customs union with Europe, Turkey's overall trade volume has quadrupled, half of which is trade with the EU.
The political trust generated by this process had knock-on effects for European security. Turkey typically adopts most of Europe's common foreign and security policy. Turkish troops, commanders and civilian administrators have played leading roles in Afghanistan. The airlifting of French forces to Congo would have taken far longer without the offer of Turkish air transport. Turkey volunteered troops for the UN mission in Lebanon and is continuing its long and varied support of Western missions in the former Yugoslavia. Straddling routes that the EU says may one day transport 15% of Europe's oil and gas supply, it is already playing a role in enhancing European energy security.
EU reforms helped to transform and democratize Turkish society, illustrating the soft power of the EU to calm its rougher southeastern borderlands. New penal and civil codes, nine packages of legal reforms and a raft of other laws constituted a modernization unprecedented in Turkish legislative history. Increasing European legal oversight brought a period of calm in the long-running ethnic Kurdish insurgency. In 2004, EU-Turkish rapprochement even brought a fleeting possibility of solving the frozen conflict on Cyprus. Those who believe Cyprus remains an insuperable obstacle should remember that the EU was instrumental in easing the bitterness between Turkey and Greece whose dispute was once thought unbridgeable.
Since 2005, however, the EU's loss of nerve, driven by domestic politics, mistakes on all sides over Cyprus and misplaced prejudices about Turkey's progressive Islam, has put the process under pressure. The U.S.-led war in Iraq has done even more to rouse anti-Western feelings in Turkey. These have triggered jarring actions by nationalist Turkish prosecutors, who harassed intellectuals, and authoritarian generals, who fanned political tensions this year as they warned of intervention if they felt the republic's secularist heritage was at risk. This in turn provoked new European criticism.
Turkish politicians are now avoiding pro-EU stances. The military has slowed purchases from Europe; French companies, in particular, have suffered losses. Religious and ethnic minorities in Turkey have come under renewed pressure. Rows over Cyprus are increasingly damaging EU and NATO diplomacy. Ankara is questioning its contributions to the new European defense structure and showing signs of a go-it-alone attitude in military matters, particularly toward northern Iraq, where Kurdish rebels from Turkey have bases. Behind closed doors, the idea of being strategically alone in a rough neighborhood is making some in Ankara weigh up whether Turkey, too, should pursue a nuclear option.
It is not too late to reverse this trend. Despite the increasingly negative atmosphere since 2005, technical work on EU reforms continues. In April, the AK Party drew up the country's most intensively researched action plan for convergence toward EU standards. Prime Minister Erdogan did not highlight his pro-EU credentials in the election campaign, but neither did he jump on the neonationalist bandwagon that has developed in reaction to the EU disappointments. In his first speech after the election victory, he vowed to use his strong new mandate to relaunch the EU reforms.
To help that happen, Europe has to reach out, seriously and sincerely, with the goal of membership firmly in place. Palliatives like a "privileged partnership" or "Mediterranean Union" cannot gain the traction the EU needs with Turkey. And the EU-Turkey accession process is not, as one French politician has portrayed it, a breakable flirtation or engagement. Like two towns that have grown into each other, Turkey and Europe, once distinct, now overlap to an extent that cannot be undone. | <urn:uuid:a9c739e9-1738-4407-88f8-00402c7f3d69> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.tc-america.org/issues-information/tca-issue-papers/losing-turkey-307.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00033-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963135 | 1,399 | 1.578125 | 2 |
An MMT site bringing you dogma-free economics without the pleadings of self interest
From Art's clip:"Thus, to justify any given amount of employment there must be an amount of current investment sufficient to absorb the excess of total output over what the community chooses to consume when employment is at the given level. For unless there is this amount of investment, the receipts of the entrepreneurs will be less than is required to induce them to offer the given amount of employment."And private investment NEVER is so sufficient. Right here is the case for public investment via the JG as this shows mathematically that full employment (btw WHICH IS LEGALLY MANDATED BY LAW) is IMPOSSIBLE without it...
Right, owners' share that is neither invested or consumed is saved and as wealth increases MPC decreases. Unless govt makes up the difference, then the economy will not operate at resources potential, decreasing efficiency and increasing UE. It's also seen from this how the fiscal deficit goes chiefly to owners' saving.
"Right here is the case for public investment via the JG as this shows mathematically that full employment (btw WHICH IS LEGALLY MANDATED BY LAW) is IMPOSSIBLE without it..."...as I have been hammering away on for some time now.This concept pretty much nullifies neo-liberal or neo-classical economics from the outset. There's nothing there. The years since Keynes General Theory have been a scam of massive proportions.If we follow this concept in any direction one will come to the conclusion that net government spending is a necessary condition for the economy to function, and funds profits, saving and leakages.Consumer credit (debt) spending is irrelevant.Matt, I like it that you are not hedging.
Tom -- Found these at Counterpunch:http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/11/30/austerity-the-battle-cry-of-1/and, also on Keynes effective demand:http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/11/30/the-fate-of-keynesian-faith-in-josephs-countercyclical-moral/Excerpts:"Into the fifth year of the Great Recession our nation’s scarcity of jobs continues to condemn tens of millions of us to suffer a hard life of involuntary unemployment, underemployment, and insufficient wages. One would hope that any future political agreements made to mend the fiscal health of the nation would not worsen this scarcity, but lead directly to solving it. A crucial way to accomplish this would be for our leaders to reassert their faith and confidence in the primary efficacy of economics’ countercyclical principle in fashioning these agreements. After all, thousands of years of evidence prove the overwhelming effectiveness of the countercyclical moral, that jobs, fiscal health, and prosperity are best grown and sustained by spending in times of scarcity, and saving in times of plenty.""A more mature capitalistic system might start and end with an appreciation of the whole person, as in perhaps treating everyone primarily as a capitalist by instituting a living wage, actual full employment economy. This would allow, on the one hand, for the creative destruction of horse and buggy businesses and jobs. Yet on the other, sustained entrepreneurship could be nurtured on a permanent, level playing field for workers, consumers, and employers alike, with everyone made better off by guaranteeing as full a market as possible at any given time.""In fact, the imposition of austerity during a slump is arrogance of Biblical proportions, the true, exploitative beginning of all “class warfare,” and, hence, revolution, warfare, and national disaster as we saw from WWII through the end of WWII. Just witness the racism, xenophobia, and organized groveling to the “jobs makers” now alive in our nation, and in Europe, fed continuously by Pharaoh wannabes and their “little nobilities,” fueling policies recklessly demolishing peoples’ livelihoods on an Orwellian altar of “‘The Government Debt Bomb,’” to use one economist’s fear-mongering, pitiless phrase.""Instead, let us reassert our collective faith in Joseph’s countercyclical moral and its virtuous heritage, and continue to reapply it now with jobs’ stimuli and increased taxes on the wealthy, and then sit back, and watch our children be saved, and rise, hopefully in full sometime before Keynes’ goal of 2028."Not in MMT paradigm, but right now I'll accept ANY argument in favor of stopping austerity and instituting stimulus policies. We can discuss monetary paradigms later.
I think that it might be interesting to try and come up with a truly "right wing MMT".i.e. in place of any spending, just put "tax cuts".Let's say the budget deficit is $1 trillion, and you want to keep it there until the economy picks up.- Cut all government spending until the government is only spending $1 trillion, and reduce taxes to 0!(Or something a bit less extreme perhaps)If you show that the basic logic can apply to different political views, then at least you're on the same page..
y, we're spending in excess of $5T a year currently.That's government-forced dis-saving. We need that much spending out of the chute for the economy to function at current levels.The question is how much of that comes from households earning less than say $400k per year?
Correction:$4T of that is government-forced dis-saving.
You're right that you need that "recycling" through tax&spend to keep things afloat.When arguing with people in person I sometimes try to offer my opponent a 'way out' that is close to my own view but still acceptable to them, rather than trying to push them all the way to my position. You have to bite the bullet and try to see things from their point of view. At least then you're speaking a similar language.It might be worth trying to devise an "MMT plan" that could appeal to those that might otherwise be turned off by MMT.
I think that it might be interesting to try and come up with a truly "right wing MMT".Lead with fiscal drag resulting from taxes (they like this) and saving (they don't like this). Then do sectoral balances and fiscal deficit as non-govt saving offset. Also show that all sectors in surplus simultaneously is impossible.
y,"When arguing with people in person I sometimes try to offer my opponent a 'way out' that is close to my own view but still acceptable to them, rather than trying to push them all the way to my position. "Perhaps to your point, I think you have to find a way to keep them in the "fight".... but some look like they are simply "hard-wired" for "flight" via their receptor proteins or genetic code... I'm trying to determine if they all are that way.... or if some remain at some level "reachable"...rsp,
The problem in dealing with fiscal conservatives is generally that their position is moral rather than economic. So it is not possible to sway them with economic arguments.It's also healthy to keep in mind that traditional conservatives believe as "scientific" that some people are better than other and deserve to be served by their inferiors. No matter that this is an obviously self-serving belief that is only held until they are the other end of the deal.
Tom,So are these "conservatives" wrong to believe in social Darwinism?rsp,
Social Darwinism has no scientific merit. It's clearly true that there is Bell curve wrt many traits but that is no justification for either privilege or oppression.
Keynes was wrong to assume that the necessary stimulus has to come in the form of what he calls "investment". It makes no difference "job creation-wise" whether stimulus spending is directed at consumption items or investment items. If it's aimed at consumption items and entrepreneurs think that warrants extra investment, they carry out that investment without any instructions from politicians, bureaucrats, do-gooders, busy bodies, or economists.
Ralph, might as well invest in new infrastructure and R&D whilst you're at it though.
Ralph and y are both right.If we think of the economy as one big business, a business needs infrastructure, plant and equipment, and trained workers to be able to do it's job and produce goods and services.A business also needs customers with the ability to spend and buy those goods and services, and individual businesses will compete for the funds in a way that ends up providing the goods and services needed.Businesses that provide what people want/need will succeed at the expense of those that don't.The biggest problem with businesses today is that some don't like competition, and if they can afford to they make it go away.Crony capitalism.
Keynes was just stating the obvious, that in a closed economy consisting only of the domestic private sector, C + S = C + I, so that if the sector tries to net save in aggregate, then the economy will contract and UE rise. Given the three sector model, net exports plus the fiscal deficit must offset domestic private saving desire in aggregate to maintain the economy at FE.
Post a Comment | <urn:uuid:378e26ed-2103-4b97-98e8-f8f73af7bc78> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.mikenormaneconomics.blogspot.com/2012/12/art-shipman-on-j-m-keynes-on-effective.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959925 | 1,940 | 1.601563 | 2 |
No one likes to hear that they have no home equity, or worse, negative home equity.
However, if you have financial problems along with a home equity loan (also known as a second mortgage or second lien), being underwater might get you extra help.
Second mortgages create more problems
If you have financial troubles and are looking for relief, home equity lenders can complicate the short sale or mortgage modification process when they and the primary mortgage holder cannot agree on how much loss each will take on the deal.
In a foreclosure, the second mortgage lender frequently gets nothing from the sale of the property, but it almost never relinquishes its lien without at least some compensation. In a modification scenario, it's the first lien-holder that is reluctant to take a loss unless the second lender also accepts some. While the bickering goes on, the foreclosure proceeds.
How do underwater borrowers make home equity loans disappear?
First, you need to understand the difference between secured and unsecured mortgage debt. Homeowners are finding that they can prevent a foreclosure and reduce their mortgage obligations in the bankruptcy courts.
While the law does not allow bankruptcy judges to modify loans secured by property, a home equity loan is only secured by property when there is sufficient equity to offset the debt. If you have $150,000 of mortgage and only $125,000 of value, there is $25,000 of debt hanging out there--naked, with no equity to protect it. The bankruptcy court says it may be unsecured debt.
Canceling debt isn't easy
Las Vegas bankruptcy attorney Dorothy Bunce of lienstripping.com says it's not that simple--each lender has laws to follow and duties owed to shareholders, employees and other borrowers.
"There is sometimes a perception that the mortgage company is like mean old Mr. Potter in 'It's a Wonderful Life.' Oh, if only George Bailey at the credit union had my note instead, then I could do something about modifying this awful mortgage! But most bankers aren't any more like Mr. Potter than they are like George Bailey. They are human beings caught in a trap of banking laws at both the federal & state levels. In the absence of a bankruptcy, they are limited by law as to the help they can provide their customers."
Home equity lenders can bite you later
Here's why. Even in non-recourse states like California where the first lien-holder must be satisfied with the foreclosure sale proceeds, a home equity lender may have no such constraint. The unpaid debt converts to an unsecured balance, like a really big credit card bill, and the lender can sue you to recover it. What it may do is wait a couple of years until your finances have improved, then sue you and recover the entire balance, plus attorney costs, penalties and interest.
Naked mortgage may be stripped!
Unsecured mortgage debt is treated a lot like a credit card balance--it may be extinguished for nickels on the dollar. So if you can't afford your mortgages plus your other payments, a Chapter 13 bankruptcy may get you out from under.
How does it work?
The judge or trustee examines your finances and determines an affordable monthly payment. You pay this for three to five years, and any remaining unsecured balances, including your home equity debts, are discharged when your plan completes.
It's important to understand that your second mortgage can't be only partially stripped--the home equity balance must equal or exceed the unsecured portion of your total mortgages.
In the example above, the total mortgage debt exceeds the home's value by $25,000. If the second mortgage is $25,000 or less, it's strippable. If it's $25,001, it's not strippable.
Can the threat of bankruptcy force home equity lenders to cooperate in short sales?
It makes sense that a home equity lender would rather make concessions than see its lien stripped from your property, right? You wish!
Arizona bankruptcy lawyer and blogger Joseph C. McDaniel at arizonabankruptcyblog.com explains.
"My experience is that bankruptcy is an ineffective threat with most institutional creditors. The individual who receives the threat is a minimum wage worker, and simply gets to dump the matter on the minimum wage worker tasked with handling bankruptcy. The phrase, 'stop calling me or I'll file a bankruptcy' often draws the response, 'Great! Please make sure I get the case number and date of filing and Chapter so I can move your file off my desk!'"
Moral of the story: Don't threaten unless you're prepared to follow through. You should probably consult a lawyer first so you don't end up with egg on your face.
Chapter 13 bankruptcy: The nuclear option
Bankruptcy isn't something you should undertake lightly, but Chapter 13 can help folks undergoing economic hardship keep their homes, unload second mortgages, establish a manageable debt management plan, and avoid tax liability for forgiven debt.
Gina Pogol has been writing about mortgage and finance since 1994. In addition to a decade in mortgage lending, she has worked as a business credit systems consultant for Experian, a bankruptcy paralegal and an accountant for Deloitte. She graduated with High Distinction from the University of Nevada with a BS in Financial Management. | <urn:uuid:7354a4e2-c101-42e5-96fd-35ce7c8680a6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://library.hsh.com/articles/home-equity/sometimes-its-good-to-be-underwater.html?WT.qs_osrc=fxb-9214010 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950688 | 1,098 | 1.585938 | 2 |
I have been fiddling with my well system, trying to get some decent pressure. I think I had a waterlogged pressure tank. I've added air, and now I can see the water level in the tank clearly, via the condensation on the outside of the tank. It's only about 8" above the bottom of the tank, and I'm sure I need more water in there.
What pressure should I add to the tank for proper operation? Should I add the air when the tank is empty and sealed off from the rest of the system? (I have gate valves on either side of the tank, so I can isolate it.)
The tank is an oldie, and I have not found any info about it despite a couple of hours of searching the 'Net. A few mentions of it, but no specifications. I suspect the company is long gone.
I've attached a picture of the data plate. I have the middle size.
I have a deep well with a submersible pump. A label on the tank identifies a local well company, and says it's a 1/2 horse pump.
The well company can't help me unless I tell them the name of the contractor who built the house. Seems they file all of their customer info that way. When I asked them why they didn't file it by street address, they were genuinely baffled. "Why would we do that?"
Oooookay! Well, that and the quality (I use that term loosely) of their work tells me who NOT to call if I need professional help!
While I'm asking, does anyone know if there is a way to tell how deep a well is without pulling the pump? In the radio world, we can send a signal up the coaxial cable and tell how far it is to the antenna. Is there anything like that for well pumps?
I was told it's a 300 foot well by the previous owner, but don't know if that's even close to accurate. Given the poor performance we enjoy, though, I wouldn't be surprised. That's too deep for a half horse pump!
Edited by BlueRidgeMark, 26 August 2012 - 10:23 AM. | <urn:uuid:8ba22a4e-3a3d-4ac7-95d9-fe4a0eebfbe3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://appliantology.org/topic/39203-water-pressure-tank-proper-pressure/?k=880ea6a14ea49e853634fbdc5015a024&setlanguage=1&langid=2 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.980842 | 452 | 1.617188 | 2 |
A fascinating article by education consultant Michael Gurian in the Washington Post's Sunday Outlook section on the fact that boys are not learning as well as girls. It's been an untold secret for a long time that the majority of college students and increasing percentage of students in graduate schools are female. This, despite continued moaning and groaning from feminist groups about the supposed disadvantages girls encounter in schools. The author of this article makes the obvious point that it is boys who are more likely to encounter disadvantages, and he sketches out what some of those may be. On this subject, I look also to Christina Hoff Summers's The War Against Boys: How Misguided Feminism Is Harming Our Young Men.
Gurian makes the interesting point that the most active crusaders for appropriate education for boys tend to be (as Summers is) the mothers of boys. My own observation in the circles I frequent is that men tend to glide along and assume that their children are getting along pretty well, while women tend to worry that they aren't and work fiercely to improve their chances. So, even if it makes the feminists happy, score 1 for women. | <urn:uuid:3b27ca4d-c1d2-4941-9ee9-9a5082ce5ce5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/barone/2005/12/05/the-war-against-boys | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967846 | 228 | 1.765625 | 2 |
Tuesday, October 30, 2012
By Shana Rowan
To The Editor:
Law enforcement is talking about child safety on Halloween night. Unfortunately, they’ve chosen the sensationalist approach instead of one based on facts — touting the need to check the sex offender registry before trick-or-treating. It sounds scary and serious — but did you know the experts say otherwise?
There are two problems with this approach. One, it’s based on the stubborn myths of high sex offender recidivism — refusing to acknowledge that most former sex offenders pose little risk of re-offending. Two, it significantly increases the risk that former sex offenders, their children, and families will be targeted on a holiday that often involves criminal mischief.
Children face the same low risk from registered offenders on Halloween as they do on any other day. The overwhelming majority of child victims are, largely ignored, as the abuser is far more likely to be found in a family photo album than on the registry; the abuse is likely perpetrated behind closed doors in a familiar place, not during a candy exchange with a stranger.
There are occurrences that are far more likely to befall children on Halloween.
According to Dr. Jill Levenson’s 2009 study, “How Safe Are Trick-or-Treaters? An Analysis of Child Sex Crime Rates on Halloween,” theft, vandalism, robbery, and assault rates increase on Halloween and the days following. After interviewing members of law enforcement all over the country, no evidence was found to indicate any increase in sex crimes against children by people on the registry on Halloween. Sex crimes of all types accounted for about 1 percent of all crimes on Halloween — and non-familial sex crimes against children age 12 and under accounted for less than .2 percent of all Halloween crime incidents.
We have the opportunity to educate the public and lawmakers about the truth, ask them to put politics aside and create real safety measures that actually keep kids safe. Why waste a minute listening to those who would rather have us terrified than informed — and far less able to keep our most vulnerable citizens safe?
The Oneida Daily Dispatch welcomes letters from our readers about subjects of interest. Letters should be fewer than 500 words.
Letters are subject to editing for clarity, brevity and taste and limited to one per writer per calendar month. For more information call 363-5100 ex 137 or visit: http://bit.ly/Pes27p
All letters must include the author's name, address and a daytime phone number to verify the letter's authenticity; phone number and exact street address will not be published.
Please send to Oneida Daily Dispatch,
130 Broad St. Oneida, NY, 13421
or : [email protected] | <urn:uuid:25b5a843-b01d-4707-b1be-edfaf3675f2b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://oneidadispatch.com/articles/2012/10/30/opinion/doc50904c359219a086303955.prt | 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 | 0.944879 | 572 | 1.796875 | 2 |
Mother Nature's Coolest Attractions
Whether made by Mother Nature or man, America is full of amazing attractions. Families interested in the natural wonders of the world have hundreds of attractions to choose from. Families who like to stop at quaint roadside attractions off the beaten path will also find many choices.
Old Faithful is the world's most predictable geyser. Located in Yellowstone National Park, the geyser has drawn visitors for decades. Plus, Yellowstone National Park is reason enough to visit!
See if your family can stay at the rustic Old Faithful Inn, built in 1904. At the Old Faithful Inn you won't find TV or radio, air conditioning or the Internet. The main attraction is right outside your window and promises to blow on time.
Niagara Falls isn't the tallest waterfall in the country. It isn't even close. But compared to all the others, Niagara Falls is a magnificent site to behold. The volume of these falls is a whopping 85,000 cubic feet of water per second with a maximum recorded volume of 292,000 cubic feet per second. That's a lot of water!
Multiple family-friendly lodging options are available at Niagara Falls, along with affordable dining options for every member of the family.
The northern lights, or the aurora borealis, are a sight to be seen — especially when they can be combined with a fun trip to Fairbanks, Alaska! Being able to see the lights is largely dependent on how dark the sky is, so careful planning is needed. That doesn't stop families from planning aurora borealis vacations throughout the viewing time, which is between August and April.
Activities like snowshoeing, watching sled dog races and sleigh rides complement Alaska's incredible beauty. Kids will love visiting the Ice Park where they can crawl through ice mazes and slide down massive ice slides. Animal-loving families will also enjoy visiting sled dog kennels where you can pet the working canines.
Chimney Rock in the North Carolina Mountains is home to the breathtaking Hickory Nut Falls. Chimney Rock is 25 miles from Asheville, North Carolina. Views from Chimney Rock are unforgettable, particularly during the fall when foliage explodes through the mountains. Geological formations formed three and half miles of trails, one of which was featured in the film The Last of the Mohicans starring Daniel Day-Lewis and Madeleine Stowe. Seventeen minutes of the film were shot along the Cliff Trail at the top of Hickory Nut Falls.
Chattanooga, Tennessee, is home to Ruby Falls. They're the tallest, deepest underground waterfalls accessible to the public in the United States. It's part of Lookout Mountain, a family destination that offers many family-friendly activities and lodging options.
One of the best times to visit Ruby Falls is around Halloween. The Ruby Falls Haunted Cavern Halloween event features a shrieking ride in the cavern's “hellevator” and numerous above- and below-ground tricks guaranteed to scare guests silly. The Haunted Cavern is open shortly before Halloween and closes shortly after. Discounts and additional information are available online.
California Redwood Forest
The California Redwood Forest in Humboldt County is one of those places you hear about and wonder if it's worth the trip to see. Well, it is. If you're planning to visit Humboldt County, you might want to invest in a neck pillow for the ride home. Here you'll spend much time gazing upward at the incomprehensible heights of the California redwoods.
On your visit to the Redwood Forest, you'll travel along the Avenue of the Giants. This is a scenic drive you won't want to miss, but also be sure to get out and explore the Humboldt Redwoods State Park, home of the largest remaining location of virgin redwoods in the world. The Avenue of the Giants extends about 31 miles on Hwy. 101. The area is perfect for stopping to picnic, camp and hike, or just walk among trees that are hundreds of years old and hundreds of feet tall.
Other Sites of Interest
Some other wonderful natural attractions:
It's not hard to convince someone to visit Hawaii. It's a tropical, beautiful paradise. One of the most impressive things to do in Hawaii is to take a tour of a live volcano. Companies like Big Island Volcano Tours can take visitors close to craters to see firsthand some of the newest places on earth.
The Rollins Planetarium at Young Harris College in Young Harris, Georgia, offers 30 free shows throughout the year on Friday nights. The show features the GOTO Chronos Space Simulator star projector, the first installation of this simulator in the world. If the skies are clear, the Observatory is also open.
Cave of the Winds near Manitou Springs, Colorado, was discovered by two brothers accidentally in the late 1800s. If you go, be sure to take the lantern tour to see what it might have been like if your family were to happen upon such an amazing attraction. | <urn:uuid:24cbf58a-f1af-4202-80c8-e0e358af18fb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.netplaces.com/family-budget-travel/attractions-festivals-and-fairs/mother-natures-coolest-attractions.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937898 | 1,024 | 1.625 | 2 |
TRANSCRIPT AND SOURCES:
Welcome. This is James Corbett with your Eyeopener report from BoilingFrogsPost.com. And now for the real news.
A recent court case in Utah has uncovered yet more evidence that the FBI is hiding key documents from the public by placing them in a separate, hitherto unknown electronic storage medium known as an “S-drive.” The fact that this drive was previously unknown has raised the specter that the FBI are using it as a place to hide requests for sensitive documents through the Freedom of Information Act. Now, a federal judge has given the FBI until the end of the month to explain what the S-drive is, how it is being used, and whether it contains key documents related to the case in question.
The case concerns Salt Lake City-based lawyer Jesse Trentadue, who has been investigating the death of his brother, Kenneth Trentadue, at an Oklahoma Federal Transfer facility in 1995. The government has maintained his brother’s death was a suicide by hanging, despite the fact that his brutalized corpse revealed him to have been beaten to death, with cuts and bruises all over his body. Numerous irregularities in the wake of Trentadue’s death were suggestive of a coverup, from the government’s unprecedented offer to cremate the body before it was sent to the family at its own expense to the fact that the coroner was not allowed to examine the cell until it had been washed, to the fact that the visitor logs from the facility on the night of the death had been destroyed. Subsequent investigations uncovered leaked documents showing that the cover-up went all the way up the chain of command to Eric Holder, currently Obama’s attorney general.
Originally baffled by the extent of the cover-up, several tips, including one from Timothy McVeigh himself, led Jesse Trentadue to the understanding that his brother had been transferred to an Oklahoma transfer facility because he fit the description of the so-called John Doe No. 2 in the Oklahoma City bombing case. Since that time, Trentadue has been suing the FBI to try to pry more information about the OKC investigation from the agency’s vaults.
Among the documents he is pursuing are the surveillance tapes from the Murrah Building itself, which were being stored off-site and thus were not damaged in the blast. These tapes, which sources connected to the investigation have told the LA Times and other major media outlets that they have seen, are purported to show the approach of the Ryder Truck to the building, and also show Timothy McVeigh’s accomplice getting out of the truck.
Under the Freedom of Information Act, the FBI is not required to say if a document exists, only that they searched their database and found no records responsive to the request. If these documents are placed in an external or disconnected storage drive, however, the agency can insure that they will never show up in any FOIA request.
In fact, the FBI has been known to have used this very technique in the past. Going under such names as “June files,” “zero files” and “I-drive,” the agency has a long and documented history of placing key evidence in special, compartmentalized files that are reviewed by senior officials before the information is placed into the bureau’s official files.
Joining me earlier this week to discuss the history and significance of the FBI’s secret storage drives was attorney Jesse Trentadue.
Critics of the FBI have long noted how the bureau under J. Edgar Hoover’s leadership sanitized files to hide potentially embarrassing information about the FBI and its agents from the public.
In a conversation with The Corbett Report last week, Coleen Rowley, the former privacy act coordinator at the Minneapolis FBI field office and noted FBI whistleblower, confirmed the sordid history of the FBI’s attempts to conceal information from the public and reveals other methods that keep key records from being accessed through FOIA requests.
Spokespersons for the bureau have so far refused to comment to the press about the S-drive story, citing the ongoing litigation. The court order requires them to present a full explanation of the use of these document storage systems to federal court by June 30th. For more on this story, stay tuned to boilingfrogspost.com and corbettreport.com. | <urn:uuid:8608f04f-370e-4258-bb59-250fdcd09010> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://wakeupfromyourslumber.com/blog/andie531/secret-fbi-storage-drive-shield-evidence-foia | 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 | 0.968672 | 909 | 1.570313 | 2 |
ASSIUT, Egypt (AP) — The Gamaa Islamiya once waged a bloody insurgency here, attacking police and Christians in a campaign to create an Islamic state. Now a political force, the former jihadis say they are setting up their own parallel police and are determined to ensure law and order in this southern Egyptian province.
Their declaration has set in motion a spiral of tensions in Assiut province, raising fears that hard-line Islamists who call for a strict version of Shariah, or Islamic law, will take the law into their own hands, threatening the delicate sectarian balance of Muslims and Christians here. Opponents warn that if they succeed here, hard-liners elsewhere in Egypt will try to take advantage of the country's lawlessness to increase their power.
Worries over vigilante action, whether Islamist or not, are already high in Egypt, which has been shaken by months of political turmoil. Protests and strikes have been boiling nationwide against the Islamist president and the Muslim Brotherhood, from which he hails. The police and security forces have themselves been caught up in the political struggles, often not doing their job. The result is a rise in crime, sometimes prompting a backlash from the public. Residents of a town in northern Egypt this week killed two alleged thieves and hung their bodies by the feet from the rafters of a bus station.
The Gamaa says its move was in response to a strike last week by some police in Assiut, the capital of the southern province of the same name. The group declared it would set up "popular committees" to carry out security duties in the police's absence. Riding on motorbikes and waving banners, hundreds of Gamaa supporters toured the city last week to show they could keep order.
Since then, police have returned to work. But the Gamaa, which is allied to President Mohammed Morsi, says it is pressing ahead with its plans. A sign plastered on the wall near the entrance of an Assiut mosque used as the Gamaa's headquarters guides volunteers to where they can register to join the committees.
"We don't need anyone's permission to send our popular committees to the streets if the police abandon their role to protect the nation," said Hussein Abdel-Al, a senior Gamaa leader in Assiut. The Gamaa's political arm, the Construction and Development Party, said it planned to submit to parliament a draft legislation to legalize the creation of popular committees nationwide.
So far, the Gamaa's popular committees do not appear to have taken any strong action in the street. But the police are pushing back. Provincial security chief Abul-Qassim Deif ordered police to take action against anyone other than the police attempting to carry out security duties. He stepped up police patrols in Assiut, a city of some 1 million, and elsewhere in the province.
"We will take all legal measures against them if they appear," Deif told The Associated Press. In an apparent attempt to reduce the Gamaa's influence, he also ordered his officers not to allow the group's members to act as mediators in "reconciliation sessions" — police-backed mediation by prominent sheikhs that is often used to settle local disputes.
Assiut's governor, who is a senior member of the Muslim Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice party, said creating popular committees is "not suitable from a political or security perspective." "Any attempt to take away from the capabilities or rights of the Interior Ministry amounts to a reduction in the state's prestige," Gov. Yehya Taha Kishk, a British-trained heart doctor, told the AP. "The state does not encourage that civilians take over police duties to maintain security. This is a red line."
But some in the Brotherhood have appeared sympathetic to the Gamaa's motivation. Ahmed Aref, a Brotherhood spokesman, told the AP, "We don't call for or promote the idea of popular committees." "But we have to say this: The responsibility (for security) rests with the police and it cannot be transferred, unless the responsible party abandons it," he said.
Assiut, 400 kilometers (235 miles) south of the capital Cairo, is a particularly sensitive area for the Gamaa to carry out its experiment. It is Egypt's poorest province, with more than 60 percent of its 4.2 million people living in poverty, according to the governor. It also has the second highest percentage of Christians, estimated at 32 percent of the population — and even higher in Assiut city — compared to an estimated 10 percent nationwide.
The province was a stronghold for the Gamaa during its incarnation as a violent militant group. The Gamaa and the Islamic Jihad, another hard-line group, were behind the October 6, 1981 assassination of President Anwar Sadat. Days afterward, it attacked Assiut's security headquarters, prompting a battle with the military.
In the 1990s, it waged a bloody insurgency that killed more than 1,000 people, and the group systematically attacked Christians, their churches and businesses. Then-President Hosni Mubarak ruthlessly crushed the insurgency with a security crackdown notorious for human rights violations, including extrajudicial killings, abductions and torture. During the last years of Mubarak's rule, Gamaa leaders renounced violence — though they still advocate rule by a hard-line version of Islamic law. After Mubarak's ouster two years ago, the Gamaa formed a political party.
Sectarian tension is never far below the surface in the province. Church leaders claim that Islamists in the province have been emboldened by Morsi's election in June, with incidents of discrimination against or harassment of Christians on the rise.
Father Banoub, a priest who is the Coptic Orthodox Church's point man on relations with local authorities and Islamist groups in Assiut, warned that a Gamaa move to take up policing duties could spark a backlash from Christians.
"We will not accept, under any circumstances, that a group takes over the streets," he told the AP. Christian dialogue with Islamists has established a "fragile sectarian peace" in Assiut, he said. "But the intimidation of Christians makes the potential for an eruption of Christian anger a real possibility," he told the AP.
A senior leader of the liberal Wafd Party's youth wing in Assiut, Mahmoud Moawad, said in a statement that, "We just cannot imagine that the Gamaa Islamiya killed all those innocent people and police officers and now wants to assume the role of the police."
The potential for vigilante action adds yet a new layer to Egypt's turmoil since Mubarak's ouster. The country has become deeply polarized between Morsi and his Islamist backers on one side and the opposition made up of moderate Muslims, liberals and Christians on the other. Amid wave after wave of political unrest and violence, the economy has fallen into dire straits. Calls for the military to seize the reins of power have grown.
Mistrust is high among all sides. Father Banoub said he believed Islamists themselves fomented the police strikes to have an excuse to take control of the province. The Gamaa, in turn, has depicted a wave of police strikes around the country the past weeks as a plot aimed at causing chaos so the military will move in to take power and remove the Islamist Morsi.
"If the partial police strike in Assiut and elsewhere succeeded, it would have spread nationwide. Our action has foiled an attempt to bring down the state," Tareq Bedeir, the Gamaa's leader in the city of Assiut, told the AP, speaking in the group's main mosque.
A spokesman for the Gamaa's Construction and Development Party, Khaled el-Shareef, warned of a conspiracy by "the counter-revolution" for the police to strike, forcing the public to choose between chaos and the return of the military.
Some in Assiut feared the Gamaa's plans are a recipe for chaos. "If every faction in the country forms a popular committee, then the country will have to deal with gang warfare," said Assiut tax officer Ahmed Fathi Abdel-Hamid.
Khaled Mehanny, a 22-year-old Islamic law student, said the Gamaa wants to impose itself on the city. "We completely reject this. And if the police disappear one day, we will protect ourselves as we had done in the past," he said. | <urn:uuid:5ab66dee-7c2e-4c69-94ad-513afdfde1c1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.mail.com/news/world/1965376-south-egypt-fears-islamist-vigilantes.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960354 | 1,749 | 1.5 | 2 |
WELCOME TO BREMERHAVEN
My grandfather, Glen R. Johnson, was transferred to Wiesbaden, Germany in 1950 (before the Army Air Corps became the Air Force). Upon arriving at the Port of Bremerhaven aboard the Gen. Patch on July 20, 1950, the U.S. Band greeted him and my grandmother, Vesta. Wikipedia says that Bremerhaven means “Bremen’s Harbor” in Bremen (which was in the free Federal Republic of Germany).
The ship – USNS General Alexander M. Patch (T-AP-122) (picture of it as it is berthed at Bremerhaven in 1950 can be found here - exciting to think that this might just be at the same time my grandparents had arrived!) was named after the General who took “command of the Allied Forces in New Caledonia” in 1942 (from NavSource Online: Service Ship Photo Archive; 2012; NavSource Naval History)
Luckily, while they were in Germany, they were able to take side trips to other places on the weekends. The picture above was taken on August 5, 1950, when they went with another lady, Mrs. Mulligan, along with a Bavarian guide to see the Nymphenburg Castle, Home of the Bavarian Kings.
Besides all of the photos, I also have several years’ worth of letters my grandparents wrote my parents. Those letters detail all the little trips around Europe they took as well as their day to day life in Wiesbaden. | <urn:uuid:58255243-4cdc-4807-8a33-4e9355b2d35d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://allmybranches.wordpress.com/tag/general-patch/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.980696 | 321 | 1.695313 | 2 |
The field of big drug makers racing to produce an effective weight-loss drug not only is narrowing, it’s almost drying up.
In the last month alone, the Food and Drug Administration has rejected approval for two new drugs and forced the withdrawal of a third that had been on the market for more than a decade. And in the last few years, several of the pharmaceutical industry’s biggest names — including Abbott Laboratories, Merck & Co. and Sanofi-Aventis — have tried and failed to take anti-obesity and weight-loss drugs to market. The F.D.A. hasn’t approved a prescription diet pill since 1999, when it gave a nod to Roche’s Xenical, now the only weight-management drug approved for long-term use.
The F.D.A. hasn’t acted without its reasons — but experts say pharmaceutical companies are increasingly discouraged from working on drugs for obesity, one of the nation’s biggest health problems. One-third of Americans are obese, and another third are overweight — conditions that lead to cancer, diabetes and heart disease.
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- Making Media Salad (3)
- Client Stories (4) | <urn:uuid:01f169bc-904b-407b-90ca-fc3cbc62cd6a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://mediasalad.com/blog/tag/xenical/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00041-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940147 | 331 | 1.515625 | 2 |
Some people find that they want to move on to other interests. If they like collecting truck memorabilia, they have probably collected everything imaginable within their budget. They may have stamps featuring different kinds of trucks, different brands, maybe some antique trucks. You get the idea. Now these truck related stamps could be worth a mint to someone else.
Most hobbies require a great deal of expensive equipment and supplies to enjoy them and most of the stuff canít be resold for enough to recoup your initial investment. Golf and photography are two great examples of this.
Stamp collecting does not require a great deal of expensive equipment or supplies to enjoy as a hobby. Sometimes you may even make a profit from your collection selling it. But of course most common stamps have a low resale value. And of course, since stamps are made out of fragile paper, there is the probability of the paper degrading over time if it is not properly maintained.
If you are a U.S. resident, you can always use your unused stamps for postage. Any stamps that you have purchased from the Post Office can be used on any letters you need to mail. It really doesnít matter if you use a bunch on the letter. It is perfectly legal.
Of course if you are just starting your stamp collection, you may be wondering how much to pay for the stamps you want to collect. If you buy them from the Post Office, you only need to pay the current face value of the stamp. Now if you are looking to buy older or foreign stamps, the situation is a lot different.
As you become more experienced handling stamps, your purchasing skills will improve greatly. Your identification skills will improve as well. You will reach the point where you will be able to identify a potential sleeper that most collectors will pass up due to their inexperience.
Stay away from any stamp that you know is a fake or you suspect to be one. Always buy quality stamps. Purchase the best specimen you can afford. You donít have to succumb to the myth that you have to fill all of the spaces in your stamp album. In other words, donít feel compelled to buy a poor specimen just to fill an empty space inyour stamp album.
Be especially wary of anyone offering you stamps or other stamp related items with a guarantee that they will appreciate in value in the near future. Investing in stamps is like investing in anything else, there are no guarantees that your investment will grow. Stamp collecting can be a very rewarding hobby depending on how you approach it. You can control most aspects of how you do your collecting. You donít even have to build another addition to your home. | <urn:uuid:089fa682-c196-466f-a7ee-4a629157c227> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.bellaonline.com/ArticlesP/art69845.asp | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00034-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961699 | 543 | 1.59375 | 2 |
If you care for an elderly, injured or special needs pet, you've come to the right place!
My dog suffered a spinal embolism one week ago. She was paralyzed in both rear legs. The vet did a mylogram and told me she suffered a FCE injury. She is a weimeriener 5 years old. We have her home now and are trying to keep her happy and comfortable. She had no deep pain perception and the vet told us she wouldnt get that back. I have noticed in the last two days when i pinch her paws she pulls her leg back a little. She is eating and drinking but we have to express her bladder. We love her so much and wont give up but we just want to know there is a chance for her to lead a normal life.
Good morning...I am so glad you found us. We have many stories of recovery from FCE - there are things you can do and there is hope. So glad to hear that you are expressing her bladder and understand the importance of that. Here is a thread with a lot of good information, a video and inspiration to get you started. You might want to get the book mentioned in this thread as well. We are here to share this journey..ask questions, come back and research. We'd love to see a picture of your girl.
Christine... and Bailey, playing at the Bridge
?/1999 - 10/25/08
Found some more links for you to look at a little at a time and when you need some inspiration.
http://www.handicappedpet.net/helppets/ ... =4&t=10626
Helpful Links and more inspiration from other owners
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_q ... arch_type=
Videos of recovery results
Karen and Bully
http://www.handicappedpet.net/helppets/ ... =4&t=15992
Ricky and Tallula
Christine... and Bailey, playing at the Bridge
?/1999 - 10/25/08
Hi. My Bully, a 100-plus bullmastiff, was diagnosed with an FCE (fibrocartilaginous embolus) -- or a stroke -- in 2006. He was paralyzed head to toe and was given a very poor prognosis. My own vet suggested euthanasia. But thank God, I could see the light in his eyes and that wasn't a consideration. It was hard work, but after about six months Bully was able to walk again. He was definitely left with a handicap -- basically some paralysis on one side -- but he was very mobile and very happy. After the FCE, he had emergency surgery for a perforated ulcer, as well as surgery for bloat. Sadly, several years later he developed cancer. He was treated with chemotherapy and we bought him almost two years more. But in April of last year, five years after the stroke, my Bully died -- 13 years old. If I had it all to do over, I would do the exact same thing. Your dog's recovery will depend on you -- keep a good attitude, there is much more hope than most vets will tell you. The only reason dogs die after an FCE is because their owners aren't willing to put in the time, work -- and yes, money -- to save them. Please continue to post and let us know how it's going. Karen
Help me be the person my dog thinks I am!
My 9 year old lab Sasha had an FCE on 2/28 this year. The symptoms were exactly the same as yours (rear paralysis and zero deep pain tolerance). My thread that I am keeping a journal on is below. She has so far gone from zero movement to being able to walk and keep herself up in 4 weeks (trust me, not in any way pretty yet ).
Keep the legs moving to prevent atrophy, be patient with the bowel and urine movements and above all keep positive. You will be surprised the will dogs have.
I want to thank you all for the positive support. I cant tell you how much it means to have other people understaning what it is like going through this. She seems to be making inches of progress each day and ill take it. Its encouraging to know that there is a chance she will walk again. We love our dog so much. And yes it has been at a cost..about 2000$ but it is worth every penny. Thank you all again and we will take any advice you can offer.
This forum was a God-send for me during Bully's recovery period. You just need to know that an FCE is not a fatal condition, nor is it a permanent one! My dog was paralyzed completely, in all four legs, including his tail and neck -- I had to handfeed him, catheterize him, take him out on a cart and roll him onto the grass to do his business laying down -- and he recovered. And Bully weighed 110 pounds at the time of the FCE. (He got down to 75 pounds during the healing process.) Slowly but surely he got movement back. It started in his left leg and gradually worked its way around his body. I know you can see your pup through this. Bully got acupuncture and electric stimulation while he was recovering, and he also went to physical therapy where they used the pool. I don't know if any of that made a difference though. I think he probably would have recovered with or without it but it helped me to think I was helping him. After he recovered I still took him for acupuncture from time to time. He really loved it too.
Anyway, it was one of the hardest times of my life because I loved my dog so much and it hurt me to see him unhappy. But he always hung in there for me. Try not to let your pup see your anguish and keep a positive attitude. Keep us up to date. Karen
Help me be the person my dog thinks I am!
I don't know why the vet said that. Improvement is the norm with FCE. My dog's physical therapist said 85% of dogs with FCE will recover. The lowest figure I've read is 69%. Aggressive physical therapy is recommended for FCE. Massage her legs, squeeze and tickle her feet, stimulate her feet and legs every chance you get, every time you walk by her give her a little squeeze or tickle, bicycle her legs through the full range of motion (do a number of reps and do it 2 or 3 times a day) to keep her flexible and avoid contractures. Get her up and help her simply stand in a normal position even if she can't bear much weight. You may need to get a harness for her hind end to help hold her up. While she is lying down, push up on the bottoms of her feet and see if she will push back. Keep in mind that even though she looks much the same every day, little bit by tiny little bit the nerves are recovering. Nerves do recover but they do it very slowly. Therefore it is best to keep doing the physical therapy even if you don't seem to be seeing any change. If you have professional physical therapy available where you live, getting her into swimming or workouts on the underwater treadmill can be a big help.
Is she dribbling urine at all, or does she simply just not urinate at all if you don't express?
Thank you all for the positive response. I have been doing all the therapy i can do at home. She is starting to flinch when i pinch her paws! That is such a good feeling. She also seems to be moving her tail more when she gets excited. It has gotten harder to express her bladder since she got movement in her tail, but she doesnt seem to hold it cause she is peeing on the training pads. Any help on that would be great. My wife and i both work long hours but my wife checks on her at lunch and she seems to be fine, just resting. We give her full attention at night. We will never give up and it is amazing when the vet gave us such a poor prognosis to see some results.
Thanks. I started to post a long reply last night, but then all of a sudden wasn't sure I was reading it right. That was what I thought you meant when I read it originally.
It is hard to be sure without feeling her, there could be more than one reason for the combination of wetting the pad but seeming difficult to express. The best thing to do would be to have the vet check her. If your vet (the one who said she would not regain deep pain sensation) is not helpful in this, then I would look for another vet. The likeliest thing is that she is wetting the pad because of bladder overflow. The bladder fills to a certain point, then when it is too full it releases part of the urine. When I first brought my paralyzed dog home, I was expressing very conscientiously, but I did not realize I wasn't getting it all. I found out when I took her to a new vet, and I had just expressed her, and he put her on the table and expressed her after me and got a flood. It is definitely something you get better at with practice. If she continues to be difficult to express, there are medications that will either relax the urinary sphincter or improve tone. I'd recommend keeping an eye on her for any signs of bladder infection. My dog got one about 10 days after her injury. It's easy to have that happen when you're still learning to express and aren't getting the bladder empty every time. They put my dog on an antibiotic and it cleared right up, and by the time she was off her antibiotic I was better at expressing.
The fact that she is wetting her pad is something that needs to be addressed right away, it seems minor but can quickly turn into a bigger problem. Right now, believe it or not, I would see this as a top issue that needs attention. It is easy for them to get a urine burn, and that is hard to heal one when the dog has to keep lying down. They can't lie on one side all the time, they need to be turned every few hours to keep the skin healthy, which means if she gets a urine burn she is going to be lying on that side part of the time, it's much better to avoid it. In addition to expressing as well as possible, you might consider getting her some diaper covers (like those denim dog pants that stay on with velcro) and put an extra absorbent pad (like a maximum absorbency Poise pad) in it. That way you can catch a lot (or hopefully all) of the urine when she leaks, and it won't end up soaking her bedding and putting her at high risk for urine burns. I think if it was my dog, I would make that a priority. Unfortunately, those underpads or puppytraining pads are not very absorbent. They work to keep the bedding dry but do not keep the patient dry. They are mainly a layer of plastic with a very thin layer of absorbent padding on top, nowhere absorbent enough for the amount of urine a large dog would void. In my experience, when I put an underpad over the bed and put my dog on the pad, his hip sank down into the soft bed and if he wet the pad, gravity carried the urine to the lowest point, which was usually under his hip. It is a risky situation to have a dog lying on a wet spot for several hours, you really risk a burn. If she is getting herself wet, she'll need to be cleaned on that area. I'm sorry to go on and on about this, it's just so much easier to avoid a urine burn than to get one healed up. Another possibility is to use human diapers (either large kids diapers or adult size, just cut a hole for the tai).
I don't know of you or your wife have had a chance to look though the expressing article, but there are a lot of different ways to express the bladder, you might find a technique that works better for you with your large dog. There are videos at the end, as well.
http://www.handicappedpets.com/mediawik ... dog_or_cat
Thank you all so much again. This has been so helpfull finding people that understand what we are going through. I followed the links and expressed our dogs bladder and it was like a waterfall. My vet obviously didnt show us the right way. Our dog "mojo"..thats her name, seems awfully happy. I did it twice today and now she is not leaking any urine. This forum has been so helpfull. Mojo is happily chewing on a bone right now and i know she thanks you all. Its been ten days now since her FCE. She still is flinching her legs when i pinch them but not for sure if its changing much. I guess maybe im expecting. To much to fast. I do know that she seems more comfortable and happy. I wish we could afford to take her to PT, but money is tight after all the vet bills. We will take any advice on more home therapy tips. Thanks again
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As we race through the 21st Century we find we are confronted by so many issues where there appears to be no right or wrong answer. Those experiences have caused us to micro-manage our philosophy so we are able to look to a self imposed standard to live in a sustainable way looking forward.
Corporate: The College of Climate Change Environmental Management System is a continual cycle of planning, implementing, reviewing, and improving C of CC processes and procedures to meet and where possible exceed our environmental obligations.
Social: It is our purpose to maintain a healthy environment by implementing sustainability projects, and also adhering to current procedures, to allow for our communities to continue long into the future .
Individual: All Directors and staff demonstrate an individual commitment and responsibility to our corporate and social policies, associated environmental objectives and targets. | <urn:uuid:10235977-8c63-448b-b7fc-fc886cffc7b8> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://collegeofclimatechange.com.au/our-philosophy-2/ | 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 | 0.931826 | 165 | 1.789063 | 2 |
Voting Therapy and Al-Qaeda’s Presidential Endorsement
By Sumbul Ali-Karamali,
Author of The Muslim Next Door
I love to vote. I love standing in line and feasting my eyes on the strange juxtaposition of voting machines and official paperwork with multicolored posters and children’s artwork in the elementary school cafeteria in which voting is held in my precinct. I love chatting with those standing ahead and behind me in line. I love thanking the volunteers for manning the voting stations. I love hugging political jokes silently to myself, refraining from voicing them, because I know it’s a breach of voting-line etiquette and I don’t want to start any brawls. I love touting an “I Voted” sticker on my lapel for the remainder of the day.
I am depriving myself of voting on Tuesday, nevertheless, because I voted by mail this year. I succumbed to pressure from my county’s mailed messages entreating me to vote by mail and from rumors of long lines occasioned by unprecedented hordes of newly registered voters.
I did receive an “I Voted” sticker in the mail, though.
A friend shakes her head at my nostalgic voting reminisces, perplexed at the thought of the desire to voluntarily waste time in line. She’s voted by mail for years.
“It’s the whole experience,” I say earnestly.
The first time I could finally vote, the friend who had accompanied me became supremely exasperated with me and my whole voting process, because I spent twenty minutes in the voting booth, agonizing over every question, checking and double-checking to make sure I turned in my first ballot exactly the way I wanted it. She stood outside and tapped her foot. I’ve never missed an election since.
It’s ironic, then, that my loyalty as an American is called into question by some of my fellow citizens simply because I am a Muslim. The 2006 World Gallup Poll reported that less than half of Americans believe that American Muslims are loyal to the United States. And yet a recent Pew Center poll reported that American Muslims are mainstream, moderate, and middle-class, invested with American values and ideals. I am reminded of how, in the 1960s, certain Americans advocated voting against John F. Kennedy because they assumed his Catholic faith would require him to be loyal to the Vatican and not to the United States.
I am reminded, too, of Barack Obama who, despite being Christian, struggles under misapprehensions simply because he’s lived in a Muslim-majority country and bears the honorable name of “Hussein,” which means beautiful.
Yesterday, on NPR, I listened to a news talk show. The host fired fill-in-the-blank statements at the contestant, who scrambled to answer them in a split second. One of the questions was: “A statement on the al-Qaeda website announced that the group is endorsing “blank” for president.”
The contestant immediately answered, “Barack Obama!”
The answer was “McCain.”
She had a fifty percent chance of getting it right. Lightning-fast answers come from the truest part of ourselves. Her answer reflected a lack of understanding; most Muslims I know would have scored correctly on that question. And that is because we know that Osama bin Laden needs the United States to continue its war in Iraq. Al-Qaeda feeds on attacks on Muslims – because such attacks allow al-Qaeda to portray the United States as waging a war on Islam, to recruit new volunteers, and to provoke the whole cycle over again. And McCain is perceived as more likely than Obama to keep the U.S. in Iraq longer.
Yet, this educated, informed contestant said “Obama.” Why? Is it because Obama has spent the last 20 months denying that he’s Muslim and we all know al-Qaeda is filled with Muslims? Because his name is Hussein, as it was Saddam’s, as it is the name of hundreds of thousands of people in the world?
For thirty-six hours, I have been troubled by this question and response, mostly because it was necessarily reflexive and perhaps even subconscious. I wish I could engage in voting therapy on Tuesday. But I’ve already exercised my civic duty.
May God bless America and all the other countries, too.
©2008 Sumbul Ali-Karamali
Sumbul Ali-Karamali grew up in Southern California. Growing up in California she frequently faced difficult questions about Islam and its practices posed by friends, colleagues, and neighbors. (“What do you mean you can’t go to the prom because of your religion?”) Her new book, The Muslim Next Door, works to answer these questions for the non-Muslim public. She holds a B.A. from Stanford University and a J.D from the University of California at Davis and earned a graduate degree in Islamic law from the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies. She has served as a teaching assistant in Islamic Law at SOAS and a research associate at the Centre of Islamic and Middle Eastern Law in London. Her book, The Muslim Next Door, is available from White Cloud Press. She was the speaker on Islam at the Commonwealth Club at San Francisco on October 30, 2008. | <urn:uuid:cdeef4c2-8f51-4bad-83e9-45da55b7db86> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://theamericanmuslim.org/tam.php/features/articles/voting_therapy_and_al_qaedas_presidential_endorsement | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00034-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964205 | 1,132 | 1.554688 | 2 |
Monday, September 28, 2009
We all know about the battle against censorship. We all know the importance of free speech. My publisher supports this battle all year long, but this is a special week in which to shout from the rooftops and draw lines in the sand.
Imagine if the censors had their way throughout the years. There'd be no ARE YOU THERE GOD, IT'S ME MARGARET by Judy Blume, or THE GIVER, by Lois Lowry, or THE CHOCOLATE WAR by Robert Cormier or A DAY NO PIGS WOULD DIE by Robert Peck. Countless others. Some people even wanted to ban HARRY POTTER, which is the silliest silliness in the history of silly silliness.
Please spread the word that we can never let ourselves take the first step on that treacherous slippery slope. Check out this website by the Random House First Amendment Committee: CLICK HERE. I love the part where you can read quotes from authors like Judy Blume and Lois Lowry about censorship.
Have a great day. I'll return to my normal giddy ranting about how close we are to my release day soon.
Posted by James Dashner at 8:17 AM | <urn:uuid:7bd7a1a0-aede-4096-9a8d-efe9b104bea2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://jamesdashner.blogspot.jp/2009/09/banned-books-week.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947303 | 251 | 1.78125 | 2 |
President Barack Obama this afternoon outlined 23 executive actions he says will ensure Americans' safety by curbing gun violence, but admitted the process will be difficult as further measures will need to be taken up on Capitol Hill.
Included in the president's legislative proposals are a universal background check for anyone trying to purchase a firearm, a ban on military-style assault weapons, a 10 round limit on magazines, tougher punishments for those who sell guns to criminals and expanded efforts to study the mental health link to gun violence.
"This is our first task as a society: Keeping our children safe. This is how we will be judged," Obama said.
Among the president's executive orders is a directive that would allow access to data for background checks.
He will also instruct the Centers for Disease Control to study the cause of gun violence and how to prevent it.
Additionally, President Obama said he plans to nominate acting director of Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives B. Todd Jones to head the agency.
The president's orders and proposals come from recommendations made by Vice President Biden's task force.
President Obama said the measures can be accomplished by respecting the Second Amendment while preventing future tragedies such as the Newtown, Connecticut massacre.
He also said the changes will not happen unless the American people demand it.
President Obama's remarks come just a day after Governor Andrew Cuomo approved what's being called the toughest gun law in the nation.
It was passed by the State Assembly on just the second day of the 2013 legislative session.
The sweeping package expands the current assault weapon ban by changing the definition of what is considered an assault weapon.
It limits the size of gun magazines to seven bullets and closes the so-called gun show loophole by requiring background checks for private gun sales.
It also contains tougher penalties for those who use illegal guns in a crime, and expands Kendra's Law, allowing judges to require treatment for people with mental illness.
"Let's at least learn from what's happened. Let's at least be able to say to people yes, we went through terrible situations, but we saw, we learned, we responded, and we acted and we're doing something about it. We are not victims, we can strike back, we can defend ourselves, but we're going to do it intelligently," Cuomo said.
Owners of previously legal semi-automatic rifles will be allowed to keep their weapons but will have to register them within one year.
Those weapons cannot be re-sold.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg praised the new law, saying it's a move in the right direction.
Gun rights advocates say it will do nothing to prevent violence while only hurting law abiding gun owners. | <urn:uuid:c0d4a061-9d72-4d0a-9e90-5d8b72b69b52> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ny1.com/printarticle.aspx?ArID=175517 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704713110/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516114513-00015-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961509 | 550 | 1.84375 | 2 |
I wish I could write like Dr. Seuss
And tell you a tale about a moose.
One who had steadfastly held on to convictions,
And about the environment made dire predictions.
Or perhaps my moose would fly in the air,
To save the birds who flew with him there.
Because he is a friend on which you can count,
To forgive a debt the entire amount.
To give you a lift when your spirits are low,
Without a moose friend you might not ever know.
That moose antlers make good rakes for leaves,
And he can talk when he’s down on his knees.
But don’t serve him eggs with a side of bacon,
Their color chartreuse because that story is taken.
And keep him away from the Taloola trees,
As the dust from their flowers will make him sneeze.
And one good sneeze could set you back,
And put you in the path of a south going Zak.
Then all you could do is tip your hat,
But there on your head another one sat.
I wish I could think the thinks that Dr. Seuss thought,
Think up the rhymes and the words that he taught.
Then all of the world would love my moose,
Like I love the world of Dr. Seuss. | <urn:uuid:0410f820-5805-4824-a872-dcf2ca61b9ca> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.poetrysoup.com/poems_poets/poem_detail.aspx?ID=368662 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964817 | 287 | 1.734375 | 2 |
2 corrections, most recently by anonymous - Show corrections
EXTRAORDINARY TRIAL FOR MURDER,
(From the Leed's Mercury, June 7.)
A remarkable case is now on trial before the High Criminal Court of Hainault, at Mons. The accused are the Count and Countess of Bocarme, of a family stated to be one of the oldest in Belgium. The crime laid to their charge is that of havng poisoned the Countess's brother, Gustave Faugnies, in order to obtain his fortune. Count de Bocarme resided at the chateau of Bury ; he married in 1843, for her fortune, Lydia Fougnies, the daughter of a retired grocer, and got with her a sum representing £100 a-year of English money. This, after all, was no great sum, and as the Count was somewhat of a spendthrift, his affairs assumed gradually a most embarrassed state. His wife's brother, Gustave Faugnies, had become possessed, by his father's death, of considerable property, and as he was unmarried, the Count and Countess had every prospect of inheriting his fortune. Gustave, though weak in constitution, and amputated of a leg, determined, in November, 1850, to marry. The state of Count Bocarme's exchequer was at this time quite ruinous. He owed large sums to his legal advisers, and had mortgaged most of his property. Fougnies' marriage would have been a blow to his hopes. Suddenly the Count became addicted, in the beginning of 1850, to the study of chemistry. He went under a false name to a manufacturer of alembics, corres- ponded also under a false name with a professor of chemistry, and ultimately succeeded in dis . tilling from tobacco leaves a deadly poison known as nicotine, and for which hitherto it has been impossible to find a reactive. This poison he tried on various animals, and, according to his own statement, he obtained tremendous results, death being instantaneous after the slightest absorption of the poison. In November, 1850, Gustave Fougnies was induced to accept an in- vitation to dinner at Bury, it being proposed to
him to become trustee for the Count and Coun-
tess, during a voyage they intended making in Germany. He came on the morning of the 20th November, and after dinner on the same day, died in the room where were present both the Count and the Countess. It was found, on examination, that death had ensued, not from apoplexy, but from the forcible injection of a poisonous and corrosive substance. There were marks of vio- lence on the face of the dead man, and part of the poison had run down the side of his face, corroding the flesh and blistering it. An exami-
nation of Count Bocarme's hands showed the
presence of a bite from human teeth, and a red tinge on one of his nails corresponded with cer- tain marks and scratches on the face of Fougnies. The clothes of Fougnies and those of the Count, which he had changed, were found wet, and hanging up to-dry in an attic of the chateau.
This had been done by the Countess, as- alie states, by order of her husbnnd. The floor had been scraped with glass, but insufficiently to pre- vent the marks of the corroding liquid, which seemed to have been spurted all over the room. There were no traces of chemical instruments or
of any apparatus for the distillation of poison. The false name assumed by the Count in his dealings with the chemical instrument-maker,, however, became known. After six weeks search, the alembics used in producing nicotine were found, and Bocarme, when informed of these discoveries, for a moment gave himself up to despair. The Countess then openly accused her husband of being the murderer. She de- scribed how, after dinner, her brother expressed his determination to go home, and Bocarme went out to order his horses. In his absence she and her brother were talking together, when Bocarme rushed in, seized Gustave by the shoulders and threw him down. She fled, and did not return into the room till all was over, and the body of Gustave lay lifeless on the ground.
(From the Adas, June 21.)
After seventeen days of trial, the case of the Count and Countess de Bocarme was brought to
a conclusion at the Assize Court of Mons on
Friday. After considering their verdict for an hour and a half the jury returned into Court and
the foreman in a somewhat tremulous bnt firm voice declared the finding of the jury to be, " ou my honour and conscience, and in the pre- sence of God and man," a verdict of guilty against the Count, and not guilty against his wife, Madame Bocarme:-The President then ordered the accused to be brought into Conrt. This time the Count was admitted first. His appearance was calm and collected. Madame de Bocarme had her veil down, but her step waB firm. On hearing the verdict of guilty a slight momentary flush passed over the Count's face, but he evinced no other sign of emotion. On heanng not guilty on his wife, an expression of
internal satisfaction animated his features. He
looked affectionately toward-» his wife, who gave no visible signs of emotion. She left the dock with a firm step, without speaking to her hus- band. The Procureur du Roi, having asked the prisoner if he had an v thing to say, he replied " No, except that I am perfectly innocent." He then entered calmly into conversation with his counsel. At eleven o'clock the Court pro- nounced sentence of death upon Hippolyte Visart de Bocarme, and decreed that the execu- tion should take place in one of the squares of Mons. The prisoner left the Court under guard with a firm step.
BANK OF AUSTRALASIA.-Yesterday, the 17th annual meeting of the shareholders of this Com Ïany was held at the establishment in Austin
riars, City. Oliver Farren, Esq., having taken the chair, Mr. Milliken, the secretary, read the report, which was to the following effect: " The current business of the bank during the past year has been of a healthy, profitable, and improving character. The bad debts of the year have been unimportant, and all provided for ; the profits have greatly increased; and con- siderable progress has at length been made in the realisation of the securities held against the old dependencies. The greater part of the secu- rities have been realised ; the loss on their rea- lisation is shown in the financial statement ; and the directors can assure the shareholders that any further losses which can reasonably be ex- pected to arise from the sale of those which re- main will be more than covered by the balance already at the credit of the profit and loss ac-
count. Notwithstanding these losses, the direc-, tors are gratified to find that they were fully justified in paying the increased dividend in April, last, and although the current business of the bank leads them to hope that a further increase may ere long be made, the rate of 4 per cent, will be, continued for the present, under the strength
ened conviction that It will not be .prudent to increase it until all the.old dependencies are completely settled. Little .doubt is entertained that this will be accomplished in the course of this year, and that the entire profits of the bank may then be devoted« to| more remunerative dividends, and to the establishment andaugmen
tation of such a reserve fund as will secare their Îernlanency under all reasonable contingencies,
'he following- statement exhibits the result of the business during the year now reported on: Balance in profit and loss account at 15th of October, 1849, £50,717 17s.'6d.; net profits iu the colonies and in London, for^tbe year ending 14th October, 1850, after deducting all expenses of management, £64,221 13s. 3d. ; from which, are to be taken £27,000, poid to the proprietors as dividends of 12s. per share, at April, 1850, and October, 1850, leaving £37,221 13s. 3d. to be added to the balance of October 15, 1849 ; total, £87,93910s. 9d. Theascertainedlossonold dependences to be deducted is, £51,683 13s. lid. The balance at the credit of profit and loss ac- count, at October 14,1850, is thus £36,255 16s. lOd. The assets and liabilities at the latter period, stood as follows :-Assets, viz. ; govern
ment stock, specie, and cash, £619,519 5s. ;
bank premises, £8,910 12s. 7d. ; hüls receivable and other securities, £1,283,532 12s. 7d. ; totnl, £1,931,962 10s. 2d.-Liabilities, viz.: Capital, £900,000; circulation, 119,650; bills payable, and other liabilities, £279,632 9s. lid. ; deposits, £596,424 3s. 5d. ; profit and loss, £36,255 16s. 10d.; total, £1,931,962 10s. 2d. The arrange- ment made with the Bank of Australia, for the liquidation of their debt bas been honorably car-
ried out, and all anxiety respecting the balance | has ceased." The report was received with great applause.-The chairman alluded to the report now presented to the meeting as a source of gratification to himself, as well as to his col- leagues. The only place where any uncertain liability still remained was at Sydney and Laun- ceston, whilst at Adelaide and Melbourne, Mait- land and Hobart Town, it was not expected that any loss would exceed the amount in hand at present. The business of the past year was most profitable, for they had made £10,000 more than in the year before. Had they not been obliged to provide for these old dependencies to such an extent, the directors might have been in a posi- tion to divide 6 per cent, amongst the share- holders, besides adding a very handsome sum to the rest. At Adelaide and Melbourne they had made a large profit, and he wished he could say the same of that at Sydney, bnt it was caused, no doubt, from the evil arising from their old dependencies in that quarter; and the same might be said of Launceston. He hoped to live to see the termination" of these old depen- dencies, as it wonld be some gratification to him, after so many years of trouble and anxiety at the unfortunate losses of this bank (applause). In respect to the Bank of Australia, he might mention that their agreement to pay this com- pany by instalments had been faithfully fulfilled up to January last, except £4000, but this he learnt from the last advices had been paid like« wise (hear, hear). The chairman concluded by moving that the report be received and adopted, and distributed in the usual way amongst the proprietors. The report was, after .some dis» cussion, adopted unanimously. Thomas Hender- son, Esq., D. O. Henriques, Esq, and Charles Morris, Esq., the directors retiring, . were re elected unanimously. Mr. Serjeant Gazelee then moved a vote of thanks to the chairman and directors of the company, which was seconded by Colonel Mitchell, and passed unanimously.
Daily News, June 18.
SUBMARINE TELEGRAPH BETWEEN ENGLAND AND FRANCE ?-We have great satisfaction in learning, from a prospectus now before us, which is authenticated by names that cannot fail of commanding the confidence of the public, that there is at length a definite prospect of this great international undertaking being conducted to a successful issue. The requisite concession has been obtained from the French government, guaranteeing to the projectors the -exclusive right to the establishment and use of submarine communication between the two countries for a period of ten years from 1st of October, 1851 ; and they have likewise procured a charter of incorporation from the British crown, limiting the liability of shareholders to the amounts of their respective shares. The preliminary arrangements are so far matured that the plans of the contemplated works, nccompained by the report of Mr. Cubitt, the consulting engineer to the company, have been lodged with the French goverment, and the neccessary amount of caution money deposit. Tenders have been received for the construction of the works, on terms which would be fully covered by the amount of capital intended to be raised (£100,000 in £1 shares), and the company's operations will be commenced as soon as a sufficient number of shares are subscribed for. The scale on which it is proposed to carry out this enterprise is of a magnitude commensurate with its intrinsic grandeur and importance. It is intended to lay down a considerable number of wires between the two coats, enclosed in a protective of adequate strength to ensure them againstaccidental injury, and thereby to obtain numerous distinct lines of telegraphic communication between Great Britain ana the various continental countries, with the view of eventually establishing a uni- versal and instantaneous communication through- out the whole of Europe." The following passage from the prospectus will perhaps best explain the scope and capabilities of the design :-" One great feature in the undertaking is the advantages it will offer to India and America. By the agency of a single wire the news by the India mail, on its arrival at Trieste or Marseilles, may be delivered, printed in Roman type, simul- taneously at Paris and London, and at Liverpool in readiness for the departure of the American mail ; while the remaining lines of wire may at the same instant be conveying intelligence be-
tween Great Britain and the other countries of
SLIGHT DISASTER TO THE ARCTIC EXPEDI- TIONARY SHIP "PRINCE ALBERT."-Stromness, 26th May : The Prince Albert, Kennedy, ar- rived here yesterday morning, having lost her jibboom off Pentland Skerries. This has been supplied, gratis, by our chief magistrate, Mr. Strange. Lady Franklin, accompanied by Miss Cracroft and Mr. Kennedy, reached Stromness on Saturday evening, and the yacht will proceed to-morrow morning. Wind at present N.B., fresh. The boats crew engaged by Mr. Kennedy are all ready.-Aberdeen Journal. Lady Franklin, it is feared by the Scotch journals, is fast sinking under the weight of her prolonged and terrible trial. Yesterday week prayers were offered up in Stromness for the officers and-crew of the expeditionary yacht.-Liverpool Albion,
PRUSSIAN STATISTICS.-A statistical work
just published states the number of Protestants m the Prussian monarcy at 10,016,798; and that of Papists at 6,079,613.-Leed's Mercury.
STEAK OK THE ATLANTIC-The New York journals contain a challenge, signed "Darius Davidson," and dated New York, April 8, offering to construct an ocean steam-ship capable of steaming 439 miles per diem, namely 100 miles every 24 hours more than have yet been achieved by the swiftest Bteam-ßhip afloat.
A STEAMER BURNT ON THE MISSISSIPPI.-A
steamer, with 100 persons on board, took fire on the Mississippi above Vicksburg, on the 21st April, and was burned to the water's edge. Of the whole number of passengers only about sixty have been found : the rest are spposed to have perished with the boat.-Bell'* Messenger.
Printed and published by RICHARD JONES, at
the "Mercnry Office," High-street, Wert | <urn:uuid:a3f7bb3f-2c02-4cda-9d2c-61bed2c7e591> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/679354 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00029-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97278 | 3,440 | 1.835938 | 2 |
This 60-minute class, facilitated by a clinical exercise physiologist, geared to people with type 2 diabetes, as well as people with type 1 diabetes that need a refresher.
You can make a huge difference in managing your diabetes by being physically active. You will learn how to:
- Get started with an exercise program
- Lose weight and keep it off
- Manage your blood glucose
- Exercise with complications of diabetes and more
You will be back for a 30 minute follow-up appointment to help track your progress in reaching your goals.
Page last updated: May 25, 2013 | <urn:uuid:ec8fe024-e61a-4b16-9ee4-ddad07302205> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.joslin.org/care/exercise_basics.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947239 | 122 | 1.664063 | 2 |
Following a period studying under Fernand Leger in Paris, Crosbie returned to Glasgow and after World War II received several commissions for church altarpieces and decorations. `Post Mortem? relates to these works. The Christ figure has five coloured legs which stand for the five continents, and suggest that Christ is part of us all. The style reflects Crosbie?s interest in early Italian art, particularly Piero della Francesca. | <urn:uuid:eaf2205b-8991-41de-9f4e-d2a5be51c1e3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nationalgalleries.org/collection/subjects/Christianity/502940/artist_name/William%20Crosbie/record_id/8803 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00038-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960979 | 88 | 1.84375 | 2 |
I have 2 cats. The youngest and thinnest started sneezing and it passed after about 5 days. Now the older, bigger cat is sneezing and he's not over it yet. What should I do?
Pet's Gender: MalePet's Age: 5Name of Cat: GizmoWhat have you tried so far?: I gave him a child's dose of Claritin (5mg)
I am sorry your kitties are not feeling well.
Did the young one completely stop sneezing?
Does either cat go outdoors?
Are both eating?
Any colored mucus?
Both are totally indoor cats. The young cat, Zappa, 3 yr old, appears to be completely fine. No sniffing, nothing. Gizmo, 5, overweight probably 5-10 lbs., is sneezing like crazy and is not feeling well because he doesn't seem to be "comfortable." Both seem to be eating as normal though and haven't seem to slow down a bit. They are also both drinking plenty of water (straight from the tap). I don't have live plants in the apt. either.
I've not seen any colored mucus, but Gizmo has a little red spot on his nose from wiping it with his paws.
Thanks so much for your reply with very helpful information.
Poor Gizmo, I am sorry he is not feeling well.
Upper respiratory infections are airborne virus so a cat can catch it without direct contact.
It is possible Zappa had it and gave it to Gizmo. This can also be an allergic reaction.
You can give him one quarter of a 4 mg chlortrimeton every 24 hours Or one mg per lb of benedryl every 12 hours.
Put a dab of plain neosporin on his little nose three times a day so it can heal up.It is mostly vaseline so safe if he licks some.
Feed odorous foods to keep then eating.
Run a hot shower to make a steam room and take Gizmo in for ten minute intervals. That should make him more comfortable.
As long as they both eat well and are drinking they should feel better very soon.I hope they do.
Please let me know how they are doing.
Best wishes for them,
Expert in feline health and behavior. 20 years experience with cats.
I gave Gizmo 5mg of Claritin this morning. Would that work? I also have Benedryl but they both hated that one! This is children's dosage and grape flavored.
I bet he hated liquid benedryl.
Try to get a tablet and just crush it up into his food. He won't detect it.
If Gizmo weights ten lbs you can give one half of a 25 mg tablet.
He should not have claritin if it has an additives for pain or sleeping.
Thanks so much for your positive rating. I just want to mention,
pseudoephedrine can be harmful so do not give Gizmo any product with that.
Please let me know how he is feeling.
Best wishes for him,
So is my cat safe with a 25 mg. claritin? I gave it to him before I left for work. Do I need to check on him?
Was it regular claritin free of pseudoephedrine?
It's Children's Claritn loratadine 5mg/antihistamine (it shows Non-Drowsy) and nowhere does it show pseudoephedrine.
I'm sorry to keep bothering you, but I just want to make sure I haven't hurt my cat!
You are not bothering me one bit! It is my pleasure to help someone as wonderful as you! It is commonly dosed @ 5 mg every 24 hours.
The generic name of claritin is loratimine. Here is the recommended dosages of all these meds:
If you gave Gizmo 5 mg just don't give anymore till tomorrow.
If you have more questions please do not hesitate to ask.
Thanks again Terri! I really appreciate your help!
You are more than welcome!
You are a wonderful person and great kitty "mommy"! It was my pleasure to "meet" you.
Please let me know how Gizmo is later.
Sending as an info request so you are not charged again. | <urn:uuid:93744b75-c142-47c4-bf1e-c65aed56581a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.justanswer.com/pet-cat/709e2-cats-youngest-thinnest-started-sneezing.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00022-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947107 | 929 | 1.71875 | 2 |
Official urges Feds to prosecute more gun cases
CHICAGO (AP) — A Cook County official wants federal authorities to prosecute more gun cases.
In a news release Wednesday, Cook County Commissioner John Fritchey says the number of cases prosecuted by the U.S. attorney's office in Chicago has dropped from 129 in 1999 to 73 in 2011 to 40 in 2012. That's despite studies that have shown federal prosecutions effectively deter gun crimes.
Officials in Chicago and Cook County have been pushing for tougher gun laws recently.
If you have any technical difficulties, either with your username and password or with the payment options, please contact us by e-mail at [email protected] | <urn:uuid:2520b090-f643-423e-a091-51ccc29d6037> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nwherald.com/2013/02/06/official-urges-feds-to-prosecute-more-gun-cases/av52akd/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00039-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.932051 | 144 | 1.5 | 2 |
You don’t want to be one of those screaming jerks online, but anger lives in all of us. Andrea Weckerle provides some practical advice on not being that jerk.
I love the Internet. I cherish being able to connect with friends and family at a moment’s notice, being able to easily reach out to some of the smartest and most inspirational people on the planet, and having the world’s knowledge at my fingertips. My life is enriched immeasurably because of all these things. But at the same time, there’s a bit of trepidation when I go online. What company’s reputation do I see unfairly taking a beating by a disgruntled customer? Which individual is being viciously mocked and humiliated by an anonymous attacker? Whose good name is being torn to shreds through innuendos and lies? These are the things I keep a lookout for, because it’s my job.
I’m the founder of CiviliNation, a non-profit organization dedicated to reducing online hostility, character assassination and adult cyberbullying. Its mission is to “foster an online culture where every person can freely participate in a democratic, open, rational and truth-based exchange of ideas and information, without fear or threat of being the target of unwarranted abuse, harassment or lies.”
When asked what prompted me to create CiviliNation, there isn’t one particular instance I can look back on and say that that was the seminal moment when I decided to take a public stand on this issue. Rather, it was something that snuck up on me over time after becoming increasingly frustrated with the ugliness I saw online. I realized that the best way to improve things was if I became a part of the solution. And the fact that I’ve been a target of online attacks myself actually helped because it made me fully understand what that feels like on a visceral level.
CiviliNation’s name is derived from a combination of the words civilization, civility, and nation. But how might civility look in the online environment? Well, it’s definitely not as simple as just applying the commonly-accepted rules of saying “please,” “excuse me” and “thank you.” The Internet, as much as some people might want it to be, is not a fantasy realm infused with perpetually-happy pink ponies and colorful rainbows. Instead, it’s a place where real life happens, and some of that’s not always pretty. CiviliNation regards civility as the foundational belief that everyone should have the opportunity to participate in passionate debate and spirited dissent, and be able to argue the merits of their views and positions, without feeling threatened, personally attacked or intimidated by their opponents, and without in turn doing it to others. All actions should flow from that.
When people are harassed, attacked or intimidated, what’s really going on is that someone is trying to take away their voice and browbeat them into submission. That’s not okay and it’s not an effective persuasion method. Unfortunately, with a low barrier to entry and the ability to remain anonymous or hide behind a pseudonym, coupled with instant dissemination, global reach, and the inability to fully retract statements, everything is amplified online. Poor self-control and anger management feed right into this. There’s a lot of hyper-aggressive posturing online, venting for the sake of venting, and being intentionally provocative just to get a reaction out of others. It’s as though some people are stuck in perpetual adolescence where being oppositional is a way of life. More often than not they don’t take into consideration the negative effect their behavior has on others or the reputational harm they’re inflicting on themselves.
My book “Civility in the Digital Age: How Companies and People Can Triumph over Haters, Trolls, Bullies, and Other Jerks,” devotes a whole chapter to anger and anger management. And, not surprisingly, there are gender differences:
Socially there are differences between who is allowed to express anger without stigmatization and who isn’t. For example, anger is generally considered more acceptable in men than in women. According to anger researcher Raymond DiGiuseppe, Ph.D., professor and chair of the psychology department at St. John’s University, men express their anger more physically than women and are more passive aggressive, whereas women hold on to their anger longer and don’t express their anger as openly as men do. Yale University psychologist Victoria Brescoll, co-author with Eric Uhlmann of the research article “Can an Angry Woman Get Ahead? Status
Conferral, Gender, and Expression of Emotion in the Workplace,” noted, “For men, expressing anger may heighten status: Men who expressed anger in a professional context were generally conferred higher status than men who expressed sadness. For women, however, expressing anger had the opposite effect: Professional women who expressed anger were consistently accorded lower status and lower wages, and were seen as less competent, than angry men and unemotional women.
We need to keep in mind that anger on its own isn’t the problem. Anger is a normal and even healthy and appropriate emotion is certain situations. But it’s when anger is expressed negatively and becomes destructive to others or oneself that we need to sound the alarm. So what are some of the things that people can do to more effectively manage their anger? Here are things to consider:
- Learn how to properly label the emotions you’re experiencing. Feeling annoyed or frustrated is different than feeling furious, and recognizing this will help you decide what an appropriate action in a given instance might be.
- Find out what your anger triggers are. What issues tend to set you off, what people rub you the wrong way? Knowing this ahead of time will help you brace against them.
- Recognize your own physical manifestations of anger, such as feeling flushed, or experiencing an accelerated heart rate or tensed muscles, so you can take action corrective action before you erupt.
- Guard against cognitive errors such as making faulty assumptions about the intent behind someone’s statement, overgeneralizing an event in terms of its negative impact, or using anger as an emotional defense mechanism for an underlying problem.
- Learn how long it usually takes you to become angry and how long it takes you to calm down again. Commit to not responding to an anger trigger while you’re still in the midst of feeling badly.
- Decide if, when, and how you’re going to respond to something that bothers you online. Remember that in many cases, you get to decide these things.
- If you’re required to respond, practice self-distancing, which means taking a detached view of what’s happening and avoiding becoming emotionally tangled up in it.
It’s vital that all of us to learn how to better manage our emotions online. That’s the first part. But the second part is learning how to be more forgiving when other people make mistakes. It’s easy to slip up in a moment of frustration or weakness and post something we wouldn’t necessarily do unless we’re in the midst of an emotional hijacking. It’s happened to many people, even the best among us. So, if they’ve apologized, shown remorse, or tried to fix the situation, let’s cut them some slack and just be happy it wasn’t us that messed up. | <urn:uuid:2425f9e8-fbbc-4bd7-be72-b6e891ff4ed3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/online-anger-where-it-comes-from-and-how-to-control-it/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955381 | 1,592 | 1.648438 | 2 |
Commercial Space Company XCOR Announces R&D Headquarters in Texas
Gov. Rick Perry joined XCOR Aerospace and the Midland Development Corp. to announce the creation of XCOR's new Commercial Space Research and Development Center headquarters at the Midland International Airport. XCOR develops and produces reusable launch vehicles, rocket engines and rocket propulsion systems, and will create 100 jobs at this new facility.
"This is a great day for Midland and a huge step forward for the State of Texas. Visionary companies, like XCOR, continue to choose Texas because they know that innovation is fueled by freedom," Gov. Perry said. "Whether on the cutting edge of biotech, communications, commerce or privatized efforts to serve the needs of the next generation of space explorers, you can find Texas at the forefront of the movement."
XCOR's new headquarters will focus on development of the Lynx, the company's next generation reusable launch vehicle. Lynx is a two-seat suborbital vehicle that takes off and lands like normal aircraft. The vehicle will carry a pilot and one spaceflight passenger, and will provide affordable launch services for academic, scientific and engineering markets.
"We are pleased to be establishing our R&D Center in Midland, Texas, where the weather, surrounding landscape, the airport, and the local & state government environment are ideally situated for the future growth and the ultimate realization of a fully reusable orbital system," Andrew Nelson, chief operating officer of XCOR Aerospace, said. "With future suborbital operational sites on the East and West Coasts of the United States and around the world, plus a manufacturing and test facility geographically separate from our R&D facility, Midland will truly be at the heart of XCOR's innovation engine."
"We are elated to welcome XCOR to Midland and to the state of Texas. The Permian Basin is a proud and industrious area where we have developed and maintained the leadership, infrastructure and highly capable work force that will support the further development of XCOR systems," Rep. Tom Craddick said. "With the announcement of the new XCOR research and development headquarters being built in here, Midland will soon be known world-wide not just as a leader in oil and gas industry, but also as a trailblazer in the aerospace industry."
"The decision to establish XCOR's R&D Center Headquarters in Midland came after intense competition from other locations," Midland Development Corp. Executive Director Pam Welch said. "Once the technical and operational needs of XCOR were met, the final factors influencing the decision to locate R&D to Midland included the friendly business climate, a predictable regulatory environment and the State of Texas tort reform initiatives. These factors allowed XCOR to see a long term future happening in Midland."
View more information about XCOR Aerospace.
Economic Development » | <urn:uuid:56b0dafa-8a03-4f5b-b488-5e95e94570b5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://governor.state.tx.us/news/press-release/17410/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00029-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.942062 | 583 | 1.789063 | 2 |
What do the courts take into consideration when determining if alimony and whether or not it is paid?
The first consideration when settling a spouse’s alimony obligation would be the ability to pay alimony. The court looks at the spouses gross income and reduces it by subtracting all mandatory deductions to come up with the net income.
Mandatory deductions are things like income taxes, social security and health care. The courts do not consider things such as union dues or work related social dues as mandatory and will not deduct them from the gross salary. The courts put a higher priority on support payments than voluntary debts and would rather see voluntary debt not paid than have a spouse go without adequate support.Ability to Earn:
Both spouses ability to earn is taken into consideration when it comes to alimony. The courts not only consider what a spouse actually earns but also considers what the potential for earning is.Ability to Self – Support:
Whether or not a spouse has marketable skills and is able to work outside the home is something else the courts take into consideration. Having custody of pre – school aged children and no access to daycare could make it impossible for a spouse to work outside the home.
The ability to be self – support differs from actually being self – supporting. If a spouse has marketable skills but refuses to look for work, the court is likely to limit the amount of alimony and the length of alimony.
In many states, no alimony is awarded if both spouses are able to support themselves. If one spouse was dependent on the other during the duration of the marriage, that spouse is often awarded alimony for a rehabilitative period. This could be a time period lasting anywhere from several months to several years.
If a spouse becomes self - supporting before the end of the court ordered support period the paying spouse can petition for the courts to terminate the alimony. In, however, the spouse is unable to become self – supporting during the allotted time he/she may also petition the courts for an extension of alimony. In some states this can only be done to keep the spouse from going on welfare.Standard of Living During Marriage:
When a court sets alimony, it often considers the standard of living during the marriage and tries to maintain this standard for both spouses where possible. Maintenance of a standard of living is more of a goal when it comes to alimony, than a guarantee.Length of Marriage:
If a marriage is relatively short and there are no children, the courts often refuse to award alimony. If there are children under school age, however, the courts often award alimony to the spouse who is given physical custody. Most courts feel that a child under school age is better served by having a full time parent at home.Tax Consequences of the Alimony:
For federal income tax purposes, alimony paid under a written court order is deductible by the spouse who pays and is taxable to the recipient of the alimony. Child support, on the other hand, is tax – free to the recipient and not deductible by the spouse who pays.Debts:
At the time of divorce, the court allocates debt incurred during the marriage between the spouses based on who benefits most from the asset that came with the debt. If the court orders a spouse to pay a large portion o the marital debts, it often reduces the amount of alimony that the spouse is ordered to pay.Professional Degree of License:
Courts will not only take into consideration the amount of financial support given during a marriage but, also the amount of emotional support. If a spouse worked and supported the other spouse through school, some states will take this into consideration. The spouse could ask for and receive compensation in the form of alimony for all the years he/she worked why the other was in school. | <urn:uuid:851f6e48-1c04-40ef-a4b5-91ea801cad0c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://divorcesupport.about.com/od/financialissues/f/alimonyconsider.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974251 | 776 | 1.671875 | 2 |
Margot James has congratulated Dudley Water Sports Centre on securing £50,000 in funding from Sport England's Inspired Facilities fund.
The fund will be used to upgrade the existing changing and showering facilities and provide a classroom for dry land training and education. In addition, it will be used to extend the current facilities to accommodate those people with learning difficulties or disabilities.
Margot said, "I was delighted to hear that Dudley Water Sports Centre was awarded £50,000 in funding from Sport England's Inspired Facilities. Sport and exercise are so important to many local people, and I am thrilled that this funding will allow the Water Sports Centre to upgrade its existing facilities, and to extend those facilities to people with learning difficulties and disabilities. I am also proud that that having won this funding the Centre will now bear the Olympics' Inspire mark, celebrating its commitment to encouraging sports in the area." | <urn:uuid:ebc018a2-df83-4fcd-9169-ab8cd2d48804> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.margotjames.com/content/dudley-water-sports-centre-funding | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00035-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.973898 | 179 | 1.570313 | 2 |
There’s nothing like Sheryl Crow’s award winning song “A Change Would Do You Good.” We all have periods in our lives where we realize we need to make change, but we’re not quite sure if we can leave our comfort zones for the arduous trek.
I love this song–it’s a wonderful anthem for how change can be powerful. Everyone can benefit from being a little more empowered.
We were put on earth to live meaningful and spiritually rewarding lives. As an individual you evolve, and benefit from setting measurable goals that keep you focused on a clear path. Every single day you can benefit from bringing you A game. A game can be applied to anything such as a project, job or event a new relationship or health regimen. Staying focused, engaged and flexible will allow you to continually move to higher ground. While that means different things for different people, I’ve determined that to master any life change there are nine steps to mastering a life change.
When you want to bring change into our life, it almost never happens over night.
While some make success look easy, almost always they have personally gone through their own journey including years of hard work and struggle behind the scenes.
It is my personal belief that to flow with the natural current is to drive in the direction of our individual truth. We have to constantly iterate in our own lives moving with environmental or circumstantial change. Additionally there’s a flavor of necessary change–plain ol’ stuck-in-a-rut and need to change.
And here’s my animation that announces the nine steps with a short example of a “yellow house.”
Here are the nine steps I’ve outlined that lead to any habit change, emotion mastery or attitude change.
You know your life isn’t turning out like you had in mind originally, but you are so stuck in your habits that the thought of not having the crutch you rely on sounds terrifying. You refuse to believe that you have a problem and busy yourself so you don’t have to recognize that things need to change. You surround yourself with people who also lead the type of life that you do preventing anyone from reminding you that this is not the best decision for you.
You’re getting tired of the same old results from the same actions. You see your life is not changing in the way you want it to. You don’t have the self confidence, groove and ease of life you felt you once had. You see successful people who have what you want and wonder what they’re doing that you’re not doing. You’re frustrated that things haven’t turned out differently, but you’re not quite sure you’re ready to make personal change. You’re starting to understand the “why” of making a change.
You start casually looking for answers. You google, you read books, you follow people who are doing what you want to do, and so on and so forth. With the web this is the easiest part. Most of the questions we have are just a click away. You make calls with people. You have coffees with people. You research events to go to, meet-ups to check out and so on.
You have all the knowledge you need to move forward. Now is the time you are thinking if you are really ready to step out of your comfort zone. This could include going without something you’ve had as a comfort for a long time, or pushing yourself harder than you have. You are deciding if you are ready to make a life-long habit change. You are considering the pros and cons of taking action.
You start writing down a plan. You create a step-by-step guide for how you will get from where you are to where you want to be. You continue to consider the “why,” but now unpack the “how.” You take all the best tips from the meetings, research and reading you did and create a tactical plan of how you can apply this to your own life. You create achievable milestones for yourself that will push you forward without making it so difficult you give up.
You’ve decided that the results you are looking for are worth the sacrifice or investment that you will have to make. You gather all the information from your research and start putting a plan into action.
It’s harder than you thought it would be. Can you do this? Maybe you’ll throw it all away and go back to the old way of doing things. But you know you won’t be happy that way. This is feeling difficult, uncomfortable and taking longer than you thought it would. Can I do it? I’ll give it a few more days–and if nothing changes…..
8. Habit Change
You didn’t think you would get through those first hurdles, but you made it! You’re riding the bicycle. It’s much easier, more fluid, and fun than you ever thought it would be. It comes natural to you and is now part of your every day life. You can’t believe that you did it but you did. Now that you have made this life change, you want to see what else you can change in your life. It’s a no brainer–you’ve mastered it!
Your whole life is beginning to change. The way people react to you is so much brighter. You have more energy, you’re attracting different people to you than you used to, and you recognize who you used to be in other people (and you never want to be that person again). Life is great when you believe in yourself.
As a sidenote:
I have personally made a commitment that I won’t help people unless they ask me for help. There is nothing worse than trying to tell a family member or friend they need to change when they don’t want your help. People have to be ready to change, and there’s a process that comes with that. | <urn:uuid:9b1e90fc-7a75-409a-b88f-1022ba7bf1bd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://blakelandau.com/tag/growth/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959098 | 1,276 | 1.515625 | 2 |
IPF-4 concluded with a Plenary session in the afternoon and evening of Friday, 21 February. The G-77/CHINA presented a proposed introduction on: the Panels origins; its mandate and link to the Forest Principles, particularly Principle 1(a) recognizing national sovereignty; its inability to deal with the complexity of issues in four sessions; and elaboration of its important conclusions and proposals for action.
Delegates adopted the introduction with the following amendments: The EU added reference to: the Rio Declaration and Agenda 21; improvement of existing forest-related international cooperation by implementing the Panels action proposals; and provision for effective participation of and collaboration with all interested parties and major groups, emphasizing the crucial role of women. CANADA replaced commitments and obligations with decisions and commitments made at UNCED. The US added a subparagraph recognizing progress that has been made since Rio on, inter alia, substantive international dialogue on forests; the results of regional, international and country-led initiatives; and a better understanding of SFM.
The Plenary adopted the Panels report contained in five informal papers, agreeing to make a distinction between the action proposals generally agreed as the result of negotiations and the conclusions reflecting the overall thrusts of the Panels discussions under various programme elements.
Final statements were made by the EU, the G-77/CHINA, the US and the ALLIANCE OF INDIGENOUS PEOPLES. The EU highlighted the important role of NFPs and urged delegates not to allow the global forest policy momentum to slip away. The G-77/CHINA reflected on the complex agenda and need to resolve issues on technology transfer and new and additional financial resources. The ALLIANCE OF INDIGENOUS PEOPLES noted that the participation of indigenous peoples in the Panel and the Leticia intersessional meeting were precedents in the CSD. He further stressed the importance of environmental and social justice and the recognition of the comprehensive rights of indigenous peoples to development and to control their territories, knowledge, technologies and cultural heritage. In his closing remarks, Co-Chair Rodriguez noted the major differences of opinion and slow pace of collective understanding on how to resolve global forest problems, trade and financial matters and the domestic root causes of deforestation. He said he was optimistic about the substance and creativity in many of the action proposals that will guide implementation of SFM. Co-Chair Holdgate was encouraged by the Panels spirit of warm cooperation and fellowship.
[Return to start of article] | <urn:uuid:00f76788-cb1f-4560-ac15-7df35c148bce> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.iisd.ca/vol13/1334009e.html | 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 | 0.939836 | 504 | 1.71875 | 2 |
April 15th, 2011
Also, did the central government have any communications security at all? Did CESG or MI5 not have anything at all to say about this? Didn’t any of them just change their damn password, or even change their damn number?
Of course not. As a class politicians are the group most clueless about ICT and worst placed to make decisions on anything to do with it and that gets worse the higher up the ranks you get. Most modern politicians these days have never been anything but politicians and in that job you only need a pc as a glorified typewriter, while once you get high enough on the ladder the normal computer scutwork most of us have to deal with day to day can all be fobbed off on interns who’ll print out all the important documents for you. So I doubt they’ve spent any time at all thinking about communications security.
Case in point: several Dutch politicians got hit with a variant of what the News of the World did recently, as investigative reporters from the newsshow Één Vandaag “hacked” their voicemails by trying the standard Vodaphone pincode on them. Quite a few ministers turned out not to have bothered resetting this or even knew that they had to do that. Worse, neither did their IT department. Personally I think having voicemail at all is way too much of a security risk anyway and I’d switch it off altogether if I were in such a responsible function, but than that’s too much of a hassle.
What doesn’t help either is that is how much party political business is interwoven with government responsibilities for modern politicians, meaning that there’s a high risk for cross pollution anway. In an ideal world government ministers would have two or three separate mobiles: one for their job, one for journalists and party workers to reach them on and another for the family, but I suspect most people use the same phone for everything… | <urn:uuid:8b94dbd9-5275-4192-a717-5aaf8f6f071f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://cloggie.org/wissewords2/2011/04/15/of-course-not/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.977654 | 415 | 1.515625 | 2 |
In 2007 the San Jose Mercury News revealed that Deputy District Attorney Jaime Stringfield of Santa Clara County, California, had introduced a fake DNA report into evidence in a sex abuse case. In February, responding to the revelation that the district attorney’s office had failed to turn over thousands of videotaped interviews with suspects, many of which contained exculpatory information, the county public defender’s office announced that it would review 1,500 sex abuse cases for possible wrongful convictions. Later that month, a state bar judge suspended Deputy District Attorney Ben Field’s law license for four years based on misconduct in four criminal cases dating back to 1995. And in March, the Mercury News reported that in hundreds of cases, officials at the county crime lab didn’t tell prosecutors or defense attorneys when their experts couldn’t agree on fingerprint matches.
In short, Santa Clara County has had more than its share of criminal justice scandals lately. The district attorney whose office has been tainted by these incidents has not exactly shown remorse or worked to correct the problems. Instead, Santa Clara County District Attorney Dolores Carr, who ran for office in 2006 on a platform of reforming the office’s “win at all costs” mentality, has adopted a combative stance.
At a February meeting of county prosecutors, Carr vowed that none of her staff would be “thrown under the bus” as a result of the scandals. Immediately after the state bar’s decision to suspend Field’s license—the harshest penalty imposed on a state attorney in 20 years—Carr announced that Field would continue working for her office while he appealed the ruling. She also vowed to help limit the ability of the state bar to punish prosecutors for misconduct. | <urn:uuid:de33922b-d1a2-42b7-b78d-f1bfdbbe080b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://reason.com/archives/2009/06/29/the-unrepentant-da | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967145 | 357 | 1.515625 | 2 |
The 17th was implanted March 11 at the Pacemaker and Defibrillator Center at the Saint Barnabas Heart Center at Newark Beth Israel Medical Center.Too bad the picture accompanying the article actually shows him holding biventricular defibrillator, rather than a pacemaker as labeled. His chest xray (seen in the article), although tough to see, shows one left ventricular lead, one right ventricular defibrillator leads, three right ventricular pacing leads and two atrial leads, one of which that has been partially withdrawn to the junction of the right subclavian/superior vena cava junction.
In some ways, Concepcion said he viewed himself as guinea pig growing up, when electrical wires in his chest malfunctioned or battery cells became weak and run down. He was in and out of the hospital every two years, sometimes more frequently, getting outfitted for pacemakers since he was 2 years old.
In the beginning, they weren't built to last long, especially for someone as young as Concepcion. He likes to think he burned them out as a kid, but Concepcion was learning something even more valuable. Each time he was hospitalized in Newark, Concepcion gradually became a part of history for having grown up with the development and evolution of the device.
His film reminds me of a similar chest x-ray from a former patient who quietly called himself "The Junkyard Dog." Fortunately for this patient, no one will ever know what's inside him - at least until they see his xray... | <urn:uuid:fe34ca40-3dd3-499c-9aca-66c2ef264e0a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://drwes.blogspot.com/2009/04/17-pacemakers.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00039-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.983848 | 324 | 1.804688 | 2 |
Lots of confusion parading as truth on this thread, in part because people are mixing MSRP and MAP. Two different things.
Manufacturers Suggested Retail Price is the price the manufacturer recommends that a product sell at. Traditionally, in photo equipment there has been wide variation between MSRP and street price (actual price generally paid). The difference has narrowed in recent years. Purpose of MSRP is to give retailers an idea of what the product should be selling for, according to the manufacturer. Depending on the manufacturer this could be accurate or a total fiction. Sigma, for example, tends to set an unrealistic MSRP on their lenses, that almost no retailer honors.
MSRP is just as the title says: "suggested." My understanding is that in the U.S. at least, there are legal restrictions that prevent manufacturers from enforcing the MSRP as a firm rule. Thus, the growth of MAP or Minimum Advertised Price. MAP says the retailer cannot advertise a price below a certain number.
MAP is designed to help smaller retailers compete. I don't know the specifics of either Canon's or Nikon's dealer agreements, but it appears they enforce the MAP during rebate times (which have become almost year round). No retailer can advertise an item for sell at less than the MAP and still participate in the rebate program.
The issue, of course, is what constitutes an "advertised price." Again, not knowing the specifics of the agreement between the manufacturer and the retailer, I can't say for certain. But, it appears that there are some exceptions. As the OP suggested, it appears that MAP does not, in some cases, apply to auction sites. Similarly, it appears that there are exceptions for direct links from websites. For example, both Canon Rumors and Canon Price Watch have occasionally offered special links for discounted prices from either B&H or Adorama. In those cases, if you follow the website link, you receive a lower price than if you go directly to the merchant's web page.
I don't know if these special deals and auctions violate the MAP agreement, but I suspect that the big merchants like B&H and Adorama wouldn't use them if the did – too much at risk.
Is MAP price-fixing? I doubt it. Again, not knowing the specifics of the agreement, makes it hard to know. But, from what I understand, MAP is linked to a benefit given the retailer. For example, if you want to participate in the rebate program, you have to adhere to MAP. The retailer has the choice, they could turn down the rebate program (of course no one would do that), so it's voluntary and not mandatory. Similarly, most manufacturers offer "co-op" programs for advertisements (If you advertise their product, using their suggested marketing materials, they compensate you in some way) Again, it is not coercive, but it is a strong incentive to adhere to the agreement.
The voluntary nature of the agreement probably keeps it legal. If there would be a successful legal challenge, I suspect it would require proving that the agreement is not truly voluntary, but is so coercive that it is in fact price-fixing. However, one thing the manufacturers have going for them is that they are clearly in a competitive market. Canon is not colluding with Nikon or Sony to fix prices, they are simply using incentives to keep their prices consistent among retailers.
The above is based on my understanding of typical retail practices and isn't meant to imply I have first hand knowledge of the specifics of the agreements between Canon and its retailers. Nor do I pretend to be a trade attorney (although I did stay at a Holiday Inn recently). | <urn:uuid:16235a3f-a71e-477d-891e-fca225adae54> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.canonrumors.com/forum/index.php?topic=10310.msg190334 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970806 | 750 | 1.5625 | 2 |
Canadians Monitor South African Vote
Several Canadian Anglicans will travel to South Africa this month to observe and monitor that country's historic elections.
Among them are a medical doctor from Whitehorse who was born in South Africa, witnessed the legislation of apartheid in 1948 and emigrated to Canada in 1981.
As a former South African, I consider it a historical event and a remarkable opportunity," said Richard D'Aeth, who will observe the election in Natal for Oxfam.
Natal, with a high percentage of Zulus in its population, is considered a potential trouble spot when South Africa votes April 26 to 28.
Three other Canadian Anglicans will observe the election as part of …
Questia, a part of Gale, Cengage Learning. www.questia.com
Publication information: Article title: Canadians Monitor South African Vote. Contributors: Not available. Magazine title: Anglican Journal. Volume: 120. Issue: 4 Publication date: April 1994. Page number: 13. © Anglican Church of Canada Feb 2009. Provided by ProQuest LLC. All Rights Reserved.
This material is protected by copyright and, with the exception of fair use, may not be further copied, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means. | <urn:uuid:f6014a9d-cea0-4989-b23e-01789790a465> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.questia.com/read/1P3-441822921/canadians-monitor-south-african-vote | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.933051 | 259 | 1.546875 | 2 |
Each time we face our fear, we gain strength, courage, and confidence in the...– Unknown
Everybody is a genius. But, if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree,...– Albert Einstein (via realistthoughts)
A loving person lives in a loving world. A hostile person lives in a hostile...– Ken Keyes, Jr.
Day 17: What inspires you?
everything. It could be something as simple as a comercial that makes a permanent mark or something one of my friends said. Inspiration is everywhere.
Today if you become frightened, instead become inspired.– Isaac (Grey’s Anatomy)
…it matters not what someone is born, but what they grow to be!– Dumbledore (4.36.708)
wordstomakeyoublush asked: hello thanks so much for following your blog is inspiring I am definitely following you back :) I would look through it all but I should be doing my History revision notes :/ aha xoxo
What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what...– Ralph Waldo Emerson (via kari-shma)
When people insult me. When people insult my humor. When people insult my face. When people insult my opinion. When people insult Harry Potter.
Anonymous asked: i like your theme and i dont think you have too many text posts justsayin.
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We are like chameleons, we take our hue and the color of our moral character,...– John Locke
Such as are your habitual thoughts, such also will be the character of your...– Marcus Aurelius
Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of...– Helen Keller
I care not what others think of what I do, but I care very much about what I...– Theodore Roosevelt
I hope I shall possess firmness and virtue enough to maintain what I consider...– George Washington
When we see persons of worth, we should think of equaling them; when we see...– Confucius
It was character that got us out of bed, commitment that moved us into action,...– Zig Ziglar
Day 16: Tell about the happiest day of your life.
happiest? i don’t know if i could limit myself to a day. i have some very happy moments that share the same aspects but not one day is my happiest. i’d say that the best days are those of realization. where something i had been questioning or dreading or just horribleness becomes solved (in my head at least). One of these days was a day that was just as any other except for a shift in...
People grow through experience if they meet life honestly and courageously. This...– Eleanor Roosevelt
“Peace is not something you wish for; It’s...
Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your...– John Wooden
right now i would really just like to fly
i don’t know why or how cause goodness knows i’m sick of airplanes, but i just want to be up in the sky where it all makes sense.
Exasperation is the mind’s way of spinning its wheels until patience...– George L. Griggs
Bad things are always going to happen in life. People will hurt you. But you...– Unknown (via kari-shma)
owlb0nes: there isn’t anyone you couldn’t love once you’ve heard their story. if only the world could see it too
Anyone can give up, it’s the easiest thing in the world to do. But to hold...– Unknown
listen for all its worth. someday it may be your... | <urn:uuid:56857402-ea8b-415b-8269-b9be385f4d0f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://underflowers.tumblr.com/archive/2011/1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00028-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.9434 | 795 | 1.53125 | 2 |
Autonomous EV to drive GM into Asian markets
General Motors (GM) is hoping an autonomous, two-wheeled electric car will help the manufacturer make serious inroads into the emerging Asian markets.
The US-based firm behind Vauxhall has set itself the huge challenge of designing a new personal transport solution for the rapidly expanding and densely populated cities of countries such as China, that will also limit increases in congestion, carbon emissions and road accidents.
The results are certainly striking: the pod-like concept vehicle, revealed earlier this year at the Shanghai World Expo as GM’s vision for 2030, comes in three unusual and suitably Asian-looking designs, with one from Opel/Vauxhall Advanced Design in Germany.
Known as the EN-V (Electric Networked Vehicle), the car is powered by a lithium-ion battery and has a carbon-fibre body that sits on a sliding chassis developed from the original Segway vehicle. The front-entrance two-seater car balances on two wheels when activated and lowers its nose to the ground when parked.
GM says an autonomous driving system that uses visual and ultrasonic sensors, plus a wireless internet connection, will help the car to avoid traffic jams and other vehicles, helping to limit congestion and improve safety. The car also has the ability to park and drive itself along a programmed route.
The aim of EN-V is to combine a small environmental footprint with networking capabilities, said GM’s director of advanced technology vehicle concept, Christopher Borroni-Bird, speaking at the vehicle’s London preview on September 10.
‘If we just have a lot of electric vehicles running around we haven’t really changed the congestion and parking issues, which are challenges facing urban centres in the future.’
These are daunting challenges: as Borroni-Bird himself points out, congestion in some cities is already so high that Beijing recently experienced a 60 mile long traffic jam lasting 10 days, while police in Bangkok receive midwife training to cope with the number of babies born on the roads.
GM has a great opportunity increase its 13.4 per cent market share in China with millions of Chinese expected to buy their first cars over the next 20 years thanks to the growth of the country’s middle class.
With a power output of 3.2kWh providing a top speed of 25mph and a range of 25 miles, the two-seater EN-V could suit consumers who might be upgrading from a scooter or bicycle and want an urban commuter vehicle, although it’s clearly not for those who want a Western-style family car or travel often outside the city.
But data already suggests that higher population density breaks down the trend for richer populations to buy more cars. Singapore, for example, has a lower rate of vehicle ownership than less-densely populated European cities, despite similar levels of wealth.
GM’s idea to have a network of cars that can communicate with each other and monitor traffic information sounds promising, although it doesn’t escape the fact that a substantial increase in car ownership will inevitably increase congestion.
The autonomous aspect of the network concept also has a serious barrier in the form of the legal ramifications of self-driving cars. And while cars that can talk to each other might easily avoid crashes, they wouldn’t be able to prevent a four-by-four slamming into the back of one.
Affordability is also an issue. A car featuring cutting-edge propulsion technology, high-concept design and autonomous navigation doesn’t immediately sound like a good entry point for citizens of developing countries.
Barroni-Bird said the affordability would come in the low-power aspect of the platform, which made it much more suitable to urban driving than the ‘over-engineered’ cars typical of Western cities.
‘A battery-powered vehicle with the kind of range we’re looking at isn’t tremendously expensive,’ he said. ‘The other thing is tremendous economies of scale are possible. This technology platform comprising the chassis, motor and wireless communication system could be a common platform for customised coaches.’
GM claims to be talking to several Asian governments about taking the idea further but Borroni-Bird admitted the firm had no step-by-step plan for getting the car to market, and issues like safety, storage and air conditioning still needed addressing. It may even create an intermediate model combining the EN-V with elements of a conventional car.
‘There are a lot of different ideas bouncing around the company,’ he said ‘These vehicles as they are aren’t suitable for testing. What we need to do is to make them practical.’
Car manufacturers are starting to capitalise on the design freedom offered by low-carbon electric vehicles. Click here to read more | <urn:uuid:a9e7f51f-88fb-4c15-9c9c-8f801e4691b4> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.theengineer.co.uk/video/autonomous-ev-to-drive-gm-into-asian-markets/1004894.article | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00020-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958157 | 1,003 | 1.671875 | 2 |
The Sharpening Stone – (Living In Community)
I used to love romantic comedies. Today, my favorite movies are about fighting evil. The greatest evil-fighting movies ever are J.R.R. Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings trilogy. One thing I love about LOTR is that fighting evil isn’t just up to the men. The women get to join the fight.
And they use swords to do it.
The Bible speaks of swords, too, calling God’s Word the “sword of the Spirit.” (Ephesians 6:17)
One of the basic principles of Christianity is our belief that the Bible is inspired by God. The Bible is God’s Word written for us to read, understand and apply to our lives. Scripture is so powerful when understood and applied, that it is a real weapon, which can protect us and help fight evil.
Even a blunt, jagged sword is good to have. But a sharp sword is even better. Proverbs 27:7 tells us:
As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.
Sharpen a stick of iron until its edges are a pointed blade and it becomes a sword. If scripture is the Holy Spirit’s sword, then sharpening our understanding of it makes it a better weapon. “One person sharpening another” means is that being in fellowship with other Christians helps us sharpen our faith. The early Christians struggled to understand and live their new faith. So:
They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching, and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. (Acts 2:42)
They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching. We have the apostles’ teaching, too. All written out for us. It’s called the New Testament.
Scripture. Bible reading and study. Are we devoted to it? Do we have a group of believers who are also devoted to doing life as followers of Jesus?
Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness? (2 Corinthians 6:14)
All of us have friends, co-workers, family members, and acquaintances who are unbelievers. But do we also have a group of friends who love Jesus and are trying to live according to his teachings?
Do we have a group of people with whom we can learn together? Grow together? Pray together? Come together in fellowship and praise? To do for each other, lift each other up and keep each other accountable?
Who can we rely on to help us sharpen our understanding of God’s Word? So that the sword of the Spirit in us can be kept sharp?
Jesus is called the “cornerstone” of God’s plan. (Psalm 118:22; Isaiah 28:16; Zechariah 10:4; Mark 12:10, Luke 20:17; Acts 4:11; Ephesians 2:19-21; 1 Peter 2:6; 1 Peter 2:7)
In ancient times, swords were sharpened by holding them against a rotating grinding stone. Today, sharpening stones are a common and effective way to sharpen knives. I like to think of Jesus—the cornerstone—as a sharpening stone for a really big sword. The sword of the Spirit—which is the Word of God.
Lord of the Rings showed us that women too can battle evil with swords. The most powerful sword is the Word of God, made sharper when we learn and grow in fellowship with others who love Jesus.
Who do you know who would be willing to join you in fellowship to learn more about Jesus and develop your relationship with Him? | <urn:uuid:e470c116-2729-4f9a-b8fc-d061bc37fa89> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.weusedtobeyou.com/the-sharpening-stone-living-in-community/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00038-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94981 | 823 | 1.71875 | 2 |
How we search for stuff: Insights for marketers
If I asked you to find out about something today, maybe booking a restaurant or choosing a washing machine to buy, chances are you would start your journey online at a search engine. That’s why it’s essential that all marketers understand how search engines work so they can optimise their sites and paid for search ads. Interestingly, the big search engines continue to frown on SEO (search engine optimisation) practices as they see it as underhand manipulation of the results generated by their clever search algorithms. But all the while the algorithms exist, smart marketers will continue to seek to influence the results to give their brands the best possible chance of standing out.
A recent study by Barcelona’s Pompeu Fabra University provides some precious insights into the ways we hunt for information on search engines. I’m grateful to Ani López of Dynamical Biz for translating sections of the study into English. You can read Ani’s summary here and I’ve added some of my own thoughts below.
One of the key findings of the research was how differently we use search engine results pages (SERPs) according to our search intent. As the above graphic shows, people searching for information like the weather forecast or the phone number of a hospital look at an average of 8.53 items in the organic results, but only 0.64% of the sponsored (paid for) results. Conversely, people looking to complete a transaction like downloading software or buying tickets to the theatre will look at only 4.05 organic results (half as many as informational searchers), but will be prepared to consider 2.20 sponsored results. The overall time spent on informational searches is also greater than transactional searches; as you might expect, when we need to get something done, we tend to get on with doing it.
On top of this, the research shows how transactional searchers spend more of their search time reading the snippet (the extract of text from your site, usually determined by your site’s meta description) than the title compared to informational searchers. For marketers, ensuring that the meta description is really compelling on transactional sites has never been more important.
Eye tracking studies also show how our search behaviour changes with different search types. Notice how in the images below the informational searchers dwell far longer over the central organic search results while transactional searchers spend a greater proportion of their time on the sponsored listings at top and right of the screen. It’s no surprise that the top sponsored listings are most popular taking 79% of sponsored fixations versus just 21% for those in the right hand column.
As Ani concludes, there are few ground-shaking revelations in this research but this serves as a helpful reminder that we need to think about the different ways people search as we plan our search marketing campaigns. Your placement tactics should change according to your desired end action, as well as the investment you put behind organic and paid search listings.
I’ve love to know how these finding compare to your own experience. What do you think marketers can learn from this study?
Further reading: Microsoft Research published the findings of similar results using eye-tracking tools. You can consult it here. | <urn:uuid:c33ac43e-f247-446a-9661-47b3e05b8e0e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://allisterfrost.com/2010/09/03/how-we-search-for-stuff-insights-for-marketers/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698924319/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516100844-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940305 | 669 | 1.640625 | 2 |
Pirate Bay Cofounder Lands in Cambodian Brig
Today in international tech news: Cambodian authorities do what Swedish authorities couldn't: detain Pirate Bay cofounder Gottfrid Svartholm Warg. Also: Chinese search engine Baidu launches a mobile app; Samsung looks into child labor at a China supplier; the UK busts the makers of a fraudulent -- and expensive -- mobile app.
Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, the 27-year-old Swedish cofounder of file-sharing site The Pirate Bay, was under arrest Sunday in Cambodia, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Svartholm, who was arrested for his alleged role in the illegal use of information technology, was supposed to begin a prison sentence in Sweden months ago. Cambodian authorities are working with Swedish authorities, and there is a chance that Svartholm will be deported to Sweden to serve his jail sentence, according to the Journal.
Svartholm's pending time behind bars dates back to 2009, when he and three Pirate Bay cofounders were found guilty of copyright infringement. That ruling was upheld in 2010 , although the four men received reduced sentences -- save Svartholm, who had already fled the country.
The Pirate Bay remains one of the Internet's eminent file-sharing sites despite repeated efforts to prevent users from accessing it. The UK, Italy, Belgium and the Netherlands are a few of the many countries that have ordered their domestic Internet service providers to block the site. Such efforts have been largely circumvented with amended URLs and proxy servers.
Baidu Searches for Mobile Market
Baidu, China's top search engine, introduced a mobile browser Monday in an effort to tap into China's enormous and fast-growing smartphone market, according to Reuters.
The Baidu Mobile Browser -- targeted at the estimated 388 million Chinese who access the Web from phones -- will enter an already crowded field that includes UCWeb's UC Browser, Google's Chrome and Apple's Safari.
Baidu, however, could have a leg up: Baidu's browser is 20 percent faster than its rivals, according to data cited in the Reuters article, and it allows users to access apps and high-definition video without having to download additional software.
It is important for Baidu to establish its mobile presence. The company's revenue comes overwhelmingly from users searching on laptops and desktops, but those platforms are fading as Chinese Internet users increasingly move to mobile devices.
Baidu's goal is that 80 percent of China's Android devices will have downloaded the Baidu Mobile Browser by the end of the year.
Samsung Investigates Chinese Labor
While finding no underage labor, Samsung Electronics announced that its inspection into a supplier's factory revealed unsafe work practices and inadequate management, according to PC World.
The findings were disconcerting enough to warrant upcoming inspections at an additional 105 Chinese suppliers.
Samsung's inspection was prompted by a report last month that the company's HEG Electronics suppliers were using underage labor. Chinese authorities conducted their own investigation and found no child labor, but that didn't satisfy everyone.
HEG seemed to have rectified the underage worker problem, but Samsung nonetheless reported that its inspection turned up poor health and safety standards, including the failure to give workers access to a medical clinic. Samsung also alleged that workers were working too much overtime.
The shortcomings led to Samsung's announcement that its contract with HEG "will be immediately severed" should improvements not be made.
UK Fines Russian Company Over Bunk App
Connect, a Russian company responsible for an app that conned users into mysterious charges, has been fined Pounds 50,000, or about US$79,000, by British regulators, according to the BBC.
When installed, the shady Android app cued the phone to send a text message to a premium-rate number. The phone owner then received an auto-reply messages that cost more than $15.
The terms and conditions information for the app did say that "charges of about [Pounds] 5" would be incurred. Regulators have ordered the company to reimburse all affected users within three months. | <urn:uuid:238c0b72-03e9-42fe-a572-68820e0a715f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.macnewsworld.com/story/76070.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00029-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961497 | 858 | 1.695313 | 2 |
Secure Communities is a fingerprint-based immigration screening program that gives local law enforcement access to FBI and immigration databases simultaneously. If an inmate is found to be in the country illegally, immigration officials are automatically alerted.
“Fingerprints don’t lie,” said Barbara Gonzalez, spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. “If their fingerprints are in the system showing they’re illegally in the country, and they say they’re legal, we know they’re lying. We’ve caught people saying that.”
The program is already operating in 21 N.C. counties, including Mecklenburg, Gaston, Cabarrus and Catawba. More than 104 illegal immigrants have been deported from Mecklenburg County using Secure Communities since the county implemented the program in October 2009, according to ICE.
Secure Communities has been introduced in the midst of controversy over civil liberties issues surrounding its predecessor, 287(g), which gives local law enforcement officers the ability to place illegal immigrants into deportation proceedings.
In Mecklenburg County, more than 8,000 illegal immigrants have been placed into deportation proceedings using the 287(g) program.
Supporters say the program is a valuable tool to protect the community and helps identify the criminal histories of people here illegally.
Critics however say 287(g) targets minor offenders. A UNC Chapel Hill report released last month found that nearly a third of immigrants flagged for deportation from N.C. jails were arrested on traffic violations.
Latino advocates have described Secure Communities as 287(g)’s little brother. They say the federal government’s continued reliance on local agencies for immigration enforcement shows the need for comprehensive immigration reform.
Gonzalez said Secure Communities prioritizes those arrested on serious offenses, such as murder, rape and kidnapping. She did not say minor offenders would be released.
In addition to Union County, Secure Communities was recently launched in Brunswick, Columbus, Dare, Halifax, Jackson, Lee and Transylvania counties.
Charlotte Observer | Scoop Network News Partner | <urn:uuid:f61d1a76-b4de-4cc4-845b-53a0051f9bb1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://monroescoop.com/union-county-sheriffs-office-joins-deportation-program/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940095 | 431 | 1.679688 | 2 |
(In fact, the day he does so, Bells Beach is ten foot and near perfect. Two Torquay locals, Charlie Bartlett and Brian Singer, surf their brains out before going home to watch the other momentous event on black and white TV.)
In Australia, surfing is at a curious stage of its development. The “short board revolution” of 1967 has created a frenzy of experimentation in surfboard design and surfing technique.
In the cool climate of Victoria, sanity prevails in design and technique, if not in the temperaments of the surfers. The cold, always a great leveller, has created a hardy breed of surfer who has no time for the hoopla and hype of the glitter beach capitals of the world. And by 1969 these like-minded souls have begun to gravitate towards the equally no-frills seaside town of Torquay, just a couple of kilometres away from Bells Beach, home of some of the most challenging waves in Australia. | <urn:uuid:3f37d064-2847-419b-b72d-d076ab3d5049> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ripcurl.com/thebegining.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940733 | 205 | 1.515625 | 2 |
There are some people today who say they don't believe in God.
They especially don't believe that God created "The heavens and the earth," as the Holy Bible says in Genesis 1:1.
I would ask, how did these people get so smart, so intelligent that they know more than God Himself, and the evidence of the Bible, which is an accurate account of the universe and of all life, including man.
The history of world civilization is paralleled in the Bible and substantiates other written and oral accounts. If one would just look at nature, and observe all the beauty and the order of Earth events, the sun and moon, the tides of the oceans, the sky and stars -- how can we question how all this came into being, and not believe the statements of the Bible?
Genesis 1:1 is a summary statement, introducing the six days of creation activity. The truth of this majestic verse was joyfully affirmed by the poet in Psalms 102:25 and the Prophet Isaiah in Isaiah 40:21.
Please read these chapters, for they are great accounts of reasonable hope and belief in God, who is the Supreme Being and Creator of all. The last verse of Isaiah 40 says, "Those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar like the eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint."
There are scientists who say the world and all life simply happened; that our universe is the result of two stars or suns that collided, and one burst into fragments which formed our earth and the other planets in our solar system. They call it the "Big bang" theory.
I have heard a story of an auto parts store exploding, and when the smoke and dust settled, behold, there was a brand new Cadillac! They explain life as beginning when, somehow, a single life cell came to earth and found an environment it could live in and mutate into different forms of life.
They cannot prove this, of course, because it didn't happen this way! I'm sure they have other ideas someone has dreamed of, and they want us to believe.
I have had some to declare that they are atheists or agnostics. They say they don't believe in God or the creation story. This is their response to my sharing the Gospel of Jesus Christ with them.
I tell them God loves them and wants to have a relationship with them, but they say "no," they want no part of God. I feel sorry for them, for the great loss they must be experiencing without faith or hope in God.
Of course, they not only will miss all the love and blessings of God in this life, but when they die, they will forever be punished in Hell because of their unbelief.
I firmly believe the Bible is true and is the Word of God. We can rely on its teachings and be confident of the Lord's promise to redeem those who repent of their sins and live an obedient life.
I believe the Lord created all, and I praise His Holy Name for who He is and what He has done. I sincerely hope you are a believer, too. And if not, that you will soon believe and accept Jesus Christ as your Savior.
I pray you will! | <urn:uuid:9d6a96dd-2bfa-4dd8-80bf-51cc77935945> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.news-daily.com/news/2009/mar/14/if-god-didn039t-do-it-who-did-jim-bell/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00027-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974686 | 673 | 1.71875 | 2 |
CASHED UP: Leroy Hopkins (centre) 5, holds onto his fortune
as his sister, Jayde, 11, and brother, Sean, 9, jump for joy at the news they’ll soon get money for recycling bottles and cans.
Picture: PATRINA MALONE
TERRITORIANS will be paid for each aluminium can, glass bottle and milk carton they recycle under a new proposed container deposit scheme.
But the program could raise the cost of a beer by $5 a carton.
The Territory Government previously rejected calls for a cash-for-cans scheme for more than five years and promised to follow a "national approach".
But the Chief Minister said yesterday he wanted a scheme ready by 2011.
"I'm taking the lead and hope other states will follow," he said.
"If we wait for everybody, we may wait another five years."
The scheme will be modelled on the South Australian legislation - where cans, bottles and cartons attract a 10c refund.
Environment Minister Alison Anderson said the project would help tackle litter issues in schools in the cities and remote communities.
"This is a real opportunity for these children to pick up containers and bottles and really make it like their first job, take it to the shops and get their first pocket money."
Environment Centre NT coordinator Stuart Blanch said the "self interested" beverage industry had held back this legislation in every other state for 30 years.
Mr Henderson said the Territory needed to act on its own because the national approach was looking "too hard and too difficult".
But Australian Food and Grocery Council Chief Executive Kate Carnell said the Government should have waited for the results of a national inquiry into container deposit schemes, which is due in May.
"It is a little alarming that the Northern Territory Government has decided to act in isolation ahead of the results... and make an ill informed decision to support such a costly scheme,"she said. "It seems like a waste of time and taxpayer money."
Ms Carnell said the scheme would add $5 to the cost of a carton of beer.
"This will hurt Territory households that are already facing cost pressures," she said.
But Government spokeswoman Shannon McRae said the Government would not support a model that "significantly" adds to the cost of basic products. | <urn:uuid:c3a5dcce-41c5-481f-9952-9dde1e71b85e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ntnews.com.au/article/2009/03/12/38765_ntnews.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00002-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959843 | 483 | 1.75 | 2 |
Saturday, December 2, 2006
"THE Saudi Arabian government is emerging as a key player in talks to broker a comprehensive Arab-Israeli peace agreement.
According to senior Israeli sources, Ehud Olmert, Israel’s prime minister, will soon meet high-ranking Saudi officials to explore the formation of a group of moderate Arab countries to negotiate with Tel Aviv over the future of the Middle East.
A preliminary meeting between Olmert and a leading Saudi representative took place in Amman, the Jordanian capital, at the end of September. According to Israeli sources, the Saudi was Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the former ambassador to Washington and one of the closest advisers to King Abdullah, the Saudi ruler.
Olmert is believed to be considering a Saudi initiative, endorsed by the Arab League four years ago, as the basis for a peace settlement.
This would include the establishment of an independent Palestinian state and could lead to a formal peace deal between Israel and seven Arab countries: Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, the Emirates, Morocco and Tunisia.
Olmert promised the Palestinians their own state last week in a conciliatory speech that he was said to have written himself.
Condoleezza Rice, the American secretary of state, praised the speech and her officials welcomed it as a promising sign that “a regional peace dialogue may be resumed”.
However, an Israeli insider said: “The truth is that it was not Olmert’s own initiative but a dictate given to him last month when he met George W Bush and Condoleezza Rice in Washington.”
An Arab source said: “The Saudis wanted to see Olmert commit publicly to what he promised Prince Bandar at the secret meeting in Amman.”
According to Israeli officials, Saudi Arabia is gradually taking over the role of principal peace broker previously played by Egypt.
Saudi influence is seen as invaluable, particularly as the country has funded many Arab causes. Hamas, the militant group that won Palestinian elections last January, was established with Saudi money; and the Palestinian Authority would have collapsed long ago without Saudi funding.
Olmert, his reputation damaged by this summer’s war in Lebanon, is looking for a dramatic initiative to restore his image at home." | <urn:uuid:47fbe02a-57d3-446b-afdf-98059c36695a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://palestinianpundit.blogspot.com/2006/12/saudis-lead-israel-peace-bid.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00033-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963825 | 469 | 1.773438 | 2 |
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The type of plan you have can affect who directs your medical plan of care (the doctor), where that care can be delivered (the facility providing services), the length of time certain services can be administered (precertification/predetermination), and any additional cost of treatment to you (coinsurance).
Managed care, by definition, is a comprehensive method of managing and coordinating medical care you receive. The goal of case management is to coordinate and facilitate access to medical care, while adhering to the guidelines and provisions of your health benefit plan. A wise course of action is to be proactive by finding out what your policy covers and how to access medical care services.
Whether you are newly diagnosed with cancer or facing choices of new or additional treatment recommendations, review your policy for clarification of benefits available regarding health care providers. Providers of medical care mean the doctor managing your medical plan, as well as the facility where that care is delivered. Review all of your covered benefits. Obtain the most current copy of the Provider Membership Directory and read it thoroughly to be sure the providers you want to use are included in it.
The following questions and points of discussion are areas for your review and may serve as a guide to help you solve potential problems.
Usual, customary, and reasonable, often abbreviated on insurance forms as UCR, is a method of determining payment the insurance company will allow for a claim. UCR is determined by the insurer by comparing charges of providers of care to those of like providers of service in the same region or community.
The extent of benefits the insurance company will cover for your particular type of cancer is defined under Limitations. They are important to understand:
Limitations are restrictions placed on a benefit. Usually this refers to the number of times for use or the circumstances of use for a particular service or treatment.
Exclusions are those services not covered at all. Excluded services can not be accepted as within the scope of medical practice, conditions not considered related to health or illness, or may be specific services excluded from the plan by request of the plan contract parties (generally the insurance group health agent and the group or employer). Experimental Procedures as defined by the insurance company may be found in the list of exclusions.
When selecting a plan, look closely at the marketing materials supplied by your plan and your employer to see how the plan defines experimental care, and under what conditions the plan might cover such care. This is very important for cancer patients who are joining a new insurance plan, or consumers who believe they are at high risk for the disease (for example, because of a strong family history of cancer). If the plan's materials do not clearly define the term, and how the plan uses it, consumers can ask their employers to let them see the contract with the plan. Consumers also can call the plan and ask plan administrators to provide them with information on the plan's coverage of experimental care, such as use of off-label drugs and care in clinical trials, which are discussed in greater detail below, and guidelines on how the plan decides what care is experimental.
Some consumers in managed care plans have reported problems getting access to care because their plan considers a particular product or service experimental. When plans deny coverage for a service on this basis, the plan will not pay for the care. Most managed care plans routinely exclude experimental care from coverage in their contracts.
While there is no widely accepted and utilized definition of experimental care, plans typically regard it to mean that the medical benefit of a particular service has not been proven to the plan's satisfaction. Thus, each plan defines the term as it wishes and may apply it differently from contract to contract. Some of the things that plans commonly exclude from coverage as experimental are the following:
Off-label use of some drugs. In some cancers, health providers and patients want to use a drug for a diagnosis other than what the drug is approved for by FDA. Plans make case-by-case decisions on whether to cover off-label use of the drug and may deem some off-label uses experimental, if the plan believes there is insufficient scientific basis to justify it.
New tests or treatments. As medical technology produces new services for cancer patients, managed care plans evaluate these new services to make policy decisions about what they will cover and pay for. They review published medical studies of the new test or procedure and government approvals (where applicable), and consult with leading oncologists. After this review, if the plan's administration believes that a new test or procedure has not been sufficiently evaluated, or its effectiveness is uncertain, the plan may designate the service as experimental and refuse to provide coverage and payment.
Clinical trials. Plans may refuse to cover the costs of having their patients treated in clinical trials. Because clinical trials are research studies, some plans may conclude that care in a clinical trial is, by definition, experimental, and therefore, excluded from coverage. For many cancer patients, clinical trials offer state-of-the-art treatment.
The issue of whether something is or is not experimental is not black and white. There is often disagreement among plans, patients, and doctors about whether a service, such as a bone marrow transplant, is an experimental treatment for a particular diagnosis. There have also been many state and federal court cases in which patients and doctors have challenged plans' decisions not to cover and pay for care of a plan labeled experimental, but which the patient and doctor believed appropriate. The courts have ruled that whether a service is or is not experimental may depend not only on published medical studies, but also on whether the doctors in a community believe it is appropriate for a particular diagnosis, as well as expert opinion. Thus, standards of care vary around the country. If a managed care plan refuses to cover and pay for a treatment or test on the grounds that the service is experimental, consumers and their doctors need to work closely together to challenge the decision.
When consumers and their managed care plan disagree over whether a test or treatment is experimental, consumers can appeal the plan's decision. This process starts with notifying the managed care plan. All managed care plans have an appeal process for reviewing denials of care. Consumers should file an appeal by writing a letter to the plan, and get a letter supporting their position from their doctor. The doctor also should submit to the plan copies of medical studies and expert opinion that support the appeal.
If a consumer and a plan cannot resolve their differences, the consumer may want to consider filing a complaint with a state regulatory agency, such as the state health department, insurance department, or attorney general's office. A complaint to these agencies should include copies of all correspondence with the plan and copies of relevant medical studies. The state agency may be able to help mediate a resolution to the complaint, or it may intervene directly on the consumer's behalf if it discovers that the plan is not adhering to the terms of its contract with you or is violating a provision of state law. State laws vary in how much authority these agencies have over managed care plans.
In some cases, consumers need legal help, and might consider filing a lawsuit against the plan to get the care they need. Consumers in a self-insured plan (employers or plans can identify that ones are self-insured) cannot turn to state regulatory agencies for help. They need to speak with a lawyer who has experience helping consumers pursue complaints against self-insured plans. Self-insured plans are regulated by the federal Department of Labor, which generally does not help consumers with complaints over a denial of care on the grounds that it is experimental.
An ethics committee is now part of the formal review system in many managed care organizations. These committees may have medical and legal representatives, ethicists and other health care providers as members. One of the functions of an ethics committee is to review cases in order to develop coverage policies and criteria for benefit application.
If you have breast cancer, the following questions may be of particular interest to you. Are the following covered as part of my benefits:
Treatment for recurrence of the primary cancer.
High dose chemotherapy.
Stem cell transplant (autologous and allogeneic)
Wigs and hair pieces, breast prosthesis.
Surgical repair of both breasts even if single mastectomy covered.
Coverage for new/innovative therapies and biologies.
Some policies limit your access to medical care to doctors listed in the Provider Membership Directory. This publication should be available from the customer service department of the insurance company. Obtain the most current copy available. Be sure the specialists listed in the directory are ones with expertise in the treatment of your particular problem and that they are available to you at the time you need them. Confirm with your employer's benefit manager and with the Customer Service Department of the insurance company whether this specialist is included with your plan. Call the doctor's office directly to verify what you have been told by the plan representative and make your appointment. Once you are receiving treatment from the specialist, be sure to periodically check that he remains a participating provider in the network. Do not assume the Provider Membership Directory remains current or accurate for any length of time.
Most health maintenance organization (HMO) plans require you to obtain a referral from your primary care physician to see a specialist or receive special tests and procedures. Plans may vary in the process. HMOs, preferred provider organizations (PPOs), and most fee-for-service plans require approval before admitting patients to the hospital; this is known as precertification. Precertification has a predetermined set of guidelines for hospital admission and length of stay in the hospital. You may want to ask the plan representative what those guidelines are and how many days are approved for a planned hospitalization. Emergency hospitalizations generally have additional or different guidelines. Check your plan.
If you are approved to have a certain type of procedure or treatment, ask where it can be performed. HMOs may use only certain hospitals or a designated medical center as the only place you may go to have a specific treatment.
If your primary care physician or the plan administrator refuses to allow the referral or services you believe you need, find out how you may appeal the decision. The appeal or grievance process is defined in your health plan.
If you become totally disabled from cancer and cannot return to work, check for answers to the following questions from your employer benefits manager:
How long will the policy stay in effect during a medical leave of absence?
How much of the premium must you pay?
Are benefits changed or reduced while on disability?
If you become eligible for Medical Disability, will the managed care plan agree to become your secondary insurance?
What are the short term benefits available through the company disability coverage?
What are the long term benefits available through the company disability coverage?
Are there specific services or benefits excluded from coverage through the disability plan?
Utilization review, or UR, is a process by which an insurer reviews the care a patient receives to assess whether it was appropriate and provided in a cost-effective manner. UR is most often associated with indemnity insurance plans, but also is used in other forms of managed care, such as HMOs and PPOs. In all these cases, UR is a means of controlling the use of services by patients, and thus, the costs of care. Managed care plans use UR in a number of ways:
Assess hospital lengths of stay, and keep patients in the hospital no longer than is necessary,
Limit the number of visits a patient makes to a particular health care provider, for example a specialist,
Choose the setting in which a patient receives care, such as inpatient versus outpatient care, and
Manage catastrophic illness, to help coordinate the care provided and to move the patient along from one phase of care to the next.
Ideally, UR should help a consumer get the best care at the best price in the right setting. Consumers in managed care plans can appeal decisions by the plan's UR departments that they believe are inappropriate. They should work with their doctor to document for the UR department their disagreement with the decision and outline why another treatment option is preferable. In fact, under the Affordable Care Act, when treatment is denied, you have the legal right to ask for an internal review and, if this appeal is denied, an independent, external review. This right applies to plans created after March 23, 2010. Finally, if necessary, consumers can also file a complaint with the state agencies, such as the health or insurance departments, or the attorney general's office. | <urn:uuid:e48e7b95-5f4a-48dc-a1ef-5d81bf9e1825> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.valleyhealthlink.com/Taxonomy/RelatedDocuments.aspx?id=0&ContentTypeId=34&ContentID=26500-1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959754 | 2,569 | 1.570313 | 2 |
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