text
stringlengths 211
22.9k
| id
stringlengths 47
47
| dump
stringclasses 1
value | url
stringlengths 14
371
| file_path
stringlengths 138
138
| language
stringclasses 1
value | language_score
float64 0.93
1
| token_count
int64 54
4.1k
| score
float64 1.5
1.84
| int_score
int64 2
2
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Google Forcing New Members To Sign Up For Google+
The ongoing battle between Google and the likes of Facebook and Twitter is far from over. Following the release of the increasingly popular Google+ social networking service and the announcement that Google Plus Your World would shape search results according to social media attention, it seems that those figures may well soon be inflated to even greater proportions as the search giant starts to force new Google members to register with their take on the social networking platform.
The Social Wars
Facebook currently dominates the social networking forum with nearly 1 billion registered users. While Twitter may be some way behind they have a loyal following of people that connect, update, and converse on a regular basis. Google+ is some way behind this although that can largely be attributed to the fact that it is still a new service. However, perhaps a reaction to a drop in share prices and missed financial forecasts, Google are now forcing registrations on all new Google members.
Google offers a huge selection of services ranging from Webmaster Tools to Adsense and Adwords, and the popular free email service Gmail. In order to enjoy any of these services it is necessary to sign up for a Google account but until now this didn’t mean that you were forced to use any of the other services that the search giant offered. However, all that has changed.
Forced Google+ Registrations
Google has said that all new Google registrations will be forced to include a Google+ registration. This is bound to buoy the figures that are being mooted regarding their own registrations. While there are now 90 million registered users, it is believed that the number of active users is considerably lower and many point to the fact that they struggle to retain new members as being a potential failure for their new baby.
A feud between Google and the likes of Facebook and Twitter has been growing for some time. Twitter withdrew access to its live feeds while no similar arrangement has been made with Facebook so Google turned to its own social network and social media site in a bid to offer live social news feeds. This forced signup looks to be the latest step in the ongoing social war.
Powered by Facebook CommentsThis entry was posted in Industry News. Bookmark the permalink. | <urn:uuid:d6ba17da-1493-4be1-9b61-e9b45237b0ed> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://manuallinkbuilding.com/google-forcing-new-members-to-sign-up-for-google | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00022-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.969049 | 450 | 1.5625 | 2 |
Everything's Falling Into Place
September 24, 2012
Autumn has finally hit NU, and boy does it get chilly in the morning and at night! Students walk around with Tim Hortons or a coffee/tea/hot cocoa from Clet to keep warm and awake. I myself have become quite fond of the chai tea from Clet, but that's beside the point. I want to take this blog to tell you a bit more about courseload, because schoolwork definitely is an important part of college.
Right now I'm taking six courses for the semester. Content varies, as do professors' teaching styles. The class I'm most fond of right now is actually Math for Elementary Teachers, which surprises me because I was never fond of math in the past. The difference is that our professor goes out of her way to make sure we understand every part of the concept and teaching techniques so that we will be prepared to teach that math to our own students in the near future.
Studying is definitely a big part of success in college. Flashcards and highlighters are two of the best pieces of advice I can give you. I use a different color highlighter for every subject: religion is yellow, writing is pink, education is green, French is purple, NUB is blue, and math is orange. This helps me organize all of my notes and due dates in my planner as well (more on that later). Flashcards are especially useful with vocabulary terms and memorizing concepts. I suggest setting aside a half hour each day at least four days before a test. Cramming definitely won't help you understand everything you will be tested on.
Best Study Spots
The first few weeks of the semester, a group of my friends would meet up on the second floor study wing of the library. We'd proof read each other's work and make sure we all had time to de-stress every once in a while. However, as the semester continues, assignments pick up and we mostly study in our dorms, where we can control how loud or quiet our room is and have less distractions. I know a lot of people also like to sit down and study in Clet, as well as people who sit outside when the weather is warm enough. Personal preference will lead you to where you will best focus on your studying.
My very best piece of advice for you is to manage your time. I was never an organized person throughout middle or high school, but now I can't imagine not keeping track in a planner. In fact, I have two planners that I always carry around with me: one contains all of my assignments and class/work study schedules, and the other contains important due dates, club meetings and things to remember (birthdays/holidays).
I have a weekly whiteboard above my bed for assignments for the week and a whiteboard opposite that where I list my daily to-dos. Another important thing is scheduling sleep. It might sound silly, but when you've somehow only had four hours of sleep before an especially long lecture, you're going to be embarrassed if you start nodding off. Plus, if you catch up, you can plan more time for friends (like for a super quirky New Girl second season premiere party!).
Next time, I'll update you on what Learn and Serve is and how my very first day at my placement went. Type to you soon! :) | <urn:uuid:baf58360-47a1-40d3-ba3f-c0347f08af4a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://niagara.edu/everything-s-falling-into-place/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971806 | 696 | 1.554688 | 2 |
Charlottesville police say the man who showed up at a Kroger grocery store with a loaded gun wanted to make a point. On Sunday, an unidentified 22-year-old man carried a loaded AR-15 into the Kroger store on Emmet Street and Hydraulic Road, sparking not only a scare for customers and employees but also a 2nd Amendment debate.
Charlottesville police drew their guns on the man after witnesses reported he brought a gun into the store. They restrained the man to ask him questions, but released him after they confirmed he is not a convicted felon, owned the gun legally and it was not concealed.
Police say he was cooperative and did nothing illegal. Officers did find a note in his pocket spelling out his intent to express his 2nd Amendment rights. Police say they could not release man's name because he was not arrested.
National Rifle Association (NRA) instructor Bill Davis says the gun incident was inappropriate and could have turned violent.
"I think it reflects on all gun owners in a bad way," Davis said. "I've talked to six NRA instructors this morning about it. Why did he have that note in his pocket? I think - this is my personal opinion - I think he expected to be shot, so they would have found the note and said he wasn't doing nothing."
NRA instructors and police agree that he did nothing illegal, but he did cause a lot of concern.
"He did not do anything wrong other than to disrupt a lot of activity, concern a lot of people within there and of course so close to the heels of a tragedy that happened in Connecticut," said Charlottesville Police Lieutenant Ronnie Roberts.
The disruption sparked the Kroger store to ban him from the property. Private property owners and businesses can post signs to keep guns out.
"The private property owners or businesses have a right to keep individuals that have either shotguns or rifles from coming into their business," Roberts said. "They can post that at the entrance to the door so that it is clearly visible, that no firearms of such are allowed inside the business."
Police point out that some localities in Virginia have restricted the use of carrying a rifle or a shotgun, but Charlottesville is not one of them. Click here for a closer look at Virginia laws pertaining to firearms. Davis says some of the legislation should be reformed.
"I think the law should be changed a little bit to say yes, you could carry open with a handgun, but you know you don't want to carry an assault weapon or any kind of shotgun in a public place of business," he said.
Charlottesville police say calls like these will require them to use valuable time and personnel.
"It does drain resources, as you could well see yesterday - the number of officers that were there and the heightened awareness on the officers' part," said Roberts. "I think the overall aspect of it is, it will increase the call volume requiring a number of officers to respond and it is a very delicate situation that you're dealing with."
A situation Davis says could have been prevented with some common sense. "If you go and carry concealed, carry concealed and don't let nobody know it. If you go and carry open, respect the rights of others," he said.
The Kroger on Hydraulic Road has no signs in front to prohibit guns from the store. Witnesses say the man did approach the store at first, and looked like he was checking for those signs before bringing in the gun.
Kroger Mid-Atlantic has released the following statement in regards to Sunday night's incident:
"Our policy in regards to guns in our stores is to comply with the state and local laws. The safety of our customers and our associates is always first and foremost as we run our business.
We treat each situation individually, based on the circumstance. In this case it was alarming and frightening to our customers and associates due to recent events.
Several of our customers dialed 9-1-1 and our store team's reaction was reasonable and understood."
Wednesday, May 22 2013 7:36 PM EDT2013-05-22 23:36:22 GMT
A fatal shooting in Crozet on Tuesday has sparked a conversation about a much broader issue - gun safety laws.Full Story
A fatal shooting in Crozet on Tuesday has sparked a conversation about a much broader issue - gun safety laws. NBC29 spoke with experts about what's on the books in Virginia and some measures gun owners can take within their own households.Full Story
Engineers and conductors who run the trains for Norfolk Southern took NBC29 along for a ride through Charlottesville, sharing heartbreaking stories in hopes of keeping people off the tracks. Full Story
Engineers and conductors who run the trains for Norfolk Southern took NBC29 along for a ride through Charlottesville, sharing heartbreaking stories in hopes of keeping people off the tracks.Full Story | <urn:uuid:0e2dd0d9-2922-40aa-8b47-8f6b7399940d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nbc29.com/story/20755619/kroger-gun-stunt-sparks-2nd-amendment-debate | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00030-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.981128 | 993 | 1.546875 | 2 |
22 June 1835 letter/cotton receipt transmitting $30.00 from Maddux & Woods to Aaron Spell. Receipt details cotton sales from May 1834 to June 1835 to various persons, sold for Aaron Spell by Maddux & Woods, New Orleans.
An improvement over the Johnson Type "A, this machine has a larger square base. It sold for $18.00 with spring motor, black and brass horn, and Johnson reproducer. It plays 7-inch lateral cut disc records.
An inexpensive mahogany-finished model with 8-inch turntable, speed regulator, single-spring drive, and flowered metal horn with "soft amber hue. The horn in 16-inches long with 14-inch bell. Original cost: $17.50.
The Victor of 1902 has a polished mahogany cabinet with hinged top measuring 14 x 14 x 7.25 inches. It features an improved speed adjustment that indicates the rpm of the 10-inch turntable. This model originally sold for $50.00.
This model, a Home has the "new style" cabinet using the red and gold banner. It is now known as the "Long-Case Home. It originally sold for $40, which was an increase from $30 in 1899. It weighs 25 lbs.
This model, a Home, has the “new style” cabinet using the banner transfer which appeared on the cover of previous models. It is now known as the “long-case Home.” This piece sold for $40 which was an increase from $30 in 1899....
This Monarch was so named because it was the "King of Talking Machine" at that time. This is one of the earlier versions of the Monarch. It has the front-mount wooden tone arm. The 10-inch turntable was designed to play the new 10-inch...
Featuring a 10-inch turntable and heavy spring motor, this model could mount a larger horn than earlier machines. The tapered rear-mount tone arm seen on this instrument was available in 1904. Original cost $45.00.
Featuring a 10-inch turntable and heavy spring motor, this model could mount a larger horn than earlier machines. The tapered rear-mount tone arm seen on this instrument was available in 1904. Price, $45.00.
This type "R" machine has a quarter-sawed oak cabinet with single-spring motor which requires windings prior to each playing. It has a front-mounted tone arm and was originally priced at $15.00.
The Victor V was introduced in 1903 with a 12-inch turntable, heavy-duty triple springs, and choice of horns. It was the first machine with a 12-inch turntable designed to play the new 12-inch "concert" records. Like previous models in...
The Type D Victor was the first Victor to be equipped with a 12-inch turntable. The oak cabinet housed a 3-spring motor. It was available with concert or exhibition sound box. This instrument has the new plainer cabinet with...
In 1903 the Type Z replaced the Royal as the lowest cost ($20.00) talking machine in the Victor lineup. In July, 1905 a new Type Z utilizing the cabinet and motor of the Victor I was announced at the even lower price of $17.00. The...
The lowest-priced victor of the period, the Victor Junior featured an oak cabinet with nickel trimming. The horn was black japanned. It has a combination brake and speed regulator for 8-inch turntable. Original cost: $10.00. | <urn:uuid:4f4451b9-a6ae-4424-aeb4-8b1ded460859> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://digital.library.msstate.edu/cdm/search/searchterm/$/mode/any/order/descri/page/2 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956381 | 757 | 1.75 | 2 |
CRFA’s Dwayne Marling discussed the province’s labour issues with Minister of Labour Jennifer Howard in on July 25, 2012.
(Aug. 14/12) Manitoba may embrace a more positive approach to minimum wage increases.
What we requested
In a late July meeting with Manitoba’s Minister of Labour Jennifer Howard, CRFA discussed:
What Minister Howard said
Minister Howard was open to establishing a new methodology for consultation on minimum wage changes. Although she reinforced her intention to raise the province’s minimum wage annually, she acknowledged the wage rate may well have caught up to the appropriate level. Minister Howard noted that government would no longer look to make future increases significantly higher than the rate of inflation.
Labour shortage on the table
CRFA also discussed Manitoba’s existing labour shortage in the foodservice industry, and the expected growth in these shortages over the next few years. | <urn:uuid:db8e0f0a-0cc0-451c-9a40-f7f53d557fe9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.crfa.com/news/2012/manitoba_to_curtail_minimum_wage_hikes.asp | 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 | 0.941378 | 187 | 1.554688 | 2 |
Food Industry Jobs - Your Culinary Career
There are more than 900,000 restaurant locations in the United States, and the industry provides jobs for more than 12.2 million employees. Whether you are interested in science or supermarkets, in engineering, accounting, human relations, or flower arranging for fancy parties, in cookbook reviewing or judging cooking contests, there is a job in the food field for you. Or you can dream up something that has never before been done and make it happen.
Irena Chalmers - A well-known Food Jobs author, once asked her students to tell her something about themselves that would surprised her. A student responded by saying,"I want to be a rock star." She couldn't help him become a great musician, but instead she suggested he find a job as a personal chef for his favorite rock group. He did. When he cooks something good for rock group to eat, they sometimes let him play with them. He finally found himself a really cool job. He had the courage to offer his food knowledge and the leader of the band was happy to give him a seat on the bus.
She had another Korean culinary career student whose English-speaking ability did not quite match his exemplary cooking skills found work as a private chef at the Korean Embassy in Washington,D.C. The diplomats were delighted to have "home-cooked" food prepared by someone who spoke their language.
These are examples of using your knowledge, experience, and passion to find your perfect Food Jobs. Unfortunately, many people don't really know there were possibilities out there, and if they had, they wouldn't know where to begin to apply for such positions. Even experienced food professionals are largely unaware of the dazzling range of career paths that will enable them to find work that is interesting, challenging, and fulfilling.
According to a recent study by the U.S.Bureau of Labor Statistics, the culinary industry represents one of the fastest-growing occupational categories in the nation. There are more than 900,000 restaurant locations in the United States, and the industry provides Food Jobs for more than 12.2 million employees. Food Industry Jobs
There is always plenty of work to be found in restaurants, but for food lovers, you could explore other opportunities and possibilities.
Does the idea of having 38 different types of grape flavor available in a powder or liquid form excite you? Are you comfortable with meticulous measuring and recording? If so, product development could be the career for you.
Obesity Researcher is another in demand food related job. Weight-loss clinics offer food professionals the opportunity to guide clients into more healthy eating patterns by conducting counseling and cooking classes. Food Industry Jobs
Want to become a caterer? The $5 billion catering business has enjoyed a 20% increase in sales in the last decade. Hotels, restaurants, country clubs, charter yachts, and even airlines represent catering opportunities. Food Industry Jobs
This Food Jobs written by Irena Chalmers that had listed 150 great jobs for culinary students, career changers and food lovers,and she would tell you where to find them. Take a look, I promise you won't be disappointed. Food Industry Jobs
Food Careers Your dream careers at Wegmans who is Ranked #3 on FORTUNE magazine's 2010 list of the 100 Best Companies to Work For.
Northeast Center for Food EntrepreneushipThe food business start-up steps outlined include: the product, business planning, labels, market decisions, and production.
http://cookingcareer.shawguides.com One of the most popular resources compiled by ShawGuides. It lists 881 culinary programs worldwide. Of those, 358 are geared toward professional training. The courses are listed with such detailed information as the type of instruction, faculty credentials, tuition costs, student profiles, and status of accreditation.
http://chefjobs.com This job site is also offers by ShawGuides for culinary professionals. It provides extensive information on job searching, resume searching, employers, and more...
Can I Sell My Home Preserved Food? Resource for starting your own preserved foods business.
The American Personal Chef Association has led the way for this emerging industry by establishing a number of services, including the valuable Find a Personal Chef in Your Neighborhood referral network.
Catersource Magazine is the leading industry resource that delivers critical products,news,and educational information to professional caterers.
The International Caterers Association offers advice and support services to on-premises and-off premises caterers and promotes catering as an important branch of food service. Food Industry Jobs | <urn:uuid:a490fb97-d6ba-4f59-b4c6-852ac39ad6f9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.for-your-dream-career.com/Food-Jobs.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964227 | 941 | 1.6875 | 2 |
So many people asked us about baking our dough inside a closed cast-iron pan that Zoe did a beautiful post on the subject a few weeks ago. The cast-iron pan method is based on a much older method, where bread is baked inside a closed clay pot (or “cloche,” meaning “bell” in French). Both methods depend on trapped steam from the dough to create a perfect crust, but the clay pot has the added benefit of being porous, so moisture is trapped, but also conducted away from the surface as the bread bakes. I tested the Sassafras brand “La Cloche” product, and I’m very impressed with the crust I’m getting –take a look at the picture above; this crust is thin and shatters when broken (the burned bits are perfect in artisan loaves; that’s how you know you’ve baked long enough). Keep in mind that these crust results are hard to re-create with loaves very high in whole wheat (because of oils in the wheat’s germ). The bread above is about 15% whole grains– it’s a light version of the Peasant Loaf on page 46 of the book. Whole grain breads perform beautifully in “La Cloche,” but the crust tends to be softer and thicker.
For crust aficionados, I think the ”La Cloche” results are a little better than what I get inside closed cast-iron. We didn’t put these two methods in our first book, because we wanted to keep things as simple as possible. But with results like these, they’re going into he second one (publication date is 10/13/09)!
Sassafras claims that James Beard once said that the “La Cloche” product gave him bread that was “nothing short of phenomenal.” “Beard on Bread” was the first bread cookbook I ever used–my wife brought it to our marriage, and then taught me to use it (click here and scroll down to meet Laura).
If James liked a product, I have to give it a try, though I should also say that readers have written me on Twitter (click to follow ArtisanBreadin5 there) to say that the Romertopf clay vessel works just as well, though I haven’t tried it myself.
Before using ”La Cloche,” rinse it in hot water to get rid of any ceramic powder left over from manufacturing, and let it dry overnight. Then apply a light coating of vegetable oil to the inside of the bottom piece (the bell-shaped top part doesn’t need it). The ceramic is very fine-grained and won’t absorb a lot of oil so it didn’t smoke when I pre-heated this thing to 450 F. You don’t need to cure the oil coating before you bake your first loaf. You’re ready to bake.
There are two ways to use La Cloche: the way that Sassafras officially endorses (putting a cool cloche into a preheated oven bearing raw dough that has rested/risen on cornmeal inside), or what I’ve found works better: preheating the top and bottom pieces of La Cloche to full baking temperature for 30 minutes, and then transferring fully-rested loaves into it (carefully, as in Zoe’s post). The crust result is fantastic; you can rest/rise in a banneton, then drop the dough into the hot bottom tray of the cloche, then cover (click here for my post on how to use a banneton). Baking time is the usual as written in our recipes. The other easy method is to rest/rise the loaf on parchment paper and just drop the loaf, with the paper, into the hot cloche. Cover and bake.
You don’t need a baking stone, you don’t need to introduce water into the oven for steam, and you don’t need to dampen the cloche; all the moisture you need comes from the dough and is trapped inside. One important point: Open the lid for the last third of baking, or the bread will not brown.
This is a very romantic baking dish (is that possible?); using it makes you think you’re in a different century. It’s heavy, and very tactile– here it is with an unbaked boule sitting in it (cool-cloche method):
Here’s the banneton-risen bread after the lid was removed to finish baking open to oven air:
There are two problems with the Sassafras-approved cool-cloche method: first, baking time is longer than written in our recipes, because the clay vessel has a lot of heat to absorb before the interior is up to baking temperature. Second, the crust just isn’t a crisp. So, even though the Sassafras instructions say to use a cool cloche, I’m going with a hot one. Keep in mind that this product doesn’t appear to be warranted against cracking, whether you follow their instructions or not. One important care instruction: never use soap on pottery baking vessels, just hot water and a clean scrub brush.
Ten years ago, Daniel Wing and Alan Scott wrote “The Bread Builders,” which was mainly about building your own wood-fired masonry and brick bread oven in your backyard (gotta do that someday). But they also had lots to say about the “La Cloche” product, which they thought was almost as good as their wood-fired masonry ovens. They interviewed the product’s inventor at Sassafras who told them that the fully-preheated method for using this product “…is fine.”
Good enough for me. Look at this bread! | <urn:uuid:25081971-a836-4dbf-9c56-d6f80ea0e6f6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.artisanbreadinfive.com/2009/03/31/baking-bread-in-a-closed-clay-pot-cloche-the-best-crust-yet | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95842 | 1,246 | 1.671875 | 2 |
Symphony No. 2, "Mysterious Mountain"
Related Artists/CompaniesAlan Hovhaness
About the Work
Alan Hovhaness, one of the most prolific composers of the last century (67 symphonies, as many as five hundred other works in various forms), was also one of the most distinctive: over the years he developed, extended and refined an approach that was unmistakably his, and his alone. Following his studies with Frederick Converse at the New England Conservatory in Boston, Hovhaness composed his earliest orchestral works in a style shaped by his admiration for Sibelius, and he even went to Finland for further study. By the time he turned thirty, though, he had abandoned that style (and destroyed much of the music he had composed earlier) in favor of a more personal one rooted in the music, the history and the religious lore of his Armenian forebears, while reflecting also his fascination with Gregorian chant and the music of the Renaissance polyphonists. Still later, in the course of his travels, he developed a similarly productive interest in the music and culture of Japan, India and other areas of Asia and the Pacific. By 1978, when the National Symphony Orchestra introduced his Symphony No. 36, which had been commissioned by Robert Bialek, with a solo part for the distinguished flutist Jean-Pierre Rampal), Hovhaness spoke of a "one-world lyricism" in his music, and remarked,
My new songs and symphonies are my flowering of melody, my final faith in endless beauty in a seemingly ugly world. . . The composer, as in old China, joins Heaven and earth with threads of sounds.
Those words might seem applicable to this earlier symphony as well, though the listener need not be too concerned with seeking any particular influence here, and would only be misled in looking for a literal significance to the work's title. Hovhaness, in fact, did not affix the title Mysterious Mountain until he had completed the score of his Second Symphony. The work, in any event, proved to be one of his most successful in any form. Three years after the premiere, Stokowski took the piece with him for his concerts in the Soviet Union, and at the same time it was recorded by Fritz Reiner in Chicago, having by then circulated among several American orchestras. The title Hovhaness chose for it did not allude to any scenic or literary stimulus, but quite the reverse: it represented what the music "said" to him once he had composed it. It had for him a certain spiritual significance, and indeed he might have chosen the same epigraph Carl Ruggles did for a shorter orchestral work of his own which he called Men and Mountains, a reference to a line from William Blake stating simply (but "mysteriously"), "Great things are done when men and mountains meet." Instead, he offered the following statement on the title and the music itself.
Mountains are symbols, like pyramids, of man's attempt to know God. Mountains are symbolic meeting places between the mundane and spiritual worlds. To some, the Mysterious Mountain may be the phantom peak, unmeasured, thought to be higher than Everest, as seen from great distances by fliers in Tibet. To some, it may be the solitary mountain, the tower of strength over a countryside--Fujiyama, Ararat, Monadnock, Shasta or Grand Teton. . .
The first and last movements [of this work] are hymn-like and lyrical, using irregular metrical forms. The first subject of the second movement, a double fugue, is developed in a slow vocal style. The rapid second subject, played by the strings, with its own counter-subject and with strict four-voice canonic episodes and triple counterpoint episodes. . .In the last movement a chant in 7/4 is played softly by muted horns and trombones. A giant wave in a 13-beat meter rises to a climax and recedes. . . A middle melody is sung by the oboes and clarinets in quintuple beat. Muted violins return the earlier chant, which is gradually given to the full orchestra.
The atmosphere of "spiritual mystique" in this music is suggested here and there in terms that may remind the listener of certain more familiar works of roughly similar character. The outer movements and the first half of the middle one contain evocative textures not unlike those of Vaughan Williams's Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis , and the more energetic second half of the middle movement exhibits a similar bond with the concluding section of another Symphony No. 2, Arthur Honegger's intensely felt wartime work for strings and solo trumpet. This observation, however, is not to suggest any lack of originality on Hovhaness's part, but simply to note the distinguished confraternity in which the noble work so eloquently affirms his own membership. | <urn:uuid:38147904-388d-4e81-b74b-56a7c1c01f2e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.kennedy-center.org/calendar/?fuseaction=composition&composition_id=3143 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00025-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972734 | 1,029 | 1.726563 | 2 |
Gabriele Muenter was born in Berlin in 1877.-Because official art schools in that time were exclus
Marcel van Eeden is a Dutch draftsman and painter. From 1989 to 1993 van Eeden studied painting at
Max Pechstein´s artistic talent was discovered and encourages at a very early age. His conve
Recent graduate from Concordia University's Theatre Design program.
A self taught artist who took up painting seriously in his early 20's, following a series of short
Rose Marie Trockel is a German artist and professor at the Duesseldorf Art Academy.
Herbert Bradl was born 1959 in Graz Austria. 1978 he studied at the Academy of Fine Art in Wien. B
Patrick Earl Hammie is an American painter best known for his monumental portraits that adopt body
Ralf Winkler, aliasA.R.Penck is a German painter, printmaker and sculptor.He was born in Dresden,
Joerg Immendorf was one of the best known contemporay German Painters, he was a sculptor, stage de
Hanne Darboven was born on April 29, 1941, in Munich. Darboven studied under Wilhelm Grimm
I am bio-matter in various stages of growth and decay. | <urn:uuid:47309271-c9cf-459d-bffe-f7234f5a3cab> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.artandculture.com/browse_artists/show/756-painting?page=5&view_by=most_recent&view_mode=list | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.980884 | 261 | 1.695313 | 2 |
Irra Petina (April 18, 1908 - January 19, 2000) was an actress and singer, as well as a leading contralto with the Metropolitan Opera in New York City. She was called the "floperetta queen" by critic Ken Mandelbaum.
Born in St. Petersburg, Russia, Petina was the daughter of General Stephen Petin, Czar Nicholas II's personal escort, and a goddaughter of the Dowager Empress Marie Feodorovna. Her debut role with the Met was as Schwertleite in Richard Wagner's Die Walküre (the second part of the acclaimed Ring Cycle) on December 29, 1933. She went on to appear as Maddalena in Giuseppe Verdi's Rigoletto with Jan Peerce, the Marquise of Berkenfeld in Donizetti's The Daughter of the Regiment with Lily Pons, Mallika in Léo Delibes's Lakmé, Feodor in Boris Godunov, Annina in Richard Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier, and the title role in Bizet's Carmen.
Petina's portrayal of Marcellina in Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro (twenty-seven Met performances in all, with four radio broadcasts), won her rave reviews from the New York Times and the New York Herald Tribune. Additional credits include thirty-five Met performances as Berta in Rossini's The Barber of Seville and, despite being a contralto, the high soprano role of Rosalinde in a 1944 national tour of Johann Strauss, Jr.'s operetta Die Fledermaus.
Petina also appeared on Broadway in such productions as Song of Norway (1947), Magdelena (1948), Hit the Trail (1954), Leonard Bernstein's Candide (1957), for which she received a Tony Award nomination as Best Featured Actress in a Musical, and Anya (1965).
Petina appeared as herself in Andrew L. Stone's film There's Magic in Music (1941).
Asked how to pronounce her name, she told The Literary Digest the first syllable should be stressed: PEH-ti-na. (Charles Earle Funk, What's the Name, Please?, Funk & Wagnalls, 1936.)
She married Dr. Frank Bussey, and died in Austin, Texas.
|This article about an American opera singer is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.| | <urn:uuid:f58c09a1-5000-4731-8faa-8b313f568582> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irra_Petina | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.941938 | 516 | 1.671875 | 2 |
U.S. Mission in Colombia Impresses Civic Leaders
By Fred W. Baker III
American Forces Press Service
BOGOTA, Colombia, April 23, 2008 As a senior vice president of investments for UBS in Cincinnati, Steve Lee never gave much thought to Colombia.
“Not really at all,” said the easy-going executive, who is touring here as part of the Joint Civilian Orientation Conference, a program for America's civic and business leaders interested in expanding their knowledge of the military and national defense, sponsored by the secretary of defense.
Yesterday, Lee had a front-row seat to a dramatic show of the capabilities of the country’s special forces. He toured its drug eradication headquarters, saw a mockup of a jungle cocaine lab and watched in awe as a team of urban counterterrorist commandos rescued a mock hostage with precision fire, speed, explosions and smoke.
“I have opened my eyes to a whole new part of the world that I haven’t thought too much about,” Lee said at the end of the day.
This is the first time a JCOC has toured the U.S. Southern Command area of operations since the program began in 1948. And while most of the previous conferences have focused on shows of military might and have even featured trips to combat zones, this JCOC group is seeing more of the U.S. military’s humanitarian assistance and other aid-oriented missions, known as “soft power.”
Lee and the 47 others in the group were guided through the tour by members of the U.S. military group assigned here to help Colombia build its capabilities to fight its narco-terrorism problems. Terrorist groups in Colombia are heavily involved in narcotics production and trafficking. The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as FARC, is believed to be responsible for more than half of the cocaine entering the United States, according to U.S. State Department documents.
Colombia is the size of Texas and California combined, with about 45 million people spread out over its diverse terrain. It has deserts in the north, tropical jungles in the south, high mountain ranges and two oceans on its borders.
The United States has its third-largest contingent of such military troops here, about 500, whose strategic objectives are to defend a fellow democracy, stop the flow of drugs to the United States and build a regional partnership, Army Col. Kevin Saderup, the military group commander here.
The U.S. servicemembers serve in an advisory role, mostly helping Colombian troops to allocate the $150 million in annual U.S. assistance to ensure they get the right equipment and training.
Many Colombian military personnel receive training in the United States or from U.S. instructors in Colombia. The United States provides equipment to the Colombian military and police through the military assistance program, foreign military sales and the international narcotics control program, according to the State Department.
U.S. troops are prohibited by law from participating in actual combat operations here. They use an indirect approach to help the Colombian forces rid the country of narco-terrorists, Saderup said.
“If we are successful here in the defense of our nation’s interest in working with our Colombian partners, no U.S. soldier, sailor airman or Marine will have to give up his life in defense of U.S. interests here in Colombia,” Saderup said.
The JCOC group started the day flying to Tolemaida Air Base, the training site for the Colombian’s special forces – the Lanceros – and its air assault and airborne troops. Located west of Bogota, the base trains about 22,000 troops at a time, and is the largest training installation south of Fort Hood, Texas. The JCOC participants watched as the Lanceros showed off their capabilities, rappelling down towers and firing their weapons, swooping along ropes and demonstrating extractions of hostages and troops from simulated enemy territory.
Afterward, participants were given the chance to try their hand at rappelling.
Lee, who had never rappelled before and who said he is so afraid of heights he wouldn’t even change the security lights on the outside second story of his house using a ladder, decided to give it a try.
“I’ve been scared of heights forever. I just said ‘I’m going to do this,’” he said afterward.
The first step, he said, was the scariest.
“You take that first step and there’s no turning back,” Lee said. “It was a heck of a lot of fun. I was thrilled to get to do that.”
After a flight back to Bogota, a brief lunch and briefings at the U.S. Embassy, the group got to see up close what a cocaine lab that’s typically hidden in remote parts of the country looks like. The Colombian police force unit that flies eradication missions spraying coca fields with weed killer briefed the JCOC group, and the participants talked with the troops who provide security for the missions.
The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration estimates that more than 80 percent of the worldwide cocaine supply and as much as 90 percent of the cocaine smuggled into the United States is produced in Colombia.
But, between 2004 and 2007, Colombian security forces interdicted almost 700 metric tons of cocaine, coca base and heroin, according to U.S. State Department records. Coca cultivation decreased by 10 percent from 2001 to 2007, while opium poppy cultivation decreased by 67 percent from 2001 to 2007.
The finale for the day was a stop at the Colombian urban counterterrorist special forces headquarters. After a briefing by the troops on the tactics, gear and weapons they use, the JCOC group donned helmets and flak vests for an up-close look at the team’s commando-style house-clearing and hostage-rescue procedures.
The group gathered on a catwalk above the four-room mock house for a bird’s eye view of the action. The scenario was a hostage situation with about 20 “bad guys.” Once the order was given, a sniper “took out” the guard and an explosion breached the entrance of the house.
With precision and speed, the four-man group went room to room, shooting targets that represented terrorists. Real ammunition was used – no blanks. More explosions rattled the helmets nearly off the heads of some JCOC participants. The hostage was recovered, and afterward the participants were able to go into the rooms and see where the rounds hit the targets.
“Those 10 minutes were worth the entire trip,” said Dirk Beveridge, president of 4th Generation Systems in Barrington, Ill. “You see it in the movies, you read about in the papers, but to experience it like that, hearing that, feeling that -- it was awesome.”
Beveridge, like Lee, said that before yesterday’s events he never thought a lot about Colombia. Now, he said, he sees a direct tie between what the U.S. forces are doing here and security in the United States for his children.
“Having a 19-year-old son and 17-year-old daughter, I am so very much appreciative of what they’re doing to help us in the United States to curb drug trafficking,” Beveridge said. “You don’t think of Colombia. You don’t know about the presence that the United States has here in Colombia. Thank God that we’ve got individuals that we met out here today to put themselves on the line to protect my 19-year-old and 17-year-old.”
Beveridge said he was most impressed by the commitment of the Colombian forces and their willingness to risk their lives to stop narco-terrorism and make their country a better place.
“These guys said they want to make Colombia a better place to live, and they are wiling to give their life for that. They are special people,” he said. “What these Colombian forces are doing [is that] they’re making the United States a better place.”
Roslyn Brock, vice chairman of the Baltomore-based National Association for the Advancement of Colored Poeple’s national board of directors, said most of her previous impressions of Colombia were based on movies.
“You see the movies about Colombia and the drug trade, and you think it’s just a country full of a bunch of drug dealers,” she said. “But … there are people who are citizens who just every day want to go to work, who are concerned about their security, concerned about quality of life and they want to do the right thing.”
Brock said that before the JCOC visit she thought mainly of the U.S. military in terms of security and defense. But now she sees that building partnerships with other agencies to help other countries and providing a variety of aid is more of a comprehensive strategy for U.S. military forces.
“Colombians are always looked at as the bad guys. But to see that we’re working together to secure our borders, to eradicate narcotics, it’s just awesome, and I think we need to do more of this,” Brock said.
JCOC is the oldest existing Pentagon outreach program, and the current tour is the 75th in the series. | <urn:uuid:a62c3082-79a4-4dad-bef6-e57193b8477c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=49662 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964698 | 1,994 | 1.507813 | 2 |
Visit the Kalamazoo Public Library channel on YouTube for great clips from recent events and vintage items from the archives.
Arnie Johnston, perhaps the foremost translator of songs by Jacques Brel, presents "Songs You Thought You Knew," a collection of songs and music by Brel, Gabriel Fauré, Kurt Weill, Charles Aznavour, and others - accompanied by special guest D. Neil Bremer. Oshtemo Branch Library, May 8, 2012.
Historian Tom Buettner explains why 27 million people attended the 1893 Chicago World's Fair (World's Columbian Exposition) and describes Michigan's exhibits in his slide show. Presented Wednesday, May 9, 2012, at Kalamazoo Public Library.
Family historian and lecturer Tim Pinnick, whose 25 years experience includes work in all the major U.S. repositories, explains how to find and effectively use African American newspapers in genealogical research. Presented at Kalamazoo Public Library, May 6, 2012. Mr. Pinnick's appearance was cosponsored by Southwest Michigan Black Heritage Society. | <urn:uuid:4efc5353-ef37-4387-864a-b75d1213d546> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.kpl.gov/video/Default.aspx?category=Authors&blogid=2118 | 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 | 0.937568 | 224 | 1.59375 | 2 |
London, Jan 30: Mensa’s newest member, who is from South Yorkshire, can already count to 200 and name every country in the world at just three years old.
Sherwyn Sarabi’s IQ score of 136 puts him in the top one per cent of the world’s population ranked in order of intelligence, the Daily Mail reported.
And the boy from Barnsley, has now become one of the youngest members of Mensa.
Sherwyn, who has a reading ability of a six year old, began speaking at the age of 10 months and was talking in sentences at 20 months.
By the age of two, he could read, count to 200, recognise and name countries, flags, planets in the solar system, parts of the body and internal organs.
His mother, Amanda Sarabi, 36, a former teacher, said that her son can also explain the function of each internal organ.
She said that Sherwyn’s general knowledge is amazing and he doesn’t even watch children’s programmes, he watches the news.
The weather is his favourite, especially the world weather, he loves that, she said.
She first noticed his interest in learning when he was 18 months old but his intelligence seemed normal until other people pointed out how unusual it was.
Sherwyn has now joined the high-IQ society Mensa, which has only 100 members aged under 10 years old out of 22,000 members across Britain. (ANI) | <urn:uuid:7a0a7f32-1c7c-40c4-9c35-cedcf6550399> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.indiatalkies.com/2013/01/3yearold-brit-tot-latest-join-mensa.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970181 | 308 | 1.75 | 2 |
China is nothing but bad news for Yum Brands.
Yum shares were down more than 5% in after-hours U.S. trading Monday after the company warned that slower sales in China will have a significant impact on its 2013 earnings.
The reputation of the global fast food powerhouse, which operates thousands of KFC restaurants in China, has suffered in the wake of an investigation by Chinese food regulators.
The inquiry was launched after media reports alleged that excess antibiotics and hormones were found in some chicken products sold at KFC locations. The revelation set Chinese consumers on edge and sparked calls for a boycott.
Same-store sales in China declined 6% in the fourth quarter, the company said, a trend that accelerated in the final two weeks of December, when negative publicity turned sales "sharply negative."
The company suggested Monday that problems will persist well into the new year, leading to a mid-single-digit decline in earnings per share in 2013.
"Due to continued negative same-store sales and our assumption that it will take time to recover consumer confidence, we no longer expect to achieve EPS growth in 2013," CEO David Novak said in a statement.
China is an increasingly important market for the parent company of Taco Bell, KFC and Pizza Hut. Yum has placed big bets on future growth in the world's second largest economy; it operates more than 4,200 KFC restaurants in China, as well as about 800 Pizza Huts.
Prior to the investigation into tainted KFC chicken, western fast food companies had enjoyed a reputation for safety in China, where consumers have been subjected to a spate of food scares.
Regulators traced the bad chicken to two poultry suppliers in KFC's supply chain and have issued a series of recommendations that Yum said it will implement. | <urn:uuid:af076fc1-9939-482f-8d46-7e022de60de9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wgal.com/news/money/China-trouble-deepens-for-Yum-Brands/-/9360224/18407736/-/9m8p9o/-/index.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00018-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96504 | 367 | 1.59375 | 2 |
56.—(1) There shall be such number of Council Committees as the Governor may from time to time determine.
(2) A Council Committee shall consist of—
(a)such number of persons who are Members of the Legislative Council; and
(b)such number, if any, of persons who are not Members of the Council,
as the Governor, acting after consultation with the Chairman of the Committee, may decide.
(3) There shall be a Chairman of each Council Committee who shall be an Elected Member of the Legislative Council.
(4) The Chairman and the other members of a Council Committee shall be appointed by the Governor, acting in accordance with the following provisions of this section, by notice published in the Gazette.
(5) Subject to subsection (6), the Governor shall appoint as Chairman of a Council Committee such Elected Member of the Legislative Council as shall have been nominated for that office by the votes of a majority of all the Elected Members of the Council.
(6) If, within such period as the Governor in his or her judgement considers reasonable, no person has been nominated in accordance with subsection (5) for the office of Chairman of a Council Committee, the Governor shall, acting in his or her discretion, forthwith appoint an Elected Member of the Legislative Council as Chairman of that Committee.
(7) The Governor shall appoint the members of a Council Committee other than the Chairman after consultation with the Chairman of that Committee. | <urn:uuid:2375e00b-c050-4757-869e-2244c1ac4a1d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2009/1751/schedule/paragraph/56/made?view=plain | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.977959 | 302 | 1.539063 | 2 |
I’ve been saying to my husband for a while now that the next car we buy will be a hybrid. Not only do I like the idea of helping the environment in some small way, but I also think there are many financially appealing reasons to go the hybrid route.
For one thing, they get more mileage per gallon (mpg), meaning you can drive farther for less gas. Hybrids I’ve looked at are in the 40 mpg to the 50 mpg—or more—range as new cars are introduced into the market. Gas in Chicago, where we live, right now tops $4 a gallon, so having to buy less of the stuff is a definite selling point to me.
Second, there’s a tax benefit. It differs by model, but you can claim a tax credit on your annual return for purchasing a hybrid car. In some cases, there are additional tax credits at the state or city level. You can check out these parameters on the IRS website.
Third, some financial institutions—such as some credit unions—offer annual-percentage-rate discounts on your car loan if you’re purchasing a hybrid rather than a conventional vehicle. The same can be true for insurance companies offering auto-insurance policies—it never hurts to ask.
A lot of people thinkthat hybrids are a lot more expensive than conventional cars to buy in the first place. This can be true, of course, but some hybrid offerings are becoming more affordable the longer this type of car is on the market. You can always look into used hybrids—a savings double whammy!
Plus—wouldn’t it be great to score one of those “for hybrid vehicles only” primo parking spaces at the grocery store? | <urn:uuid:fb0ab751-10a3-4865-8cbf-effb4e157a1b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://moneymix.cuna.org/24652/blog/?p=1401 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00028-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956326 | 362 | 1.8125 | 2 |
Sell your textbooks, share exams & notes, read full course & prof reviews, win sweet prizes.
We've seen our most fundamental beliefs about the nature of the universe change so many times over the past century that it's almost old hat. Danish science historian Helge Kragh looks at these revolutions and their effects in Quantum Generations: A History of Physics in the Twentieth Century. This well-told series of interlocking stories skillfully blends hard science with biography; Kragh intends to reach a broad audience and succeeds in maintaining interest on all levels. Starting in the 10 years before 1900, he shows us that the state of physics was not as moribund as textbooks would have us believe--in fact, much of the groundwork for the revelations of relativity and quantum mechanics was laid then. Moving along through the highlights of the past hundred years, we read of Heisenberg, Lorentz, Feynman, and many more scientists building on their predecessors' work.
Only the most pathologically math-phobic need fear this book; Kragh has done nonphysicists a favor by restricting his scientific discussions to terms understandable by most well-informed readers. Though he does neglect certain important fields (e.g., optics and materials science), the cohesion and relative brevity resulting from this decision make for a better book. Whether you have an abiding interest in the roots of modern physics or want to learn more about recent developments in unification theories, you'll find Quantum Generations a pleasant yet challenging review. --Rob Lightner
1. Search thousands of student ads at your school.
2. Message the seller. Meet on campus.
3. Trade directly. Save up to 90%. We keep nothing.
We also search 200 million online book deals (exclusive coupons, shipping deals) from 50,000 book sellers (from Amazon to mom & pop shops). If you end up buying from these guys, you get routed to their site. We don't actually sell the book.
Happy book hunting ;)
1. Enter book title & maximum price you're willing to pay.
2. We'll email you as soon as it becomes available.
Want to Sell Textbooks?
1. Enter ISBN & price. We'll auto fill the rest.
2. Post a FREE ad online.
3. We'll market it around campus & online.
4. Print Flyer (optional) & post around campus. | <urn:uuid:1e93feb5-70d2-47f8-aea3-a70d1492c3f6> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.locazu.com/U-Toronto-TEXTBOOK-0691095523-Quantum-Generations-History-Physics-Twentieth-Century-Kragh/171872 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936013 | 494 | 1.726563 | 2 |
Golden Hawaii Sunset Picture - January in Kealakekua Kona, Hawaii
I took this sequence of pictures from my view of Kealakekua Bay on the West coast of Hawaii Island. This sequence of Hawaii sunset pictures shows the progression of the sky over the ocean fading from a brilliant amber-gold color down to a faded peach-pastel color, which then fade to blue-gray tones as darkness falls over the sea.
Taken in Keakakekua in North Kona, on the Big Island of Hawaii
Madagascar Gecko on a rain-wet lanai
The Madagascar Gecko, or the “daytime geckos” as a lot of people call them, are a common sight here in Hawaii. As their nickname suggests, this species of gecko comes out during the day, and looks very different from their nocturnal cousins.
Their bright colors contrast with the nighttime gecko varieties which tend to be less vibrant shades of translucent pink, tan, or gray, some even sporting tiger stripes.
The madagascar geckos are almost my favorite lizard species on the island, second only to the Jackson Chameleons. These geckos (the same type depicted in the Gecko comercials) are green (brighter or darker depending on how warm they are) with yellow “gold dust” on their shoulders and upper back, and distinct red marks on their lower back and on their head, with a just a touch of blue around the eyes.
Anaeho'omalu Bay or "A Bay" Hawaii Sunset
Anaeho’omalu Beach, also known as “A Bay” is in South Kohala, on the west coast of the on the Big Island of Hawaii. It’s a beautiful salt and pepper (both black and white sand) beach, and a great place to swim and snorkel.
I took these shots at Sunset in late January. The setting sun was framed perfectly by the trees lining the shore and the nearby ancient fish pond.
Click the link to see photos of this Hawaii sunset at Anaeho’omalu or “A Bay”
Molten orange sunset over Keauhou, Big Island of Hawaii
The Big Island, like other islands in Hawaii, is host to many beautiful sunsets.
People from the mainland are amazed at ones I find ho-hum, but this gallery includes some of the more beautiful sunsets, even for Hawaii.
The sunset pictured at right was one of the most intensely beautiful sights I have ever seen, and I hope my photos do it some justice.
Click the link to see the full photo gallery of Hawaii Sunset Pictures – Sunsets in Kona & Kohala Hawaii and Beyond
ohia lehua flower
The Hawaii flower of the Ohia tree — the Ohia Lehua — is a beautiful red flower that can be found all over the Hawaiian islands.
The Ohia (or ‘Ohi’a) is an evergreen shrub that commonly grows to become tall trees. The plant is capable of surviving, or even thriving in most of the widely diverse climate types found in the islands.
These pictures were taken one afternoon when I was down in Ka’u on the Big Island, about to head down South Point road.
Click to view the gallery of pictures of the beautiful Hawaiian Ohia Lehua flower. | <urn:uuid:6101314c-b81c-476b-8ac8-3302c569b486> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.hawaii-pictures-photos.com/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.93796 | 706 | 1.765625 | 2 |
(Newsroom America) -- Russian heavy bombers tested U.S. air defenses near Alaska earlier this month during a chilly summit between President Barack Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin, as part of large-scale arctic war games, a report said Wednesday.
The Washington Free Beacon, quoting unnamed senior defense officials, said the Russian aircraft flew close enough to U.S. airspace to warrant launching of F-15 fighter jets to intercept.
The war games began on the same day Obama and Putin met at a summit in Mexico June 18.
U.S. officials said the war games appeared to be a further sign of Moscow's hardening stance towards Washington.
The report went on to say that the Obama administration did not protest the bomber intrusion, as part of its "reset" policy of trying to seek warming relations with Russia.
The exercises featured some 30 strategic aircraft, including Tu-95MS Bear H and Tu-160 Blackjack nuclear-capable bombers, Il-76 refueling tankers, A-50 airborne warning and control aircraft, and Su-27 and MiG-31 jet fighters. About 200 troops also took part in the exercise, the report said.
The Beacon said U.S. defense officials had no comment on the paper's report.
Retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney, a former Alaska North American Aerospace Defense commander, told the paper the exercises should be cause for concern.
"The Russians continue to exercise our air defense identification zone, which shows Mr. Putin loves to let President Obama know that they still have global capability," he said. "So much for reset."
© 2012 Newsroom America. | <urn:uuid:dd8d366c-c198-4532-97ac-728ca6f71822> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://newsroomamerica.com/story/258149/report:_russian_bombers_tested_u.s._arctic_air_defenses_during_obama-putin_summit.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96088 | 341 | 1.515625 | 2 |
Inauguration Notebook: Get an Inauguration Day flag ... islanders witness historic event ... inauguration potluck celebration tonight ...
January 23, 2009 · Updated 10:43 AM
San Juans went for Obama:
San Juan County residents cast 7,374 votes for Barack Obama and Joe Biden in the Nov. 4 general election. That's 70 percent of all ballots cast.
Inauguration was shown in most classrooms: Friday Harbor Middle School Principal Ann Spratt said teachers determined whether the inaugural ceremony would be broadcast in their classrooms and, for those that did, how to incorporate it into the curriculum.
A quick trip through the halls revealed most of the faculty, perhaps all, took the time to tune into today's event.
Spratt said the school, like Switzerland, remains steadfastly neutral in the political arena. However, she noted a presidential inauguration offers a unique opportunity to showcase the culmination of the American political process and the peaceful transfer of presidential powers from one administration to the next.
"It's not the outcome but the exercise of voting, and the political process, that we're focused on," she said. "Our job isn't to pick a side. But an event like this reinforces that this is what we do in America, we vote."
Tying historical events together:
At Spring Street International School, Inauguration Day was an opportunity to connect the dots.
The day began with a general assembly during first and second periods that featured a double-dose of U.S. milestones. Prior to watching the inauguration in real-time on satellite feed, students got a glimpse of just how far the nation has come in bridging its racial divide by watching historic footage of Dr. Martin Luther King delivering his "I Have A Dream" speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial some 45 years ago.
With the inauguration of Barack Obama as the nation's 44th president occurring the day after the national holiday honoring Dr. King, Spring Street Director of Operations Jerry Riley said that school officials wanted to try and tie together the past, present and future by placing two historic events side by side. He was pleased with the outcome.
"It's an incredible linkage," Riley said. "I think (the students) were hit pretty strong by the moment. We definitely wanted to make a special day out of it."
The assembly featured poetry readings and refreshments provided by parents, some of whom, along with several teachers, offered personal recollections of the civil rights struggles of the past and thoughts on what Obama's presidency may mean for the future. Such reminders, Riley said, may prove instructive for a generation which in large part accepts racial equality as a place "where we should be."
"It's a very momentous occasion and I think they understand that," he said. "But a number of students commented about America being a young country and a country of change and they're ready to embrace it, and they're excited about moving forward."
Several islanders witness inauguration: Several San Juan County residents are in Washington, D.C., for the inauguration: Among them, Woody Ciskowski of Orcas Island; Randall Gaylord of Orcas Island and his daughter, Genevieve; Jamie Stephens of Lopez Island; Chris, Kate and Arla Sutton of Orcas Island; Jim and Kathleen Youngren of Orcas Island.
Derin Ross, a San Juan Island native now living in Rock Springs, Wyo., will also attend the inauguration.
Ciskowski, a student at Western Washington University, will attend an inaugural ball.
This is the second inauguration for Gaylord. In 1969, he accompanied his parents to the inauguration of Richard M. Nixon as the 37th president.
"I want to make sure I balance that one out," Gaylord said in an earlier interview. "I think it's important to mark big events in life, to do something that brings it home, then it becomes a part of our life. I want this to be a part of my life. That's why I'm going."
The Gaylords lucked out on accommodations; they are staying with friends of his sister. Likewise, Stephens' daughter, Jessica, attends Georgetown University; Stephens said he planned to spend the night in his daughter's dorm room.
Community potluck tonight at Friday Harbor High School: A community potluck will be held in Friday Harbor tonight to celebrate the inauguration of Barack Obama as the nation's 44th president.
The event, sponsored by organizers of Democracy Corner and other local progressives, begins at 5:30 p.m. in the Friday Harbor High School Commons.
At 6:30, the morning’s inauguration ceremony will be shown, followed by Obama’s inaugural address.
Participants are encouraged to bring a food dish to share, plus their own plates and silverware.
The event is free and open to the public.
Own an Inauguration Day flag: Washington Secretary of State Sam Reed's office is making available U.S. flags that are being flown over the state Capitol today in commemoration of Barack Obama’s inauguration.
The 3 by 5 flags are at a discounted cost of $14 if obtained at the front desk of the secretary’s office on the second floor of the Capitol, or $17.25 by mail. Each will have a certificate, state seal and secretary’s signature.
Any proceeds will go to the State Capitol historical furnishings fund. For more information, call Suzette Black at (360) 902-4151.
'This is a day of promise': “We join all Washingtonians in honoring our new 44th President of the United States, Barack Obama, and concur with his call for national renewal, shared sacrifice and a great generosity of spirit," Washington Secretary of State Sam Reed said in Olympia after the president took the oath of office.
"These are trying times for our state and nation and world, but together we will endure and prevail as we faithfully exercise our duties of citizenship, as neighbors, as family, with civility and compassion and care.
“It was a long, hard-fought campaign that sometimes divided us, but now let us unite and support our new administration. This is a magical time, a time of possibility for our country, but we have not elected a magician, but a man. Let us go forward with patience and resolve. This is a day of promise.”
'We are free at last ...: "With regard to our President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama and in the words of the Rev. Martin Luther King, 'Free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty, we are free at last!" — Mary and Smithy Smith, San Juan Island | <urn:uuid:13863f93-a7dd-42ee-ab17-5a353046c32a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sanjuanjournal.com/news/37898949.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00027-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.958018 | 1,382 | 1.648438 | 2 |
«previous pageCOMMUNICATIONS CATEGORY
The Master List of Design Projects of the Olmsted Firm, 1857-1979
Lucy Lawliss, ASLA, Caroline Loughlin and Lauren Meier, ASLA, Editors
client: National Association for Olmsted Parks, Washington, DC
National Park Service, Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site, Brookline, MA
The Master List of Design Projects of the Olmsted Firm 1857-1979 is the comprehensive guide to the work of the landscape architecture firm founded by Frederick Law Olmsted. Searchable by project type and location and comprising over 6,000 jobs, the Master List includes new research, illustrations and essays that demonstrate the importance of the Olmsted firm in an accessible format so that the variety and geographic distribution of the work is comprehensible to diverse users.
Intended as a resource for both research and public education, The Master List of Design Projects of the Olmsted Firm 1857-1979 serves a diverse audience, from landscape architects and Olmsted scholars, to public officials and park managers, by providing a comprehensive guide to the complete portfolio of the Olmsted firm, including over 6,000 projects throughout the U.S., Canada and other nations. In its richly illustrated and visually accessible format, it is tangible evidence of the importance and breadth the work of the Olmsted firm, produced by individuals recognized as pioneers in the field of landscape architecture. Furthermore, this publication represents a major volunteer effort that brought together a broad spectrum of individuals devoted to preserving and continuing the Olmsted legacy.
The Master List was published in April 2008, following nearly two years of research, writing, editing, design and printing by a large group of volunteers and staff of the National Association for Olmsted Parks (NAOP) and the Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site (NPS). The authors and editors contributed their time and talents; without this volunteer effort, the project would have been substantially higher in cost and thus impossible to achieve. Hard costs, excluding staff time, totaled $39,000 for graphic design, printing and shipping. The Master List received grants totaling $24,000 from the Hubbard Educational Foundation, Central Park Conservancy and the Felicia Fund. Numerous landscape architectural firms also contributed toward the publication or provided in-kind services to help offset the cost. 2000 copies were printed in April 2008; the book is available for sale through the NAOP, selected booksellers, Eastern National, National Park Service, and is sold directly at conferences and symposia for $45/55. Funds raised through the sale of the Master List are used to recover design and printing expenses and fund education activities and related publications. The Master List includes a database of more than 6,000 design projects organized into 14 thematic categories, each with a corresponding contextual essay, along with seven introductory essays, indexes and a chronology of the Olmsted firm. A total of 15 individual authors contributed text, including the three editors.
This second edition was conceived by the Research Committee of the National Association for Olmsted Parks (NAOP) as a tool for research and education to increase public support for the Olmsted legacy. The editors and a core working group developed a conceptual outline for the book with assignments to complete the intellectual content. The editors developed the idea for a series of essays that would illustrate the 14 thematic categories of Olmsted project work, thus placing these individual design projects in context. The editors then contacted scholars, academics and practitioners throughout the U.S. and beyond, who voluntarily contributed the contextual essays.
Presentation of the vast project list, which had grown from 5,000 to 6,000 projects since the first (photocopied) printing twenty years ago, required reaching out to a larger community of Olmsted scholars, so that all were in agreement with the way to present the project list, and to ensure its usefulness and clarity in order to reach as diverse an audience as possible. The NPS Olmsted Archives staff worked to build, organize and correct the database in collaboration with the NAOP and the Frederick Law Olmsted Papers Project, and incorporated information on the critical holdings at the Library of Congress. This work was captured by the NPS into a massive Excel file, organized by project category for review by the editors prior to the publication's design. Individual authors provided essays along with a list of suggested illustrations for review and revision by the editors.
The aesthetic presentation of the Master List was achieved by a skilled graphic designer and through the acquisition of images of noteworthy Olmsted landscapes that were evocative, illustrative of the landscape design process, and representative of the diversity of project types and geographic location. The completed and edited narrative text, database and illustrations were then transformed into a beautiful and accessible publication by the book designer. Key features of the layout and design include a subtle color scheme for every project category, strategic and well-placed illustrations, and visually interesting presentation of the job list (a database of 6,000 projects). The designer also facilitated the printing process to ensure both quality and delivery so that the book was completed in time for the April 2008 150th anniversary of the Olmsted and Vaux Greensward Plan for Central Park, celebrated in New York City. Landscape architects in private practice, public service and academia served as co-editors and authors, working collaboratively with NAOP, NPS, other contributing authors and the publication designer. The three editors volunteered their time over a two-year period, from the initial concept for the book through its final publication, in a wide variety of roles from grant preparation and coordination of authors, to research, writing, image selection and editing. This was done in close collaboration with the working group, who included NAOP and NPS staff and Olmsted scholars, each of whom played an important role both in shaping the vision for the book and completing its intellectual content. With the exception of the book's designer, the traditional relationship between client and landscape architect did not exist. Rather, this project involved a unique collaboration of individuals and organizations, each of whom brought their knowledge and skills to produce a tremendously useful and complete handbook on the work of the Olmsted firm.
Project's Significance: The Master List is the only publication that provides a comprehensive guide to the work of the Olmsted firm, which was instrumental in establishing the profession of landscape architecture in the U.S. The body of work represented by over a century of landscape architecture practice is noteworthy not only for its social, political, environmental and aesthetic accomplishments, but also for the number of pioneer landscape architects who have roots in the firm and for the landscapes designed by the Olmsted firm still evident throughout the U.S., which breathe life and vitality into many of the nation's cities and enrich people's lives. It illustrates the importance of landscape architecture to individuals and communities who may not be familiar with the profession, but who benefit daily from its achievements. The book also complements the Olmsted Research Guide Online (ORGO), a web-based index to the work of the Olmsted firm that is useful in locating archival materials for individual projects housed at the Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site in Brookline, Massachusetts, and the Library of Congress in Washington, DC. Until now, more broadly focused research to understand related projects in a specific category (e.g. parkways) or geographic location (e.g. Louisville, KY) has been very difficult to accomplish. Thus, presenting the entire job list in book format with a geographic index and contextual essays greatly enhances the understanding of the Olmsted firm's work well beyond individual design commissions.
The relevance of the Master List extends from coast to coast, including nearly every state in the nation and re-enforcing the role of the Olmsted firm in establishing and shaping the nation's parks and the National Park System. It is used by elected officials at the local, state and national level to promote and raise awareness of the Olmsted legacy within their jurisdictions and nationally. Park commissioners from Seattle and Boston have praised the Master List, noting its importance both as a tribute to Olmsted's philosophy and design for parkland as well as its value in achieving their goals of connecting people to nature. The Master List brings the work of the Olmsted firm to life, in a readily-accessible and attractive format, so that it can be easily used by landscape architects, public officials, citizens, landscape managers, students and scholars for a wide number of purposes, from locating all the Olmsted landscapes in a given community, to determining the dates of drawings or letters for a specific project. In this way, it represents the profession of landscape architecture to a large and diverse audience, showing that landscape architects play an important role in shaping our personal and civic outdoor spaces and preserving the natural environment. Recognizing the importance of the Master List, Charles Birnbaum, FASLA of the Cultural Landscape Foundation noted, "When the field of landscape preservation and our awareness of the Olmsted design legacy was in its promising infancy, The Master List of Design Projects of the Olmsted Firm was the essential reference. Twenty years later, this new edition, brought to life with contemporary photography and evocative essays, is as much a cause for celebration as the hundreds of Olmsted designs that have been preserved and interpreted by communities all across America."
Julia S. Bachrach, Chicago Park District
Charles E. Beveridge, Honorary ASLA, F.L. Olmsted Papers
Ethan Carr, FASLA, University of Virginia
Lee Farrow Cook, Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site
Rolf Diamant, Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historical Park
Nancy Pollock-Elwand, International ASLA, University of Adelaide
Susan L. Klaus
Francis R. Kowsky, Buffalo State College, emeritus
Lucy Lawliss, ASLA, George Washington Birthplace National Monument
Arleyn A. Levee
Lauren Meier, ASLA, Pressley Associates
Catherine Nagel, National Association for Olmsted Parks
Anthony Reed, Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site
Jill Trebbe, Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site
Jamison Spittler, Jamison Design
"An important volume for all landscape architects and urban planners to track and research Olmsted projects in their cities. ††Itís amazing to see the magnitude of Olmsted's legacy on the American landscape — quite astonishing!"
— 2009 Professional Awards Jury | <urn:uuid:d3b46262-f1ab-4885-adff-5e3fb25c5f89> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://asla.org/2009awards/115.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.942317 | 2,179 | 1.78125 | 2 |
Grand Falls-Windsor —
“Rescue a child, raise a leader, rebuild a nation” — that’s the motto of the Watoto Children’s Choir in Uganda.
Watoto means “the children” in Swahili.
The Watoto Children’s Choir brought its message to Grand Falls-Windsor on Sunday at The Concert of Hope.
“The Watoto Children’s Choirs were put together in 1994 to travel around the world and to be a voice for the millions of children in Africa who were left orphaned by the AIDS crisis,” said choir team leader Stephen Banyikiza.
“Through the choirs, people get to know more about what is happening in Africa, and in Uganda in particular, and see how they can help.”
Banyikiza said the choir represents the Watoto childcare ministries out of Watoto Church in Uganda, which was started by a Canadian couple, Gary and Marilyn Skinner.
He said Watoto is a holistic program that takes care of children in every aspect — physical, spiritual, educational, social and emotional. It builds homes and families for children who are orphaned and vulnerable, he said.
“Watoto rescues them, to raise them up as leaders so that they can help to rebuild the nation of Uganda.”
Watoto has affected the lives of more than 2,000 orphaned and abandoned children, he said.
There are two well-established Watoto children’s villages in Kampala, Uganda, and a third in Gulu, in war-torn northern Uganda.
The villages are built to become self-sustaining, with homes, a school, a medical clinic, community centre and agricultural project.
In 2007, the first Watoto baby home opened its doors in Kampala to provide care and attention to orphaned and abandoned babies under the age of two.
Watoto currently has three babies’ homes — one in downtown Kampala, one in Suubi Village and one in Gulu.
Living Hope is a new Watoto program that has touched the lives of approximately 1,200 women in Kampala and 900 women in Gulu. The target groups are teenage mothers, HIV-positive single women and women who were abducted by the Lord’s Resistance Army.
The goal is to restore their dignity.
“The Watoto Children’s Choirs were put together in 1994 to travel around the world and to be a voice for the millions of children in Africa who were left orphaned by the AIDS crisis." - Stephen Banyikiza
Watoto is funded by collections during concerts like the one being held in Grand Falls-Windsor, and by other donations and sponsorships.
“There are opportunities for sponsorship for $35,” Banyikiza said.
“(Sponsors) can make a big difference in the life of a child or the mothers that we have in the program.”
There is no admission to the Concert of Hope.
“We have a free will offering that people can give and also we do have merchandise that people can purchase and that’s what helps us to cover the cost of touring,” Banyikiza said.
Choir tours are funded by the sale of merchandise, including CDs, DVDs, T-shirts, African jewelry and crafts made by women in the Living Hope Program.
Banyikiza said the choirs have done a lot of touring in Canada, the United States, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Asia, Africa, Israel and Brazil.
“This is choir No. 46,” he said. “We started a tour on Jan. 12 in Vancouver and we go as far east as St. John’s. We have children between the ages of eight and 13. We do lots of concerts of hope in different churches and anywhere people would have us.”
Although the choir has performed in Grand Falls-Windsor previously, these particular children have not.
“The children are only given one chance to tour on the choir,” Banyikiza said.
“When they go back home, other children train and tour and get to travel as well.
“Everyone is very excited. It’s my first time in Canada, so it’s very exciting to be touring all across. We are meeting very many nice people, and people blessing us in very many ways. We’re glad.”
“We know that you do not have to be an African orphan to feel lonely, rejected. … You can be in Canada and feel the same way. So they actually will be ready to pray for the people as well to share that hope in that way.”
For more information, visit website watoto.com or call 1-888-9-WATOTO. | <urn:uuid:6365a7f2-4456-481a-a350-2e7e8b9bf307> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.thetelegram.com/Living/2011-05-31/article-2546972/Songs-of-hope/1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.967666 | 1,034 | 1.742188 | 2 |
Audit us, say independent agencies in survey
Twenty-one of 26 independent agencies surveyed by the General Accounting Office said they supported financial audits for most agencies, particularly those with fiduciary responsibilities or at high risk for mismanagement. The agencies surveyed, which included the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Trade Commission, are not required to submit audited financial statements under the 1990 Chief Financial Officers Act.
"Overall, the surveyed agencies reported that they either achieved significant benefits or would anticipate achieving such benefits from having audited financial statements," said Gary Engel, director of financial management and assurance at GAO, at a hearing last Tuesday before the House Government Reform Subcommittee on Government Efficiency, Financial Management and Intergovernmental Relations.
Twelve of the 26 agencies included in GAO's survey prepared audited financial statements in the past five years, even though they were not required by law to do so. The agencies told GAO that the audits improved accountability, helped identify weaknesses and enhanced their public image.
GAO conducted its study at the request of Rep. Patrick Toomey, R-Pa., who introduced legislation (H.R. 4685) earlier this month that would amend the 1990 Chief Financial Officers Act to require agencies with budgets of $25 million or more to submit annual audited financial statements. Currently, only the 24 largest federal agencies have to prepare audited statements.
"The federal government has a responsibility to ensure that the American taxpayer's hard-earned money is used properly," Toomey said at the May 14 hearing. "Auditing financial statements is a fundamental part of good management and oversight."
But the cost of such audits could drain the resources of smaller agencies that do not operate trust funds or grant programs and already have strong internal controls, according to Alison Doone, deputy staff director for management at the Federal Election Commission. For an agency like the FEC, which enforces the financial laws governing federal elections, "preparation of audited financial statements would increase costs with few or no material benefits," Doone testified at the hearing. The FEC, whose budget was about $44 million in fiscal 2002, has not conducted financial audits.
Frederick Zirkel, inspector general of the Federal Trade Commission, agreed that financial audits can be expensive, but said they are an important part of the management process and could prevent additional costs in the future.
"Conducting a financial statement audit is a major commitment of OIG [Office of Inspector General] resources," Zirkel said at the hearing. "Yet, I believe the resource commitment is a wise expenditure of taxpayer funds." Zirkel's office has an annual budget of about $100,000-$60,000 of which went to conducting a financial audit in 2001. The FTC, which enforces antitrust and consumer protection laws, had a total budget of nearly $156 million for fiscal 2002.
Audits can also result in money being returned to the agency, Zirkel said. In fiscal 2000, the FTC identified $189,000 in overpayments of its rent, according to Zirkel. Most of that money has been returned to the agency, he said.
The true cost of a financial audit is usually directly related to how well the agency is managed, Zirkel said. "All other things being equal, the better managed the unit or organization being audited, the lower the cost of the audit will be for management." | <urn:uuid:753a49a0-7646-4ab2-88ff-793661231dba> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.govexec.com/management/2002/05/audit-us-say-independent-agencies-in-survey/11687/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00033-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.962963 | 694 | 1.710938 | 2 |
But when said to the nation's veterans, they convey not only appreciation, but sacrifice, honor and freedom.
Thank you for your service, Veterans. Those simple words were said several times at last week's Veterans Day observance at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory's Visitors Center. And another word was also used to describe veterans — heroes.
Brent K. Park, with the Global Security Directorate at ORNL, said this year's observation was "a serious event." When he recognized the veterans in attendance, about 75 percent of the room stood up.
And then they stood again when the Oak Ridge High School band played the musical salute of each branch of U.S. Service — the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps and Coast Guard.
"Freedom's not automatic," assured guest speaker retired Major Gen. Richard E. Webber. "They fight and die … many times paid for by blood."
Webber was the first commander, 24th Air Force, and commander Air Force Network Operations at Lackland Air Force base in Texas. He was responsible for the Air Force's newest numbered air force providing combatant commanders with trained and ready "cyber forces," which plan and conduct cyberspace operations.
Later he was a command cyber, space and missile operator with qualifications in the Minuteman II, Minuteman III, Global Positioning Satellite and Counter Communications System weapon system.
He also served as assistant deputy chief for Air, Space and Information Operations at Air Force headquarters in Washington, D.C.
Webber retired after 36 years and joined ORNL as the director of Cyber Programs Integration in the Global Security Directorate.
"The current generation is every bit as courageous as those who went before them," he said.
Webber quoted the U.S. Constitution's oath administered to uniformed officers: "I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God."
Webber also talked about the Henri-Cappelle American Cemetery and Memorial in Belgium, which is the resting place of nearly 8,000 Americans who died in World War II, including about 500 "unknowns." The cemetery is located near the Battle of the Bulge.
The retired general also talked about a veterans parade in Colorado during Operation Iraqi Freedom. "The people on the sides of the streets came into our formation," Webb said. "They walked along with us. They looked at our name tags, called us by name and said, 'Thank you.'"
He said the Vietnam vets weren't received like that when they came home, but in that Colorado parade "they were leading the charge."
He said he appreciates all the projects to help veterans, but stated the most important thing to do is "just make a phone call to someone who has served and say thank you for your service."
Beverly Majors can be contacted at (865) 220-5514. | <urn:uuid:869c5b61-4efb-48d8-a7a5-6c1ad5ff0a65> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.oakridger.com/article/20121114/NEWS/121119956/0/State%20News | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971253 | 660 | 1.679688 | 2 |
Posted by Shanti Roy on March 7, 2011
Disliking change is one of the most common symptoms in autism. Anyone who has a vague idea of what autism is will know that the autistic person often has a routine, does repetitive movements and is greatly distressed if they are not allowed to follow these little rituals.
I have talked about change before but I really wanted to elaborate on it because it still remains to this day to be my most debilitating symptom. I can learn non-verbal cues and remember them for at least a day, I can block out sensory stimuli, I can learn what is appropriate and what is not appropriate to say and I can even learn self help skills appropriate for my age but there’s no escaping the various levels of distress that I experience when change happens. I’m high functioning now so change for me is different from other people with autism. As a child I would scream and cry or put up a fuss about any slight change. My mother’s favourite one would be that I cried every time when the family went out and cried when we had to leave from that place that I eventually adjusted to so much that I didn’t want to leave.
Not all change will result in a meltdown or shutdown, it’s on a sliding scale, or spectrum if you will from mild to severe, but I also place them into groups of ‘controlled’, ‘uncontrolled, ‘sudden’, ‘gradual’ and even consider the environments one is in that drastically escalate the distress of experiencing change. And like most things the stress levels can be raised by certain moods and illnesses.
I’ll start off with mild change in the home or what I call a ‘familiar environment.’ The house is the most familiar environment because, well, they live there. Sometimes it can be a stressful place, depending on what living at home is like. But for me it’s the most comfortable place in the world. Mild change for me happens when I go to switch between tasks. I’m a very organised person and get through my day by doing a lot of tasks that are written down and need to be ticked off in a list. They involve house chores, reminders to shower, when my favourite TV shows are on, reminders to eat and even do things I enjoy like reading or drawing. It’s still hard for me to switch between these tasks. I might find myself doing something just a bit too enjoyable and get stuck on it. The act of switching leaves me with a little discomfort; a feeling of ‘well what am I supposed to do now’ to literally pacing around with a blank mind with no idea of what to do next.
The next level of change is when someone wants to take me away from my special interest pre-maturely. It’s not their fault and I’m not mad at them even if my little rhinoceros huffs under my breath say otherwise. My special interests are very important to me. I can even be quoted by saying ‘they are the only things that matter to me in life’ and it does certainly seem that way. I may get into a different interest every three or so months or maybe every year but at that moment that interest is all I am thinking and caring about. So when I’m taken away from this one true love for even a few seconds I can become a bit irritable.
The next level is sudden change in the home. This could be anything from going to eat something and finding we’ve run out, or being rushed to go out, or having unexpected visitors or even wanting to wear something and find out it’s in the wash. I panic a lot when I go to eat or grab something and find out it’s not there. It takes me a few moments to calm myself down. We’ve now entered into panic and a substantial amount of irritability mode because of this, what I dub ‘uncontrolled change.’ I had no control over the situation and the end result is usually a brief panic episode or a feeling of wanting to lock myself in a room far away until everything just fixes itself. But these things never just fix themselves. And because my shift in mood is so abrupt and maybe even in the form of kicking a few chairs or snapping at people the receiving end will not look upon this muttering moody brooder sympathetically. And if a violent meltdown is present where I share my expanded vocabulary of every profanity in the English language, a compulsion to blame inanimate objects and unpredictable weather patterns on my outbursts, well, I’m the one who gets yelled at for overreacting.
Many of my meltdowns are triggered by the rain. It seems a silly thing that something so common could completely throw me off a routine. But the rain makes a whole lot of difference to someone with autism. It could mean a quick walk into town is postponed, or those clothes that I wanted to wear on a certain day couldn’t be worn, or even that a delayed train would make me late and miss out on something very important to me. And if it storms that further throws me off my routine. That could mean the satellite is out so I miss my favourite programs. It means that I have to turn my computer off and I’m not left with many other options. I’ve just got free to air TV channels, books to read and a bunch of wet cats that ran inside too late to be safe from the storm.
The next two levels up involve leaving that familiar environment and dealing with both controlled and uncontrolled change. Controlled change could be something as small as changing my mind and there’s not much stress. There is some that is greater than when I’m not at home but it’s not enough to start the chain reaction leading up to a meltdown. Ahh, but uncontrolled change is a whole new tier of distress and it has to be broken up further into ‘gradual’, ‘sudden’ and ‘clusters.’
Gradual change is when I mentally or even vocally try to get through the steps of what I have to do to cope with this in order for me to calm down. It’s a way of understanding that there is nothing I can do to go back and I just have to accept it. Sudden change can be anything from sudden panic, to a pressure in my head (a bad kind – you know when you feel jealous or embarrassed – like that but you may feel like hitting someone) to a sudden outburst. Cluster change is when just a few too many things begin to go wrong when trying to adjust to change and eventually the slightest rain drop could send you into a murderous rage, but you desperately hope it does not come to that. Usually this is accompanied by a shutdown, which is kind of like dissociating with the world and not being able to move or speak, or even feeling depressed and not having the energy to do anything. This latter shutdown might not occur until a day or more after the event that caused so much distress.
Change in an uncontrolled environment can lead to a panic attack, in fact usually when I get lost or am racing against the clock in the city I will probably have a panic attack. The worst of my meltdowns happen when sudden change happens in an uncontrolled environment, usually with a lot of sensory stimuli and growing feelings of stress and anxiety. And it can sometimes last for days. These are sort of internal meltdowns which happen because having an outburst in the city is not always tolerated and that will eventually turn into a shutdown where I appear to become much more autistic. I get told a lot that when I come back from the city I’m in a bad mood. Well, I have to disrupt my routine, go away from the safest environment, leave behind my special interests, be exposed to many sights and sounds and smells which are all overwhelming and I have to go through so much stress and not show it because people are usually not that overcome by these things, and then I have to communicate with people that I don’t even share the same neurology with. So excuse me if I’m a bit irritable when I get home.
This is just a simple scale of change for me. It can be very mixed up. Usually the stress of so much change accumulates over time and the actual trigger for the meltdown had nothing to do with it, and other times the trigger brought on a sudden meltdown. There are also things I won’t do like go on holidays or travel overseas. Even thinking about one day working a job or living on my own is scary because that is something that won’t only disrupt a routine but bring it to an all time halt. It has to happen one day, I know it, but I still really don’t like change. I should add that this is not just something that happens a few times a week. This happens every time I need to shift my attention or do a new task, every time I leave the house or have to communicate with another person. That is pretty much an everyday occurrence for me. The more long lasting distress from change could happen a few times a week, depending on how much I allow myself to be exposed to it. | <urn:uuid:9f655ca1-6910-4eba-96e3-67b252427ee1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.autismhwy.com/articledetails.php?id=77 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970572 | 1,933 | 1.515625 | 2 |
A proposed theater for music and dance groups in Grant Park would be lowered deeper into the ground under a revised plan being considered by city officials. The new plan responds to objections that the theater would detract from Grant Park's openness.
The key step is to sink the structure, most of which is to be below street level, 20 feet deeper into the ground than originally planned.
Also, the architects will abandon their design for a weighty-looking, neoclassical facade, substituting a glassy pavilion that will be comparable to a "greenhouse or a solarium," said Ed Uhlir, the city's project manager for Lakefront Millennium Park.
The theater, which would cost at least $20 million, is a late addition to the park, a festival site being built over railroad tracks in Grant Park's northwest corner.
It would occupy the south side of Randolph Street, across from the Amoco Building, and would provide a permanent home for a dozen long-itinerant music and dance companies, such as Hubbard Street Dance Chicago.
At a Wednesday night meeting, Uhlir also announced that Mayor Richard M. Daley has authorized him to request proposals to beautify Randolph Street between Michigan Avenue and Harbor Drive, on the northern edge of Millennium Park.
Uhlir could not say how much the beautification effort will cost, nor would he estimate the price of sinking the theater farther into the ground.
However, he said that lowering the theater will allow both its Randolph Street facade and its lighting and scenery tower to be far less prominent than in the original plans.
For example, the Randolph Street facade, initially 27 feet tall, could be about 15 feet high, he said. Patrons would enter the pavilion and proceed down into the two-tiered, 1,500-seat theater.
Under the revised plan, the roof of the theater would become a terrace where people could stroll or sit.
Erma Tranter, executive director of Friends of the Parks, said the changes "could be a positive addition," but she added, "you don't know until you see it."
Her group had objected to the plan, citing the successful, turn-of-the-century court battles of businessman Aaron Montgomery Ward to keep Grant Park free of buildings.
Uhlir said the theater architects would have a computer-generated tour of the theater ready for the Feb. 17 meeting of the Grant Park Advisory Council, a citizens group that advises the Chicago District. | <urn:uuid:2bc4dfc4-38fd-4355-a3b6-5c418ab503e1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1999-01-22/news/9901220210_1_theater-ed-uhlir-hubbard-street-dance-chicago | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701852492/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105732-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.964472 | 509 | 1.5 | 2 |
By ERIC EGAN, NEWS10 Staff
ALBANY - Federal transportation officials are getting involved after construction workers uncovered old caskets while digging along Mona Terrace--just off Delaware Avenue--in Albany on Tuesday.
Federal officials are involved because federal funds went toward the construction project.
For those living along and just off of Delaware Avenue, they say this isn't the first time they've heard of people buried in their neighborhood.
"Over here somewhere used to be an old burial ground," said Silvia White.
The site is now blocked off by barrels and orange fencing but under the black tarp is where road crews dug into five different caskets early Tuesday. It happened as workers continued renovations along Delaware. The work has since stopped, but the questions are just starting.
"If it was a burial ground in the first place why would you even start building on it?" one neighbor said. "It doesn't make sense to me"
"It bothers me a little bit because this only feeds into the fear of the kids," said White.
According to the City, the graves likely belonged to a family of five. Local historians say the bodies were originally buried back in the mid-1800's when Saint John's Cemetery was in the area.
The coffin pieces remained under the dug-out portion of Mona Terrace on Tuesday. But now since the five have been found, folks can only help but wonder what will turn up next.
"I want to know if there's more," said a resident.
NEWS10 spoke to New York State Assemblyman and local historian Jack McEneny, who was called to the site by City officials. McEneny says he wouldn't be the least bit surprised to find more.
"I would almost say it's probable that somewhere around here there's more," he told NEWS10.
Crews will begin digging again Thursday morning to see if any other bodies are buried there. | <urn:uuid:9aa5b037-4abf-4112-8cac-9a5bf7e34502> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.news10.com/Global/story.asp?S=11231646 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708766848/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125246-00022-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.981613 | 399 | 1.671875 | 2 |
The scene, a work of Henley and Judy Gray of Jasper that was constructed in 2006, came in the form of a request from several area Sunday Schools who were eager to have a replica of the famous Nativity scene brought to the downtown area.
For the Grays, the project brought a chance to create something special and unique for the community. Henley, a 40-year employee of Alabama Power who makes furniture and other crafts in his spare time was more than happy to get to work on the scene.
“It was a joy for me,” Henley said. “Once Judy had the designs drawn up, I went to work cutting it out and getting it put together.”
Judy, a homemaker and mother of five daughters who has drawn and designed for church projects throughout her life, wanted a different Nativity scene than those scenes commonly in Christmas decorations.
“There are many Nativity scenes that are fairly repetitive in their look,” Judy said. “I wanted ours to be unique. There are several hidden messages and scriptures in the design that we used. Also, there is some personal touches to it that I used. The carpenter seen in the scene is Henley and is seen as missing a finger just like Henley is. My youngest daughter is riding the camel in it. Those are the kind of images I wanted to use to speak out to people’s Christmas spirit.”
As it turns out, the Grays did not have to embark on their journey alone. The Sunday schools that requested that the scene be made furnished the wood and supplies necessary for completion and many of the family’s friends came to help in painting it.
“We approached Mayor Sonny Posey about placing it in the Courthouse Square and he was very eager to see it placed there,” Judy said. “Now every year, the city comes to get the scene and helps put it up down at the square.”
As an added bonus, ABC 33/40, whose location camera points down on the courthouse area, often shows pictures of the scene during its weather broadcasts, letting people from not only Walker County but from other parts of the state see the Grays’ work.
“We really love getting the exposure as so many people get to see how beautiful our courthouse looks during Christmas time,” Judy said. | <urn:uuid:0f89c8f9-cbe3-47e7-ac73-c8e0bbd73a48> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.mountaineagle.com/view/full_story/10773447/article-Nativity-scene-a-symbol-of-Christmas-spirit | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00005-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.983558 | 492 | 1.617188 | 2 |
CVHN Dental Clinic now serving children who quality for Medicaid
In its seventh year of serving the community, Children's Volunteer Health Network is continuing to expand its mission of enhancing the lives of uninsured and underinsured school-aged children in Okaloosa & Walton Counties. As of September 2012, CVHN had facilitated more than 9,900 medical, dental, vision and mental health care procedures since inception in 2005 and has now taken another step toward serving more children in the community. The CVHN Dental Clinic in Santa Rosa Beach, which opened in April 2012, will now be seeing children who qualify for Medicaid.
"CVHN has worked diligently over the past several years to find a solution to the overwhelming dental care needs of our uninsured and underinsured children. There are numerous children in our community who qualify for Medicaid, but are unable to gain access to dental care due to a very limited number of Medicaid providers in our area. We are thrilled to now be able to expand our dental services to children who qualify for Medicaid,' said Zach Billingsley, CVHN's Executive Director.
CVHN will continue operating in its original mission of facilitating access to medical, dental, vision and mental health care for uninsured and underinsured children in Okaloosa and Walton Counties. Billingsley said, "Our hope is that a combined effort from the local health departments, CVHN's generous volunteer providers, the CVHN Mobile Dental Clinic and our new CVHN Dental Clinic will allow all of our local children to gain access to the care they need and deserve. Our mission remains the same. This will simply allow us to reach more children who face issues gaining access to dental care and help provide some sustainable income for our programs."
The CVHN Dental Clinic is a state of the art 3-chair dental clinic headed by Dr. Stephanie Cook. Cook is a graduate of the University of Florida's College of Dentistry and has four years of dental practice experience, primarily treating indigent children. She has taken two mission trips to Guaimaca, Honduras where she treated impoverished Hondurans in the mountain villages, orphanages and hospital of Guaimaca performing various dental and oral surgical procedures.
ABOUT CHILDREN'S VOLUNTEER HEALTH NETWORK, INC. (CVHN)
Children's Volunteer Health Network, Inc., HEALTHY HAPPY KIDS, is a faith-based 501(c)(3) organization, established in 2005 in response to Walton and Okaloosa county's large population of low income families who are unable to access high quality health services due to the unavailability (or inadequacy) of insurance. CVHN seeks to enhance the lives of uninsured and underinsured school-aged children by facilitating free, immediate access to medical, dental, vision and mental health services by utilizing a network of over 95 local physicians, dentists and healthcare providers. CVHN also operates the 'Just for Grins' Mobile Dental Clinic that visits local elementary schools and opened the CVHN Dental Clinic in 2012. CVHN has facilitated more than 9,900 medical, dental, vision and mental healthcare procedures since inception.
About the author
Offering news, features, insider tips & info, photos and video all across the South Walton area. | <urn:uuid:ddbd7ecb-033b-4e99-896f-f3f9872a6b09> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sowal.com/blog/sowal-staff/cvhn-dental-clinic-now-serving-children-who-quality-for-medicaid | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949367 | 679 | 1.5625 | 2 |
An old cassette tape opens the door to century-old yarns.
Shirley Berdie cradles the cassette tape gently in slender fingers, as if it were a rare gemstone.
She's kept it close for nearly 35 years -- since her kids sat their grandfather down in 1977, turned on the tape recorder and captured Joseph Sher's stories of growing up as a poor kid shining shoes and hawking fish in Duluth's Bowery.
"It's invaluable and has a pretty good chunk of Minnesota history on it -- from Duluth to the Iron Range and up the North Shore," she says, as the sun filters through her fifth-floor apartment window in St. Paul.
A retired fourth-grade teacher, Berdie spent her first 60 years in Duluth. Then she moved to Asheville, N.C., for 25 years until her husband, John, died in 2009 and her kids encouraged to move back to Minnesota six months ago.
On the 45-minute tape, Joe Sher talks about his days as plumber, pioneer movie theater projectionist and roller rink instructor. Born in 1893, Joe was 83 when the tape was recorded. He died four years later.
"Oh, boy, did I have experiences," he says.
Joe talks about how his father, who emigrated from Vilna before the Russian army could snatch him up, would take a team of horses 20 miles up to Knife River every day and bring back a ton of herring, ciscoes and trout that "peddlers from the old country, with these two little baskets on their arms, would sell on the streetcars and house to house.
"He'd wake me up at 2 o'clock in the morning and I'd go down to the lake shore 100 feet from our house and chop a hole in the ice to get water for the horses," he says. "Money was so scarce that if I needed new shoes, my father would let me pick a dozen of the biggest herrings" to sell.
When lumberjacks came down from the lumber camps, Joe and other 6-year-old shoe-shine boys "were waiting like a bunch of vultures."
"Their pockets were full of money and what the girls didn't take away from them and the bartenders didn't rob them of, would be a harvest for us," he says. "They had these great big muddy boots and we'd shine one and ask for money before we'd shine the other one."
Joe also gives a rare eyewitness account of the November 1905 Mataafa disaster, when an ore boat failed to make it between Duluth's piers and 10,000 people lighted bonfires and watched crew members try to run from the back to the captain's quarters up front between 50- foot waves. Fifteen survived, three were washed over and six in the rear froze to death. "The next morning, we were watching as they chopped the bodies away from the ice and brought them in," he says.
He sold newspapers for 2 cents on Superior Street.
When a man reached out the window and gave him two pennies for the paper, Joe realized he'd slipped him a $5 gold piece by mistake. He ran home with 10 unsold papers to tell his mother. She asked why he didn't sell all the papers.
"I thought I'd better disappear before the guy came looking for me," he explains. "She slapped me and made me go back and sell the rest."
Shirley Berdie can't help but smile.
"If I didn't have this tape, it wouldn't make a great difference in my life," she says. "But I do have it, so it's something I want to pass along and keep alive." | <urn:uuid:47c3bee8-0b7d-49c2-98a8-86a3f3498e11> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.startribune.com/local/133301333.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00034-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.98379 | 771 | 1.601563 | 2 |
Follow Harriet on Twitter
Javier Sicilia: poet to activist
The New York Times continues to report on Javier Sicilia, the Mexican poet, novelist and essayist who is now the unlikely hero of the movement to drastically alter the Calderón government’s crackdown on organized crime, which has left nearly 40,000 people dead in four years of drug cartel violence (one of whom was Sicilia’s son, killed in March). Sicilia won the country’s top prize (the Premio de Poesía Aguascalientes) for his book of poems Desert Triptych in 2009, but he read his last poem at a rally in early May, and has said in an interview that “Poetry doesn’t exist in me anymore.”
The renouncement calls to mind literary figures like Flipino poet Francisco Baltazar, who wrote his poems in Tagalog instead of Spanish to show his resistance to Spanish rule, before he told his children that it would be better for them to cut off their hands than to pursue a profession as a writer; and, famously, Rimbaud and Laura Riding Jackson, who wrote: “My kind of seriousness, in my looking to poetry for the rescue of human life from the indignities it was capable of visiting upon itself, led me to an eventual turning away from it as failing my kind of seriousness.”
In the case of Javier Sicilia, it is both a radical gesture and an indication that he expects to be far too busy with his new occupation as a leading activist: “Until a few weeks ago, he did not even have a cellphone, but one now trilled incessantly as he made plans for the next step, including a caravan to Ciudad Juárez, the border city that is Mexico’s most violent, next month,” says NYT. Sicilia is also utilizing other media:
Mr. Calderón appeared on national television a couple of days before the most recent march, on Sunday, both to defend his policies and express sympathy for the victims, including the more than 300 whose bodies have been dug up from mass graves in two states in recent weeks.
As he left Monday on a trip to New York and Washington, Mr. Calderón issued five messages on Twitter expressing solidarity with the marchers.
“I celebrate the March for Peace, and its legitimate and just intentions to put an end to the problem of insecurity,” said one. Others called for a national dialogue to find solutions to the crisis.
Importantly, as the New Statesman notes: “Stories that would remain etched in the public consciousness for years in Britain disappear from the headlines in days in Mexico as news of fresh atrocities consigns them to the history books. In April, several mass graves, containing more than a hundred bodies in total, were found in the northern state of Tamaulipas.”
However, the only particular update on the movement’s progress is that it’s being met by deaf ears. Sicilia’s call for the resignation of public safety director Garcia Luna (“a conservative who is widely hated,” according to Fox News!) has been swiftly resisted. Interesting: The New York Times actually dedicated six pages to Luna in 2008. As well, Felipe Calderón’s spokesperson is contradicting what the president reportedly confessed to Sicilia in a recent meeting, that being, “I agree I made a mistake but I can’t go back now.” | <urn:uuid:16b15a60-3a58-4c7e-9a26-25008cd726ee> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2011/05/javier-sicilia-poet-to-activist/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972305 | 729 | 1.789063 | 2 |
Transfer the passion
“..we’re talking about how customers come to make buying decisions in preparation for a discussion as to how this knowledge can, and should, be transferred to how nonprofits approach making appeals of any kind.
We’ve adapted this from Robert Jolles work (specifically the names he assigns categories in his customer centered decision cycle) as well as included insights derived from the Yngage best practices knowledge base.”
This post takes us to the decision making cycle all nonprofits are most interested in: the stages of “getting to yes” when a person is considering answering and appeal from a nonprofit. These stages also apply to those who aren’t answering a specific appeal from a specific organization, but have reached the “Doing My Homework” stage in the process and are now researching/contacting your organization as part of their decision making process.
In our last post that dealt with these stages from a business or “market” perspective, we called this “The “Happy as a Clam” or “Blind as a Bat” Stage.” For subject matter expert Robert Jolles, this is the “Satisfaction” stage. Whether you’re talking about a business or a nonprofit, this stage is pretty much the same – this is when people are fairly satisfied with the status quo. They are OK with things as they are. But there are differences that nonprofit organizations want to keep in mind.
Nonprofits generally find two main groups within this stage: those who are completely oblivious (unaware) of your cause/mission and those who are aware but who either aren’t ready to take the step from being aware to becoming involved – or think the problem isn’t that “bad”, will solve itself, or that others are solving it. In any case, the person in this stage in no way feels a personal pull to support or become involved.
Jolles categorizes this second stage in the decision making cycle as the “Acknowledgement Stage” – what we here at Yngage coined The “I Can (Or Can’t) Handle It” Stage. When applied to a person making a decision to support a nonprofit and/or answer an appeal from a nonprofit, people in this stage are ready to acknowledge to themselves that a problem exists and there are needs to be filled. Many are also ready to voice this to others - but not in particularly active role, not involved with any specific organization.
These are the people who you will find hanging out on social networking sites expressing their opinions – sometimes quite strongly. You will also come across people in this stage of the decision making process during your organization’s in-person networking activities. These are people are ready to concede when approached with an appeal that there is a problem/need – but they are nowhere near ready to commit to your organization’s appeals because they have not yet identified your mission/services/activities as the way to get the job done.
When speaking about the decision making cycle in terms of a business perspective, we called this The “I Can’t Take This Anymore” Stage – Jolles called it the “Decision” stage. Just as in the market place, in the nonprofit world, something fairly specific happens that pushes the person to the point where they not only can no longer deny there is a problem/need – they can no longer deny THEY must do something rather than hope others will.
For example, they themselves, a family member or friend may develop an illness and they want to become involved in some way in order to find a cure or support those suffering from the illness. Or maybe getting off the bus they just now walked by another homeless, hungry person and know they have to do something more than hand them a few dollars.
Again, this is the stage a potential donor or volunteer knows they need to do something – they’re just not certain exactly what that’s going to be.
This is a very important stage in the decision making cycle. In this stage, a person begins to develop criteria (Jolles identifies this as the “Criteria” Stage) for solving or mitigating the problem/need they can no longer ignore exists – nor ignore a sense of personal responsibility to do something about.
Remember that a commercial sales proposition and a nonprofit appeal both are seeking “buy in” – but both need to be very careful NOT to attempt to define this criterion FOR their prospect. This is dangerous territory as doing so can alienate your prospective donor. Instead, this is an especially good time to LISTEN carefully as well as ask probing questions. This both helps a person develop their criteria as well as provide the nonprofit an opportunity to describe how their organization meets that criterion.
We kept the same moniker for this stage as we did in our last post – because this is exactly what people are doing in this stage. Having developed their criteria for solving or mitigating the problem/need, in this stage they begin actively researching specific organizations. Just as when interacting with a person or group in the “I’ve Got to DO Something About This” Stage, it is important NOT to superimpose your criteria. Why? Because by the time you interact with them in this stage of the decision making process (whether online or in-person) they have already not only identified their criteria, but prioritized their criteria. This means they know what is important to them and aren’t interested in people telling them what’s important to them.
Rather than a time to try and convince someone your organization “knows best”, this is a time to provide metrics and stories that back up your ability to meet the expectations of the person considering whether or not they will commit to supporting your mission.
Jolles calls this the Selection stage for a very simple reason – this is the point where a person selects to “answer yes” to your appeal, whether that is for financial support, a call for volunteers, or corporate sponsorship. At this point everybody’s happy. People feel they’ve made a good decision to “do something” and they also feel they’ve made a good choice to partner with your organization to do it with. Your organization is happy and grateful for the support.
But this is certainly not the end of the decision making cycle. Once someone decides to support your organization in any way it is really the beginning of the relationship because the next stage in the cycle is:
This is where the pavement meets the road when it comes to growing sustainable nonprofit organizations. Today, people do not hesitate to evaluate whether or not they are receiving a positive return on their investment in your organization.
People making a purchase have moved from viewing a transaction to “buy” something and then evaluate whether their decision to buy was good one to viewing the transaction as an investment . Similarly, donors and supporters of your organization have moved away from the notion that they are “giving” and then questioning if they made a good decision.
People now commonly view “charitable donations” as a form of investing and expect a positive return on that investment. It is imperative NPs report back to donors and supporters consistently and regularly with metrics and stories that demonstrate your organization continues to meet – and exceed – their criteria. | <urn:uuid:d94def65-950d-4cb1-a690-f652a3d66611> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://yngageblog.wordpress.com/2012/04/25/decision-making-cycle-nonprofit/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00026-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96846 | 1,533 | 1.734375 | 2 |
Evolution of Yoseikan Budo
Three generations of Mochizukis
Yoseikan Budo, created by Minoru Mochizuki in his Shizuoka dojo in 1931 has gone through decades of changes, modernization and improvement. Minoru Sensei never wanted to “freeze” budo in an academic form and pursued a search for constant evolution and improvement, well represented by his own words, “Never teach only what you have been taught”.
Minoru Sensei is now 93 and in frail health, living as tradition wants it with his eldest son Hiroo and his grandsons in the south of France. Aware of his fragility, he thought the time had come for retirement and he transferred his non-hereditary Soke (headmaster) title to Hiroo Sensei in July 1999.
Hiroo Sensei, 65, is to be regarded as a pioneer and genius in the 20th century’s martial arts world. Besides his formal training with his father he also studied with Masters Hyogo, Ostuka and Michihara, therefore reaching a much higher level in atemi forms than his father did. When moving to Europe, he got involved in western arts and practiced boxing and kickboxing at the highest level. He also studied Chinese martial arts. He discovered that many interesting techniques could be learnt from all these arts and could enrich the more academic forms from Japan for a higher efficiency. (In recent years, through the promotion of sports and UFC fights, it has become obvious that an adept of a single martial art cannot win a real-fight situation, and that combatants have to be very complete and have a broad technical knowledge in order to win).
Being a veterinarian doctor, Hiroo Sensei also very soon discovered that many techniques were detrimental to the health and body and he subsequently changed the forms of certain kicks, punches and ukes to make them more suitable to human morphology and physiology.
However, his greatest attainment was to discover that the “vibration” or “undulation” produced by the hara—and called qi by the Chinese—could be used in every technique (atemis, throws, locks, weapons, etc.) while allowing the user to increase his power tremendously while remaining very lithe and supple in all situations. He proved on machines (at the Sports Institute in Paris) that the use of this wave could increase the power by 50%. He analyzed the technique and made it clear to explain and understand (something the Chinese never were able to do). Then he ingeniously linked all the techniques to the undulation wave and made it a starting point of study for all the techniques.
Although he was the national French karate team coach—world champions under his coaching in 1970—, for many years, Hiroo Sensei had refused to organize budo competitions to avoid removing dangerous techniques and impoverishing the art. Only after many years of mounting pressure from his students did he decide to organize tournaments. Over the years the system has been refined, and it is probably the only budo in the world that offers so many possibilities competition wise.
The standard competition involves three kinds of sparring:
- Sude Randori (atemi/throws/osae)
- Emono Randori (with foam padded weapons)
- Emono Sude Randori (combo —or padded tanto— against bare hands)
The rules for this form of randori include only very few prohibitions, but it is practiced with complete protective equipment to avoid injuries. Almost all techniques are used. (The forbidden techniques are basically kicks to the knees, head grab or twist, and locks).
Additionally, there are also some specialized competitions:
- Aiki (with one or several opponents)
- Kyoe Randori (the supreme form of randori)
- Bajutsu (on horse back)
Note: The Kyoe Randori involves all techniques (atemis/aiki/jujitsu) and no protective gear, but combatants must keep perfect control over all the techniques.
In other words, Yoseikan Budo now offers an unlimited array of techniques to the adept of serious martial arts. Competition over the years has greatly enhanced the efficiency of techniques and boosted the level of martial artists. Attacks and defenses are fast, real and powerful, and do not give room to any imprecise or careless behavior.
It is now at the same time a very traditional martial art and a modern sport all rolled into one. The belt system has remained the same with all students wearing the same blue and white belt without any distinctive rank marks.
Hiroo Sensei emphasizes the value of men more than the value of belts, and keeps on modifying and improving Yoseikan Budo for Yoseikan Budo to remain a living martial art, against the pessimism of traditionalists…
Presently, thousands of people practice Yoseikan Budo worldwide (there are 140 clubs in France alone). For more information visit the YWF website.
The above reflects the opinions of the writer only and does not engage the responsibility of the YWF and/or the Mochizuki family in any way.
G. Zwygart is a freelance writer based in Taiwan. | <urn:uuid:274f21ad-1d41-412e-ad31-381745bfd440> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.aikidojournal.com/article?articleID=244 | 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 | 0.971828 | 1,075 | 1.757813 | 2 |
Rusting freighter to be scrapped next week
Published Thursday, May 31, 2012 10:45PM ADT
The scrapping of a vessel that had been partially submerged in the Sydney, N.S., harbour for more than five years will begin on Monday.
The 53-metre trawler Cape Ann III was recently raised during a joint Canadian-American military training exercise.
John Aylward of the Cape Ann III Artificial Reef Society says it was decided to recycle the vessel for environmental reasons.
Terra Mac Construction will handle most of the demolition after some site preparation is completed this weekend.
Permits give the company until the end of June to send the ship to the scrap heap.
The cost of raising and beaching the vessel was covered by the military, while the recycled metal obtained during scrapping is expected to cover most of that expense. | <urn:uuid:d145cf4d-27eb-42f6-a20a-6742e0ad51b2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://atlantic.ctvnews.ca/rusting-freighter-to-be-scrapped-next-week-1.833818 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00032-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979643 | 177 | 1.617188 | 2 |
A longer school day is in store for students at two Huntington County schools, Huntington County Community Schools Superintendent Tracey Shafer says.
Shafer announced the plan during a discussion of the Indiana Department of Education's school letter grades during the Nov. 12 meeting of the school board.
The overall grade for the corporation is a "B," he noted, up one letter grade from last year.
But, he noted, letter grades for Lincoln and Flint Springs elementary school fell significantly from last year.
To improve these grades next year, Shafer says the plan is to "provide an extended learning day" for students at those two schools.
The increase in instruction time will be voluntary this year, he said, and transportation will be provided for students who choose to participate.
However, he added, the increase in class time will be mandatory for all Lincoln and Flint Springs students during the 2013-14 school year as long as transportation issues can be worked out.
Long term, Shafer said he hopes these schools will have equalized learning times with other schools across the district.
"We are working hard to make it happen," he said.
The board approved a request to add three new courses at Huntington North - advanced placement microeconomics, Chinese III and forensics (biology II).
Forensics will be offered to Viking New Tech students only, while Chinese III and AP microeconomics will be open to the general population of students.
The classes will be added to the course catalog for the 2013-14 school year.
Chuck Grable, assistant superintendent, and Tom Ashley, director of technology, discussed bandwidth, student email accounts and the "re-imaging" of student iPads.
Grable stated the rollout of student e-mail accounts is "pretty much finished" and said the updated bandwidth settings are "holding steady."
He also stated 90 percent of student iPads at Riverview Middle School have been "re-imaged" - a process that replaces the Safari web browser with a more restrictive browser, Mobicip; places restrictions on applications that can be downloaded to the iPad; and removes Apple's app store.
"Mobicip seems to be helping resolve the situation regarding the access to inappropriate content," noted Grable.
However, he pointed out that Mobicip is "a short-term solution" and a more long-term solution would be to change the school's firewall protection.
At this time, Crestview Middle School and Huntington North High School's iPads have not been re-imaged. Grable predicts the process will begin at Crestview within the next two weeks.
School Board President Kevin Patrick presented his concerns about disciplining students who use the iPads for other than educational purposes.
Patrick called for the development of a policy detailing how iPad usage will be monitored and how discipline will be implemented.
"The discipline needs to be very tough ... we need to deal with it swiftly," he said.
Grable said the administration is currently encountering students at Riverview who are finding ways around the new, safer settings placed on their iPads after re-imaging.
Ashley explained this type of activity can be monitored and building administrators can be made aware of students taking part in this type of behavior.
Grable and Ashley also presented a new iPad case to the board. This new case is expected to prevent breakage more effectively than the current iPad cases. Ashley stated he would have recommendations of purchase for the board within a few days.
Jon Bennett, assistant superintendent for business and classified staff, presented a request for a 2 percent raise for classified and administrative staff.
For classified staff, the increase was unanimously approved as a 2 percent raise in wages for all classified staff, retroactive to the beginning of the 2012-13 school year (or the employee's hire date if he or she began employment after the start of the school year).
For the administration, the increase was unanimously approved as a 2 percent raise in base pay, retroactive to the beginning of the 2012-13 school year.
In other business:
• Shafer announced three General Education Diplomas (GED) were awarded in October.
• The board unanimously approved the advertisement of fuel bids for transportation.
• Bennett reported a cash balance of $1.4 million in the corporation's general fund; a cash balance of $28,000 in the capital projects fund; and $1.9 million cash balance in the transportation fund.
• Member Rex Baxter, District 7, requested a report at the next meeting detailing the possibility of paying substitute teachers more money per day. Substitutes within the corporation currently make $70 per day worked, or more if the substitute is long term.
• The board unanimously awarded permission to accept a donation of $250 from Wells Fargo Bank, to be used for after school programming and recognizing student efforts of achievement. | <urn:uuid:1e8d2f9d-d3e0-4660-b8cc-72cb34939774> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.huntingtoncountytab.com/community/19437/decline-state-letter-grades-could-result-longer-days-two-schools | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955309 | 987 | 1.539063 | 2 |
Oily skin is very difficult to manage as every time you are kind of holding tissues in hands and removing extra oil from your chin, nose and forehead. Heredity is the major cause of oily skin. The best part of having oily skin is that it less prone to wrinkles than normal skin.
Few home remedies to cure oily skin are as follows-
Use of Almonds and honey – Take 2-3 almonds and grind them properly. Add ½ tablespoon honey to it. Mix them to make a fine paste. Massage your face with this paste gently for 15-20 minutes. Wipe off with a hot water dipped cloth. Wash with water after that. It gives your skin a deadly glow. It is very effective home remedy for oily skin.
Use of Cornstarch - Cornstarch helps in drying oily patches on skin. Take a cup of lukewarm water and add 2 tablespoons of cornstarch to it. Mix well to make a fine paste. You can now rub this paste on your face in upward circular motion for 10-15 minutes. Now allow it to dry completely. Wash with lukewarm water after that. Regular use of this helps in removing extra oil from your skin. One of the useful home remedies for oily skin.
Use of Baking Soda – Add half teaspoon of baking soda to your liquid soap or body wash. Gently massage the oily areas of skin. Wash with cool water after that. Regular use of this will help you in getting rid of extra oil on your skin.
Use of Salt – It is a simple and well known home remedy for oily skin. Add a teaspoon of salt in a bottle of water. Sprinkle this water on your face several times a day. You will notice the changes in your skin after a week. It is an efficient way to get rid of extra oil on your skin.
Use of Apples and Oatmeal – Take half cup of mashed apple and add half cup oatmeal to it. Now add few drops of lemon juice and one egg white (beaten) to it. Mix well to make a thick paste. Now apply this .paste on your skin for 15-20 minutes. Wash with cool water after that. It is an efficient home remedy for oily skin.
Use of Vinegar – Vinegar is very helpful in treating oily skin. Apply vinegar on the oily skin with a cotton ball. If your skin is sensitive then add 4teaspoons of water to 1 teaspoon vinegar. You can also freeze vinegar and use it as a cooling pad. One of the simple home remedies for oily skin.
Use of Egg yolk – An egg yolk mask helps in drying out the skin. Take the egg yolk and apply on the oily part of skin with a cotton ball. Let it dry for 15 minutes. Wash with cool water after that. Regular use of this will balance the oily spots on your skin.
Use of Lemons- Take 2 tablespoons of lemon juice. Mix same quantity of water to it. Apply this solution on your face with a cotton ball. Wash with lukewarm water for better and quick results.
Use of Aloe vera - . Aloe vera gel work like wonders in reducing oily spots on the skin. Take a leaf and slice it to get the gel. Apply this gel 2-3 times daily. It is a simple home remedy for curing oily skin. You can also keep the gel in refrigerator 30 minutes before applying. It will give you a smooth as well as refreshing effect.
Use of Limes and cucumbers – Take 2 tablespoons of cucumber juice. Add same quantity of lime juice to it. Apply this solution on the oily skin parts. Allow it to dry. Wash with cool water.
Few Tips –
· Always keep your skin clean. Use a mild soap or a gentle face wash.
· Always carry few tissues with you.
· Use astringents to wipe off the excessive oil. | <urn:uuid:40a5f24e-5b98-4edf-9f0a-cfff27a82b13> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.home-remedies-world.com/homeremedies-oilyskin.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00004-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.931281 | 805 | 1.648438 | 2 |
I need your input to a parenting cunundrum I created.
Last night at dinner with the family we were talking about how the different states in our wonderful country got their names. My youngest son asked how Ohio got its name and I told him I thought the word was from the Native Americans that lived here and that the name came from there. My oldest son then asked if Michigan was an Indian name. My wife said that it was. He then asked what did the word mean. I, very calmly, said "The word Michigan translated into English means 'The Butthole of the World'." Both boys, ages 6 and 8, laughed their tails off. My wife looks at me from across the table and says, "I hope you are willing to take any consequences your little remark may cause." Granted, we don't condone "potty" talk in our house, but I thought the comment was very apt.
You also have to know that when my oldest was going threw potty training he would regularly pee in the toilet, but would still poop in his diaper. After a few weeks of this I told him that the only people in this world that pooped their pants were Michigan fans. He stopped that day. Again my wife thought I was to crass, but I got the result she wanted. It worked for his younger brother as well. This time older brother told his younger sibling and it worked just as quickly.
I know I won't win any parenting awards. But I also don't think instilling in them that Meatchicken and everything that comes from there is bad will only help them as they grow up.
So, what do you guys and gals think? Did I go too far, or not far enough? Let me know in the comments. I'm interested in your thoughts on this matter. | <urn:uuid:d53ecd87-3d62-4868-bd2f-8e2ece3bace0> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.elevenwarriors.com/blogs/doc/did-i-do-the-right-thing | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368711005985/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516133005-00024-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.994593 | 372 | 1.515625 | 2 |
Black and white mourned together at Boer’s open graveside,’ wrote Beeld journalist Nico van Burick
February 2 2001 -- SWARTRUGGENS, NOW - Beeld newspaper reported on February 2 2001 that Swartruggens farmer Piet Potgieter, 41, was buried as a tribal member of the Silverkrans tribal authority, and his death eulogised by the chairman of the National African Farmers Union in North West, Nabot Leketi, and by Captain Mogatoa Motlatal, chief of the tribe in the North West region. Beeld journalist Nico van Burick, who attended the funeral, quoted Captain Motlatal as saying that Boer Piet Potgieter was an honourable and kind man who was considered a member of his tribe. Hundreds of tribal members attended the funeral and contributed to the funeral costs as a sign of respect. Piet Potgieter’s younger brother Kobus was also murdered on their family farm five years earlier in 1996. Piet Potgieter was killed ‘execution style’ last Friday by unknown black men with a 9mm handgun, in front of his wife Magda.
source: Tabita charity archives and SAPS Tzaneen
Lita Fourie (nee Cross): tel +27 725427352 Mobile, Address Yamorna 29, 0850 Tzaneen, South Africa, Email [email protected], | <urn:uuid:d26235fb-8686-4a13-9c3d-e80911712396> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.boerentrepreneur.com/farmitracker/reports/view/1298 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.940104 | 303 | 1.695313 | 2 |
Get flash to fully experience Pearltrees
Your name, profile picture, gender, current city, networks, Friends List, and all the pages you subscribe to are now publicly available information on Facebook. This means everyone on the web can see it; it is searchable. This represents just the latest instance of Facebook violating the contract it holds with its users. This is no small matter, either.
Just over two years ago, Sophos UK conducted a Facebook ID Probe to see how willingly social networkers give out their personal data. 43% of those in the probe accepted an invitation to be friends with Freddi Staur – allegedly a 20-something from London, but in reality a green plastic frog . That was in 2007, and in England.
Five months after it first announced coming privacy changes this past summer, Facebook is finally rolling out a new set of revamped privacy settings for its 350 million users. The social networking site has rightly been criticized for its confusing privacy settings, most notably in a must-read report by the Canadian Privacy Commissioner issued in July and most recently by a Norwegian consumer protection agency . We're glad to see Facebook is attempting to respond to those privacy criticisms with these changes, which are going live this evening.
Sent this to my email newsletter earlier today… you can join the list at www.bit.ly/jasonslist
I came close to killing my Facebook account this week.
Facebook's privacy pullback isn't just outrageous; it's a landmark turning point for the social network.
Like many other people, I have a Facebook account. | <urn:uuid:9bd14086-1765-48b0-93f1-c517c229d722> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.pearltrees.com/mahendra/facebook-privacy/id392329 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949894 | 320 | 1.601563 | 2 |
Video calling comes to Facebook
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg (L) watches a demonstration of the new Facebook video chat during a news conference at Facebook headquarters July 6, 2011 in Palo Alto, Calif.
It's going to be pretty simple for the computer user, really. You go to your Facebook page and look for the little list of friends in the lower right. Same space where the instant messaging feature has been. You'll see a camera icon there. That's the portal into making a video call to your Facebook pal.
The request goes to your friend, they see that there's a call coming in from you, and then they decide whether or not they want to accept it. If they do, boom, you're connected. Facebook has worked with Skype to provide the actual guts of the operation here, but you won't need a Skype account to make this work. Just a Facebook account and a webcam of some sort (most newer computers have that built in).
We talk to Molly Wood, executive editor at CNET. She says you will need to have some special software on the computer but it loads with just a click and then you're up and running. As for security and privacy, the calls are restricted to your Facebook friends only. This might be a good time to reconsider all those friendship requests you accepted from people you don't really know because they could soon be attempting to call you on Facebook.
Of course, video calling has been around for a while now. Most recently, Apple users have been able to make calls on Facetime. And Skype has been around as a standalone application for some time. But for most of us, the browser is the place we do most of our computer living.
Glenn Fleishman writes for economist.com and has been following telephony issues for many years. He thinks this has real potential to take off where other video calling methods have not: "If you live in the Philippines and half your family is in America, it's exciting. When my in-laws were 3,000 miles away, we connected this huge system for them so they could see their grandchildren. That personal connection, especially the family connection, will drive this."
Also in this program, a flying car gets a new round of government approvals and should be on sale next year. Video calls? Flying cars? This is your day, George Jetson! | <urn:uuid:f18c7cd6-2c49-4ab0-a385-7e8819f4058d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.marketplace.org/topics/tech/video-calling-comes-facebook | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970477 | 482 | 1.585938 | 2 |
EC probes Apple for anti-competitive antics
Joins FTC in monopoly pondering
It's not just the Federal Trade Commission that thinks Apple might be going all monopolistic - the European Commission is also taking a careful look into Cupertino's business.
The New York Post reports that the European Commission is working with its US equivalent, the FTC, to see if the practice of banning companies from iOS on the basis of their ability to compete with Apple (or its mates) is anti-competitive.
That's certainly how the iTunes application store looks from the outside. Bans on automatic porting technologies are one thing, and arguably unreasonable in themselves; but only applying them when the company has "adobe" in its name is hardly fair.
Companies such as Titanium and Grapple Mobile* have been happily getting ported applications into the store, in breach of a rule that now looks like it was imposed specifically to prevent Adobe's Flash slipping in.
Similarly, the ban on applications that interpret downloaded code is hard to justify, other than that it protects the vertical integration of the iTunes App Store. Allow someone to create a console emulator and they might start selling games direct - something Apple won't permit.
Apple claims that this is all in the interests of quality, and simplicity for its users, no matter how much it looks like Apple using its unprecedented level of control to shut out the competition. But even if the Commission agrees, it could decide that competition between suppliers is more important than either of those things. We'll find out in six months. ®
* Grapple has been on the phone to assure us they always play by Apple's rules, and would never consider converting anything to Objective C that wasn't originally written in Objective C. | <urn:uuid:1f3f900d-96bb-477c-8417-95bec66a2819> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/08/11/eu_investigation_apple/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00028-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972653 | 352 | 1.828125 | 2 |
Rupert Murdoch once described sports and films as the 'battering rams' of pay television. The expansion of distribution methods for television has placed scarcity in broadcasting away from distribution and onto content production.
This gives copyright owners leverage because success as a broadcaster depends upon securing ongoing access to the the rights of distinctive and attractive programming. So, the bargaining power of television rights owners has increased.
The growth in pay television has lead to bidding wars for attractive content from sustainable producers and inflated the cost of programming rights. Sports is the perfect example, and trends show that sports franchises have moved from mainstream channels to pay channels over the last few years in increasing numbers.
With direct payment, costs for outbidding terrestrial rivals are simply passed on to the viewer. Advertiser-supported broadcasters cannot do this. So the growth of subscription funding is inevitably shifting not only audiences but also economic power away from advertising-funded channels to pay-television operators.
This trend is clearly reiterated by Kagan Research today, Broadcast TV Networks Grab Two-Thirds Of Sports Ad Dollars Despite Cable's Gains | <urn:uuid:3f4a8a0b-9cbb-4dcf-b504-3b98efa8985d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.alexaobrien.com/secondsight/ideas/sports_the_battering_rams_of_p.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00011-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951057 | 220 | 1.78125 | 2 |
Burlington Northern Santa Fe (NYSE: BNI) is the second-largest U.S. railroad company with over 6,300 locomotives and 32,000 route miles. The company ships freight, such as coal and agricultural products, throughout the western two thirds of the United States.
In recent years, Burlington has benefited from rising demand for coal energy in the US. Increasing volumes of imports from China have also increased demand for BNI services. Most imports enter the U.S. through California and have to be shipped through out the U.S. by railroad companies like Burlington.
BNSF primarily serves the Midwestern, Western, and Southern regions and ports of the US. BNSF transports coal and a range of consumer, industrial, and agricultural products.
The following map shows BNSF's primary routes and trackage rights - which allow BNSF to access major cities and ports in the western and southern United States as well as Canadian and Mexican traffic. BNSF also serves many smaller markets by working with over 200 shortline (short regional transportation) partners. BNSF also has an agreement with CSX (CSX), Kansas City Southern (KSU), and Canadian National Railway Company which expands the marketing reach for all 4 companies and their customers.
Demand for coal will play an important role in BNI's growth prospects, as coal accounts for 20% of its revenues. The company mostly transports coal from the Powder River Basin (PRB) of Montana/Wyoming to coal-fired utilities and industrial users. In 2006, PRB coal averaged $1.31/Million British Thermal Units (MMBtu) delivered – easily the lowest priced American coal and substantially below natural gas delivered costs of $5.00/MMBtu or more. Last year, Burlington delivered over 55% of PRB coal. Much of BNI’s coal business is based on legacy contracts that will see significant price adjustments upwards to current market rates. It is estimated that 60% of BNI’s coal contracts will be renegotiated in the next 5 years to BNI’s benefit.
Agricultural products account for some 16% of BNSF revenues. Growing global food and ethanol demand has resulted in increased production of corn, soybean, wheat, and a whole host of other agricultural commodities. BNSF's rail network is well positioned to serve the grain-producing regions of the Midwest and Great Plains. This could boost this segment's freight revenue.
BNI's main competition comes from other railroads and the long-haul trucking industry. Union Pacific (UNP) is the primary railroad competitor. Many of their tracks run parallel and they service many of the same ports. UNP is the larger of the two companies and is the only railroad that services all six gateways to Mexico. However, BNI has better operational efficiency, as measured by it average operating ratio (operating expenses/operating revenue) - BNSF's average operating ratio over the past five years is about 4% lower than UNP's. In response, UNP created the Unified Plan in 2005-2006 to lower their operating ratio. It is designed to increase speed, efficiency, and improve asset utilization by changing their transportation system. The plan is new, but its impact could be noticeable over the next few years. | <urn:uuid:27c99877-7ec5-48cb-a93f-62f4255cd50d> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.wikinvest.com/stock/Burlington_Northern_Santa_Fe_(BNI) | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00039-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96577 | 684 | 1.632813 | 2 |
April 04, 2011
Häschenschule wooden Rabbits from East Germany
These rather fetching, wooden rabbits turned up at the car boot, a while back, but despite having their bases stamped, I knew nothing about them except they were East German.
However after stumbling across Spielzeugladen, a toy shop in Freiburg, South West Germany, I'm a little bit wiser. It appears the characters, Hans & Gretchen, come from the classic German tale, Die Häschenschule. The Rabbit School was written by Albert Sixtus, and first published in 1924. | <urn:uuid:e3c17e7e-d92b-4b89-9989-c6ac3ed13108> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://downtothecellar.blogspot.com/2011/04/haschenschule-wooden-rabbits-from-east.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705195219/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115315-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.96579 | 125 | 1.734375 | 2 |
Komotau, 22nd March, 1938.
Dear Comrade Citrine,
I have just received some information of extreme importance and absolute authenticity, which I am forthwith transmitting to you, as in the present situation it is of greatest significance.
Last week, 3,000 German regular soldiers left the Dresden Command, Saxony, for the Munster Camp in the north of the Province of Hanover, for re-shipping to Spain. Munster Camp is a vast soldiers' training camp in the moors, and it may safely be assumed that an army is being collected there for Spain.
Moreover, another 4,000 regular soldiers are "standing to" in Königsbrück, Saxony, ready to leave for Spain. In recent weeks, there have been quite open appeals in the Army for "volunteers" for Spain, whereas formerly attempts were made to camouflage it. Herein is an indication of the change in the Army command since 4th February.
In the Dresden Command, all subaltern officers on leave have been recalled to the colours, and all reserve officers have received mobilisation orders. No person connected with the military can leave the vicinity of the Dresden District Command for more than 24 hours without official permission. The object of all these military measures is a logical conclusion. They can hardly been connected with Spain, and there remains no other conclusion but that the measures are directed against Czechoslovakia.
These positive particulars are absolutely correct and authenticated, even if they should be denied by diplomatic words. They refer only to the land Army, since the Air Arm is under Göring's control, and he exercises his own command.
A further communication from North Germany says that each Army Corps is required to make 1,500 infantrymen and 500 artillerymen available for Spain.
That would mean, without the men for the Air Arm - aircraft and anti-aircraft defence - 26,000 to 28,000 men for Spain.
I have also informed Comrade Schevenels, but as I thought no time ought to be lost, I am writing to you direct.
(signed) H. SCHLIESTÄDT. | <urn:uuid:dc9c4130-651d-4bf9-83bb-6fe0b8eaf54f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://contentdm.warwick.ac.uk/cdm/compoundobject/collection/scw/id/4821/rec/20 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970605 | 442 | 1.710938 | 2 |
Stolen or Fabricated Prescription Pads Play Role in Surge in Painkiller Abuse
Stolen or fabricated prescription pads are contributing to the surge in prescription drug abuse, experts say. There is a growing call for computer systems that directly link doctors to pharmacies, to avoid this problem.
The federal government is offering bonus payments for physicians who voluntarily stop using paper prescriptions, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. The newspaper notes 34 percent of office-based prescribers are sending their prescriptions electronically through the Medicare program.
Computerized prescribing, or “E-prescribing,” is gaining in popularity, mostly as a way to reduce medication errors. The Drug Enforcement Administration began giving physicians the option to send prescriptions electronically for painkillers in 2010.
At a California diagnostic imaging center, investigators in March found thousands of unsigned prescription pads that were stored there as part of a suspected Medicare fraud scam. Last fall, the New York State Health Department reported an unknown number of blank prescription pads had been stolen from hospitals in New York City since 2008. The thefts are thought to be linked to gangs selling prescription painkillers illegally.
The New York State Health Department believes the stolen prescription forms are mainly being used to obtain the painkiller oxycodone. The prescriptions have been used in New York as well as several other states, and at mail-order pharmacies.
A memorandum by the Health Department says a large nationwide organized crime gang known to traffic in illicit and legal drugs is involved in the distribution of stolen prescription forms. State officials said they planned to review policies and safeguards to protect prescription forms at New York hospitals, and will draw up new guidelines, according to the memo. | <urn:uuid:c3a2b168-fb68-4ef8-8138-36243196b2bd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.drugfree.org/join-together/government/stolen-or-fabricated-prescription-pads-play-role-in-surge-in-painkiller-abuse | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948077 | 336 | 1.5625 | 2 |
well, assuming the command prompt is accessible on the limited user account, you can. Go to start, then run, type in "cmd", type "net user", then locate the account that is an administrator. type "net user 'admin' *" (obviously replace 'admin' with whatever the username is) then you can type in a new password. be aware that the little stars that usually appear when you type in a password will not be there. then log out and log in as the administrator. then you are free to change the administrative settings to however you would like them. good luck.
Link: view Post: 118926
This is very interesting. Does it work on corporate networks? If it does, is there a way to disable this as this is obviously a huge security risk! | <urn:uuid:f2c3f79b-6101-44c3-8c70-816f7819a806> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.astahost.com/star/tidofs | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.947172 | 165 | 1.78125 | 2 |
This is from http://the-hermeneutic-of-continuity.blogspot.com/ which is always worth a visit.
An article in today's Telegraph Schools get help for 'too sexual' pupils tells how Birmingham council's inappropriate sexual behaviour unit is sending in "teams of experts" to schools to tackle the problem of little children engaging in sexually explicit behaviour. Stephane Breton, a social worker is quoted as saying:
They are seven and eight and they are flirtatious. We go with them and address the issue to make sure they know what they are talking about.So that's all right then.Yesterday, the same paper reported on how £150m plan has failed to cut teenage pregnancies. The £150 million has been spent on the notorious Teenage Pregnancy Unit. The headline figures from the TPU show a small decline in teenage pregnancy "rates" - but there is actually an increase in the number of teenage pregnancies. Critics of the figures have pointed out that the rates can fall where there is an increase in population, especially in the population of Muslims "where teenage pregnancy is rare" - i.e. where there is sound moral education for teenagers.To get some idea of why children are becoming sexualised at an early age and why £150 million has done nothing useful to reduce teenage pregnancy rates, it is worth having a look at another article from the Telegraph about a book for PSHE (Personal, Social and Health Education) produced by Coordination Group Publications. Alternatively, have a look at the unit descriptors for the Channel 4 DVD All about us: Living and Growing - a programme that is used in at least one Catholic school to my knowledge:
Unit 1: For Ages 5-7
*How Did I Get Here? (Contains animation of the sexual organs)
Growing UpUnit 2:
For Ages 7-9
* How Babies Are Made (Contains animation of sexual intercourse)
Growing Up (Contains footage of a live birth)Unit 3:
For Ages 9-11
* Girl Talk
* Boy Talk (Contains information on erections, wet dreams and masturbation. There is an animated sequence showing ejaculation).
If some old bloke on a park bench showed children how to masturbate, he would be lucky if the police got to him before their parents did. Nevertheless, campaigners against this kind of sex-education are routinely dismissed as cranks and extremists. They may begin to find some allies outside the Catholic sector as parents become aware of the actual content of these sort of materials. In 2003, parents of children at a non-Catholic school in Dagenham protested vigorously and got the programme banned, saying it was "virtually pornographic". In Scotland, North Lanarkshire Council, East Renfrewshire Council and the Western Isles Council have all banned the programme as unsuitable for use in schools. | <urn:uuid:670cc119-7025-435c-be80-7472f9b9ece1> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://marymagdalen.blogspot.co.uk/2006/07/sex-ed-pouring-petrol-on-fire.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00009-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950304 | 588 | 1.78125 | 2 |
Date of this Version
In this paper, we report on the production of Fe cluster/FePt matrix nanocomposite permanent magnets. Monodispersed Fe clusters with sizes below 10 nm were formed by gas aggregation techniques. These Fe clusters were imbedded in an FePt matrix by alternate deposition from two sources. Specimens with a range of Fe cluster phase content from 0 to 30 vol% were produced by controlling deposition times from each source. As-deposited FePt formed in the A1 structure; thus, post-deposition heat treatment was necessary to form the hard magnetic L10 FePt compound. A single-step heat treatment at 600 °C for 10 min leads to nanocomposite structures with excellent magnetic properties. The coercivity decreased with increasing Fe cluster content, while the energy product initially increased, reaching a maximum of almost 18 MGOe, and then decreased at higher Fe cluster content. Secondary heat treatment at 500 °C signifi cantly improved the magnetic properties when compared with the single-step heat treatment at 600 °C. Increased coercivity and remanence was observed, resulting in energy products of 21 MGOe. The energy products are close to 70 percent greater than expected for uncoupled systems. | <urn:uuid:83e4039c-058a-4174-a7a5-fe5042db292c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/physicssellmyer/95/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00037-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.938153 | 257 | 1.679688 | 2 |
STOCKTON - The city unveiled a slate of ambitious plans Friday for turning around Stockton's violent culture along with a barrage of trends, facts and figures underpinning high crime that for years have tarnished the city's reputation and plagued residents.
In addition to the proven gang diversion programs called Peacekeepers and Project Ceasefire, which is in its early stages of a comeback in Stockton, the city identified more ventures that have worked in troubled cities across the nation and could change lives here.
One year ago the Stockton City Council voted to spend $150,000 to hire criminal
justice consultants David Bennett and Donna Lattin to guide Stockton's Marshall Plan on crime.
Their work made its debut Friday. City Manager Bob Deis said this begins a community discussion on what to do next. Deis gave no deadlines, but here's what he said the community can expect next:
• Consultants deliver a written report to the City Council, including their findings and recommendations.
• City leaders seek input from the community, setting priorities based on the consultants' recommendations.
• The City Council consider how to pay for enacting any new programs.
• The city executes its plan.
One called Becoming a Man targets boys with a D average in school and ripe for gang recruitment, pairing them with a mentor and sports programs, such as night basketball.
In the Hospital Response program, counselors intervene after a violent crime. The rationale is that friends and family members often plot their retaliation at the hospital bedside of their injured loved one.
This discussion came in a four-hour symposium, culminating eight months of work by the city's Marshall Plan on crime steering committee and consultants hired by Stockton.
The city invited about 200 community members to the Progressive Community Church to listen and give feedback. The event was designed to launch a dialogue with the community on what steps to take next.
City Manager Bob Deis, who has guided the effort, acknowledged that Stockton's bankruptcy is a complicating factor, but it is no excuse for failing to take action.
"It's not whether we're going to do this," Deis said. "It's when and how."
While Stockton does not control much of the criminal justice system outside its police department, it is taking the lead in solving the larger crime problems because Stockton experiences the most violence.
Public outcry for officials to act peaked last year - the most deadly in Stockton's history.
Criminal justice consultants David Bennett and Donna Lattin, hired to unearth the root of Stockton's crime, shared their findings. They have pored over crime data and toured the courts, jails, police department and streets.
They found known "hot spots" or historic crime areas. The good news is that there are known methods for changing that. They also identified what doesn't work, such as youth boot camps and scared straight classes, Lattin said.
"Getting tough on crime is just not good enough," Lattin said. "Getting soft on crime is just not good enough. We have to get savvy."
Stewart Wakeling, the consultant hired to launch Ceasefire, said much of Stockton's gun crime is perpetrated by its most active 18 gangs and their 700 members.
Armed with data, key players in the Stockton Police Department in April will begin "call in" sessions, bringing in a select few for group meetings to offer either a helping hand or show them the heavy hand of the law that awaits them.
With a focus on these known and chronic offenders - often young men - the city's overwhelming violence becomes manageable, Wakeling said.
"We don't want to just keep them alive," he said. "We want them to have better lives."
Stockton Police Chief Eric Jones explained how the city's finances have crippled his department. He named specific Stockton intersections where crime and violence too often erupt.
Kelley and Salters drives is one where residents distrust police, and an open drug market goes unchecked at the intersection of Sonora and Sutter streets, he said.
In 2011, Stockton had the second highest crime and violence rates in the state, and it ranked as the nation's 10th most violent city. In 2012, the city hit a record of 71 homicides, marking a 22 percent increase over the past year.
Budget cuts since 2009 robbed his department of 99 officers and many civilian employees. His department is worse staffed than any other city nationwide of its size and crime rate, Jones said.
Stockton has a budget to employ 344 officers, but a city of its size and complexity needs closer to 590. Stockton has no narcotics unit, and property crimes take a backseat to triage violence, he said.
Jones said his officers tell him they became cops to solve crimes, but they are running from one violent crime to another.
"They want to make their community better," he said. "They get weary responding to emergency to emergency to emergency."
A panel of former gang members took center stage in the symposium, bringing the harsh reality of street culture into the room - and hope that this is not a losing battle.
Stan Thomas, a former gang member and now outreach worker with Peacekeeper, told his story of coming from an abusive home, starting with drugs as a boy and having to learn to read as an adult.
He got out before it was too late and often asks hardened gang members why they're the only ones around who don't know they're going to die early.
"The last guy I told that," Thomas said. "I saw him walking down the street. He was killed a week later."
Samuel Diaz, 18, a client of the Peacekeepers described having a gun put in his lap at age 8 growing up in San Jose. He landed behind bars for "some really big stuff," facing a 40-year prison sentence. He asked for help.
Today, he's about to graduate from high school and in the painful process of getting his gang tattoos removed with Peacekeepers' help.
"Gangs lead you to two words - dead end," he said.
Community members were invited to speak.
Former City Council member Duane Isetti noted that Ceasefire once thrived in Stockton. And then it vanished. He doesn't want to be part of a discussion after 15 years having the same conversation about reviving it, Isetti said. | <urn:uuid:9593e7ae-1797-42a6-a748-958e9087e263> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.recordnet.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20130209/A_NEWS/302090326/0/rss02 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700264179/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516103104-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97962 | 1,325 | 1.742188 | 2 |
By CAIN BURDEAU, Associated Press
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — The Times-Picayune, one of the nation's oldest newspapers, will no longer offer print editions seven days a week and instead plans to offer three printed issues a week starting in the fall. The change means New Orleans would become the largest metro area in the nation without a daily newspaper in the digital age.
The changes announced Thursday were combined with similar moves at three major Alabama daily newspapers also owned by the Newhouse family group's Advance Publications. The Birmingham News, the Press-Register in Mobile and The Huntsville Times will switch to publishing three days a week as part of a new focus on online news. At all four papers, there will be unspecified staff cuts. All four papers will continue to publish continuously on their websites, and online access will remain free.
Newspapers have struggled in recent years as consumers increasingly get their news online. Print advertising declined as the economy went into recession, and newspapers have yet to learn how to make online advertising as profitable as its printed counterpart.
"For us, this isn't about print versus digital, this is about creating a very successful multi-platform media company that addresses the ever-changing needs of our readers, our online users and our advertisers," said Advance Publications' president of local digital strategy, Randy Siegel, in an interview with The Associated Press. "This change is not easy, but it's essential for us to remain relevant."
Siegel didn't say how much money the reduced print runs in Louisiana and Alabama would save, nor how many staff members would be laid off or hired in the new online units.
"To get good quality information is not cheap," said Jennifer Greer, chair of the journalism department at the University of Alabama. "What you are seeing is people trying to figure out a business model that works in a digital age."
The decision was met with sadness by some residents in New Orleans, where The Times-Picayune won a Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Staffers continued reporting despite being forced out of the newspaper's offices amid widespread flooding and power outages.
The storm drove away thousands of residents, some of whom never came back. The city — and its newspaper — struggled to recover in the years since.
The paper was a lifeline for the Southern, working-class city, providing government announcements, obituaries, Carnival and scoops on local corruption, said Cheron Brylski, a 53-year-old New Orleans-based political consultant. Not having the paper every day is like losing a sports team, she said.
"Where is New Orleans headed since Katrina? This is not something that helps our recovery," she said.
The papers in Alabama also have long histories. The Mobile paper has roots to 1813 with the founding of the Mobile Gazette and became a daily in 1832, according to a history of the publication on al.com. And in 2007, the Birmingham News won a Pulitzer Prize for a series on corruption in Alabama's two-year college system.
Birmingham News employees were told during morning meetings that longtime Editor Tom Scarritt will retire this fall when the new companies are created, according to two reporters who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the changes for the company.
In New Orleans, a new company, the NOLA Media Group, would be created to oversee both The Times-Picayune and its affiliated website, NOLA.com.
The announcements mirror changes Advance Publications made in Michigan. In 2009, the company shut the Ann Arbor News but created AnnArbor.com, a news website that still publishes print editions on Thursday and Sunday.
In February, it launched the MLive Media Group, which runs MLive.com, to focus its efforts in Michigan digitally. Meanwhile, all of its eight other newspapers in the state offer three days of home delivery with newsstand sales from three to seven days a week.
Newspaper analyst Ken Doctor, who writes the Newsonomics blog, said the company is trying to hold on to declining print ad revenue for a few more years, and expects Advance to eventually cut print runs at its other newspapers in New Jersey, Oregon, Ohio and elsewhere. The company owns The Oregonian in Portland, Ore.; The Plain Dealer in Cleveland; and The Star-Ledger in Newark, N.J. | <urn:uuid:282dd43d-74b6-4cb9-b2b7-3fd005f6ebc5> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.usnews.com/news/technology/articles/2012/05/24/times-picayune-to-cut-paper-to-3-days-a-week | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368700958435/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516104238-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971425 | 908 | 1.578125 | 2 |
Posted Online: March 11, 2011, 12:00 am
Taught to forgive an unforgettable tragedy
Comment on this story
by Leon Lagerstam, [email protected]
DAVENPORT -- She's never forgiven the drunk driver who killed one of her childhood best friends.
Emma Williams, 19, Milan, a freshman at St. Ambrose University in Davenport, was starting to celebrate her 7th birthday when her parents told her one of her classmates wasn't going to make it to the party. He and his grandmother had died in a car accident.
Photos published a few years later of a smiling driver getting released early from prison kept Ms. Williams from forgetting or forgiving the man.
She doesn't think she'll ever forget the tragic death of her friend, but believes she's a bit closer to forgiving the man responsible for it, thanks to an Ambrose class she took in the fall.
The ''Forgiveness, Reconciliation and Peace-Building'' class was part of the ''Learning Communities for Excellence'' program that groups students with similar interests whotake a couple of general education classes and participate in ''New Student Seminars.''
"Redefining Right and Wrong'' was the name of Ms. William's learning community.
No theology classes were offered when she was a public school student in Sherrard, so she felt drawn to the category when choosing her community, she said.
It was worth three credits, but by the end of term, Ms. Williams said she credited it for taking a huge weight off her shoulders.
''I've always been told about forgiveness since my Sunday school days, but was never told anything specific about how to forgive,'' she said. ''I knew it was one obstacle I had to address in my life.''
As she quickly learned, she wasn't the only one facing forgiveness obstacles. Students from other parts of the country and from other countries also struggled with it.
The Ambrose class used Facebook to link students from the Davenport university, including Ms. Williams, to peers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and St. Mary's University College in Belfast, Ireland.
Stories from the Belfast perspective, with the town's long history of strife between Protestants and Catholics, ''were so different,'' Ms. Williams said. ''But the message about forgiveness' universality was the same.''
One of the first things students learned is ''that it is a process,'' she said. ''I thought, for example, that I would never be able to forgive the man who did what he did to my friend. I knew I would have to come to terms with it somehow, but now I know it's a process that will take some time to complete.''
She also learned that ''forgiveness is my choice, and is something I have to do for my benefit.''
Scientifically, forgiveness has been linked to many health benefits, said Mara Adams, an associate professor in St. Ambrose's theology department, and one of the class collaborators.
Forgiveness relieves stress and depression, lowers blood pressure and reduces the risk of disease, among other things, she said.
Ms. Adams chose to explore the issue of forgiveness after attending a ''Spirituality and Health'' conference at Duke University in North Carolina.
She and University of Wisconsin-Madison educational psychology professor Robert Enright collaborated on some Belfast research, which eventually led to Sharon Haughey, a senior lecturer at the Northern Ireland college, joining the team.
Ms. Adams said that ''never in my wildest dreams'' did she think it would take her to Belfast.
Using Facebook as a teaching tool also was a big step for Ms. Adams, who listed ''wanting to use computers better and embrace 21st Century technology,'' when asked what she wished she knew how to do.
Ambrose philosophy professor Jessica Gosnell contributed computer expertise.
Ms. Adams recently got a grant from the Scott County Regional Authority that she will use to create and provide a form of her forgiveness curriculum to local students in preschool to eighth grade, tying it into anti-bullying programs.
The college-level class also will be back in the fall at Ambrose, she said, adding that shereceived a lot of good feedback from students involved last fall.
''My goal was to help people understand what forgiveness is -- that it is a process,'' she said. ''I want people to know forgiveness can operate independently from reconciliation or forgetting, and that forgiveness is good for one's physical, mental and spiritual health.''
Ms. Williams may not have realized all that when she was 7, when she learned of her friend's death on her birthday, but knowing she has reached the point of figuring out how to forgive the driver is what she calls a valuable gift.
Occupation: Student at St. Ambrose University, Davenport, psychology major.
Education: 2010 Sherrard High School graduate.
Family: Parents, Bob and Jenny Williams; three siblings.
Favorite book of the Bible: Matthew.
Favorite Biblical character I'd like to meet: Peter.
Hobbies: Theatre, dance, playing guitar and French horn, campus ministry opportunities, including recently selected to be a resident adviser next year.
I wish I knew how to: Sing better.
Address: Rock Island.
Occupation: Theology department associate professor at St. Ambrose University.
Education: Alleman High School graduate; Bachelor of Arts degree from St. Ambrose; doctorate degree at University of Iowa.
Family: Husband, two children
Favorite Biblical character I'd like to meet: Hagar.
Hobbies: Music, reading, family. | <urn:uuid:560b615f-e472-4dd7-a9be-9defa2d3b165> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://qconline.com/archives/qco/print_display.php?id=534623 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.9702 | 1,161 | 1.671875 | 2 |
These letters graciously have been shared with the Victorian Web by Eunice and Ron Shanahan; they have been taken from their website. The letters give an insight into the daily lives and concerns of 'ordinary' people without whom history would not exist. The letters are a wonderful example of how much history may be gleaned from such sources.
Click on thumbnails for larger images.]
This letter is a London Twopenny Post letter of over 170 years old — a very short one but shows how much information can be found in addition to the interesting postmarks. The paper itself is gilt-edged and bears the watermark J. WHATMAN TURKEY MILL 1832. This company still makes paper and has a most interesting website.
The letter is dated July 14 1834 and is addressed to E.W. Brayley Esq, London Institution
- Boxed two-line T.P. Pall-Mall in black — this was a Twopenny Post Receiving office in the Town area of the London Twopenny Post under the Westminster Office from 1793 to 31 December 1838, when it was closed.
- Hand-stamp 2 charge mark of the type applied to all unpaid letters received in and/or for delivery in the Twopenny Post area from 1801.
- Oval transfer stamp NIGHT JY-14 1834. This would have been applied at the Chief Office of the Twopenny Post — identifiable by the month being before the day. This example has been incompletely struck so that the hour is not visible but in 1834 it was 7 p.m. so it should have a 7 either side of the word NIGHT. It would have been transferred from the Pall Mall Receiving Office to the Chief Office for delivery to Finsbury Circus, which is where the London Institution was situated.
Since this letter was before the use of envelopes, the letter was sealed with a wax impression of a signet ring of the writer, showing an eagle with outspread wings facing a rising sun, with a small shield beside it and on the right hand side a coronet. Underneath in a scroll is the motto which is rather hard to read but appears to be UNC ... SOLIEL. Unfortunately it is almost impossible to reproduce this type of seal. The letter obviously is personal and not written by his secretary.
I fear that it will not be in my power to aid you with respect to Mr Wilks, being hardly acquainted with him, but I will see whether I can be of use to you in mentioning your claims to any other of the gentlemen whose names are on the list you have sent to me.
Yours very faithfully
This was written by Sir Harry Verney, Baronet, who was the Liberal Member of Parliament for Buckingham and a member of the House of Commons for 52 years. At his political jubilee celebrations were attended by members of both sides of the House of Commons — when the Duke of Argyll described him as “a rare example of the soundest and best kind of relationship between those who represent and those who are represented in parliament”.
The records show that he had a really interesting life, had travelled widely, and was the last in the line of Verneys, who had served the Borough of Buckingham in Parliament since the time of Edward VI (1537-1553). He was a good landlord, and a far-seeing man who lived an active life, who rode his pony up till a week before his death in 1894 at the age of 92. One possibly more publicised claim to this man's fame is that in 1857 he proposed to Florence Nightingale, who was then 37 years old, but after spending some time at Embley Park, he reportedly fell in love with her sister Frances Parthenope and married her the next year.
However, a different version of this proposal is that Sir Harry proposed by letter, but addressed his letter incorrectly to Miss Nightingale, and as Parthenope was the elder sister, that was her title. He should have addressed it Miss Florence Nightingale, for the younger sister. As the letter was addressed to her, Parthenope opened it, and accepted his proposal. After they were married they lived at his home in Buckinghamshire, Claydon House, and this house and family were an important part of Florence Nightingale's life.
The next point to check was the addressee, and I found out that Edward Wedlake Brayley (1773-1854) was a very well known author of topographical books including among others A Topographical History of Surrey.
I found more information about him on the website of the Geological Society — the address of the President 1st February 1870
Edward Wedlake Brayley, F.R.S., F.L.S., for many years Librarian to the London Institution, was a pupil of Prof. Brande at the Royal Institution, and as early as the year 1824 published, in the Philosophical Magazine, a paper on luminous meteors, a subject which occupied his attention nearly to the close of his life. His principal contribution to our science is his paper on the formation of rock-basins, published in the Philosophical Magazine in 1830. Mr. Brayley possessed a wide range of knowledge, and his printed memoirs, although not numerous, include papers on Physics, Astronomy, Chemistry, Zoology, and Meteorology. He died rather suddenly on the 1st of February, 1870.
Then I wondered if I could find anything about the London Institution itself, and sure enough, I found that as well, in Weinreb & Hibbert's London Encyclopaedia (Macmillan, 1987) p.475,
The London Institution was at Finsbury Circus. It was founded in 1806 for the Advancement of Literature and Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. Originally meeting in a house in Old Jewry, it moved into a house designed by William Brooks on the North side of Finsbury Circus in 1819. Its library was celebrated for topographical books. Lectures were given at the Institution by eminent scientific and literary men. The building was demolished in 1936.
So the only thing that I could not find out was what Mr Brayley wanted Sir Harry Verney to do for him. I wonder if he was approached because he was a personality who may have had some influence, or whether he was Mr Brayley's local MP. I don't suppose I will ever find out.
Brumell, G. The Local Posts of London 1680-1840.
Dictionary of National Biography
Members of the internet mailing list for English local history : Dr. G.P. Moss, Michael Holland, Eve McLaughlin, author of the McLaughlin Guides for family historians .
Last modified 14 February 2005 | <urn:uuid:cc160def-e426-4803-a3db-abd6e462273b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.victorianweb.org/previctorian/letters/brayley.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706499548/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516121459-00006-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.979859 | 1,401 | 1.609375 | 2 |
Fisher-General Motors and the Nature of the Firm
University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) - Department of Economics
Journal of Law and Economics, Vol. 43, No. 1, pp. 105-141, April 2000
After working well for more than 5 years, the Fisher Body - General Motors (GM) contract for the supply of automobile bodies broke down when GM's demand for Fisher's bodies unexpectedly increased dramatically. This pushed the imperfect contractual arrangement between the parties outside the self‐enforcing range and led Fisher to take advantage of the fact that GM was contractually obligated to purchase bodies on a cost‐plus basis. Fisher increased its short‐term profit by failing to make the investments required by GM in a plant located near GM production facilities in Flint, Michigan. Vertical integration, with an associated side payment from GM to Fisher, was the way in which this contractual hold‐up problem was solved. This examination of the Fisher GM case illustrates the role of vertical integration in avoiding the rigidity costs of long‐term contracts.
Number of Pages in PDF File: 38
JEL Classification: L14, K12Accepted Paper Series
Date posted: July 9, 2011
© 2013 Social Science Electronic Publishing, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
This page was processed by apollo3 in 0.312 seconds | <urn:uuid:6dcb0705-3519-46de-ab06-c0d748a29b72> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1658206 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368709037764/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516125717-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.933428 | 270 | 1.523438 | 2 |
Kunming city proper covers five districts: Wuhua, Panlong, Guandu, Xixian and Dongchuan; one city which is Dongchuan city; and eight counties: Chenggong, Jinning, Fumin, Yiliang, Shilin, Songming, Luquan and Xundian. The city has a total population of 4.67 million, of which about six percent are minority nationalities, including Yi, Hui and Miao. Also, some 150,000 Vietnamese refugees from the China-Vietnam wars have made home here.
The center of the city is focused around the Kunming Department Store area - to the southeast of which is the main bustling shopping-dining-theatre district. Another major shopping mall in the city is the landmark, Zhengyi Department Store, which is situated in the northwest part of town. Lying north and northeast is the older back-alley maze. By travelling eastward beyond this old quarter, and crossing Fengjian Road, you can see some of the city's scenic attractions like Cuihu (Green Lake) Park, Yuantong Temple and the zoo. At the west side of town, on Daguanjie Road, there are throngs of farm produce markets. Beyond in the west lies Western Hill Park, which offers one of the best of the city's out-of-town sights.
Green Lake Park
West of Yuantong Temple, and only 15 minutes along Yuantong Street, one approaches the city's largest park, Green Lake Park, which is decked out with long embankments and waterways. Many pavilions and buildings have been newly built, where art exhibitions, floral displays or some other exhibitions are frequently on show. To the southwest of the park lies Daguan Street where there is a large free market selling farm produce brought in from the nearby farms, which is mingled with cobblers and other merchants. In the double-story shop fronts along Daguan Street, one can catch a rare glimpse of the rapidly disappearing traditional wooden architecture.
Wuhua and Panlong Districts
These two districts constitute the center part of the city, which then extends to Guandu and Xishan Districts. With Zhengwen Street in the Wuhua District as the north-south axis and Dongfeng Street as the east-west axis, the city has kept its historical layout, despite the vicissitudes of time. Lined along Wuhua Hill Street, East Dongfeng Street, Shulin Street and near the Maitreya Temple area, are some of the important provincial and municipal government buildings. The area around Zhengyi Street, Nanping Street, East Dongfeng Street, Wucheng and Changchung Roads is the city's commercial center, while the financial center is spread along Nanping Street, Zhengyi Street and Beijing Road.
Dotted along Beijing Road, Dongfeng Street and Huangcheng Road are a host of hotels and restaurants of different sizes and tastes. Lying in the north part of the city is the academic district where there is a cluster of well-known scientific research institutes, universities and colleges. A residential construction boom has been witnessed along the First and Second Ring Roads over the past few years.
History of KunmingArcheological evidence appears to indicate that Kunming has been inhabited for approximately 2,000 years. Records can be traced back to 722-481 BC when the first Chinese began inhabiting the area. Following this time, the area surrounding present-day Kunming has been witness to a succession of various kingdoms and dynasties.
The Kingdom of Dian was first established around Kunming during the Warring States period, and the township of Yizhoujun was established in 109 BC. The Nanzhao Kingdom took over Yizhoujun, making it one of its capitals. However, in 1274, the Mongols under Genghis Khan, captured the area (and pretty much most of China) as part of their quest to rule the world. Next, came the Ming Dynasty who claimed Kunming, then known as Yunnanfu. In the 19th century, tumultuous events marked the city due to several rebellious attacks against the reigning Manchus by the Muslims, led by the Sultan of Dali. This stream of violence and destruction was to continue for about fifteen years until the rebellion was finally overthrown.
During the turn of the century, the imperial forces of Britain and France made their way to Kunming, both of whom wanted to exploit the area's natural resources. This paved the path for Kunming's development into modernism. During the Second World War, Kunming proved to be invaluable for the Allied Forces and Nationalists fighting against the Japanese. Because it was located far from the Japanese forces, Kunming became the city to supply aid and supplies for the troops. Supplies were carried to troops on the famous Burma Road. Munitions factories sprang up in Kunming, as well as a thriving black market. With an influx of Chinese refugees from the east fleeing the Japanese, Kunming expanded as a city, establishing itself as an industrial and manufacturing base.
Under the reign of Mao Zedong, Kunming faced socially turbulent years during the Cultural Revolution. Many individuals were persecuted, exiled and tortured by the fanatical Red Guards. Many cultural relics were destroyed as well, although a few temples and buildings managed to survive. Geographically isolated from the government power base up north, Kunming and Yunnan province has always stood apart from the rest of China. It was often the place to send people into exile during the revolution.
One of the major developed cities in Southwest China, modern-day Kunming is thriving. Recently, it has seen the growth of its tourism industry and increasing foreign investment. The city is rapidly modernizing with more office and residential buildings being built everyday.
Copyright © 2005 worldfacts.us | <urn:uuid:65c29d17-b75a-459b-bada-8c934ee68aac> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://worldfacts.us/China-Kunming.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00033-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97196 | 1,211 | 1.65625 | 2 |
Hot rhetoric separate Obama, Boehner
WASHINGTON – In their “fiscal cliff” standoff, President Barack Obama wants to raise taxes by about $20 billion a year more than House Speaker John Boehner. The president wants the government to spend about that much more yearly than Boehner does, too.
That’s real money by most measures. Yet such numbers are barely noticeable compared to the $2.6 trillion the government is projected to collect next year, and to the $3.6 trillion it’s expected to spend.
As the “cliff” approaches – economy-shaking tax increases and spending cuts that start hitting in early January unless lawmakers act first – each side says the other isn’t being serious enough about trimming federal deficits. But their inability so far to strike a compromise underscores that their problem is more than arithmetic – it’s also about the difficult politics that Democrat Obama and Republican Boehner face when it comes to lining up votes.
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:a0c4668f-c4e3-47e1-9252-c1de6d979d48> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.nwherald.com/2012/12/20/hot-rhetoric-separate-obama-boehner/amkars8/?list-comments=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.951515 | 236 | 1.640625 | 2 |
Posted: Monday, 15 October 2012 6:55AM
New Era Wind
A nearly $150 million wind energy project in rural Goodhue County has a new name.
Following the acquisition of all membership interests in AWA Goodhue from American Wind Alliance of Dallas, the local community advisory board selected the name New Era Wind Farm. According to the Post-Bulletin, the name was chosen to reflect its commitment to developing the 78 megawatt wind energy project as a community-based project.
New Era has formed an advisory board comprised of participants in the project that are longtime residents of Goodhue County. Many of the members are lifelong residents whose families have been engaged in farming in the county for several generations.
New Era plans to develop the project with local input and direction from its advisory board. It will use 48 wind turbines over an area of about 15,000 acres in rural Goodhue County. | <urn:uuid:aed35467-4fb6-40ca-970c-f2b7809b7739> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.winonaradio.com/pages/14520293.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960595 | 188 | 1.695313 | 2 |
Mark Landler Bids Adieu to Imaginary 'Era of Single-Minded Deficit-Cutting' in New York Times
President Obama's State of the Union speech was covered by the New York Times' Mark Landler: "Obama Vows Push To Lift Economy For Middle Class." Landler, a master spinner for the president, marked the Supreme Court upholding Obama-care in embarrassingly syrupy prose in a June 2012 story: "While Mr. Obama will be remembered for bailing out the auto industry, winding down two wars and dispatching Osama bin Laden, health care was his play for history."
On Wednesday, Landler oddly claimed that Obama had signaled "the era of single-minded deficit-cutting should end" (as if it ever began), while chiding the Republican Party's "hard line stance on immigration" and pushing a higher minimum wage as an unmitigated boon for workers, though it may serve to make it even harder for the unemployed to get a job in the first place.
President Obama, seeking to put the prosperity and promise of the middle class at the heart of his second-term agenda, called on Congress on Tuesday night to raise the federal minimum wage to $9 an hour, saying that would lift millions out of poverty and energize the economy.
In an assertive State of the Union address that fleshed out the populist themes of his inauguration speech, Mr. Obama declared it was “our generation’s task” to “reignite the true engine of America’s economic growth -- a rising, thriving middle class.”
Raising the minimum wage holds particular political appeal for younger Americans, struggling workers and labor groups, all of which were important to Mr. Obama’s re-election. His proposal drew one of the loudest ovations of the evening from Democrats in the House chamber.
Republicans quickly rejected Mr. Obama’s activist approach, saying it would inevitably translate into higher taxes and an overweening government role, strangling economic growth and deepening the nation’s fiscal hole.
Still, in selecting Senator Marco Rubio, a Cuban-American from Florida, to deliver their party’s official rebuttal, Republicans implicitly acknowledged the damage they had suffered at the polls from their hard line stance on immigration. Mr. Rubio, one of the party’s rising stars, favors overhauling immigration laws.
Mr. Obama pledged to work with states to provide high-quality preschool to every child in America. And he recycled a proposal to help homeowners refinance their mortgages.
None of these proposals, Mr. Obama said, would add to the deficit, since they were consistent with the budget deal of 18 months ago. “It’s not a bigger government we need,” he said, “but a smarter government that sets priorities and invests in broad-based growth.”
Mr. Obama also signaled, however, that the era of single-minded deficit-cutting should end. He noted that the recent agreements on taxes and spending reduced the deficit by $2.5 trillion, more than halfway toward the $4 trillion in reductions that economists say would put the nation’s finances on a sustainable course.
But Obama's deficit reduction triumph is not quite that simple, as the liberal-leaning FactCheck.org pointed out:
The president claimed that “both parties have worked together to reduce the deficit by more than $2.5 trillion.” But that’s only an estimate of deficit reduction through fiscal year 2022, and it would be lower if the White House used a different starting point. | <urn:uuid:1898cab8-557c-4b67-883d-ffc79e1b7e26> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.mrc.org/articles/mark-landler-bids-adieu-imaginary-era-single-minded-deficit-cutting-new-york-times | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00019-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.956608 | 749 | 1.546875 | 2 |
GRAND JUNCTION, Colo.-
Could you imagine waking up to a phone message saying your child didn’t make it to school that day? That was the case for 10-year-old Jessica Ridgeway’s mother after the girl went missing last week on the Front Range.
It's estimated nearly 1,600 students within School District 51 walk to school.
With a large number like that it comes as no surprise that School District 51 officials say they’re always prepared to handled a crisis.
“Whatever number is on the emergency contact list we will go through systematically and contact those,” said Tim Leon of School District 51 security. “The school is really good about knowing, even if names aren't on those lists they know their parents pretty well.”
The drop-off lines at schools across the Grand Valley pile up every school day. Even though many parents say goodbye to their children in front of the school, some students make the journey to the building by themselves.
However, if a school bells rings and a child fails to arrive to school, district officials say that's when things get really serious. "That’s the big thing,” said Leon, “making sure kids are there and accounted for.”
Leon says a parent typically calls the school to let them know the student will be missing from class that day, but if a parent forgets, officials say school officials will try their hardest to get to the bottom of it.
“Our staff is very concerned about all students, and if a student isn’t accounted for then there are concerns that any number of things could happen to that student,” said Leon.
Local parents agree, saying the safety of their children should always be at the top of the district's list.
“I would hope they would call any numbers they had for me, my husband, my parents, her grandparents, until they figured out why she wasn't at school,” said Ashlee Meindersee, a parent.
“I hope they would have a list of my home numbers, cellphone numbers, any number until they got a hold of somebody related to my daughter, until we knew, somebody knew that she wasn't where she was supposed to be,” said Sarah Queen, another parent.
District officials say a school typically calls a parent within the first 30 minutes of school starting.
With a lot of recent changes to bus routes, schools are focusing on teaching kids safety tips.
Parents are also encouraged to teach safety tips to their children while at home.
For more information, click here. | <urn:uuid:611fb897-1074-494a-a73b-e1f49c7b31e2> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.krextv.com/news/around-the-region/Precautions-School-Officials-Take-if-Student-Goes-Missing-173690811.html?skipthumb=Y | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00034-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.978152 | 546 | 1.734375 | 2 |
Chamber: Colombia Oil Sector Hurt by Torrential Rains
BOGOTA - Heavy rains in Colombia's southern, oil-producing region of Putumayo are hampering oil activities there, the Colombian Oilfield Services Chamber known as Campetrol said in a statement Monday.
"Flooding in Putumayo is affecting the oil sector," Campetrol said in a Twitter message, without providing further details.
The chamber's website showed photos of what appeared to be an oil-tanker truck trying to slowly navigate through streets flooded with muddy water reaching halfway to the top of the truck.
Nearly 70,000 people in the state of Putumayo, located along the Ecuador border, have been forced from their homes in recent days due to the rains and floods.
Campetrol, citing a regional disaster prevention agency, said the banks of the Putumayo River and others have been overrun, "causing a large part of the state's infrastructure to disappear."
Companies that produce oil in the Putumayo region include state-run Ecopetrol, Canada-based Petrominerales Ltd. and Gran Tierra Energy Inc.
None of the three oil companies were immediately available for comment.
The flooding comes as oil sector also faces the challenge of rising attacks on infrastructure by leftist guerrillas that is slowing down production.
Alleged rebels used explosives to attack two important oil pipelines over the weekend. Rebels are also blamed for demolishing a bridge in the Putumayo region used by oil companies.
Colombian oil production fell to 934,000 barrels a day in June, down 0.5% from that month of 2011 and nearly 3% lower than its record monthly production average of 962,000 barrels a day in November of last year.
Copyright (c) 2013 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
WHAT DO YOU THINK?
Generated by readers, the comments included herein do not reflect the views and opinions of Rigzone. All comments are subject to editorial review. Off-topic, inappropriate or insulting comments will be removed.
More from this Author
Most Popular Articles
From the Career Center
Jobs that may interest you | <urn:uuid:2a23fbeb-92c5-4872-9d7e-99cce3a58124> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.rigzone.com/news/oil_gas/a/119517/Chamber_Colombia_Oil_Sector_Hurt_by_Torrential_Rains | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705953421/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120553-00042-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.952185 | 454 | 1.625 | 2 |
COPE Leader Mosiuoa Lekota has asked the Speaker of the House to intervene in a spat between him and two cabinet ministers. However, the African National Congress (ANC) spokesperson, Luzuko Jacobs suggested that Lekota reads the National Assembly rules.
According to the rules, Lekota has a right to defend himself of any allegations, but he cannot use Parliament to do so. The Speaker's office says it will rule on the matter in due course.
On Tuesday, Ministers Susan Shabangu and Edna Molewa accused Lekota at the Parliamentary debate of having sent the Defence Force into Khutsong to shoot residents - that was when Lekota was still Defence Minister.
Shabangu accused Lekota of being more brutal than the ANC. "During your era as Minister of Defence, in Khutsong, you called soldiers to attack."
Minister of Water and Enviromental Affairs, Molewa was quick to rise in Shabangu's defence stating she is a living witness of that event. "Former Minister Lekota did that, I was there with him."
Lekota has vehemently denied these allegations. "This is unfounded, I have never sent soldiers to Khutsong to kill people it never happened." He has demanded a public apology from the ministers and filed a complaint with the Speaker.
The ministers could not be reached for comment. | <urn:uuid:5e8767f1-3d5f-4775-8ad3-412ce47eb756> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.sabc.co.za/news/a/625b07804c747e7f9e5abf8460d01006/Lekota-calls-on-Parliament-to-intervene-in-ministry-spat-20120823 | 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 | 0.9788 | 287 | 1.53125 | 2 |
That's exactly what Oracle is arguing in its lawsuit.
Rubin faced tough questioning from Oracle lawyer David Boies, who led the government's antitrust case against Microsoft in the 1990s.
In one email, Rubin wrote to a Google engineering manager, "I don't see how you can open Java without Sun, since they own the brand and IP [intellectual property]."
When Boies questioned him if that meant he thought Google needed a license from Sun, Rubin answered "Yes, that's correct," reports CNET.
Boies later tried to dig into an email that Rubin wrote saying a "cleanroom version of the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) would be unlikely because of the Android team's prior knowledge of Java."
In plain English, that means that the Android team already knew so much about Java -- several members had previously worked for Sun -- that Google couldn't reverse-engineer it in a way that didn't violate Sun's IP.
Rubin refused to go into much detail on this part, saying "I think that’s reading a lot into that small sentence."
In the end, most of this testimony probably won't affect the final outcome of this lawsuit. The case will be decided on matters of law, rather than what Rubin thought he needed to do back in 2005 and 2006.
But it makes Android look slimy, like Google knew it might face intellectual property problems way back when it started building Android, but forged ahead anyway.
Don't miss: Android Is Suddenly In A Lot Of Trouble | <urn:uuid:a84a6420-865f-4892-bbfb-5d475aadddcb> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.businessinsider.com/android-chief-squirms-under-questioning-2012-4 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706890813/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516122130-00007-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971464 | 313 | 1.59375 | 2 |
By Janet Chang (Alumn, Dev Bootcamp)
It has been almost three months since the end of my software development training at Dev Bootcamp, where my fellow students and I spent 15+ hours daily over a 10-week period to learn to build fully functioning prototypes of web applications like Twitter, Basecamp, Airbnb and Yelp.
All 10 female students have already landed their first jobs as software developers, with salaries to the tune of $75k-95k per year.
It’s impressive, given that students began with no prior formal experience in software development, save for a few exceptions. The typical student previously worked in a non-technical roles, learned programming during off-hours or on the job as a minor part of their role, then transitioned to learning programming full time at Dev Bootcamp.
For example, Amy Lai formerly worked at a large pharmaceutical company as a chemist, and started learning programming through MIT’s online Intro to Computer Science course.
“I tried it and I liked it. At first, I found out about Hungry Academy [the now-defunkt coding apprenticeship program hosted by LivingSocial in early 2012]. But it was past the application due date so I looked around and found out about Dev Bootcamp, and applied.”
Sarah Sorelle was a marketing consultant when she was first exposed to programming – “I was creating email newsletter campaigns with HTML and CSS. I used code from other people’s examples to put [emails] together. I started to fiddle around with it, and thought it was really fun.”
Still, her career could have taken a turn in a completely different direction.
“I was in this interview for a high dollar job, at a huge company. They were about to offer me the position, and I thought if I took that job…my life was over,” she said. It was at that point she realized she wanted to commit to becoming a software developer.
Within two months of the end of Dev Bootcamp, almost everyone had job offers, sometimes with the opportunity to consider multiple companies.
How we became software developers in 10 weeks – here are 6 tips!
1. Establish a Routine to Balance “Pair-Programming” and Solo Work
For a large part of learning at Dev Bootcamp, students worked in pairs, mirroring one of the best-practices that form the bread-and-butter of top software consulting companies that serve clients like Twitter and Groupon.
To Daniela Grossmann, a software engineer at ProofPoint, the most helpful learning strategy was “pairing” with other students because “I really had to think things through carefully before I say them to my [pairing partner].”
As a former middle school teacher, she noticed “it was helpful to be able to teach other students”. She also “loved pairing with [one of the instructors]. I would sit back, watch him, and try to mime him later, on my own”.
Because students were encouraged to pair for most of Dev Bootcamp, Daniela realized the need to take time out for herself, subsequently established a routine of pairing on the weekdays during Dev Bootcamp hours and working by herself on the weekends.
By proactively reaching out to her mentor during Dev Bootcamp, she was able to get the help she needed: “When I was pairing with other students, I felt like I was learning about small parts [of an application]. When I was stuck, [my mentor] would give me help and [let me] see the whole picture.”
Julie Mao, a software engineer at Sandbox Industries, echoes the sentiment on pairing, albeit from a different perspective. As one of the few students with traditional university computer science training and professional programming experience, she found pairing to be immensely helpful in the context of having programmed solo for most of her career.
“Even though I’ve spent a lot of my career programming solo, I find that pair programming is very rewarding [because] you can always learn something from your pair. You learn tremendously in the process of communicating your thought process out loud,” Julie said.
2. Create Your Own Optimized Learning Process
When asked about her strategy for learning a new skill during Dev Bootcamp, one student was particularly thoughtful about the learning process. She explains the importance of understanding the type of skill to be learned, then applying tactics accordingly – “It depends on the type of problem. If it’s a logic or design problem, I like talking through it with other people, or writing it out. If it’s a new framework, I like to familiarize myself with the tools I’m using, and research how the tool is used by people who know what to do with it.”
However, she recognizes there are also tactics that can be generally helpful in learning anything.
“I learn best watching people who are really good at it do it. I’m most empowered to learn when I have best practices to follow and when I can be exposed to more than just process, but also style [of] how someone does something,” she said.
This deep understanding of her own learning process influenced her work, in particular, when she took time outside of Dev Bootcamp to author a free tool for Ruby developers to incorporate foreign language translations in their applications. It has been downloaded 200+ times since its release three months ago. That subsequently laid the foundation for her acceptance into apprentice.io, an apprenticeship program hosted by thoughtbot, a leading Ruby on Rails software consultancy in San Francisco and Boston.
3. Build Passion Projects on the Side
Kyrie Kopczynski, an apprentice at CloudCity Development, a software consultancy in San Francisco, learned best when she was “generating new apps and seeing what [she] could do with it”.
Instead of thinking about programming as individual exercises in isolation that teach a single concept, “it really helps if I’m making [a real application]…I do better when I’m free to think about what I want [the app] to do.”
Fortunately, Dev Bootcamp provided such freedom in the context of group projects, with the open-ended goal of creating applications that would meet a basic set of specifications. For example, students were tasked to create an application that would notify users by email the results of any Craigslist search. While certain features were required, like the ability for the application to send emails, the implementation of such features was left to students to figure out.
When there were no group projects, Kyrie would satiate her learning needs with self-directed side projects, explaining “I learn best having a problem I want to solve and looking up Stackoverflow…and hit a lot of of roadblocks and push through by doing as much as I can, with the resources that are available.”
4. Proactively Reach Out to Others for Help
Formerly from Hawaii and now software intern at ThredUp, a startup in San Francisco, a Dev Bootcamp graduate recounts her experience trying to learn programming before Dev Bootcamp: “I was by myself, on an island. It was very frustrating to get help.”
She realized that “the Ruby community is very small, so “[she] could use Facebook or email groups to have a network to reach out to when you need help learning something new.” She has been attending every local Ruby on Rails meetup she could as soon as the full-time demands of Dev Bootcamp ended.
Looking back, she wishes she could have “moved to San Francisco earlier and plugged into the social tech scene earlier”, because “it was twice as fast to talk to someone” than to solve problems alone.
Therefore, she concludes that the “biggest benefit of Dev Bootcamp was the people, by far. Everyone’s learning and [that] makes it easier to learn, push yourself, [and provide] positive pressure. Whenever you got stuck, you would ask your friends.”
5. Solidify Learning by Giving Back to the Community
Kari Weiler, a developer at GoBalto, an award-winning clinical trials startup, had attended Railsbridge – an introductory programming workshop series for women – as part of her earlier exposures to programming with the Ruby on Rails framework.
She enjoyed it so much that, once she learned enough about Rails development at Dev Bootcamp, she has returned twice as a volunteer to teach the very same things that were impressed upon her merely months prior, saying “It helps me retain information that I learn when I have to explain it to someone else. And it’s nice to be helping others learn.”
6. Know Your Worth and Negotiate Salary
Of the women who negotiated their salaries, the result was varied, but fruitful: up to a 60% increase in salary. It’s important to be persistent in negotiations, even when unsuccessful at first. One student tried to negotiate on two job offers she received. This did not result in higher salary, but “the main upside, in my view, was gaining salary negotiation experience.”
Recommended Resources for Finding Mentorship and Learning
Events in the San Francisco Bay Area:
Top Books for Beginners:
- Head First HTML and CSS, by Elisabeth Robson and Eric Freeman
- Learn to Program, by Chris Pine
- Learn Web Development with Ruby on Rails, by Michael Hartl
Tutorials for Readers:
Tutorials for Video/Visual Learners:
Branching out from its San Franciscan roots, Dev Bootcamp will launch Chicago-based cohorts starting April 22. Although the first class consists of only two women out of 18 students, the goal is to reach a 1:1 gender ratio with at least one cohort this year.
Dev Bootcamp Chicago plans to achieve this through a scholarship program for women and minorities, and progress is promising. Recently, they managed to attract a 60% female attendance rate at their “Day of Dev Bootcamp” workshop, wherein 18 women attended the 30-person event.
Dev Bootcamp cohorts in both San Francisco and Chicago locations are booking up quickly, we hope, with many women.
Photo credits: Dev Bootcamp.
Women 2.0 readers: Do you want to learn to code? What resources have you found most helpful? Let us know in the comments!
About the guest blogger: Janet Chang is an alumna of Dev Bootcamp, and software consultant for early-stage health startups in the San Francisco Bay Area. She is on a mission to use accelerated learning techniques to construct a blueprint for becoming world class in software development in one year, which she writes about on her blog. Follow her on Twitter at @JanetLChang. | <urn:uuid:95d4a55d-4e58-4b6f-89a7-fdd321963d76> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.women2.com/how-we-became-software-developers-in-10-weeks-the-rising-femme-elite-of-tech/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704132298/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113532-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97407 | 2,269 | 1.632813 | 2 |
Overnight, Sen. Lou Correa expanded his constituency by more than 411,000 residents this week and now represents coastal areas like Huntington Beach and Seal Beach in addition to his central Orange County district.
But the Santa Ana Democrat isn't on some power trip. He, along with 20 other state senators, has been assigned to temporarily represent additional regions outside of his district because of a bizarre quirk in state election procedures.
Since the 1970s, millions of Californians have, temporarily, gone without having a state senator every decade. This occurs after redistricting, when new legislative districts are drawn to reflect changes in the population. Redistricting has no effect on Assembly representation, because all Assembly members are elected every two years.
But senate elections are staggered -- half are elected during one cycle, half during the next. This staggered schedule, combined with the redrawing of district lines, inevitably means that some regions are going to slip through the cracks during the two years immediately following redistricting.
In December 2011, the Orange County Register and the (Riverside) Press-Enterprise analyzed election maps and identified all of the regions statewide where residents will not have a senator during the 2013-14 legislative session.
To address this problem, the Senate routinely assigns senators to temporarily cover the unrepresented areas. The assignments were doled out this week and Orange County's four senators each received areas. In fact, most of the Orange County lawmakers were assigned sizable populations, in part because Orange County has almost an entire senate district unrepresented this cycle.
Because of the staggered nature of Senate elections, the vast majority of the region once represented by former Sen. Tom Harman won't have a senator until after the 2014 elections.
But residents in that district and others unrepresented areas shouldn't worry. If they have problems, they can always contact the senator assigned to temporarily cover their region.
Correa has been asked to pick up the largest unrepresented population, in places like Huntington Beach, Seal Beach, Los Alamitos and Fountain Valley. (Click here to see a map of the region's Correa is temporarily representing.)
Sen. Mark Wyland, R-Oceanside, whose district includes a piece of Orange County, is picking up 226,000 residents in Dana Point, Mission Viejo, Coto de Caza and Rancho Santa Margarita. (Click here to see map.)
Sen. Mimi Walters, R-Irvine, was assigned 141,000 additional constituents in places like Laguna Niguel, Laguna Hills and Aliso Viejo. (Map.) Senate Republican Leader Bob Huff of Diamond Bar, whose district also includes a piece of Orange County, was assigned 85,000 additional residents, but none of them are in Orange County.
For more information about this strange phenomenon, click here see a special website the Senate has created.
Click here to see an interactive map of the unrepresented areas produced by the Press-Enterprise. | <urn:uuid:22852da7-0a31-4499-b477-b48aa0548d71> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.ocregister.com/articles/senate-469603-strong-http.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00036-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.95778 | 604 | 1.554688 | 2 |
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr.
Recently, I listened to The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr. on audiotape. Surprisingly, the audiotape recently won a Grammy. Not surprising because of this piece of work, but I didn't know they offered Grammys to audio tapes.
The book won the Grammy because, constantly inserted throughout it, it has audio clips of soul singing and his speeches. I couldn't believe how many speeches they have on record. They had at least partial footage of the following speeches and other recordings:
Letter from Birmingham Jail
Address to SCLC
On Rosa Parks
The Eulogy of the Child Martyrs
Freedom is Demanded by the Oppressed
On the LA Riots
On High School
Remaining Awake through a Great Revelation
On Black Power
Why Jesus Called a Man a Fool
Nobel Peace Prize Speech
Rediscovering Lost Values
I've Been to the Mountaintop
I Have a Dream
Why I Must March
The Drum Major Instinct
It was really cool to hear about Martin Luther King Jr. from his own personal accounts. I'm surprised I've never even heard that he has such a book; it's so cool that he was able to record his experiences pretty much up until his death.
I think I enjoyed hearing his speeches the most. He would rise up so much energy from the crowd. People would be responding to every line he said, and sometimes they would be cheering and hollering. To see that one man could cause so much response and so much hope is overpowering. It's a beautiful thing. He's very inspiring, and you can tell his intelligence from his writing and his speeches.
And, he was so bold even after so many threats. I knew that he was threatened, but hearing him talk about the many times that his life (and his family's) would be threatened, it's hard to bear. I am impressed that this didn't stop him on his quest. Actually, he would speak openly about it in his speeches (this probably angered his oppressors). You would think that one might avoid the topic to save oneself, but he was on a mission to make change, and he needed his followers to know that they were not going to bring him, or his mission, down.
I think it is inrcredible that he was offered the Nobel Peace Prize while he was still alive and while so much racism was prevalent in our country. What is really crazy is that, very shortly after he accepted the award, he was thrown in prison. Ironic. He's such a legend but our country throws him in prison. He got his message across and out there, but it just shows how outrageous times were in the south during his lifetime.
Additionally, I think it's honorable that Dr. King decided to dedicate his life to improving conditions in the south. After he graduated college, he was able to accept jobs in the north, where he knew his life would be easier, or in the south, where he knew his life would be harder but he could make more change. King chose the harder path to make more of a difference even though it ultimately lead to his premature death. I would definitely say that is honorable.
King writes all the way back to calling his childhood and pretty much up until the time of his death. They end the audiotape with a recording of him talking about death. He got the message across that he didn't fear death and he was ready to accept it. He had a journey on earth, and he had accomplished very much while he was still alive. He got the ball rolling, and change did happen (even though it is very far from ideal today). If anything, he helped instill hope in his people and he did cause some change in legislation.
What I didn't know and I learned is that King was fascinated and inspired by Gandhi. King took many principles of Gandhi's work and incorporated it into his own. It's pretty obvious that he took his passive resistance method, but I was fascinated to learn that. It makes so much sense!
If anyone is at all interested in King, listening to the audiotape was well worth the time. For History teachers out there, import some of his speeches. He talks about his relationship with Malcolm X, his childhood, the SCLC, and many other famous speeches noted above are quite valuable for the classroom.
So, what do you think of The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr? | <urn:uuid:caae9113-6c10-4e35-b55c-b7e7568a0181> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://musingforamusement.blogspot.com/2009/05/autobiography-of-martin-luther-king-jr.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.995186 | 937 | 1.796875 | 2 |
By Yereth Rosen
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) - A large drill ship belonging to oil major Shell ran aground off Alaska on Monday night after drifting in stormy weather, company and government officials said.
The ship, the Kulluk, broke away from one of its tow lines on Monday afternoon and was driven to rocks just off Kodiak Island, where it grounded at about 9 p.m. Alaska time, officials said.
The 18-member crew had been evacuated by the Coast Guard late Saturday because of risks from the storm.
With winds reported at up to 60 miles an hour and Gulf of Alaska seas of up to 35 feet, responders were unable to keep the ship from grounding, said Coast Guard Commander Shane Montoya, the leader of the incident command team.
"We are now entering into the salvage and possible spill-response phase of this event," Montoya told a news conference late on Monday night in Anchorage.
There were three minor injuries to people responding to the incident but all personnel have returned to duty.
There is no known spill and no reports of damage yet and a U.S. Coast Guard helicopter overflight conducted shortly after the grounding detected no visible sheen.
A spokeswoman for the command team said it would do another overflight during daylight on Tuesday, weather permitting.
The Kulluk has about 139,000 gallons of ultra-low-sulfur diesel on board, and equipment on the Kulluk is estimated to have about 12,000 gallons of combined lube oil and hydraulic fluid.
The grounding of the Kulluk, a conical, Arctic-class drill ship weighing nearly 28,000 gross tons, is a blow to Shell's $4.5 billion offshore program in Alaska.
Shell's plan to convert the area into a major new oil frontier has alarmed environmentalists and many Alaska Natives, but excited industry supporters.
Environmentalists and Native opponents say the drilling program threatens a fragile region that is already being battered by rapid climate change.
"Shell and its contractors are no match for Alaska's weather and sea conditions either during drilling operations or during transit," Lois Epstein, Arctic program director for The Wilderness Society, said in an email.
"Shell's costly drilling experiment in the Arctic Ocean needs to be stopped by the federal government or by Shell itself given the unacceptably high risks it poses to both humans and the environment," she added.
The nearest town is Old Harbor, located on the opposite side of Kodiak Island from where the Kulluk is grounded. Old Harbor is a Native Alutiiq village with 208 residents.
The leading Democrat on the U.S. House of Representatives' Natural Resources Committee, Ed Markey, of Massachusetts, said in a statement that this incident and others illustrated the perils of oil drilling in the Arctic.
"Oil companies cannot currently drill safely in the foreboding conditions of the Arctic, and drilling expansion could prove disastrous for this sensitive environment," he said.
The Kulluk's woes began on Friday, when the Shell ship towing it south experienced a mechanical failure and lost its connection to the drill vessel.
That ship, the Aivik, was reattached to the Kulluk early on Monday morning, as was a tug sent to the scene by the operator of the Trans Alaska Pipeline System. But the Aivik lost its link Monday afternoon, and the tug's crew could only try to guide the drill ship to a position where, if it grounded, "it would have the least amount of impact to the environment," Montoya said.
The tug Alert intentionally disconnected about 30 minutes before the ground for the protection of the nine crew members aboard the tug.
The Kulluk was used by Shell in September and October to drill a prospect in the Beaufort Sea. It was being taken to Seattle for the off season when the problems began on Friday.
Susan Childs, emergency incident commander for Shell, held out hope that a significant spill from the drill ship was unlikely.
"The unique design of the Kulluk means the diesel fuel tanks are isolated in the center in the vessel and encased in very heavy steel," she told the news conference.
Shell is waiting for weather to moderate "to begin a complete assessment of the Kulluk," she said. "We hope to ultimately recover the Kulluk with minimal or no damage to the environment."
The Kulluk was built in 1983 and had been slated to be scrapped before Shell bought it in 2005. The company has spent $292 million since then to upgrade the vessel.
Shell's Arctic campaign has been bedeviled by problems. A second drill ship, the Discoverer, was briefly detained in December by the Coast Guard in Seward, Alaska, because of safety concerns. A mandatory oil-containment barge, the Arctic Challenger, failed for months to meet Coast Guard requirements for seaworthiness and a ship mishap resulted in damage to a critical piece of equipment intended to cap a blown well.
(Additional reporting by Phil Wahba in New York; Editing by Patrick Graham and James Dalgleish) | <urn:uuid:83f603f0-ab36-4d35-a359-381b7fedec89> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://wtbx.com/news/articles/2013/jan/01/drifting-shell-drill-ship-grounds-on-rocks-off-alaska/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697974692/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095254-00029-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.970385 | 1,052 | 1.664063 | 2 |
(Getty Images) Malaysian Muslims hold placards and shout anti Israel slogans during a rally in support of Palestine in Shah Alam, outside Kuala Lumpur on March 30, 2012. People across Israel and Palestinian territories are holding a series of rallies on March 30 to mark ‘Land Day,’ which recalls an incident in 1976 when Israeli troops shot and killed six people during protests against land confiscations.
(Getty Images) Egyptian protesters shout slogans against the military rule during a demonstration in Cairo’s Tahrir square on May 4, 2012 as thousands of people took to the streets in the Egyptian capital and the Mediterranean port city of Alexandria, days after bloody clashes near the defence ministry raised tensions ahead of landmark presidential elections. Arabic writing on placard reasds: ‘The revolution continues in the square’.
(Getty Images) A protester holds a poster reading ‘No to occupation, settlements and division. Yes to a Palestinian state, national unity and popular resistance.’ during a rally held by Palestinian and foreign peace activists to mark the 10th anniversary of the Arab Peace Initiative, seeking to end Israeli occupation and establish an independent Palestinian state, in the West Bank village of Faquaa near Jenin on April 28, 2012.
A protester who supports Syrian President Bashar al-Assad‘s regime holds a banner reading ‘No to US, Qatari, and French intervention in Syria‘, in front of the hotel where the ‘Friends of Syria’ conference is taking place in Tunis on February 24, 2012. (Getty Images)
A man holds a placard during a demonstration against the regime of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad outside the Syrian embassy in central London on October 29, 2011. (Getty Images)
Egyptian students hold a portrait depicting a wounded revolutionary protester as they protest against the military rulers of the country in Cairo on February 11, 2012. Egyptian people mark first anniversary of the resignation of the former president Hosni Mubarak after his 30-year term. (Getty Images)
CAIRO, EGYPT – FEBRUARY 11: Students carry a symbolic coffin in rememberance for student who was killed in Port Said during the recent football match clashes on February 11, 2012 in Cairo, Egypt. Egyptian people await the upcoming first anniversary of the resignation of the former Muhammad Hosni Mubarak after his 30-year term on 11 February last year. The poor economic condition of the country and the unrest in the past are a threat to the transition to a democracy. (Getty Images)
An Egyptian demonstrator holds up a cartoon (the artwork I made in January 16, see HERE) depicting a member of the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) with the slogan ‘Down with the military rule’, during a demonstration in the coastal city of Alexandria on January 25, 2012, to mark the first anniversary of the revolt that toppled the regime. (GETTY IMAGES) | <urn:uuid:dd755959-43d7-44d8-bf4b-cad70998b4d7> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://latuffcartoons.wordpress.com/tag/getty-images/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959744 | 595 | 1.789063 | 2 |
- About the LPO
- Volunteer & Support Us
- Organization Contacts
- County Party Information
- Web Links
In 2007, the Libertarian Party of Ohio sued the state and former Secretary of State Ken Blackwell for ballot access. The party won the lawsuit and, along with other "minor" parties, has retained ballot access since that time -- until now. Under the new election laws, it will be virtually impossible for a political party other than the Democrats and the Republicans to run for office in Ohio.
The U.S. Constitution guarantees both the right of association and the right to equal treatment under the law. This tactic to eliminate competition from the outside further proves that there is a blurry line between to the two "major" parties, and that our constitutional rights are being stolen while we sleep.
I worked a Libertarian outreach booth this past weekend, and the disdain for both major parties is immense. The Libertarian Party believes in minimum government, fiscal responsibility and maximum freedom. It is time for America to wake up and tell the Republicans and Democrats that we have had enough party-line politics.
Robert F. Sherwin, Columbia Station | <urn:uuid:9b7c41b1-1dcd-4025-8842-a2b6257ecedd> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://lpo.org/communications/published-letters-to-editor/453-gop-voting-bill-third-parties-are-fed-up.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368701459211/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516105059-00024-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.950665 | 232 | 1.734375 | 2 |
By Janice Penix
ATKINS - Bus transportation supervisor Jim Camp told school board members during Tuesday night's monthly meeting he was attempting to reconfigure the district's bus routes in order to reduce fuel costs.
"We're trying to save money with our bus routes," Camp said. "We have cut one of our handicap routes, and we may be able to cut both."
At July's meeting, board member Paul Wayne Duvall asked Superitendent Al Davidson if the district could save money by combining some bus routes. Davidson said he would ask Camp to look into it.
Tuesday night, Camp said he had also looked into the possibility of using volunteer bus drivers. He said that idea was not practical because drivers are required to have a significant amount of information on file and to have the information updated periodically.
He said using volunteers would mean drivers would have to pay for those services and would be responsible for keeping the information updated.
Board member Gary Simmons asked if the district could save money by reassigning certain bus routes to drivers who live in the area of the routes.
"The one I really see is a waste of money is the driver who's driving off the mountain to get a bus and do a route, and another driver is pulling that mountain route," Simmons said.
Camp said he supported Simmons' idea.
"I tried that a couple years ago, and the board stopped me," Camp said. "Someone had complained about drivers taking the buses home, so the board put a stop to it. But I'm 100 percent for it."
Simmons made a motion to permit Camp to allow drivers to take buses home if it would make the route driving more efficient. Duvall seconded, and the motion passed unanimously.
Camp also gave a report on new laws that will affect school bus transportation. One, Isaac's Law, will make penalties for passing stopped school buses stricter.
"We have a lot of trouble with that here, so we need to pass the word around - the people don't need to be passing school buses," Camp said. "Also, if the driver doesn't report a vehicle passing his bus, he can be fined.
"We also have a problem with little ones not staying in their seats [while riding the bus]. We've been fortunate because we've had two or three accidents, and no one got hurt. But it's one of the biggest safety problems here at Atkins and is probably 80 percent of our discipline problem on the buses. Our major problem is not fights on the bus, it's keeping little ones in their seats."
The board approved an attendance policy for certified staff as recommended by Davidson. The certified personnel policy committee (PPC) also presented a recommendation, but the board voted 3-2 not to approve that proposal.
The proposal submitted by the PPC omitted a paragraph stating teachers would be encouraged to be present during the school day and at school functions whenever it is possible and reasonable to do so.
Committee members objected to the wording in the paragraph, saying if a teacher was required to attend a school function outside of the regular school day, he or she should be compensated for that time, according to state law.
Davidson said the policy gave more freedom to building principals to determine which teachers should attend certain events. He said it was important not to limit principals by eliminating that paragraph.
Simmons made a motion to approve the policy recommended by the committee, and Duvall seconded his motion. It was not approved, however, as board members Bobby Fletcher, Phillip Haney and Carl Warren voted against the motion.
Haney made a motion to adopt the policy proposed by Davidson. Warren seconded, and that motion passed, 3-2, with Simmons and Duvall voting against it.
The board also approved changes to its policy manual according to policy updates released by the Arkansas School Boards Association.
Board members awarded a bid to Sean Rehm for a Ford Ranger. The vehicle, which is no longer needed by the district, was offered for sale through closed bids. The bids were opened at Tuesday night's meeting, and Rehm was the high bidder.
The board also acccepted two student transfer petitions - one from Atkins to Hector and another from Wonderview to Atkins. | <urn:uuid:0f1bd164-ccbb-4a26-808c-47da300a0376> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.couriernews.com/view/full_story/15346152/article-Atkins-School-District-hopes-to-reduce-fuel-costs-via-bus-routes | 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 | 0.983957 | 877 | 1.609375 | 2 |
December 10, 2012
Texas wine country on the rise as more residents choose to drink local
According to the Texas Wine and Grape Growers Association, Texas is No. 5 in the country for wine production and No. 7 for wine grape production. From 2007 to 2009, the number of cases of wines produced in Texas increased by 20 percent, and the number of wineries across the state increased by 16 percent. | <urn:uuid:9270c8f3-dde3-40d1-a98f-1baf91ab77d9> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.winebusiness.com/news/?go=getNewsLink&dataId=108650 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00030-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.960631 | 83 | 1.507813 | 2 |
Police arrest a woman for allegedly writing with chalk on the street in downtown L.A.
The LAPD arrested 17 people last night after altercations between both officers and Occupy LA protesters during Thursday night’s Art Walk near the corner of 5th and Spring in Downtown Los Angeles. Four officers were injured. What prompted this clash? Sidewalk chalk drawings. “Vandalism has always been illegal,” said Mayor Villaraigosa. Given last night’s events, we examine the Occupy movement and the cities response to it.
What do you think of the cities handling of the Occupiers? Do you think sidewalk chalk drawings are vandalism?
Tony Pierce, KPCC’s Online News Editor | <urn:uuid:b5fb6f6f-dd5d-4ff7-bbf9-3dcf1197870e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.scpr.org/programs/patt-morrison/2012/07/13/27405/protestors-and-lapd-clash-at-downtown-las-chalk-wa/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946273 | 148 | 1.632813 | 2 |
May 19 2013 Latest news:
Friday, July 13, 2012
Legendary photographer David Bailey and fertility scientist Professor Robert Winston at Newham’s first Ideas Olympiad.
The pair will share ideas and their experiences during a series of lectures organised by the council.
The event will open at Stratford’s Theatre Royal tonight, Friday, where Mr Bailey will take part in a question and answer session with Tim Marlow.
He will talk about the East End, the images which define it, and his exhibition at Compressor House.
This will be followed three days later by Bad Ideas, presented by Professor Winston at the Stratford Picturehouse from 6.30pm.
The lecture will question whther human creativity always produces desirable results.
Newham Mayor Sir Robin Wales said: “I am delighted to welcome some of the UK’s most brilliant and creative minds to Newham so they can share their life experiences.
“I hope that audiences will take away with them the inspiration to share these ideas and their own with friends and relatives.”
Future lectures will include the Origin of our Species on July 18, given by former East Ham resident and Natural History Museum research leader Professor Christopher Stringer.
The next day, between 6pm and 8pm, the Old Town Hall in Stratford will host an interactive panel debate, Generation 2012: The Challenges Ahead.
The debate will aks 18-25 year olds in the audience what they think the government needs to put as a priority.
For more information or to book tickets, visit www.newham.gov.uk/ideasolympiad | <urn:uuid:1bc8a990-83d5-465a-aee8-a71e6d65614b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.newhamrecorder.co.uk/what-s-on/arts/david_bailey_and_tv_s_professor_robert_winston_to_speak_at_newham_s_ideas_olympiad_1_1444742 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00031-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.936871 | 336 | 1.617188 | 2 |
Results Around the Web for Aska
Back to the Aska name page
Askar Akayevich Akayev (Аскар Акаевич Акаев) (born 10 November 1944) served as the President of Kyrgyzstan from 1990 until his overthrow in the March 2005 Tulip Revolution.
An askari was a local soldier serving in the armies of the European colonial powers in Africa, particularly in East Africa, Northeast Africa, and Central Africa.
Askam and Ireleth is a civil parish in the county of Cumbria, in North West England. It originally consisted of two separate coastal villages with different origins and histories which, in recent times, have merged to become one continuous settlement.
The House of Ascania () was a dynasty of German rulers. It was also known as the House of Anhalt, after Anhalt, its longest-held possession. | <urn:uuid:33c8ff6c-4ff5-4bfa-8df6-bd3669e3ee5c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.babycenter.com/babyNamesMashup/aska-319745.htm | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00023-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.972693 | 197 | 1.757813 | 2 |
- Used Books
- Kobo eReading
- Staff Picks
- Gifts & Gift Cards
- Sell Books
- Stores & Events
Special Offers see all
More at Powell's
Recently Viewed clear list
Used Mass Market
Ships in 1 to 3 days
The Necessary Beggarby Susan Palwick
Synopses & Reviews
Susan Palwick, author of the remarkable Flying in Place, now returns with a compelling new novel of a family cast out of an idyllic realm, learning to live in our own troubled world. With its richly imagined portrayal of a lost culture, complete with poetry and fables, traditions and customs, and its searing yet sympathetic view of own society as seen through new eyes, The Necessary Beggar is an compelling examination of humanity and the redemptive power of love, in the spirit of Ursula K. Le Guin's The Dispossessed and Robert A. Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land.
Lémabantunk, the Glorious City, is a place of peace and plenty, of festivals and flowers, bejeweled streets and glittering waterfalls. But it is also a land of severe justice. Darroti, a young merchant, has been accused of an unforgiveable crime - the brutal murder a highborn woman. Now, in keeping with the customs of their world, his entire family must share in his punishment - exile to the unknown world that lies beyond a mysterious gate.
Passing through that gate, and grieving for the life they leave behind, Darroti and his family find themselves in a harsh and hostile land - America just a few years hence, a country under attack in a world torn by hatred and warfare. Unable to explain their origin, they are rapidly remanded to an internment camp in the Nevada desert, along with thousands of other refugees. There they endeavor to make sense of this ill-fated land where strange gods are worshipped, and living things like flowers and insects are not respected.
After Darroti, unable to bear his disgrace, takes his life, the rest of the family escapes to the outside world. There, each tries to cope in their own way. Timbor, the head of the clan, troubled by the restless spirit of his departed son who comes to him in dreams, does his best to preserve the old ways, and avoid conflict with the outsiders. His eldest son Masofo, who calls himself Max, is lured by the worldly temptations of this new world, while his second son, Erolorit, strives to make a decent life for his family.
But it is Timor's granddaughter, Zamatryna, who is the quickest to adjust to this strange new world. It is she who is the first to learn its language, to adopt its customs, to accept this place as her new home. And, as the strain of adapting themselves to this new life begins to tear the family apart, it is Zama, sustained by the extraordinary love of an ordinary young man, who finds a way to heal their grief and give them new hope.
A compelling new contemporary fantasy novel from the award-winning author of Flying in Place
RThe author of the award-winning "Flying in Place" has crafted a unique story of a family's love and the power of forgiveness to transcend the boundary between life and death. Highly recommended for all libraries.S--"Library Journal," starred review.
About the Author
SUSAN PALWICK teaches writing and literature at the University of Nevada, Reno. She is the author of more than a dozen works of critically acclaimed short fiction and poetry. Her first novel, Flying in Place, won the Crawford Award for Best First Fantasy Novel, and her poem, "The Neighbor's Wife," earned the Rhysling Award for best short science fiction poem.
What Our Readers Are Saying
Other books you might like | <urn:uuid:3722ce34-b7f6-40fb-82dd-0b20a9cd28fc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.powells.com/biblio/7-9780765349514-1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959151 | 806 | 1.640625 | 2 |
Stop complaining about politics
Are people afraid of looking stupid, or are they avoiding conflict by not discussing politics.
I've been here for 41 years now and I'm slowly realising that the best word to describe Western Australian politics is probably "funny".
We all grizzle about having to walk down the road to the local school or community hall once every four years, talkback callers seem totally unpleasable when it comes to the people who we choose to represent us and evidently the whole issue choosing one of only two, who are so offensive it's considered impolite to discuss with dinner companions.
But the fact remains, the outcome of tomorrow's state election will see a bunch of people - some woefully underqualified and others eminently qualified – yell at each other in a big old building on the hill, take a salary from our pockets and collectively write the laws that every single one of us have to abide by for at least the next four years.
How is it possible that so many of us either don't care or are afraid to admit that we do?
My best guess is that it comes down to the fact that political discussions often end in disagreement and many of us have little to no conflict resolution skills, combined with our natural human fear of sounding stupid – and most people are embarrassed by their lack of understanding about the whole political 'thing'.
Clearly these two issues are of no consequence to “that person” at every party who will happily jump into an argument about whether the sky is actually down, not up, and has no fear of sounding stupid in front of a mass audience if it allows them to have a good scrap.
And doesn't everyone love that type?
Well, obviously not. At parties, they are the loudest guys wearing the loudest Hawaiian shirt that you spend most of your night trying to avoid (sorry fellow party-goers) and if they happen to be a relation (sorry family) over the years you learn to avoid the hot-button issues and develop the necessary skills to 'manage' their enthusiasm for debate at Christmas lunch.
But perhaps we've being doing it wrong all these years. Perhaps the rusted-on theory of avoiding political discussions in social settings has led to a disappointingly small pool of people willing and able to duly represent us in the big house on the hill? Maybe the ostrich approach and constant grumbling on talkback puts many of the best minds off pursuing a career in what was once the most honourable and respected way to serve the community?
If you agree or are even willing to consider this thesis, I propose a 48-hour trial run of a new paradigm. Starting now - I mean right now - stop complaining about the calibre of our politicians and find out who is running in your electorate. Google them, email them or even call them if you can. Ask them what they stand for and if they are going to fix your particular issue if you vote for them. If you don't like them, say thanks and try the next one. Then tomorrow morning, bounce into your local polling booth with a smile on your face and cast your vote.
And given this was only a 48-hour trial if you don't like the result, you can wake up on Sunday morning and start complaining again.
Poll: What is West Australians' biggest problem when it comes to engaging with politics?
- I don't think there is anything wrong with the way people engage with politics.
- People are apathetic - they just don't care.
- People want to avoid conflict and arguments over politics.
- People are afraid to sound stupid or uniformed.
- Other - let us know in the comment section below.
Total votes: 164.
You will need Cookies enabled to use our Voting Feature.
Poll closed 9 Mar, 2013
These polls are not scientific and reflect the opinion only of visitors who have chosen to participate. | <urn:uuid:394dd06b-fdbb-4d9e-9e6f-e31b7866480c> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.smh.com.au/wa-news/state-election-2013/stop-complaining-about-politics-20130308-2fpfq.html | 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 | 0.963461 | 803 | 1.5 | 2 |
Big Bird's nest is the home of Big Bird on Sesame Street. Located to the right of 123 Sesame Street at 123½, with Oscar's trash can between the two, Big Bird's nest is set off by a collection of doors and paneling. Brick walls from surrounding buildings set off the area, giving Big Bird complete privacy, though no roof. One of the windows of Susan and Gordon's apartment looks into the nest, and the former has been a sort-of surrogate mother to him over the years. His bed is a large-scale version of a real bird's nest, made of sticks and twigs.
The furnishings include crates, which serve as table space or benches for visitors, a bookshelf (containing such titles as March of Democracy, Preface to Philosophy, Principles of Chemistry, and Shattered Lamp), and a variety of diverse items. According to the book Sesame Street Unpaved, Big Bird's nest contains: a bubble gum dispenser, a clock with no hands, a feather duster, a football helmet, a golf bag with one club, a hurricane lamp, a megaphone, a Roman bust (which has occasionally worn his red neck tie), a tricycle wheel, a watering can, an old record player, an umbrella, a mailbox, and a pair of snowshoes. Prominent decorations include an alphabet chart and Mr. Hooper's Picture. Among other objects not listed in the book, he has a small wooden alphabet sign, a jack-and-balls game, and a picture of his cousin Abelardo. The opening of a 1974 episode reveals that he also has a pull-string lamp.
When the set was given a complete makeover in 2002 following the hurricane in Season 32, Big Bird acquired some actual, colorful child-like furniture like a couple of multi-colored nightstands with drawers, a colorful bookshelf, and even a small wooden step-ladder to get into Big Bird's nest. Most of the original belongings of Big Bird's mentioned above have been removed with the exception of his snowshoes, and his mailbox (which is now repainted to no longer show his name on the side).
The nest used in Elmo in Grouchland was built by Geoffrey Cormier of the movie's art department. The item was put on eBay, but didn't sell, so in 2005, it was placed for sale on his website. That nest had thicker twisted branches than the contemporary television version.
- "Big Bird's Nest" appears as a property on the Monopoly: Sesame Street Edition game board, in place of Pennsylvania Avenue. | <urn:uuid:51f3eb9b-1c19-42f8-9668-98aebfb8f015> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://muppet.wikia.com/wiki/Big_Bird's_nest?oldid=633456 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696383156/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092623-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968434 | 538 | 1.71875 | 2 |
As Ross Douthat, and Bill Kristol noted over the weekend, few tax cuts help the middle class more than the extension of the payroll tax cut.
The extension was missing on the list of important tax cuts named by the White House White House this morning in a report on the economic impact of tax hikes for the middle class.
The report was co-authored by Alan B. Krueger the Chairman of President Barack Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers.
When Krueger was asked by reporters about the issue in today’s White House press briefing, Krueger would only admit that the initial tax cut was successful economically.
Rather than explaining why it wasn’t on his list, Krueger only added that that President Obama thought it “should be on the table.” | <urn:uuid:6ece1f17-6591-410a-a6ac-0d7f447e440f> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://washingtonexaminer.com/is-obama-giving-up-on-the-payroll-tax-holiday/article/2514370 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.976082 | 169 | 1.601563 | 2 |
New Iowa State Cow-Calf Specialist Ready To Work with Beef Industry
AMES, Iowa -- Growing up on an Indiana diversified crop and livestock farm and having the opportunity to become involved in the beef industry early in his life helped create Patrick Gunn’s passion. Showing cattle and being actively involved in 4-H and state junior beef associations shaped the passion. Undergraduate and graduate work with utilization of biofuel byproducts in beef cattle diets while maintaining those ties with the cattle associations strengthened the passion. And now as the new cow-calf specialist at Iowa State University, he’s embarking on a career that will allow that passion to flourish.
“Even prior to college, I had the ultimate goal of fostering a career that would allow me to work with beef producers on a daily basis, and assist those producers in making management decisions that would increase both productivity and profitability,” Gunn said. “And, although I am confident in my abilities, I know that the trust of a producer can only be earned over time, so I plan to utilize our network of experts both on campus and across the state to efficiently and effectively answer the questions presented by producers.”
Gunn, who joined the Iowa State University animal science department faculty earlier this month, said his appointment is 60 percent extension, 25 percent applied research and 15 percent teaching. His first priority is to meet with as many beef producers on a face-to-face basis as possible.
“I plan to spend a lot of time listening to the needs and views of producers around Iowa so I can help develop extension programming which not only addresses current needs, but also anticipates future needs of the cow-calf sector,” Gunn said. “I’m a firm believer in personal contact with producers, and while I’m comfortable in our technology-driven world, I plan to use a variety of platforms to effectively communicate with producers and partners across the Midwest.”
Gunn’s primary research focus is on nutrition and reproduction, including interaction between the two areas. With continued volatility in commodity markets, producers are looking for ways to reduce feed costs while maintaining productivity and herd health. In many instances, this involves the use of byproduct feeds in heifer and bull development rations as well as wintering cow rations, he said.
“While a great deal of data have been generated regarding how byproduct feeds impact feedlot production, the effect of these feedstuffs on reproduction and fertility is not as well understood. Plus, we now know that maternal nutrition during gestation and lactation can alter growth and development of the offspring, thus affecting potential profit for years to come,” he said. “So it’s imperative that we are attentive to how new and alternative management schemes affect the cow and her offspring.”
Gunn also plans to work with estrous synchronization schemes for heifers and cows, determining how to alter existing protocols to incur less labor and lower costs for producers without negatively impacting pregnancy rates.
He said the choice to accept this faculty position at Iowa State was easy.
“Getting the opportunity to work in a state that is as agriculturally minded as Iowa is exciting. Moreover, the opportunity to work with producers that are as passionate about the beef industry as those in this state was an opportunity I could not pass up,” he said. “The Iowa Beef Center comprises a talented and well-rounded group of individuals who each bring their own strengths to the table, and at the same time complement each other so that most any beef-related question should be able to be effectively addressed.”
Gunn welcomes presentation requests, research suggestions and invitations to meet with individuals and groups. Contact him by phone at 515-294-3020 or email at [email protected] to set an appointment or check on his availability.
Agriculture and Natural Resources Menu
- Field Specialists
- Natural Resources
- Yard and Garden | <urn:uuid:3dad1d8a-cec0-44b2-b7fd-4d2c81be87ed> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.extension.iastate.edu/ag/node/16128 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00021-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.965286 | 823 | 1.757813 | 2 |
Welcome to Distress Centres Ontario
Distress Centres (DC’s) across Ontario offer support and a variety of services to their communities. At a DC you can find a listening ear for lonely, depressed, and/or suicidal people, usually 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Many centres also have Suicide Survivor programs, support services for youth, telephone call out programs for seniors and vulnerable people, mental health Crisis Lines services and much more.
Distress Centres provide their listening and referral services primarily through highly trained and committed volunteers. The staffs of Distress Centres are knowledgeable individuals who insure the highest levels of support to the individuals in their communities and innovation in service provision. | <urn:uuid:95e552b0-5831-4902-a14f-9e951685d5ad> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.dcontario.org/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368698207393/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516095647-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946172 | 143 | 1.789063 | 2 |
March 31, 2013
The award winning play, “The Mountaintop,” looks at the everyday divinity of ordinary folks and places Martin King right there with them. His greatness is not a greatness which is inaccessible or isolated. In the Lorraine Motel that night, King listens and even agrees at some point with the young maid, Camae, a Malcolm X radical in an apron.
January 10, 2013
On Jan. 9, MASSIVE demonstrations throughout Haiti supported former President Aristide after he was summoned to court on frivolous charges seen as political persecution. People say that putting Aristide on trial is the same as putting the Haitian masses on trial and that the charges are meant to divert attention from the third earthquake anniversary and the theft of billions in aid. Speak out against the Red Cross for building a luxury hotel with aid funds. Rally Friday, Jan. 11, 4:30-5:30 p.m., outside Red Cross headquarters, 3901 Broadway, near MacArthur BART, Oakland.
January 3, 2013
In what is clearly a continuation of the Feb. 29, 2004, U.S. instigated coup d’etat against Haiti, former Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide has been called before Martelly’s handpicked government prosecutor Lucmane Delile in what is widely believed to be an attempt by Martelly, the U.S. and France to wage a campaign of political persecution against Aristide, Fanmi Lavalas, and the democratic process and progress in Haiti.
December 28, 2012
“Haiti may have many problems but until 2010 cholera was not one of them. In fact, the country had no known history of the disease at all,” the Al Jazeera host explains. In October 2010, the first of now 8,000 Haitians died of cholera introduced to Haiti by U.N. peacekeeping troops from Nepal and the U.N.’s negligence in allowing their untreated waste to poison a major river.
August 26, 2012
More than 70 percent of Haitians responding to a recent poll said they wanted MINUSTAH to leave within a year. The U.N. can use the money currently wasted on this military force to rid the country of cholera. Then, at least, they will have cleaned up one of their biggest crimes in the country.
February 5, 2011
The return of Jean Claude Duvalier, “Baby Doc,” to Haiti as a free man was excruciating to veterans of the struggle that overthrew the 30-year dictatorship. The traumatizing symbolism of Duvalier’s return at Haiti’s weakest hour is an insult to the dead and an assault on the living.
November 15, 2010
Nicolas Rossier conducted an exclusive interview with former Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in forced exile in Johannesburg. Aristide concludes: “We are poor – worse than poor because we are living in abject poverty and misery. But based on that collective dignity rooted in our forefathers, I do believe we have to continue fighting in a peaceful way for our self-determination, and if we do that, history will pay tribute to our generation.” Rally for democracy in Haiti and Aristide’s return Wednesday, Nov. 17, 5 p.m., Montgomery & Market, San Francisco. | <urn:uuid:c14ef9cc-0688-4a8c-bb5e-9a3adf6aae1e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://sfbayview.com/tag/cholera-epidemic/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368708142388/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516124222-00022-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.955834 | 701 | 1.578125 | 2 |
This is the first article in a four-part series . . .
When does a man truly fail? What makes a failure complete?
I remember being a young man truly afraid of getting my report card. I was six years old and in first grade, and I had no idea how grades came to appear on the report card or what they were based on other than someone else's idea of whether or not I had "done well in school" for some time period. The report card came in small yellow envelopes of the kind you'd find in most offices when something official needs to be transported from here to there. I remember carrying mine home with a heavy hand.
I suddenly recounted all the things I had been in trouble for up to that point . . . throwing rocks in the playground . . . spitting water when it was my turn for a drink at the water fountain . . . not staying in line when walking between the classroom and the playground . . . and on and on it went. When I handed my report card to my mother, she began to read down the list of topics I had only heard in the classroom, and was not sure exactly what they meant. Reading - A, Math - A, Penmanship - A (there was a ship?!) and when she came to the bottom of the list I had gotten all A's.
Glad that was over with, I simply went on my way. The next report card, however, did not come back so good. I had a B and a C, and although I was not sure what that meant, I knew from my dad's reaction that it was not good. The third report card came back with an F on it, and that is when my dad took me into the back room for a talk.
Is the letter "F" for "Failure", stamped anywhere on your life? Unfortunately, many Christians have this letter stamped on their life, and not by God, but either by themselves or even more unfortunately, by other Christians. The failed Christian life happens when we do what we know is wrong, but it's not merely getting out of line at the water fountain. It can be much worse.
Infidelity in a marriage is the biggest one that springs to my mind because it seems to be the most abhorrent and prevalent in churches. However, there are other ways to get the big "F" stamped onto your life. For some, it is simply failing to meet expectations. Whether you set them or had them placed on your life, a broken expectation can feel so much like a broken promise that disappoints those around us. However you get it, chances are high that you may be walking around with an "F" stamped on your Christian life. The worst thing about it is it feels permanently engraved there.
How do you know a man has accepted that mark? He stops going to church. He stops reading his Bible. He may even stop trying to talk with God. "God cannot use me" is the message in his heart, and that message can be reinforced in cruel ways by others.
Back to my questions: When does a man truly fail? What makes a failure complete?
Through the year of first grade, I was able to bring my grades back up. The lower grades turned back into B's and A's. In the end, I was no failure. I still had the marks of the past to show for the lack of performance, but it was in the past. The only mark that mattered was the one at the end of the year. The only way that mark of an "F" would have been my undoing is if I had ceased to try. If I had accepted the "F" as permanent the moment it appeared, that would have been my moment of real failure.
Too many Christians today live the Failed Christian life, not because of the mark of Failure, but because they have accepted that mark as permanent, and have stopped trying. What is more, there are too many other Christians out there all too ready to remind them of the mark. Though life has moved on, they continue to point their finger into the past - "Failure" is on their lips every time they say hello, and the engraving grows a little deeper.
We do not have to live the Failed Christian life though. All we have to do is keep trying. Peter fell beneath the waves, cut off a man's ear, denied Christ three times, and still lived a very successful Christian life . . . because he understood . . . a man only truly fails when he fails to keep trying. Then, his failure is complete.
Reposted from www.MenRising.com | <urn:uuid:b005d647-7211-4cca-af1e-4a2379405c95> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.annistonstar.com/bookmark/15676698/blog+entry-F1+Failed | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702810651/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516111330-00013-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.988963 | 956 | 1.796875 | 2 |
Tuesday, 17 April 2012
[This is reposted as part of our Best-Of Revelife Week. It was originally posted on October 30, 2009.]
"An atheist, like a Christian, holds that we can know whether or not there is a God. The Christian holds that we can know there is a God; the atheist, that we can know there is not." --Bertrand Russell
I really do love atheists, you know. Atheism, next to paganism, has to be my favorite non-Christian belief system.
Because at the heart of it, atheists care.
They think that it matters whether there is or isn't a God. They think that this question is important. And while they and I come to two very different answers to that question, we are kin in that we come to answers. In a world that tells us "all religions and belief systems are equally valid" or "it doesn't matter what you believe, as long as you're true to it," both atheists and theists scream "It matters!"
A prime illustration is G.K. Chesterton's little parable The Ball and the Cross, which I highly recommend. It tells the story of Turnbull, publisher and editor of an atheistic newspaper who tries to fight against the dominant "Christian" elements of Victorian England, and yet cannot get a rise out of the general public because no-one cares enough.
"It was in vain that he cried with an accusing energy that the Bishop of London was paid £12,000 a year for pretending to believe that the whale swallowed Jonah. It was in vain that he hung in conspicuous places the most thrilling scientific calculations about the width of the throat of a whale. Was it nothing to them all they that passed by? ...He had said the worst thing that could be said; and it seemed accepted and ignored like the ordinary second best of the politicians. Every day his blasphemies looked more glaring, and every day the dust lay thicker upon them."
After years of being so ignored, the first person who treats Turnbull's atheism with a "real respect and seriousness"--the first person to even read Turnbull's articles all the way through--is MacIan, a fiercely devout Catholic from the backwoods of Scotland, new to London and not yet jaded in matters of religious belief. ("What is the good of words if they aren't important enough to quarrel over?" he asks.) MacIan is so incensed by what he reads on the newsprint in Turnbull's window that he smashes the window, kicks his way into the office of The Atheist and challenges Turnbull to a duel, to which Turnbull enthusiastically agrees (thrilled at last to have someone who actually listens, someone who is actually angry with his ideas).
The two men are hampered in their efforts to fight their duel, however--firstly because duels are illegal, but also because every person they encounter tries to talk them out of it. "Religion is--a--too personal a matter... The most religious people are not those who talk about it," says one. "...You ought to be more broadminded," says another. And (while I won't spoil the ending for you), as the two men flee from place to place throughout England searching for a quiet place to have their duel, they find that they are quite coming to like each other.
It is that which I love about atheists. They think that these questions of reality or existence are worth fighting for, worth arguing over. They think that it matters whether God is or is not.
Those who tell me that every religion/belief system is the same, or that every religion/belief system is just as good as the others, are making a value claim. Because if it is true that all religions and belief systems are equally valid, it would only be true if they were equally worthless, equally meaningless. When one belief claims that the Good is found by detaching oneself from the needs and desires of the body, and another belief claims that the Good is found by plunging in and changing the world for the better, and another belief claims that the Good is found by isolating oneself from other people, how can they all be true? When one claims that God is pleased if we behave and follow his laws, and another claims that God is pleased if we admit that we haven't behaved and throw ourselves on his mercy, and another claims that God doesn't really care what we do, and another claims that God doesn't exist and we shouldn't be fixated on pleasing a nonexistent figment at the expense of humanity--how can these all be true? If all belief systems are equally valid, equally true, then "true" means little more than "what makes me happy." (And that in and of itself is a truth-claim.) If each religion and belief system is only as good as all the others, then they are meaningless, and the question of whether there is or is not such a thing as a god (and what God/gods are like if there is) simply isn't important enough to bother over.
But Atheism says, "God/gods/deity do not exist." It makes a clear statement regarding the validity of other belief structures; it uncategorically states that belief structures which contradict its own are wrong, because the universe cannot be contradictory (God cannot exist and not-exist at the same time). And by making such a claim, it places importance on the issue: the question of whether there is such a thing as a deity not only can be answered, but should.
So while I disagree with their answer, I love atheists for answering. I respect and admire their stance. Because, in answering, they acknowledge the importance of the question--which is far more than most people do.
What are your thoughts on atheists? Does this post change your opinions ? | <urn:uuid:c93c4614-ec58-4904-a450-c97f6af4f6ba> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.revelife.com/761606830/why-i-love-atheists/?cuttag=true | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00010-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97365 | 1,202 | 1.65625 | 2 |
BERLIN — The leaders of Germany and France, the eurozone’s two biggest economies, said Sunday they have reached an agreement about how to strengthen Europe’s shaky banking sector amid the region’s debt crisis.
“We are determined to do the necessary to ensure the recapitalization of Europe’s banks,” said German Chancellor Angela Merkel after talks with French President Nicolas Sarkozy in Berlin.
A “comprehensive response” to the eurozone’s debt crisis will be completed by month’s end, including a detailed plan on recapitalizing the banks, Sarkozy said at Berlin’s chancellery.
“The economy needs secure financing to ensure growth. There is no prospering economy without stable banks,” he said. “That is what is at stake.”
However, both leaders declined to name a price tag for the new measures or elaborate further, saying the proposal must first be discussed with other European leaders.
Analysts have urged the eurozone to identify all the banks in the region that need to replenish their capital reserves, then decide whether to compel them to raise that money on the open markets and to provide government financing to the ones that can’t.
Many experts say the capital cushions of many European banks must be strengthened in order to withstand a possible government bond default by Greece. Some analysts fear that a Greek default could cause a severe credit squeeze that would even threaten banks not exposed directly to Greece’s debt because banks could be afraid to lend to each other.
The credit freeze that followed the collapse of U.S. investment bank Lehman Brothers in 2008 choked off lending to the wider economy and caused a deep recession.
Merkel did not provide details Sunday about how the recapitalization would work, saying only that all banks across the eurozone would be measured by the same criteria in coordination with, among others, the European Banking Authority and the International Monetary Fund.
Any solution must be “sustainable,” Merkel added.
Sarkozy said the French-German accord on the proposal “is total.”
Germany and France will now submit their proposal to shore up Europe’s shaky banking sector to other European Union governments ahead of an Oct. 17-18 summit of the bloc’s 27 leaders in Brussels, they said.
Both leaders expressed confidence that a comprehensive European response to the crisis will be completed before a summit of the G-20 most developed nations in France Nov. 3-4.
“The global economy needs this summit to become a success, and the European Union will do its part” to ensure a positive outcome, Merkel said.
The IMF has said banks across the continent might need up to (euro) 200 billion ($267 billion) in new capital. The EU disputes the IMF’s estimate, but has warned that lending between banks and from banks to businesses is threatening to freeze up.
Earlier this week, Merkel said that banks must first seek to raise new capital on the market before turning to their government, insisting that the eurozone’s newly strengthened (euro) 440 billion ($590 billion) bailout fund would then only serve as a backstop if a member state can’t cope with shoring up its banks’ capital.
France, however, was reported to favor turning to the fund’s resources right away instead of relying on a national facility to re-capitalize its banks — who are among the biggest holders of Greek bonds.
But Sarkozy sought on Sunday to dispel the notion of different approaches regarding the European Financial Stability Facility, saying “there are no disagreements.”
German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble and his French counterpart, Francois Baroin, also took part in the two leaders’ discussions.
Merkel and Sarkozy were set to have a working dinner after the news conference they gave at the chancellery.
Germany and France, which together represent about half of the 17-nation currency zone’s economic output, regularly hold talks before EU summits to chart out joint positions.
The implosion of Belgian lender Dexia after its sizable exposure to Greek and other eurozone sovereign debt, meanwhile, added a sense of urgency to the talks.
France, Belgium and Luxembourg announced Sunday they had approved a plan for the future of the embattled bank, but they offered no details. France and Belgium became part owners of the bank during a (euro) 6 billion ($7.8 billion) 2008 bailout.
While an all-out Greek default appears unlikely, bondholders might still face severe losses, with some analysts maintaining that Greece’s debt must be cut by about 50 percent or more to attain a sustainable level.
Private bondholders agreed in July to take about a 20 percent cut on their holdings of Greek bonds as their participation in a second international (euro) 109 billion bailout for the country.
But Finance Minister Schaeuble on Sunday joined Merkel and other eurozone officials in hinting that the agreement might have to be renegotiated.
“It is possible that we have so far assumed an insufficient percentage of debt reduction,” he told German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung.
Such a move will be discussed after the so-called troika of Greece’s international creditors — European Central Bank, European Commission and IMF — submits its next progress report later this month, Schaeuble was quoted as saying.
Greece is currently struggling to meet budget and reform targets, but it needs an over all positive progress assessment by the troika to qualify for the next (euro) 8 billion ($11 billion) installment of its (euro) 110 billion package of international bailout loans to avoid bankruptcy.
Greg Keller in Paris contributed to this report. | <urn:uuid:7ef8f045-127a-4799-8a86-a8704c93bd2e> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://bangordailynews.com/2011/10/09/business/germany-france-reach-agreement-on-europe%E2%80%99s-banks/?ref=relatedBox | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00028-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.943432 | 1,196 | 1.5625 | 2 |
Bone Reactions to Early Occlusal Loading of Two-Stage Titanium Plasma-Sprayed Implants: A Pilot Study in Monkeys
This pilot study analyzed the bone reactions to early loaded titanium plasma-sprayed implants. A total of 24 titanium plasma-sprayed implants (12 in the maxillla and 12 in the mandbile) (Primary Healing Implant, Legnano) were inserted into four Macaca fascicularis monkeys with instruments specially designed to obtain a precise fit of the implant in the bone socket. A metal superstructure was cemented into 10 mandibular and 10 maxillary implants 15 days after implant insertion. The four remaining implants were used as controls. Eight months after implant placement, a block section was carried out, the defect was filled with nonresorbably hydroxyapatite, and all 24 implants were retrieved. The implants were treated to obtain thin ground sections that were examined under normal and polarized light. Histologic analysis showed that bone was observed around the implant surface in all implants. Morphometric analysis demonstrated that bone lined 67.2% (SD = 3.1%) of the maxillary implant surface, and 80.71% (SD = 4.6%) of the mandibular implant surface. No differences were found in the percentage of bone-implant contact in the control implants. In the loaded implants, however, the bone around the implants had a m ore compact appearance. The study demonstrated that it is possible to obtain a high percentage of bone-implant contact in early loaded titanium plasma-sprayed implants. | <urn:uuid:82334834-649c-4949-a3ce-bd981a19ac47> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.quintpub.com/journals/prd/abstract.php?iss2_id=498&article_id=6020&article=6&title=Bone%20Reactions%20to%20Early%20Occlusal%20Loading%20of%20Two-Stage%20Titanium%20Plasma-Sprayed%20Implants:%20A%20Pilot%20Study%20in%20Monkeys | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00033-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.94622 | 318 | 1.828125 | 2 |
I can scarcely imagine reducing the scriptures to my top ten - but before I read Doug on this, I must have a try. I will confine myself to the TNK first. I am going to go from memory and on impulse.
Narrowing down the books: Psalms, Genesis, Deuteronomy, Job, Ecclesiates, Isaiah, Song, Lamentations - that will do and some of my verses may not come from these favorites and some of my favorite books may not register individual verses. I apologize to the books I have not listed.
Verses: (if I need to say where they come from, they are not your favorite)
- Let him kiss me with the
mkisses of his mouth for your love is better than wine.
- My beloved is mine and I am his - and its counter - I am my beloved's and his desire is for me.
- He will not break a bruised reed, nor smother smouldering flax.
- O that you were my brother that I might embrace you in the streets and no one would take notice.
- Your loving kindness is better than life itself - my lips will praise you.
- Jerusalem, Jerusalem, turn to the LORD your God (ht Thomas Tallis - favorites include musical memory) - to which I will add - ht Stanford - O pray for the peace of Jerusalem, they shall prosper that love thee.
- Have mercy upon me, O God, after thy great goodness (ht Allegri).
- My help comes even from the LORD who has made heaven and earth.
- My just one will live by my/his faith/faithfulness (take your pick).
- Sit at my right hand, till I make your enemies your footstool (ht Handel).
As for my excuses - that will have to wait for another time. | <urn:uuid:4a9680eb-5cdf-4f40-bff4-b537160af61b> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://stenagmois.blogspot.com/2007/11/my-top-ten-from-tnk.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703682988/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112802-00014-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946297 | 387 | 1.546875 | 2 |
Governor David A. Paterson today announced that he will call a special election for Tuesday, November 2, 2010 to fill a vacancy in the 29th Congressional District.
“Over the past several weeks, I have worked closely with representatives from Western New York to determine the best possible timing to fill a vacancy in the 29th Congressional District,” Governor Paterson said. “Since the vacancy, Western New Yorkers have been served by a working Congressional office that has and will continue to address their needs. Due to serious concerns over the rollout of new electronic voting machines in several counties within the district, the local financial burden of holding a special election so close to the regular election cycle, as well as the possible disenfranchisement of overseas military voters who would not be able to participate, I will call for a Special Election to be held on November 2, 2010. This will ensure a fair and open election process. I urge all eligible voters to go to the polls in November to select their next Congressional representative, along with their next statewide and local officials.”
Governor Paterson will issue the Special Election Proclamation in October, approximately 30-40 days prior to the Special Election, pursuant to Section 42 of the Public Officers Law. The proclamation orders that an election for a Member of the Congress be held in the 29th Congressional District and shall be conducted in the manner prescribed by law for elections in New York State. | <urn:uuid:72aa18e8-4410-4ded-b572-065c0bcb1e15> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.governor.ny.gov/archive/paterson/press/051210SpecialElection.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00040-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.968271 | 289 | 1.5625 | 2 |
"I know not what treason is, if sapping and betraying the liberties of a people be not treason." ~ Cato
User's Guide to Spreading the Philosophy of Liberty
Column by Vahram G. Diehl.
Exclusive to STR
Whatever the collective heading they arbitrarily choose to fall under, the supporters and practitioners of free choice who reject coercion through force or fraud as a viable ethical standard are constantly facing barriers in the path to spreading this moral precept to those around them. Those who believe in a stateless and free society absent of centralized political rule have likely without exception all been ridiculed, shunned, or even violently opposed for expressing their support of the optimum in individual liberty.
The success of creating the kind of culture we envision depends upon our ability to market this ideology to others and to educate them with sound principles. The nearly universal resistance to even the consideration of a break from past political tradition and dogma is not merely a minor bump in the road; it is the single greatest inhibition we face for progress in creating a free world.
It is easy to point our fingers at the uniformed, gun-toting enforcers who patrol the streets, or to slander the names in a well-intentioned but crude attempt for change of the elite puppet masters pulling the strings. To hold an accurate view and make the most possible progress, we must remember that it is conscious and unconscious agreement in the minds of our commonplace neighbors far and wide that allows such tyranny to remain in effect. Accordingly, it is in the minds of our friends and neighbors that we must act to make slow but effective change which will one day lead to total peaceful revolution.
Having had a moderate amount of success in the arena of ideological propagation, I would like to offer some advice to my brethren on ways to most effectively broaden paradigms in fertile minds. The skill of inspiring and inciting intellectual growth in others is one of the most valuable and rewarding qualities, and its applications extend to a great variety of endeavors. I have summarized the process of second-hand paradigm expansion into five simple steps. Following these steps, and I am confident that one's rate of success in explaining their ideals to outsiders and winning ideological converts will rise dramatically.
Step 1: Be a person of noteworthy intellectual and moral character in order to gain respect and influence.
Before any other major progress can be made, one must make use of his or her greatest tool in this mission: their reputation as an individual. One who can present himself as intelligent, honest, ambitious, curious, and all the other traits that are ambiguously looked up to has a much higher chance of successfully inciting interest through endorsement alone. The same simple sentence spoken by Joe Nobody will suddenly take on immense new power and influence coming from someone whom intuition tells others is worth listening to.
We all represent different demographics through distinctions like age, gender, race, profession, pastimes, and other cultural discrepancies. Each of us will have access to differing spheres of influence; we can only make best use of them when we are in good standing in those spheres. There are comparatively few females who support and adhere to the principles of liberty. A healthy, headstrong, studious, intelligent, fiscally responsible, well-spoken, young woman has a great opportunity to gain attention and influence in her demographic and others simply because of her rarity. Ditto housewives, ditto teenagers, ditto geriatrics, ditto physicists, ditto farmers, ditto educators, ditto musicians, and so forth.
Even if you never actively seek to engage in publication and education on the subject, your positive personal reputation and identification as an individualist will build positive imagery for freedom and add momentum to our progress. A good reputation is a boon to even the most passive of activists.
Step 2: Focus your attention and influence on students who are open-minded, discontent with their present knowledge, and curious enough to seriously recognize problems and evaluate answers.
We should seek to act as guides helping others to utilize their own innate intellectual curiosity and capacity for reason to arrive at the right conclusions. To borrow the cliché analogy: we ought help them to be critical thinking and questioning fishers, not just hand over the catch of the day to them in the form of an all-encompassing, conclusive statement. This can only happen when a person's mind has reached a point of viability at which new ideas can effectively be planted in the healthy soil. It is senseless to try to call attention to the obvious atrocities of our system to someone whose mind is dried and dense. Try as we all have, we will always fail in chipping away at the concrete and stone composing their propensity for free inquiry.
So logically then, our concern should be to select pupils who have already expressed a growing discontent for the state of things and an earnest desire to learn the nature of them. It is not enough to be discontent; everyone is discontent with the state to some extent. Most seek cheap tricks, hallucinations, quick fixes, painkillers, distractions, and shortcuts to ease their suffering. We need quality people who are excited by learning and who will not stop at anything short of the most real of realities and solutions, no matter how disquieting.
If a person is at a state of intellectual or ethical development where they still believe archaic and morally retarded fallacies such as that stealing is sometimes good, or that people should be shot and imprisoned for introducing foreign substances into their own bodies and engaging in other victimless vices, you have little hope of getting past their juvenile mental blockades and should likely save your energy for a more mature subject. Furthermore, most people simply do not have broad enough perspective to even conceptualize the magnitude and scope of the subject of freedom. We all know people who can hardly find more pressing thoughts to occupy their minds than next weekend's prospective dinner plans. Intellectual lightweights should be avoided, with few exceptions.
Some demographics will naturally contain more viable candidates for learning than others. There is a general trend for people to lose curiosity, open-mindedness, and reason as they age. The more comfortable a person has grown with their current circumstances, the less inclined they will be to challenge that mirage of comfort with conflicting ideas. Young people have been subject to less culture programming and are more apt to continue acclimating new knowledge, especially those who found the public schooling system to be inadequate. Men in general seem more concerned than women with fundamental sociological principles and solving worldwide social problems. People who feel strongly passionate about any political party or course of political action, even libertarians, are unlikely to make good candidates for change, as they have already invested far too much emotionally into their stances to easily admit error. Politically apathetic or agnostic types are much more promising. Steer clear of anyone who studied political “science” in college.
There are exceptions to every generalization above, but they do function quite well as guidelines.
Step 3: Be gentle in your approach; never introduce more material or point out more fallacies than newcomers can handle.
The major mistake most people make when they attempt to share their understanding with another is that they lack proper concepts of pacing and logical sequencing. They are quick to forget that the conclusions they now hold often came about as the result of years (or even decades) of self-inquiry and investigation into the problems of our respective daily personal microcosms and the larger interplay of worldwide affairs. Having finally arrived at sound conclusions, they wish to shortcut their own trials in others and to merely promulgate said conclusions in the hopes that others like themselves will listen and rejoice in gratitude.
The process of undoing ideological fallacies in the individual mind is crucial to an integrated and complete understanding, and absolutely cannot be foregone unless one's goal is to create merely another army of indoctrinated zombies mindlessly preaching a gospel they don't fundamentally understand. That will not bring freedom, the world already has enough of those in the form of political parties and religious sects.
For a new idea to take root in a mind, it must be welcomed in. The red pill must be swallowed willingly. To circumvent the ideological immune system that is set off whenever certain politically incorrect buzzwords are used in conjunction, it is wise of us to stick to simple and universally agreeable premises in the beginning. At times, this will require us to be vague and ignore common fallacious arguments parroted out at us. Oftentimes, the best counterargument one can give to an overly confrontational, baloney-spewing zealot is a simple, lighthearted chuckle and a gentle shifting of the focus of the conversion.
It is very difficult for any sane person to argue with such obviously rational and desirable statements as:
-“It seems to me that the most peaceful kind of society would be one in which every interaction between two or more people was voluntary”
-“I think civilization would be better off if all forms of theft were peacefully eliminated”
-“I would prefer to live in a world where people could do whatever they wanted with their own lives so long as it did not harm or force anything upon anyone else.”
While these blanket opinion statements don't seem profound on their own, they have the capacity to start a train of logic moving in the right direction. Working rationally from these kinds of premises and sticking to them in principle, the path will eventually culminate in the understanding of how all political action is necessarily involuntary and can only function through mass theft and other forms of brutally enforced coercion. As well, they act as very effective filters for determining whether or not someone is mentally and emotionally mature enough to have the type of discussion that is required. Only very lightly can we prompt outsiders of our own accord, and then we must be highly cautious and observe the results, adjusting the amount of pressure we apply with every response we receive.
Another good tactic is to gently refer them to a third party publication that they can choose to absorb at their own pace and discuss with you as they go along, or give up on if the content proves too threatening or advanced at the time. Correct information and insight are becoming more and more prevalent and available all the time; gift them a copy of an introductory classic.
Better still, you can mention your own works if you are a published author, or run a website, or help produce videos, a blog, etc. pertaining to freedom in some way. I will never forget how shocked I was to read John Pugsley's The Alpha Strategy (read it free online here), which he casually slipped into conversation after I had come to know him personally as just a wise, genial, optimistic economist with a youthful spirit. Reading such radical yet inescapably rational conclusions from someone I knew personally and had a high opinion of changed the way I thought and incited a curiosity in me that opened countless new doors for conversation with him. These conversations and other fuel supplied by third party material propelled me along the intellectual path to freedom.
Step 4: Never fight or negate what is wrong; always support and build what is right. Begin introducing solutions slowly.
It is unbelievably tempting to attempt to jump the gun and speed blossoming minds along in their growth by immediately shooting down every commonplace intellectual error that they and their neighbors are likely to hold. I cannot express how important it is that you refrain from proving them wrong. Nobody likes to be told they are wrong, they prefer to come to that conclusion on their own. You need to wait for them to approach you with questions and inquiry. If you have successfully done your job so far of appearing as someone respectable, friendly, and intelligent, it should not be long before they are practically begging you for more words of wisdom as they proceed along the track of logical sequencing.
It is important to respect how unsettling and damaging it is to the ego to realize that one has spent the entirety of one's life believing in an illusory scam. The same applies to any form of paradigm enhancement, most notably in superseding the psychological need for religion. If you have ever lost your faith in something that you once held in the highest regard and which composed a huge part of your world, try to remember how terrifying it was at first to be lost in the unknown before the true feelings of liberation from ideological enslavement set in. Faith in the political racket can be just as important to a person's sense of identity as religion; we need to be there to catch them and help them to their feet when they fall, not kick them when they are down.
As easy and fun as it is to systematically rip into and roast every example of bureaucratic incompetence, thuggery and propaganda, such tactics are of little long-term utility for building strong intellectual foundations in new minds. Making fun of the Post Office, comparing the police force to a mafia protection syndicate, or calling the Federal Reserve and Social Security systems out as pyramid schemes can actually be edgy and humorous ways to initiate interest in liberty, so long as they do not set off any culturally inherited mental defenses. However, the conversation absolutely must progress further beyond pointing out what is wrong with the present world.
When the subject is ready, the idea for positive, privately owned alternatives to state “services” must somehow enter their mind. The biggest objection to total freedom people will always have, even if they can clearly see the problems with government rule, is that they don't know of any alternative besides total chaos. Their minds have been trained so that as bad as they can see things to be, they lack the ability to independently envision ways that they could be done better except through more of the same.
It is a major intellectual leap to see through the false alternative of “state rule vs. chaos” and to begin conceiving of solutions in terms of individuals working in conjunction for their own benefit and innovating improvements that permeate outward to the masses without the need for state intervention. They must become absolutely secure in knowing that anything the state can accomplish through stolen taxpayer money, free enterprise can accomplish faster, better, cheaper, and morally through free trade customer service fees. It is only when someone begins to see every problem and its accompanying solution in these terms that you will have successfully enlightened them to the power of voluntary interaction, and they will never turn back to the darkness of statism and mass coercion for the greater good.
Step 5: Prepare for the inevitable backlash from the rest of the world.
I do not know of a single agorist, anarchist, anarchocapitalist, anti-statist, autocratist, cosmopolitan, free enterpriser, free marketist, free stater, non-aggressionist, objectivist, sovereign individualist, total capitalist, or voluntaryist who has not faced immense resistance to change from those around them as they began to broaden their perspectives and embrace liberty. Be ready to deal with the opposition that will come as the student's freshly acquired paradigm clashes with old influences from friends, family, and most of society at large. Remind them that ideological wars are not won by fighting, but by advertising, inspiring, and educating.
When the times comes, assure them that they are not alone in having a clear view on the problems of society. They will have to discover for themselves that they will only alienate former influences by attempting to share these new ideas with them. In time they will learn discretion as you have regarding when to broach with prudence such controversial subject matter. Many will lose friends; all will seek a higher caliber of friendship as a result. They will be relieved to learn that there are digital communities and networks of like-minded individuals, and that numerous best-selling books and even major historical documents like "Common Sense" and The Declaration of Independence have been written on this very subject under a plethora of labels starting centuries before them.
The discontent they will now feel at being lost in and at the mercy of a sea of blind insanity can serve as important motivation for them to do what they can to increase the prevalence of the philosophy of liberty. If you have done your job correctly, they should have enough knowledge to follow the same tactics and logical sequencing as you and begin imparting this information onto others who are ready to mature.
Changing the world is a lengthy process; we are correcting thousands of years worth of incorrect thinking and it is slow going. If we can accomplish in a only a few generations what has not been done for a thousand generations past, we are making relatively good time. It is no doubt frustrating to have the clarity to see the abundance of problems in the social structure all around us and be able to envision simple yet at the moment mostly unimplementable solutions.
We cannot allow our frustrations to get the best of us and to spurn us into trying to speed through the process faster than the nature of our evolved psychology allows. To act in contrast with the laws of nature will only be counterproductive in the long run, even if it does provide the brief, instant gratification supplied by symptom fighting. Even the most open-minded and eager of learners requires a significant time investment to adopt a totally new way of conceptualizing the world. We are limited by our physiology, and current advances in nutrition, psychology, and biotechnology do little to help us overcome these limits.
Patience and detachment are the most important virtues we must adopt when working with learners on their way to arriving at the right conclusion. It is they who will be doing the work itself, mentally working through every grueling mental conundrum and challenge and struggling to deduce the right course of moral and rational action. We are mentors, watchers, and guides only. We help steer the ship, but it is they who exert the energy and make the needed changes in themselves to get where they need to go.
I know of no other viable way to achieve for the first time in human history a sustainable and free civilization. This is the course we must take if we wish our dreams to become a physical reality, even if it does not happen in our lifetimes. The satisfaction we get from helping others ethically and intellectually mature and the increases in standard of living we experience as more people sign on will be reward and incentive enough to stay the course. | <urn:uuid:1b37740f-c2fc-4562-967d-c8a4f3d0d7ed> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.strike-the-root.com/users-guide-to-spreading-philosophy-of-liberty?page=1 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368710006682/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516131326-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.959694 | 3,711 | 1.625 | 2 |
The Olympics have wrapped up and our athletes did us proud once again. Plenty of medals, many of them with that golden shimmer.
I start this article with the games because I’d like you to consider the process behind them for a minute. Specifically, the process of getting the right athletes in place to represent the U.S.A. If you think about it, the most important thing Olympic leaders do is find and train the best people. They spend years and years doing that. Searching, selecting, training, honing skills, preparing them to perform at the highest possible levels.
In the world of real estate, clearly one of the most important aspects of your job (especially if you’re a broker, but also if you’re an agent looking for an assistant) is to hire the right person.
I know of where I speak. I used to be an executive recruiter. I’ve come to believe that having the right people in the right position is the single most important job of any leader in business or any organization for that matter. A slogan I still use to this day is, “Hire slow and fire fast.” It’s served me well over the years and I think it’ll help you, too – along with these tips:
- Plan ahead. This is part of the “slow” part in hiring. It begins by spending a lot of time on the specifics of exactly what you need a prospective employee to do. The more you know on the front end: how much you’ll pay them, the must-have skills, the kinds of experience they’ll need, etc., the better prepared you’ll be to find the right person to fill the slot.
- Consider the source. To find the right person, you need to think carefully about the sources you’ll tap to get names of prospective employees. I often recommend talking to those in the industry (and the affiliate industries such as mortgage companies, builders, etc.) to solidify your relationships with them. They also understand the real estate game pretty well.
- Think carefully about the interview questions. Again, taking time with these is key. Something to consider is getting candidates to share real experiences versus hypotheticals. So, instead of asking, “What would you do if …” go with, “Tell me about a time when you …” Use “behavior-based interviewing” that considers past behavior as the best predictor of future performance. E-mail me at [email protected] and I’ll send you – free – some of the best interview questions you can ask.
- Don’t put a lot of weight on the resume. I’ve hired many, many people in my career and you know what, I’ve only seen a handful of bad resumes. They’re rare. Why? Because it’s easy to find someone to write them. Personally, I think the most important thing on a resume is the names of the references. Check them, always. And besides the standard questions of work ethic and character, probe deeper by finding out they consider the candidate’s weaknesses are, or if they were to fail, why that might be.
Trust me, interviewing and hiring is a crucial task because the right person can be your best asset and the wrong person can be your worst liability. Follow these tips and you just might find yourself on your way to the medal stand!
Let me hear from you? How have your past hires worked out for you? Do you see any trends in past employees you’ve hired, either good or bad? How much importance do you attach to hiring? Please send any comments or questions you have to [email protected] or http://www.facebook.com/CorcoranCoaching.
Bob Corcoran is a nationally recognized speaker and author who is founder and president of Corcoran Consulting Inc. (CorcoranCoaching.com, 800-957-8353), an international consulting and coaching company that specializes in performance coaching and the implementation of sound business systems into the residential or commercial broker or agent’s existing practice.
We look forward to hearing from you. Sign up TODAY for your complimentary business consultation. http://www.CorcoranCoaching.com/bpw.php | <urn:uuid:5dba57bd-28c0-4a09-8aa6-a1ff069e91dc> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://articles.realtown.com/2012/11/27/how-to-interview-and-recruit-serious-talent/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368704392896/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516113952-00027-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.946606 | 914 | 1.578125 | 2 |
Sunday, November 4, 2007
© Copyright 2013
Gwinnett Daily Post
WINDER - Barrow County students might be able to take Bible-based classes as early as next fall. The Board of Education will make a deciding vote Tuesday whether to offer the courses in the fall, wait until 2009 or not offer them at all.
Senate Bill 79 was passed in 2006 allowing Georgia public high schools to offer elective courses in literature and history of the Old and New Testaments. The State Board of Education approved course standards shortly thereafter in the Jan. 2007 Board meeting.
The Barrow County Board of Education polled 3,216 students and 45 teachers at Apalachee and Winder-Barrow High Schools in the spring. The poll showed that 47 percent of the students expressed an interest in taking the classes, while 14 teachers agreed they would be interested in teaching them.
A committee made up of school administrators, parents, students, central office personnel, BOE members and local residents was formed to examine the prospects and feasibility of offering the courses. That committee voted to recommend the board offer the Bible-based courses in the 2009-10 school year, giving administrators time to more fully develop the curriculum and train teachers.
If the courses are incorporated in to the classroom, students will study literary style, structure of culture, customs, law, government, history, art, language and music of the Old and New Testaments.
Curriculums would have to abide by constitutional limitations that prohibit evangelism in the classroom and ensure classes are taught as academic pursuits.
SideBar: If you go
' What: Barrow County Board of Education meeting
' When: 7 p.m. Tuesday
' Where: 179 W. Athens St., Winder | <urn:uuid:208262b0-1da8-4714-abe4-8d578038e179> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.gwinnettdailypost.com/news/2007/nov/04/barrow-boe-to-vote-whether-to-offer-bible-based/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696382584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092622-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.948389 | 359 | 1.585938 | 2 |
How to be a smarter job seeker
11:34am Wednesday 8th June 2011
When looking for a job you often need to come up with more creative and smarter ways to stand out from the competition. So what is it that some jobseekers do that they often seem to find a new job faster than others? Oftentimes, it is one of these 10 things that make your job search smarter:
1. Surf job boards for more than just open positions.
Job boards can be "goldmines" for research. You might see companies you didn't know before and you might see the same requirements for the job you want over and over again -- this indicates a standard, so incorporate these items into your pitch and cover letters.
2. Realise a potential job lead could be anywhere.
Smart job seekers aren't afraid to mention occupational aspirations to their book club, their parents' friends or their dentist. (One never knows whose golf partner might be the ticket to getting a foot in the door.) Also, when sending e-mails you can easily attach your CV to every correspondence by adding a link to your LinkedIn public profile in your e-mail signature. Even friends who think they know you may click through to your profile, learn more about you and perhaps think of you for a job that they know of.
3. Put adequate time and effort into your applications.
Spend time to make your CV the best possible written advertisement of you. Analyse the job requirements against your own skills and abilities, and always customise your cover letter for each application. All correspondence should be free of errors and typos. And before sending off the application packet, look at the job posting one last time to ensure all desired material is included.
4. Make your value known quickly.
An employer gives each CV about a three-second window of time before he decides to either 'delete' or read further. A smart applicant answers the "What can you do for me?" question right off the bat with a summary of strongest accomplishments at the top of the CV.
5. Do your homework.
It seems logical to smart applicants to know something about potential employers. From searching a company to checking out its financial statements, they learn what they can -- and use the info to enhance their correspondence.
6. Know that employers do their homework, too.
"According to [a 2010] Coremetrics [study], 75 percent of companies require recruiters to research job applicants online, so you'll want to be sure you know what they'll find," states Sherrie Madia, co-author of "The Online Job Search Survival Guide." Besides thinking twice about what you choose to post, she suggests doing an online search on your name. If you find something undesirable, try to have it removed.
7. Look and act like a professional.
Simple but effective: A smart applicant arrives on time, dresses appropriately, both talks and listens, displays confidence and minds his manners.
8. Show that you want this job.
Smart job seekers are not "tyre kickers." They focus on the needs of the employer and demonstrate how they are perfect for this particular position. Show enthusiasm during the job interview and always make certain that the company you're interviewing with feels as if it is your first choice, no matter what other companies are involved in your job search.
9. Don't get ahead of yourself.
As much as you may be dying to know about promotions, raises and vacation time, being a smart candidate you don't jump the gun and tackle these issues during the first interview. Rather focus on landing the position, then on whether the package is suitable.
10. Show your interest in the job, follow up and thank.
At the end of the interview, sum up your strengths, tell the interviewer that you are excited about the position and say, 'I would really like to contribute to this company. I am hoping you will select me.' Then, a smart interviewee keeps his name in the game with a follow-up note reiterating interest and offering thanks. A great last impression can seal the deal! | <urn:uuid:be156b8c-19a1-4eda-9a66-def703b8dab3> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.yourlocalguardian.co.uk/jobs/tools/job_finding_tips/9072030.How_to_be_a_smarter_job_seeker/ | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00001-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.961293 | 843 | 1.5625 | 2 |
The inspiration for this week’s Sepia Saturday post is “Library”. I’m not a big borrower of books for casual reading, but I AM a huge fan of reference libraries – the ones where you can go and look up all sorts of weird and wonderful facts. I know, it all sounds horribly dull, but really it isn’t. Honestly
Near to where I live, we have lots of exciting places to look up interesting stuff, the Loanhead Archives Centre is a mine of information on Midlothian ancestors, although housed in a rather uninspiring 1960′s building and now bursting to overflowing.
East Lothian Archives Centre moved at the end of March to a fabulous new building in Haddington, the John Gray Centre – very “old building meets steel and glass” and bears absolutely no comparison the their previous billet. It was requiring modernisation and updating, shall we say Now they are state of the art!
There is also the rather posh National Library of Scotland, which has an amazing amount of original manuscripts and obscure records…
My most-used “library” is a series of rather ordinary book cases containing very valuable, and often one-off unpublished books relating to Scottish genealogy. Unfortunately, I don’t have a photo of the book cases because they are so ordinary that it never occurred to me to take one, however they are housed in the Dundas Search Room of New Register House in Edinburgh. When you visit Register House, you are led through a series of search rooms, where members of the public can research their family histories and professional Scottish genealogists work. The first room that you come to is known as the “Adam Room” on account of the fabulous Adam design.
I asked permission to lie on the newly-laid plush carpet and take a photo with my phone (and it was laughingly granted) so I did. If you don’t ask, you don’t get, as my Granny used to say. Yes, they all laughed at me
You can read more about the historical Adam Dome if you wish, but I warn you, if you are ever in Edinburgh and fancy tracing your family history, the ceiling will be a major distraction. Here are a few more photos I took on my phone (the poor quality is due to me holding a cup of coffee and a slice of cake as well as the phone) during the launch of the 1911 Census – the reception was held in the Adam Dome and the staff dressed up in period costume. Not in the least bit stuffy!
Sheila – our Blue Lady – check out all the Registers in the bookshelves, they go around the entire circular room.
Linda, Blair and Susan all out of uniform and togged up in period gear
And finally, the statue of King George III set in an alcove, which creeps me out because if you are the last to leave and the emergency lighting is on (or it is winter and there is a full moon coming through the dome) he glows in the dark. He was found during renovations in a rather sorry state, blackened and covered in a green lichen growth. He was sculpted in alabaster by the niece of the first Registrar General for Scotland and first placed in position in 1791.
I always say goodnight to him to keep on his good side. Check out other Saturday Sepians’ interpretations of “Library”, and come and join in if you feel inspired, there is a new theme every week, and your photos don’t have to be sepia.
PS: For a Scottish Library blog with a HUGE sense of humour, check out Orkney Library and Archives Blog. I defy you not to subscribe – so funny! | <urn:uuid:c28d0a9b-1065-4449-b09e-455bac0f9187> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://imagespast.wordpress.com/2012/04/06/sepia-saturday-library/?like=1&source=post_flair&_wpnonce=134bd2d71b | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368696381249/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516092621-00016-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963107 | 787 | 1.601563 | 2 |
Q: Can you lose something if wine is decanted too long before consuming?—John
A: In two words, it depends. There are two fundamental reasons to decant a wine:
1. To provide extra aeration for a recent vintage by exposing it to the air as it is poured from the bottle into a decanter.
2. To separate the sediment or deposit of tartrate crystals that have accumulated at the bottom of an older bottle.
The former poses little risk or damage to a wine, and may aid in "opening up" its contents. Some collectors open and decant a recent vintage several hours prior to serving to facilitate the process. While the latter may succeed in eliminating the sediment (you stop pouring when the deposit reaches the neck of the bottle), you also expose the wine to oxygenation in the process, which poses a risk. I have attended tastings of older vintage wines where the bottles were opened too soon (2-plus hours before pouring), and the wine was slightly madeirized. My suggestion is to open and decant an older bottle about half an hour prior to serving.
Have a question about collecting and auctions? E-mail us.
Sips & Tips | Wine & Healthy Living
Video Theater | Collecting & Auctions | <urn:uuid:ebcefb64-b3bc-42d1-be25-907d5ca36189> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.winespectator.com/webfeature/show/id/44456 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368707435344/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516123035-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.953804 | 261 | 1.640625 | 2 |
Eric Clapton, whose solo career has veered between pop hits and blues explorations, was set to join the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for the third time on Monday.
His fellow inductees included Bonnie Raitt, James Taylor and Earth, Wind & Fire.
The 1960s hit-makers The Lovin' Spoonful, doo-wop pioneers The Moonglows and embattled music executive Clive Davis were also to be inducted in a ceremony at New York's Waldorf Astoria Hotel.
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, however, is in Cleveland.
Earth, Wind & Fire's Maurice White, who last week revealed his battle with Parkinson's disease, made a rare appearance performing with the band he founded.
Clapton already is in the rock hall for his work as a member of two groups, the Yardbirds and Cream.
This time, the guitarist's solo career was being spotlighted. His hits have spanned three decades, from After Midnight and Wonderful Tonight in the 1970s to the Grammy-winning Tears in Heaven and Change the World in the 1990s.
He's kept current on the pop charts while not abandoning his blues roots, which he explored on the From the Cradle album in 1994.
Blues-rocker Raitt was largely a cult favorite until her 10th album, Nick of Time, won four Grammy Awards in 1989 and made Thing Called Love a hit. She started the Rhythm & Blues Foundation to help older artists who didn't reap financial rewards from their work.
"Sweet Baby" James Taylor was the quintessential 1970s singer-songwriter with hits like Fire and Rain, How Sweet it Is and Carolina in My Mind. He's still a major concert draw, and now his children, Ben and Sally, have their own performing careers.
Earth, Wind & Fire favorites Shining Star and September are enjoying renewed popularity because of radio formats devoted to 1970s soul. White continues to record with the band but hasn't toured since 1995 because of his Parkinson's disease.
Endangered dragon reroutes royal landing
A rare lizard with no ears has forced organizers of Queen Elizabeth II's visit to Australia to reroute her flight.
The Eastern lined earless dragon, an endangered species, lives near Canberra Airport, where the queen had planned to start her two-week trip March 17. But accommodating her Boeing 747 would require a widening of the runway.
Because the lizard is a protected species, any changes to the runway would have to go through a 90-day consultation period before they could be approved. So the queen's plane will touch down in Sydney instead.
President Clinton's 747 was able to land at Canberra Airport in 1996 because Air Force One is a military aircraft that does not need as wide a runway as the queen's civilian aircraft.
They're still abuzz over Lopez's dress
Jennifer Lopez's jaw-dropping dress at the Grammys was still a hot topic at the weekend's Soul Train Music Awards in Los Angeles.
At one point, co-host Shemar Moore walked on stage in a skimpy top with jagged edges, exposing much of his chest and belly.
"I'm not going to lie," Moore told the crowd Saturday. "Jennifer Lopez helped me pick this one out."
The Versace dress Lopez wore to last month's Grammy Awards opened in a deep V all the way to navel, with a large brooch holding some of the blue and green print fabric in place.
Lopez was at the Soul Train Awards for best female R&B album but lost to Mary J. Blige.
Jacko's theme park on Warsaw agenda
Michael Jackson is heading for Poland next week to meet with Warsaw officials with whom he agreed in 1997 to develop a theme park.
The two-day visit, starting next Tuesday, comes at the invitation of Mayor Pawel Piskorski.
City officials and Jackson's spokesman refused to give any details on the trip, but the King of Pop is thought to be searching for a site for his family theme park.
Jackson signed a letter of intent with Warsaw officials in 1997 to develop a $500 million park, but the two sides have not agreed on a location.
It's Super Tuesday of Campaign 2000, the 67th day of the year; 299 days left in 2000: On this date:
In 1849, horticulturist Luther Burbank was born in Lancaster, Mass.
In 1875, composer Maurice Ravel was born in Cibourne, France.
In 1876, Alexander Graham Bell received a patent for his telephone.
In 1936, Adolf Hitler ordered German troops to march into the Rhineland, thereby breaking the Treaty of Versailles and the Locarno Pact.
In 1995, New York Gov. George Pataki signed a death-penalty bill into law.
Thought for today: "More tears are shed over answered prayers than unanswered ones." -- St. Teresa of Avila (1515-82)
Today's birthdays: Photographer Lord Snowdon, 70; TV weatherman Willard Scott, 66; actor Daniel J. Travanti, 60; Walt Disney Co. chairman Michael Eisner, 58. Actor John Heard, 54; singer-actress Taylor Dayne, 35; actress Rachel Weisz, 29. | <urn:uuid:fc2faf63-2119-4103-874e-3c87b79f7744> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/2000-03-07/news/0003070253_1_blues-foundation-species-roll-hall | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368699273641/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516101433-00003-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.963552 | 1,097 | 1.632813 | 2 |
Alyas Karmani, Respect's candidate running in Little Horton, is director of Street, a national project working with at-risk young people. He has campaigned for social justice since he wrote his first paper on the subject at the age of 14 but never stood for office. What changed?
Last year, I had 15 people working for me, mentoring over 100 kids. They cut our funding to zero and one of our kids went and shot someone. Just before the riots. That is the impact of the public sector cuts. Youth services have been decimated, youth unemployment is at its highest level. In Bradford , 60% of our kids are coming out of schools without five GCSE passes – what are their life opportunities going to be?
Karmani saw the momentum created by Galloway's win and put himself forward when the new MP asked local people to sign up as candidates during a rally in a local park. Hundreds applied, like Karmani, who thought:
We've got to create a radical political shift back towards real people and real issues, if we can do that now we can build on it, create a ripple efffect and in two years time in a general election and subsequent council elections there is a real chance for change.
A professional man in his twenties handing out leaflets for Respect says:
My parents came in the sixties and I wonder what kind of stuff they went through. We moved into a primarily white area in 1996 and it was 'Paki this' and 'Paki that' and we ignored it. Eggs were thrown at the windows. As a child growing up with that - it was scary. I thought it was my fault because I had a brown skin or because I was a Muslim. How do you teach a six year old why this is happening?'
Times have changed and everyone I meet on the Canterbury estate says things are better now. When the English Defence League demonstrated in Bradford last year, the city stood firm, holding peace vigils and threading flowers through the streets to show that Bradford is a united and peaceful place. Karmani says:
Politicians create a message that Bradford is a divided city. But Canterbury isn't a divided estate. This is a great city with enormous potential.
Zulfi Karim, general secretary of Bradford Council for Mosques, takes a similar line in criticising the Channel 4 programme Make Bradford British, with its emphasis on division. The question is not what divides the city, he says, but what unites its diverse communities.
Ron, a white Bradfordian in his 70s who has lived on Canterbury all his life is another who takes the same line, as he jokes with a Respect campaigner, a neighbour called Khan whom he's known, and liked, for more years than either cares to remember. Both raised their families against a backdrop of racial tension, and they want no more of it.
In this context, Karmani isn't chasing the mythical 'Muslim vote'. Little Horton is a diverse ward, he says, in which:
The people who are most in need are poor white families. They are the ones who are most avoided and most ignored. If elected, I will be bringing attention to them, otherwise we don't believe in social justice, we would just be believing in saving ourselves.
Austerity may be achieve what years of attempts at a cohesive policy failed to do. In Little Horton, working class people are being drawn together by the impact of hard times. More binds than divides the various communities there. They are rejecting mainstream politics because of a feeling that they have been cast adrift without representation, without a voice.
The city that gave birth to Old Labour, with the foundation of the Independent Labour Party in 1893, could be seeing its ghost rise up to haunt its modern reincarnation, New Labour. A taxi driver on the Canterbury estate tells me:
People that I pick up ask me what team I support, and I say: 'You're not interested in the team I support'. They say 'What's that, then?' and I say 'My wife and three kids. I can't afford anything else. I was never a chaudhary and I never will be a chaudhary (slang for a wealthy landlord). I'm just a working class person. Baraderi (the traditional Pakistani system of clan voting on elders' advice) should break. It has to go. It's the old Pakistani mentality – that's what happens over there.
Anne Czernik is a freelance photojournalist specialising in activism in the north of England. You can read the first part of her report here. | <urn:uuid:1e16ce74-8c73-4475-aae6-34e3ab70e9ae> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/the-northerner/2012/may/01/bradford-elections-george-galloway-respect-labour | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00008-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.97695 | 950 | 1.570313 | 2 |
Looking for ways to include more fruits and vegetables at every meal? Check out our meal plans for help today!
Our Favorite Recipes for Your Zucchini Harvest
Letter Z is here! I'm so excited I think I want to cry. I won't realize the magnitude of this freedom until next week when I start thinking about new post ideas, but HOORAY for now!! Goodbye Alphabet Academy!
There are two varieties of summer squash. The green vegetable, we call Zucchini, and the yellow one we call crookneck. Both are easy to grow, and both supply families with a huge harvest! The tricky part is to pick your squash before it turns into the size of a baseball bat. Picking them at 6 inches or less gives you a sweeter food, with less seeds.
- Zucchini Cups! These look amazing! With meat, tomato, and mozzarella these zucchini cups are fun to make, and fun to eat!
- Whole Wheat Zucchini Bread: This one is from Everyday Food Storage, and has a great combination of nuts, applesauce, nutmeg, and cinnamon! MMM. Crystal's website helps you use up that food storage you've got in your basement, so you can eat well any time!
- Zucchini Fritters! From Simply Recipes. Simply Recipes has been the go to site for moms everywhere looking to keep dinner on the table each night. These fritters combine egg, zucchini, scallions, and salt and pepper to make a delicious meal for breakfast, lunch OR dinner!
- Baked Zucchini Fries, from the Girl Who Ate Everything! Christy's gorgeous site has some amazing healthy recipes, that will make your mouth water, including these zucchini fries!
- Chocolate Zucchini Cake (It's still cake, but mm-mm, good!)
- Zucchini Rice Casserole Eating Well is one of several food magazines I get and love! They have a way of making any dish look appetizing, no matter what crazy ingredients are in it.
- And lastly, Stuffed Zucchini Boats! My kids had fun making these! They are similar idea to the zucchini cups above, but with a few changes.
So, that is all! Goodbye Zucchini, Goodbye Alphabet Academy! What is your families favorite way to prepare zucchini? | <urn:uuid:def8ea6c-352a-4c0b-bda5-a5fd3df1ec05> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.superhealthykids.com/healthy-kids-recipes/favorite-recipes-zucchini-harvest.php | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368697380733/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516094300-00017-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.937266 | 498 | 1.5 | 2 |
They claim Jersey cream should only be called that if it has been made on the Channel Island, not if it has been made from Jersey cows in Britain.
They want to receive official Protected Designated Origin status, a label granted by the European Union in only a small number of products, such as champagne, Parma ham, Melton Mowbray pork pies and Cornish clotted cream.
All major British supermarkets sell Jersey cream that has been produced in mainland Britain. However, from next week Tesco will become the first of the large companies to stock cream made from Jersey Dairy, a co-operative of farmers on the island.
Christopher Journeaux, the Jersey Dairy marketing director, insisted the cream made on the island had a "unique" taste that made it stand out from cream made from Jersey cows.
He said: "Jersey cows are renowned for the quality of their milk but the ones over here enjoy a longer grazing period – from February to early November – than their cousins on British mainland soil.
“We believe that it is this long period on grass combined with the unique environment of Jersey with its long hours of sunshine and sea air makes our dairy products so sought after."
Gaining European PDO status is a long process and some food companies have managed to wiggle around the rules with imaginative labelling. There are some pork pies that are labelled "from the Vale of Mowbray" in Yorkshire, about 100 miles away from the Leicestershire town of Melton Mowbray, which is protected.
However, food companies and supermarkets are increasingly seeking the status, after consumers have become more interested in local food and its provenance.
Jersey already enjoys the status for its Royal potatoes.
Tesco's extra thick Jersey Cream will go on sale in its finest range, priced at £1.20 for 250ml. | <urn:uuid:24ec2cbe-dcb6-4f7f-8d12-f5537751aadf> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/foodanddrinknews/8096745/Jersey-cream-asks-for-EU-protected-status.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368705559639/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516115919-00000-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.971831 | 385 | 1.648438 | 2 |
MARK MADISON: Today is June 29th, 2011, and I'm Mark Madison at the Student Climate and Conservation Congress, an opportunity for high school students from around the country who are interested in possible environmental careers to hear from exciting and inspiring speakers, and I have one of the speakers with me this morning, Juan Martinez, who is going to address the students this evening, and he's agreed to do a brief Podcast with us.
Juan is a proud product of South Central L.A., and he is the national Natural Leaders Network Coordinator for the Children & Nature Network. His passion is to empower individuals and youth, and that led him to direct the Sierra Club's first Environmental Justice Youth Leadership Academy in L.A. In 2009 he introduced the Department of Interior's Ken Salazar at Power Shift in Washington D.C., the largest gathering on youth climate change. And he was invited by the White House to attend the National Forum on Clean Energy Economy. Currently, he's Director of the Natural Leaders Network, which is part of the Children & Nature Network.
Juan, welcome to Shepherdstown, West Virginia. We appreciate you coming here.
JUAN MARTINEZ: Thanks. It's always amazing times here.
MARK MADISON: And tell us what you do for the Children & Nature Network.
JUAN MARTINEZ: So what I do, Rich Louv wrote a book about-- in 2005 called "Last Child In the Woods" and pretty much coined the phrase "nature deficit disorder." Now, for a long time, I think, a lot of us have been working around this issue to connect people and nature, but Rich kind of brought it all to a catalyst and really initiated a grass roots movement throughout the country and really the world. So he brought me to the table and said, "How do we get more young people involved?" And I said, "Well,
we have to create a place and a sense of security for these young people who feel passionate just about their connection with nature and their love for it," and that's where the Natural Leaders Network came about.
So what we do now is do leadership development through peer-to-peer networking throughout country. We do different initiatives and attend different conferences and spread the message of celebrating our connection to nature while also serving and doing research studies as well.
MARK MADISON: What type of connections to nature did you have as a youth, Juan?
JUAN MARTINEZ: For me, it was very dim in the beginning. I grew up in South Central. They didn't have much. Grew up poor. Grew up angry for what I felt the cards had been dealt to me. And up to the age of 15, I didn't see much hope in the future for myself. Around that time, I was given an ultimatum in detention. I was told either I stay in detention for the rest of the semester or go to Ecoclub. And for a kid who at that point was trying to be the tough guy in school and a football player, very dark kind of person at that time, it wasn't such a clear decision. Like I could have stayed in detention and I would have been fine.
But I took a chance and went to Ecoclub, and the first thing Miss Peppin, who ran the Ecoclub, tells me is "Go ahead, grab a bag of seeds, and let's go out to the garden." And in that garden I decided to grow jalapenos, which to me were delicious and good food, and I grew up with them, but more than anything, I saw my mom grow jalapenos in our backyard in coffee pots and tires and her own unique way of growing plants and herbs and different vegetables. And so I wanted to show to my mom that I could do that, too, and I wanted to make salsa for her at the end of that crop.
Then they tricked me. Then I started worrying about photosynthesis, carbon dioxide, and pH balance and all these different things, and I started caring about school, and I did better, and I got more interested in what school represented.
So at the end of that semester, I got an opportunity to go to the Teton Science School in Wyoming. Now, for a kid who grew up in the middle of South Central and didn't have-- didn't see much beyond that, to see the stars for the first time in my life, to see more stars than I could count for the first time in my life, to see a shooting star and realize it wasn't a Disney special effect or anything like that, to see a free-flowing river, and to get a good night's sleep because there wasn't a helicopter or police siren outside my window was an enlightening moment, to say the least. And then the scientific experience that came with that, you know, learning about plate tectonics and erosion and different flora and fauna just kind of opened up a new world to me in making sure that I realized that just as I was connected to those stars that I was looking at so was I connected to my community back home.
MARK MADISON: That's a great story. Teton Science School is a beautiful place.
JUAN MARTINEZ: Yeah, right.
MARK MADISON: Juan, what message do you give young people to inspire them and get them engaged like you?
JUAN MARTINEZ: I think it's follow your passion, and we're all integrated with this passion to explore and enjoy nature. It's integrated in our genes, I think. And when I look back at the last couple weeks, you know, my first-- I'm a National Geographic Explorer now. I was named an Emergent Explorer for 2011. I work with the North Face as an ambassador for their brand. I work with the Children & Nature
Network. I work with leaders in this issue... Rich Louv, Martin Oblong, Cheryl Charles... all mentors of mine. You know, 12 years ago when I was 15, I didn't see myself accomplishing any of these things. So if there's a message that I can put out there is that never doubt what you're capable of doing, just following your passion, and that's what I've been doing ever since.
MARK MADISON: That's great, Juan. That's a good quote to go out on.
If people wanted to learn more about the Children & Nature Network, do you guys have a web site?
JUAN MARTINEZ: We do, www.childrenandnaturenetwork.org.
MARK MADISON: Thank you very much, Juan. We have been speak wing with Juan Martinez at the Student Climate and Conservation Congress, and he's going to be addressing about 100 high school kids this evening. So thanks again, Juan.
JUAN MARTINEZ: Thank you.
Click tabs to swap between content that is broken into logical sections. | <urn:uuid:83172eb4-1cb8-48e0-8d50-de8b27e45524> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://digitalmedia.fws.gov/cdm/singleitem/collection/audio/id/5/rec/11 | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368703298047/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516112138-00030-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974893 | 1,451 | 1.695313 | 2 |
Mississippi River Above Flooding Stage Near Aitkin
AITKIN (AP) – Flood waters are still rising near Aitkin, where the Mississippi River is expected to remain above the flooding stage until Tuesday.
The Minnesota Incident Command System says the river was at 18.1 feet at Aitkin on Sunday morning. The flood stage there is 12 feet.
The forecast calls for the river to reach about 18.5 feet by Tuesday before gradually falling.
Water levels are also expected to rise at Big Sandy Lake, just north of McGregor. The area received 5 inches of rain between Tuesday and Wednesday, followed by more rain Saturday night.
The Army Corps of Engineers is monitoring the local reservoirs and making adjustments to reduce the flood risks to local communities.
Several Aitkin County roads remain underwater, washed out or otherwise impassable.
(Copyright 2012 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved) | <urn:uuid:978c64af-b6b2-4506-a246-c455d48d04ad> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://wjon.com/mississippi-river-above-flooding-stage-near-aitkin/ | 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 | 0.950892 | 188 | 1.734375 | 2 |
Washington: Pledging a new era of engagement
with the world, President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle
Obama served 'chicken samosa' among other mouthwatering dishes
at a White House reception hosted for scores of ambassadors
including new Indian envoy to the US Meera Shankar.
Diplomacy has always been critically important to all
nations, Obama said with Michelle Obama at his side. But in
many ways, it grows more important with each passing year
because the interconnectedness of this world means that in the
21st century, "we cannot solve our problems until we solve
them together," Obama said.
Noting that for centuries diplomats have come together to
discuss war and peace, commerce and exchange, Obama said that
now it is hard to think of an issue that matters to people
that does not depend in some way upon cooperation among
nations -- health and education, energy and the environment,
the arts and even athletics.
"That's one reason why I came into office with a strong
commitment to renew American diplomacy and to start a new era
of engagement with the world," Obama said.
It was splashy affair, held under the chandelier glint of
the Grand Foyer, replete with champagne and the music of the
Marine String Ensemble. Musicians performed a handful of light
jazz songs including Shadow of Your Smile and Come Back to
Waiters bore trays of tequila smoked salmon on crisps,
'chicken samosas' with yogurt dip, leek tartlets, petit filet
mignon sandwiches, crme brulee and blueberry vanilla
One of the wonderful things about America is that so much
of the world is represented in our own cities and towns, the
First Lady said. "Whether you have been here for years, or
whether this is your first time in the White House, I hope you
feel welcome," she said.
"I look forward to working together to advance peace and
prosperity of the people not only of the United States but
also people all around the world," she said.
Also in attendance were Susan Rice, the US Ambassador to
the United Nations and US Trade Representative Ron Kirk.
First Published: Tuesday, July 28, 2009, 12:14 | <urn:uuid:0454bd48-4387-41ca-ad3f-a9b34766354a> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://zeenews.india.com/news/gourmet/chicken-samosa-served-at-white-house-reception_550810.html | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368706153698/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516120913-00041-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.949149 | 485 | 1.578125 | 2 |
Herbs ... a natural remedy
Mancos Times editor
Jane Burk of Twig Woman Herbs believes in natural medicine, and her herbs are a big part of that.
“I’ve been into natural medicine for about 20 years,” she said. “I got involved in it because, well, I have a family and the medications I was giving them weren’t working. So, I’ve been educating myself, with the help of some phenomenal herbalist friends.”
Burk’s new store is inside Geeks on Grand, 145 Grand Ave. in Mancos.
Burk has dry herbs that can be used in a variety of ways, essential oils, and tinctures.
“I believe I have the best tincture in the Four Corners area,” said Burk.
She also has a fairly good library of used books that she makes available for anyone to use for research or borrowing.
“One of my primary goals is to educate people on alternative health,” she said. Burk said that educating ourselves and taking responsibility for our own health is what we need to do to stay healthy.
“There’s always so much to learn, and I’m always finding new things out about herbs,” she said. “There is a lot that I’m not familiar with yet.”
She likes to learn about each herb and what herb goes with which one.
“I think God put these things here to heal us and help us,” she said. “The herbs work with your body and help to get it back on track.”
Burk is not a naturopathic doctor; she merely likes to help people however she can with her knowledge and research.
“All I can do is make suggestions and tell what has worked for me and what I’ve learned,” Burk said.
At her Grand Opening on Dec. 7, which will coincide with the Geeks on Grand’s Holiday Open House, Burk will have her inventory marked down considerably.
She and her daughter, Rachel, are co-owners of the business and can be found on Facebook at www.facebook.com/TwigWomanHerbs. | <urn:uuid:29dd2faa-8b29-401b-b76e-ceb721144453> | CC-MAIN-2013-20 | http://www.cortezjournal.com/article/20121127/MT03/121129853/0/MT0403/Herbs--a-natural-remedy | s3://commoncrawl/crawl-data/CC-MAIN-2013-20/segments/1368702448584/warc/CC-MAIN-20130516110728-00012-ip-10-60-113-184.ec2.internal.warc.gz | en | 0.974973 | 477 | 1.570313 | 2 |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.