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Radiation therapy is used to treat cancer and other diseases. It uses high-energy particles to damage the DNA in the cancer cells. This makes the cells unable to grow or divide.
There are two main types of radiation therapy:
—radiation is delivered by a machine that shoots particles at the cells from outside the body
Internal—radioactive materials are placed in the body near the cancer cells; this is also called implant radiation or brachytherapy
In certain cases, your doctor may recommend a combination of these. Radiation is often used with other types of treatment, such as surgery,
, and immunotherapy, which stimulates the immune system to fight infection.
This fact sheet will focus on internal radiation therapy.
This procedure is done to:
Control the growth or spread of cancer
Attempt to cure cancer
Reduce pain or other symptoms caused by cancer—called palliative radiation
Radiation therapy is used to treat
solid tumors such as prostate cancer, breast cancer, and head and neck cancers.
Internal radiation can cause side effects. The radiation damages your own healthy cells as well as the cancer cells.
The side effects will vary depending on the type and location of treatment. Common side effects of radiation include, but are not limited, to:
Skin changes such as redness and irritation
Reduced white blood cell count
Nausea, vomiting, or
Discuss the specific side effects that you may have with your doctor.
Previous radiation therapy or chemotherapy
A personal history of
A woman who is pregnant or could be pregnant should avoid exposure to radiation. It could harm a developing fetus.
You may need local anesthesia, which will numb a small area, or
, which keeps you asleep during the procedure.
The radiation source will be placed inside your body on or near the affected area. This provides higher doses of radiation in a shorter time. The radioactive sources are in the form of wires, seeds, or rods. This treatment is mostly used for cancers of the head and neck,
. The two main types of internal radiation are:
Interstitial radiation—Rods, ribbons, or wires placed inside the affected tissue on a short-term or permanent basis
Intracavitary radiation—A container of radioactive material is temporarily placed inside a body cavity, such as the uterus, vagina, or windpipe
Rods for Internal Radiation
How long it will take depends on the type of cancer treated and the method of internal radiation
Anesthesia prevents pain during the procedure. You may be sore when recovering from the procedure depending on where the radioactive material was placed.
You will stay in the hospital until the implant is removed, or in the case of a permanent implant, when the radioactivity has decreased. High-dosage implants are usually removed within a matter of minutes. Low-dosage implants may stay in for a few days. Permanent implants lose their radioactivity within a few days.
doctor’s instructions
You will return to a hospital room while the implant is in place. While the radiation is implanted, you will follow these precautions to prevent transmitting radiation to others:
Limited visitation:
Many hospitals do not allow children under 18 years old or pregnant women to visit a patient having implant radiation. They may visit after the implant is removed. If visitors are allowed, they will need to sit at least six feet from the bed. Visits will be limited to 10-30 minutes. Staff may place a shield beside the bed to protect visitors and staff from radiation exposure.
Limited contact with the staff:
The staff will be available to you at all times. They may speak to you from the doorway. They may also come and go very quickly to avoid excessive radiation exposure.
During treatment, your doctor will want to see you at least once a week. You may have routine blood tests to check for the effects of radiation on your blood cells.
After treatment is completed, you will have regular visits to monitor healing and to make sure the treatment affected the disease as planned. Follow-up care will vary for each person. Care may include further testing, medicine, or rehabilitative treatment.
Tell your doctor if you experience
side effects. Many side effects can be controlled with medicine or diet. The course of your treatment may be changed if the side effects are too great. Most side effects will gradually go away after treatment.
After arriving home, contact your doctor if any of the following occur:
Diarrhea or loss of appetite
Frequent urination, particularly if it is associated with pain or burning sensation
New or unusual swelling or lumps
Nausea and/or vomiting that you cannot control with the medications you were given
Pain that does not go away
Unusual changes in skin, including bruises, rashes, discharge, or bleeding
Any other symptom your nurse or doctor told you to look for |
Gardening and Living in Grand StyleTrees to consider for relief during hot sunny days…
Michael JohnsonUtah State University Extension Agent, Grand County
Jul 18, 2013 | 907 views | 0 | 9 | | As the summer sun beats down upon us, we are all looking for shade. And while standing in the shade of a building can help, most of us know it’s more comfortable in the shade of a tree. If you want more shade and need another tree, it’s true there’s more of a push to sell trees in the spring, when many stores temporarily sell plants but nurseries sell trees year-round and most get new stock in the fall since that’s a better time to plant trees. Some people just want a tree and won’t put a lot of thought into the type, but my experience suggests it’s better learn something about the tree to know if it fits your willingness and ability to care for it. As such, you want to consider your yard space, how you plan on watering, and how big a tree is big enough. For real shade its best to have what I would term small- to medium-sized trees, which are in the 20- to 40-foot height range. Trees smaller than that are more for show. Increasingly, the small to medium trees are looking to be the best option for planting in our area. Some good small to medium trees include the goldenrain tree, which grows 20 to 40 feet high by 15 to 25 feet wide. In the summer it has clusters of yellow flowers that turn into a papery fruit and look like a paper lantern. Many people find the flowers to be nice, but it can be messy when they start dropping off the tree. Many of these trees grow in front of the shops along Main Street, however, if you grow these in your yard I am sure they will be fuller and more robust than those dealing with the issues of being street trees. Another interesting tree species is hawthorne’s with the cockspur hawthorne growing up to 30 feet, with attractive white flowers and good bronze to red fall color. You might want to look for the thornless variety. Another is the Washington hawthorne, which can grow to 30 feet high with a 25-foot spread. It has white flowers, reddish purple leaves in the spring that turn dark green and has good fall color. As an added bonus, the small red fruits are enjoyed by song birds. Then there is the Eastern redbud, which can grow to 30 feet high by 35 feet wide. It has flowers that can be reddish purple to rosy pink and also varieties with white flowers. The redbud has heart-shaped leaves and can grow both in full sun or some light shade. The hedge maple is one of the few maples that is tolerant of high pH soils, which means it’s less likely to get iron chlorosis. Its 25 to 35 foot height and similar width makes it a good tree for our area in terms of overall water needs. It’s been used as a hedge in some areas, so it could be pruned into a large deciduous hedge (meaning it loses it leaves in the fall) but of course you can just let it be a tree. People regularly plant trees and then hope to get healthy growth with limited water, which usually doesn’t work long-term. If you truly don’t feel a tree will provide more for you, your family and community than the water it takes to make it healthy, please find something else to grow. A tree that never reaches its potential or is truly healthy is the bigger shame and since more of these trees will die sooner rather than later, that’s a true waste of water. The bottom line for planting trees is that if you want success and aren’t just incredibly lucky you must understand the needs of your trees and determine whether you can provide the care for them to thrive. Thought for the day: “The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The next best time is now. – Chinese Proverb For more information about these topics call the Utah State University Extension Grand County office at 259-7558 or email Mike Johnson at [email protected]. |
Host of the 2013 Mormon Lit Blitz
My Novel: The Five Books of Jesus
Some thoughts on gender and the church
A Thought on Gender Inequality Since a friend mentioned it on Facebook, I have been thinking about Gender Inequality in the church. I've decided I don't love the term because it's more emotionally charged than precise--we all know inequality is bad, but we can't seem to agree on which practices might be "unequal" in the negatively charged sense. I worry that talking about "gender inequality" in the church is going to end up counter-productive because the term itself switches us straight from discussion mode to impassioned reaction mode. That is: if you think a certain practice is promoting inequality, you are probably going to bring a certain righteous indignation to any discussion of it. And if you think a certain practice is being unfairly labeled as promoting inequality, you're likely to bring a very defensive mindset to any discussion. So what if we threw the term out altogether? Would we have more room to talk about the differences between male and female experiences in the church if we simply acknowledged that they are different, but withheld judgments about equality and talked instead about what each gender needs to increase the quality of its average experience? For this post, I've prepared a list of four gender-related differences in church experience I've noticed. I'm not trying to be comprehensive. I just want to offer a few talking points to test this kind of discussion.
1) Relationships of children with opposite-gender adults
In general, I think LDS boys are far more likely to have multiple positive relationships with adult women and more feelings of trust toward adult women than LDS girls are to have positive relationships and general feelings of trust toward adult men.
Part of this comes from parenting: the number of mothers who are physically or emotionally absent is rising, but remains low relative to the number of physically or emotionally absent fathers. And even in cases where both mother and father are highly involved in the family, I would imagine that statistically, boys tend to feel closer to their mothers than girls to their fathers.
Part of this comes from the community: while many girls will have positive associations with the Priesthood, girls' childhood relationships with priesthood holders are likely to be more distant than young boys' relationships with a Primary President, Primary Chorister (who may be one of the key charismatic figures in many children's ward experience), and a majority of Primary teachers. Sisters in the ward in general are probably also more likely to give positive attention and signals of approachability to boys than brothers in the ward in general are likely to give positive attention and signals of approachability to girls.
Part of this also comes from the broader society and media: while there are periodic news stories of female teachers sexting or otherwise harassing male students, people don't tend to internalize them and warn their boys about female predators. There are far more stories in the news of male predators, and many parents have internalized them and overtly or implicitly trained girls to act with caution and fear toward unfamiliar men. Beyond the news, there are probably far more fictional media portrayals of aggressive, overbearing, and dangerous men than of women who pose a danger to children.
For all these reasons, I suspect that boys will have an easier time bonding and feeling safe with women than girls with men. 2) Degree of Scripted Life Expectations for Youth (Mission and Marriage)
Thirty years or so ago, there may not have been as much of a gender gap here, but in today's church culture young men have a much more standardized script of expectations for their early adulthood while young women are left with a somewhat more open story of what to expect from their future.
LDS young men are typically trained to expect to serve a full-time mission as a rite of passage, while young LDS women are taught to seek individual inspiration as to whether they should serve as full-time missionaries. Recent changes in the age of missionary service will make it easier for women to fit full-time missionary service into their lives, but were not accompanied by strengthened calls for young women to consider missionary service as a rite of passage. Probably, the position of missionary work as normative for young men and a matter of choice for young women will continue. Because marriage is a central religious value, both LDS young men and young women are taught to prepare for marriage. But there's significantly more discussion for young women about how preparation for marriage does not always result in marriage: most young women are taught to consider the possibilities of not finding a spouse or of losing a spouse to death or divorce. Perhaps because most cultures still expect men to initiate relationships, there seems to be less sympathetic attention to the possibility of young men failing to find a spouse. Possibly because of higher remarriage rates for men, there also seems to be less attention to encouraging men to prepare to function effectively as a single parent in the event of a spouse's death or divorce.
LDS young men are also expected to prepare to serve their families as economic providers in addition to their emotional roles as husbands and fathers. Young women are counseled to obtain as much education as possible, but with more varied expectations as to how that education might serve them as individuals, as mothers, as citizens and community volunteers, and as economic providers as circumstances require. In general, I think young LDS men are raised with more fixed or rigid expectations for the next steps in their lives, while young LDS women are raised with more conditional counsel and circumstance-based caveats as far as their expectations for adulthood. 3) Volunteering One small area where my wife and I have noticed what seems to be a gender difference is in volunteer sign-ups within the church. While the calling system seems to work in similar ways for most men and women, Relief Society sisters seem (anecdotally) far more likely to volunteer to fulfill individual assignments than their male counterparts--especially than the younger adult men in Elders' Quorum. Specifically, my wife has noted that volunteer assignments in Relief Society seem to be filled more evenly by members of the group, while Elders' Quorum volunteer assignments seem to be filled disproportionately by a few quorum members. It's hard to say what exactly is happening here. It may be that the higher percentage of men than women with full time employment is the explanation, though I suspect that women who work full time are still more likely to volunteer than men who work full time. I've noticed that many married men in Elders' Quorums I've served in don't feel comfortable volunteering for something without checking with their wives first--and then often forget to check. My wife has not noticed the same pattern among women--most sign up without waiting for a discussion with their spouse.
Maybe women on average feel more emotionally invested in the lives of other ward members, and are therefore more quick to contribute. Maybe men on average feel less mentally prepared to handle variations from their standard schedules. Maybe Relief Societies, drawing on larger numbers of women, tend to be better organized than the smaller separated Elders' Quorums and High Priests' groups. Assuming that there are broad differences in volunteering culture between men and women throughout much of the church, and not just in wards where I've served, it suggests a different gender-based experience of how small task volunteer sign-ups are perceived and received. 4) Adult intra-gender relationships, especially across generations
In theory, the Church provides great structures for both brotherhood and sisterhood. But in practice, I suspect that there is slightly more tension and distance on average in a ward or branch's relationships between men than between women--especially across generations.
My sense is that there's a higher chance of annoyance or tension in relationships between men than between women in the church. This is especially clear if you look at inter-generational relationships: most younger women seem to deeply enjoy having older women in Relief Society with them, while many younger men seem a little more susceptible to annoyance or resentment toward some older men and vice-versa.
There are many theories, of course, as to why women may got along with each other better than men. At least in some cultures, men tend to make slightly more rapid and action-oriented decisions about how to handle problems while women tend to take more time, pay more attention to relationships, and work more to build consensus. Women's slightly different average patterns of focus may make it easier for them to manage relationships in a larger group. Conflicts for power between generations of men may be more deeply ingrained throughout our culture than conflicts for power between generations of women, leaving women's relationships with each other a little less complicated by the general baggage of culture.
Equality? I chose the examples above because they seem important, but I don't know how they relate to the idea of equality.
It seems like girls deserve better relationships with adult men, but I'm sort of hesitant to call that an equality issue. Maybe that's because our society typically uses "equality" in contrast to active oppression and I just don't see an oppressor here. Maybe it's because our culture typically treats greater roles for women as the answer to gender inequality, while in this case, better quality seems to require more active roles for men. While I see a clear difference in how our culture treats life expectations for young men and women, I honestly have no idea which gender gets it better. If we think that equality means treating everyone the same, should we make young men's expectations more open, or young women's more concrete? If we're OK with treating young men and young women differently so long as we're treating them all in the best way we can imagine, then are more concrete expectations good for young men? And are more flexible expectations good for young women? Why?
Volunteer sign-ups seem to be set up basically the same way in both Priesthood and Relief Society classes. So why does there seem to be a disparity in how they're received? Would it be better if men in Elders' Quorums had a different system for small task volunteering than their female counterparts? Why or why not?
And if it's true that women have stronger intra-gender relationships on average, does that mean there's plenty of room for men to improve? Should we be talking about closing a relationship gap? How different are male and female ways of building relationships--and could men be learning something applicable from women on this issue?
We do have trouble talking about gender inequality in the church. But can we talk about gender differences in experience in a way that's more productive, a way that can ultimately increase the quality of experience for men and women in the church? Posted by
AnonymousDecember 21, 2012 at 2:56 AMYou made some good points, and you thought about many things. I thought it was good.I don't have a problem with not having the Priesthood, I don't mind wearing dresses to Church, and I consider myself a feminist although I am sure other feminists would say I am not one of them.There are many, many, culture problems in the Church and some do discriminate against the females. There are still men who think the Priesthood gives them the right to dominate their spouses and women in general.There are men who, as Bishops and Stake Presidents won't allow women to say prayers in Sacrament or let women sit on the stand or let a woman be the last speaker in Sacrament. These men who do these things are individuals who can't be controlled but they get some of their ideas about women in the Church from the higher up leadership in lessons, talks, etc.In my Ward the young men do not respect the young women and they have not been held accountable for their actions directed towards some of the young women, actions which scream they don't respect the female gender. And the fact that the young men are not held accountable speaks volumes - that this behavior is acceptable even by the female adults, which comes from the culture mentality in the Church. SAD!!Also the Young Women, at least in the area where I live, don't get the same recognition for their accomplishments compared to the Young Men and Scouts. Scouts and Priesthood gets all the attention.So as a Church there is still a lot of work to do, and the example needs to start at the top - the First Presidency - they need to start attacking the culture mentality in this Church not only in dealing with gender inequality but other issues as well.And yes,we can all do better.ReplyDeleteRepliesJames GoldbergDecember 21, 2012 at 10:10 AMThe blatant disrespect from some young (and not so young) men is an important issue. One of my strongest memories of Pres. Hinckley was a talk in Priesthood session (https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2002/04/personal-worthiness-to-exercise-the-priesthood?lang=eng) in which he strongly condemned verbal as well as physical abuse of one's spouse. The spiritual power of that rebuke was an important part of my testimony of what a prophet can do. It would be great if more leaders at the local level were paying careful enough attention to notice verbal abuse and more often had the confidence to speak out boldly about it. I also think leaders and individuals at the local level can do a lot by praising positive behaviors--especially among the youth. Wouldn't it be great to have a generation of young men who knew respect and trust in the community came from honoring and respecting others--especially young women. And maybe our practices around church awards are a good place to encourage that positive behavior. I don't know a ton about the youth programs--but it sounds like a good idea to make a bigger deal of young women's achievement awards and give young men a better understanding of what work the young women are doing as a way to build more respect. DeleteReplyMyrnaDecember 21, 2012 at 6:26 AMVery interesting. Some of what you wrote actually made me think that the men are, in some ways, more "oppressed" than the women are.I think that some things are actually Utah church culture things: for example, how young men get recognition for their accomplishments-- I guess that Anonymous, above, is referring to maybe the Eagle Court of Honor? Where I grew up, Canada, that doesn't even exist, because there are no Eagle Scouts. Some people started doing that kind of an event when a scout got his Queen's Venturer award, but they were clearly copying what they had seen done for scouts they knew in Utah. The first one I went to seemed like a funeral for someone who was still alive, and actually, seemed really silly to me. I think the Utah culture thing about boys HAVING to get their Eagle Scout is horribly oppressive of young men--no driver's license until you have it? Really? Scouting is just not every boy's thing. When we moved to Utah, my oldest son had earned his Chief Scout award from Canada which is almost an Eagle (the Queen's Venturer is more difficult than an Eagle), but BSA won't transfer achievements from another country, so no Eagle for him. At 17, he didn't have time to start over, and it was frankly not that important to us. Oh, and he already had his driver's license! My second son was just not interested. As far as women and the priesthood, Belle Spafford, who was the RS General president for a long time, once said, "Power? Why would I want power when I can have influence?" I am so with her. About volunteering...I have often thought that men need the priesthood so that they have an obligation to serve because otherwise, many of them never would. Women seem more naturally inclined to serve others, so they don't need to be saddled with an obligation to do what just comes naturally to many of them.I come from a long background of feminism, where women received more education while men stayed at home and farmed. And I think that equality...doesn't exist. Anywhere. And I am not sure I think it should. Take for example, my own children. Should I treat them all equally (as in, exactly the same)--no. They are all so different. Different often looks like unequal, but sometimes unequal is more fair, and equal is unfair.ReplyDeleteRepliesJames GoldbergDecember 21, 2012 at 10:56 AMI never earned my Eagle Scout--though if I'd been in Canada, I probably would have put in a little more effort to make "Queen's Venturer." It just has such a nice, piratey sound to it. I can almost see it: Sir Francis Drake, Queen's Venturer and Privateer. Do they take adult men as scouts in Canada? DeleteReplyAlana TolleyDecember 21, 2012 at 7:30 AMI liked Anonymous' comment about the lack of consequences for young men who don't realize the consequences of their disrespect. Growing up in a California ward, one young man made repeated comments about how I, as a woman, wasn't allowed to enter the sacrament preparation room, and mocked me at age 20 because I couldn't go in the temple to attend a wedding and he could just after returning from his mission. Another young man from Texas who was my district leader at the time, stated "Women get comfy chairs in Relief Society, men get the priesthood." These are just two comments for which there should have been swift (and if you ask me corporal) retrubution by a man in authority. Boys and men of any age who make these comments need to be made to feel like abusers.I also liked Anonymous' comment "Bishops and Stake Presidents won't allow women to say prayers in Sacrament or let women sit on the stand or let a woman be the last speaker in Sacrament." I see this type of tendancy all over in church. Who is asked to teach gospel doctrine? men. Who is asked to babysit in primary? Women. The home teaching message is drafted by one of the church presidency. The visiting teaching message is not given a credit. I especially have a problem with how women have few examples to draw from in the scriptural heroes who are always highlighted. Alma, Peter, Paul, Nephi: all great examples of righteousness. But where are our women? I know they exist and they should be highlighted and honored equally as models to learn from in both Elders' quorum and Relief Society.The "differences" you chose to highlight are sociologically interesting, but you missed the point. The emotional charge is there for a reason. The emotional charge exists where there is something wrong. It is not to be ignored. Choose the items that have emotional charge to explore and decide how you, as a man, will influence other men to correct the problem.ReplyDeleteRepliesJames GoldbergDecember 21, 2012 at 10:14 AMAbout the order of talks: I am especially baffled by the tradition in many units of having the wife speak first and the husband second. In the logic of our culture, that can make the wife seem like she's there to introduce her husband. In the case of my father-in-law, it also means he seldom gets more than five minutes for a talk. It would be easy to simply alternate the husband-wife order when couples speak, and might do a lot of symbolic help reinforcing our doctrines on equality in marriage. DeleteMerrijane RiceDecember 21, 2012 at 10:41 AMMy ward must be unusual. I'm a gospel doctrine teacher there, rotating with two men. Also, we've had both male and female primary choristers, pianists, organists, choir directors, and scout leaders.But it is bizarre about the sacrament meeting talk order. They don't do the opening and closing prayers that way. They don't do the youth talks that way. They don't even do the talks in primary opening exercises that way.DeleteJames GoldbergDecember 21, 2012 at 10:48 AMI also want to mention briefly that in my ward, half the gospel doctrine teachers are women. And that the longest formal interview I can remember having with a bishop was when I was called as a primary teacher for 11-year-olds--because one of his main concerns as a leader was that children in the 8-12 range have solid teachers who could give them the gospel and show them why it matters. Primary is definitely not just babysitting or we're failing as a church. DeleteBecca RDecember 21, 2012 at 11:11 AMYou don't think these issues are emotionally charged as well? (they are - maybe not for you - but the one where my husband has to consult me for every little thing is a very emotionally charged issue for us)I do not think James was suggesting in his post that we dismiss the emotion. As he stated: "if you think a certain practice is promoting inequality, you are probably going to bring a certain righteous indignation to any discussion of it. And if you think a certain practice is being unfairly labeled as promoting inequality, you're likely to bring a very defensive [and I would add, dismissive] mindset to any discussion."I think you are right - that emotional charge exists where there is something wrong, but it doesn't always necessarily mean the issue at hand is the thing that needs to be changed. Often, emotional charge comes as a result of pride, and it is the pride that needs to be changed, not necessarily the issue. And emotional response is almost always an indicator that "something is not right", but what that something is can be hard to pin point.For example, when my husband gets frustrated, whether with me or with something else, I would definitely describe my emotions as "charged" - but even if he is expressing his emotion negatively, most of the time the emotional charge comes from my pride which has caused me to become defensive. Or if I get frustrated with him and in my emotion say something criticizing, sure the issue is emotionally charged, and surely something needs to change, but it is necessarily him that needs to change? Or is it me? (and I could use an example of me and a girl friend, or my sister, or my mother - and if I was a man it would be the same thing)."decide how you, as a man, will influence other men to correct the problem."So it's a man's responsibility to correct the problems in the Church now? I thought that's what the whole issue was about in the first place? Men have more influence. But now you're saying that it should be that way? Why not have us all decide how we, as disciples of Christ, will influence other people to be more effective disciples? (I seem to remember there being several talks about that exact topic in the past few General Conferences)DeleteBecca RDecember 21, 2012 at 11:16 AMRe: James and Merrijane's comments - the experiences that Alana described are not all that uncommon. But that's part of the problem of the whole discussion - when we talk about inequality in the Church we are looking for a universal solution to a completely non-universal problem.Which is why I agree wholeheartedly with James' suggestion that we forego the discussion of inequality for a discussion of different experiences - not just between men and women, but also in individual wards and branches - and among individuals (which, I believe is kind of the purpose of the Church structure anyway - to provide a place for the individual to learn and grow).DeleteJames GoldbergDecember 21, 2012 at 11:16 AMBecca, I agree that we all need to do more as disciples of Christ. But I also think Alana is on to something: there are some things men will need to do (and some things women need to do) to take things better. Our genders are probably part of the solution to gender-related problems!DeleteJames GoldbergDecember 21, 2012 at 11:17 AMAbove, that should read "make things better" not "take things better." DeleteHillaryDecember 21, 2012 at 11:34 AMIn one Sunday School lesson, I heard it taught that the wife prays last so that the priesthood can open the meeting and that the husband speaks last so that he can correct anything his wife said that was contrary to doctrine (just like the presiding authority in the meeting has authority to do). Yeah...that was my stake president at the time (different ward from now). I didn't leave the Church, but I most definitely did leave the meeting. :) I think it goes back to the principles in D&C 107 and is the same reason high councilmen are scheduled to speak last. The person with the greatest authority has the final word for the meeting, which means the person with the least priesthood authority (or no authority, in the case of a woman) speaks first. It's meant to honor the priesthood, but unfortunately, it ends up being at the expense of the woman. It goes back to that "baffling" aspect of gender discussions. My then-stake president just didn't see it from my perspective. We all have blind spots, as this blog post so gently points out.DeleteBecca RDecember 21, 2012 at 11:36 AMI am not saying that there aren't things men can do to make things better, I just don't agree that she should have a problem with men taking all the prominent roles in the Church, and then suggest that men should do something to influence other men to change (which would suggest that they are still more prominent). Men should do something to influence other men and women to change. And Women should do something to influence other women and men to change. I guess that was my point, but not stated very well.DeleteEmilyDecember 21, 2012 at 12:20 PMI think one thing we women can do to make change is to be gospel scholars ourselves. I don't know why, but some women I know don't like to comment, say in Sunday school. I've been a big commenter at times, and yes, ended up a Gospel Doctrine teacher. Maybe enough women don't participate in the gospel discussion, so others don't think they're able? I suppose some of this is because fewer women serve missions and therefore, feel less qualified? I did not serve a mission, but for some reason (haven't figured it out yet), still feel a drive for gospel scholarship.As for the speaking last thing, it is a bit weird, but, more than once, I've not left more than 10 minutes for my husband. Guess there are pros and cons to that one.DeleteJames GoldbergDecember 21, 2012 at 12:29 PMResearch actually shows that in public school classrooms, boys are called on more often to comment than girls. The same may be true in other contexts. So for some women to make a point of being prepared to share insights in gospel doctrine classes is probably a great way to help teachers and students alike correct for some cultural habits we have which prevent us from following the Doctrine & Covenants' call for all to be edified of all. A few assertive women speaking more may help other women to feel more comfortable and confident in commenting. And it may help teachers to pay more equal attention to everyone--there's certainly a risk of men subconsciously being noticed more (for good and ill). Especially if they're six and half feet tall and bearded....DeleteBecca RDecember 21, 2012 at 12:44 PMEmily, I agree with your comments that enough women don't participate in gospel discussion. (which I think actually doesn't originally come from Church culture - I think it might be a convert-related thing - women who came from oppressive American society into the non-oppressive Church culture didn't know that they were allowed to speak, and so they didn't. And it just stuck, and it led men to believe that women weren't supposed to speak either).Honestly, one of the most disturbing attitudes I hear is the attitude that "I don't want the priesthood, I already have enough to do as a woman." What I hear under that comment is that "I am content to let men learn the gospel for me, interpret it for me, and tell me how to live it." That is absolutely not what we are expected to do.As women, we have a priesthood duty, along with men, to become gospel scholars, to minister to the needs of our brothers and sisters, and to instruct one another in the gospel.We need to be stepping up, not sitting back. I don't think men are oppressing women as much as women are just being lazy. It's so much easier to just get together and make little wooden Christmas tress than it is to get together and actually talk about the gospel. We would rather just let the men do the talking.Women need to step up, and I think men could definitely be more encouraging in helping women to step up and rise to their potential - but then, I hear the complaint that men tell us how to be women. Well, that's because women aren't telling us how to be women. They are telling us how to make tomato sauce. Men are telling us because women won't, not because they aren't allowed to or expected to. We don't nearly live up to the expectations God has for us (as women OR men).I should post my notes some time from an excellent class I attended on the Patriarchal Order at BYU Education Week. It helped me really understand what that means, and what it doesn't. I'll post a link when I get them up.DeleteReplyjiDecember 21, 2012 at 8:18 AMSo what if we threw the term out altogether? Would we have more room to talk about the differences between male and female experiences in the church if we simply acknowledged that they are different, but withheld judgments about equality and talked instead about what each gender needs to increase the quality of its average experience?Yes. Understanding is far better than judging. Discussion is far better than arguing. Loving another is far better than convincing another.ReplyDeleteRepliesJames GoldbergDecember 21, 2012 at 10:51 AMAnd I'm guessing it's also more effective. Take the example above: let's say you notice that some young men in your branch or ward are disrespecting young women. If you come upset and talk to their leader about how the culture is promoting gender inequality, he may feel guilty or defensive and not know what to do. But if you bring him Pres. Hinckley's talk and mention that he might have concrete opportunities to teach the young men by what principles priesthood works, he's more likely to have the confidence and language to take action that promotes positive change in those young men's lives. DeleteReplyAnonymousDecember 21, 2012 at 9:19 AMI do want to keep the discourse about gender...relationships?...positive, but I have to agree with Alana that whether it detracts from rational discussion or not, this is a very emotionally charged issue. Most feminists I know are pretty content with the Gospel; it's the culture that often causes pain. Actually it's just certain people. And that pain is very, very real. I've endured all kinds of blatant, misogynistic, verbal abuse (some of the worst examples come from the zone and district leaders I had on my mission) and I knew it wasn't the Church's fault--at least, not doctrine itself. But something let those young missionaries think it was okay to have such little respect for me, and that was the culture. They had certain ideas in their heads about women, and the organization and structure of the mission/church/culture allowed it. So in my opinion, yes, I think something needs to change.ReplyDeleteRepliesJames GoldbergDecember 21, 2012 at 10:24 AMI referenced one talk I remember from Gordon B. Hinckley in a comment above. It's here: https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2002/04/personal-worthiness-to-exercise-the-priesthood?lang=eng. I wonder whether it would be useful to gather a short packet of talks from male and female church leaders that deal with issues of respect, love, the sin of verbal abuse, etc. to help remind people. A packet like that would be good both to try to prevent verbal abuse and to make clear to those who are disrespected our verbally abused that they are right to feel upset by it and that others' behavior is inconsistent not only with the spirit of the gospel, but also with explicit teachings of current and recent leaders. There may also be valuable structural changes to be made--but I can't do anything about that at the moment. Whereas I can direct people to talks that make relevant doctrines clear in both gentle and sharp ways. DeleteBecca RDecember 21, 2012 at 11:49 AMYour suggestion to have a packet of talks reminds me of something someone shared about Valerie Hudson's article here. "[Sister Hudson] reminded me that THIS vision of zion (the one described in her article) is the one I should live in, and that when people aren't seeing things that way, I should invite them into that space with me."What you're talking about with the articles makes me think of this exact sentiment - when people aren't living in Zion, we invite them to come live in Zion with us.It also reminds me of Pres. Packer's wonderful comment that "True doctrine, understood, changes attitudes and behavior. The study of the doctrines of the gospel will improve behavior quicker than a study of behavior will improve behavior."As far as structural change - there are (and have been) some useful policy changes that could occur (the change in missionary age for YW is one that comes to mind, and the extension of the priesthood to all worthy male members is another). But we cannot force those changes.DeleteReplyMerrijane RiceDecember 21, 2012 at 9:43 AMI’m flattered you tagged me to comment on this, but I’m not sure I have anything useful to say. When it comes to “gender inequality,” I feel like an autistic child who wonders why people greet each other by pulling back their lips and bearing their teeth. In other words, I understand what people are saying, but I just don’t feel it. I do have two thoughts that hopefully relate to your post, though.First, I was very close to my father growing up—more so than my mother. Mom regulated my life, fed me, cleaned me, made be do chores, etc. Dad sat and talked with me. He believed in my talents and abilities. He encouraged me. As a result, I’ve never felt like I was inferior simply because I’m female. Perhaps I project that experience on my relationships with other men, because I don’t think any of them look down on me, whether they are Mormon or not. My only experience with a man treating me as inferior was on my mission. It was an investigator—a fundamentalist Christian from Africa.Second, I appreciated your unique questions about how to address gender differences in church. The things you talk about seem way more important to me than arguments about who gets to “wear the pants” in the ward family, so to speak. I know I shouldn’t dismiss the emotional pain of my sisters in the gospel, but when they start to get accusatory and contentious, I just want to ignore them. It makes me feel defensive of all the wonderful men I have in my life.ReplyDeleteRepliesJames GoldbergDecember 21, 2012 at 11:01 AMI have a friend who grew up without a father and who really appreciated it when other men in the ward took time to mentor her, take her to father-daughter activities, and generally be positive, confidence-building presences in her life. Maybe part of building confidence in girls and young women in the church is having a stronger emotional "safety net" so that more and more grow up with regular positive encouragement from men, no matter what their home circumstances may be. DeleteReplyBonnieDecember 21, 2012 at 10:16 AMI like your points. We are so tempted to carry the world's discussion and the world's terms and the world's vocabulary into this, and I think that's not only counterproductive but insulting to the creator. If we go back to the scriptures and see how GOD uses the words equal and equality, he talks about three things: the importance of us being equal with each other in terms of resources, the importance of us being equal with each other in terms of authority (teaching), and his plan to make us equal with HIM. When we shift our thinking to try to think like God, we become genderblind as well as colorblind and nationalityblind and etc. Instead we want to insure that everyone has what they need to live, that everyone has a voice in the mutual edification of intimate church settings, and we are all focused on receiving the opportunity to become like God.When the discussion comes from these defensive and worldly positions, it has a wholly different flavor. Satan is in control of the discourse when it becomes "you can buy anything in this world with money" just as much as when it becomes "you can buy anything in this world with ecclesiastical power." Abraham was a starving Syrian vagabond. If we really chew on that we understand that God is interested in the personal, not the institutional.As persons, we can have these wonderful conversations about increasing opportunities for both young men and young women to become well-rounded individuals, to embrace greater opportunities (although I lay odds that those are the conversations happening at every level institutionally as well). I loved your points. Each deserve a conversation. We can do better, but most of that will occur personally, not institutionally. Abraham sits on his throne now not because the institution bequeathed something to him but because he sought it straight from God. I doubt we'll have many Abrahams in our own day until we stop waiting for the institution to tell us what to do and go do it ourselves - offer equality in all we do, search for consecration, approach God ourselves.ReplyDeleteRepliesJames GoldbergDecember 21, 2012 at 10:28 AMI like the idea of consecration as a great equalizer--'cause you can't really give more than 100%. I also like your reminder that we are aiming for divinity, which goes a lot further than equality. That doctrine also puts disrespect and verbal abuse into a vivid context: when one person is demeaning to another, it's not just sexism or another form of oppression. It's blasphemy. When you demean another human being, you are demeaning God. DeleteBecca RDecember 21, 2012 at 11:23 AMI think that God also uses the term "equal" in a very important way that we often forget about in discussions of equality - and that is that the atonement and mercy of the Savior applies equally to all.One of the things that I have thought about a lot in the discussion of inequality is that the purpose of the Church is to bring us into Zion, or "unity" which means that we have to be united. United does not mean "the same" - one definition of unity is "Harmony or agreement between people or groups." I love the idea of "Harmony" because if you listen to a symphony, every instrument is not playing the same part. Usually, in fact, you have several dozen "parts" playing at the same time. The flutes have to recognize that the cellos are not going to be playing the same thing they are playing, but they still have to play their part in time with the cellos, and in the right key, etc. I think talking about the different experiences we all have in the Church, validating those different experiences, and then together discussing how to approach all of our different experiences with a gospel attitude make us more unified. We are not all having the same experience, but we are all learning to use the Spirit and each other to approach our experiences with faith, hope, and charity, rather than with doubt, despair, and judgment. DeleteReplyHillaryDecember 21, 2012 at 10:29 AMBefore I wade into this conversation, I wanted to first comment on the post itself. I admit, as I read it, my first reaction was “This doesn’t address what *I* want to talk about at all.” But as I continued, I realized that in all these instances you were discussing women were the ones in a position of power or advantage, and it was baffling because I hadn’t considered it that way at all. My next thought was that you’ve placed me in the position of the many men and women in the church who just don’t see what we feminists are getting so worked up about. Is this how they all feel when we feminists start talking about men being the ones in positions of power or advantage? No, because we are often not as polite or neutral about it as you are, so they probably feel both baffled and under attack. It was eye-opening and, I think, sets the stage nicely for a respectful and hopefully edifying discussion of gender within the Church.So thank you for that. Whether it was unintentionally brilliant or (more likely) carefully crafted with that end in mind, it was an impressive post. Just for the pure aesthetics of it, this was lovely and (for me at least) highly effective.I’ll actually jump into the conversation a little later today, but I wanted to give you my knee-jerk reaction first. ReplyDeleteRepliesMerrijane RiceDecember 21, 2012 at 10:50 AMBaffled and under attack--sounds like my husband! He gets particularly upset about the fact that elders quorum never seems to have a budget to work with because it's a long-standing practice to let the RS and YW take the bulk of the money. He thinks EQ should get to have at least one activity a year that isn't potluck!DeleteReplyEmilyDecember 21, 2012 at 11:58 AMI like your analysis, James. You bring up some good points. I particularly like the level-headed approach of what happens in the experience of either sex. I just had a few thoughts as I read. 1. Just wondering why you thought the gender gap wouldn't have been as bad 30 years ago. I would have thought it would have been worse. Just wondering what specific things your thinking of.2. As for not teaching men to single parent, you can also see that even if there is a child in a union, and that union splits, the child generally is more cared for by the mother anyway; hence, making his ability to parent less necessary. It's too bad. Maybe if men knew how to better parent, the greater burden wouldn't be on the mothers.3. When I read the part about the guys not signing up to volunteer, my immediate reaction was the wives keep the schedule, so they have to talk; like you say, if you forget to talk, then you forget to sign up. Been there, done that. I suppose I'm also guilty of that one, but I think both my husband and I have gotten better at just signing up individually and hoping it works out. Sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn't, but I sure don't like signing up and then not being able to do it.4. I was fascinated by your thoughts on men not working so well together. I guess I'm totally inexperienced, but I hadn't seen this. I just figured men were more easy going and got together fine! Little do I know. Honestly, I wouldn't say women are all peachy. I've seen some jealously amongst women; so, it sounds like it's something both men and women need to work on. When I worked under a woman at the COB in college, one of the first things she asked me was if I was okay working under her. I was really confused. It never occurred to me that I should have difficulties working under a woman. I think they considered switching me to a male supervisor, just in case. I don't know why I share that because Church hierarchy is somewhat different than work hierarchy (maybe?).5. I wonder how awkward it would be to promote cross-gender relationships, such as in men/girls. I think as a little girl, men were great, but then as you get older, your hear stories about men and get worried, and then distrust men. It's sad. Maybe some of our segregation of the sexes is from perhaps unfounded stories, and that has just carried into our church culture.ReplyDeleteRepliesJames GoldbergDecember 21, 2012 at 12:13 PMRe: #1. I meant the gender differences in terms of how fixed expectations are. My vague sense is thirty years ago LDS women also had pretty fixed expectations for early adulthood (with the exception of missionary service, which was optional then). Over the past three decades, expectations seem to have opened up for women but not changed much for men.I don't know if that's a bad thing--my wife feels like many young men benefit from clear expectations/demands and that many young women struggle more with disappointed expectations than their male counterparts. So maybe we're in a good place now with men having the structure they might need more and women having the flexibility they might need more. But I don't know. Maybe we should be changing on men, maybe we should be thinking more about whether it's time to treat full-time missionary service as a normative rite of passage for women. I do think it's interesting, though, that there's a clear difference in expectations but without one option clearly looking better than the other from our broader culture's perspective. DeleteReplyBecca RDecember 21, 2012 at 12:00 PMThis comment has been removed by the author.ReplyDeleteBecca RDecember 21, 2012 at 12:08 PMI just wanted to add that it makes sense to talk about "gender-related differences in experience" rather than "gender inequality", for a few reasons: First, because men and women can never be "equal" in the sense of the word that they are exactly the same - because men are and always will be different than women. Secondly, because we can't really agree on what gender inequality looks like in the Church anyway, which inhibits us from having a productive conversation, because we're stuck debating what "inequality" really looks like. Instead, if we talk about gender-related differences in experience (and really, any kind of difference in experience - location-related, perspective-related, differences in experience just by virtue of being individuals) we can then validate each other's different experiences (because no one's experience is less valid than another's) and move on to a discussion of what parts of that person's experience are in line with the gospel, and talk about how to improve our own and our fellow members' experiences to be more of a gospel experience.ReplyDeleteRepliesJames GoldbergDecember 21, 2012 at 12:16 PMCool. In rhetoric, we talk about four stages of argument: fact, definition, quality, and procedure. It sounds like with "gender inequality" we get stuck on definition, whereas with "gender-related differences in experience" we can move on to quality and procedure--what's working and not working, and what action do we take. DeleteReplyHillaryDecember 21, 2012 at 12:50 PMOne last preamble before I start commenting on the list itself. :) Whether we’re looking at misogyny or misandry, the root of both is hate. A lot of the differences in the way gender plays out in the Church (whether it’s doctrine, policy, or culture) comes from the fact that we’re trying to build Zion in the midst of the slums of mammon. There are zoning issues. ;) Another thought that I had was that hatred against women has doctrinal roots and goes back to the Garden of Eden, but not to the Tree of Knowledge. Satan can set up priestcrafts to combat the Priesthood, but he can’t touch the procreative power that resides in Eve and her daughters. God himself placed a protective enmity between Lucifer and The Woman (and that seed of life she bears), enmity that Satan uses to devastating effect. I’m probably misunderstanding a lot of what happened in those verses of Genesis, but I think the takeaway is that the procreative power as expressed in the family is something Satan has a particular, driving hatred for. What better way to attack those sacred relationships (husband and wife, mother and father, son and daughter) than to sow hatred between male and female? Anytime we discuss gender in the Church, I think that doctrinal truth should be in the back of our minds: anything less than love is enmity. ReplyDeleteEmilyDecember 21, 2012 at 2:03 PMI posted this comment on a facebook thread James started, but I figured I'd add it to the conversation here, since not everyone is engaged in the fb thread.I have a few thoughts. 1. I absolutely agree that the term "inequality" is problematic and that it's often counter-productive to conversations. Personally, I've wanted to get rid of the terms "oppress" and all variations of "equal" in gender discussions for the reasons you've listed. The way I've been explaining it to friends for a few years now is that if all I wanted was for men and women to be equal, that would mean tearing down whoever appears to be doing better until they're on the same level. I see inequality as a symptom of other problems that need fixing. Which means that instances of apparent inequality bear further investigation before anyone tries to resolve them. 2. The points you raise all seem interesting to me and worth considering. I'm intrigued by your decision to focus on inter-gender relationships, since it's in the personal that most experience the political. 3. That being said, your discussion didn't really talk about differing and overlapping leadership responsibilities or the way that those experiences impact individual perceptions of gender. Or about rigid gender roles, though you hinted at it a little bit. I know you were looking to talk about some areas not often covered, and I know your discussion is operating in a new paradigm, but leadership responsibilities and opportunities all play into personal gendered interactions. In creating a different paradigm, your discussion veers a bit toward creating a "the other side" approach, which is by definition always going to be an incomplete side.4. To respond to a specific area of your post: I'd add to your discussion of how the future is more specifically mapped out for young men that on a cultural level (and it's still unclear to what extent this mapping is backed by doctrine or leadership), the specific expectations swing back in the other direction for life from the mid-twenties and on, placing some very specific expectations on women, while simultaneously offering more options for men. If women are meant to aspire toward a career as a stay-at-home mom, while men are meant to aspire toward any number of unique and fulfilling careers, then that's a terrible position for women to be in, and it's an expectation that doesn't end after two years. But again, it's increasingly unclear to what extent that responsibility is grounded in the gospel and to what extent it's cultural. 5. It looks like someone might have brought this up on your blog, but simply feeling close to a female leader, does not mean that a boy will grow into a man who respects women when they are in authority positions or who even perceives women as capable of having stewardship over men in the way he sees men as having stewardship over women. And those perspectives have repercussions. We've all seen it in little ways, such as when a recent RM closes his notes during general conference because the speaker is a woman. But what are the subtle repercussions of nearly one-half of the church population (men) being deprived of leadership from women? As a woman, I am under the stewardship of both men and women. And I like it that way. I think men would benefit if more at least recognized ways in which women in the church do have some stewardship over them, even if that stewardship isn't direct.ReplyDeleteRepliesMerrijane RiceDecember 21, 2012 at 2:50 PMExcept that women do have stewardship over men in many instances, both directly and indirectly. We don't hold priesthood leadership positions, but that doesn't negate all areas of stewardship. Maybe I'm not understanding--what areas do you think women should be given stewardship over and how do you think that should work?DeleteJames GoldbergDecember 21, 2012 at 3:16 PMShe does say it would help if "more at least recognized ways in which women in the church do have some stewardship over them." So it seems like at least part of what Emily is calling for is just better education. DeleteJames GoldbergDecember 22, 2012 at 8:55 AMRe: #4 in Emily's comment. I've been thinking about career and church, and one thing I think is worth mentioning is that the church doesn't seem to care whether a man's career is self-actualizing or interesting or anything like that. The church message on career for men (in my experience) is primarily that as a man, you have a responsibility to strive to provide basic economic security for your family. Now, I don't remember anyone in church taking me to task for choosing theatre as an undergraduate major. But there certainly was some concern in my extended family. And I certainly felt significant internal pressure to reconcile my field of study with my responsibilities: was I being foolish or selfish in pursuing arts, or doing something that would be useful enough to justify the risks in the end? I don't want to say the church pressure for men to provide is bad. In fact, I think it helps keeps us family-centered rather than self-centered. I just think it's possible to think that the church wants men to enjoy their careers and women to endure the difficulties of home-making...when actually, I don't think the church sees careers as routes of self-actualization at all. As far as the church is concerned, joy comes from relationships with God, family, and community and work is a fairly tangential (though necessary) way to support those relationships. DeleteReplyHillaryDecember 21, 2012 at 3:20 PM1) Everything in this list are observations, not questions posed for the sake of conversation, so I’m left to ask (and answer) my own questions about them. So why does it matter that little boys are taught to trust their Primary president but little girls are kept at arms’ length from their bishops? This goes back to my comment about zoning issues when building Zion within Mammon. The fact of the matter is that there ARE child molesters among us and, like it or not, the majority are male. In a fully Zion community, there probably will be much closer relationships between children (particularly girls) and adult men. As a Cub Scout leader, I would add that in Scouts, at least, there’s no double-standard here. Women leaders are also subject to the “Two-deep Leadership” and “No One-on-One Contact” rules that the men are. This is relevant to the “Pants to Church” issue because, from the time they’re little, girls are being taught that men are dangerous. How can we ever have a discussion about gender in the Church and NOT have it be emotionally charged when fear of men is being instilled in our girls? The roots of some of these gender issues run very deep.At the same, there is a genuine need to protect these little ones. Perhaps the Scouts are on to something that could be helpful more generally in the Church. Each Cub Scout manual has an insert for the parents to discuss issues of child abuse (how to avoid it when possible and telling someone if abuse occurs), but the responsibility for keeping these boys safe rests squarely on the leaders. In particular, the policy of “No One-on-One Contact” is driven home with a pile driver. We are charged with actively preventing even the possibility of abuse and the adults are to watch each other for problems, not leave it up to the kids to keep themselves safe. The adults police themselves, or to put it in a more doctrinal parlance, the shepherds keep vigilant watch over their sheep and drive out any wolf from among them (Alma 5:59).Of course, that policy would have ramifications for things like bishops’ interviews, and so I’m not sure how or if it might be implemented (though I think it could be). Regardless, if EVERY adult, male and female, were expected to make the effort of preventing one-on-one contact, this fear would probably be lessened. My mind would certainly be more at ease.Going back to “zoning issues” though, Western society expects men to be more aloof. I’ve commented to my husband about it before, that it’s just as unfair expect men to be the strong, aloof dominant male as it is to expect women to be submissive, emotionally-driven beings. It’s becoming more socially acceptable for men to be moved to tears, but we’re not anywhere near comfortable with the idea of men being as free to express their emotions as women are. In a fully Zion society, men would be as open with their emotions as the Savior is (see 3 Nephi 17 in particular, where he weeps because his joy is full in the children before him). Until that ideal of masculinity is achieved, we as a Church culture have much work to do in helping the brethren feel more comfortable working toward that ideal. I’d love to read THAT priesthood lesson or conference talk! :)ReplyDeleteLobbieDecember 21, 2012 at 6:00 PMI'll write a real response next, but in case it takes awhile, I was wondering if you would also be interested in hearing some of the things others have noticed as gender-based differences in the church and whether they think those are positive or negative. I personally have seen a variety and with different results and often mixed results as opposed to all good or all bad, though some of them seem to lean more in a positive or negative direction.ReplyDeleteRepliesBecca RDecember 21, 2012 at 6:16 PMI think the part of the discussion we need to get to is whether they are good or bad (and more importantly, how the experiences reflect adherence or opposition to gospel doctrines), and also even further than that in the discussion is what we can do to help the experience be in line with the gospel - whether that involves, as James has suggested, sharing messages from our leaders, or if it involves strengthening one another to deal with and endure less-than-Zion circumstances.I, personally, would love to hear some more examples of gender related differences - but only if we can also talk about what makes the in line or not with gospel principles and what we can do to help improve the overall experiences of members.And as long as we can keep in mind that a negative experience for one person may be a positive experience for another, and visa versa - which is why I think focusing on "differences of experience" is much more useful than talking about "inequality".I look forward to your responses :)DeleteReplyAnonymousDecember 21, 2012 at 8:18 PMJames,You start off your post with a plea for neutrality, yet I did not find any of your explanations in your “list” neutral. Your interpretation of anecdotal events seems clearly set. You start off with male/female relationships. This is an important point of discussion, yet I could not find evidence to support your broad generalizations. You jumped from issue to issue extensively throughout that portion and I am still unclear as to what exactly you were trying to say. I believe that you are saying that men have a good relationship with women in the church due to primary (if that is not what you are saying, then let me know). If boys are more attached to women because women are more present in their formative years, then wouldn’t it make sense, in order to “fix” the girl/man relationship, to call more men to primary callings? Women are often placed with children both in the home and in the church. This can be infantizing and limiting to women’s spiritual and personal growth. Your second argument is equally convoluted. Male and female expectations within the church are different, but I don’t think that women have much more choice. Young women are groomed for temple marriage in ways that young men are not. As a young woman I had lessons on how to dress for a date and designing temple gowns. Such activities would never be a part of a male curriculum. Even in the new young men and young women lesson books there is a great disparity in male and female leadership. Leaders are frequently asked to have young men assume leadership roles, where the equivalent lessons for young women still remain more passive. I am not certain what volunteering has to do with inequality. I just do not understand it’s place in your post. While the anecdotes and the differences are interesting, I don’t see it’s place in a discussion of inequalities. I do think that women are more likely to volunteer their time, without speaking to a spouse, when the service would not affect the husband (example: bringing a meal to another family would not have a great impact on the husband, as it would most likely be prepared when he was away and be delivered in a short amount of time). If a husband is working his time with his family is valuable and so, he may need to check with his spouse before committing that time to service. If we’re speaking from personal experience, I have been far less likely to volunteer when I am the working spouse than when I am a SAHM. When I am working, I feel my time belongs to my family first, where as when I am staying home with my children I feel more freedom to serve and volunteer. Also, when I was staying home I felt more pressure to volunteer, because otherwise I felt that I was disconnected and would not be seen as doing my part. I know that you do not see which gender “has it better.” I would urge you, as you pursue this task of discussing gender differences in the church, to look at this fabulous blog post about Mormon male privilege. I think sometimes it is difficult to recognize our own place of privilege. http://www.the-exponent.com/mormon-male-privilege-and-how-to-make-apparent-gender-disparity-in-the-church/Happy writings and thanks for inviting response AnneReplyDeleteRepliesJames GoldbergDecember 21, 2012 at 9:59 PMI certainly don't feel like I've proven anything with this post. What I wanted to do is to call attention to differences in gender experiences without labeling them as inequalities and then to suggest that we could probably work on several things to improve the quality of each gender's experience of church without having to argue over definitions of inequality. For instance--I don't think someone has to accept a premise of gross gender inequality in the church to see a good argument for more men in primary. All you have to believe is that a) girls benefit from positive relationships with adult men and b) many girls don't have enough of those relationships in their immediate and extended families. We can discuss those issues without feeling defensive...so why not do so? If we're comparing privilege, I have all kinds--I'm highly educated, I'm filthy rich on any fair historical or global scale, I come from several large and supportive extended families, I have a voice that carries and a face people remember, I know how to make food that makes people like me better...the list goes on and on. But I think there's a straight shot from acknowledging any of my privileges to figuring out what our community can work on. I think it might be faster to start by discussing how different people experience the church and then go from there. What do they need? What could be better? DeleteMahonri StewartDecember 24, 2012 at 12:55 PMJames,I appreciate the tone you're trying to create here. However, when Anne tries to bring up legitimate points about your approach you label her as "defensive." That's a label that shuts down dialogue rather than encouraging it.Again, I appreciate your motives here. But to discuss gender in the Church without addressing the larger issues involved (purposely limiting yourself to much smaller, less controversial issues) is a bit confusing to me. What's the purpose? Personally, it seems to be a bit of a smokescreen that talks around the issue while telling people to ignore the elephant in the room.--MahonriDeleteAnonymousDecember 27, 2012 at 10:19 PMMahonri,I feel like you are purposely misreading James's point here. I understand that you believe the two of you have completely different ideas about gender, but you may find that you agree on a lot of things. If you read carefully, you will notice that he isn't addressing larger issues on purpose. And he certainly didn't say Anne was defensive (just because he mentioned defensiveness in his response to her). I found that he was making a more general statement about how people respond to controversies rather than a pointed remark to Anne. In fact, I see that he is merely clarifying.The purpose, as I see it, is to discuss people's experiences with gender differences in the church. I can see that has happened throughout the fifty-five comments listed here. I think it's good we're talking about curriculum and weird activities like designing a temple dress. I also think it's good we're saying we need more men in Primary and that the scout rule of no one-to-one contact is something to consider. But, again, the point of this post, as I see it, is not to talk about inequality (as he points out upfront) but quality. How can we make sure people have good experiences as men and women and girls and boys and teenagers in the church? I think it helps us redirect responsibility to each of us. We are the ones responsible for how we treat those around us. And if we want our daughters to feel empowered in church, then we need to step up and make that difference.DeleteReplyLee AnnDecember 21, 2012 at 9:45 PMInteresting that you see less inter-generational accord among the men than the women. Watching my teenagers' experience, it seems that the young men have quite a few more institutional opportunities to interact with the men, than the YW do with the RS. The men have opening exercises together with the YM, do service projects together, fill home teaching assignments. When I was RS pres., it was like pulling teeth to get the RS and the YW pointed in the same direction (though we did do the optional program of having opening exercises together once a month). We received a lot of encouragement to facilitate transition into RS, but we had to do it outside of existing programs.Of course, that's youth, and you're talking about adults. Funny that it's the men who are later divided into quorums, while the women from 18-108 meet together. From my perspective, the boys have more opportunities for real, recognized, meaningful service than the girls. The boys are at church early and late every week, getting the sacrament ready, shoveling the snow, ushering, collecting fast offerings, taking the sacrament to shut-ins. My daughter pretty much just has to show up. Which leads to a lot more over-the-pulpit commendations for the boys--they're the ones doing most of the work! Interesting discussion, and commentsReplyDeleteLobbieDecember 22, 2012 at 12:10 AMSo in reading all the post and comments, I'm still not precisely sure what kind of response you were looking for-although my intellectual ego was quite puffed for being asked. So here's some thoughts:Yay for talking nicely. That is a good thing, though I don't think you'll be able to eliminate completely the intense feelings because for some of us (hey, I'm being all sneaky and mean ME), it was those intense feelings in spite of trying to be objective that got us down this path of questioning in the first place. Perhaps I shall share the specific details of my own experiences eventually. Then you could have the privilege of saying you were the one who got me blogging again, hehehehe.OK, now for this list. I like numbered thoughts.1) I think we need more men in primary and nursery. Theories on why they aren't as often involved with children:1-Traditionally this is viewed as "woman's work" in both church and American culture. In some culture-pockets this is viewed as "lesser" work, though I have never experienced that in the church itself, but that's not to say some members don't subtly carry that belief whether they are male or female because it sometimes comes from the outside culture. 2-We have hammered into our church culture the belief that women are somehow inherently better at dealing with children simply by virtue of them being a woman, whether they've had kids or not. While I would argue women are infinitely better at birthing children than men are, I have known many men who are stellar with kids (my own hubby included.) I believe if we were more open to letting men develop their nurturing attributes, we would be surprised by how many stellar primary teachers we would have who would actually enjoy it too! I can't tell you how many women in primary have told me they crave adult interaction after being with children all week only to be back with children on Sunday. I view this as a negative result of our over-emphasis of rigid gender characteristics. Many of those characteristics are encouraged or omitted from youth-age onward (YM aren't given lessons on nurturing their families because that's what "women do" and YW aren't given lessons on providing for their families.)3-Your point about sexual/physical abuse is well-founded. I have several friends and family who have suffered abuse at the hands of men in the church and it's a real concern. However, the children themselves are not likely to think they should be afraid, so it's more about creating an environment of accountability and safety for everyone. I also wonder if men are taught to have relationships/work with children, if it will help because they will not view themselves as so separate and removed and can engage emotionally in their community where most American culture does not often give them an opportunity to do so.ReplyDeleteRepliesJames GoldbergDecember 22, 2012 at 8:33 AMPrimary has been my favorite callings. I'm all for more men there. As far as children's fears: I know a woman whose rule for her young kids is that they can only go play at friends' houses when the mom is home. Mom--dad at home doesn't count. She probably has her own good reasons for making a rule like that and I certainly am not going to argue with her right to do what she thinks she needs to to protect her children. But surely an eight-year-old who grows up with a rule like that internalizes a little of the implicit fear. I don't think kids are that oblivious. DeleteLobbieDecember 22, 2012 at 9:18 AMBecause of the history of some of my extended family, I would have to say that unless I knew the family well, I might have the same rule when my wee one is a little older. However, there are some families I know personally where I may actually be more comfortable with the dad there than the mom, but it's a family-by-family thing for me. I think it depends on a child's age as to when they start contextualizing gender/generational separation and how it's explained. Sadly, the church doesn't help much with its modesty rhetoric that implies men cannot control themselves and are just that much more likely to do something inappropriate. But that will get me on a whole other tangent..... DeleteReplyLobbieDecember 22, 2012 at 12:12 AMThis comment has been removed by the author.ReplyDeleteLobbieDecember 22, 2012 at 12:14 AM2) I gotta disagree with you on this one my friend. As my mission trainer said "There are 3 lessons in YW/Singles Ward RS: Preparing to be a wife and mother, honoring the Priesthood, and chastity." I remember shocking my Sunday School teacher when I was 12 or 13 when I told him I wanted a career and didn't have being a mom as my foremost goal(but if that happened, then that was cool too.)While I thankfully had awesome YW leaders who were more concerned with helping me develop a relationship with God and the Savoir than teaching me the divine purpose of deodorant (yes, there is a hygiene lesson), I was even then bothered by how MANY lessons seemed to be about being a (stay-at-home) wife and mother and no other options were really discussed. Education was important, but that was just the thing you did before you became a SAHM. Now being a wife and mom is totally important, but COMPLETELY dependent on another person. Even then this disturbed me that my male counterparts were preparing for things they could do independently (priesthood duties, prepare for the temple, serve a mission), and I was supposed to prepare for something that potentially may not happen. I guess in that sense women do have a lot more open possibilities, but they can make some feel like they did something wrong.3) I don't have too many strong opinions on the volunteering thing. I have seen a variety of responses in different wards, but that seems very dependent on the local church or surrounding culture. 4) The last one is suuuuper complicated because you're looking at how men socialize in groups vs. women, which is a huge thing that has been studied in many different cultures all over the world. It would probably best be learned about from a cultural anthropology or a sociological point of view with some evolutionary biology thrown in there for good measure. But since you have me instead, I'll just say that men and women can be separately but equally dysfunctional. I do think women are more attuned to the emotions of others, and it may be due to biology, spitritualogy, social conditioning or (likely) a combo of all, but just being attuned doesn't always mean that ability will be used for good. Now the church encourages people to be good to each other, so often this ability IS used for good, but I don't think the male groups have any kind of monopoly on treating their own gender with rudeness or disdain. Women are often just better at hiding it (not always though.) That said, neither hubby or I have experienced anything that bad apart from some "meh" Priesthood/RS groups in the wards we've been in. I know he has actually enjoyed getting to know some of the older men and one of the men who blessed our baby was a HP he had become friends with just from church interaction. I used a lot of acronyms. Also, I'll leave with one thought that this has made me think about. On a FB discussion, someone brought up the point that in marriage we're commanded to become one. Perhaps instead of thinking this means we have to get into some really extreme gender-roles/jobs to become the absolute most masculine/feminine we can, it's actually about learning the characteristics of the other and trying to incorporate that into what we already have so we can increase our capacity. I hope that makes sense. It's a wee late. Looking forward to continuing this conversation, though I have noticed there is a severe lack of calling anyone to repentance on your blog for such a heated topic. Perhaps someone will do me the honors, but I'd prefer an up-front, dramatic denouncement. The passive-aggressive ones are just not fun.ReplyDeleteRepliesJames GoldbergDecember 22, 2012 at 8:20 AMI hereby call you to repentance. For, um...using acronyms! Don't you know that every time you use capital letters needlessly, an angel gains a pound? Or something! Dramatic like that!I would like to point out, though, that when I call someone to repentance, it's not a denouncement. People I've denounced I always encourage to sin...DeleteJames GoldbergDecember 22, 2012 at 8:28 AMRe: YW/YM curriculum. It will be interesting to see what the new curriculum is like. I don't know much about it, but it was on the second cover of the Ensign and people in my ward seem pretty psyched. So we'll have to watch what changes.DeleteReplyAnonymousDecember 22, 2012 at 2:50 PMHere's a couple of side by side look at two of the lessons in the new young men/ young women books. http://www.dovesandserpents.org/wp/2012/10/manuals/ and http://www.dovesandserpents.org/wp/2012/10/another-look-ymyw-manuals/ ReplyDeleteBri GuyDecember 27, 2012 at 12:19 PMThis comment has been removed by the author.ReplyDeleteBri GuyDecember 27, 2012 at 12:28 PMThank you for the post. I appreciate that you focus on things that really are more local in nature. I think we would do a lot more good to look at our own local church experiences, speak with local leaders, and try to come up with local solutions, which is what I think you are encouraging here. Holding the church up to a worldly standard of political-correctness is the wrong way. Like others have said, look where there is dissatisfaction, look at where there are hurt feelings, watch for disrespect, and try to address things locally. I think many of the people reading and commenting on this post are probably in presidencies, ward councils, or at least live down the street from people who are and can really get some change into the works by looking locally instead of trying to find "the fix" for all the church's perceived equality problems.ReplyDeleteTrishaFebruary 4, 2013 at 9:43 AMI know I'm late coming into this discussion, but I felt like sharing my experiences and ideas about these issues. I love the idea of just talking about differences rather than inequality. Because even in this world with equal rights for genders, cultures, etc., we all experience the world differently because of those factors. My experience in the church and world is fundamentally different from my brothers' though we grew up in the same household and have extremely similar lives.Growing up in Utah with a 95%+ LDS high school, I felt like I had an altogether positive experience in the church. There are things that I would like to see improvement on, but I felt like I had many positive relationships with adult men in my ward. I also felt that, in general, my relationships with young men in my ward were positive. I never experienced comments similar to those above. However, I have witnessed comments of other nature that disappointed me. Those comments have to do with the intra-gender relationships of men in the ward. For some reason, perhaps the socioeconomic situation of my ward, there was a huge emphasis on what men wore to church. When I was about 14, the young men in my Sunday School class essentially mocked my teacher who was wearing a colored shirt instead of a white one. I was really disappointed because the only thing that brother was expected to do that day was teach Sunday School. He wasn't officiating any Priesthood ordinances. But even if he was, would the color of his shirt have made a significant difference? Around the same time, our YM President made it very clear that he expected every young man to be dressed in a suit every Sunday. While the vast majority of our ward had the means to do this, some did not. And at an age where young men are growing so quickly, I almost think it's unreasonable to purchase a suit. It set an expectation that, though I didn't witness it, likely lead to some disillusionment for some young men.On another note, one of my greatest disappointments in my education as a young woman was lack of knowledge about the Priesthood. The young men are taught from an early age about keys and procedures and having a respect for the Priesthood. Why? Because they are given the Priesthood and begin using at a very early age. Unfortunately, I missed out on that. I got that education to a degree, but not nearly as much of it as I would've liked to.Another thing that I would like to see is mixed gender leadership for mixed gender organizations. Sunday School and Primary are mixed gender, so why not the presidencies? I think we'd be able to have a much more balanced and effective experience if we started seeing more this.As far as the structure of young adult lives for men and women, it's tough. I'm considering missionary service and marriage and it's difficult to navigate all the counsel that has been given and the expectations of family and leadership. However, I hope for one thing to come of the age change. I hope that young men feel less pressured to go at a specific time. I hope that they are given more room for reflection to see if this time is right for them to go or if they need another year at college. There should be less expectation on men to serve as soon as they fit the requirement, and more expectation to serve a mission in general. As a young single adult at BYU, I actually feel pretty good about the things we've been discussing. I have female gospel doctrine teachers. I have female Sunday School and Missionary leadership. I feel like a lot of the problems that exist in family wards that have been discussed, aren't nearly as much of a problem for my ward. This gives me hope. I believe that as time goes on, these changes will take place because my peers will begin taking leadership positions in wards all over the place. It will be a slow process, but I believe that it's happening as we speak--and it's wonderful.ReplyDeleteRIAZ UDDINFebruary 22, 2013 at 6:24 AMDo you know why Male Primary Teachers are not Interested to do Job in Primary School? I Think Low Amount of Salary. Are you agree with me? ReplyDeleteAdd commentLoad more...
Mormon Lit Blitz: 2013
Eleven finalists compete for the highest honor in Mormon Microliterature: May 14-25. |
Publishing Magazines For An 'Ambidextrous' Generation
Share Tweet E-mail Comments Print By editor Listen The latest publication of the literary journal The American Reader is its anniversary edition.
Magazine publishers continue to uneasily navigate print and digital worlds. Harper's Magazine publisher John MacArthur shared his perspective on the importance of online pay walls in the magazine's October issue. All Things Considered speaks with MacArthur, MediaFinder's Trish Hagood and the co-founder of year-old literary magazine The American Reader about the changing publishing industry. You can hear all of these conversations at the audio link above. One year ago, The American Reader jumped headfirst into the literary publishing world. The monthly print and digital magazine features new fiction, poetry, criticism and essays. What were they thinking? Co-founder and editor-in-chief Uzoamaka Maduka, who's in her mid-20s, says she heard that question a lot. But she has an answer: Maduka and co-founder Jac Mullen wanted to "bring the literary conversation back to the center of American cultural discourse," especially among millennials. "The generation which I'm a part of, when it comes to technology, we're ambidextrous," she tells Arun Rath, host of All Things Considered. "We like to have choices between print or digital. And I don't think it really profits anyone to be led by the nose by that sort of hysterical reaction." That "hysteria" she's referring to is the notion that print is dead and that readers' attention spans have shrunk, so content needs to be "shorter, more accessible — 'accessible' being a buzzword for dumbing things down." "We felt that the opposite was the case. Among our generation, we felt people were hungry for more sophisticated writing, for deeper engagement with the topics of the day," Maduka says. She says "bad advice" over the past 10 years has had publishers shying away from that. "And the readers have really suffered. And I think it's up to discerning editors right now to bring us back to where we need to be," she says. But editing is one thing, and making money is another. The American Reader has avoided an online pay wall in order to attract new readers. "For us — because we're just starting out — we're more inclined to give more of our writing basically away for free because we want people to get to know what we're doing," she says. Maduka says digital and print content are really extensions of one another, rather than different "versions" of the same thing. There is a lot of labor that goes behind every piece, though, and giving it for free online "devalues" the writing in a way, she says. The magazine is paying its writers, but "it's a constant sort of shadow on the work that we're doing — if it continues to be devalued at this rate, it will become harder and harder to do so." Still, she is optimistic: "People are going back to traditional forms. People are asking for the editor again. People are asking for smart writing again. And smart writing, smart editors require money." One year in, The American Reader has new partnerships, including with Barnes & Noble and Salon.com, and about 1,100 print subscribers — with high hopes of a larger circulation in the coming years.Copyright 2014 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/. Transcript ARUN RATH, HOST: This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR West. I'm Arun Rath. Coming up, the chilling effect of NSA surveillance, stories that never get written. But first... (SOUNDBITE OF ADVERTISEMENT) UNIDENTIFIED MAN #1: When you read Time each week, you know more. You understand. RATH: It wasn't that long ago that bookstores were everywhere you could find shops. And in front, the mighty magazine stand. (SOUNDBITE OF ADVERTISEMENTS) UNIDENTIFIED MAN #2: Pick up this week's People. UNIDENTIFIED MAN #3: Games, the magazine you... UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #1: New Family Circle is... UNIDENTIFIED MAN #4: Welcome to Psychology Today. UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #2: This week's Woman's Day. UNIDENTIFIED MAN #5: Reach for a Star, reach... UNIDENTIFIED MAN #6: TV Guide magazine... UNIDENTIFIED MAN #7: Do you know there's a magazine devoted entirely to cats? RATH: But you know the story. The Internet came and everything changed. Bookstores folded. The vast majority of magazines put their content up online because the conventional wisdom at the time said that you had to plant your flag on the Web. Build it, and they will come. And they did come in huge numbers. The problem was they didn't pay anything. That may be changing, and that's our cover story today: Who pays for your contact? (SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) RATH: John R. MacArthur is the president and publisher of Harper's, a magazine that's been around since 1850. And since the beginning of the Internet age, Harper's has protected its writing behind a pay wall, despite MacArthur's many colleagues considering him a bit of a dinosaur. In a publisher's letter last month in Harper's, MacArthur lambasted the industry for trashing what he calls the compact between writer and reader. JOHN R. MACARTHUR: My quarrel is with the publishers and the advertising agencies who have turned writing into what they unfortunately refer to as content. And there's been a systematic degradation of the craft of writing, not just of payment for writing. And I am trying to restore a certain amount of respect for writers and writing. RATH: Why did everyone just start putting up content - sorry to use that word - for free? MACARTHUR: Well, the publishers, most of whom are ex-ad salesmen or currently ad salesmen, are mainly interested in what they call total audience and cost per thousand. And they imagined that since the Web reached potentially billions of English-reading consumers, their audience was, in theory, almost infinite. And the cost per thousand for reaching those people, if they gave away the information, gave away the articles, would drop to levels that would excite ad agencies. And, of course, the opposite has occurred. The ad agencies got excited about social media and about Google, which they think, at least at this point, are much more efficient ways to advertise. RATH: Why at the time didn't Harper's jump on that free-content bandwagon? MACARTHUR: I realized when I first got into this that if you didn't have committed readers willing to pay for writing, you didn't really have much of a future. You didn't have really much of a magazine. That made a better subscriber for advertisers, and it made a better reader for writers, in my opinion. So I said to the young people on my staff who were clamoring for free, free, free, let's be like everybody else, I said, forget it. I said, if we can't convince our readers that we're producing something of value that they should pay for, we're finished. RATH: If the readers are getting to the material, though, you know, whether it's through a digital portal or behind a pay wall or not, what does it matter? MACARTHUR: Well, they won't get to - the material will stop being produced. If nobody can make a living writing, which is where we're getting, writing or writers, as we know them, are going to disappear. I cite one example in Harper's. We published a series of photographs from Iran that were taken by an anonymous photographer who risked their liberty and cost us a lot of money - I think all told $25,000 - to send them to Iran to take pictures that the government doesn't want us to see. Now, why shouldn't that person be compensated for what they did, for the risk they take? Why shouldn't we be compensated for it? Why should it be free? And Google, they just want to aggregate it, as they say, and relay it across their network and then sell advertising adjacent to it. They don't want to compensate the photographer or us. So we take all the risk, we do all the work, and we don't get any of the benefit. That's not a healthy equation. And it's going to wind up deeply, deeply - it's already damaged American democracy in my opinion. RATH: Is Harper's making money? MACARTHUR: Well, we don't know how this year's going to turn out. Last year, we lost a little, but I'm cautiously optimistic. Now, that being said, it's a crisis right now. The odds against us are heavy when you take into consideration the immense propaganda now that has been pushed forward on the free-content model. And unless people come to their senses - and I see them coming to their senses now at The New York Times - and they never lost their senses at the Financial Times or the Wall Street Journal - unless people come to their senses and realize that the advertising's not coming back and we have to charge the subscribers more or the newsstand buyers more, we are going to be out of business. And it's going to be catastrophic for American culture. RATH: John R. MacArthur, president and publisher of Harper's Magazine. Now, Harper's has it easier than most. They've got 160 years of heritage to attract paying customers. The other companies that make pay walls work, like the Wall Street Journal or Financial Times, also tend to have established reputations and existing readers. Uzoamaka Maduka does not. She and her partner started the American Reader just one year ago. Didn't people say, what are you thinking trying to launch a magazine right now? UZOAMAKA MADUKA: Yes. And especially said, what are you thinking trying to launch a print magazine right now? RATH: The American Reader is a monthly publication of new fiction, poetry and criticism. For Maduka, setting up a pay wall just isn't feasible. MADUKA: Because we're just starting out, we are more inclined to give more of our writing basically away for free because we want people to get to know what we're doing. But certainly, I think for those people who've been around longer, I do agree with Mr. MacArthur. I think it is a very disastrous road to go down. RATH: Maduka is in her mid-20s. She's right in the middle of the millennial generation that publishers think had abandoned the printed page. Well, think again. MADUKA: You know, it's been my experience that our generation, when it comes to technology, we're ambidextrous. We like to have choices between print or digital. And I don't think it really profits anyone to be led by the nose by that sort of hysterical reaction. RATH: What's the kind of hysteria like? What's the kind of sky is falling things that you're hearing? MADUKA: Well, the idea that print is dead, that, you know, no one is going to be reading in that form anymore, that because people have short - diminished attention spans, first of all, the fact that that would be the case. Secondly, that this would mean that all the content, as people call it, would have to be shorter, more accessible - accessible being a buzzword for dumbing things down. We felt that the opposite was the case. Among our generation, we felt people were hungry for more sophisticated writing, for deeper engagement with the topics of the day. These are things that people have been shying away from in the past 10 years because of the bad advice that they have been getting because of the sort of histrionic attitudes that have been going on throughout the industry. And the readers have really suffered. And I think it's up to discerning editors right now to bring us back to where we need to be. RATH: Uzoamaka Maduka says The American Reader has just over 1,100 paid subscribers for the print edition of the magazine. That might have market a failure 20 years ago. But today, with cheaper printing runs and fewer middlemen, smaller print runs are feasible. (SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) RATH: So what does the future hold? Can your local paper, for instance, start protecting its reporting behind a pay wall as well? According to Trish Hagood of the database MediaFinder that won't work. TRISH HAGOOD: Well, because news is ubiquitous. For something to be special - I mean, the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, like Money - the data has to be proprietary or essential. If you have a unique product, then you can maintain a pay wall. If you have a product that anybody can get anywhere, like the news, you're in trouble. RATH: Hagood says fewer magazines started up this year but fewer folded as well. In the meantime, more pay walls are going up. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR. |
More » Kindness in Marriage and Divorce
November 17, 2011 by TMO · Leave a Comment By Karin Friedemann, TMO
Live with them in kindness; even if you dislike them, perhaps you dislike something in which God has placed much good. (Quran 4:19)
There is almost nothing more damaging to the human psyche than trying hard to please someone who is trying hard to tolerate you. Whether it’s a child-parent relationship or a wife-husband relationship, conditional love creates a type of emotional violence which involves spiritual enslavement of the weaker party. The essential cause is dehumanization of the Other; when one person doesn’t view the other person as fully human. In the classic set-up, the weaker party is striving to be what the other person needs him or her to be, while the stronger party judges whether the other is good enough to merit approval. There are countless personality and relationship disorders that get passed down in this way from generation to generation; it’s like farming pain.
While laying down the financial groundwork for a marriage is important, once this is behind us, it becomes important to explore the hopes and dreams of each party involved, as well as their past. If a new spouse shows no interest in looking at the other’s old school yearbooks or handwritten poetry from days gone by, how can a couple face the future as one? Each party will come to the table with their own set of baggage. Some of this baggage contains real treasures. If the couple cannot discuss the past and explore why the other feels and reacts as they do, how will they ever relate? In both arranged marriages and love marriages, there often comes a time when one or both partners may come to dislike one another. It is probably impossible to truly get to know anyone on earth without disliking something about them. A friendship or marriage must be sustained on the good will and trust about the intentions of the other party. There may be psychological or neurological reasons for their behavior. But as long as one party is actively disliking the other, there is no way for them to connect on a level of mutual respect and understanding. It is tragic how many cases of personal insecurity could get in the way of truly appreciating another human being. One man married a certain woman in order to please his mother. She gave him a son, whom he truly loved, but he did not love his wife – perhaps because she was not beautiful enough, or perhaps just because he had not chosen her himself. But he had agreed to the marriage! So he is walking around feeling sorry for himself because he has no feelings for this woman who gave him a son, even though she had never showed him any unpleasantness nor gave him any reason for complaint. Even if they had not ever exchanged any words of tenderness by this point, which must have been at least two years, that woman already proved her dedication to the marriage by willingly and voluntarily subjecting herself to physical pain in order to provide offspring to his family! What could cause a man to willingly and voluntarily subject himself to physical pain for someone else? Only the most heart-felt, deepest emotion. Even if those emotions were not available at the time, she went through the motions. She made the sacrifice for him. Is that not enough for her husband to feel deep gratitude and friendship? How would he feel towards a man who took a bullet for him? Would he not feel obligated to love and protect him for life? The ability to find beauty in someone else should not be a huge task. We could easily find something to love about a stranger. Perhaps the angle between her eyes and her nose is very interesting. Perhaps he has a cute way of mispronouncing words. One thing I have come to realize is that the attributes that other people find most frustrating or annoying about me are my best qualities. It is harmful to me to constantly be around people who devalue or demean what I have to offer the world. A divorce is only permissible twice: after that, the parties should either hold together on equitable terms, or separate with kindness. (Quran 2:229)
A lot of psychological research is being done these days on the effect of personality disorders on the spouse. A person who truly cannot see any good in a spouse who has done him or her no wrong, who blames excessively, who doesn’t live in the present but lives somewhere else, probably has some kind of personality disorder. Trying to merge lives with someone who has only their own interest in mind is not only frustrating but can be debilitating, especially in old age. If you don’t like your spouse, and you cannot address your own personal issues that keep you from being able to like someone who is trying hard to be your life partner, it may be most merciful to let them go so they can find someone else. You should never stay married to someone out of pity or a sense of unwanted obligation, because this deprives your spouse of their humanity. It is easier for a woman to raise children alone than to raise children while buffering extreme emotional negativity in her home. That point being made, if you leave a woman with children, financial support must be provided. While the state mandated child support amount is a must, it is more merciful to calculate the actual costs associated with raising a child. If you cannot imagine paying your ex-wife a check each week for her efforts, it is truly in your best interest to find something about her to like.
Campaigners have voiced concerns over a growing number of non-Muslims using Islamic law to resolve legal disputes in Britain despite controversy over the role of Shari’ah law.
A spokesman for the Muslim Arbitration Tribunal (MAT) said that there had been a 15% rise in the number of non-Muslims using Shari’ah arbitrations in commercial cases this year. Last year, more than 20 non-Muslims chose to arbitrate cases at the network of tribunals, which operate in London, Birmingham, Bradford, Manchester, Nuneaton and Luton. “We are offering a cheap and effective service for Muslim and non-Muslims,” said MAT spokesperson Fareed Chedie.
“95% of the people who come to us for arbitration do not feel they need legal representation.” Chedie said that tribunals deal mainly with civil and commercial cases, including mosque disputes referred by the Charity Commission. But the tribunals have also continued to hear cases in the field of family law and divorce, Chedie said.
“We are increasingly dealing with reconciliation and mediation in marriage,” said Chedie. “Many of these are cases where women have petitioned because they have a difficult marriage and want some guidance and direction. If they then want to terminate the marriage then we can help with that.”
The increase in marriage and divorce cases comes as one law firm has begun offering advice on civil Scots law and Shari’ah law, making it the first in Britain to offer both civil and Islamic law as part of one service.
Glasgow law firm Hamilton Burns says that it is responding to a greater demand from Muslim clients who want advice on Shari’ah law alongside civil advice under Scots law. It has teamed up with Shaykh Amer Jamil, a Muslim scholar who specialises in Islamic family law.
“We hope that by incorporating Shari’ah family jurisprudence against a background of domestic Scottish legislation, we can provide our clients with as much relevant information as possible,” said Niall Mickel, a solicitor advocate and managing partner at Hamilton Burns. But some groups have criticised the move by the Scottish firm, arguing that the recognition of Shari’ah law decisions in Britain is regressive and harmful to women.
“We have a petition signed by more than 22,000 people saying that all religious tribunals should be prevented from operating within or outside the legal system,” said Maryam Namazie, a spokeswoman for the One Law for All Campaign, which campaigns against Shari’ah law in Britain. “I have spoken to women who are losing custody of their children in the Shari’ah councils – under Shari’ah law custody of a child goes to the husband after a certain age, irrespective of the welfare of the child.
There are cases of domestic violence where women have dropped criminal charges and the Shari’ah councils have sent the husbands on anger-management courses. That is just not how we deal with domestic violence in this country,” Namazie said. Many Muslim lawyers have challenged criticism of Shari’ah law in Britain as “islamophobic”, arguing that there is a distinction between Shari’ah councils – which largely operate outside the law – and arbitration tribunals, which are subject to the Arbitration Act passed by parliament.
“The media get this out of context and hyped up,” said Dr Saba Al-Makhtar, from the Arab Lawyers Association. “Under English law there is room to settle disputes on any ground that it is acceptable to the parties involved, provided it doesn’t conflict with English law .… it is an extremely good idea.
Critics deny that the campaign against Shari’ah law is targeted specifically against Muslims, however. “Our campaign is focusing on Shari’ah but we are against all religious tribunals including the Jewish beth din,” said Namazie. “Human rights are non-negotiable and religious tribunals puts religion before people’s rights and their freedoms. Law based on any religion – whether the Bible, Torah or the Quran – is completely antithetical to rights woman have in this day and age. Many of the rights women have now result in the UK is the result of a hard fight to wrestle control out of church hands.” |
Carroll, Dudley Dewitt
by Sterling Stoudemire, 1979
28 July 1885–30 Nov. 1971
Dudley Dewitt Carroll, college professor and dean, was born in the Mizpah community of Stokes County, the son of Dewitt Valentine Carroll and Sallie Ann Lewis. He was educated at the Mountain View Institute, Guilford College (A.B., 1907), Haverford College (A.B., 1908), and Columbia University (A.M., 1916).
Dean Carroll, as he was known to almost everyone, was vitally involved in academic and public affairs for a span of almost half a century. He began his career as principal of Mountain View Institute (1908–9); then he was instructor in social sciences at Guilford College (1909–11), dean of Guilford College (1912–14), and assistant professor of economics at Hunter College (1915–18).
Carroll taught in the summer session at The University of North Carolina in 1917, and one of his students, Lenoir Chambers (later editor of the Greensboro Daily News and the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot and Pulitzer Prize winner), brought him to the attention of President Edward Kidder Graham. Graham offered Carroll a position, but because he was under contract to Hunter College for the following year, Carroll could not accept until the fall of 1918; then he was appointed professor of economics. The following year he became dean of the School of Commerce (later Business Administration), a position he held for thirty-one years. During his service in Chapel Hill, Carroll was at one time or another a member of almost every faculty committee, as well as the Chancellor's Advisory Committee. He was a member of Phi Beta Kappa and in 1955 was named Kenan Professor of Economics and elected Chairman of the faculty, the highest honor his colleagues could bestow upon him. The trustees named the main building of the School of Business Administration Carroll Hall. Few persons have exerted stronger influence upon the faculty and students of The University of North Carolina than Carroll over his long tenure. His approach was always to obtain results and to reduce to a minimum or avoid totally the red tape too often found in academic communities.
In 1938, when it was obvious that developments in Europe would lead to the greatest holocaust the world had known, Carroll, Dorothy Thompson, and Rabbi Stephen S. Wise advocated and got an open door policy for oppressed minorities who wished to seek refuge in the United States. When the Selective Service System was instituted, Carroll was named chairman of the Orange County Draft Board, even though he was a devout Quaker.
After the repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution, when Orange County voted wet, Carroll was named chairman of the Alcoholic Beverage Control Board of Orange County. It was the general feeling that this board was perhaps the best managed in the state and that Carroll, who never had a drink of whiskey, saw to it that alcohol would not be abused and that the profits from the system would be channeled without delay to the public schools.
Carroll's public service did not end with the control of alcohol and the management of conscription, both distasteful to his Quaker principles. An important figure in business affairs of Chapel Hill and the county, he was director of the Orange County Building and Loan Association from 1920 to 1950 and chairman of its board of directors from 1937 to 1950. He was active in the Society of Friends and was instrumental in developing a flourishing society in Chapel Hill; he acquired property for the society and directed the construction of the meeting house. He was a trustee of Guilford College from 1918 to 1946 and chairman of its board from 1933 to 1946. He retired from the university faculty in 1960.
Carroll, on 27 June 1918, married Eleanore Dixon Elliott. They had four children: Dudley DeWitt, Jr., Marshall Elliott, Eleanor Hillyard Carroll Roberts, and Donald Cary. A memorial service for Carroll was held in the Friends Meeting House, 11 Dec. 1971.
Dudley Dewitt Caroll. Image courtesy of UNC Libraries. Available from (accessed June 12, 2013).
Subjects: BiographyEducatorsUNC PressAuthors: Stoudemire, SterlingOrigin - location: Guilford CollegeUniversity of North Carolina at Chapel HillStokes CountyFrom: Dictionary of North Carolina Biography, University of North Carolina Press. |
Are mobile phones safe for children to use?
Children's nervous systems are still developing, and there are fears that radiation could penetrate deeper into their brains
By David Reid
Reporter, BBC Click
While many experts say there is no link between mobile phone use and cancer in adults there is still widespread uncertainty about the risks children face. Research into health and mobile phones has been beset with difficulties. Mobiles have been in use for a relatively short time and yet cancers can take decades to develop. However most scientists seem to agree about one thing - that if mobiles are hazardous, children may be more vulnerable than the rest of us to their possible ill-effects. "If the penetration of the electromagnetic waves goes for four centimetres into the brain, four centimetres into the adult brain is just the temporal lobe," says Dr Annie Sasco of the Institute of Public Health, Epidemiology and Development in Bordeaux. "There are not too many important functions in the temporal lobe - but in a child the more central brain structures are going to be exposed. "In addition kids have a skull which is thinner, less protective, they have a higher content of water in the brain, so there are many reasons that they absorb more of the same radiation," she adds. 'Possibly carcinogenic'European research just published in America's Journal of the National Cancer Institute has concluded children who use mobile phones are at no greater risk of developing brain cancer than those who don't. But critics say the research is too short-term and the data it used is out of date. About five billion people now use mobile phones across the world
The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) has recently reclassified mobile phones. The UN agency has fallen short of saying that mobile phones are definitely hazardous, instead they have re-classified mobile phones as possibly carcinogenic. The re-classification was the result of a meeting held at the headquarters in Lyon of the world's leading scientists in the field. They reviewed experimental data from animal research and also the longest running research project into the use of mobile phones by brain cancer sufferers. "The strongest evidence really comes from the studies of cancer in humans and there was some evidence that there may be an association between the use of mobile cell-phones and certain types of brain cancer," says Dr Kurt Straif of the IARC. The GSMA, the industry body representing the interests of the mobile industry followed up the IARC's findings by saying: "The IARC classification suggests that a hazard is possible but not likely." And while the GSMA acknowledged that some mobile phone users may be concerned it said that present safety standards remain valid, and that there was need for further research. Safety adviceSome scientists believe the IARC's classification of a "possible" link between cancer and mobile phone use is not strong enough. We think we face a new emerging health risk and that we shouldn't wait 30 to 40 years to see the results
Elizabeth RuffinengoWomen in Europe for a Common Future
"I think mobile phones are a risk for brain tumours and we have already quite substantial epidemiological evidence showing that people who use cell-phones for more than 10 years have about a doubling in their risk of glioma, which is a brain tumour, quite often fatal," says Dr Annie Sasco. Certainly for parents, giving children mobiles helps to keep tabs on them when they are out and about in a world full of hazards. But if the hazard is the phone itself, then we would be wise to take precautions. "From the review of the exposure determinants we can clearly say that it is mostly the use of cell-phones for voice calls, particularly when the phone is close to the brain or to the ear - so you could for example recommend a hands-free kit for voice calls," said Dr Straif. "There is also some evidence that exposure in children may be up to two-fold higher because of the different biology and other factors that influence exposure, therefore it may be prudent to restrict it further to kids and take these pragmatic measures more seriously," he added. Text rather than talk, hands-free sets, use a land-line when there is one to hand - the sort of advice that some would like to see governments and health authorities passing on to consumers in the light of the IARC's new classification for mobile phones. Elizabeth Ruffinengo, from Women in Europe for a Common Future, believes that as mobile phones represent a possible carcinogen there should be some safety recommendations. "We have heard scientists saying that children are more at risk when it comes to exposure to mobile phones, so what we want is recommendations following the new IARC's classifications and so far we have not seen any. We think we face a new emerging health risk and that we shouldn't wait 30 to 40 years to see the results." So after 20 or so years with mobiles, many experts say there is nothing to worry about, the UN says there might be a problem, and others believe there definitely is an issue. It is up to the individual to decide whether to dismiss the warnings or take minor precautions to ensure those thought most vulnerable do not blame us if the most dire predictions do turn out to be correct. |
s) were rather less self-assured and condescending in the presence of large numbers of Japanese soldiers. In fact, they proved to be rather fawning and conciliatory; though, much to the chagrin of the Vietnamese, the Japanese soldiers were quite content to let the French continue to run things on their behalf.When World War II came to an inglorious end in the pacific, astonishingly, life returned to a more or less European-style normality in Saigon. French colonial administrators continued to order cocktails in the sweltering Saigon evenings and Vietnamese waiters continued to serve them, albeit with a growing sense of dissatisfaction.Eventually, this state of affairs proved to be altogether too much for the people of Saigon who, after a decade of increasingly bloody confrontations, finally persuaded the French that, after all, the real fun was to be found in Africa. Unfortunately, all this merely resulted in the less-than-satisfactory division of the country into two separate political entities in 1954; the imposition of increasingly corrupt and despotic puppet rulers in the newly constituted South Vietnam and, finally, following another long and bloody war3, the Communist Vietnamese in the North.The French were finally defeated at Dienbienphu, despite America's best efforts to make sure that the contest was stacked heavily in favour of the old colonials. Vietnam was partitioned pending a referendum on reunification in 1956, which was not allowed to take place, of course, because the new colonial stake-holders in the South were in the throes of anti-Communist hysteria at home (where there was also a booming domestic market for cheap Vietnamese rubber).The rottenness at the heart of Saigon's successive puppet regimes inexorably drew an ever-greater American involvement in the affairs of the Vietnamese semi-state, as Southeast Asia spiralled towards yet another tragedy. Inevitably, this involvement degenerated into a bloody quagmire, a war perhaps unlike any other, in which Vietnamese fought Vietnamese and America fought itself - on college campuses and in the halls of power - a ruthless, sadomasochistic orgy of wanton destruction, perfidious corruption and obscene cruelty.As Vietnam's war with America dragged on, Saigon gradually became home away from home for more and more American servicemen and the city increasingly took on the appearance of a decadent and decaying capital under siege. This state of affairs finally came to an end in 1975 with the unconditional surrender of South Vietnam and the ignominious evacuation by helicopter of the last Americans from the rooftop of their Saigon embassy.In celebration of their victory and in recognition that 30 years of bloodshed could have been avoided if the western world had looked more favourably on the aspirations of Ho Chi Minh (the person) and the provisional government he had formed in 1945, the victorious Vietnamese from the North promptly changed the name of Saigon to Ho Chi Minh City.The PersonAll men are created equal. They are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights. Among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.If that has a familiar ring, perhaps it is because the Vietnamese Declaration of Independence, pronounced by Ho Chi Minh and the provisional government of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam on 2 September, 1945, is based on a better-known revolutionary document, the American Declaration of Independence.It may be a surprise for some to learn that Ho Chi Minh, considered by them to be an icon of perfidious rebellion and a lackey of international Communism, could bring himself to utter such a profound homage to America. They might be even more surprised to learn that Ho had actually lived in America for a short time and worked for American military intelligence during World War II, spying on the Japanese army in Vietnam. For, although Ho was a Communist, he was first and foremost a Vietnamese nationalist, whose dream was to see his homeland free and prosperous. One of the greatest of the many tragic ironies of the 20th Century is that Ho, America's Communist enemy, could just as easily have been Ho, America's Vietnamese friend, and the bloodshed and devastation that marked three decades of war need never have happened.Before there was a Ho Chi Minh City, before there was a Ho Chi Minh person, there was a Nguyen That Thanh. There was a Nguyen That Thanh from 1890 � 1969, even though for part of that time he was better known as Ho Chi Minh, or even as 'Uncle Ho'. In fact he was known by a lot of different names, we have to draw the line somewhere.Ho Chi Minh left Vietnam at the age of 21, working his passage aboard a French liner. He travelled a lot, living for a time in England4, America, France, Russia and China, and visiting other places, such as Thailand and Hong Kong.World War I had the same effect on Ho that it had on many young men: It made him sick of the way things were and desperate to find an alternative to the madness that had destroyed the best and brightest of a generation5. Now living in France, Ho became a Communist and founding member of the French Communist Party.Ho moved on to Moscow and then to China where, from 1925 to 1927, he taught the gospel of Marx according to Lenin. Gradually moving back towards his homeland, Ho founded an East Asian revolutionary movement in Indo-China, which uniquely blended the flavours of European Socialist doctrine with a dash of classical Asian Confucianism. Returning to Vietnam just in time for the arrival of World War II, Ho founded the Vietnamese independence movement, the Viet Minh, which harassed the Japanese in a guerilla war and generally supported the efforts of the Allies. At the end of the war in 1945, Ho Chi Minh declared Vietnamese independence. At the insistence of Western powers he grudgingly agreed to work alongside the French colonial administration which, even at this late stage, had not yet lost its taste for cocktails and sultry Saigon sunsets. A new relationship with the same old colonial masters was bound to fail though...and it did. Sadly, the same countries which had fought to drive the Japanese colonial adventurers back to Japan now joined forces to maintain the European love affair with exotic living and cheap rubber. The people with the most money to lend the French at this time were, of course, the Americans.Uncle HoNguyen That Thanh left Vietnam to wander the world as a young man. Along the way he learned a lot about the way the world works and he learned to write.Ho drew a lesson from the First World War that perhaps many Western statesmen missed. At the 1919 Versailles Peace Conference he tried to tell American President Woodrow Wilson about how much better life could be if Vietnam regained its independence. It was a message that nobody wanted to hear just then.Ho went to China and learned about fighting on a monumental scale.Ho fled from China back to Europe when Chiang Kai-shek claimed Guangzhou in 1927.Ho was arrested in Hong Kong by the British for being a Communist.Ho travelled from place to place, harassed and pursued wherever his views chafed local authority.Ho returned to Russia and taught at the Lenin Institute.Ho returned to China and advised the Chinese communist army.Ho returned to Vietnam with his new friends, Vo Nguyen Giap and Pham Van Dong, and his new name, Ho Chi Minh (He Who Enlightens) and fought back-to-back wars which nearly destroyed his ancient homeland, traumatised the richest nation on earth and bought Vietnamese independence at a terrible, unimaginable price.Ho Chi Min died on 2 September, 1969, at the age of 79. Contrary to his wish to have his ashes buried in urns on three hilltops after his death, his body was embalmed and displayed in a granite mausoleum in a Communist fashion first used following the death of Lenin.'Not only is cremation good from the point of view of hygiene, but it also saves farmland', he had said.Was Uncle Ho a hero? Let history be the judge.1 The epithets 'Pearl of the ___' or 'Paris of the ___' have been used to describe various parts of the world where Europeans have made themselves the comfortable, if unwelcome, guests of people who lacked the means to (or were too polite to) make them go away.2 The deaths of Christian missionaries provided the excuse.3 This time involving the Americans, who had financed and supported the French, and who maintained until the bitter end that they were 'defending' the southern Vietnamese against the Communist Vietnamese.4 Ho Chi Minh's life in London.5 This was in the old days, before the people who run things caught on that wars are much better when only the poor and disenfranchised are killing each other, and the 'best and brightest' are safe at home.Discuss this EntryPeople have been talking about this Guide Entry. Here are the most recent Conversations:Sending Letters to Ho Chi Minh City
That dash of Confucianism...
(Last Posting: Feb 27, 2006)
Add your Opinion!There are tens of thousands of h2g2 Guide Entries, written by our Researchers. If you want to be able to add your own opinions to the Guide, simply become a member as an h2g2 Researcher. Tell me More!Entry DataEntry ID: A7564052 (Edited)Written and Researched by:John the gardener says, "Free Tibet!"Edited by:Speller - If I can help somebody...Date: 23 |
Yosemite fire threatens giant sequoia trees
A fire burns near Yosemite National Park, Calif.
8/25/13 By Brian Skoloff and Tracie Cone
California firefighters battling the blaze near Yosemite National Park are trying to save two groves of giant sequoia trees.
GROVELAND, Calif. — Firefighters braced Sunday for strong winds that could push a raging wildfire further into the northwest edge of Yosemite National Park, threatening thousands of rural homes.The massive blaze was also burning in the vicinity of two groves of giant sequoia trees that are unique the region, prompting park employees to take extra precautions of clearing brush and setting sprinklers.The towering trees, which grow only on the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada and are among the largest and oldest living things on earth, can resist fire. However, dry conditions and heavy brush are forcing park officials to take extra precautions in the Tuolumne and Merced groves. About three dozen of the trees are affected.The Rim Fire has burned 203 square miles — an area about the size of Chicago — and was just 7 percent contained late Saturday night. It started in a remote canyon of the Stanislaus National Forest Aug. 17 and grew rapidly under dry conditions. More than 2,600 firefighters and a half dozen aircraft were battling the blaze.The fire has grown so large and is burning dry timber and brush with such ferocity that it has created its own weather pattern, making it difficult to predict which direction it will move. Steep, inaccessible terrain was hampering firefighter's effort to surround it.Related: Hot, dry summer pushes wildfire spending past $1BWith 30 to 40 mph winds expected to push the fire further north into the park Sunday, fire crews were focused on attacking its northern edge to keep flames from the communities of Tuolumne City, Twain Harte and Long Barne."The wind could push it further up north and northeast into Yosemite and closer to those communities and that is a big concern for us," said Daniel Berlant, a spokesman for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.The U.S. Forest Service says about 4,500 structures are threatened. Berlant said 23 structures were destroyed, though officials have not determined whether they were homes or rural outbuildings.Jessica Sanderson said one of her relatives gained access to the family's property in Groveland, just 26 miles from the park's entrance, on Saturday and was able to confirm their vacation cabin had burned to the ground.The family saw firefighters defending the cabin on a TV news report just a day earlier."It's just mindblowing the way the fire swept through and destroyed it so quickly," said Sanderson, who's been monitoring the fire from her home near Tampa Bay, Florida. "The only thing left standing is our barbeque pit."The tourist mecca of Yosemite Valley, the part of the park known around the world for such sights as the Half Dome and El Capitan rock formations and waterfalls, remained open, clear of smoke and free from ot |
John Lennox, Innkeeper at Lunenburg, Nova Scotia
The Lennox Inn, Lunenburg, Nova Scotia
Today's Innkeeper, Robert Cram, and the tavern room
The house across the street, where John Lennox actually lived.... The Lennox Inn, a bed and breakfast, is located at 69 Fox Street in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia. Lunenburg is a pretty town on the coast, famous for being the berth of the “Bluenose” schooner, found on the Canadian dime. The United Nations has designated the entire town of Lunenburg as a World Heritage Site. The Lennox Inn is the oldest continuously operating inn in Canada, built in 1791 by John Lennox, a Scots immigrant. There is some evidence that it was built by Andreas Jung, and sold to Mr. Lennox for a tavern. This must have caused some concern, for the Lutheran church is still located directly across the street.
John Lennox was born about 1765 in Scotland, and he died on 1 Oct. 1817 in Lunenburg. He married Ann Margaret, the daughter of German immigrants, on 19 Mar. 1797 at St. John’s Anglican Church. Their first child, Ann Barbara, was born several years previous to the wedding. His will left property to his wife, Anna Margaret (Schupp), son William and daughters Anna Barbara, Isabella, Sarah and Lucy, omitting son Louis.
In one of the four large upstairs guest rooms, the name of John Lennox was uncovered on a pine panel. This pencil autograph is still visible above the fireplace. Robert Cram also found a receipt for wine and rum, complete with John Lennox’s name, between the floor joists of the attic during the restoration. The first floor of the Inn is set up for daily breakfast, but the original tavern can be imagined since the wooden bar is still installed in one corner. It still has the wooden cage over the bar, just like one I once saw at the Wayside Inn in Sudbury, Massachusetts.
Several years ago we planned a family vacation to Nova Scotia, and I was excited to book two nights at the Lennox Inn. We were the only occupants, so at night it was spooky to hear the creaking and groaning of the old building, and we half expected to see the ghost of our ancestor, John Lennox. Innkeeper Cram assured me that John Lennox probably never lived there in the Inn, because his personal residence was across the street in a smaller house.
The Lennox lineage:
Gen. 1. John Lennox b. about 1765 in Scotland, d. 1 Oct. 1817 in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia; married on 19 Mar 1797 at St. John’s Anglican Church in Lunenburg to Ann Margareta Schupp, daughter of Johan Justinas Schupp and Anna Margareta Finck, b. 18 Sep 1773 in Lunenburg.
Children: 1. Ann Barbara, b. 30 Dec. 1793 in Lunenburg; married about 24 Aug. 1813 in Lunenburg to Thomas Humphreville Chamberlain.
2. William Lennox, b. 8 Jun 1799 in Lunenburg, d. 15 Apr. 1822 in Lunenburg
3. Louis Lennox, (not mentioned in his father’s will) b. 1 Jun. 1801 in Lunenburg, d. 14 Jul 1901 in Lunenburg
4. Isabella Lennox, b. 7 Oct 1803 in Lunenburg; married on 25 May 1830 at the Zion Lutheran Church, Lunenburg to Caspar Arenberg
5. Sarah Elizabeth Lennox, b. 16 Feb. 1805 in Lunenburg; married to Bremner Frederick Bollman.
6. Lucy Catherine Lennox, b. 14 Mar 1807 in Lunenburg, d. 13 Dec. 1869 in Lunenburg; married to George Oxner.
Gen. 2. Bremner Frederick Bollman and Sarah Elizabeth Lennox. He was the son of Dr. Johann Daniel Bollman and Jane Bremner. Dr. Bollman was a surgeon from Hammersleben, Saxony, Germany, who arrived in the New World as a Hessian mercenary serving under Baron Riedesel’s Regiment. He settled in Lunenburg, a mostly German town. Jane Bremner was the daughter of Scots immigrants Robert and Margaret (Stewart) Bremner. Bremener Frederick Bollman was born on 25 Feb. 1802 and died on 15 Dec 1838 in Lunenburg. Sarah remarried to Martin Ernst.
Children: 1. Jane Sarah Bollman, b. 9 May 1833 in Lunenburg; married on 26 Jan. 1850 at St. James Anglican Church in Mahone Bay, Nova Scotia to George James Lowe.
3. James Daniel Bollman, b. 11 Jun 1836 in Lunenburg Gen. 3. Ann Margaret Bollman and Caleb Rand Bill. An excerpt was found in the Diary of Adolphus Gaetz of Lunenburg: June 1858 Monday 7th- "Married at 12 o'clock noon, at the house of Mrs. Trider, under whose care the Bride had been brought up, Mr. C. R. Bill, formerly at teacher of vocal music in this place, to Miss Annie Bolman, daughter of the late Bremner Bolman. At 2 o'clock the married couple started on their way to New Brunswick, they were escorted as far as Mahone Bay by several young men and maidens who had been at the wedding. The above were married by the father of the Groom, Rev'd I. E. Bill, baptist preacher, at St. John, New Brunswick, who came here for the purpose." Caleb Bill was a music professor, and he and his bride lived at St. John’s, New Brunswick; Houlton, Maine; Watertown, Massachusetts and Salem, Massachusetts. They had nine children, all musically talented. Professor Bill and his wife, Annie, were my great, great grandparents.
Bollman,
New Brunswick,
Nova Scotia, |
New Rule: Spelling Bee Will Now Include Definitions Test Share Tweet E-mail Comments Print By editor Winning the National Spelling Bee, like Snigdha Nandipati, 14, of San Diego, did in 2012, will get harder.
As if it weren't hard enough to spell "cymotrichous," now the National Spelling Bee will expect contestants to know that it means "having wavy hair." "This is a significant change in the Scripps National Spelling Bee, but also a natural one," Paige Kimble, director of the bee, said in a press release. "It represents a deepening of the Bee's commitment to its purpose: to help students improve their spelling, increase their vocabularies, learn concepts and develop correct English usage that will help them all their lives." The change will take effect this year during the National Spelling Bee, scheduled for May 28-30. The spelling bee explains: "This year, a speller's qualification for the semifinals and championship finals will be based on a cumulative score that incorporates onstage spelling, computer-based spelling questions and computer-based vocabulary questions. "Vocabulary evaluation will count for 50 percent of a speller's overall score. The score determines which spellers advance to the semifinals (Thursday, May 30 at 2:00 p.m. on ESPN2) and the championship finals (Thursday, May 30 at 8:00 p.m. on ESPN). "Because the computer-based tests of spelling and vocabulary are not part of the onstage portion of the Bee, they will not be broadcast on ESPN or any of its affiliates." The spelling bee has also published a list of sample questions. Here is one: What is the purpose of defibrillation? a) removing fibrous matter from vegetablesb) removing bodily hairc) restoring the rhythm of the heartd) reducing a fever using medication The answer is C. Here is another: Something described as indocile is: a) markedly inane or foolishb) not able to be physically documentedc) not easily instructed or controlledd) perseveringly active The answer is C.Copyright 2014 NPR. To see more, visit View the discussion thread. |
« Knocker 10
Lower Piedmont Park walk (#28) »
Bella Vista hill
Bella Vista hill is part of the big Pleistocene alluvial fan that sprawls across the middle of Oakland, as shown by the “Qpaf” code on the geologic map.
The “Qmt” code is the marine terrace I’ve discussed before. The fan is dissected by modern streams into several lobes, which take their position in today’s cityscape as distinct topographic hills as seen in Google Maps topography:
Bella Vista hill lies in the polygon defined by Park Boulevard, East 34th Street, MacArthur Boulevard, 14th Avenue, East 18th Street and 8th Avenue. All of those street run in valleys or saddles, except that East 18th is on a break in slope. The numbers refer to the following photos, taken from across or in the valley of 14th Avenue Creek.
The hill is low on its bayward side, as shown here from E. 22nd Street.
It has a corrugated surface, such that 9th, 10th and 12th Avenues run on high ground and 8th, 11th and 13th run up declivities. Higher up on the hill, the ground is steeper and the allee of palms marking the former Francis Smith estate is the defining feature of the hill.
The top of the hill has two eminences. The more dramatic one is on the south where Highland Hospital frowns down upon the stream valley.
Hospitals, like schools, were traditionally sited to take advantage of fresh air. Highland Hospital took its very name from this practice. Here’s a view of the whole hospital complex on the southern boss of the hill.
The northern knob is higher, exceeding 200 feet elevation. At its high end, 10th Avenue becomes Bella Vista Avenue and curves across this peak. Old palm trees from the Smith estate mark it from a distance.
Borax Smith knew what he was doing when he picked this hilltop for his home base. The hills on the fan to the south are a bit higher, but the views to every other direction were unimpaired from that spot. If you want to walk the crest of this hill, go up 10th or 12th Avenue and jog across to 13th and take it all the way up to the I-580 overcrossing. |
Tom Petty, Doris Day and the Art of Being Dumb
By David Bowman | 05/24/99 12:00am Good pop music is usually gloriously dumb. “I love you, yeah-yeah-yeah” (the Beatles). “Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle” (Bob Dylan). But Tom Petty’s new single, “Room at the Top,” is dumb musically, not lyrically, a rare occurrence. “I have a room at the top of the world tonight,” he begins quietly over subdued guitar strumming. He tells us that in this room people can drink and forget the things that went wrong with their lives. Then Mr. Petty repeats that he’s in a room at the top of the world tonight, insisting, “And I ain’t coming down.”
After that, the song gets ridiculously gaudy. Mr. Petty goes on and on about this room at the top of the world while a bass starts thumping loud (bum-bum-bum ), and an electric guitar blares single chords like some old Queen song. Then Mike Campbell, one of Mr. Petty’s longstanding sidemen in the Heartbreakers, plays a quick, sloppy guitar solo imitating (or mocking) a Richard Thompson Celtic Strat solo.
The music is both dumb and jubilant because of the wholehearted pathos in Mr. Petty’s lyrics. Once you realize how many regrets you’re carrying around, Mr. Petty’s insistence that he “ain’t comin’ down” is touching. Most of us are smart enough to know that no one, save maybe Donald Trump, stays in the room at the top of the world for even the duration of a single night. Bless Mr. Petty for being dumb enough to think that he’ll be up there forever.
Most of the songs on Echo (Warner Brothers), his latest album, concern the triumphs of losers. But listening, you feel neither equal nor superior to his characters, like the chick in trouble with the law who calls her mother-in-law for dough (“Swingin’”). Or even Mr. Petty himself, who goes “down hard like Billy the Kid” but gets up again. What you do feel is pleased that at least a handful of good-natured dumb clucks realize “you need rhino skin to pretend you’re not hurt by this world” (“Rhino Skin”). Mr. Petty rips through 14 songs about losers without betraying bitterness, and only slips on the 15th song, “One More Day, One More Night.” In that one he whines, “No one taught me how to be on my own.” It’s the only moment when Mr. Petty is a crybaby. On the rest of Echo , he is a man humbled by bad luck, bad decisions and bad karma, and still dumb, or brave, enough to stay in the ring.
It’s not necessarily an insult to call Tom Petty a dumb blond. He was born in Gainesville, Fla., in 1952 and considers himself a Southerner, once singing, “There’s a Southern accent where I come from … the Yankees call it dumb.” He followed his inspiration to become a rock star after seeing Elvis Presley filming Follow That Dream in 1961, and since 1976 has recorded pretty good shopping-mall rock with his pretty good band the Heartbreakers, writing pretty good songs like “American Girl” and “Don’t Do Me Like That.” But Mr. Petty has reached a plateau with his new, very good album. He has the dumb courage to realize what sophisticated singers would never be caught admitting: “The mistakes I’ve made will follow me into the grave” (“This One’s for Me”).
To now compare Tom Petty to Doris Day will seem a stretch. What do they have in common other then blond hair? Dumbness.
Doris Day was born Doris Mary Anne Kappelhoff in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1924. Her music was dumb in the 40′s and 50′s, and sounds even dumber in 1999. But to call Ms. Day a dumb blonde is problematic; the phrase implies she was sexually available and naïve, and Ms. Day was (and is) anything but. Columbia is about to release a 48-track celebration of her music, Golden Girl (The Columbia Recordings 1944-1966) , and even a cursory listen will reveal Ms. Day as the most virginal female singer ever recorded. Well, not “virginal”–innocent. Basically, Ms. Day served the national duty of being the Pied Piper, leading post-World War II maidens into marriage while revealing not a clue about what to expect on or in or under the marriage bed.
All these songs are dumb–but dumb in a good way, like Mr. Petty’s Echo . Before I tell you why, hear Ms. Day’s first big hit–”Sentimental Journey,” released in January 1945–in historical terms. This lovely song is not about marriage; it’s about taking a sentimental journey back home. Now what does a 19-year-old girl (Ms. Day’s age when she sang it) know about sentimentality? The song is just a pretty piece of blankness unless you consider the month it came out. The Allies were winning in Europe and had Tojo on the run in the Pacific. Hope was in the air. American boys would soon be taking a “sentimental journey” home.
There’s no way for us “postmoderns” to imagine how sincere the now-dopey-sounding naïveté of those days was. Certainly when the grunts returned from Vietnam no one sang about a “sentimental journey.” And in the 30-odd years since the end of Oliver Stone’s war, naïveté and innocence have ceased to exist in America’s cosmology. Only dumbness remains. Not even children are innocent–i.e., school shootings, Internet porn, “homosexual” brainwashing by Teletubbies (or so says Jerry Falwell). Listening to dumb Doris Day becomes a necessary postmodern delight. On Golden Girl , Ms. Day sings “Ain’t We Got Fun?,” a great dumb song with a corny choir in the background. The answer back in 1953 is Yes! The answer in 1999 is a resounding No.
The one Day song that everyone knows is “Que Sera, Sera (Whatever Will Be, Will Be).” You know how it goes. The narrator remembers asking Mom, “What will I be when I grow up?” Rich? Poor? A Jedi knight? And Mom answers, “The future’s not ours to see. Que sera, sera …”
Now, a mom can give that kind of la- di-da spin to her kid, but it’s just a cop-out, because as another dumb guy once sang, the future’s uncertain and the end is always near. Not that you can bear Doris Day any ill will for one false song. She was pre-Tet offensive, pre-Watergate, pre-AIDS, pre-trench coat mafia. Her music gives us the archeological experience of innocence, while Tom Petty sits in his room at the top of the world and forgives us for all the dumb things that went wrong in our lives. It’s dumb, but it feels good. |
Diary: John Hersey’s ‘Hiroshima’ — Are People Who Live Through Disasters ‘Survivors’ or ‘Victims’? Filed under: Classics,Diary,Nonfiction — 1minutebookreviewswordpresscom @ 12:35 pm Tags: Book Reviews, Books, Disasters, Hiroshima, Japan, Journalism, Military, Reading, World War II
Perhaps no book has had more uncredited influence on the best accounts of 9/11 than Hiroshima. In this great book John Hersey tells the true stories of six people who escaped death when the atomic bomb fell on their city. One line deals with the confusion that arose, right after the blast, about what to call people who lived through the events of August 6, 1945: “In referring to those who went through the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, the Japanese tended to shy away from the term ‘survivors,’ because in its focus on being alive it might suggest some slight to the sacred dead.”
I fear the word “survivor” is used so often and for so many things that it may end up becoming watered down one on hand and a word of denial on the other. It’s hard to find the truth in a word that’s at once used to describe those who emerged alive from 9/11 or an abusive childhood and those who have been voted off during the tribal council of one of CBS’ popular reality shows.
When people tell in an overly aggressive fashion that they are survivors, I wonder if they have denied to themselves that they were victimized and, in so doing, have given themselves no time for grief, for healing, for recapitulation of the event, forgiveness, and perhaps atonement. We tend in these days to look down upon victims and so we run from the realities of having been one a little sooner than we may be ready.
Hard choice, victim/survivor. Survivor seems more apt, for it’s true, but only after we have come to terms with what it was that we survived and no longer use the word as an excuse to act differently as though being a survivor grants us special priviledges other than the continuing freedom to remain (or become) whole. |
After nearly two hundred years in business, the oldest bespoke shoemaker in Europe is modernizing and expanding its product line—and still making footwear of exceptional quality.
Kimberly Bradley
March 14, 2013 12:41 p.m. ET
BUILT TO LAST | Markus Scheer, the seventh generation of shoemakers in his family, in front of the original storefront
Photography by Andrew Phelps SCHEER SHOES ARE A VIENNESE LEGACY. The Habsburg dynasty named the shoemaker an imperial court purveyor in 1878, and the building at Bräunerstrasse 4 hasn't changed much since then. Nor has the quality of the footwear, which today costs upward of $6,700 a pair and ranges from classic wing tips and tall-shaft boots to peppy derbies and glossy whole-cuts. As the oldest bespoke shoemaker in Europe—in business for nearly 200 years—Rudolf & Söhne Scheer has fashioned footwear for Austrian emperors and Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany. The family business has also shod countless cultural luminaries, many of whose feet, in the form of wooden lasts, are stored in the workshop—though it's tradition to never name living customers, says Markus Scheer, a trained orthopedist and the head of the company. Markus, who at 40 represents the seventh generation of the family business, still hand-carves all the lasts himself. Photos: The Oldest Bespoke Shoemaker |
Japan Says Recession Has Probably Started
Kosaku Narioka
Updated Dec. 7, 2012 6:09 a.m. ET
TOKYO—An index of data reflecting the current state of Japan's economy fell in October for the seventh straight month, indicating a high possibility that the country has already fallen into a recession. The coincident composite index, whose 11 indicators include retail sales and employment data, declined 0.9 point from the previous month to 90.6, the Cabinet Office said Friday. That led the government to downgrade its assessment of the indicator to "worsening"—indicating, in Cabinet Office talk, a high possibility that a recession is under way—from last month's "signaling a turning point toward the downside." It's the first "worsening" assessment since April 2009. "The trend is taking hold and there is a greater possibility the economy is in recession, judging from the coincident index," a Cabinet Office official told reporters. Enlarge Image
A crane at an industrial port in Tokyo; Japan's export-led economy is suffering from a slowdown in China and recession in Europe.
Reuters Japan's export-led economy has been hit by Europe's recession, a slowdown in the Chinese economy and continuing tension between Tokyo and Beijing over a territorial dispute. The Cabinet Office assessment largely reinforces the view among private economists that the economy entered a recessionary phase earlier this year, although it will take more than a year for government-appointed economists to officially define the peak and the bottom of the latest economic cycle. Many economists say the recession will likely be shallow and short, with the economy potentially starting to pick up by the end of the year. Japan's economic output was down a real annualized 3.5% in the July-September quarter, the sharpest drop since the aftermath of the March 2011 earthquake. Economists expect contraction again in the current quarter but a possible return to the positive in the first quarter of the 2013, supported by a recovery in overseas economies. The country's industrial production posted a surprise gain in October, the first rise in four months, helped by improvement in the electronics sector. The data also showed companies expect November output to be down 0.1% from October, but then rebound with a 7.5% rise in December. The Cabinet Office official said the production data would be closely monitored to see how it actually fares. In another more-encouraging sign looking ahead, October's index of leading indicators, reflecting the future state of the economy, was up by 0.9 point from September. "There have been signs of the economy bottoming out," Yoshiki Shinke, |
Autobiography by Benjamin Franklin
Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography is a four-part memoir of his life, originally written for his son but in later sections intended for publication.
Franklin's Autobiography was not published in his lifetime. In 1790 a French translation of the first part was published in Paris, with English versions following a few years later. Franklin's grandson, William Temple Franklin, published a fuller authorized edition in 1817 and 1818, but frequently altered the text, and did not include the final part. In 1868, John Bigelow published the first complete English edition from the original manuscript; his editions were long recognized as standard. More recent scholarly editions re-examine and document revisions made in Franklin's original manuscript; I do not know of free online copies of these editions, but the manuscript itself can be examined online.
Numerous popular and school editions have also been published. Some include additional annotations and writings. Some editions abridge the work for length or propriety, and do not always note this.
Online Editions and Versions
Bigelow editions
These are probably the most faithful printed texts freely available online at present.
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, Edited From His Manuscript, With Notes and an Introduction (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott and Co.; London: Trubner and Co., 1868), by Benjamin Franklin, ed. by John Bigelow (multiple formats at archive.org). The first of Bigelow's editions.
The Life of Benjamin Franklin, Written by Himself, Now First Edited From Original Manuscripts and From His Printed Correspondence and Other Writings (fifth edition, revised and enriched, 3 volumes; Philadelphia and London: J. B. Lippincott and Co., c1916), by Benjamin Franklin, ed. by John Bigelow (page images at HathiTrust). The fifth edition, which includes various supplementary material, was the last edition I am aware of that was prepared by Bigelow himself.
Editions based on Bigelow's
To the best of my knowledge, these editions include all of Bigelow's text (from one or another of his editions), and may also include additional material.
The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin (from the Collier edition of 1909), by Benjamin Franklin, ed. by Charles William Eliot HTML at Virginia HTML at eserver.org
Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin (images of the autograph manuscript at the Huntington Digital Library), by Benjamin Franklin (page images at huntington.org). Difficult to read online, but the image enlargement tool helps. |
Anthimus of Jerusalem
His Beatitude, Anthimus of Jerusalem was the Patriarch of the Church of Jerusalem from 1788 to 1808.
Patr. Anthimus was born in Antiocheia during the year 1717. Little is known of his life. As Bishop Anthimos of Skythoupoleios, he participated with Archbishops Jeremiah and Jacob Lyda Strip in the consecration of Procopius as Bishop of Caesarea on December 12, 1775. When Bp. Procopius was installed as the Patriarch of Jerusalem on November 2, 1787, he was of advanced age and soon began planning the timely election of his successor. As his successor, he proposed Bp. Anthimus. After Bp. Anthimus accepted the proposal, Patr. Procopius resigned as patriarch on October 24, 1788. Bp. Anthimus was then elected and installed as Patriarch of Jerusalem a month later.
During his patriarchate, Patr. Anthimus continued the efforts of Patr. Procopius to improve the state of the patriarchate and combat Latin propaganda. He also defended Orthodox relations with the Ottoman Empire against charges by Adamántios Koraïs, a Greek humanist scholar, of the willingness of the Orthodox hierarchy to identify its interests with those of the Ottoman authorities, to which Patr. Anthimus argued in 1798 that the Ottoman Empire was part of the divine dispensation granted by God to protect Orthodoxy from the taint of Roman Catholicism and of Western secularism and irreligion.[1] Patr. Anthimus reposed on October 11, 1808 in Constantinople. |
First Ecumenical Council
+[[Image:Nicea.jpg|right|thumb|250px|Icon depicting the First Council of Nicea]]
The '''First Ecumenical Council''' was held in [[Nicea]] in A.D. 325 and set a pattern for all later [[Ecumenical Councils]]. It primarily addressed the issue of [[Arianism]] (producing the original version of the [[Nicene Creed]]) and set a universal pattern for calculating the date of [[Pascha]]—the [[Paschalion]]. It is also referred to as the '''First Council of Nicea'''. The '''First Ecumenical Council''' was held in [[Nicea]] in A.D. 325 and set a pattern for all later [[Ecumenical Councils]]. It primarily addressed the issue of [[Arianism]] (producing the original version of the [[Nicene Creed]]) and set a universal pattern for calculating the date of [[Pascha]]—the [[Paschalion]]. It is also referred to as the '''First Council of Nicea'''.
The council was summoned in the year 325 by the Emperor St. [[Constantine the Great]], who desired unity in the Roman Empire and thus called the Church's [[bishop]]s together to settle the raging of the [[heresy]] of [[Arianism]], the doctrine that [[Jesus Christ]] was a created being and therefore not truly the one God. The council was summoned in the year 325 by the Emperor St. [[Constantine the Great]], who desired unity in the Roman Empire and thus called the Church's [[bishop]]s together to settle the raging of the [[heresy]] of [[Arianism]], the doctrine that [[Jesus Christ]] was a created being and therefore not truly the one God.
−The [[synod]] had originally been intended to be held at Ancyra, but its location was moved by Constantine to Nicea (much closer to the imperial headquarters in [[Nicomedia]]) so that he might be able to participate more easily. The First Council of Nicea assembled according to tradition on [[May 20]] of 325. Earlier in the year, there had already been a council at Antioch, presided over by St. [[Hosius of Cordoba]], which condemned Arianism and its followers, even explicitly naming [[Eusebius of Caesarea]] (who is believed to have waffled somewhat on the question). When Constantine convened the council at Nicea, he did so primarily out of a desire to have a unified Empire rather than in an attempt to affect Church doctrine.+The [[synod]] had originally been intended to be held at Ancyra, but its location was moved by Constantine to Nicea (much closer to the imperial headquarters in [[Nicomedia]]) so that he might be able to participate more easily. The First Council of Nicea assembled according to tradition on [[May 20]] of 325. Earlier in the year, there had already been a council at Antioch, presided over by St. [[Hosius the Confessor |Hosius of Cordoba]], which condemned Arianism and its followers, even explicitly naming [[Eusebius of Caesarea]] (who is believed to have waffled somewhat on the question). When Constantine convened the council at Nicea, he did so primarily out of a desire to have a unified Empire rather than in an attempt to affect Church doctrine.
After the initial speeches by the emperor, Hosius is generally believed to have presided at the council, summoned on the scene by the emperor himself, who had retained him as theological advisor. Fr. [[Alexander Schmemann]] writes in his ''Historical Road of Eastern Orthodoxy'' that Constantine intended the synod to be "the symbol and crown" of his victory over Licinius and the reunification of the Empire (p. 76). In his opening address, St. Constantine describes disputes within the Church as "more dangerous than war and other conflicts; they bring me more grief than anything else" (ibid., p. 77). After the initial speeches by the emperor, Hosius is generally believed to have presided at the council, summoned on the scene by the emperor himself, who had retained him as theological advisor. Fr. [[Alexander Schmemann]] writes in his ''Historical Road of Eastern Orthodoxy'' that Constantine intended the synod to be "the symbol and crown" of his victory over Licinius and the reunification of the Empire (p. 76). In his opening address, St. Constantine describes disputes within the Church as "more dangerous than war and other conflicts; they bring me more grief than anything else" (ibid., p. 77).
The Palestinian creed had included the Biblical phrase "Firstborn of all creation" in its [[Christology|description of Christ]], but that phrase does not appear in the Nicene Creed, probably because, taken out of its context in the [[Apostle Paul]]'s [[Colossians|letter to the Colossians]], it could be interpreted in an Arian manner. This phrase gets replaced with the famous ''[[homoousios]]'', a philosophical term meaning that the Son of God is ''of one essence'' with the Father. |
Pavel (Stojcevic) of Serbia
Patriarch Pavle (Paul) of the Church of Serbia
His Holiness Patriarch Pavel (Stojčević) of Serbia (in Serbian: Његова светост Павле по милости Бо-ијој православни Архиепископ пећки, Митрополит београдско-карловачки и Патријарх српски) was the patriarch of the Church of Serbia until his death on November 15, 2009. His Holiness' full title is Archbishop of Peć, Metropolitan of Belgrade and Karlovac, and Patriarch of the Serbs.
2 Bishop of Raska-Prizren
3 As patriarch
Early life Pavel was born September 11, 1914, to Stefan and Ana Stojčević (Стефан и Ана Стојчевић), in the village of Kučani, in the county of Donji Miholjac, in Croatia. His baptismal name was Gojko (Гојко).
He graduated with high honors from the Fourth Male Gymnasium (high school) in Belgrade 1929. He also graduated from the seminary in Sarajevo in 1935, аnd from the Orthodox Theological Faculty in Belgrade in 1940. He did postgraduate studies at the Orthodox Theological Faculty at the University of Athens from 1955 to 1957. During his stay in Greece, he studied the New Testament and developed an expertise in liturgics, which resulted in the Patriarch becoming one of the most prolific liturgical writers in the Serbian Church. For his patient and prominent work in the field of theology, the Theological Faculty of the Serbian Orthodox Church awarded His Holiness an Honorary Doctorate of Divinity.
From 1944 to 1955, he was a monastic of Rača Monastery performing different disciplines. During the 1950/51 academic year, the then-Hierodeacon Pavel was appointed a lecturer at the Prizen Seminary, a position which he retained until his election to the Patriarchal Throne.
He was tonsured a monastic in 1948 and that same year he was ordained a hierodeacon. In 1954, he was ordained a hieromonk and raised to the rank of protosingelos. He was elevated to the rank of archimandrite in 1957 by Bishop Emilian of Slavonija. On May 29, 1957, the Holy Assembly of Bishops elected Archimandrite Pavel as Bishop of Raska-Prizen.
Bishop of Raska-Prizren
From that day to the present, he has faithfully shared in the plight of his suffering people. Bishop Pavel wrote and warned of the present exodus of Serbs from Kosovo, the attacks of the Albanians on Serbian monasteries, the rape of nuns, and terrorizing of pedestrians, the desecration of Serbian cemeteries and overall suffering of the Orthodox in Kosovo and in Metohija. In 1989, the then Bishop Pavel was personally beaten by several Albanian youths in Kosovo. The extent of his injuries required nearly three months of hospitalization. However, in the spirit of Christian forgiveness, he refused to press charges. |
Raphael Morgan
Very Rev. Raphael Morgan (born Robert Josias Morgan, 186x/187x - 19xx) was a Jamaican-American priest of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, designated as "Priest-Apostolic" (Greek: Ιεραποστολος) to America and the West Indies,[note 1][1] later the founder and superior of the Order of the Cross of Golgotha,[note 2] and thought to be the first Black Orthodox clergyman in America. He spoke broken Greek, and therefore served mostly in English. Having recently been discovered, his life has garnered great interest, but much of his life still remains shrouded in mystery. Fr. Raphael is said to have resided all over the world, including: "in Palestine, Syria, Joppa, Greece, Cyprus, Mytilene, Chios, Sicily, Crete, Egypt, Russia, Ottoman Turkey, Austria, Germany, England, France, Scandinavia, Belgium, Holland, Italy, Switzerland, Bermuda, and the United States."[2]
Period in the Church of England
He then came to England, where he joined the Church of England and was sent to Sierra Leona to the Church Missionary Society Grammar School at Freetown. He studied Greek, Latin, and other higher-level subjects. Being poor, Robert had to work to support himself, and worked as second master of a public school in Freetown. He took course in the Church Missionary Society College at Fourah Bay in Freetown, and was soon appointed a missionary teacher and lay-reader by the Episcopalian Bishop of Liberia, the Right Reverend Samuel David Ferguson.[2] Robert later said during a trip to Jamaica in 1901 that he served five years in West Africa, of which he spent three years in missionary work.[3]
After this Robert again visited England for private study, and then travelled to America to work amongst the African-American community as a lay-reader. He was accepted as a Postulant and as candidate for the Episcopalian deaconate. During the canonical period of waiting period before ordination, Robert again returned to England to study at Saint Aidan's Theological College in Birkenhead, and finally prosecuted his studies at King's College of the University of London.[2] The colleges however do not contain records of his attendance.[note 3] Period in the Episcopal Church
He returned to America, and on June 20, 1895 was ordained as deacon[note 4] by the Rt. Rev. Leighton Coleman,[4] Bishop of the Episcopalian Diocese of Delaware, and a well-known opponent of racism. Robert was appointed honorary curate in St Matthews' Church in Wilminton, Delaware, serving there from 1896 to 1897,[5] and procured a job as a teacher for a few public schools in Delaware. From 1897 he served at Charleston, West Virginia.[5]
In 1898, the deacon Robert (Rev. R.J. Morgan) was transferred to the Missionary Jurisdiction of Ashville (now in the Diocese of Western North Carolina). By 1899 he was listed as being assistant minister at St. Stephen's Chapel in Morganton, North Carolina, and St. Cyprian's Church in Lincolnton, North Carolina.[6][note 5]
In 1901-1902 Rev. R. J. Morgan made a visit to his homeland Jamaica. In October 1901 he gave an address to the Jamaica Church Missionary Union, on West Africa and mission work.[3] He also gave a lecture in Port Maria, Jamaica in October 1902, entitled "Africa - lts people, Tribes, Idolatry, Customs."[7]
Between 1900 and 1906, Robert moved around much of the Eastern seaboard. From 1902 to 1905 Deacon Morgan served at Richmond, Virginia; in 1905 at Nashville, Tennessee; and by 1906 at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania with his address care of the Church of the Crucifixion.[5] At some point during this period he joined an off-shoot of the Episcopalian Church, known as the "American Catholic Church" (ACC), a sect founded by Joseph René Vilatte.[note 6] He is listed in the records of the Episcopal Church of the USA as late as 1908, when he was suspended from ministry on the allegations of abandoning his post.
Trip to Russia
By the turn of the 20th century, Robert seriously began to question his faith, and began intensive study of Anglicanism, Catholicism, and Orthodoxy over a three year period, to discover what he felt was the true religion. He concluded that the Orthodox Church was "the pillar and ground of truth", resigned from the Episcopalian Church, and embarked on an extensive trip abroad beginning in the Russian Empire in 1904.[2]
Once there, Robert visited various |
Theodosius (Nagashima) of Japan
His Eminence the Most Reverend Metropolitan Theodosius (Nagashima) of Japan was the first Japanese man to be the ruling bishop of the Church of Japan.
He was born on April 3, 1935, in Tokyo. He was attracted to the Orthodox Church through hearing the choir singing in Nicolai-do when he passed the cathedral during his student days. In the event, as he learned more about Orthodox Christianity he was baptized and became a member of the choir, that was led by Victor A. Pokrovsky, and began attending the Tokyo seminary. He graduated from the seminary in April 1963.
He was ordained a deacon in 1964 and a priest in 1965. Continuing his education, he studied at St. Tikhon's Orthodox Theological Seminary (South Canaan, Pennsylvania) for a year before returning to Japan. Upon returning he took monastic vows in October 1969 before Archbishop Vladimir, then the ruling bishop of the Church of Japan, receiving the name of Theodosius. In November, he was raised to the dignity of archimandrite and nominated for bishop. On November 18, 1969, Archbishops John (Shahovskoy) of San Francisco (Metropolia) and |
Governor Riley Scheduled to Dedicate Walls of Jericho April 23
Governor Bob Riley is scheduled to formally dedicate the Walls of Jericho land tract at 10 a.m. on Saturday, April 23 near Hytop off Highway 79. The governor will be joined by representatives from the Forever Wild Land Trust, the Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources and The Nature Conservancy. The public is invited to attend the ceremony, which will be held at the hiking trail parking lot.
The Walls of Jericho was purchased by Forever Wild and opened to the public in 2004. Since opening, the property has become a favorite of hikers, horseback riders, bird watchers and photographers. Because it is so scenic, the site attracts tourists from surrounding states and has been featured in magazines and newspapers across the southeast.
“Alabama is blessed with beautiful natural resources from the mountains in the north to the Gulf Coast,” Governor Riley said. “By preserving lands, such as the Walls of Jericho, we ensure that future generations will be able to experience and enjoy our state’s unique natural qualities.”
The land is managed by the State Lands and Wildlife and Freshwater Fisheries Divisions of the Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources. The tract is adjacent to the Skyline Wildlife Management Area.
According to State Lands Assistant Division Director Greg Lein, the popularity of the site is at the heart of what Forever Wild is all about. “This land is forever protected for the people of Alabama to experience and enjoy,” he said.
Forever Wild land now totals 107,000 acres since the program acquired its first tract in 1994. The land is used for wildlife management areas for public hunting, nature preserves, additions to state parks and outdoor recreational areas. More than 100,000 acres of the total Forever Wild land is available for public hunting.
The Walls of Jericho tract consists of 12,510 acres in Jackson County that border the state of Tennessee. It is comprised of mountainous and wooded terrain, hosting caves, springs, rocky bluffs and portions of the headwaters of the Paint Rock River. It was named the Walls of Jericho because the area encompasses a large bowl-shaped canyon of rock.
After the dedication ceremony, the public is invited to hike the trail, which is about 2.5 miles long one way. The hike in is mostly downhill, which means the hike back up is quite strenuous. Visitors are encouraged to wear proper shoes and bring water for the outing.
To reach the Walls of Jericho, take Highway 79 north and go just past the community of Hytop. |
Hard to fish areas of the seabed may act as refuges for endangered skate
Nov 16, 2012 One of the team with a skate - showing its size. Credit: Luke Aston
(Phys.org)—Marine scientists working in the Celtic Sea have discovered a natural refuge for the critically endangered flapper skate.
Many elasmobranchs (sharks, rays and skates) are highly vulnerable to over-fishing, but a new paper in the open access journal PLOS ONE shows that small areas of the seabed that experience below-average fishing intensity can sustain greater populations of these species.
The study reveals that such refuge areas in the Celtic Sea support at least ten species of elasmobranch, including the rare blue skate (Dipturus flossada) and related flapper skate (Dipturus intermedia). Dipturus was previously considered to represent a single species (D. batis), but made the news in 2009 when a case of misidentification was revealed (BBC news: Science/Nature). Both species are now listed as critically endangered but populations of the flapper skate, which can grow up to 2.5 metres in length, are considered to be under greatest threat from extinction. European Union regulations mandate that fishermen throw back any flapper skate but its slow growth and reproduction mean that even very low levels of fishing mortality are now unsustainable for this species.
Scientists from Queen's University Belfast, Bangor University and the Irish Marine Institute carried out the study. Lead researcher Dr. Samuel Shephard suggests "the discovery of a Celtic Sea stronghold for flapper skate provides a remarkable opportunity to help save a species on the verge of extinction". Professor Michel Kaiser, Chair in Marine Conservation at Bangor University added "some have previously argued that areas of little interest to the fishing industry are not worthy of conservation, however this study clearly overturns that perception and highlights just how important some of these areas are".
Importantly, the fishing industry has reacted positively to the 'win-win' situation that areas of little commercial interest have potential as important marine reserves. Professor Dave Reid presented the information to industry leaders, and this has led to the inclusion of these areas in proposed management plans for elasmobranchs in the Irish and Celtic Seas. Eibhlín O'Sullivan, CEO of the Irish South &West Fishermen's Organisation responded "The Irish Fishing Industry has been working with the Marine Institute for the past 18 months on developing a management plan for Skates and Rays. This new research adds valuable information for the identification of potential seasonally closed areas". Professor Reid noted "this is a great model for collaboration on conservation between the fishing industry and scientists". |
Chromosomes dance and pair up on the nuclear membrane (w/ Video)
Nov 13, 2009 By Robert Sanders Enlarge
This simple model of a nucleus with only one pair of chromosomes illustrates the process of synapsis - the pairing of homologous chromosomes. In early meiosis, the chromosomes attach by their pairing centers to proteins on the nuclear envelope, which are linked to the cytoskeleton of the cell. The microtubules in the cytoskeleton facilitate movement of the patches and associated chromosomes, promoting encounters between chromosomes. Once the chromosomes come together, a protein called dynein assesses whether or not the chromosomes are homologous and, if yes, allows formation of a zipper-like synptonemal complex between the two.
(PhysOrg.com) -- Meiosis - the pairing and recombination of chromosomes, followed by segregation of half to each egg or sperm cell - is a major crossroads in all organisms reproducing sexually. Yet, how the cell precisely choreographs these chromosomal interactions is a long-standing question.
New findings by University of California, Berkeley, scientists show that the cell's cytoskeleton, which moves things around in the cell, plays a critical role, essentially reaching into the nucleus to bring chromosome pairs together in preparation for recombination and segregation.
In fact, the cytoskeleton appears to encourage the dance of the chromosomes around the nuclear membrane as they search for their partners, and help make sure they have the right partner before meiosis continues.
The new finding in the nematode worm C. elegans match related but less detailed findings in organisms ranging from wheat and fungi (yeast) to flies and mice, suggesting that the basic mechanics of sex - at least at the cellular level - arose more than a billion years ago when single- celled organisms first leaned how to mix and match their genes as a strategy for survival.
"Errors during meiosis lead to age-related human infertility, and to birth defects such as Down syndrome and Klinefelter syndrome," said Abby Dernburg, UC Berkeley associate professor of molecular and cell biology and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator. "Our work teaches us about the fundamental mechanisms of genome organization, about how cells execute processes in precise ways, monitor their own mistakes and correct or eliminate them."
Dernburg studies the first steps in meiosis; steps that, in humans, are completed in the ovaries of a female well before she is born. This involves the pairing, or synapsis, of homologous chromosomes in which the chromosome from the mother pairs with the analogous chromosome from the father. In humans, that means 46 chromosomes pair off into 23, but in the nematode, 12 chromosomes pair off into 6.
To stabilize the chromosome pairs, protein links form along the length of the homologs, like a zipper. Called the synaptonemal complex, this zipper seems necessary to allow the homologues to break and recombine, thereby exchanging a set of genes between Mom and Dad before sending the chromosomes into the world aboard egg or sperm.
"The whole goal of the cell at this developmental stage is to pair up homologous chromosomes, to reinforce that pairing through formation of the synaptonemal complex, to make crossovers between homologs, and then to separate the pairs into different daughter cells," said Dernburg, who is also a researcher at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) and a faculty affiliate of the California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences (QB3). "But the synaptonemal complex can form between non-homologous regions of the chromosomes, so pairing has to be coordinated with synapsis, and synapsis has to be regulated so it happens only between homologous chromosomes." Enlarge
The gonads of a nematode make up nearly one-third of the organism's cells, and contain eggs at various stages of development, indicated by the different colors above. The red-stained cells are in an early stage of meiosis, before the homologous chromosomes have paired up, while the cells stained green have already gone through synapsis. Each worm completes its lifecycle in just three days, producing up to 200 offspring.
To facilitate this pairing, Dernburg has shown, each of the nematode's 12 chromosomes becomes attached by one end to patches on the nuclear membrane that envelops the chromosomes. The patches form a bridge between the chromosomes and the cytoskeleton outside the nucleus. The skeleton assists the random movement of these patches, each with a chromosome attached, around the nuclear membrane, until each chromosome encounters its homolog. Once a chromosome finds its mate and pairs up, the paired homologs remain attached to each other through recombination, separating only prior to segregation.
To many biologists, it seemed likely that synaptonemal complex formation would occur spontaneously between paired chromosomes, Dernburg said. But she and her colleagues have now shown that the cell actively prevents formation of the synaptonemal complex until it has checked and made sure the paired chromosomes are really homologs.
"The punch line of our paper is that it indicates there is a check point that we weren't aware of, and which we believe is testing homology between paired chromosomes and licensing the formation of the synaptonemal complex when it is satisfied that the chromosomes are homologous pairs," she said. "It probably facilitates the separation of mispaired chromosomes and helps them find their right partner."
She also showed that a motor protein called dynein is necessary for this checkpoint mechanism.
"When you get rid of dynein, the homologs pair, though more slowly, but they don't go on to form the synapotnemal complex, suggesting that dynein overcomes an inhibitory mechanism," she said. "Mutations in nuclear envelope components that link to the cytoskeleton show that the barrier to synapsis is imposed by the connection between the chromosomes and these nuclear envelope proteins."
There are indications that the constraints on chromosome pairing involve mechanical stresses imposed by the connection between the cytoskeleton, the nuclear envelope proteins and the chromosomes, and that the pull from the nuclear envelope releases a constraint that tells the chromosomes that it is OK to synapse.
Despite obvious differences between nematodes and humans, Dernburg noted, the mechanism of synapsis control is probably very ancient.
"It is probably highly conserved that chromosomes attach to the nuclear envelope during meiosis, though they usually do it through their telomeres," she said. "At the nuclear envelope, the chromosomes attach to a force-generating mechanism, and C. elegans has probably just evolved a variant of this."
Dernburg continues to explore the protein complexes in the nuclear membrane that coordinate synapsis, and the protein zipper that connects homologs during synapsis. |
Researchers discover new way to 'rescue' treatment sensitivity of breast cancer cells
May 10, 2010 A study by researchers from the Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center at Georgetown University Medical Center (GUMC) identifies a potential new combination therapy to "rescue" treatment sensitivity to fulvestrant in estrogen receptor positive breast cancers. The findings were published on May 15, 2010 as the cover story of Molecular Cancer Therapeutics.
Fulvestrant is a common second-line therapy for women whose cancer progresses following anti-estrogen therapy. In this paper, Lombardi researchers identify a cytokine, a small protein called IFNγ, which appears to increase or even rescue sensitivity to fulvestrant.
Led by Robert Clarke, PhD, DSc, professor of oncology and physiology & biophysics at Lombardi, the research team identified a key downstream regulator of sensitivity to fulvestrant - the protein IRF1. When cells were treated with both fulvestrant and IFNγ, Clarke and colleagues saw an increase in expression of IRF1, which resulted in increased apoptosis - or programmed cell death - of the cancer cells.
The American Cancer Society estimates that in 2009, 192,000 women were diagnosed with invasive breast cancer, and approximately 70 percent of these cases were considered to be estrogen receptor-positive (ER+), meaning that estrogen and its receptor drive the disease. While a number of anti-estrogen therapies are able to successfully treat these cancers, resistance may develop, often leading to disease progression.
"This finding is significant because we and others in the field have been searching for a long time for clinically relevant ways to make anti-estrogen therapies more effective for women with ER+ breast cancer," says Rebecca Riggins, PhD, assistant professor of oncology at Lombardi and co-author of the paper.
Most of the genes and proteins regulated by the estrogen receptor are unknown, and the molecular effects of therapies such as anti-hormonal drugs are also largely unidentified, says Clarke, who also serves as interim director of GUMC's Biomedical Graduate Research Organization.
However, in this paper, the research team has identified that the induction of IRF1 expression involves regulation of well-known cell fate proteins including NF- κB and the BCL-2 family of proteins, leading to apoptotic pathways. Ultimately, Clarke and colleagues suggest that a combination of anti-estrogens and compounds that up-regulate IRF1 expression - like IFNγ - may be useful for the treatment of anti-estrogen resistant ER+ breast cancers.
Clarke was also recently awarded a major program grant by the National Cancer Institute to lead a Center for Cancer Systems Biology addressing estrogen receptor signaling in breast cancer resistance. |
Well it's official, the first beam in the Large Hadron Collider at CERN has safely made its way around the 27km tunnel at around 1030 this morning, local time. It was a historic moment, the culmination of over 20 years' work building the biggest experiment the world has seen, and one that many hope will give us a glimpse into the beginnings of
the universe and give experimental evidence to long-held theories fundamental to physics.
"It’s a fantastic moment,” said LHC project leader Lyn Evans, “we can now look forward to a new era of understanding about the origins and evolution of the universe.”
Starting up a major new particle accelarator takes much more than just flipping a switch. Thousands of individual elements have to work in harmony and timings have to be synchronized to under a billionth of a second. The second beam was fired at around 2pm local time, and is now making its way around in the opposite direction. Over the next few weeks, as the people at the LHC learn how to
drive their new toy, they will steer the two beams, finer than a human hair, into a head-on collision. It will be these collisions that will allow the research programme to begin properly.
Once colliding beams have been established, there will be a period of measurement and calibration for the LHC’s four major experiments, and new results could start to appear in about a year's time. Experiments at the LHC will allow physicists to complete a journey that started with Newton's description of gravity. Gravity acts on mass, but so far science is unable to explain the mechanism that
generates mass. Experiments at the LHC will provide the answer. LHC experiments will also try to probe the mysterious dark matter of the universe – visible matter seems to account for just 4% of what must exist, while about a quarter is believed to be dark matter. They will investigate the reason for nature's preference for matter over antimatter, and they will probe matter as it existed at the
very beginning of time.
“The LHC is a discovery machine,” said CERN Director General Robert Aymar, “its research programme has the potential to change our view of the Universe profoundly, continuing a tradition of human curiosity that’s as old as mankind itself.” |
Mathematical mysteries: twin primes
Mathematical mysteries
twin primes
Prime numbers are a rich and ancient source of mathematical mystery. It has been known for over 2000 years that there are an infinite number of them.
This issue's mathematical mystery concerns pairs of prime numbers called twin primes. A pair of prime numbers are twins if they differ by 2. If you look at a list of the first 50 primes you'll see that it contains 16 twin prime pairs:
73 79 83 89 97 101 103 107 109 113
(3,5) (5,7) (11,13) (17,19) (29,31)
(41,43) (59,61) (71,73) (101,103) (107,109)
(137,139) (149,151) (179,181) (191,193) (197,199)
(227, |
Does Congress Have the Authority to Tax Americans At Different Rates? Posted on January 2, 2013 by Gary DeMar filed under Constitution, First Amendment, Morality, Politics, Second Amendment, Taxes The 16th Amendment gave the Federal Government the authority and power to tax every citizen. Here’s the wording of the Amendment:
“The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.”
Please note that there is no provision in this amendment that Congress is given the right to unequally apply this power. In looking over all the Constitution’s amendments, I don’t see an unequal distribution of either a freedom or limitation.
Equality under the law requires that as each of us stands before the courts or the Constitution, no one should be treated in an unequal way. The law applies to every citizen equally, except, it seems, when it comes to apply the 16th Amendment.
Does the First Amendment parcel out its freedoms in percentages? Doesn’t every person have the same right to speak, write, and assemble? Rich people and poor people have the same percentage of these rights — 100 percent. The same is true of religion. In constitutional terms, all religions are to be treated equally.
The same is true of the Second Amendment. Everybody has a right to “keep and bear arms” at the same rate. Rich people and poor people have a right to purchase as many guns as they want. Because the rich can afford more guns does not mean that they have to pay more for those guns.
The quartering of troops is similarly equal in the distribution that “No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.” No one could argue that because rich people have larger houses that they should be required to open their house to soldiers.
The same is true about the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, and Eighth Amendments. Read them over and try to apply the percentage differences to them like Congress and the President do with the 16th Amendment.
The 8th Amendment might apply in the case of increased percentages in taxation because the practice could be considered to be “cruel and unusual punishment.” Liberals regard taxation at ever higher rates as punitive. High taxes are designed to punish the rich. Sen. Rand Paul notes the law of diminishing returns on raising taxes. Taxation is not about increased revenue:
“You may not get any more revenue. You may not get any more economic growth. But you can say, ‘I stuck it to the rich people.’”
A progressive income tax is “cruel and unusual punishment.”
The 14th Amendment could also apply. No State "shall . . . deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." "Equal protection." Our government is not permitted to treat people in an unequal manner. In Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), Justice John Marshall Harlan argued the following in his "Great Dissent":
"[I]n view of the Constitution, in the eye of the law, there is in this country no superior, dominant, ruling class of citizens. There is no caste here. Our Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law. The humblest is the peer of the most powerful."
The rich are considered a "class" in American politics. We speak of "class warfare" on a regular basis. Why are the rich classes treated unequally when it comes to legislative law? The taxation of income at unequal levels deprives people of liberty and property.
All we need now is some lawyer or group of lawyers to make this point in the courts. We need to have the same fortitude as those who have worked for decades to overturn capital punishment. |
Ben Chifley contested the seat of Macquarie in ten federal elections over 25 years. He lost three elections, in 1925, 1931 and 1934. He won the seat in 1928 and 1929, then won it back in 1940. He held the seat of Macquarie through the five federal elections from 1940 until his death two months after the 1951 election.
The Labor Caucus, assembled at Parliament House on 21 October 1929 to elect the members of the Cabinet of James Scullin. Neither Ben Chifley nor John Curtin (both seated at the desk) was included, but Joseph Lyons (seated left) was among the nine ministers elected.NAA: A3560, 6120
Chifley stood unsuccessfully for the seat of Macquarie, won from the Labor Party in 1922 by Country Party candidate Arthur Manning and retained by Manning at this election. The coalition government led by SM Bruce was impressively returned with 37 Nationalist and 14 Country Party seats in the House of Representatives, with 23 Labor seats and 1 Independent. In the Senate, 18 Nationalist and 4 Country Party Senators were elected. This was the first federal election where voting was compulsory, and over 90 per cent of those eligible voted.
Chifley won Macquarie from sitting member Arthur Manning at this election, but the Nationalist–Country Party coalition government held office. The House of Representatives comprised 29 Nationalists, 13 Country Party, 1 ‘Country Progressive Party’, 1 Independent and 31 Labor members. In the Senate, Labor won 7 seats, the Nationalist Party 10 and the Country Party 2.
Chifley quadrupled his majority in Macquarie when a Labor government led by James Scullin was returned in this ‘landslide’ election. Labor won 46 seats to 14 Nationalists and 10 Country Party seats in this House of Representatives election. There were also 3 ‘Independent Nationalists’ and 1 Independent.
Chifley lost his seat of Macquarie to conservative candidate John Lawson when the Scullin government fell after a split in the Labor Party. Labor held 14 seats and the ‘Lang’ Labor group won 4. The new United Australia Party, led by JA Lyons after his defection from the Labor Party, won 34 seats and there were 16 Country Party seats and 1 Independent. In the Senate, the United Australia Party won 15 seats and Labor 3. This was the first federal election contested by the Communist Party.
After failing to gain pre-selection for the 1937 election, Chifley won Macquarie back for Labor in 1940. The United Australia Party, led by Robert Menzies after the death of Joseph Lyons the previous year, narrowly retained a coalition government. The United Australia Party won only 23 seats to Labor’s 32. The Country Party won 14 seats and the ‘Lang Labor’ – Non-Communist Labor Party won 4. There was also 1 Independent in the House of Representatives. The United Australia Party and Country Party won 16 Senate seats, and Labor won 3.On 28 August 1941, Menzies was replaced as leader of the United Australia Party, and Country Party leader Arthur Fadden became Prime Minister. Fadden was unable to retain majority support in the House of Representatives and, on 7 October 1941, John Curtin became Prime Minister of Australia.
Chifley held Macquarie, winning a massive 65 per cent of the vote. The Curtin government was also returned with a convincing majority. In the House of Representatives, Labor won 49 seats, the United Australia Party 12, the Country Party 7 and the ‘Liberal Country Party’ 1, the Country National Party 1, the Liberal Country Party (Victoria) 1, the Queensland Country Party 1, with 1 Independent. The Labor Party also won all 19 Senate seats contested.On 5 July 1945 John Curtin died and, after being elected party leader, Ben Chifley became Prime Minister on 13 July 1945.
Chifley contested this election as Prime Minister, holding his seat of Macquarie and leading the party to a strong win. Labor won 43 House of Representatives seats, with 15 won by Robert Menzies’ new Liberal Party and 11 by the Country Party. The splinter Country Party groups in the States won a total of 3 seats and Lang Labor won 1. In the Senate, Labor won 16 seats and the Liberal–Country Party alliance won 3 seats.
Chifley held his seat, but lost government when the Liberal Party won 55 seats in the House of Representatives and the Country Party 19, to Labor’s 47 seats. The House of Representatives had been expanded that year from 75 seats to 121, and the Senate increased from 36 seats to 60. At this election 42 Senate seats were contested, the Coalition winning 23 and Labor 19.
In this double dissolution election, the Menzies government was returned with a reduced majority in the House of Representatives, but with control of the Senate. In the House, the Liberal Party won 52 seats to the Labor Party's 54, with the Country Party winning 17 seats. Of the 60 Senate seats, the Coalition won 32, Labor 28.Chifley again won Macquarie in this, his tenth and last federal election. |
Advocate Attributes Recovery to Strength of Therapeutic Alliance
Eve Bender
Reprints For Keris Myrick, M.S., M.B.A., several pivotal moments leading up to her recovery from serious mental illness will remain forever crystallized in her memory: her psychiatrist sitting with her on the floor during one hospitalization, a therapist agreeing to a game of “Chutes and Ladders” during a session, and the realization that she needed to be in charge of her life.
At APA’s annual meeting last month in Philadelphia, mental health advocate Keris Myrick, M.S., M.B.A., spoke to APA minority fellows about fostering recovery and resilience in their patients. David Hathcox
Today, she credits her recovery to a strong therapeutic alliance with her psychiatrist, the steadfast support of family and friends, and a busy schedule as the chief executive of Project Return Peer Support Network, a nonprofit organization in the Los Angeles area. She also jets across the country routinely to fulfill duties associated with roles as the first vice president of the National Alliance on Mental Illness and as a consultant to projects of APA’s Office of Minority and National Affairs (OMNA).
“My mind needs to be busy,” Myrick told Psychiatric News. “If I’m not analyzing some kind of problem, or if I’m not challenged, there is too much room for other things to get in.”
Myrick is nothing if not busy as she oversees nearly 100 advisors—also people in recovery from mental illness—who provide peer-support services to “consumers” in Los Angeles County. The peers assist with symptom management, provide a “warm line” for those in distress, and help them navigate the mental health system. “Although managing a high-level job seems to be the key to mental health for me,” Myrick said, “I have to be careful that my stress levels don’t get too high.”
Myrick is also a member of the selection committee of the APA/SAMHSA Minority Fellowship and offers assistance with the psychiatry component of the Recovery to Practice project, a SAMHSA-funded collaborative effort between APA and the American Association of Community Psychiatrists.
As the daughter of an Army colonel, Myrick grew up in places as far flung as Seoul, South Korea; Ft. Leavenworth, Kan.; and Bremerhaven, West Germany, and was never in one place for more than a few years. As an African American living in Europe and Asia, she didn’t fit in with her peers. When her family returned to the United States to live in a predominantly African-American community in New Jersey, Myrick explained, she also felt like an outcast. “I thought it would be a good experience because it would be one place I wouldn’t stick out, but being an African American, there are expectations about how you will talk and look, and I didn’t meet any of those expectations,” she noted. “My peers made fun of me because I was different from them, and it was very difficult.”
Myrick said her alienation from her peers became more pronounced as she began experiencing early signs of what would years later be diagnosed as schizoaffective disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder.
She recalled a trip to the grocery store in her early 20s that should have been effortless and routine. For Myrick, however, it was a nightmare of epic proportions as she strolled down the cereal aisle looking for a box of Cheerios. “When I grabbed the box, voices began telling me that it was poison and that it would kill me.” With each successive box she chose, the same thing happened—it didn’t matter what brand of cereal she chose. When a cleanup was announced in her aisle, she looked behind her and noticed piles of boxes cluttering the floor. “This was a really sad moment for me because I realized that I couldn’t do something completely mundane that everyone else can do.” Myrick didn’t tell anyone about the incident at the time and was later diagnosed with an eating disorder, because the voices often forbade her to eat anything and she became dangerously thin.
Although her family was always supportive of her, they didn’t know the truth about the symptoms behind her weight loss. “I never told anyone that I was hearing voices,” due to the stigma associated with psychosis, she remarked.
It was only when she forged a trusting relationship with her psychologist and then with her psychiatrist that the truth emerged, Myrick said.
While seeing a therapist who also worked with children, Myrick noticed a game of “Chutes and Ladders” in his office. Therapy felt contrived up to that point, she said, but there was something about the game that enabled her to let down her barriers during the sessions.
During one of several hospitalizations, Myrick met a psychiatrist who also gained her trust over time. Timothy Pylko, M.D., “made the effort to get to know me as a person instead of just asking me about my symptoms,” she said. When in a catatonic state during one hospitalization, Pylko sat next to Myrick on the closet floor, where she laid. “All I could think about was that his nice suit must be getting so dirty,” she said. Over time, she noted, the two worked as partners to solve the riddles of her illness, including researching treatments together.
Her work at Project Return Peer Support Network, which she joined in 2008, is part of that treatment, as is her work with OMNA, in which she helps train primary care physicians to understand the mental health needs of African-American patients as part of the In Living Color project.
OMNA Director Annelle Primm, M.D., M.P.H, appreciates Myrick’s perspective. “Keris is a premier voice among leaders and advocates working to advance the delivery of recovery-oriented services for people with mental illness and substance use disorders,” Primm told Psychiatric News. “Her knowledge, experience, and eloquence in articulating how psychiatrists and other mental health practitioners can provide more recovery-oriented, culturally competent care have made her an invaluable collaborator.” More information about Project Return Peer Support Network is posted at www.prpsn.org. |
A State Born Of Civil War
Listen Lincoln Walks at Midnight stands outside the state capitol in Charleston, W.Va. The statue depicts President Abraham Lincoln contemplating the prospect of statehood for West Virginia.
One hundred and fifty years ago this week, West Virginia became the 35th state in the union. Born in in 1863, the middle of the Civil War, the state was created by patriots who didn't want to join the Confederacy — no mean feat considering the political climate of the time. Western Virginians were fed up with their eastern-dominated government, says Joe Geiger, director of the West Virginia State Archives. He says they also felt they didn't get fair funding for education and infrastructure. On top of that, western Virginians opposed slavery — only 4 percent of the state's slaves lived there. "You would naturally assume that there was an opposition to slavery in western Virginia, and indeed there was," Geiger tells Weekend Edition Sunday host Rachel Martin. "But this was largely due to economic and political reasons, not moral ones." So when the easterners in Richmond seceded from the union, western Virginians seized the opportunity to organize. "I firmly believe that without the Civil War, we wouldn't have a West Virginia," Geiger says.Interview Highlights How West Virginia became a state "What these folks do in Wheeling, these folks who are so determined to remain loyal to the union ... the first thing they do is try to create a union government, a replacement government for Virginia. In the end this is going to be key to West Virginia statehood, because according to the constitution, in order for a new state to be created from an existing state, the existing state has to give its permission." What kind of people are West Virginians? "West Virginia is the kind of state where you walk down the street and you speak to every person you see. You make eye contact, you smile; and I understand if you did that in New York, you might be looked at a little strangely. "People care about one another, they take care of each other. We've had certainly different disasters and tragedies in our history, and the first thing that you see in response is people banding together to help one another."Copyright 2013 NPR. To see more, visit . Transcript RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: One hundred and fifty years ago, West Virginia became the 35th state in the Union. Born in the middle of the Civil War in l863, the state was created by patriots who didn't want to join the Confederacy - no mean feat considering the political climate of the time. So, as West Virginians celebrate their sesquicentennial - yes, that is a real word - we are joined by Joe Geiger. He's the director of the West Virginia State Archives. Mr. Geiger, thanks for being with us. JOE GEIGER: Thank you so much for having me. MARTIN: Happy West Virginia state birthday. GEIGER: Thank you so much. We're real excited to celebrate our 150th anniversary as state. MARTIN: So, for those of us who weren't paying that much attention in school, remind us exactly how and why West Virginia came about? GEIGER: Well, largely because of the Civil War. I firmly believe that without the Civil War, we wouldn't have a West Virginia. Western Virginians believe that they didn't get enough funding from an eastern-dominated legislature for internal improvements, for education and things like this. And also, the economy was different in western Virginia. In terms of slaves, only 4 percent of Virginia's slaves were in present-day West Virginia. So, you would naturally assume that there was an opposition to slavery in western Virginia, and indeed there was. But this was largely due to economic and political reasons, not moral ones. Essentially, what happens is the government of Virginia, when they secede from the United States of America, it leaves that government vacant. And what these folks do in Wheeling, these people who are so determined to remain loyal to the Union, is they try to find a way to deal with this. And the first thing that they do is create a Union government, a replacement government, for Virginia. In the end, this is going to be the key to West Virginia statehood. Because, according to the Constitution, in order for a new state to be created from an existing state, that existing state has to give us permission. MARTIN: For people who have never been to West Virginia, what are West Virginians like? GEIGER: Well, West Virginia's the kind of state where you walk down the street and you speak to every person that you see. You make eye contact, you smile, and I understand that if you do that in New York, you might be looked at a little strangely. So, people care about one another. They take care of each other. We've had certainly different disasters and tragedies in our history, and the first thing that you see in response in West Virginians banding together to help one another. MARTIN: Joe Geiger is the director of the West Virginia State Archive. Thank you so much for taking the time. GEIGER: Thank you. (SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) MARTIN: This is NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR. |
This quote is about men
A bit about Orson Welles ...
George Orson Welles (May 6, 1915 October 10, 1985) is considered not only one of the greatest directors of film but also that of the theatre, as well as a fine actor, screenwriter, broadcaster and producer. His first feature film, Citizen Kane (1941) and last Hollywood film Touch of Evil (1958) are both universally acknowledged as important steps in the history of cinema and widely cited by critics as among the best films ever made, while his various productions with the Mercury Theatre were considered revolutionary in the theatrical world. |
hide Drought persists in Plains; improvement in Midwest
By Julie Ingwersen
CHICAGO (Reuters) - Snowfall in parts of the Plains last week had little impact on historic drought gripping the region, but parts of Illinois, Wisconsin and the Southeast showed slight improvement, weather experts said.
A weekly report issued Thursday by a consortium of federal and state climatology experts said that as of January 1, 42.05 percent of the contiguous United States was in severe to exceptional drought, down from 42.45 percent the previous week.
Parts of the central Plains received snow in the last week, providing some much-needed protection for the region's dormant winter wheat crop before temperatures plunged at the end of December.
However, the snow did not offer much drought relief, according to the weekly U.S. Drought Monitor report.
"It's getting colder now and the ground is starting to freeze up, so if any precipitation does fall, it's not going to go into the soil," said David Miskus, a meteorologist with the U.S. Climate Prediction Center who contributes to the Drought Monitor.
In a seasonal outlook released Thursday, the Climate Prediction Center said extreme to exceptional drought was likely to persist across the Plains for the next three months.
"Most of the annual rainfall for the High Plains really occurs in the springtime and early summer, so that is going to be the critical period. They really do need a wet season this year to make any kind of dent in the drought," Miskus said.
Earlier this week, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said that in Kansas, the top wheat producing state, 24 percent of the crop was rated in good to excellent condition as of December 30, a drop from 29 percent at the end of November. USDA attributed the decline to limited moisture.
In Nebraska, only 14 percent of the winter wheat crop was rated good while zero percent of it was rated excellent. That compared with 74 percent a year earlier for those categories combined.
Current drought conditions are most severe in Nebraska, where the Drought Monitor shows more than 77 percent of the state suffers from "exceptional" drought, the most extreme category.
SLIGHT IMPROVEMENT IN MIDWEST
Drought conditions in the Midwest showed incremental improvement in the last week, with recent storms bringing welcome moisture to northern Illinois, the No. 2 corn state, and southern Wisconsin.
The Drought Monitor showed that 8.9 percent of Illinois was in severe drought as of January 1, a drop from 9.29 percent the previous week and down from more than 31 percent three months ago.
In its three-month outlook, the Climate Prediction Center said continued drought improvement is possible across the Midwest and in northern tier states including Minnesota, North Dakota and Montana.
However, concerns persist about historically low water levels that may halt shipping on part of the Mississippi River, a key artery for barges carrying grain from the Corn Belt to the U.S. Gulf Coast.
The snowpack in the Rocky Mountains, which eventually helps supply moisture for the Mississippi, is below normal, said Mark Svoboda, a climatologist with the University of Nebraska's National Drought Mitigation Center.
"They get most of that snow typically later in the winter. But they are still running 20 to 30 percent below normal," Svoboda said. "That does not bode well for the Missouri Basin, the Platte, the Arkansas - those feeders into the Mississippi basin," he said.
RAINS AMELIORATE DROUGHT IN SOUTH
Drought conditions eased in the South after storms brought two to four inches of rain from eastern Texas to the Carolinas, the Drought Monitor report said. In Alabama, about one-third of the state remained in moderate to extreme drought but the rain eliminated the "exceptional" drought category that had covered about 3.7 percent of the state a week earlier.
However, the report cautioned that long-term moisture deficits persisted in the region, and dry weather continued across much of western, central, and southern Texas. |
Wake up coal: Renewables is now the main game
By Giles Parkinson on 23 June 2013 It is staggering to observe that even in modern sophisticated economies such as the US, Australia and UK – which are supposed to have modern, sophisticated political systems (no really, don’t laugh) – that the role of renewables in the world’s future energy systems is constantly underplayed.
This has probably got something to do with the way that mainstream media handles the issue. In its pursuit of division, fear and controversy, it’s happy to oblige the tactics of delay and misinformation from the fossil fuel industry, that is seeking to protect and prolong several trillion dollars of investments and revenue streams.
Too often, renewable energy is portrayed as an expensive and unnecessary plaything or indulgence. But the media is not solely to blame. There is a shocking lack of vision at the political level too, with the notable exception of the Greens. Conservative political parties, in Australia in particular, constantly use green energy as a scapegoat for problems elsewhere; often for superfluous and inefficient grid upgrades.
But one thing should be made clear: whichever way you cut the future energy outlook, and whichever way you attack the challenge of climate change and the goal of reducing emissions, two technology solutions dominate all others – energy efficiency and renewable energy.
Even if the pro-nuclear lobbies and those who still hold on to the dream of carbon capture and storage have their way, the investment in those technologies will pale in comparison to that needed for renewables – be it in solar PV or solar thermal with storage, wind energy (onshore and offshore), hydro, biomass, or the emerging technologies such as wave and tidal.
This is true on two counts. Already, solar PV – and the arrival of socket parity in more than 100 countries – is providing an economic rationale for investment in renewables, regardless of climate policies. Utility-scale wind is cheaper than new fossil fuel plants in many countries – particularly in energy starved developing nations in Africa and Asia – and utility-scale solar will follow soon enough. Once climate policy is taken into the equation, the impact is even more dramatic.
This first graph below – taken from the International Energy Agency’s recent “Redrawing the climate energy map” publication – probably best sums up the situation. It is the IEA’s take on where the greatest emissions reductions are going to take place in the energy industry if the world is going to meet its climate goals. This graph illustrates its “delayed” scenario, which takes into account the probability that governments will not ramp up their policy actions by 2014 – as would be prudent – but would delay a few years.
Energy efficiency and renewable energy sources account for well over half of the abatement. Nuclear and CCS – even if they meet the IEA’s optimistic scenarios, which, given the financing problems for nuclear and the technology challenges for CCS, is unlikely – they still account for less than one-quarter of anticipated abatement. If either of those two technologies fall short, then energy efficiency and renewables will have to take up the slack.
Given this, there are no prizes for guessing where the best returns are going to be made over the next two decades, a key factor that seems to go largely absent when renewables are discussed in the frame of short terms costs and not in the context of long-term opportunities.
This next graph illustrates this point. It’s the difference between policies that have been promised and enacted by leading economies so far (the blue New Policies scenario), and the policies required to meet the climate goals (green). Either way, revenues from renewables outstrip those from new nuclear and fossil fuel plants combined, even if nothing more is done, and are nearly double when the world takes serious action. Could there be any clearer demonstration of where the future is?
The political debate in Australia around fossil fuels – and by extension renewables – is still based on the assumption that international demand is inexhaustible as the growing middle classes of emerging superpowers such as India and China require more electricity to power their new gadgets and appliances.
But the IEA makes clear that renewables will dominate the world’s new capacity – even out to 2020 – with some $2 trillion likely to be invested in hydro, wind, solar, biomass and other renewables. Australia’s share of that, with current policies such as the 20 per cent renewable energy target (should it be retained) is a modest $20 billion. That does not even meet our pro-rata share on a population basis.
“Despite the insufficiency of global action to date, limiting the global temperature rise to 2 °C remains technically feasible, though it is extremely challenging,” the IEA says.
“To achieve our 450 Scenario, which is consistent with a 50% chance of keeping to 2 °C, the growth in global energy-related CO2 emissions needs to halt and start to reverse within the current decade. Clear political resolution, backed by suitable policies and financial frameworks, is needed to facilitate the necessary investment in low-carbon energy supply and in energy efficiency.” Can’t be any clearer than that.
Still, the fossil fuel industry, and particularly the Australian Coal Association, has its head stuck firmly in the ground. Its CEO Nikki Williams is insisting that there is no such thing as “unburnable carbon”, and that all carbon can, and should be burned.
It’s a premise based on the hope that CCS will deliver, and deliver on time. Curiously, the coal industry has done precious little to fund the research, but it still hangs on its promise. Williams’ hopes are based on a business-as-usual scenario – or, at best, the New Policies scenario. But as the IEA points out in the graph below, even with CCS – the total market for coal-fired power stations is going to fall dramatically in the coming decades. Unless, of course, we just ignore the climate.
As said James Leaton, research director rom the Carbon Tracker Report which has been pushing the concept of unburnable carbon to the financial community, pointing out its risks: “The denial of the potential for unburnable carbon is exactly what will create a carbon bubble, wasted capital, and stranded assets – the coal industry needs to accept the need to change our energy mix and address air quality and climate change now.” |
Use the map and your knowledge of social studies to answer the following question.
According to the map, in 1860 all U.S. cities with populations greater than 250,000 were located
west of the territories
near the Great Lakes
in the Northeast
Use the excerpt and your knowledge of social studies to answer the following question.
. . . there comes a time when people get tired of being trampled over by the iron feet of oppression. . . . I want it to be known that we're going to work with grim and bold determination to gain justice on the buses in this city. And we are not wrong. . . . Martin Luther King, Jr., 1965
2 Martin Luther King, Jr., gained prominence in the Civil Rights movement by leading the struggle against
limited city bus routes for African American riders G
higher fees charged to African American bus riders
restrictions on the hiring of minority bus drivers
segregated seating on buses
The invention of the lightbulb contributed to industrial growth in the Untied States by making it possible for
production to continue at night
workers to light their homes
electric companies to raise their prices
cities to reduce crime by lighting city streets 4
Charles Lindbergh's 1927 solo flight across the Atlantic Ocean was important to Americans because it
allowed the United States to demonstrate new military technology to European allies
helped Great Britain to develop new aviation technology
embarrassed the fascist dictators of Germany and Italy
symbolized American ingenuity, courage and ability Use the photograph and your knowledge of social studies to answer the following question.
The photograph above presents a scene from the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. The conditions it pictures resulted from
government programs during the Great Depression
drought and poor agricultural practices
the burning of coal to power factories
the increased use of automobiles
One social effect of the large migration of African Americans to US industrial centers between 1940 and 1950 was
increased racial tensions
the peaceful integration of southern schools
a 20th-century renaissance in the arts
improved public transportation systems
Use the poster and your knowledge of social studies to answer the following question.
This World War II poster shows that
The government tried to recruit women to fight in the war
the government sought women to fill jobs left vacant by men
women refused to volunteer to help in the war effort
female military officers commanded both male and female troops
Use the chart and your knowledge of social studies to answer the following question.
Spread of the Bubonic Plague, 13471349 Year
Regions Affected
Black Sea coast Aegean Sea coast Southern French coast Western Italian coast
(in addition to above) North African coast Eastern Mediterranean Sea coast Aegean Peninsula Eastern and Northern Spain Southern and Western France Central and Northern Italy Southern British coast 1349
(in addition to above) Western Spain Central and Eastern France Central Britain Ireland Coasts of Norway and Denmark 8
What pattern can be deduced from the information in the chart?
The plague spread primarily from north to south. G
The plague spread primarily from west to east.
The plague spread primarily from coastal areas to inland ones.
The plague spread primarily from Christian countries to Muslim countries.
W.E.B. Du Bois was one of the founders of the NAACP, an organization dedicated to
preserving racial segregation in the United States B
achieving racial equality for African Americans
promoting landownership as the key to economic equality D
using force to gain equal rights
Use the graphs and your knowledge of social studies to answer the following question.
One reason for the large increase in defense spending between 1950 and 1960 was
an unprecedented inflationary economy
funding for military involvement in South America H
the Cold War and the arms race with the Soviet Union
a large investment in supersonic military transports
Some American colonists believed they were justified in declaring independence from Great Britain because the British government
required free trade with France, Germany, and Spain
allowed the colonies to elect their own governors C
encouraged diplomatic relations with Native Americans D
taxed the colonies without direct representation in Parliament
Use the excerpt and your social studies skills to answer the following question.
Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., 1929 12
In this excerpt, Justice Holmes suggests that allowing free speech in a democratic society includes
developing new ideas
endorsing popular viewpoints
tolerating unpopular views
silencing vocal dissenters
The problems we face are not limited to one coast or one region. From the contaminated waters of Boston Harbor to the pollution of San Francisco Bay; from the closed shellfish beds of the Chesapeake to the growing "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico; from the Puget Sound Superfund sites to the PCB-ridden striped bass of New York; coastal pollution is pervasive and growing more deadly with each passing year.
Congressional Record, June 1989 14
Population growth in coastal regions has contributed to the problems described above by --
creating a need for more highways
causing an increase in flooding and soil erosion H
creating a demand for more clean water
producing increasing amounts of sewage and other waste products
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibited discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, or national origin. The act also established --
legal consequences for discrimination
exceptions for job-related discrimination
an official definition of housing discrimination
criminal penalties for those practicing affirmative action
Use the graph and your knowledge of social studies to answer questions 16 and 17.
The largest decline in German immigration prior to 1915 was in
Which event best explains the change in German immigration to the United States after 1914, as shown in the graph?
The outbreak of World War I limited immigration from Germany.
The economy in Europe improved, eliminating the need for emigration.
The German government encouraged emigration. D
The United States passed new restrictions on immigration.
The idea of representative government flourished in colonial America because the colonists wanted
the people to be the source of power
to be responsible for their own defense
government power to be held by only a few leaders
a president to control the government
Which of the following is the correct cause-and-effect pairing of events that occurred during the 1920s?
Victory in World War I and the outbreak of urban riots
Labor strife and the downfall of unions
Prohibition and the rise of organized crime D
Fear of foreigners and the closing of US borders
In which of the following situations would a historian need to use secondary sources?
When studying the private lives of World War I leaders
When researching different interpretations of World War I
When explaining the battlefield decisions of World War I generals
When trying to understand the personal experiences of World War I soldiers
In the 1960s César Chavez organized the United Farm Workers to --
assist farmworkers in securing loans to buy homes
demand disaster relief for farmers in the Midwest
guarantee government subsidies for US fruit growers
improve working conditions for migrant farm laborers
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press . . . .
First Amendment to the
US Constitution 22
This excerpt reflects the principle of
What was one result of the rapid growth of U.S. cities in the early 20th century?
Fewer educational opportunities were available. B
Prices for consumer goods became unstable.
Farm production declined significantly.
The population in slums increased.
One of the primary goals of the Marshall Plan was to prevent the
spread of democratic forms of government
collapse of the Soviet Union's economy
collapse of communist governments in Eastern Europe J
spread of communism in Western Europe
The efforts of Susan B. Anthony and other leaders of the women's suffrage movement led to women
gaining the right to vote
earning the same wages as men
gaining the right to attend state universities
becoming property owners in some states
Industrialization during the late 1800s contributed to the development of organized labor because it
created low-wage, low-skill jobs that made employees easy to replace
allowed individuals to accumulate huge fortunes
reduced the demand for hourly wage earners
contributed to the growth of college business programs 27
The intellectual ideas of Renaissance thinkers spread throughout Europe largely as a result of the
voyages of exploration
invention of the printing press
opening of the first universities
We will not submit to the prosperity that is obtained by lowering the wages of working men and charging an excessive price to consumers, nor to that other kind of prosperity obtained by swindling investors or getting unfair advantages over business rivals.
August 6, 1912 28
President Theodore Roosevelt made this statement during which historical period?
The Progressive Era
The Gilded Age
Don't be afraid to . . . read every book, as long as any document does not offend our own ideas of decency. That should be the only censorship.
How will we defeat communism unless we know what it is, what it teaches, and why does it have such an appeal for men, why are some many people swearing allegiance to it?
President Dwight D. Eisenhower,
Speech at Dartmouth College, 1953
In the excerpt above, President Eisenhower was responding to Senator Joseph McCarthy's public attempts to
promote religious tolerance
limit free speech
increase U.S. literacy rates
restrict conservative political influence
The 17th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution provided for U.S. senators to be elected directly by the people. This amendment is significant because it
allowed for the election of more experienced senators G
gave citizens more control of the government
discouraged people from voting in state and local elections
lessened the importance of political parties
The movement in the late 1960s and early 1970s to lower the voting age to 18 was prompted by the
election of John F. Kennedy as president
debate over the Vietnam War
successes of the Persian Gulf War
Use the diagram and your knowledge of social studies to answer the following question.
Which of the following best completes the diagram as a cause of the Great Depression?
Decreased income-tax rate
Decline of agricultural prices
Increased savings by consumers
Expansion of foreign markets
The significance of the Allied invasion of Normandy on June 6, 1944, was that it
caused the Soviet Union to join the war against Germany
liberated Paris from German control
opened a second major front in the war in Europe
forced Germany to surrender immediately to Allied forces
I doubt that a country can live in freedom where its people can be made to suffer physically or financially for criticizing their government, its actions, or its officials. . . .
Hugo Black, New Your Times v. Sullivan,
According to the excerpt, which of the following is necessary to preserve liberty within the United States?
Which of these terms best completes the diagram?
36 Which event is an example of geography playing an important role in the defeat of an invading army? F
The North Korean invasion of South Korea in 1950
The Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931
The German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941
The U.S. invasion of Cuba in 1898
Which of the following is an example of the constitutional principle of governmental checks and balances?
Direct election of senators
Presidential veto power
Congressional term limits
Appeal of court decisions
Some recent work by E. Fermi and L. Szilard, which has been communicated to me in manuscript, leads me to expect that the element uranium may be turned into a new and important source of energy in the immediate future.
Albert Einstein, letter to President
Franklin D. Roosevelt, August 2, 1939 38
The development referred to in Einstein's letter led directly to
a government program to develop the atomic bomb
the first funding of scientific research by the federal government H
the delivery of inexpensive electricity to U.S. consumers
the creation of a new cabinet department
Many members of the First Continental Congress opposed declaring independence because they
saw no reason to declare what was already obvious to the colonists
believed reconciliation with Great Britain was still possible
were waiting for the outcome of battles between British and French troops
needed time to recruit and train soldiers
Entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO) might change China's economic relationship with the rest of the world because China will have to
allow more foreign competition in its markets
allow Europeans to manage the economy
produce completely different goods
It is a fearful thing to lead this great, peaceful people into war. . . . But the right is more precious than peace, and we shall fight for . . . a universal dominion of right by such a concert of free peoples as shall bring peace and safety to all nations and make the world itself at last free.
President Woodrow Wilson, 1917 41
According to the excerpt, President Woodrow Wilson supported involvement in World War I because he wanted to --
protect U.S. colonial interests around the world B
prevent communism from spreading outside the Soviet Union
make the world safe for democracy
provide Germany with humanitarian aid
The 15th Amendment to the US Constitution gave citizens the right to vote regardless of race, color, or former status as a slave. Later methods of depriving citizens of their 15th Amendment rights included
poll taxes and literacy tests
requiring landownership
church membership requirements
requiring a high school education
President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal was a program designed to
prevent the onset of the Great Depression
control big business
combat the effects of the Great Depression
restore the gold standard
The year 1776 is an important date in US History because it marked the
beginning of the American Revolutionary War G
signing of the Declaration of Independence
writing of the U.S. Constitution
founding of the first American colony
The automobile industry helped stimulate the US economy in the 1920s because it
increased demand for products such as steel, rubber, and gasoline
started the Industrial Revolution in the United States
ended U.S. dependence on foreign-made cars
of 10 seconds. |
In April 1967 Robert Kennedy and other members of a Senate subcommittee investigating poverty in America traveled to the Mississippi Delta country to have a firsthand look. They drove in a caravan of cars to Bolivar County north of Greenville, where they found a small community amid cotton fields. It was a collection of shacks surrounding an earthen courtyard where the women washed clothes in tubs. There were few men of working age, little food in anyone�s refrigerators, no indoor plumbing. Changes in the wage laws had brought to a close the practice of sharecropping, which had been a form of quasi-servitude that had prevailed for a century. As a result, poverty had worsened. In those Delta villages, children suffered the diseases of malnutrition. The children Kennedy saw were happy to shake his hand, but they were ragged and filthy. The women who were watching over them were in poor health and prematurely aged. It was a visit to the Third World. America at the time was beginning to realize that poverty was a fact of life even in a land of riches and opportunity. And poverty was not unique to African-Americans in the Delta. Impoverished white populations in Appalachia and elsewhere also came to the attention of the nation. Conditions in urban slums flared up into deadly riots in Los Angeles, Detroit and elsewhere. An influential book at the time called �The Other America� showed Americans the reality of what, properly considered, was not another America. It was America, and it would no longer be ignored. One of the outcomes of Kennedy�s investigations was the food stamp program. Poor children � in Mississippi or in New York City � would not be allowed to suffer malnutrition. It was an embrace of one of Franklin Roosevelt�s Four Freedoms � the freedom from want. It was the charitable response of a national community to the shocking reality of economic injustice.Political support for food stamps persisted over the years because it was the responsibility of the Agriculture Department, and so its appropriations became part of the farm bill. The farm bill authorizes farm support programs, such as subsidies for cotton, corn and soybeans and price supports for dairy farmers. Farmers understood that poor people would be able to consume the products of American farms if they had food stamps in their hands. Thus, liberals of the old school � George McGovern, Hubert Humphrey � supported the farm bill in part because it covered the cost of food stamps � but conservatives from farm country supported it, too, because it maintained support for farmers.This week Republicans in the U.S. House trashed this long history. They had failed previously to pass a farm bill because they had trashed the alliance of interests that made a farm bill possible. They did so by slashing spending on food stamps so deeply that as many as 3 million Americans, half of them children, stood to lose nutritional support. In addition, some conservatives bolted because they opposed continued spending on subsidies for farmers.The Republican response to this failure was to pass a farm bill this week that excluded food stamps altogether. As one Republican congressman said, Republicans had decided to eliminate �extraneous� portions of the bill.Democrats responded with fury. �Kids going to bed hungry at night in this nation is extraneous?� said Rep. Rosa DeLauro. �The 47 million people who are on (food stamps) are not extraneous,� said Rep. Jim McGovern of Massachusetts. Dysfunction in the Republican House has reached a new low. Not only have Republican members decided not to take up comprehensive immigration reform, now they have sent an unequivocal message on food policy: billions in subsidies for farmers; zero for poor people. Robert Kennedy was murdered 14 months after helping to shine a spotlight on the gross injustice of poverty in America. Over the years we have spent billions to help put food in the refrigerators of poor families. Far from extraneous, it has been crucial to our nation�s well-being. |
United States Population: 316,668,567« Previous Country | Next Country » Country List Background Britain's American colonies broke with the mother country in 1776 and were recognized as the new nation of the United States of America following the Treaty of Paris in 1783. During the 19th and 20th centuries, 37 new states were added to the original 13 as the nation expanded across the North American continent and acquired a number of overseas possessions. The two most traumatic experiences in the nation's history were the Civil War (1861-65), in which a northern Union of states defeated a secessionist Confederacy of 11 southern slave states, and the Great Depression of the 1930s, an economic downturn during which about a quarter of the labor force lost its jobs. Buoyed by victories in World Wars I and II and the end of the Cold War in 1991, the US remains the world''s most powerful nation state. Since the end of World War II, the economy has achieved relatively steady growth, low unemployment and inflation, and rapid advances in technology.GeographyPeopleGovernmentEconomyEnergyCommunicationsTransportationMilitaryTransnational Issues Geography World's third-largest country by size (after Russia and Canada) and by population (after China and India); Mt. McKinley is highest point in North America and Death Valley the lowest point on the continentLocation: North America, bordering both the North Atlantic Ocean and the North Pacific Ocean, between Canada and MexicoGeographic coordinates: 38 00 N, 97 00 WArea: total: 9,826,675 sq km land: 9,161,966 sq km water: 664,709 sq km note: includes only the 50 states and District of Columbia Size comparison: about half the size of Russia; about three-tenths the size of Africa; about half the size of South America (or slightly larger than Brazil); slightly larger than China; more than twice the size of the European UnionLand Boundaries: total: 12,034 km border countries: Canada 8,893 km (including 2,477 km with Alaska), Mexico 3,141 km note: US Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba is leased by the US and is part of Cuba; the base boundary is 28 km Coastline: 19,924 kmMaritime claims: territorial sea: 12 nm contiguous zone: 24 nm exclusive economic zone: 200 nm continental shelf: not specified Climate: mostly temperate, but tropical in Hawaii and Florida, arctic in Alaska, semiarid in the great plains west of the Mississippi River, and arid in the Great Basin of the southwest; low winter temperatures in the northwest are ameliorated occasionally in January and February by warm chinook winds from the eastern slopes of the Rocky MountainsTerrain: vast central plain, mountains in west, hills and low mountains in east; rugged mountains and broad river valleys in Alaska; rugged, volcanic topography in HawaiiElevation extremes: lowest point: Death Valley -86 m highest point: Mount McKinley (Denali) 6,194 m (highest point in North America) note: the peak of Mauna Kea (4,207 m above sea level) on the island of Hawaii rises about 10,200 m above the Pacific Ocean floor; by this measurement, it is the world's tallest mountain - higher than Mount Everest (8,850 m), which is recognized as the tallest mountain above sea level Natural resources: coal, copper, lead, molybdenum, phosphates, rare earth elements, uranium, bauxite, gold, iron, mercury, nickel, potash, silver, tungsten, zinc, petroleum, natural gas, timber note: the US has the world's largest coal reserves with 491 billion short tons accounting for 27% of the world's total Land use: arable land: 16.29% permanent crops: 0.26% other: 83.44% (2011) Irrigated land: 266,440 sq km (2007)Natural hazards: tsunamis; volcanoes; earthquake activity around Pacific Basin; hurricanes along the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico coasts; tornadoes in the Midwest and Southeast; mud slides in California; forest fires in the west; flooding; permafrost in northern Alaska, a major impediment to development volcanism: volcanic activity in the Hawaiian Islands, Western Alaska, the Pacific Northwest, and in the Northern Mariana Islands; both Mauna Loa (elev. 4,170 m) in Hawaii and Mount Rainier (elev. 4,392 m) in Washington have been deemed "Decade Volcanoes" by the International Association of Volcanology and Chemistry of the Earth's Interior, worthy of study due to their explosive history and close proximity to human populations; Pavlof (elev. 2,519 m) is the most active volcano in Alaska's Aleutian Arc and poses a significant threat to air travel since the area constitutes a major flight path between North America and East Asia; St. Helens (elev. 2,549 m), famous for the devastating 1980 eruption, remains active today; numerous other historically active volcanoes exist, mostly concentrated in the Aleutian arc and Hawaii; they include: in Alaska: Aniakchak, Augustine, Chiginagak, Fourpeaked, Iliamna, Katmai, Kupreanof, Martin, Novarupta, Redoubt, Spurr, Wrangell; in Hawaii: Trident, Ugashik-Peulik, Ukinrek Maars, Veniaminof; in the Northern Mariana Islands: Anatahan; and in the Pacific Northwest: Mount Baker, Mount Hood Current Environment Issues: air pollution resulting in acid rain in both the US and Canada; large emitter of carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels; water pollution from runoff of pesticides and fertilizers; limited natural freshwater resources in much of the western part of the country require careful management; desertificationInternational Environment Agreements: party to: Air Pollution, Air Pollution-Nitrogen Oxides, Antarctic-Environmental Protocol, Antarctic-Marine Living Resources, Antarctic Seals, Antarctic Treaty, Climate Change, Desertification, Endangered Species, Environmental Modification, Marine Dumping, Marine Life Conservation, Ozone Layer Protection, Ship Pollution, Tropical Timber 83, Tropical Timber 94, Wetlands, Whaling signed, but not ratified: Air Pollution-Persistent Organic Pollutants, Air Pollution-Volatile Organic Compounds, Biodiversity, Climate Change-Kyoto Protocol, Hazardous Wastes ^Back to Top PeopleNationality: noun: American(s) adjective: American Ethnic groups: white 79.96%, black 12.85%, Asian 4.43%, Amerindian and Alaska native 0.97%, native Hawaiian and other Pacific islander 0.18%, two or more races 1.61% (July 2007 estimate) note: a separate listing for Hispanic is not included because the US Census Bureau considers Hispanic to mean persons of Spanish/Hispanic/Latino origin including those of Mexican, Cuban, Puerto Rican, Dominican Republic, Spanish, and Central or South American origin living in the US who may be of any race or ethnic group (white, black, Asian, etc.); about 15.1% of the total US population is Hispanic Languages: English 82.1%, Spanish 10.7%, other Indo-European 3.8%, Asian and Pacific island 2.7%, other 0.7% (2000 census) note: the US has no official national language, but English has acquired official status in 28 of the 50 states; Hawaiian is an official language in the state of Hawaii Religions: Protestant 51.3%, Roman Catholic 23.9%, Mormon 1.7%, other Christian 1.6%, Jewish 1.7%, Buddhist 0.7%, Muslim 0.6%, other or unspecified 2.5%, unaffiliated 12.1%, none 4% (2007 est.)Population: 316,668,567 (July 2013 est.) Age structure: 0-14 years: 20% (male 32,344,207/female 31,006,688) 15-24 years: 13.7% (male 22,082,128/female 21,157,025) 25-54 years: 40.2% (male 63,802,736/female 63,581,749) 55-64 years: 12.3% (male 18,699,338/female 20,097,791) 65 years and over: 13.9% (male 19,122,853/female 24,774,052) (2013 est.) Dependency ratios: total dependency ratio: 50.4 % youth dependency ratio: 29.4 % elderly dependency ratio: 21 % potential support ratio: 4.8 (2013) Median age: total: 37.2 years male: 35.9 years female: 38.5 years (2013 est.) Population growth rate: 0.9% (2013 est.) Birth rate: 13.66 births/1,000 population (2013 est.) Death rate: 8.39 deaths/1,000 population (2013 est.) Net migration rate: 3.64 migrant(s)/1,000 population (2013 est.) Urbanization: urban population: 82% of total population (2010) rate of urbanization: 1.2% annual rate of change (2010-15 est.) Major urban areas - population: New York-Newark 1 |
Say It With Science
Say It With Science is an educational blog that serves to teach readers about science, in general, but more specifically about physics and mathematics.
It is run by members who each have their own unique specialty and interests in science and mathematics. Some of us are merely high school students and some of us are university students. This enables us to provide high quality information about lower and higher level subjects.
∑ F = ma
… is a differential equation:
where acceleration a(t), velocity v(t), and displacement s(t) are all vectors and functions of time. This equation is second-order in position because the highest derivative is the second time derivative of position. Combined with the right boundary conditions, s(t) (also called the trajectory: path through space and time) can be determined.
This differential equation can be solved one component, or dimension, at a time. Let us focus on one of these, and call it the x component. The equations for y and z can be found exactly the same way.
Constant acceleration
If the graph of a(t) signifying acceleration in the x direction is constant
then the graph of v(t), the velocity in the x direction, is a straight line with slope a0
and the graph of x(t), the position along the x axis, is a parabola
It is also possible for the acceleration, or either of the initial velocity or initial position, to be negative. Thus the displacement/projectile motion formula is derived.
differential equation
integrals
projectile motion |
The New York Times reports: E.P.A. Chief Stands Firm as Tough Rules Loom:
In the next weeks and months, Lisa P. Jackson, the Environmental Protection Agency administrator, is scheduled to establish regulations on smog, mercury, carbon dioxide, mining waste and vehicle emissions that will affect every corner of the economy.
She is working under intense pressure from opponents in Congress, from powerful industries, from impatient environmentalists and from the Supreme Court, which just affirmed the agency’s duty to address global warming emissions, a project that carries profound economic implications.
The new rules will roll out just as President Obama’s re-election campaign is getting under way, with a White House highly sensitive to the probability of political damage from a flood of government mandates that will strike particularly hard at the manufacturing sector in states crucial to the 2012 election.
No other cabinet officer is in as lonely or uncomfortable a position as Ms. Jackson, who has been left, as one adviser put it, behind enemy lines with only science, the law and a small band of loyal lieutenants to support her. Well, she’s also got you and me. And that’s not trivial. These new rules include the first regulations on mercury emissions from coal plants. Coal plants are the major source of toxic mercury in the fish you eat (bad for you, bad for the fish, bad for the bird that eat the fish, bad, really for everything), so reining those emissions in is a huge step forward for the environment and for public health. These regulations have been in the works since the 1990 amendments to the Clean Air Act, and after a regrettable rulemaking hiatus under the Bush administration, they are a welcome addition. David Roberts at Grist, probably the best environmental policy journalist out there, has a great series on these new rules and their implications.
Those new rules, if they’re strong and well-enforced, won’t just reduce toxic mercury emissions. By raising the price of making electricity from coal, these regulations will push utilities to close older coal plants and to shift towards cleaner fuels, fuels that don’t just release less mercury, but that have lower greenhouse gas emissions. Combined with the EPA’s new regulations on carbon dioxide (and others soon to come), this could have a major impact on the US carbon footprint, though less than could be achieved through a comprehensive climate bill.
As the figure shows (borrowed from this article at Grist, which drew on this report from ICF), most of the impact from these rules is expected to come in the Central US, which will have to replace 25 gigawatts (GW) of electrical generation, while western states will be relatively unaffected. But among the states hit hardest will be Presidential battleground states like Ohio, Florida, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan, Missouri, Florida, West Virginia. Of course, those are also the states most dramatically impacted by coal mining and coal burning, so there ought to be some political upside, especially if utilities react by building new natural gas plants and new wind farms to make up for losses in coal capacity. The jobs and clean air created by such moves would be boons to the local communities. Whether they’d outweigh potential bumps in electricity rates remains to be seen: with unemployment hovering between 9 and 10 percent, lots of people will notice job creation, but everyone gets an electrical bill, and the environmental benefits will be diffuse, and long term.
These mercury regulations are sure to be politically contentious, so if you’d like to see the EPA finally establish strong limits on mercury emissions, you should contact your members of Congress and your governor and your utilities and tell them that you want these rules to be implemented, and you want them to be strong. Then ask them (especially governors and utilities) whether they’ve sent in comments on the new rules, or whether they’ve otherwise taken a position. Feel free to leave a comment here with the responses, or if you get the runaround. We can all help you get answers to the simple question of whether your public officials support a plan that would save lives and prevent birth defects, stillbirths, and miscarriages.
July 8, 2011 I didn’t say it’s not important, I was just responding to your comment, giving my opinion.
As to point #2: If God is there? Where? God is imaginary. Natural selection is a fact and ideas being passed from one mind to another is common knowledge, no magical thinking required. #5
July 8, 2011 Everywhere. Everything we think about is imaginary, our thoughts aren’t an actual reproduction of what we think about, other than that we exist, our thoughts, both accurate and inaccurate, are the product of imagination. |
Santa Clara Magazine » Spring 2006 » After Words The real question of "Theology of Marriage" By Robert Brancatelli Robert Brancatelli is an assistant professor in the Pastoral Ministries graduate program and in the undergraduate Religious Studies department. Students often come to “Theology of Marriage,” one of the most popular courses at Santa Clara, full of anticipation and eager to learn the “how to”s of marriage, particularly since many are seniors and plan to marry in the near future. They want to know how to maintain good communication. How to stay “in love” with their partner. How to juggle a professional career with the needs of a spouse. How to have a good marriage that doesn’t end in divorce. How to rear children who are psychologically adjusted and perform well in school. These may seem like good questions to ask, but I see them as fueled by popular media and our culture’s obsession with therapy, which can be seen in the rise of the self-help industry and television programs like “Dr. Phil.” True, some students are justifiably anxious about marriage from having experienced their parents’ or a family member’s divorce, but I believe that these questions and concerns miss the mark. Theology of Marriage does not offer a therapeutic solution to the problems of marriage and relationships. In fact, I show students that therapy, although helpful, can mask the real problems in a relationship. The “work” of marriage is not primarily about communication, family, fidelity, gender roles, or trust, although these are important. And it is certainly not about getting one’s needs met by a partner, which is what Tristan seeks in the twelfth century epic, Tristan et Iseult, a text studied in the course. As he pursues Iseult the Fair, Tristan laments: “Will I never find someone to heal me of my unhappiness?” The answer, despite every romantic comedy written or produced since then, is no. In Theology of Marriage, students discover that the work of marriage has less to do with the marriage and more to do with the self. It begins long before shopping for the ring. After all, the answer to Tristan’s question is that only he can heal himself of his unhappiness. In rejecting both the therapeutic and romantic solutions to the problems of relationships, what does Theology of Marriage offer? To begin with, theology offers something that therapy and romance cannot: a reference point outside of the self that does not depend on how much we are moved emotionally or how hard we work at the marriage. This point is a transcendent God who is present in the daily “The work of marriage is the work of transforming the self, since to love another person in a mature way, you must first love yourself.” —Robert Brancatelli decision to love another person in the midst of meals, meetings, and crises. Thomas Aquinas believed that the only way for two people to survive a marriage is through God’s grace and that this grace makes the marriage sacramental. Given the current emphasis on personal fulfillment and meaning in marriage, this has become a practical as well as a theological truth for many couples. Secondly, a theological approach to marriage is necessarily paradoxical, since it views the encounter with a transcendent God as occurring in the depths of the soul. This means that one must have a sense of self to find God. It also means that the greatest obstacle to finding God is the self, which is the same obstacle to finding another person. Acquiring communication skills or searching far and wide for a soul mate detracts from the real work of the self. Therefore, the theological solution emphasizes authenticity, so that the self can be offered freely to the other person as gift. In the course, I try not to answer questions about soul mates, the “one,” or whether love is simply a matter of pheromones and synapses. Instead, I challenge students to develop new questions based not on popular culture but on a religious worldview in which death and rebirth are at the core of human experience. In this way, they see that the work of marriage is the work of transforming the self, since to love another person in a mature way, you must first love yourself. How you do that is the real question. The work of marriage is the work of transforming the self, since to love another person in a mature way, you must first love yourself. Home |
Shot of Prevention
Where People Come to Discuss News and Views on Vaccines
Lara Lohne grew up in an anti-vaccine household. Although her father was fully vaccinated, the decision for Lara and her siblings not to be vaccinated rested primarily with her mother. Several of her extended family members happened to be chiropractors, including her grandfather and two uncles, and Lara believes that they were a big influence on her mother’s position.
Lara explains that as a young child she didn’t realize that most people were, in fact, vaccinated.
“I lived an extremely sheltered life growing up, and I was essentially taught that what my parents (or my mom) believed was the only point of view that mattered. Any other view was considered as rebellion and betrayal. In my house, people who were vaccinated were contaminated and less pure than those who chose not to vaccinate. I remember when I asked my dad if he was vaccinated. He told me he was because he served in the Marine Corps and it was required for service. It was a huge disappointment to me and I had difficulty not feeling resentful toward my dad because of it. Of course I was only eight years old at the time and only had what my parents told me as the basis to form my beliefs and opinions.”
Lara remained unvaccinated throughout her childhood and recalls a time when there was a measles outbreak in school. She was in the ninth grade at the time and she didn’t want to be removed from class. She asked her mom if she might be vaccinated so she wouldn’t have to miss school.
“She had told me we’re not going to let them inject us with poison. It is only a trap, trying to force us into their way of thinking. She used to say, over and over again, “We are not sheep!” She told me that the shot would cause me to get sick, make me go crazy or retarded (her word) or even kill me. She successfully talked me out of it at the age of 14.”
Despite her mother’s insistence, two years later, Lara was surprised that her parents took her to receive her first MMR shot at the age of 16. At the time, there was another measles outbreak in her school and the county health clinic was offering free MMR vaccines to those who didn’t already have them.
“I was a junior in high school and my mom came to take me out of class to get vaccinated. Due to the fervor in which my mom fought us getting vaccines in the past, it confused me why she would want us to get them now. However my mom explained that it was to keep them from being able to remove us from school again. She and my dad had to drag me kicking and screaming into the county health clinic to get the shot. I even remember saying a few times while this was all going on, “I don’t want to be a sheep!”
I was hurt that my mother, who had taught me to hate vaccines and everything they stood for, was now so adamant that I get one. After successfully convincing me vaccines were harmful, dangerous and inherently evil, she took me to get one with no sign of regret or remorse. It felt like callous disregard and I felt betrayed. I had to ask myself, why would someone who was so strongly opposed to vaccines – who believed it could harm or kill me – insist that I get one after all the times she had rejected them before? I was convinced that she didn’t care about me because she was literally dragging me to get one with no good reason in my head other than “They won’t have an excuse to remove you from school this time.”
After getting the shot, I waited, and expected the worst to happen. I didn’t get sick, I didn’t lose my mind and I most certainly didn’t come anywhere close to dying. I didn’t even have a mild reaction. I suppose that was when I started to really question everything I had been raised to believe. I started to wonder about vaccines, but unfortunately I didn’t have access to any resources at that time to investigate them further. It was an experience that I have never forgotten.”
Years went by and Lara remained confused about her views on vaccines. Then she discovered she was pregnant with her first child and she decided that she needed to do some research in order to make an educated decision for her own child. Since these were the days prior to prevalence of the internet, Lara researched the subject by visiting the public library, reading books on childhood diseases and discovering how and why vaccines were first introduced. Obviously, she was very surprised by what she learned.
“I didn’t know people died from these diseases and it was quite shocking when I learned about the harm that they could cause. My thoughts went back to my mom and whether or not she really cared about us as she felt it was better to fight infections naturally and make our immune systems stronger.”
“I realized that vaccines contained the virus or contagion of the disease but in a weakened or dead form. I understood that by injecting that tiny little bit into a vaccine, that a ‘natural’ immune response was initialized. The benefits? You got the immunity and you didn’t suffer the disease or run the risk of permanent damage or death. The risks? Compared to what the disease could do, the risk was minimal.”
“Since I had survived a few of these diseases myself, I was well aware of how it felt to live through them. Looking back, I would have preferred to get a little shot in the arm then have to suffer through the disease. The thought of watching my own children suffer through the same diseases was unbearable. What I learned about vaccines during the months I spent in the library prior to my first child being born convinced me that it would be better to vaccinate then to take the risk of my child contracting the diseases they provide immunity for.”
Growing up in an anti-vaccine household made Lara’s decisions to vaccinate that much more difficult.
“It definitely made it harder for me to accept vaccines. I didn’t want to think that my mom had been ‘telling stories’ all my life, trying to get me to believe something that wasn’t true at all. It was something I struggled hard against because along with feelings of betrayal. there was fear of rejection. I also wanted to make sure I didn’t buy into vaccines just because it was against what my mom wanted. I didn’t want it to be a rebellion thing and at first I believe it may have been. Until I did the research of course. Then I realized that all the feelings in the world don’t mean anything if there isn’t any fact to back it up. Once I learned the facts and my common sense caught up to my emotions, I was able to make the decision to vaccinate without feeling like it was just me being rebellious. It really was nothing personal against my mother. It was the simply the best decision I could make for myself, my children and the general public that we would all be exposed to. Knowing that science was behind me made the decision a lot easier to make with a clear conscience.”
My decision to vaccinate my own children was based on the information I gleaned in the library while I was waiting for my first born to come. When I learned all the facts, I felt my mother had betrayed me, yes. But after weighing everything, I came to realize my mother was only repeating what she believed was true because it’s what her parents taught her. Opinion is fine and there is no right or wrong with opinions, if it is a true opinion. However, fact is quite different from opinion and the two should not be confused. If you base an opinion on inaccurate and false information, however, then you are being naive and/or gullible because the fact is out there to refute your opinion and in the case of vaccines and public health, there really isn’t room for opinion. There is right, and there is wrong. If you choose not to vaccinate your children nobody can stop you from making that decision. However, when it comes to your children having limited access to the general public because they could pose a threat of an infectious disease to someone who is immuno-compromised, that is like those who choose to smoke, but are not allowed to do so in a public area, for the greater good of public health. I think it’s safe to say we all agree that limited exposure to second hand smoke is a benefit to most of the rest of the population. Limited exposure to infectious diseases is, to a degree, treated in a similar fashion. If your choice could potentially impact public health and safety, then expect that your children will be subject to removal from school and quarantined if necessary, to ensure those who are unable to vaccinate (there is a difference between choosing not to do something and being unable to do something) will not be exposed to something your child may be carrying without anyone knowing. It isn’t fair to the child of course, but by the decision you have made in regard to that child, you are causing, and allowing that unfairness to be. I hope you are ready for the day when your own children realize that you don’t know everything and begin learning things for themselves.
I started off believing in vaccination like everyone else around me. Even though I reacted to a DTP as an infant with days of inconsolable screaming, and my brother did too, and even though I reacted to a tetanus booster at nineteen with both arms being paralyzed for two days (brachioplexal neuropathy), and later developed M.S., I still thought vaccines were overall safe, effective, and necessary to control dangerous diseases. But before my daughter was born in 2000, I had read that the hep-B vaccine at birth often caused autism, and I went to her pediatrician a month before she was born just to say I didn’t want her to get it. I had tested negative for hep-B, and it is a disease that is not transmitted casually among children. There was no reason at all for her to get it. The pediatrician forgot to tell the staff at the hospital, and they gave it to her her first day in the world without asking permission. She reacted with four days and nights of endless, inconsolable screaming, vaccine-induced encephalitis, and was later diagnosed with autism. She struggles gamely with it every day of her life, is in a special-needs classroom (but in a typical one for math, the left side of her brain was not affected by the encephalitis), and I doubt she’ll ever be independent. This experience, bolstered by the extensive research I”ve done on vaccines, have convinced me that vaccines destroy more lives than they save. The vaccine-preventable diseases fall into two categories: usually mild formerly routine childhood diseases, and rare one. All are treatable by allopathic, naturopathic, or homeopathic means. If you get any vaccination, you may not see the adverse reactions for days, months or even years, but then you may see autism, ADHD, learning disorders, seizure disorders, asthma, allergies, bowel disease, diabetes, or other autoimmune conditions, because the vaccines alarm the immune system, which often reacts with more and longer-lasting inflammation than it was supposed to.
The rate of autism in the U.S. tripled between 1992 (the year after they started giving the hep-B vaccine at birth) and 1996. School nurse Patti White testified before a congressional hearing the year before my daughter was born that her organization had become reluctantly convinced that the sudden increase of autism in Missouri public schools starting in 1996 was because of the hep-B at birth. (Of course the MMR and the DTaP also cause a lot.) Young babies should be quarantined rather than vaccinated to protect them from pertussis, and medical personnel should wear masks and gloves when handling young babies. Pertussis isn’t usually fatal even in the youngest group, and it’s not usually dangerous at all in older infants, children, and adults. If you get the vaccine, you run the considerable risk of SIDS, asthma, seizure disorder, or autism, and you’ll be on tenterhooks waiting for the adverse events for years. Quarantine your newborn (the vaccine isn’t very effective to start with in people of any age, and isn’t effective at all in young babies), and you’ll heave a sigh of relief when they are four months old and out of the age of danger.
My baby got the DTaP at 2, 4, and 6 months, but caught pertussis at a La Leche League meeting when she was 9 months old. It was an alarming experience, but not a dangerous one. She gave it to me as well, and while she coughed ten coughs on a breath for over a month, I coughed for over two months. But we both recovered fine. She had been brain-damaged from the hep-B at birth, but I didn’t know it yet. She was very slow to talk, but had developed two words by eighteen months, uh for up and uff for dog. But after the DTaP booster at 18 months, both words completely disappeared forever. She didn’t say another word until she was almost 35 months old, when she laboriously started saying the repeated baby syllables like baba, poopoo, peepee, mama, and so on. She had been diagnosed with suspected autism at 20 months, later confirmed.
I had measles as a child, at that time everyone did, it was no big deal, not a disease that anyone feared. If you talk to anyone over the age of 55, they will tell you about their having had it as a child, and will confirm that everyone had it, and no one feared it.
My daughter and I struggle every day with life, she from autism, and I from M.S., which makes me exhausted, dizzy, and nauseated most of the time. If we had not gotten vaccines, we would both be enjoying a healthy life now.
I feel for your struggles and understand if you and your relations had adverse reactions to vaccines why you might be tempted to blame them for everything. However, what you are saying here has never been proven by science and therefore is just speculation, rumor and opinion. Your family may be one of those that is unfortunately unable to get vaccines, but the majority of people in the world DON’T fall into that category and if they started believing your stories, then your own health would be threatened more so then it already is as herd immunity declines. Vaccines do not cause these things you say they do. The increase in autism diagnosis, at least a quarter of the cases, has to do with changes in the diagnostic criteria, part of it is also better evaluation techniques and better early diagnosis. Research study after research study has been done for a couple of decades now and no scientific evidence has ever been found that links vaccines as the cause of autism. You really don’t know what your life would have been like without vaccines because you did get them and there is every indication that everything you have suffered through and experienced would have come to pass even without vaccines. Since there isn’t any way to know what would have happened, and no scientific evidence points at vaccines, your statement is unfair and inflammatory. There are children who develop autism without vaccines, many of them. And not everyone recovers just fine from measles or pertussis. I had pertussis at 17 and a cough that last for 3 or 4 months and once it was over, I still get a recurring cough if I laugh too much, because it caused permanent damage to my lungs. Unfortunately, without actual citations, your claims are invalid. That doesn’t minimize or invalidate your own personal suffering, it only invalidates your claims that vaccines did it all, and vaccines aren’t needed because the diseases they protect against aren’t that bad. As pointed out by Chris, this is why anecdotes do not constitute proof. I know I have a lot of anecdotes that say the opposite of what you are saying, the difference between mine and yours is mine are backed up by proven, scientific fact and research.
So Deb, are you saying families that are “anti-vax” are in fact, in a “no vax cult”? I’m curious as to your definition of health and how that conflicts with the anti-vax stance. Actually, I’m curious to your definition of cult as well. I’m mean that sincerely.
anarchic teapot
Oh good lord. Vaccination causes neither autism nor MS. We’re not quite sure exactly what causes them (although there seems to be a genetic component to autism at least), but it isn’t vaccination.
If you talk to anyone over the age of 55, they will tell you about their having had it as a child,
Yes, and it was hellish. I recall my mother being worried sick, too, so don’t come the “no one feared it” with me. It was known to cause disability and death.
sdwstephanies
I have a friend that has two children that have autism. It wasn’t until after they were diagnosed with autism did they get vaccinated. She was afraid of all the stories she heard about vaccine=autism. Well after getting the news that both her sons have autism she knew it was not the shots.
As I have told you multiple times, the question is not whether or not measles sometimes causes death, but whether the rarity of fatal complications and the benefits of getting the natural disease justify giving a dangerous vaccine to try to prevent measles. The exoneration of Professor John Walker-Smith yesterday is going to lead to the complete vindication of all those involved in the Lancet article Walker-Smith and Wakefield lost their licenses over. The judge, Sir John Mitting, said that there was no fraud involved, the children were appropriately treated for their condition, there was no connection between the lawsuit and the research, that the GNC acted on no justifiable grounds in revoking Professor Walker-Smith’s license, and that its revocation of his license was quashed, and Professor Walker-Smith’s license and privileges restored. At last a breath of honesty and truth!
The fact is that the MMR does indeed cause autism and/or bowel disease in many of the children who receive it, and this possiblility must be weighed against the likelihood of serious or fatal complications from the measles itself. This possibility must be weighed by the parents themselves, not the doctors, and their decision respected. The death rate from measles in Europe last year was three out of every ten thousand, nine total. One out of every 88 vaccinated children now has autism. (Of course, the MMR doesn’t cause all of that autism, the hep-B vaccine and the DTaP also cause it, others as well to a lesser degree.) Tragic outcomes are possible either way. Personally, I would rather take my and my daughter’s chances with getting the natural disease, as I, and over 90% of children in the 1960s, did.
The MMR has been used since 1971. If you have evidence that autism increased in the USA between 1971 and 1990, then please provide it. You cannot just make statements without any evidence.
And also, tell us exactly how Roald Dahl’s daughter Olivia is supposed to tell us how measles affected her life.
According to the CDC, in 1970 autism affected 4 in 10,000 children. By 1991, 5,000 autistic children were in the public school system; by 2001, that number had grown to 94,000 (and I think it’s at least doubled since then). I don’t have time right now to look for the figures you asked for, and I don’t know how many children total were in the school system in 1991, but if you’re saying that the MMR doesn’t cause autism, I think you’d have to explain the facts I do know. I know that at Mill Creek School in Columbia, Missouri, from a personal communication with the principal Mrs. Mary Sue Gibson, the rate went from four autistic children in 2009 to eight autistic children in 2011. It appears likely that the sheer number of vaccines given now may be responsible for this huge increase. Many thousands of parents say their child was developing normally until he got the MMR, and suddenly underwent a severe regression into autism and/or bowel disease. That’s why Dr. Wakefield said in the Lancet study that so sudden and severe a regression within days or weeks of the child receiving the MMR indicated a need for further study. His case study only involved twelve children, nine of whom developed both autism and bowel disease shortly after the MMR. One mother put it off for her second child when her first regressed after the MMR, but was finally persuaded to give it to her second child when she thought he was out of the danger range, and he suddenly regressed into autism and bowel disease right after getting it.
It would certainly be useful if researchers were allowed to do research on the rates at which different vaccines have been linked to severe chronic disease, both now and historically. I am confident they will be once Big Pharma’s big road block has been overcome. But the fact that Wakefield, Walker-Smith, Murch, and a number of other researchers were crucified merely for pointing out the coincidence of the MMR with severe symptoms, and suggested a need for further research to be done, seems to indicate that Big Pharma knows very well that it had to quash this line of inquiry immediately and thoroughly, to delay as much as they could the recognition that the MMR is associated with causing autism in many thousands of cases.
I read that one doctor told a fearful mother that a live child with autism was better than a child dead from a vaccine-preventable disease. I love my autistic daughter dearly, and am glad I have her. But I’m sure you’re aware that most women who know that they are carrying a child with Down’s syndrome choose to abort that child, meaning that a huge number of people would choose abortion over having a child with autism, death rather than disability. So that is a moral choice which must be left in the hands of the parents. (Pennsylvania is already going bankrupt from costs associated with autism. I’m terrified that one day the taxpayer will rebel when his taxes double or triple from autism costs, and it’s gone through my mind that they might eventually euthanize autistic people, over my dead body, of course, but I’ll probably die before my almost twelve-year old daughter does). If parents choose to take their chances with measles, usually a mild disease, rather than take the chance of causing autism in their child, that’s a completely justifiable choice. I personally am completely unwilling to damage my daughter further with vaccines, trusting that either she won’t get the more dangerous vaccine-preventable diseases like meningitis C (super dangerous vaccine!), or that a combination of allopathic crisis care and homeopathic/naturopathic treatment , and the efforts of her immune system, would probably be enough to save her. But it’s not a case of making this one choice to ensure life and health for your child, but rather a choice of which path seems more dangerous to you, no guarantees either way.
And I understand very well that the diseases can disable or kill. I’m not denying that Roald Dahl’s daughter has every right to her own opinion, based on her experiences. We all have that right, and our experiences and world view shape our opinions. But since most of us would not get the more dangerous of the diseases even if we didn’t vaccinate, would not have a dangerous case of usually mild diseases like pertussis or measles if we didn’t vaccinate, and since the vaccines disable or kill at a rate far higher than what is recognized by the medical establishment, my experiences and world view lead me to reject vaccines.
You really don’t know what happened to her! How can you be so foolish as to not even look it up! She cannot speak up for the same reason that at least five hundred other children per year who had the same fate did before 1963. Plus the thousands of children per year who became permanently disabled, some who only communicate with sign language and others who only read Braille. Calling measles and pertussis “mild diseases” is a lie.
She died when she was seven years old in a hospital from measles encephalitis: Roald Dahl’s secret notebook reveals heartbreak over daughter’s death. I suggest in the future you actually learn how to do real research, and stop being spoon fed nonsense by certain biased websites. Or even take the time to open up your mind to the comments directed towards you on this blog, and actually learn to click on the URL links that have been provided.
I’m sorry, you’re right, I didn’t look her up. But, as I’ve said, I’ve never denied that some children died from measles pneumonia or encephalitis. And everyone who is more afraid of that possibility than of death, autism, or bowel disease from natural measles is free to choose to get the MMR, I would not say a word to them about their choice unless they asked me. Around 1960 one in a thousand died from measles complications. Probably fewer would die now if it came back, we know about vitamin A reducing complications, the danger of antipyretics, etc. In Europe last year, as I’ve said before, the death rate was nine out of thirty thousand, a lot less than the one out of a thousand of fifty years ago. But whether it’s one out of one or ten thousand, it still means that most people who got it and get it make a complete recovery in a few weeks, with no permanent damage, but they do get permanent immunity. And it still means that thousands of parents have seen their child regress into autism within days or weeks of the MMR. Have you read Callous Disregard?
I think you should treat me politely. I’m nothing if not sincere, and I sincerely believe that in most cases (notice that I’m not saying all or always) vaccines are more dangerous than the diseases. My belief, my right, just as you have the right to your opinion. I’m homeschooling my daughter today, I keep her out of school on Thursdays for homeschooling today and on the weekend. I haven’t fed our rabbit, guinea pig, parakeets, canary, or hamster yet. The house is a wreck. I’m studying for a very hard ATA translators’ exam in two weeks, which I know I’m going to fail. My M.S. (from vaccines) means that I”m dizzy and unsteady on my feet all the time, and I can’t sleep at night. I just don’t have the time to research everything as I would like. You are antagonistic to me, which lessens my desire to follow your links and debate with you. What’s the point? It’s not as though either one of us were going to change our opinion. How could it? I held my baby all night for four nights through the encephalitic screaming, and my heart still aches because of the autism it caused, and sometimes I look at how pretty she is, and imagine her saying something normal about her day, in a normal way, and feel so sad because that was taken from us. I hope that my witness will at least make people think deeply about the issue before making their choice.
“I read that one doctor told a fearful mother that a live child with autism was better than a child dead from a vaccine-preventable disease. I love my autistic daughter dearly, and am glad I have her. But I’m sure you’re aware that most women who know that they are carrying a child with Down’s syndrome choose to abort that child, meaning that a huge number of people would choose abortion over having a child with autism, death rather than disability.”
This is seriously one of the most disgusting and sick responses I have ever heard in my life. “MOST” women?????? There are PLENTY of women that give birth to Down Sydrome Children and Austistic children and the children lead long and happy lives. If a parent chooses DEATH over a disability then they are NOT a parent at all and shouldn’t be having kids! A REAL parent would love and care for their child no matter what. But your right!!! Let’s just STOP vaccinating ALL children and let the diseases run wild once again. We will see then, whether or not parents think it may be wise to vaccinate. Eliminate the vaccines and the disease will come back full scale. It’s okay thought right? We will just cross our fingers that our children aren’t the ones the get the “really bad cases”, who end up becoming permenatly affected or die! Because once they are born and become disabled from a disease it’s too late to abort them then right??
Again you missed the entire point of this article. I hold not feelings of betrayal or animosity toward my parents. At first, yes I did, but I came to realize my parents weren’t deliberately keeping the truth from me, they were merely echoing what they had been raised to believe. When I was able to do my own research I found what they believed, and what they had taught me to believe were in fact wrong. That being the case, I did the only thing that a sensible person with the ability to think logically and rationally could have done; I had my children vaccinated.
It’s very clear you will not be swayed in what you believe. Vaccines are not your enemy, nor your children’s enemy, yet you treat them like they are out to do deliberate harm. More people are vaccinated then not, and I’m sure statistically, more who are not vaccinated suffer adverse reactions because of living through a disease then those who receive vaccines. That is scientific fact, not just opinion. If you choose to disavow science, you might as well go back to having your children bled when they get sick, or treating their disease with leeches. After all, if science is wrong about vaccines, why isn’t it wrong about everything else too?
Lack of medical coverage for my son and inability to pay for vaccines is why he remained unvaccinated for so long. Once he had coverage through medicaid, we got him vaccinated. And no, he didn’t go to he doctor, which is possibly why he was over two before we were really convinced something was wrong with him. If he had been seeing a doctor regularly, the tell tale signs would have been noticed, the loss of language skills, fixed attention of parts of toys or obsessive lining up of toys and inability to play normally with them, the toe walking, lack of eye contact as well as the obvious sensory issues and tantrums and inconsolable screaming fits and self injurious or assaultive behavior. I give a little more detail in a comment on the second part of the story. I was not away there were potentially services in place that could have helped me get him vaccinated as I’ve never been in a situation where I needed them before and generally speaking, they aren’t advertised, so if you don’t know they are there already, you generally don’t ever know until someone tells you and you do use them.
Of course not – if you read my comment I’m talking about ‘the movement.’ Admittedly this is ambiguous, but I mean the people and organisations who are active in spreading misinformation and attempting to recruit others. It’s like religion – the majority have their individual beliefs, but some extremists form groups that are dangerous to the health and well-being of their own members or others. I personally consider that most non-vaxxing families believe they are doing the right thing for their children, however misguided. But the leaders of the movement and the organisations that are actively promoting their ideology and recruiting others display cult-like characteristics.
There are a few different lists of cult behaviours, I chose this one because it was put together by a couple of people with PhDs and I think they probably know more about it than me. The AVN, the Australian organisation I’m most familiar with, checks at least 10 of those boxes – I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt and not counting any that I haven’t seen evidence for myself. Other people have written about it in more detail than I can in a comment, it should probably be easy to find.
My specific statement was that the movement ‘relies on emotion to try to convert people – much like a cult.’ I used your comment as evidence that you consider emotion to be important, and I feel the page I’ve linked to demonstrates that emotional manipulation is one of the things cults do. If you are going to engage online it’s important that you read what people actually say rather than putting your own interpretations on it, so I’m glad you asked for clarification.
I’m not sure why you’re after my definition of health, is it because I said this was being framed as a rights issue rather than health? Personally I think health is complex, but one aspect of being healthy is not having diseases – I remember having chicken pox and mumps, that definitely wasn’t healthy. Do you consider having diseases to be healthy? Many anti-vaxxers I’ve been in contact with do claim that diseases are good for various reasons. But yes, being anti-vax conflicts with my definition of being healthy, because I think diseases are bad and because being anti-vax means you are more likely to get them.
Please don’t try to argue that vaccines have not decreased disease incidence. The various graphs that get pulled out are based on mortality, not incidence, so they certainly aren’t going to convince me. And it’s very easy to do the maths to show that anti-vaxxers are far more likely to catch diseases. My references probably won’t convince you, which brings us back to the whole ‘based on emotions rather than facts.’ Now I’ve answered your questions, I’d like to know your take on the relative importance of emotion versus facts, with reference to your original comment which was exclusively about the style of the writing and its emotional content. Plus of course your definition of health and whether it includes having diseases.
That is true that if you are not aware of services for infants for free healthcare, they might be hard to find. I am surprised the hospital where he was born did not help you but I am not shocked. Some hospitals just let people leave without a followup plan. At least, you have him covered and taken care of now.
So, he had not had the hep b vax in the hospital when he was born? He had not been sick before age 2?
I think you should treat me politely. I’m nothing if not sincere, and I sincerely believe that in most cases (notice that I’m not saying all or always) vaccines are more dangerous than the diseases.
I have treated you as politely as you deserved. I was very surprised that you had not even bothered to check up on the family of a very famous children’s author. Plus you refuse to actually open your mind to new information, or even do basic research. I don’t care if you are sincere if you keep making blatantly false statements about the relative safety of vaccines and the diseases. You have been told time and time again that measles is dangerous, and that there is no real evidence that the MMR vaccine (which has been used for over forty years) causes autism. When you keep repeating the false statements again despite being told they are wrong, you are either a liar or purely delusional. If you think I am hostile, then stay away from the Internet. If you cannot be bothered to support your outrageous statements with real data, then stop posting them on the Internet if you do not like them being questioned. You have a choice: you can grow a backbone, learn to actually post real evidence and read the science, or you can stay away from the Internets.
Silly question, Ms Parker: How many ambulance rides have you been on with your own child? I was on three of his four trips in an ambulance, my husband accompanied him on his first one. I know from first hand experience it is hard to hold a baby/toddler when they are hooked up to monitors, an oxygen tube and an IV. Just a wee bit of advice that you don’t play “my kid was sick from the vaccine” card with me. If you think I am hostile, it is because I am realistic about the affects of vaccine preventable diseases from personal experience. A reality that you deny.
“no-one feared it”
Yep, measles was horrible, Mr Teapot, you are quite right. I remember my mother’s terror that even a tiny chink of light could make us blind when my sis and I caught it. I’d call that fear.
Measles in vaccinated children is often “atypical” measles, which is more severe than in unvaccinated children.
Millions of people have found that vaccines cause the things I say they do. Look at the Manitoba study done in 1998 on many thousands of Canadian children, which found that getting the pertussis vaccine at two months as opposed to later more than doubled their chance of asthma at the age of seven. The pertussis vaccine makes it five times more likely that they have asthma than if they don’t get it at all.
Autism did not exist before the 1930s. Dr. Leo Kanner examined the first children with it after the pertussis vaccine began to be used in the 1930s, and said it had never before been seen or described by anyone.
The French government took the hep-B vaccine off the list of mandated vaccines because so many people reported that they had gotten M.S. shortly after getting the vaccine. The tetanus vaccine has also caused symptoms similar to the paralysis of M.S., certainly sometimes causes Guillain-Barré syndrome and brachioplexal neuropathy, like what I had after a tetanus booster. Both arms became paralyzed the same day as I got the shot. That paralysis only lasted two days, it was later that I was diagnosed with M.S., but the paralysis and optic neuritis were so similar that I don’t tink a link can be ruled out.
One reason that the MMR started to cause autism more often is that the vaccination recommendations changed in the 1980s, those who received the vaccine at twelve months or younger were revaccinated at fifteen months; a second vaccinatin, to be administerd by the age of four, was introduced in 1991; and the current recommendation to vaccinate at twelve months was introduced. I’m going to have to split this reply.
Another reason the MMR started causing more autism was that in 1990, Merck quadrupled the amount of the mumps vireus included in the U.S. MMR vaccine, it was increased from 5,000 to 20,000 units. The viruses contained in the MMR vaccine interfere with each other and may increase the risk of adverse reactions. The U.S. birth cohort of 1989 was the first to receive this new vaccine.
The hep-B at birth starting in 1991 may also have started the process of damage in newborns who got (and get) it, resulting in severe cumulative damage when the MMR is given later.
Sir John Mitting, the judge in the Walker-Smith case, suspended his judgment for a few weeks because he was deeply troubled by the case and needed to research it more. He eventually found that there was NO FRAUD involved in Wakefield and Walker-Smith’s Lancet study, the children were APPROPRIATELY TREATED for their illness, there was NO CONNECTIN between the lawsuit and the case study, that the GMC had used SUPERFICIAL REASONING to reach FALSE CONCLUSIONS. The GMC actually never alleged fraud, that was something you people came up with. Even Brian Deer back away from the allegation of fraud several months ago, when he saw which way the wind was blowing.
This means that the Lancet study made correct, unimpeachable observations that nine of the Lancet Twelve’s terrible symptoms of autism and bowel disease started within days or weeks of getting the MMR vaccine. The study cautiously added that this did not prove a link, but certainly gave grounds for further study. It looked VERY SUSPICIOUS! Wakefield, Walker-Smith, and Murch acted like compassionate, conscientious scientists and doctors, and were DRAGGED THROUGH THE MUD FOR IT! Tens of thousands of other parents have seen their children regress into autism and bowel disease shortly after getting the MMR. If the Lancet study had been followed up on fourteen years ago, and if it had then become obvious that the MMR is guilty as charged, countless thousands of families would have been spared a lifetime of disabiility.
Several of you have commented about personal knowledge of severe cases of measles. Again, I would never deny that it can be serious or even fatal. But the MMR to prevent it can also be serious or even fatal. Such reactions are frequent enough that I think any reasonable person would conclude that it’s only fair to let parents make their own decision as to whether or NOT they want to give their child the vaccine. If you don’t want my unvaccinated child to associate with yours, that’s fine, I really don’t care, no one wants to play with her anyway because of her vaccine-induced autism. (No MMR for her, though!)
Dr. Robert Sears in The Vaccine Book (2007 edition, p. 82) that measles is not usually serious. Most cases, especially in children, pass in a week or so without any trouble. However, approximately 1 in 1000 cases is fatal.
That statistic is from fifty years ago, when measles was still a common, routine childhood disease. Last year in Europe, there were thirty thousand cases, nine deaths, so a fatality rate of one in 3,300 cases, a lower rate than fifty years ago here.
Richard Moskowitz said that there were so few fatalities from measles, serious sequelae were inconsequential, and the benefits to those who had recovered from it and to their children were so great, that it was a bad idea to vaccinate against it and run the risk of the autoimmune problems that it often caused.
In a 1984 congressional safety hearing, Wendy Scholl gave this testimony about her daughter’s reaction to the MMR.
These are some articles on encephalitis or Guillain-Barré syndrome or thrombocytopenia occurring shortly after the measles vaccine. There are dozens more I have citations for, but I think yoú’ll get the point with these. A lot of people have taken the adverse events caused by the MMR very seriously:
Beale, A.J. Measles vaccines, Proc of the Royal Soc of Med, 1974: 67:24.
Roden, A.T. Fits following Immunization. Proc of the Royal Soc of Med 1974: 67:24.
Jagdis, et al. Encephalitis after administration of live measles vaccine, Journal of the Canadian Medical Association, April 19, 1975, 112(8):972-75.
Hirayama, M. Measles vaccines used in Japan, Rev of Infectious Dis 1983, 5, 495-503.
Pollack, T.M., et al, A 7-year survey of disorders attributed to vaccination in NW Thames Region, Lancet, 1983, 1: 753-757.
Jorch G., et al, Coincidence of virus encephalitis and measles-mumps vaccination, Monataschr Kinderheilkd 1984; 132(5): 299-300.
Morris, K., et al, Guillain-Barré syndrome after measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine, Lancet 1994; 343: 60.
Oski, F.A., et al, Effect of live measles vaccine on platelet count, New England Journal of Medicine 1976; 265; 352-356.
Someone on Age of Autism observed what I had, that there’s an absolute silence from you people on Sir John Mitting’s judgment the other day. Are you awaiting instructions from your superiors on how to play this?
Of course they are. That’s obvious. They had to do quick BS story like this one to distract from the real story.
Not sure what a judge’s ruling on a misconduct case in the UK has anything to do with the decision to vaccinate or not, cia. My silence is because it is completely irrelevant. My decision to vaccinate is based on the science. A judge’s ruling doesn’t change that science.
And unlike anti-vaxers, I have the ability to think for myself. You just parrot back the same misinformation over and over again, even though you have been corrected on this blog many times. Obviously you lack the ability to think for yourself and just do what your masters at AoA tell you to do. Doesn’t it get embarrassing for you when you take the misinformation out of AoA onto other blogs and get pwn’d every single time?
cia parker :
The French government took the hep-B vaccine off the list of mandated vaccines because so many people reported that they had gotten M.S. shortly after getting the vaccine.
Citation needed, as they say. In fact, only diptheria, polio and tetanus are obligatory for all in France. Hep B is recommended, as are a number of others, including MMR. Source: (in French). Some of the recommended vaccines are obligatory for certain jobs or attending a public school.
The tetanus vaccine has also caused symptoms similar to the paralysis of M.S., certainly sometimes causes Guillain-Barré syndrome and brachioplexal neuropathy, like what I had after a tetanus booster. Both arms became paralyzed the same day as I got the shot. That paralysis only lasted two days, it was later that I was diagnosed with M.S., but the paralysis and optic neuritis were so similar that I don’t tink a link can be ruled out.
“The weight of the available scientific evidence does not support the suggestion that hepatitis B vaccine causes or worsens MS.” Source:
I do this out of love for my daughter. What do you call people who get paid for opposing us?
Autism did not exist before the 1930s. .
There is a huge difference between something NOT existing, and something not having a specific defining list of diagnostic symptoms. That is the difference with autism. Of course it existed prior to the official diagnosis of the disorder being recognized, which is probably why Dr Kanner began to study children with it so it could be defined and have specific diagnostic points. Over the years those diagnostic criteria have changed multiple times until we have what we define autism as today, but even that has yet to change next year where PDD-NOS will no longer carry the ASD definition. The ‘science’ you quote of course is suspect simply because you rely on information from AoA, a notorious anti vax site, where I personally have been insulted, abused, threatened and ultimately blocked from posting anything (love the first amendment rights violation there by the way) and anything coming from their site is not going to be real science, therefore it cannot be trusted. I rely on independent research, and there is a significant amount of it out there, and none has ever found any link between vaccines of any sort and autism. Obviously, when it is found there are safety issues with a vaccine, it is pulled from the market, that doesn’t make all vaccines unsafe, nor does it make ones that are release to replace the ones that are removed unsafe. Vaccines are subject to the most strict safety and effectiveness testing of anything else on the market, including the food you eat. Because it is important to make sure that vaccines are as safe as it is possible for them to be, as well as effective for preventing the diseases, everything about them is tested, retested and them monitored for years after they are administered to ensure there are no adverse reactions. When adverse reactions do occur, the vaccine is removed and reformulated and retested for a very long time before it is released again. By the way, the paralysis you mention after the tetanus shot is not an out of the ordinary reaction seeing as tetanus is actually a neurotoxin that can cause paralysis. That’s why tetanus poisoning is sometimes referred to as lock jaw. But tetanus poisoning and MS are not the same thing as MS is an auto immune disorder, not poisoning.
Public health advocates. I don’t get paid to correct your misinformation, cia. I oppose you because I don’t want to see children suffer for the lies that you spread cia. Not sure how spreading lies that put others at risk is showing love for your daughter though, cia. Perhaps you could explain that one.
Why should we believe you? Post the citations, and make sure they actually support your statements.
Most of those are not on the American MMR vaccine (hint: the words “used in Japan” and “NW Thames Region” (which was on DTP), one in a German journal), one is a general article on various vaccine strains, there is a case report, and neither Guillain-Barre nor platelet count are autism.
Again, where is the evidence that the rise of autism started in 1971 in the USA? Plus why would the HepB vaccine be more of a cause of increases in autism diagnoses than the 1994 introduction of the DSM-IV?
You have MS, right. It may be a possibility that your “tetanus reaction” was your first episode. Occam’s razor- the most likely explanation for your phenomena is in fact a single disease entity.
The recent judgement in favour of Walker-Smith exonerated him from misconduct, not Wakefield. The judge specifically pointed out the lack of evidence for the link which they proposed (the lack of evidence was probably what he took some time to verify). Not just lack of evidence either, but systematic attempts to replicate the Wakefield “data”. Walker-Smith is now thought to be an innocent victim of Wakefield’s fraud. Wakefield, by the way, seems to be the unlikely darling of the anti-vaccine movement at the moment. This is infuriating. The man deliberately falsified data. His motive was a single measles vaccine which he hoped to make millions out of by terrifying the public about MMR. Face the truth. The vaccine-autism link was a scam or a conspiracy by a man who wanted to make money from vaccines.
p.s. as people have tried to explain, there has not been a “huge increase” in autism. What is happening is that we are diagnosing it better. Also, early intervention and other assistance for autistic children means there is additional incentive to diagnose, and many quite mildly affected children are being diagnosed (there was no Asperger’s syndrome in the ’70s).
There was a recent study in the UK which verifies the consistent prevalence in adults of various ages and children. When using current diagnostic criteria across different age groups, this confirms that the “epidemic” theory is incorrect. Autism has always been here, in similar rates. In the past they weren’t labelled though, particularly the mild ones.
Thanks for sharing your story Lara. There are many more parents of autistic children who don’t believe that vaccines caused their child’s autism than we might believe from reading articles on the internet. These informed parents are mostly less vocal, they’re probably concentrating on the best outcomes for their children. It’s nice that some are speaking out!
gattarian
Very little of this is accurate. John Walker-Smith was indeed reinstated on the medical roles in Great Britain. However, none of the things you said about the Lancet paper are true. It has been impeached directly and by lack of replication. The court did not find NO fraud, only that the GMC had not determined Walker-Smith’s culpability.
Here is a copy of the actual ruling. Please tell me the section which exonerates the Lancet Study.
http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Admin/2012/503.html
Maybe this bit?
“Professor Walker-Smith gave unchallenged evidence that this was the last draft of the paper which he saw. Dr. Murch said, again in unchallenged evidence, that there was then a meeting attended by all of the researchers and clinicians involved to discuss the draft, which they approved. At the end of the meeting there was a discussion between Dr. Murch, Professor Walker-Smith, Dr. Thomson and Dr. Wakefield about the reference to Ethics Committee approval of “this clinical investigation”, because it was a clinically driven investigation which did not require Ethics Committee approval. Dr. Murch said that Dr. Wakefield had assured them that he would liaise with the Lancet to ensure that appropriate wording was substituted. The wording in the published paper which neither Dr. Murch nor Professor Walker-Smith saw before publication was,
“Ethical approval and consent
Investigations were approved by the Ethical Practices Committee of the Royal Free Hospital NHS Trust, and parents gave informed consent.”
This statement was untrue and should not have been included in the paper.”
Or perhaps this bit?
“In paragraph 34 of its determination, the panel found that Professor Walker-Smith was irresponsible and in breach of his duty to ensure that the information in the paper was accurate, because it stated that investigations were approved by the Ethics Committee. This finding was justified. Professor Walker-Smith should not have allowed a paper to be published under his name without ensuring its accuracy.”
. Now that Professor Walker-Smith has been cleared of all wrongdoing, for the same research for which Dr. Wakefield also lost his license, and the GMC which persecuted both doctors has been adjudged to have given faulty, deficient reasoning to reach FALSE conclusions, it would behoove you if you were an honest, ethical person to apologize for your insults and rethink your stance on the safety of the MMR, and, by extension, all vaccines.
You are a funny lady. Some reading for you:
March 10, 2012 at 12:10 pm | #67
Dr. Kanner was a renowned neurologist at Johns Hopkins in the 1930s and ’40s. He collaborated with his colleagues on a compendium of all neurological disorders known to mankind in the mid-’30s, and they described nothing even remotely resembling autism, because it did not yet exist. You people asset that it has always existed, and at the same rate as now, which would mean that at its present incidence of one in 88, one in 48 boys, someone would have noticed it and described it, but the fact is that no one ever did. Dr. Kanner examined the first children who had it, all from rich families, starting in 1938, shortly after some rich families had started to give a prototype of the pertussis vaccine to their children. He published his article in which he coined the term autism in 1943, and in it he said that this was a condition never before in all of the annals of history ever seen or described. Only rich children had it until the 1960s, when public health programs made the DTP and autism accessible to all social classes. Parents must be allowed to make up our own minds as to whether or not to give our children any vaccine. Drs. Wakefield, Walker-Smith, their fellow researchers, and the parents of the damaged children all thought it was significant that the nine of the Lancet Twelve who developed autism and bowel disease did so within days or weeks of receiving the MMR. Tens of thousands of other families since then have seen their own childen regress into autism and/or bowel disease within days or weeks of getting the MMR. Obviously, research of this issue was for the most part squelched by the public lynching of these doctors. Now Dr. Walker-Smith has been completely exonerated,, and the medical board which lynched him has been reprimanded for its superficiall reasoning and FALSE conclusions. Your side is going to have to do some major regrouping. In the meantime, the fact that measles, mumps, and rubella are very rarely serious diseases for children may welll cause a huge number of parents to reject this dangerous vaccine, and it is our right to do so. I’m not saying that they can never be serious diseases, even for children, but that it’s necessary to read and cast your lot one way or the other, there is no alternative that is a guaranteed safe choice, and the stakes are very high. Autoimmune diseases are usually, if not always, caused by the immune system being confused by vaccines. Vaccines are designed to cause it to react with inflammation, that’s what causes it to produce antibodies. Unfortunately, no one knows how to let the immune system know that it should keep its inflammation within certain boundaries, and so we see in a huge number of vaccine recipients an inordinate amount of acute or chronic inflammation, resulting in encephalitis soon after the vaccine (as in my baby), causing autism, ADHD, seizure disorders, learning disorders, or chronic autoimmune inflammation, causing asthma, allergies, bowel disease, diabetes, or multiple sclerosis (etc.). Vaccines can set into motion an autoimmune process which may take months or years to manifest.. These are VAERS reports on children with paralysis from the tetanus vaccine. Please don’t say these reports on vaccine damage are worthless when you don’t have any better way of tracking adverse events. It seems very suspicious that you’re just totally willing to discount and ignore any and all reports of adverse events soon after vaccines:
43425: a 1 year-old boy received the DT and three days later lost head control, his arms became weak, he developed labored breathing, and subsequently died.
166017: a 7-year-old boy received the tetanus vaccine (T), developed complete paralysis from head to toes, and was hospitalized with Guillain-Barré syndrome.
115055: an 11-year-old girl received the T and one day later lost strength in her legs, developed visual deterioration and lost control of her bowels and bladder. Symptoms included neuropathy, optic neuritis, myelitis, spastic paraparesis, and sensory loss.
Immediately after getting a tetanus booster when I was nineteen, the same day anyway, both my arms became painful and paralyzed, and my college roommate had to help me in the cafeteria and to get dressed for two days. Brachioplexal neuropathy. Who are you to say that was unrelated to my later developent of MS? There has been such a deliberate stifling of research related to vaccine damage that one has to wonder what Big Pharma is afraid will come to light if this research were permitted. Their lying about Wakefield and Walker-Smith, and the worldwide public dismemberment of these admirable men, would seem to indicate that they know they have a lot to fear.
Multiple sclerosis did not exist before the smallpox vaccine in the early nineteenth century. I read books on M.S. when I was first diagnosed, and read about the Swiss nobleman who was the first recorded case of M.S.,, with a dramatic exacerbaton which then remitted. It observed that it was so dramatic and unusual (like autism a century later) that if it had existed before it would have been noticed and described. Vaccines can set off an autoimmune demyelinating reaction, stripping off the myelin sheath of the nerve endings in the brain and spinal cord. It would appear that the natural disease tetanus may cause paralysis because it causes a similar demyelinating reaction. I had sensory loss (numbness), hemiparesis (my left arm and leg were paralyzed for over a month), optic neuritis and double vision (I had to wear an eye patch over my left eye), and I would fall down when I attempted to walk. Until a LOT more research is done, I think it is premature of you to say the tetanus vaccine could not possibly cause M.S. The French government took the hep-B off the list of mandated vaccines because it caused so many cases of M.S.
I think it is unwise of you to even mention the Age of Autism website. Those whom you have not totally brainwashed to not stick their nose out of the sheepfold may click their way to it and be impressed, as I was when I found it a year ago, by the scientific cogency and moral passion of the articles and comments published there, as well as the many personal, blow-by-blow testimonials of the families whose children, like mine, were damaged by vaccines. And since most families care more about the wellbeing of their children than about adhering to a political philosophy, you might do better to not even point them in that direction.
Drs. Wakefield, Walker-Smith, their fellow researchers, and the parents of the damaged children all thought it was significant that the nine of the Lancet Twelve who developed autism and bowel disease did so within days or weeks of receiving the MMR.
Actually, not really. That paper is still retracted, and they really did not connect any of the versions of MMR vaccine. It says so in its conclusion:
We did not prove an association between measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine and the syndrome described. Virological studies are underway that may help to resolve this issue. These are VAERS reports on children with paralysis from the tetanus vaccine. The real VAERS website says:
Again I ask, what do you have to read and understand before accessing the database? You might find the following blog article useful:
March 10, 2012 at 2:48 pm | #69
Saying that autism didn’t exist before Dr Kanner ‘found’ it is like saying electricity didn’t exist before Benjamin Franklin flew his kite. It WAS there, always there, there was just not a name for it and no confirmed list of criteria to define it. THAT is what Dr Kanner did, he didn’t invent autism, he simply defined it. I believe the numbers you gave are slightly inflated. Last I heard the official numbers were 1 in 100 and 1 in 70 boys. That is everyone being diagnosed with an ASD, so it is taking everything into account, PDD-NOS, Asperger’s, Rhett’s Syndrome and autistic disorder, in the 1930s only autistic disorder was defined and only very severe or profound autistic disorder at that. The rich were not the only ones who had autism, it was in the lower income communities as well, it just wasn’t diagnosed due to lack of medical care, and had nothing to do with getting a vaccine or not, simply whether or not the child had regular doctor’s visits so the doctor could find something wrong. If a family couldn’t afford regular well baby care for their child, and since the symptoms of autism generally begin to manifest prominently between 12 months and two years of age, with a few exceptions, the only way anyone would know something was wrong is if they were being checked regularly by a medical professional to see if they were reaching their developmental milestones. Even after Dr Kanner defined the symptoms of autism, there were still many that went undiagnosed simply because their doctor was unfamiliar with it so didn’t know enough to diagnose it. We find that even today, doctor’s show a lack of understanding and knowledge.
There are many factors that have increased the incidence and prevalence, most of which have to do with changes is the diagnostic criteria. Another would be the sheer number of us on the planet today compared with the 1930s. There are more of us, and since this particular disorder has genetic markers it’s going to become more prevalent as the population grows. Parental age has a significant influence as well and many parents now are waiting until they are in their 30s to begin their families, that could also have a huge impact. What was the average age of new mothers and fathers in the 1930s compared to now? Using your logic, one could argue that the feminist movement caused autism. The old line “Correlation does not equal causation” is very fitting in your situation. But you seem unable to face the fact that sometimes these things happen, like lightning striking and are random genetic mutations, you must have something to blame. I have felt for a very long time, it’s time to get past the vaccine issue and focus on the real issue: autism. If we focus on the autism, we may come to understand it better eventually. And understanding is the first step toward overcoming.
Sir John said none of the things you’ve stated here. I suggest you look at the actual ruling, rather than someone’s biased interpretation of it. What Sir John did say, and the basis for his ruling, was that Walker-Smith believed himself to be doing tests that were necessary to the children’s medical treatment and in line with their symptoms and diagnosis. What he also said was that Wakefield knew himself to be doing research and doing it without ethics committee approval. Not quite the same thing.
I recently read a facinating book regarding Autism in History – I will try and find the reference. It took a rally fascinating angle of searching legal documents – which have a greater likelihood of being availalbe and kept indefinately and searched cases involving competency hearings, probate cases etc where a person was being questioned about their competency to manage their own affairs. Descriptions in court transcripts of social/ developmental / behavioural aspects mirrored DSM-IV criteria for diagnosis of PDDs. It was fascinating to follow individual cases of outcomes and the thinking and labeling practices of the times. BTW that cases were from the 1800s
Measles is not usually serious, though occasioally it is. This is a link to the editorialist Sam Blumenfeld writing on vaccines for the New American. He remembers having measles as a child, as I do, and says it was no big deal for him:
. He remembers having measles as a child, as I do, and says it was no big deal for him:
One or two stories by one or two people do not constitute scientific evidence that a disease isn’t harmful to many, many more and deadly still to others. Without scientific rigor and fact to back up your statements you are merely spewing nonsense and ideology, not fact and that is where the difference lies in what you choose to believe and what has been found to be correct. Measles continues to be the most contagious virus to human kind, meaning if a person has it, they can’t help but spread it. I, personally, don’t want to take my chances that a disease might ‘be no big deal’, I’d rather not have to be sick to begin with. That goes for my children also, I don’t want them to have to suffer through something like that, particularly when there is a strong potential for lasting harm. That, along with the science that backs it up, is why I choose to vaccinate my children and there isn’t anything that will change my mind.
Measles is not usually serious, though occasioally it is.
Note that the URL link you provided includes the word “opinion.” In short, it is still not data. I know you will not bother reading this link: The Clinical Significance of Measles: A Review. So I will post a couple of highlights for you, with added emphasis:
Postinfectious encephalomyelitis (PIE) occurs in 13 per 1000 infected persons, usually 3–10 days after onset of rash [39, 131]. Higher rates of PIE due to measles occur in adolescents and adults than in school-aged children (table 2 [124, 132, 133]). PIE usually begins with the abrupt onset of new fever, seizures, altered mental status, and multifocal neurological signs [131, 134]. Although measles virus was found in cerebrovascular endothelial cells in a person who died during the first few days of rash [135], the virus usually is not found in the central nervous systems of persons with PIE. PIE appears to be caused by an abnormal immune response that affects myelin basic protein [61, 136]. As many as 25% of people with PIE due to measles die, and ∼33% of survivors have lifelong neurological sequelae, including severe retardation, motor impairment, blindness, and sometimes hemiparesis [39, 131]. Ms. Parker, please stop downplaying the effects of measles with your anecdotes. If you have real evidence that the MMR vaccine that has been used in the USA since 1971 causes more than one out of a hundred side effects more dire than encephalomyelitis, the present the title, journal and date of your evidence. No stories, no unsupported “statistics” and no complaints how we are being mean to you. Just post the scientific evidence to support your statements.
If you could provide the title of the book, I know I for one would love to read it. I’m sure there are others also who would find it fascinating too. Thanks for sharing this information. It proves that even though it didn’t have a name, autism was still there.
Of course it’s your right to decide whether or not to get the MMR or any other vaccine for yourself or your children. I’m sure you saw my post about all the other horrible diseases the MMR can cause besides autism and bowel disease. Nine out of thirty thousand died of the measles in Europe last year, and I personally, with memories of the natural disease, feel totally confident that if my daughter got it, she would recover with no problem. Total bedrest, darkened room, well-hydrated, no fever reducers like Tylenol, vitamin A if there were signs of danger. The fever gets very high and the cough bad, it would be scary, I get nervous every time she has the flu or bronchitis, but the permanent immunity would be of great value. And, both of us having been vaccine-damaged, I’m simply not willing to run the risk of further vaccine damage.
But I totally respect your decision to take a different course, and sincerely hope that nothing harmful happens to you or your children either from a vaccine or from a natural disease.
Look up the Touch Point website, it used to be called Judevine, an autism service agency. The CDC is supposed to release updated figures on autism incidence soon that will probably be similar to Touch Point’s one in 88, one in 48 boys. The one in a hundred figure is from three or four years ago, the principal of the school my daughter went to for five years said the number of autistic kids there doubled in two years, and Rock City, a suburb of St. Louis, said that the number of autistic kids in public schools there has doubled in the past five years.
Hi Lara,
Firstly – thank you for taking the time to share your experience. I am a Psychologist who works with the families of children with disabilities and reading about the diversity of families and their individual journey helps others more than you know.
Even the negative or questioning responses are important becuase they show the families of other children the range of attitudes they are going to experience.
I had lent the book to a friend ( who runs a visiting teacher service for children with disabilities – we all tend to cluster together!) but she has rifled through her bookcase and found it for me. It is called Autism in History: The case of Hugh Blair of Borgue (2000). Houston,R & Frith, U. Blackwell Publishers.
I’m sure you saw my post about all the other horrible diseases the MMR can cause besides autism and bowel disease.
Citation needed. At no time have you shown that the MMR vaccine causes more harm than measles with any real evidence. And there is no real evidence that it has anything to do with autism, and you have certainly shown no evidence that autism increased in frequency starting in 1971 in the USA when the MMR was introduced there.
Nine out of thirty thousand died of the measles in Europe last year,
So how many deaths would it take for you to consider it dangerous? Back to the days before the vaccine when deaths averaged 500 per year in the USA? The article I gave you (here), says of the 26000 cases there were 7,288 hospitalizations. That is one in four being hospitalized. That is not considered a “minor” thing.
Stop lying.
In addition to the book Quakka mentioned (down below), there is also a book by a dad, Paul Collins, called Not Even Wrong: A Father’s Journey into the Lost History of Autism.
I mucked up the link:
My name is Renee Hartman I’m currently earning my MS to Dr in Natural Medicine to Ph D in Integrative Medicine, i.e. both Medical & Holistic / natural / alternative Medicines. I started this journey years ago when our 1st baby almost died at 6 months of age by following our Family Physicians recommendation to reduce her high fever. Tylenol was not working fast enough so we were advised to give her infants Motrin. 20 min after I administered it, our daughter started turning blue and was gasping for air. We rushed to the hospital. We were told if we would have been 5 minutes later she would have died. The doctor at the hospital asked if we’d vaccinated her, we told him we were debating whether to vaccinate because I had reactions as a child and I wanted someone to tell me it was 100% safe…Through the years our daughter has had the most reactions to medications/ foods /detergents /soaps etc. at this time. Our youngest child also has allergies to may foods, however, I’ve not tried medications with him – because of our experience with our daughter and also having been in school learning how to help naturally…it’s just better for them and their bodies. Our children our medically exempt from any & all vaccines yearly and we get a doctors slip for milk & their shots. However, I received a message& letter Friday concerning the chicken pox outbreak at Western Schools -5 student is considered an outbreak?!?! SO WEIRD. We WANT our children to go to school and they have their right to their education. NO doctor in the past 12+ years can guarantee vaccines are safe for them, I know why cannot too. Besides, If our children catch the Chicken Pox, it’s a good thing, their body will make the immunoglobulin and immunomemory for it- this is NOT a bad thing. This is what “vaccines” are suppose to do but there is NO concrete proof they do this. In the letter from the Health Department, they even admit the out break was caused by children who received the vaccine. Our children may be forced to miss 21 days of school from the last cause reported – that is ridiculous!!! Our daughter has only missed 1 1/2 days of school ALL YEAR – she has all A’s. Our son has missed 2 1/2 days of school ALL YEAR – he makes A & B’s. This is SO WRONG!!!! Our children are healthy and it is OUR right as their parent to make this decision and judgment call, especially since they are medically exempt and I understand and have education on the subject at hand. Chicken Pox is NOT life threatening or a serious disease -if they get away with this…they will get away with more. Our rights are being pulled out from underneath us slowly -it’s ridiculous. Our children have already been exposed numerous times to Chicken pox, at previous schools but have not gotten it and they were allowed to attend school. Our children’s MD knows it is unsafe for them due to their numerous allergies, medical sensitive’s, including to eggs. I was also taught the same during Pathology & Pathophysiology in 06, i.e. “those with sensitive systems, numerous allergies, immunocompromised systems, weakened immune systems [etc] are more susceptible in having a adverse reaction and vaccines should be avoided until the allergies, symptoms subside. And those with egg allergies are exempt.” I’ve spent the past 12 + years studying not only the medical side but also natural and most of my teachers have been MD’s or had Ph D of some kind and why I’m still in school at this time. I’ve done all of this just to be able to help my children. As stated, we cannot get anyone to tell us if we inject a foreign pathology /substance into our children with their sensitive systems, egg allergy [etc] that it will not cause a reaction, bring harm to them or their body, kill them…I would think that their doctor would know what is best. We are not breaking any laws, we are good Christian people and we LOVE our children so much. It is our job as their parent, protector, teacher, mentor, guider and so on to do what is best for them. Again, I’m not an ignorant parent who doesn’t have understanding or education in the subject at hand. Believe me, I would not be continuing to go to school and through all of this if my children didn’t matter to me. As parents, I feel this is just part of the job and I want to help my children and I want them to have an as normal life as possible, I want them to succeed and I want them to go to school /college. We are not trying to cause any problems or trouble…what parent wouldn’t do the same for their children?!?!?!
However, tomorrow Monday March 26th 2012 – our children may not be punished /discriminative against because they cannot receive “vaccines.” This is unjust and unfair -unconstitutional. If we allow our government to continue on this path…ALL of our rights will be GONE!!! They are slowly doing this now!!! This is SO WRONG!!!
- you think there is no evidence for the effectiveness of the vaccine
- you think your children are healthy, yet admit that they have medical exemptions because they have defective immune systems
- you think it is your right to harm your children
For someone who claims not to be an ignorant parent, there sure is a lot of things you are ignorant about.
Besides, If our children catch the Chicken Pox, it’s a good thing, their body will make the immunoglobulin and immunomemory for it- this is NOT a bad thing.
Not really. The varicella virus does not go away, it stays in their body and will come back as shingles. How come you did not know that?
Also, it is quite cruel to have children suffer two weeks with itchy open wounds (pox). The school district is trying to prevent that from happening to your children because you do not understand vaccines (or the diseases). Our children’s MD knows it is unsafe for them due to their numerous allergies, medical sensitive’s, including to eggs. So they have a medical exemption? The egg allergy is not a reason to avoid the varicella vaccine, so they must have more severe immune issues. Even more reason to keep them out of school if there is a varicella outbreak. If they cannot be vaccinated, you definitely don’t want to chance them getting the full blown disease! They may end up like the poor Christopher.
Steve Michaels
Interesting how you have completely ignored the credentials and points made by Renee and make a completely idiotic statement about chicken pox. Let me elaborate. You said, “Not really. The varicella virus does not go away, it stays in their body and will come back as shingles. How come you did not know that?” The varicella (chicken pox) vaccine is a LIVE vaccine. If natural exposure leaves the virus dormant within the body, so does the vaccine. You also completely ignored the cause of the outbreak: vaccinated children who contracted the disease from the vaccine. Nice one Chris.
That would be an appeal to authority, Steve, if Renee actually had credentials. The link she provides says she is a massage therapist practicing “therapeutic touch”. She is furthering her studies in equally bogus disciplines and it is evident in her line of study that they didn’t teach her about chicken pox.
The vaccine is made up of an ATTENUATED live virus. The attenuated part is important. It means that the vaccine virus is less likely to come back as shingles than the real disease. Renee prefers the real, full-strength, virulent form of the virus which is more likely to return as shingles. The information Renee provided does not identify the cause of the outbreak Steve, just that the students infected so far have been vaccinated. You know you are way out of your league with this stuff, Steve.
And according to the health department the children have had one dose, not necessarily the recommended two.
mplo
Lara:
I read your story with much interest. Thanks for a huge breath of fresh air in the wake of so much hatred, hostility and intolerance of other people’s points of view, especially on the subject of vaccines. You’re absolutely right on when you say that when autism occurs, it’ll occur whether a child is vaccinated or not. The British-born Dr. Andrew Wakefield lost his license to practice medicine due to the fact that he promoted the anti-vaccine movement, using deliberately falsified data in order to promote his point. He deserved to lose his career. That jenny McCarthy is an equally dangerous person, and she, too, needs to be stopped in her tracks.
I never thought much of vaccines as a kid… not too in depth. But I never liked the idea of something going into my muscle. ..so when they had free flu vaccines at my work years and years later it made me think about it a little more… I felt like if this even did work wouldnt the toxic stuff inside vaccines just sit in my muscle for years? Or could it travel somewhere I wouldnt want it, like the lungs or brain? That made me think of autism straight away… because I know people with autisn generally have high amounts of metals in there body… clearly im not a health professional of any kind and I was 19 at the time. And I never got the vaccine!!
Now that im 25 and pregnant with my first child. Vaccines crossed my mind.. so I did a bucket load of research and now that I know the FACTS (not just what the government and pharmaceutical companies tell us) I will not be vaccinating my child. And this is probably the first decision in my life ive ever been 100% confident in. My partner doesnt agree with me. But when I read him stats and journals etc he cries “conspiracy theory” without giving it a chance.
Theres a study they did in new Zealand proving that unvaccinated children are healthier then their vaccinated peers (google it!)
I have had one flu since I was 7 and it lasted two days… my friends get the flu shot every year and always seem to be sick.
Do some research before its too late. I believe that the body can heal itself just fine, and im not some kind of pot smoking hippie, I just dont believe the answer is in monkey testicles, cow parts, eggs, formaldehyde, mercury or any of the other toxic crap they put in shots ..
Oh yeah I had chickenpox shot…. still got chickenpox!
Wow I know this is old. But cia parker… totally on your side on this. Dont listen to those other twitts…
Hey sarcastic assholes… how about you GO AHEAD pump your kids full of TOXIC CRAP and we wont because we actually have factual evidence for reasons not too.
And if anything bad happens then
WE TOLD YOU SO :)
novalox
@sarah
[citation needed], necromancer.
Immunization Action Coalition
Institute for Vaccine Safety at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
Meningitis Angels
National Foundation for Infectious Diseases
National Meningitis Association
National Network for Immunization Information
Parents of Kids with Infectious Diseases
The History of Vaccines
Vaccine Education Center at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia
Voices for Vaccines |
The Stones of Ancient Latium
Inscriptions, Archaeological Remains, and the Geographic Contexts of Latium Vetus How to Apply
PREREQUISITES AND EXPECTATIONS
We invite applications from students in a broad range of programs: e.g. Classical Studies, History, Archaeology, Geographical Studies, Linguistics, et cetera. Teachers of High School Latin seeking to improve their familiarity with the archaeology and culture of the ancient Italians are also encouraged to apply. Our goal is to create a collaborative and multidisciplinary community of scholars at multiple stages in their academic careers.
I. Latin: As a course focused on Latin inscriptions, the program requires the equivalent of two semesters of university-level Latin. Students, having relevant skills in geographic studies, but not the appropriate level of Latin preparation, must complete a no-charge, four week, mini-course on the essentials of the Latin language prior to the start of the program. The mini-course will be offered by the professors Berti and Harrington via distance learning. Students will be placed in appropriate Latin levels by a Latin Placement Exam on the first day of the course.
II. Roman History: Students, who have not taken a survey course involving Roman history, will be assigned general readings on Roman chronology to be completed prior to the start of the program. Students will acquire familiarity with the arc of Roman history and the details of many specific events in the course of studying the archaeology and the Latin sources associated with the sites.
III. Italian: Knowledge of Italian is not required, but there will be opportunities for students to acquire some familiarity with conversational Italian.
This program will require extensive walking and study of archaeological sites out of doors. Some sites are located in hilly or brushy terrain. Students should be in physical condition to walk up to four miles and to spend up to four hours in direct sunlight in the course of a day. Strong sun-block, wide-brimmed hats, light-weight clothing, and other countermeasures are strongly recommended. All students should carry ample water and snacks from “Tor Vergata,” as markets will not always be available or open for business near archaeological sites.
The application process will be conducted in electronic format via email. There are slots for fifteen (15) students in total. Students will be selected from the pool of applicants based on their complete skill-set, their stated reasons for participation, and the strength of their recommendation letters. The selection criteria for undergraduate students will, of course, be less strict than for graduate students.
I. Application Form (email the completed form as a PDF)
II. Two (2) academic references (these should be sent via email per the instructions on the application form)
APPLICATION TIMELINE [TENTATIVE]
Early Application email deadline: March 1st, 2013 (priority admission)
Final Application email deadline: April 1st, 2013 (if any slots remain)
Announcement of accepted students: by April 3rd, 2013
Accepted students must confirm their attendance and secure their slot by a $1,000 deposit (in check or money-order): by April 8th, 2013
Full payment deadline: May 1st, 2013
Any students that choose not to confirm by April 8th or are unable to make final arrangements for payment by May 1st will be replaced by students on the wait-list. |
Affected by diabetes? Important facts and developments you should know
(BPT) - A disease so prevalent that it is labeled an epidemic in America, diabetes affects nearly 26 million children and adults, according to the American Diabetes Association (the Association). As this number grows, so does the urgency of finding a cure.Health experts around the world research type 1, type 2 and gestational diabetes in hopes of discovering a cure. More than 13,000 top scientists, physicians and other health care professionals will share their cutting-edge research, treatment recommendations and other diabetes advances at the Association’s 73rd annual Scientific Sessions in Chicago June 21 to 25, 2013.Although Scientific Sessions is primarily for medical professionals, its core is about improving the lives of people affected by diabetes – shaping the direction of research, technology and care with a focus on treatment and prevention and ultimately finding a cure for this devastating disease.You don’t need to be a health expert to benefit from the information shared at the conference. A special video News Bureau translates the in-depth scientific findings into an easy-to-understand format available through the Association’s social media channels. Visit /breakingnews to view short briefings and interviews produced onsite last year, as well as information as it becomes available this year at the event.Staying informed is an important part of managing a diabetes diagnosis. The Association helps those affected by diabetes sort through the information out there and better understand the facts. Here are some of the top myths and misconceptions about diabetes:Myth: Diabetes is not that serious of a disease.Fact: Diabetes causes more deaths a year than breast cancer and AIDS combined. Two out of three people with diabetes die from heart disease or stroke.Myth: If you are overweight or obese, you will eventually develop type 2 diabetes.Fact: Being overweight is just one risk factor; other risk factors are family history, ethnicity and age. Most overweight people never develop type 2 diabetes, and many people with type 2 diabetes are at a normal weight.Myth: People with diabetes should eat special diabetic foods.Fact: A healthy meal plan for people with diabetes is generally the same as a healthy diet for anyone – low in fat (especially saturated and trans fat), moderate in salt and sugar, with meals based on whole grain foods, vegetables and fruit. Diabetic and "dietetic" foods generally offer no special benefit.Myth: People with diabetes can't eat sweets.Fact: If eaten as part of a healthy meal plan, sweets and desserts can be eaten by people with diabetes. The key to sweets is to have a very small portion and save them for special occasions.Myth: People with diabetes are more likely to get colds and other illnesses.Fact: You are no more likely to get a cold or another illness if you have diabetes. However, people with diabetes are advised to get flu shots. This is because any illness can make diabetes more difficult to control, and therefore serious complications are more likely to develop.For more information, visit . Copyright 2014 zz-test-- Site 1. All rights reserved. |
Flexible Microsystems Deliver Drugs Through the Ear
A MEMS-based microfluidic implant could open up many difficult-to-treat diseases to drug therapy
By Jeffrey T. Borenstein Posted 30 Oct 2009 | 15:39 GMT
Illlustration: Bryan Christie Design
The bedrock of modern medicine is an age-old technology: the pill. For the most part, it works. The drug inside the pill finds its way to whatever part of the body it's meant to treat, and the patient recovers.
But sometimes, oral medications just aren't effective. The medication may interact with other drugs or food. It may break down in the stomach before entering the bloodstream. Or, even more frightening, it may trigger other, bigger problems even as it aims to cure. Recall the painkiller Vioxx, which did wonders for arthritis patients but also raised the risk of heart attack and stroke. Or Baycol, a cholesterol-lowering medication that was linked to dozens of reports of fatal kidney failure. In one way or another, traditional oral medications fail hundreds of thousands of patients each year, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
For years, researchers have searched for better ways to deliver drugs. The ideal method would administer the right dose to the exact area being treated, whether it's an arthritic knee or a tumor in the lungs. From the patient's perspective, it would be both convenient and unobtrusive—as easy as, if not easier than, taking a pill [see sidebar, "The Push-Pull Method"].
My collaborators and I are pursuing that better way. The implantable drug-delivery device we are developing at the Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, in Cambridge, Mass., and at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary (MEEI), in Boston, merges aspects of microelectromechanical systems, or MEMS, with microfluidics, which enables the precise control of fluids on very small scales. Unlike rigid implants, such as pacemakers or titanium hips, our device is a flexible, fluid-filled machine: Stretchy tubes expand and contract, and fluids flow in and out of channels according to a preset rhythm. A tiny pump acts as the machine's heartbeat, and software lets the device adapt to new demands from its environment.
Microscale machines are nothing new, of course. For the last four decades, engineers have built them for a variety of purposes, harnessing the mechanical properties of silicon and the same assembly techniques used to manufacture microchips. The resulting MEMS products now appear in all kinds of consumer electronics, such as air-bag sensors, inkjet printers, and the tiny accelerometers inside Nintendo Wii controllers.
Microsystems may have a much greater impact, however, in biomedical engineering. Engineers and clinicians have dreamed up a whole world of assistive devices that could enhance, sustain, and prolong human life. But these health-care innovators are stymied by one key constraint: the difficulty of making the devices small enough to sit comfortably and unobtrusively inside the body. Microscale systems built not from silicon but from flexible, stretchy polymers could be the answer. And to take that one step further, our implantable device may be the first therapeutic MEMS machine to include the active control of fluids.
The polymer MEMS device my colleagues and I are developing, with funding from the United States' National Institutes of Health, will treat the most common form of hearing loss, which now affects more than 250 million people worldwide. By delivering tiny amounts of a liquid drug to a very delicate region of the ear, the implant will allow sensory cells to regrow, ultimately restoring the patient's hearing.
Our system, which is still under development, consists of a programmable micropump powered by a small battery and controlled by an electronic circuit. It pulses precise quantities of a drug from a small reservoir into the inner ear. A flow sensor meters the delivery and sends out an alert if anything goes wrong. What we have so far is about the size of a D-cell battery, but we're working to get it down to the volume of a single AA battery, which ought to be small enough to suit most patients. The device's reservoir would hold enough medication for about one year. We've already tested the system on guinea pigs, and our results show that it can successfully deliver medication to the inner ear without damaging hearing.
Do we really need to replace the simple act of swallowing a pill with complicated, invasive electronics? Yes—for many diseases and conditions, pills are either ineffective or unsafe. The human body has a number of defense mechanisms that will attempt to outsmart invading foreign substances like drugs. A drug, when swallowed, travels through the bloodstream to circulate widely. Doctors must often prescribe a higher dose than would otherwise be necessary if the drug could be delivered directly to the spot where it's most helpful. Sometimes that higher dose is also more toxic.
Another challenge is that not all parts of the anatomy are in direct contact with the bloodstream. As a result, many conditions, including hearing loss and several neurodegenerative diseases, can't be treated effectively with oral or injected medications, The blood-brain barrier, for instance, is a thin layer of endothelial cells lining the blood vessels in the central nervous system that prevents contact between the bloodstream and the brain. A similar blood-cochlea barrier protects the ear. A device implanted directly into a hard-to-reach target, however, could circumvent these blockades.
Dose on demand: The 2007 version of the device [above] uses a traditional pump and is about the size of a D-cell battery. A smaller, push-pull system is under development.
We aren't the first to explore implantable drug delivery. Nonelectronic implantable systems are now used to treat brain tumors that can't be surgically removed. In such cases, the tumor is typically treated with a drug called BCNU, which is effective but also highly toxic. In 1987, Robert Langer, a chemical engineering professor now at MIT and a pioneer in the field of drug delivery, and his colleagues Henry Brem of Johns Hopkins and W. Mark Saltzman, now at Yale, came up with the idea of encapsulating the drug in a biodegradable polymer wafer and surgically implanting it in the brain. As the polymer slowly dissolves over a period of weeks to months, the BCNU is released and delivered directly to the tumor. Studies show that, on average, the treatment extends patients' lives by several months at least, and they avoid the severe side effects—such as anemia, liver problems, and lung damage—that can occur when the drug is taken by injection. Similar passive systems have also been developed into drug-delivery patches for treating nicotine addiction and motion sickness and for birth control.
The dissolvable wafer was a landmark development, but not all ailments respond to its passive functions. In the cochlea, for example, injected medication and drugs in controlled-release gels would not travel far enough without the assistance of a pump. The wafer also has a limited life span; an electronic delivery device, by contrast, could operate for years and be programmed to deliver multiple drugs of varying dosages at different times. Several teams of engineers are now developing implantable drug-delivery systems to treat pain, neurological diseases, cancer, and many other conditions. One leading system is the "pharmacy on a chip" being developed by MicroChips, in Bedford, Mass., also founded by Langer and his colleagues. This drug-delivery microsystem has spurred the development of other implantable delivery devices, including our own microfluidic approach. |
Who says you have to eat meat to be a successful athlete? By Jonah KeriSpecial to Page 2 (Archive | Contact)
With each home run Milwaukee Brewers slugger Prince Fielder hit in his breakout 2007 season, a prototype was confirmed. Here was a big, beefy athlete swinging from the heels, producing an NL-leading 50 homers. His physique resembled an evolutionary version of his dad, Cecil, a more muscular version of another hulking and somewhat round power hitter. If you had to guess Prince's diet, you'd probably picture lots of steaks, with a side order of steak sandwiches and a steak smoothie.
But a funny thing happened in the offseason. Fielder told the world he wasn't a big meat eater at all. In fact, he'd given up animal flesh entirely after he read some eye-opening books, talked at length with his wife and soul-searched for months. At first there was some gentle poking, a few writers and talk show hosts wondering out loud whether a man who makes his living as a big, strong destroyer of baseballs could cut it on a diet of tofu and pixie dust. Ha, ha, ha.
Jonathan Daniel/Getty ImagesPrince Fielder was scrutinized this season when he got off to a slow start after becoming a vegetarian. Then the season started. And Fielder wasn't hitting. One week went by, then two. Still no home runs. Now this was getting serious. Those who owned Fielder in fantasy leagues started cursing his name. The yuk-yuk set started indirectly questioning his manhood. Even some of the industry's serious journalists started shouting from the rooftops: Someone give this guy a cheeseburger already!
Fielder eventually hit his first homer of the season on April 17. But his numbers continued to lag. Three weeks into the season, he was hitting .215. Though he's since raised his average to .285, his power numbers still pale next to the monster stats he put up in '07. With the only obvious change to Fielder's regimen his switch to a meatless diet, some sports pundits have gone beyond the little digs and jokes, asking seriously whether Fielder can ever again be the player he was last year without consuming animal flesh.
Fielder, who's affable with the media, turned down an interview request for this story. A Brewers representative said Fielder talked so extensively about the subject earlier this season that he didn't want to do so anymore.
Nevertheless, the noise generated from Fielder's decision brings up broader issues within the sports world. With athletes paying more and more attention to what goes into their bodies and how nutrition affects performance, can a no-meat diet fuel success? Will more athletes turn to a meatless diet, whether for performance, or other reasons? How would such choices be received by a society that values meat eating and assumes our greatest athletes to be among the greatest carnivores? Because so many different factors affect performance, and all athletes have different bodies and metabolisms, how will we even know what's working and what isn't?
Already we've seen a number of world-class athletes move toward vegan and vegetarian diets. NBA guard Salim Stoudamire, former NFLers Desmond Howard and Ricky Williams, track and field greats Carl Lewis and Edwin Moses and others have followed that path. Four other athletes who have made the switch to vegan or vegetarian diets recently shared their thoughts on these and other meaty issues tied to their choices. Here's what they had to say:
Sitting at home one day in May 2007, Gonzalez suddenly lost all feeling in his face and felt a terrible pain in the back of his head. He initially thought he was having a stroke, but hospital tests confirmed he had Bell's Palsy instead. Many doctors prescribe a diet consisting entirely of raw fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds -- no animal products or processed foods -- as a way to improve digestion and combat the condition. A few months later, Gonzalez got another health scare, when doctors warned him of a low white blood cell count, raising the possibility he had leukemia. In the end, a mix-up with another patient's blood had caused that diagnosis. Still, with two scares in a span of a few months, Gonzalez became more attuned to his health and to what he put into his body.
Not long afterward, Gonzalez was on a cross-country flight when he struck up a conversation with the man next to him in first class. When lunchtime arrived, Gonzalez's seatmate ordered the salad with shrimp, hold the shrimp. Come dessert time, the man turned down the flight attendant's offer of milk to go with his cookies.
"So I asked him, 'Are you a vegetarian?'" Gonzalez recounted. "He said he was a vegan. Not eating meat I could understand, but I asked him why he wouldn't even drink the milk. He said that we're the only animals on Earth who drink milk after being babies."
Josh Umphrey/Getty ImagesTony Gonzalez is proving that even football players can compete at a high level on a strict vegan diet. A few years earlier, or maybe even a few months earlier, Gonzalez might have nodded politely and ended the conversation right there. But that year, he'd started to seriously ponder his long-term health and the dietary choices he was making. The health scares had opened his eyes. But more than that, Gonzalez wondered what life would be like after football. He wanted to stay in shape and live well after his playing days were done.
When the man recommended "The China Study" as a must read, Gonzalez devoured it. The 2005 book by Cornell professor and nutrition researcher T. Colin Campbell claims people who eat mostly plants contract fewer deadly diseases than those who eat mostly animals. The book got its name from diet studies and blood samples drawn from 6,500 men and women in China. Gonzalez has since met with Campbell and now plans to write his own book about dietary choices from the perspective of a 246-pound football star.
For Gonzalez, now 32, getting from Point A to Point B took a great deal of thought and self-doubt. Conventional wisdom held that eating steak and drinking a gallon of milk a day would make you big and strong and prepare you for the rigors of NFL life. Gonzalez followed that path, pounding steaks and milk, as well as pizza, hot dogs and burgers -- whatever it took to pack on the pounds. He especially loved macaroni and cheese, with an emphasis on cheese, piled as high as possible. You couldn't argue with the results. In his first 10 seasons with the Kansas City Chiefs, Gonzalez had made the Pro Bowl eight times, establishing himself as the best tight end in the league.
When he switched to a meatless diet, he wondered whether the move would backfire on him. At first, it looked like it might. In the first few weeks of his new regimen, he lost 10 pounds. His strength quickly dropped, and Gonzalez found himself unable to lift the heavy weights he'd hoisted with ease in the past. Teammates started telling him he looked skinny. "You're going to get your butt kicked" was another common refrain.
"It was a trial by error," he said. "I had to educate myself on how to do it the right way."
After reading up on vegan-friendly recipes, Gonzalez found the right balance. Though he had more than enough money to buy any foods he wanted, Gonzalez still wasn't thrilled with the prospect of spending through the nose on groceries. Instead, his grocery bills stayed about the same, but the check at restaurants got slashed with no $50 porterhouse steaks on his plate. Gonzalez says he now focuses on produce when constructing his meals. He loads up on berries, bananas and mangoes, fresh vegetables and milk alternatives like rice milk or hemp milk, then blends them into what he calls "power smoothies."
"People were still making fun of me, because I think they wanted to make themselves feel better," Gonzalez explained. "I'd be ordering salad, potatoes, veggies. I think they felt guilty. Unless you've been in a cave, you know what's healthy and what's not healthy. But most of them still keep eating what they've been eating, because they think that's the only way to get enough protein and compete at a high level."
As the season progressed, Gonzalez's numbers picked up. Playing in his 11th season, Gonzalez made 99 catches (the second-highest total of his career), racking up 1,172 yards (the third-highest total of his career). In the previous three seasons, he'd dealt with an arthritic foot that got so bad he could barely walk the day after a game. The foot condition had forced him to give up basketball, a sport Gonzalez loved, having played varsity ball alongside the Sacramento Kings' Shareef Abdur-Rahim at Cal. Coincidence or not, the foot condition improved dramatically over the course of an offseason, to the point that he started hitting the hardwood again. Playing basketball in turn gave Gonzalez another good way to boost his training, which he says helped improve his agility.
More surprising than his improved health, he says, was the reaction of some of his friends, especially ex-players.
D'Marco Farr was a bruising NFL defensive lineman for seven seasons before injuries forced him into early retirement. Seven years after leaving the league, Farr told Gonzalez he still didn't feel 100 percent, carrying extra weight and still suffering from aches and pains. When Gonzalez told him about the changes he'd felt since going vegan, Farr jumped on board. He has since spread the word to other ex-players, including Lincoln Kennedy, a three-time Pro Bowler who retired at well more than 300 pounds.
Gonzalez has become something of a spokesman for healthy eating. When he retires, he wants to travel around the league speaking about the value of healthier diets. He's excited about the prospect of his first book on the subject. Gonzalez wants to reach out to younger players, too. He recently spoke to a group of 300 college football prospects at USC, where he counseled the group not to fall into the trap of scarfing down fatty foods just because that's the norm for aspiring players trying to pack on weight.
"I believe in moderation," he said. "I know this isn't easy. One steak or a chicken dinner once in a while, that's fine. You just have to be smart about it. When you go from eating that way to a vegan diet, you can get into situations where it's like an alcoholic going to a bar: You say you're going to have one drink, and you end up having 10."
Pin Gonzalez down, and he'll concede his new diet hasn't necessarily improved his on-field performance. Science agrees with him on that point: No conclusive studies have proven a vegan or vegetarian diet helps an athlete run faster, jump higher or throw a ball harder or farther. To Gonzalez, making the change was about living healthier and about recognizing there's a life beyond football.
"In this league, you think you're invincible, that you'll last forever," he said. "Then you look at some of the numbers, that the average football player dies young. I'm sure there are other reasons, but eating unhealthy foods and carrying around all that extra weight can't help.
"I realized football's not going to last forever. To me this isn't a diet. It's a complete lifestyle change."
For all the health and performance reasons an athlete might consider when switching to a meatless diet -- cutting out animal fats, introducing a broader range of vitamins and nutrients -- occasionally you'll find an athlete who makes the switch for entirely different reasons. In Mac Danzig's case, it takes awhile to fully digest the idea.
At a ripped 5-foot-9, 155 pounds, Danzig is a rising star in mixed martial arts. He fights under the direction of the Xtreme Couture gym in Las Vegas, training with some of the biggest names in the sport. To succeed in mixed martial arts, competitors must wield explosive strength, the kind typically linked to high-protein foods. When your job is to clobber other men into submission, a meaty diet seems like a given.
"I believed what everybody said," Danzig confirmed, "that you need animal protein in your diet if you're going to train hard and win."
He'd always wanted to go vegetarian, but he and his mom had never thought they'd had the resources to do it. His surroundings also made that kind of lifestyle change seem impossible.
"Western Pennsylvania was the same as a lot of Midwest areas," Danzig said. "There were regular grocery stores, Denny's -- that was about it. No one around us was doing anything like that, going vegetarian or vegan. So it didn't happen."
In 1999, right before he started training to become an MMA fighter, Danzig got a job at an animal sanctuary. The people who owned and operated the place were vegans and showed him that a meatless diet could be healthy and affordable if done the right way. But there was another side to their education.
"They just seemed like these fanatical vegan people," he said. "They kind of wore it on their sleeve, and I wasn't into that. I said to myself that I'd want to do it one day. But with my training about to start, I didn't think the time was right. I thought, maybe after I have a successful career, I could try it then."
Danzig dove into his training, determined to make a career out of his love for MMA competition. First he took up jiu-jitsu, then submission grappling. In 2002, he moved to California to train more seriously and compete full time. He found early success, rising to the rank of lightweight champion and winning the King of the Cage competition. To further advance his career, he entered the UFC-sponsored reality series "The Ultimate Fighter," which he also went on to win, raising his celebrity status in the sport.
As his career evolved, so did his diet. He'd already cut out all dairy products years ago, as they'd given him health problems, all the way up to debilitating ear infections, sinus problems and even vertigo. He then stopped eating mammals entirely. But poultry and fish remained staples of his diet. In 2004, he took the next step, cutting out poultry and fish and going entirely vegan. His role model was strength and conditioning instructor Mike Mahler. Danzig followed Mahler's diet down to the smallest detail. If this famed fitness guru could do it, that was proof enough for Danzig that he could do it, too. Danzig won his first fight after the switch, giving him further inspiration.
"I felt really good for that fight," he said. "I didn't have any problems with strength, didn't feel weak. I had cravings for about a month, then they stopped. I haven't had any cravings since."
Though Danzig at first feared a meatless diet would hurt his performance, he now says it has helped him recover faster from fights and workouts. Rather than heavy weightlifting, Danzig's training focuses on plyometrics (rapid muscle stretching and muscle contracting), calisthenics and various cardiovascular routines. He hasn't lost any strength, he said, and his endurance has improved, allowing him to work out longer and recover more quickly.
In the meantime, Danzig has continued to build up his career. Fighting in UFC 83 in April, he battled jiu-jitsu expert Mark Bocek for 14 minutes before forcing his opponent to submit to a choke hold. The fight was Danzig's first since winning the finale of "The Ultimate Fighter" and moving to the lightweight division.
Other challenges remain. Though his training partners and fellow competitors have respected his dietary decisions, some MMA fans have lashed out at Danzig.
"I've noticed a lot of negative things said about me, saying 'Who does he think he is?'" Danzig explained. "So many people who are vegetarian or especially vegan, really wear it on their sleeve, like they're part of some exclusive club. That's not my style."
Instead, Danzig is content to be, as some friends call him, a nature boy. When not slapping submission holds on opponents, he's passionate about backpacking. He has developed his second career, Mac Danzig Photography, and specializes in taking pictures of natural landscapes. And he's sticking to his convictions, both inside and outside the octagon.
"What I'm doing might be just a drop in the bucket," he mused. "My whole philosophy is not that it's bad necessarily -- we are omnivores, with the ability to survive on both. But in this day and age, I don't want to contribute to the meat and dairy industries if it's not necessary. That's not just for the animals. It's for the Earth, too."
Like Gonzalez, Neshek was succeeding at his craft, which would make a major change seem like an iffy idea. But after reading a series of books by The Juice Master (also known as U.K. health and nutrition mogul Jason Vale), Neshek began questioning his own nutritional habits. After that came more books. They included scientific tomes such as "The China Study" and disturbing exposés such as "Slaughterhouse." Before reading those heavier books, Neshek's wife, who was already a vegetarian, had gobbled up "Skinny Bitch," a slickly packaged book on vegan diets that also propelled Fielder and his wife to give up meat.
Jonathan Daniel/Getty ImagesPat Neshek's first season on a vegan diet was derailed by injury. Neshek says his sensibilities already leaned in that direction. Eating meat, he felt, wasn't doing anything for him. As a kid, his dad would often make fresh-squeezed juice for the family, having been swayed by the infomercials of Jay "The Juiceman" Kordich. Living in Florida in 2004, Neshek took advantage of the orange and grapefruit trees in his backyard, making juice for himself both at home and on the road with his portable juicer. Soon he added apples, carrots, spinach and other items to the mix to blend in other nutrients.
"It was at that point when I started noticing how my body reacted to better things going into me," he said.
Neshek's diet changed little by little from that point. First, he tried to buy only organic foods. Like Gonzalez, he worried about the cost of shopping for high-end produce and foods, especially at his then-minor league salary.
"To be honest, I'm about as cheap as they come," Neshek noted. "And I was this way before being a ballplayer! But it's pretty easy and pretty cheap if you know how to cook. I guess the message in the end is that what you pay for is what you get. If you pay for something with no nutritional value, you are going to feel like garbage."
His next concern was whether his meals would taste bad.
"But I was wrong," he said. "The meals were more tasty, so I guess we just kept going."
Next to go were milk and other dairy products, except cheese. Neshek was in the major leagues by that point, and he phased out red meat. But his decisions didn't come easily. Neshek had wondered how he'd get the kind of protein, iron, Omega-3 acids and other key nutrients he'd need to survive the long slog of a 162-game season -- let alone excel at his sport.
By substituting items such as brown rice and beans, tofu spiced to taste like different meat dishes, and flaxseed oil and various legumes, he found that his body held up even better than expected. Though Neshek admits he's hardly a demon in the weight room, he has put on seven pounds of lean muscle since switching to his now-vegan diet and a refined workout program last offseason.
He started off this year again by averaging more than a strikeout per inning through 15 games before a torn ulnar collateral ligament knocked him out for the season. Tommy John surgery has an increasingly high success rate for major league pitchers, and Neshek's optimism won't hurt as he tries to make his way back in 2009.
That doesn't mean he should expect to completely avoid ribbing from others in the dugout, though. Neshek says he has gotten some questions from teammates wondering why he went vegan. Most of them have respected his decision, with a few, including fellow pitchers Scott Baker and Dennys Reyes, asking questions in an effort to learn more. Manager Ron Gardenhire, however, is another story.
"At first he liked to kid me about what I was eating," Neshek said. "One day, he walked over to the food stand in spring training, grabbed a hot dog and started [saying] something like, 'Mmmm, meat
Don't you just love meat?
mmmm
' I looked at him and smiled and said, 'Meat? I don't think that hot dog contains much meat, if any.' He laughed. He's been the toughest on me, in a good way."
Ultramarathon running is already tough enough. A typical race can cover 100 miles or more, often in scorching heat, blistering cold or at dizzying elevation. As one of the leading ultramarathon runners in the world, Scott Jurek has had to deal with all of those challenges and more, vaulting scorpions in the desert, even meeting an occasional bear on the trails.
[+] EnlargeRobyn Beck/AFP/Getty ImagesScott Jurek is proof that athletic endurance doesn't have to be compromised by a vegan diet. But Jurek adds another degree of difficulty to the mix. As a strict vegan, he goes through his grueling training regimen on a diet consisting of fruits, vegetables, grains and nuts. This seems completely impossible when you consider Jurek's typical calorie intake during peak training periods: 6,000 to 8,000 calories a day. Despite all that calorie loading, he packs just 165 pounds on his super lean, 6-foot-2 frame.
"For breakfast it's a dense, caloric smoothie," Jurek explained. "Then you've got lots of fruits and almonds. People assume it's all carbs. But there's also fat -- avocados, rich monosaturated fats, almonds, olive oil."
He's just getting warmed up.
"For protein you've got beans, lentils, combining whole grains. Tofu and tempeh. Then for carbs: whole grains, breads, cereals, fruits and veggies, whole foods, unprocessed foods. There's three main meals, then lots of smaller snack foods and mini-meals throughout the day."
Jurek's background didn't seem to portend a vegan diet years later. Born and raised in Minnesota, Jurek lived on meat and potatoes, regularly going out for hunting and fishing expeditions. After competing at Nordic skiing in his younger days, he ran his first ultramarathon in 1994.
As his ultramarathon career progressed, Jurek began phasing out meat from his diet. In 1999, Jurek read "Mad Cowboy," the investigative book about the beef industry that prompted Oprah Winfrey to famously declare she'd never eat another burger. He became a vegetarian that year. Then, just before taking on the 100-mile Western States Endurance Run, he went vegan.
"I had my doubts, sure," Jurek recalled. "Am I going to be strong enough, have enough protein? There were all those common disclaimers, how it would affect my performance. When I went on to win the race, I realized it was all just this mental barrier. After performing well on [the vegan diet], I never really doubted it afterwards."
Neither did Jurek's rivals. Not after he went on one of the most dominant runs in the history of his sport, including seven straight Western States victories. Instead, he often gets feedback from other distance runners, with everyone from beginners to high-level competitors telling Jurek that he inspires them to train harder and to seek out alternative diets.
Still, Jurek says he never tries to impose his personal choices on anyone else. Nor does he see his vegan eating as a way to enhance performance. Like Danzig, Jurek says his diet does help him indirectly, in that it helps him recover from the pounding that his sport dishes out. A lot of people excel at ultramarathon running while living on unhealthy diets, he says.
"But where are they going to be in 20 years?" Jurek asked. "For me, it's about optimizing health. It's about lifestyle and longevity. Then you think about what vegetarian diets can do for the mass population, in terms of lower consumption of resources. When you look at the numbers, it's pretty staggering."
Traveling around the world, while competing everywhere from Death Valley to Greece, Jurek has learned how to maintain his vegan diet wherever he goes, without skimping on taste. So, Scott, any tips to pass along to others thinking about going veggie, or even vegan?
"It's really not that hard once you get things down," he said. "You just have to be a little creative. Sometimes you may not find a great vegetarian protein source in a restaurant -- no tofu, for instance. So you can do something like add chick peas to salad. Ethnic foods are good, too. Mexican beans, Asian tofu, Indian lentils. [To] some people it's this weird diet. But most grocery stores have a plethora of foods. Just keep variety in your diet, and you'll be good." |
Committee on Economic Security (CES)
Social Security In America Part II
OLD-AGE SECURITY
PROVISIONS FOR THE AGED IN THE UNITED STATES
THE AGED in the United States may be classified in 10 groups, as follows: (1) The old person who is still engaged in some occupation until 70 or perhaps even until 80. (2) The fortunate minority which may rest on its economic laurels, drawing upon inherited wealth or upon savings of a successful economic life. (3) Those who have earned and receive a satisfactory pension from their former private or public employer. (4) The large, though gradually decreasing, number of recipients of war pensions, whose number may perhaps increase if the pension principle is applied to the veterans of the World War. (5) The very large, perhaps the largest, number of those who are supported by their children or other relatives. (6) A rather limited number of persons receiving regular relief from private philanthropic agencies. (7). Guests or inmates of private homes for the aged, showing a very great variety of standards of comfort. (8) The aged population of our poorhouses or almshouses or county farms. (9) The aged in homes for incurables or insane asylums. (10) The recipients of State old-age assistance, the latest development in the care of the aged.
Unfortunately, there are no figures to indicate the distribution of the 61/2 million persons over 65 years of age among those ten classes. At least approximate estimates, however, can be made of recipients of public and war pensions, inmates of public almshouses, private old folks' homes, and hospitals for incurable and mental disease, and fairly complete data are available showing the number of recipients of old-age assistance in the several States. The total number of these classes, however, amounts to considerably less than a million. Only rough guesses can be made of those still employed, living on savings, or living in children's homes. And the population of cheap lodging houses and the utterly destitute are an absolutely unknown quantity. A few local investigations which have been made are not sufficiently trustworthy. No study made in the pre-depression era
can serve as a guide because of the tremendous changes which have taken place in the value of savings, in the employment of the aged, and in the ability of the majority of workingmen's families to support their parents. Perhaps a thorough investigation of the distribution of our aged population among these classes should be the first task in a scientific study of the old-age problem.
DEVELOPMENT OF STATE OLD-AGE ASSISTANCE LAWS
A series of State commissions began almost 30 years ago to investigate the plight of the aged, and shortly thereafter the American Association for Labor Legislation and the fraternal orders led by the Eagles, began to urge legislation on behalf of the needy aged. Until 10 years ago the only permanent provision for the needy aged in nearly all the States was through the medium of the so-called "almshouse" or "poor farm." The shocking conditions existing in the majority of these institutions were described in a book by Harry Carroll Evans, published in 1926 by a group of fraternal organizations.{1} This book summarized the findings of the surveys of American almshouses conducted by these organizations, with the aid of special examiners from the United States Department of Labor. Insufficient and unfit food, filth, and unhealthful discomfort characterized most of them. Even in institutions with sanitary and physically suitable buildings, it was found that feeble-minded, diseased, and defective inmates were frequently housed with the dependent. aged.
The cost of maintaining old people in these institutions, as was revealed by a financial survey of almshouses made by the Federal Department of Labor in 1925, was high, principally because of inefficient "overhead." {2}
Stimulated by the facts disclosed in these two reports, the drive for regular non-institutional aid for needy old people made more progress. A series of measures variously described as "old-age pensions," "old-age assistance," "old-age relief," and "old-age security" were passed by State after State, beginning with Montana in 1923, totaling 18 by the middle of 1931, and 28, with two additional Territorial laws, by January 1, 1935. These measures offer citizens of long residence, who have small assets and no financially competent relatives, monthly grants to enable them to maintain themselves outside institutions. The maximum monthly sums authorized range from $15 to $30 (the latter being the commonest figure). New York
Newark, N.J.
LosAngeles, Calif.
Number Percent Number Percent Number Percent Number Percent Number Percent Number Percent Total
886 100.0 587 100.0 827 100.0 1,076 100.0 443 100.0 738 100.0 Less than 1 year
0 --
3 .4 1 year
1 .2 1 .1 2 .2 1 .2 2 .3 2 years
1 .1 0 --
7 1.0 3 years
1 .2 13 1.8 4 years
11 1.3 10 1.7 41 5.0 31 2.9 22 5.0 106 14.7 10 to 14 years
19 2.2 19 3.2 52 6.3 50 4.6 39 8.9 94 13.0 20 years and over
823 93.7 536 91.3 685 82.9 930 86.4 341 77.5 264 36.6 Unknown
17 --
{1} Furnished from a sample study made through courtesy of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, Division of Research, Statistics, and Finance.
existence to which many needy aged persons previously were doomed. One of the serious limitations of these measures is the long residence qualification, 15 years or more, which characterizes most of them. In this regard a sampling survey made in six cities by the Research Section of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, Division of Research, Statistics, and Finance, is pertinent. Table 35 presents the results of this survey. While the residence requirements of the various States differ widely, it would appear from this sampling investigation that a reduction of required residence to 5 years in the last 9 before applying for assistance would include practically all the old people on relief at the time of the survey and yet not fasten upon the States the burden of providing special assistance for mere transients.
It must be conceded, however, that the maximum possible grants in some of the acts are inadequate for comfortable existence and that
actual grants, as information recently gathered indicates, in some States are even below general relief standards. In only 16 of the States were the measures functioning at all at the end of 1933, and only 9 more States started to give pensions in 1934. Moreover, during 1934 the grants were given throughout the whole State in only 11 States and 1 Territory. To quote from the recent report made by the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics, "sharply curtailed benefits and refusal to take on new pensioners, even the discontinuance of the system altogether until times improve, these are some of the measures to which the pension officials have been forced. In certain other jurisdictions, the result has been to crystallize the plan and to build up a waiting list as large or larger than the number of actual beneficiaries." {3}
The history of the old-age assistance movement in the United States {4} indicates that the American States were slow to enact legislation giving aid to the destitute aged. Long before they took action, European countries, industrial as well as non-industrial, had recognized the problem of old-age dependency by making provisions for old people. In Australasia, public old-age relief systems had become well-established before the World War. In the United States, on the other hand, the movement for old-age assistance did not get under way until after the depression of 1920-21.
This indifference to the problem of the aged can be explained only partially by the American public's lack of confidence in State action. The fact is that a large portion of the American people were convinced that persons who had been hard working and thrifty all their lives would not become destitute in their old age; only shiftless and lazy people were faced with dependency in their later years. This meant that to give State old-age relief was tantamount to rewarding the one who had not done his duty toward society. In addition to this philosophy of thrift and self-reliance, there was--and there still is--extant in the United States a conviction that it is the duty of the children, and not of the State, to take care of the old. It is assumed that if the State relieves the children of this responsibility, family ties are loosened, and, since the family is one of our most highly valued institutions, this danger is to be avoided at all costs.
once and for all the comfortable belief that "deserving" citizens do not become dependent in their old age. But the laws which were passed following the recommendations of the commissions made it clear that even though the States instituted a system of old-age relief, children and relatives were not to be relieved of the responsibility to provide for their aged parents. All laws, with the exception of those of Arizona and Hawaii, exclude from State assistance all those who have financially competent children or relatives.
The movement for State old-age relief began in Massachusetts, where, in 1903, the Bureau of Statistics of Labor made an investigation in which it attempted to calculate the cost of a system of old-age assistance. The next step in the history of the movement was again taken by Massachusetts, where, in 1907, the legislature appointed a commission which was instructed to investigate old-age dependency. The report of this commission was not made until 1910. From that time on a number of old-age survey commissions investigated the problem.{5}
There are to be distinguished in these investigations two periods--one period before the depression of 1920-21 and the other since then. In the first period the commissions held very divergent views on the reasons for old-age dependency. A number of them recommended health insurance as a solution to the problem of old age; others were opposed to State action in the field, while only two were sympathetic toward old-age assistance grants. The Pennsylvania report of 1919-21 marked the beginning of a new trend. In it, the attitude that poverty and pauperism were the direct consequences of laziness and deliberate transgressions was abandoned for the first time, and the State was urged to grant old-age assistance. From that time on the many commissions which were appointed to study the question all reached the conclusion that it is the responsibility of the State to provide for its dependent aged if no children or relatives are able to do so.
The brief history of legislation in the various States, given in the following paragraphs, is based on Bulletin No. 561 of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Public Old-Age Pensians and Insurance in the United States and in Foreign Countries. The first State law was passed in Arizona in 1915 by an initiative act, which abolished almshouses and established provisions for old-age assistance and aid to
{5} The following is a list of these commissions and the years in which their investigations were started: 1910, Massachusetts; 1914, Massachusetts; 1915, Wisconsin; 1917, New Jersey (two commissions), California, Massachusetts; 1919, Ohio, Connecticut; 1919-21, Pennsylvania; 1922, Montana; 1925, Massachusetts, Nevada, Indiana; 1926, Virginia; 1928, California; 1929, New Jersey, Minnesota, Maine; 1930, New York; 1932, Connecticut.
dependent children in their stead. However, it was worded so loosely that it was declared unconstitutional on account of its vagueness. In the same year Alaska passed a law providing assistance to its aged pioneers. This law, though it has been amended on different occasions, is still in effect at the present time.
No action was taken by any State until 8 years later, in 1923. In that year three States (Montana, Pennsylvania, and Nevada) passed old-age assistance laws, but only one of them, that of Montana, has remained on the statute books. In 1925 the Nevada State Legislature passed a bill repealing the 1923 law and putting another one in its place. The Pennsylvania law was declared unconstitutional in 1924 on the ground that it was in conflict with a provision in the State constitution, which prohibited the legislature from making appropriations for charitable, benevolent, and educational purposes. A movement was started immediately to amend the constitution, but it was not until 1931 that the amendment passed the legislature. Since this amendment had to be re-passed in 1933 and then submitted to a referendum vote for approval, it was not until 1934 that Pennsylvania secured action. Thus the decision of the court deferred legislation for 10 years in Pennsylvania.
Ohio, too, took some first steps in the year 1923. The question of old-age assistance was submitted to a referendum vote, but it was decided adversely by a vote of almost 2 to 1.
By 1925 the movement had gained considerable impetus. Although only Wisconsin enacted a law in that year, there was much activity in a number of the States. California passed a law, which, however, was vetoed by the Governor. Bills were introduced in the legislative sessions of Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, Ohio, and Texas. In Indiana and Illinois the bills passed the lower house but were not acted upon by the upper chamber. In four States (Colorado, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, and Utah) commissions were appointed.
In 1926 one law was added, that of Kentucky. In the same year the Washington State Legislature approved a bill, which was vetoed by the Governor. In 1927 Maryland and Colorado enacted old-age assistance laws.
At the end of 1928, after 6 years of agitation, there were only six States and one Territory which had made provision for their aged. They were Colorado, Kentucky, Maryland, Montana, Nevada, Wisconsin, and Alaska. All the State laws were of the optional type, i, e., they left the adoption or rejection of an old-age assistance system to the discretion of the counties. For this reason these laws had very limited effect. In these six States there were slightly
more than 1,000 recipients of old-age assistance grants, and these were found almost exclusively in Montana and Wisconsin, the former having 884, the latter 295 old people on their old-age assistance rolls. The total amount spent by the six States in 1928 was, in round numbers, $200,000.{6}
From 1929 on the trend in legislation has been toward making the adoption of the old-age assistance systems mandatory upon the counties. This type of legislation proved much more effective, especially when it was accompanied by a provision by which the State shared in the expense of the county. Of this latter type was the California law which was passed in 1929. In the same year Minnesota, Utah, and Wyoming passed laws which did not provide such State assistance, although those of Utah and Wyoming made the adoption of the system mandatory upon the counties.
In 1930 the Massachusetts and New York laws were passed which not only were of the mandatory type but also provided that the State share in the expense of the locality.
In 1931 and 1933 State legislatures were very active in the field of old-age assistance. It is estimated that 100 bills were introduced in the legislatures of 38 States in 1931. In that year five new laws were enacted in Delaware, Idaho, New Hampshire, New Jersey, and West Virginia. Of these, all except the West Virginia law were of the mandatory type, but only Delaware and New Jersey provided for State funds. Colorado and Wisconsin amended their laws making them mandatory upon the counties as well as making State funds available for the purpose of old-age assistance.
Ten more laws were added in 1933 in Arizona, Indiana, Maine, Michigan, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Oregon, Washington, and Hawaii. With the exception of Hawaii, they were all mandatory upon the counties, but in Oregon and Washington the State did not share in the expenses of the locality. Arkansas passed a law in 1933, but it was declared unconstitutional by the State supreme court.
Iowa and Pennsylvania passed mandatory laws in 1934, the State bearing the entire cost. By the end of 1934, 28 States and 2 Territories had passed old-age assistance laws.
In addition to these qualifications, several old-age assistance laws make sure that the recipients of aid are "deserving" citizens. People who have deserted their husbands or wives, who have failed to support their families, who have been convicted of a crime, who have been tramps or beggars, who have failed to work according to their ability, are ineligible to assistance in most of the States. Inmates of jails, prisons, infirmaries, and insane asylums are also barred from receiving grants. A few States permit the payment of the assistance grant to a benevolent and fraternal institution after a recipient becomes an inmate, but they make such payment subject to the proviso that the institution may be inspected by the old-age assistance authority.
After this survey of the many restrictions in the old-age assistance laws, particularly the requirement that the recipient must be in actual need, it is not surprising to find that their operation has been much more limited than in other countries which have adopted non-contributory old-age pension legislation. The percentage of old people on assistance rolls in the United States is far below that of European countries, Canada, and Australasia. Several of these countries pay pensions to all aged persons whose income is less than a specified amount, not requiring proof of actual need.
Operation of State Laws.-Data furnished by the Bureau of Labor Statistics indicate the experience under old-age assistance acts in 1934. Some 236,000 old people were being cared for through the medium of public old-age assistance at the end of 1934. During the year over $32,000,000 was spent for this purpose. (See table 37. )
Although 28 States and 2 Territories had old-age assistance acts on the books at the end of 1934, in only 25 States and 2 Territories were grants actually being paid. In 3 States the act was entirely inoperative because of lack of funds. In only 10 States was the system State-wide.
The average monthly grant paid ranged in the various States from 69 cents in North Dakota to $26.08 in Massachusetts. In the former State a total of $507,744 should have been available to meet the old-age assistance obligations. The system is, however, financed by a property tax of 0.1 mill, which, during 1934, yielded only $28,534. The amount paid in grants totaled $24,259. The sum available for distribution, therefore, fell short of the sum awarded by more than $475,000. Dividing the funds among the recipients on a pro-rata basis, the average was 69 cents a month.
The three State-wide systems of longest experience are those of California, Massachusetts, and New York. It is an interesting fact that year after year the average allowance runs practically the same in these three States (one of which has a maximum of $30, while the other two have no maximum). In 1934 the average grant was $20.21 in California, $26.08 in Massachusetts, and $20.65 in New York.
These data were collected in the annual survey of old-age assistance made by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The figures indicate, however, that 13 States and 1 Territory were paying grants averaging less than $10 per month in 1934.
The number of recipients of old-age assistance is very low in States which have financial difficulties. That many more people are in need of assistance becomes clear from the following tabulation, which shows the number of applications received in some of the States since the passage of the law:
Number of applications received by old-age assistance authorities (November 1934) {7} State
Number of persons receiving grants
Number of applications received
Number of people on waiting list
2,098 from Aug. 1, 1933, to June 30, 1934.
5,685 since1931
1,700 applications not yet investigated; of these about 1,200 will qualify.
3,525 since 1931
200 at close of 1933.
39,304 from January through August 1934.
3,959 applications not investigated August 1934.
60,000 since April
Estimated that 28,000 will qualify.
Maryland (Baltimore County only).
Applications are investigated only when there is a vacancy.
42,358 since October 1933
6,575 applications approved; 27,032 applications not yet investigated.
26,269 since July 1932
3,080 pending applications not yet investigated.
136,482 since September 1930
105,000 since May 1934
{7} The information presented in this tabulation was obtained through correspondence with State officials.
In all the States for which this information is available the applications far exceed the number of recipients of actual grants.
Activities of State Legislatures From January 1, 1935, to October 15, 1935.-In the first 10 months of 1935, State legislatures all over the country were very active. During this period action on the social security program was pending in Congress, and, while the Social Security Act did not become law until August 14, 1935, many of the States passed new laws or amended their old laws in anticipation of proposed Federal aid. The trend in State legislation during that period reflects in most cases the provisions of the Social Security Act as they crystallized during congressional discussion.
Eight States (Alabama, Arkansas, Connecticut, Illinois, Missouri, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, and Vermont) and the District of Columbia passed new old-age assistance laws in the period from January 1 to October 15, 1935. In addition, the Florida Legislature adopted a law, which, to become effective, had to be approved by a referendum vote. The provisions of these laws are briefly summarized in table 38. It is worthy of note that, with the exception of the Florida law, all these new statutes are of the mandatory type. All provide for a central State agency to administer or supervise the administration of the law, and all provide for State financial participation. None of these new laws makes citizenship of many years' duration an eligibility requirement, and the State residence requirement is in most cases 5 years within the 9 or 10 years preceding date of application--a considerable liberalization in comparison with the laws passed prior to 1935. The same is true of the county residence requirement, which, in a number of the new State laws, was canceled entirely. Only the Arkansas and Missouri laws, have an age requirement as high as 70 years, and the Arkansas law provides that its age requirement is to be lowered to 65 beginning with 1940.
The same general trend toward more liberal provisions can be traced through the many amendments adopted by States which had laws prior to 1935; 16 States and 2 Territories amended their laws in the period from January 1 to October 15, 1935.
In five jurisdictions the laws, which up to that time had been optional, became mandatory upon all political subdivisions (Hawaii, Maryland, Minnesota, Montana, Wisconsin). Central State administrative agencies were established in eight jurisdictions (Hawaii, Maryland, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, Washington, and Wyoming). At the same time legal provisions for State financial participation were introduced in eight jurisdictions (Hawaii, Maryland, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Washington, and Wyoming).
The requirement that a person must have been a citizen of the United States for many years before he could become eligible for aid was canceled quite generally by State legislatures. A provision was substituted according to which otherwise eligible citizens should not be barred because they had not been citizens for a required period of time (California, Hawaii, Iowa., Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Oregon, Washington, and Wyoming). Residence requirements were liberalized in 14 of the jurisdictions (Alaska, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Iowa, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Oregon, Washington, and Wyoming). Four States (California, Minnesota, Montana, Wisconsin) lowered their age requirement from 70 to 65, and one (Michigan) provided that it was to become 65 in 1940. A number of other changes were made in the laws within this period.
Table 38, summarizing the provisions of State old-age assistance laws as of October 15, 1935, shows that at that time there were 36 States, 2 Territories, and the District of Columbia which had passed old-age assistance laws. The Florida Legislature had passed a law, which, to become effective, had to be submitted to a referendum vote.
INDUSTRIAL PENSION SYSTEMS
Beginning in a modest way about 1875, several hundred of the most important companies in American industry have voluntarily created systems providing pensions for their own employees when they become superannuated or permanently and totally disabled. The motives behind the establishment of these systems have been many, and the reasons for their continuance have not always been those which led to their original initiation. Generally speaking, the managements starting and maintaining these systems have not only desired to provide employees with security in their old age, but have also wished, usually from necessity, to dispose of aged personnel who are inefficient in the productive processes of modern industry. A third closely-related motive has been to use the pension system to clear out older employees periodically in order to give younger employees a chance to move up in the ordinary channels of promotion, a measure which not only replaces inefficient employees with younger men who are more efficient, but one which makes the younger men more satisfied with their own jobs and their own prospects. A fourth motive, also relating to economy, has been a desire on the part of certain companies to maintain conditions of employment so attractive as to draw into their service persons of superior capabilities. One motive of the pension systems of the railroads has been to facilitate the retirement of older persons who might consti-
tute a menace to the safety of the traveling public. With the great expansion of various mechanisms for automatic control of train movements and improvement in safety conditions generally, this motive perhaps has not been as strong in recent years as it once was.
The use of the offer of a pension, coupled with certain restrictions, was considered the means of accomplishing the results indicated by the motives which have already been mentioned, without undue burden on the company. These restrictions, as will be pointed out presently, were so framed, however, that two further important ends were comprehended. First, since the pensions were payable only to persons who continued in the company's service to the time of their superannuation or disablement, the deferment of pensions acted as an inducement for employees to remain in the service, reducing various expenses connected with training new employees in place of others who had left the service. Ordinarily the qualification for receipt of pension is further conditioned upon uninterrupted service, and voluntary interruption in service by resignation or otherwise results in forfeiture of service credits acquired prior to such event. This latter class of restriction was aimed at discouragement of strikes as much as anything else.
In the initial stages the pension movement grew rather slowly in this country. By 1900 only about a dozen plans had been established.{8} By 1910 the number of plans in force was about 60; by 1920 about 270; and by 1930 about 420. On January 1, 1935, there were approximately 750 voluntary pension plans in effect.{9}
The majority of the plans, considered in terms of employees affected, have been in the heavy industries. Over 40 percent of all employees affected by these voluntary pension plans in 1930, the last date for which comprehensive employment data were available, were on class-I railroads; another 18 percent were employed on public utilities; 11 percent in iron and steel companies; 7 percent in companies engaged in production of chemicals and allied products; and approximately the same percentage in companies engaged in the manufacture of machinery exclusive of transportation equipment.
The number of employees affected by pension plans in 1930 was approximately 3,500,000. Despite the unusually rapid growth in the number of plans since that time, the number of employees affected is probably substantially smaller today than in 1930, because most of the
{9} Estimated by the pension division of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Co. Library.
new pension systems have been established in companies of relatively small size, and employment in the companies already maintaining plans has been greatly reduced.
Following the passage of the Railroad Retirement Act in 1934, some of the railroads limited the operation of their voluntary pension plans and some have cut their retirement benefits.
Generally speaking, the great majority of employees affected by voluntary pension plans are in the employ of companies of great size. In 1930 about 25 percent of all employees affected were engaged by companies which had more than 100,000 employees. Almost 70 percent of the employees were in companies which had more than 25,000 workers, and 98 percent in companies which had more than 2,000. While the recent expansion in the number of industrial-pension plans has affected necessarily a group of companies of much smaller size in point of number of employees, the movement still remains one predominantly confined to large industry. At no time have more than 15 percent of the gainfully occupied employees engaged in manufacturing, mining, and mechanical industries, and in trade and transportation been covered by these plans.
With but few exceptions all the employees of the companies which maintain pension plans are eligible to participate in those plans. Where a contributory system is established, participation is ordinarily optional for the whole staff at the time of initiation of the plan, and frequently this is true for employees hired subsequently. In a number of important instances, however, participation is a condition of employment for new employees.
As has already been indicated, the award of a pension to an employee is based upon continued employment for a considerable period of years and is contingent upon the employee's being attached to the company in active service at the time of attaining the age of retirement or at the time of becoming disabled. There are many differences in detail in the retirement. age and in the length of service period required as qualifications. Generally speaking, however, the employee must have attained the age of 65 and have completed from 20 to 25 years' service and be permanently and totally disabled.
The methods of computing the benefits are themselves quite numerous. Under the majority of the plans, in terms of employees covered, the benefit is 1 or 1.5 percent of the average pay during the final few years of service multiplied by the number of years of service.
Reference has been made to the fact that these large companies have established pension plans, among other reasons, because they have found it inadvisable to follow a policy of retiring superannuated and disabled persons without a pension. As a matter of fact, however, considerable numbers, at least in the railroad industry, are
Prior to about 1925, with few exceptions, voluntary pension systems provided that the companies were to bear the whole cost of paying the pensions. Most of the plans were begun with but little knowledge of the costs involved, and no very careful study was given to the financing of the liabilities assumed. By reason of a number of factors, including the rapid rise in money wages in the period after 1915, the slackening of the rate of expansion of individual companies, the effects of various policies calculated to reduce labor turnover, the decline in mortality rates, and various other causes, the pension payments of individual companies grew rapidly. By about 1925 it began to be more widely appreciated that the maintenance of a pension system involved very considerable costs and that proper accounting and safe financing involved setting aside funds currently at interest to be used later to pay retirement annuities.
The recognition of the principles of sound financing and accounting was hastened by the entrance of the insurance companies into this field, for these companies began to solicit group annuity contracts actively at about the same time. In order for the insurance company to assume the obligation of paying annuities, it would, of course, be necessary for them to collect premiums in respect of all promises of benefits. As companies became more cognizant of the costs involved, they were increasingly reluctant to assume the total burden themselves. New plans were arranged and old plans revised to induce employees to share the financial burden. In practically every case this involved an agreement to refund employee contributions upon withdrawal or death before qualifications for retirement were fulfilled, though in a number of cases no interest was paid upon such refunds. Occasionally insurance companies were able to induce companies to provide that after a certain period of service employees who were willing to leave their contributions with the insurance company would receive a deferred annuity earned both in respect of their own contributions and those of the employer. But this practice has been relatively unimportant. In 1925 less than 15 percent of all plans involved employee contributions. Early in 1935 the propor-
tion was probably about 60 percent, although the considerable majority of employees were still under plans in which they bore no part of the cost.
Early pension plans were in large part established and maintained by the management without reference to or approval of stockholders. Failing this approval, the plans were ordinarily subject to revision or discontinuance at any time and the payment of pensions was also subject to suspension, even where a grant of pension had actually been made. When the necessity for setting aside funds currently came to be realized, it was recognized that if such funds were to serve their purpose some safeguards had to limit their use; and, of course, insurance companies for their own protection could accept funds only on condition that they be used as intended. These financial considerations, coupled with the increasing skepticism by which the completely discretionary type of plan came to be viewed by the employees themselves, led to a material strengthening of the legal foundations of voluntary pension plans, although even in such cases the action taken was not put up to the stockholders for ratification.
As has already been pointed out, the early pension plans were begun without an adequate realization of costs and no special provision was made for accumulating funds to meet the liabilities. Almost without exception the pension payments made during the year were charged to current operating expenses; indeed, until 1928 the accounting regulations of the Interstate Commerce Commission prohibited the use of any other method by companies under the jurisdiction of that Commission. As early as 1918 or 1919 some companies began to set up book reserves to meet the liabilities for pensions which had been granted, although they still failed to take into account the fact that there were additional liabilities for active employees with long periods of service which would ultimately have to be recognized in the calculation of annuities payable. The real accumulation of funds coincided approximately with the entrance of the insurance companies into the field. Thereafter the growth in funds was rapid and continued even in the depression years, probably because during the period of liquidation many large companies became possessed of large sums which were not needed in their business and thus found an unusual opportunity to provide funds to cover liabilities already accrued. It has been estimated that by the end of 1931 the total sum set aside for pension purposes was $625,000,000, of which $105,000,000 was in the hands of insurance companies, $460,000,000 in trust funds, and $60,000,000 consisted of balance-sheet reserves.{11} Not all these funds were irrevocably earmarked for pensions, but probably at least
{11} Latimer, op. cit., p. 873.
the sum of $500,000,000 to $550,000,000 was so designated. At the beginning of 1935 total funds set aside for pensions under private industrial plans probably aggregated $800,000,000, of which about $700,000,000 was so restricted as to be usable only for pension purposes.
The half century of experience with voluntary pension plans has shown that they have been inefficient and inadequate as sound social insurance measures. The proportion of all employees in the field affected has been small, never rising above 15 percent; nor are there very good grounds for supposing that the field is capable of any material expansion. Many industries never have any acute problem of aged persons because of marked cyclical and seasonal variation in the number of employees and because of their refusal to rehire employees after a certain age when once they have been dropped from the pay roll. The rate of turn-over of business enterprise itself continues high and employees periodically are thrown out of work because their employers fail to continue in business. It is a reasonable conclusion that in the future pension plans on a voluntary basis will be confined, as in the past, to large-scale industries and specifically to "public utilities and manufacturers of the basic commodities required for the functioning of a mechanized civilization." {13}
Even within the field which these voluntary pension systems embrace, the terms of the plans are restricted so that relatively few employees qualify for pensions. On the railroads, for example, although fully four to five million persons have at one time or another probably been employed by railroads with pension plans, less than 120,000 have been awarded pensions.
Probably no survey of industrial pension systems has ever discovered every system in existence. But it has been estimated that in 1927 the number of pensioners did not exceed 90,000 and that the total annual pension payments were not more than $55,000,000.{14} An estimate from the same source for 1931 was that pensioners did not
{12} Ibid., p. 609.
exceed 140,000 at the end of that year and that pension payments aggregated no more than $97,000,000. Latest available information, for 1933, indicates that pensioners at the end of the year were not more than 165,000 and that payments in that year were not in excess of $115,000,000.{15}
Average per-capita pensions were about $50 per month in 1927, $58 in 1930, $61 in 1931, and about $58 in 1933. The decline after 1931 was mainly the result of reductions in pensions by most of the railroads.
Moreover, these voluntary plans contain many elements of discrimination. In most cases, at least until recent years, the benefits have been related to the pay of the final few years of service. While this has protected all employees to a certain extent against the hazard of change in price levels, it has nevertheless produced pensions which were much larger in proportion to the total value of service rendered for executives and supervisory employees than for the rank and file. Moreover, the continuous-service requirements have discriminated against low-salaried employees as compared with those in official and executive positions. And, as has already been pointed out, there are many elements of insecurity, inadequate financing, and lack of sound legal basis in pension systems even at the present time.
Apart from these inadequacies in the plans themselves, industrial retirement systems have entailed certain unfortunate social consequences. A concomitant of these plans is a hiring-age limit which forbids the employment of persons over 45 to 55years old. Whereas the genesis of these age restrictions is frequently to be found in conditions other than pension plans, the pension systems, nonetheless, have introduced a further reason for keeping these limits in effect. The apparent desirability, from the strictly company viewpoint, of maintaining low hiring-age limits might, in the main, be eliminated by a modification of existing regulations. This modification would entail a provision that employees might receive upon retirement age whatever pension they had earned during their period of actual service, without forfeiture because of failure to remain in the service of a single employer. Moreover, the provisions of pension plans which attempt to tie employees to a particular firm are undesirable even though their actual effectiveness is open to question. Insofar as they have been effective in this direction, however, they are not desirable.
Generally speaking, industrial pension systems viewed as a managerial device to limit superannuation among the personnel, clear
{15} Based on material supplied by Industrial Relations Counselors, Inc., New York.
channels of promotion, and add to the relative attractiveness of the employment of a particular firm, and, in general, improve personnel efficiency can be helpful and successful, although for various reasons they have frequently not had such results. Viewed as a means of providing security to industrial workers in old age, because of their limited application and restrictive provisions requiring long and continuous service for a single employer, they are wholly inadequate. Nor do they give promise of substantially adequate protection in the future. Social insurance with a far broader coverage and without these restrictions is essential to old-age security. Social legislation aimed to provide insurance against old-age dependency will in no way interfere with the solution of these strictly managerial problems. On the contrary, a social insurance scheme aimed to prevent old-age dependency by imposing a uniform burden on the pay rolls of all industries and employers, by spreading over the whole employed community the costs of the high proportion of aged employees which characterize many firms maintaining private pension systems and by making absolutely secure the payment of such part of the total benefits as is provided under the law, will be of material assistance to companies which for various reasons may wish to supplement the stipulated benefits.
The first important legislative measure toward the provision of old-age security in the United States was the Railroad Retirement Act passed by Congress in 1934. {16} This established contributory old-age annuities for employees of steam railroads, sleeping-car companies, and express companies. When the act was tested in the Supreme Court in 1935, it was declared unconstitutional by a five-four decision on the ground that "several of its inseparable provisions contravene the due process of law clause of the fifth amendment" . . . and that "the act is not in purpose or effect a regulation of interstate commerce within the meaning of the Constitution." {17}
A second Railroad Retirement Act was passed by Congress and approved on August 29, 1935.{18} The new act provides annuities for employees on the same scale as the first Railroad Retirement Act. As in the first act, credit toward annuities is guaranteed the older workers so that the system will function for them as well as for the young men just entering the service. The worker who leaves railway employment before reaching the age of 65 is entitled to the annuity
Employees in the active service of steam railroads, sleeping-car companies, and express companies, and former employees on leave of absence or furlough, subject to call for service and ready and willing to serve, as of the date of enactment, August 29, 1935, are included in the retirement system. All benefits under the act are payable from appropriations from the general funds of the Treasury. The effective date of the act is March 1, 1936, and annuities become due and payable 90 days thereafter.
RETIREMENT SYSTEMS FOR PUBLIC EMPLOYEES
The largest of the public retirement systems is the civil-service retirement and disability fund for civil-service employees of the United States Government. This fund was established in 1920, and on June 30, 1935, had 48,665 annuitants on its rolls, to whom it paid $48,082,396 during the fiscal year ending on that date. With an active membership of 420,000 employees, it is the largest public employees' retirement fund in the entire world. Civil-service employees contribute 3 1/2 percent of their basic wages to the fund, and Congress appropriates amounts which to date have been appreciably less than the employee contributions. The congressional appropriations will have to be greatly increased in future years, as the system contemplates full credits for prior service, the costs of which are to be borne by the Government. Retirement allowances are payable after 15 years of service and attainment of specified. retirement ages. Seventy years is the retirement age for most classes of employees, but for extra-hazardous employments the age may be as low as 62 years. The average annuity in the last fiscal year was $988.03.
Besides this large system the Federal Government. maintains smaller retirement systems for special groups of employees. The
most important are those for the Army and Navy, which at the end of 1935 had over 21,000 men on their retired lists. The men enlisted in the Marine Corps, the employees of the Panama Canal Zone, the Lighthouse Service, the Coast and Geodetic Survey, the diplomatic service, the Coast Guard, and the commissioned officers of the Public Health Service are all protected against superannuation by special pension funds.
In addition to the retirement systems of the Federal Government, several States and municipalities pension their employees. Nine States at the close of 1934 had retirement systems for (general) State employees with somewhat less than 100,000 members and 5,000 annuitants. Additional State and local teachers' retirement funds had 560,000 members, 12,000 annuitants, and annual pension costs of $20,000,000. Between 400 and 500 retirement systems for municipal employees were also in existence, some covering substantially all municipal employees, but the majority providing only for policemen and firemen. At the end of 1934 these municipal systems applied to approximately 160,000 elpployees and had 25,000 pensioners on their rolls, with annual pension costs of $18,000,000.
A considerable number of public retirement systems are not on an actuarially sound basis. This applies to most of the policemen's and firemen's funds and to many of the older retirement systems for teachers. Even in the Federal employees' system Congress, until the present year, failed to make any appropriations to meet the accrued liabilities assumed by the Government for past-service credits. Only a few of the public retirement systems, however, have thus far been in serious financial difficulties, compelling their abandonment or a reduction of promised annuities. On the whole, public employees enjoy far better old-age protection than any other group in the population, although that protection is neither complete nor perfect. |
back Fibromuscular Dysplasia
It is possible that the main title of the report Fibromuscular Dysplasia is not the name you expected.
Fibromuscular dysplasia, commonly called FMD, is a disease that causes one or more arteries in the body to have abnormal cell development in the artery wall. As a result, areas of narrowing, called stenosis, may occur. If enough narrowing causes a decrease in blood flow through the artery, symptoms may result. FMD is most commonly found in the arteries that supply the kidneys with blood (renal arteries). Up to 75% of all patients with FMD will have disease in the renal arteries. The second most common artery affected is the carotid artery, which is found in the neck and supplies the brain with blood. Less commonly, FMD affects the arteries in the abdomen (supplying the liver, spleen and intestines) and extremities (legs and arms). In 28% of the people with this disease, there will be evidence of FMD in more than one artery. |
(6) THE GREAT ASH`ARI SCHOLARS
Abu `Ali al-Daqqaq, al-Hasan ibn `Ali ibn Muhammad ibn Ishaq al-Naysaburi (d. ?), the teacher and father-in law of Imam Abu al-Qasim al-Qushayri and the foremost Sufi shaykh in his time. An Arabized Persian from Naysabur, he took usul there and fiqh from Marw at the hands of al-Khudari and Abu Bakr al-Qaffal al-Marwazi. He then took tasawwuf from Abu al-Qasim al-Nasrabadhi. Al-Qushayri relates that his knees would shake in his presence. In his Risala he relates from him the following sayings:
About tasawwuf: "This path is fit only for those persons whose spirits Allah has used to sweep the dunghills." About the Sufi: "If the dervish had nothing left but his spirit and he offered it to the dogs at this door, not one dog would pay it any attention."
Abu Nasr al-Isma`ili, Muhammad ibn Ahmad ibn Ibrahim ibn Isma`il al-Jurjani (d. 405), one of Abu Bakr al-Isma`ili's sons. He attained leadership and renown among scholars beyond his country's borders even in his father's lifetime, and until his own death. He specialized in hadith transmission.
Ibn Furak, Muhammad ibn al-Hasan ibn Furak, Abu Bakr al-Asbahani al-Shafi`i (d. 406), the imam and foremost specialist of kalam and usuull, transmitter of al-Ash`ari's school, specialist of Arabic language, grammar, and poetry, orator, jurist, and hadith scholar. He studied doctrine under al-Ash`ari's companion, Abu al-Hasan al-Bahili, and taught al-Qushayri and al-Bayhaqi who cites him frequently in al-Asma' wa al-Sifat. He fought and defeated the anthropomorphist Karramiyya in Rayy then went to Naysabur where he trained generations of fuqaha' at a school founded for him, an expansion of Abu al-Hasan al-Bushanji's earlier Sufi school (khankah). He brought to Naysabur the transmissions of the narrators of Basra and Baghdad and authored numerous books in various disciplines.
`Abd al-Ghaffar ibn Isma`il said: "Ibn Furak's works in usul al-deen, usul al-fiqh, and the meanings of the Qur'an count nearly one hundred volumes." Among them: Mujarrad Maqalat al-Ash`ari and Mushkil al-Hadith wa Bayanuh, in which he refuted both the anthropomorphist tendencies of Hanbali literalists and the over-interpretation of the Mu`tazila. Ibn Furak said that he embarked on the study of kalam because of the hadith reported from the Prophet: "The Black Stone is Allah's right hand" which a mutakallim explained to his satisfaction in contrast to the fuqaha'.
Ibn Furak was particularly tough on the companions of Imam Ahmad who strayed, in his opinion, from the correct understanding of the verses and hadiths of Allah's attributes. Upon returning from a debate on the topic in Ghazna he fell on the road, poisoned. He was carried back to Naysabur and buried in al-Hira. Ibn `Asakir relates that his grave is a place of visitation where one seeks healing (istishfa') and one's prayer is answered. Abu `Ali al-Daqqaq was heard supplicating on behalf of a number of a people and was asked: "Why do you not supplicate on behalf of Ibn Furak?" He replied: "How can I supplicate on his behalf when only yesterday I implored Allah to cure me for the sake of Ibn Furak!"
Al-Dhahabi in his cursory notice on Ibn Furak mentioned spurious derogatory reports - without questioning nor commenting them in the least - whereby Ibn Furak said that the Prophet is no longer a Prophet after his death and other things which entail disbelief. Al-Subki showed that these were anti-Ash`ari fabrications falsely attributed to Ibn Furak, al-Ash`ari, and his companions and declared false by al-Qushayri and Ibn al-Salah. Al-Subki further relates that Ibn Furak considered a disbeliever whoever said that the Prophet is no longer a Prophet. Furthermore Ibn Furak said: "The Ash`ari doctrine is that our Prophet - blessings and peace upon him! - is alive in his grave and is Allah's Messenger forever until the end of time, literally, not metaphorically, and that he was a Prophet when Adam was between water and clay, and his prophethood remains until now, and shall ever remain."
The martyred imam Abu al-Hajjaj Yusuf ibn Dunas al-Findalawi al-Maliki mentioned that Ibn Furak never slept in a house that contained a volume of the Qur'an, but would go and sleep somewhere else out of respect. Among his sayings:
"Every instance in which you see scholarly endeavor but upon which there is no light: know that it is a secret innovation (bid`a khafiyya)." Al-Subki said: "This is truly well-said and shows the great refinement of the teacher. Its foundation is the Prophet's saying: 'Uprightness is what the conscience consents to."
"It is impermissible for the walee to know that he is a walee because it annuls his fear and imposes self-security upon him." Abu `Ali al-Daqqaq considered it permissible. Al-Qushayri said: "And this is what we prefer, and choose, and declare." Al-Subki said: "Abu al-Qasim is right without the shadow of a doubt, for knowledge of one's wilaya does not do away with one's fear of Allah, nor knowledge of one's Prophethood. Indeed, Prophets are the most fearful of Allah of all people, yet they know that they are Prophets. And the walee does not cease to fear Allah's planning as long as he lives, and this is the greatest proof of fear. `Umar said: 'If one of my feet were inside Paradise and the other still outside, I would not feel secure from Allah's plan.'"
Al-Kharkushi, `Abd al-Malik ibn Muhammad ibn Ibrahim, Abu Sa`d ibn Abi `Uthman al-Naysaburi al-Shafi`i (d. 407), named Shaykh al-Islam, al-Imam al-Qudwa by al-Dhahabi, one of the leading scholars, commentators of Qur'an, exceptional orators, pious ascetics, and hadith narrators of Khurasan, "one of the imams of the Religion and eminent ones among the believers by whose mention mercy is sought." He obtained fiqh at a tender age then gave up recognition and kept company with the ascetics and destitute until he reached an advanced state among those devoted to worship and utterly reliant on Allah. He took various disciplines and narrated hadith from and to the scholars of Naysabur, Iraq, and Hijaz, taking up residence in Mecca, thereafter returning to Naysabur where he died. Al-Khatib said of him: "He was trustworthy, righteous, and scrupulous." Ibn `Asakir considered him one of those meant by the Prophet's hadith: "When Allah loves a servant of His He says to Jibril: 'Truly, I love So-and-So, therefore love him too!' Whereupon Jibril says to the inhabitants of the heaven: 'Your Lord loves So-and-So, therefore love him too!' At this all the inhabitants of the heaven love that one, and acceptance is marked for him on earth."
Al-Kharkushi was generous and hospitable towards the poor until it was said: "The fuqara' in his house are emirs." He sowed head-coverings which he then ordered sold without letting show that he himself had made them. He built a school with a library, and a hospital with perpetual endowmnent. At the conclusion of medical treatment, he would clothe the former patients and give them funds for their journeys back home. He authored a large Qur'anic commentary, a book on the signs of Prophethood, a book entitled al-Zuhd, the biographies of pious ascetics, and on other topics. Al-Hakim narrated hadiths from him. Al-Kharkushi was heard reciting the following lines:
To You have we come, but it is You Who have brought us, For none other than You, our Lord, can suffice us! Your door beckons, its entrance is munificence Because of which the humble flock to it. |
Chorionic Villus Sampling -- Transcervical
Chorionic villus sampling is a test that is done during early pregnancy to test for chromosomal problems in the fetus. It involves removing chorionic villi from the placenta. The placenta is the organ that provides nutrients and oxygen to the baby during pregnancy. It also removes waste from the baby’s blood. Chorionic villi is the tissue that makes up most of the placenta. The test is done during the 9th-13th weeks of pregnancy.
Nine Week Old Fetus in Utero
Chorionic villi contains valuable information about the baby’s genes. By testing chorionic villi, the doctor can find out if the baby has a chromosomal abnormality, like
. The test can also detect genetic disorders, like
. It cannot detect neural tube defects, such as
This test may be considered when:
Other tests, such as a first trimester
revealed abnormal results
A prior pregnancy had a chromosomal abnormality
The mother is 35 years old or older
You or your partner is a carrier for a genetic disorder
There is a family history of a genetic disorder
Although a test showing a healthy baby without a genetic disorder is ideal, you will need to be prepared if the results show otherwise. If the test shows that your baby may have a genetic disorder, it may require you to make tough decisions regarding your pregnancy, such as whether or not to continue it. If you continue with the pregnancy, you will need to address concerns, such as planning for a child with special needs. Your doctor can help you understand the pros and cons of having this test, as well as talk about your options after you know the results.
There are some risks with having this test, such as:
Bleeding from the vagina
Sensitivity to your baby’s blood, which may enter your bloodstream, also called
Rh incompatibility
Infection in the uterus
Chorionic villus sampling through the cervix may not be recommended if you:
Have an active infection, like a
Are carrying twins
Have experienced bleeding from the vagina during pregnancy
Have a tilted uterus
Since you may need to have a full bladder, drink plenty of fluids before the test. However, depending on how your placenta is positioned, you may be asked to urinate before the test. Talk with your doctor about specific ways to prepare for the test. Also, arrange to have someone drive you home from the hospital.
The doctor will use an ultrasound to find the position of your placenta and take measurements to determine the age of the fetus. An ultrasound uses sound waves to create images of structures inside the body.
The doctor will use the ultrasound images as a guide to take a tissue sample from your placenta. First, your vagina and cervix will be cleansed with antiseptic. Next, a device called a speculum will be inserted to widen the opening of the vagina. A thin, hollow tube will be inserted through your vagina and cervix. When it reaches the placenta, it will gently suction a small tissue sample. You may feel cramping while the sample is being taken.
The doctor may want to monitor your baby’s heart rate using an ultrasound. You will be encouraged to rest when you are home. You will most likely be able to return to normal activities the next day. If you have a RH negative blood type, you will need to receive Rhogam to prevent a condition called isoimmunization.
You may feel some cramping during and after the test. You may also have a small amount of bleeding right after the test.
It may take 1-2 weeks to receive your test results. You will go over the results with your doctor or a genetic counselor.
If the test results are unclear, you may need to have another test, called an
to give you a better understanding of the results.
If the results show that your baby has a genetic disorder or chromosomal problems, you and your doctor will discuss how to manage your pregnancy. This may be a stressful time. Get support from your family, friends, and healthcare team.
Heavy bleeding from your vagina
Leaking of amniotic fluid
Uterine contractions |
Fatigue, Runny nose, Sneezing and Sore throat
WebMD Symptom Checker helps you find the most common medical conditions indicated by the symptoms fatigue, runny nose, sneezing and sore throat including Viral pharyngitis, Indoor allergens, and Common cold.
There are 103 conditions associated with fatigue, runny nose, sneezing and sore throat. The links below will provide you with more detailed information on these medical conditions from the WebMD Symptom Checker and help provide a better understanding of causes and treatment of these related conditions.
Viral pharyngitisViral pharyngitis is a sore throat caused by a virus, and causes throat pain and cold-like symptoms.
Indoor allergensIndoor allergens are the things that cause an allergic reaction: dust, dust mites, mold, pet hair and more.
Common coldThe common cold is a viral respiratory infection causing sore throat, stuffy or runny nose, headache and more.
Hay feverHay fever, an allergic reaction to outdoor pollens and molds, causes nasal congestion, itchy eyes, and more.
Acute sinusitisAcute sinusitis, an inflammation of the sinuses, causes sinus pain and tenderness, facial redness and more.
Dust exposureDust exposure can cause congestion, runny nose, cough, shortness of breath, tightness in the chest, and more.
Allergic reactionAllergic reaction causes sneezing, runny nose and hives and can lead to anaphylaxis, a whole body reaction. MononucleosisMononucleosis is a viral infection causing extreme fatigue, sore throat, fever, rash, muscle aches, and more.
Strep throatStrep throat is a throat infection causing symptoms including a red sore throat with white patches.
TonsillitisTonsillitis is painful swelling in the tonsils, causing sore throat, red tonsils, pain, fever, and more.
LaryngitisLaryngitis is an inflammation of the larynx, or voice box, causing hoarseness and loss of voice. Medication reaction or side-effectMedication side effects include nausea, vomiting, stomach upset, weakness, dizziness, seizures, and more.
MumpsMumps is a contagious viral disease that causes painful swelling of the glands that produce saliva. Respiratory syncytial virusRespiratory syncytial virus (RSV) is a virus that causes symptoms similar to the common cold. Multiple sclerosisMultiple sclerosis is a disease of the nervous system causing difficulties with balance, speech, and movement.
AnemiaAnemia, a lack of red blood cells, can cause fatigue, pale skin, weakness, dizziness, headache and more.
Depression (Adult)Depression is a painful sadness that interferes with daily life and includes hopelessness, anxiety, and more.
Heart rhythm disorderSome heart rhythm disorders can cause a fluttering in the chest, shortness of breath, chest pain or dizziness.
Diabetes, type 2Diabetes can make you feel hungry, tired, or thirsty; you may urinate more than normal and have blurry vision.
Dehydration (Children)Dehydration, or not getting enough fluid, causes dry and sticky mouth, tearless crying, and more in children.
Nasal congestionNasal congestion is a stuffy nose, and can be accompanied by blocked ears, sore throat, and more.
Smoke exposureExposure to smoke can cause coughing, wheezing, shortness of breath, chest tightness, chest pain, and more.
Sleep deprivationSleep deprivation occurs when the lack of restful sleep is severe enough to compromise basic body functions.
Sleep apneaPeople with sleep apnea stop and restart breathing multiple times while sleeping. Acute stress reactionAcute stress reaction symptoms include shortness of breath, anxiety, nervousness, sense of doom and more.
Viral syndromeViral syndrome is an unidentified cause of typical virus symptoms sore throat, stuffy nose, aches and more. Heartburn/GERDSymptoms of heartburn and GERD are a burning feeling in the chest, throat, or mouth, nausea, and more.
Chronic sinusitisChronic sinusitis, or sinus infections, cause a stuffy or runny nose, tooth pain, fever, sore throat and more.
Bipolar disorderBipolar disorder causes extreme mood swings between depression and mania. Atrial fibrillationAtrial fibrillation is a heart condition that causes heart palpitations, confusion, dizziness and more.
Cystic fibrosisCystic fibrosis is an inherited disease that causes the body to produce abnormally thick and sticky mucus. Heat exhaustionHeat exhaustion causes intense thirst, heavy sweating, pale, cool, and moist skin, muscle cramps, and more.
Hepatitis AHepatitis A is an inflammation of the liver. Symptoms include fever, fatigue, yellowing of the skin, and more.
Hepatitis BHepatitis B is an inflammation of the liver that may cause fever, fatigue, dark urine, jaundice, and more.
Hepatitis CHepatitis B is an inflammation of the liver that may cause yellowing of the skin and eyes, tiredness, and more.
Eating disorderPeople with eating disorders have extreme and dangerous eating habits. EmphysemaEmphysema is a chronic lung condition that causes shortness of breath, a chronic cough, wheezing, and more.
EpiglottitisEpiglottitis is a rare, life-threatening illness that keeps air from getting to the lungs. GlomerulonephritisGlomerulonephritis is a type of kidney disease and causes swelling, abnormal urine, fever, achiness, and more.
Rheumatoid arthritisRheumatoid arthritis is an autoimmune disease that causes pain, swelling, and joint damage.
Scarlet feverScarlet fever is a red itchy rash on the body caused by streptococcal bacteria. TuberculosisTuberculosis usually infects the lungs, causing a bad cough with blood, chest pain, fever, chills, and fatigue. Thyroid cancerThyroid cancer is cancer of the thyroid gland and can cause a cough, hoarseness, a lump in the neck, and more.
Pre-leukemia (myelodysplastic syndrome)Myelodysplastic syndromes are diseases that affect the bone marrow and blood, causing anemia and tiredness. Nasal polypsNasal polyps, sacs of inflamed tissue in the nasal passages, can cause cold symptoms, snoring, and more.
Nonallergic rhinitisNon-allergic rhinitis causes congestion, sneezing, runny nose, or itchy red eyes for no apparent reason. Pulmonary hypertensionPulmonary hypertension can cause shortness of breath, a fast heart rate, or lightheadedness.
Low blood pressure (hypotension)Low blood pressure, or hypotension, can make you feel lightheaded and dizzy
Lyme diseaseLyme disease is a bacterial infection spread through tick bites; symptoms include rash, fever chills, and more.
Anemia, chronic diseaseAnemia of chronic disease (ACD) can cause fatigue, pale skin, weakness, dizziness, headache and more. Anemia, iron deficiencyAnemia , a lack of red blood cells, can cause fatigue, pale skin and gums, brittle nails, irritability, and more.
Carbon monoxide poisoningCarbon monoxide poisoning can be fatal, symptoms include headache, dizziness, nausea, and vomiting.
Chronic kidney diseaseChronic kidney disease is a condition of the kidneys that can cause high blood pressure, fatigue, and weakness.
Dehydration (Adult)Dehydration, or not getting enough fluid, causes low blood pressure, weakness, dizziness, fatigue, and nausea.
Restless legs syndromeRestless leg syndrome causes intense discomfort in your legs and an overpowering urge to move them. SarcoidosisSarcoidosis is a rare disease that can cause swelling and hard lumps in the lymph nodes and organs. Supraventricular tachycardiaSupraventricular tachycardia is fast heart rhythm starting in one of the upper chambers of the heart. Radon exposureBreathing in high levels of radon over time can cause lung cancer. HyperthyroidismHyperparathyroidism can cause fatigue and weakness, increased thirst, impaired thinking, and bone fractures.
Vitamin B12 deficiencyVitamin B12 deficiency symptoms include fatigue, pale skin, weakness, sleepiness, numbness, weakness, and more.
Low blood sugar (hypoglycemia)Low blood sugar, or low glucose levels, causes shakiness, anxiety, clammy skin, irritability, hunger, and more.
Lung cancer (non small cell)Non-small cell lung cancer is the most common type of lung cancer and can cause a cough, chest pain, and more.
Iron poisoningIron poisoning causes abdominal pain, vomiting, diarrhea, lethargy, and dehydration.
Chronic fatigue syndrome (CFIDS)Chronic fatigue syndrome is a condition that causes extreme tiredness that doesn't get better with rest.
Congestive heart failurePeople with congestive heart failure can have shortness of breath, fatigue, irregular heartbeat and more.
Depression (Child and Adolescent)Depression is a painful sadness that interferes with a child's schoolwork, family life, and social activities.
Gastrointestinal bleedingThe symptoms of gastrointestinal bleeding include black or bloody stool or vomit, dizziness, and cramping.
MalnutritionMalnutrition occurs when the body isn't getting enough nutrients; sometimes the condition is life-threatening.
Exercise or physical activityExercise is vital for good health, but overdoing it can lead to muscle aches, dehydration, headache, and more.
UnderweightBeing underweight means weighing less than you need for good health.
Cocaine withdrawalCocaine withdrawal may cause feelings ranging from anxiety, irritability and sleepiness to suicidal thoughts.
Foreign object in the noseSymptoms of a foreign body in the nose include trouble breathing, pain, discharge, and bleeding.
HistoplasmosisHistoplasmosis is a fungal infection of the lungs causing muscle aches, fever, chest pain, cough, and more.
Myasthenia gravisMyasthenia gravis is caused by abnormal immune responses that weaken muscles, particularly of the face.
Thermal burn of mouth or tongueA thermal burn of the mouth or tongue can cause pain, blisters, peeling skin, and temporary loss of taste.
Rectal cancerRectal cancer appears in the rectum and causes bloody stool and constipation.
Dementia in head injuryDementia resulting from a head injury may cause memory problems, difficulty speaking, and personality changes.
Drug allergyA drug allergy is an allergic reaction to a medication and can cause a rapid heartbeat and difficulty breathing.
Hypothyroidism (adult)Hypothyroidism your body functions slow down, making you gain weight and feel tired all the time. Narcotic abuseNarcotic abuse can cause fatigue, shallow breathing, anxiety, euphoria, vomiting, confusion, and constipation.
Lung cancer (small cell)Small cell lung cancer is the least common type of lung cancer and can cause a cough, chest pain, and more.
ThalassemiaThalassemia is a rare group of genetic blood disorders effecting red blood cells and leading to anemia.
Aortic regurgitationAortic regurgitation, when the aortic valve doesn't close completely, can cause severe heart symptoms.
Pleural effusionPleural effusion is buildup of fluid in the pleura and can cause difficulty breathing or chest pain.
HyperparathyroidismHyperthyroidism causes weight loss, shakiness, tiredness, sensitivity to heat, insomnia, and more.
Hiatal herniaWhen hiatal hernia symptoms do occur, they include chest pain and burning, sweating, a bitter taste and more.
Whooping coughWhooping cough, a contagious respiratory infection, causes a runny nose, a mild fever, and a severe cough. Renal cell (kidney) cancerRenal cell cancer is a type of kidney cancer that can cause bloody urine and persistent pain in the side. Mesenteric lymphadenitisMesenteric lymphadenitis is an inflammation of abdominal lymph nodes causing pain, diarrhea, fever, and more.
Bird (avian) fluBird flu is spread to people from birds and causes fever, cough, sore throat and muscle aches.
West nile virusWest Nile virus is an infection spread by mosquitoes, and can cause diarrhea, fever, abdominal pain, and more. Throat cancerThroat cancer can cause symptoms including difficulty swallowing, hoarseness, and chronic cough.
Small intestine cancerSmall intestine cancer is rare and often has no symptoms, but can cause symptoms in its advanced stages.
Lead poisoningLead poisoning causes sudden pain on either side of the lower back, urinary issues, nausea, fever, and chills.
Radiation sicknessRadiation sickness is caused by a high dose of radiation, and causes vomiting, diarrhea, hair loss, and more.
Toxic shock syndromeToxic shock syndrome is a serious bacterial infection and causes fever, low blood pressure, a rash, and more.
Anemia, hemolyticHemolytic anemia occurs when there aren't enough red blood cells in the blood. Typhoid feverTyphoid fever is a life-threatening illness and causes fever, general aches and pains, headache, and weakness.
HypopituitarismHypopituitarism is a rare disorder of the pituitary glands, which can cause many different symptoms.
PseudohypoparathyroidismPseudohypoparathyroidism is a rare inherited condition that can lead to cramps, muscle spasms, and more. |
We Shall Overcome: Historic Places of the Civil Rights Movement Which locations, open for visitation, are most relevant to the civil rights movement? [...] »
With an Even Hand: Brown v. Board at Fifty Examine the events which led to and the aftermath of Brown v. Board of Education. [...] »
Brown v. Board of Education 50th Anniversary Digital Archive Explore Brown v. Board of Education through interactive activities and personal recollections. [...] »
Jackie Robinson and Other Baseball Highlights, 1860s-1960s Learn about race in American sports history through the life of Jackie Robinson. [...] »
Say it Plain: A Century of Great African American Speeches Hear 12 renowned speeches by African Americans, including Marcus Garvey's only known recording. [...] »
Freedom Now! An Archival Project of Tougaloo College and Brown University Immerse yourself in the historical struggle for the African American vote in Mississippi. [...] »
The Malcolm X Project Read FBI files on and watch interviews about Malcolm X, human and African American rights activist. [...] »
Seattle Black Panther Party History and Memory Project Who exactly were the Black Panthers? Explore the history and memories of the Seattle chapter. [...] »
Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse Review litigation studies ranging from mental health facilities and jail conditions to equal employment. [...] »
Atlanta in the Civil Rights Movement What was Atlanta's role in the larger African American civil rights movement 1940 through 1970? [...] » |
Pro libertate nostra
“La libertad es el derecho”
Vergesst Es Nie – In commemoration of the Kristalnacht and the Holocaust! Posted on November 10, 2010 by tegis Tonight we commemorate the Kristalnacht, which took place 1938 on this date. It started off because of a German diplomat got shot by a Jew in Paris and Hitler called for retribution – and then the German Jews had to pay the price. Jewish homes were ransacked, temples smashed, and people got killed. And their only crime was their cultural and racial belonging.
This was the beginning of the Final Solution and the Holocaust. Sadly, this was neither the first or the last racial pogrom in our history. In former Yugoslavia, Soviet Union, Africa, in Israel-Palestine there have been genocides and hatred campaigned against folk groups. It seems that it is a tragic thing we humans tend to do where ever we live.
Posted in Europe |
Tagged Germany, Hitler, Holocaust, Jews, Kristalnacht |
In Iceland (and some thoughts regarding the Nordic speech community) Posted on October 21, 2010 by tegis OK, I am in Iceland and the past week has been pretty hectic. The flight went OK and also my short stay in Copenhagen, where I took part in the board for language understanding within the Nordic Council of Ministers of which I have the honor to have been appointed into. The Nordic language community is a hard-to-handle subject of which this post will be devoted to.
The basic idea is that we in the North are living in a speech community which we share with several other countries – we have different languages but due to linguistic, political, and historical reasons they are mutually understandable for us. But it is a complex issue, to say the least – it is the idea of that the people of the northernmost region in Europe who live in – or in countries formerly belonging to – the Scandinavian countries mutually understand one another even though they have different mother tongues. It doesn’t come easy. There is also a need of explaining the division about what is considered Scandinavia, the North, and what is not considered as not being any of the above. It can be a complicated and rather confusing discussion to say the least – even for people living in the area. Scandinavia is the three countries of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway. The term “the North” refers to Denmark, Norway and Sweden as well as Finland and Iceland, and the associated territories. Neither term does include areas such as Canada, Russia, and/or the Baltic countries (even if it is disputable, according to myself, regarding Estonia). This is so due to linguistic, territorial, political, and cultural reasons that go back as much as a thousand years back in history.
The biggest problem for the Nordic speech community is its peripheries, Finland and Iceland. This is so due to that the language in Finland – Finnish – belongs to a complete different group of languages which cannot even be considered to be of European origin. And Icelandic has stayed intact in its development whereas the other North-Germanic languages (Swedish, Danish, and Norwegian) drifted away from their roots so the language is not mutually intelligible with the others anymore. This constitutes problems of course for the idea of the Nordic speech community. Therefore, in order to prevent the community to break down and collapse it is necessary that the inhabitants in Finland and Iceland know a second language – the language of any of the Scandinavian languages. Another option would be giving in to what some would say be a natural development and use a sc. bridge language – a lingua franca. Even this option comes with two alternatives: 1) use a mixture of the three Scandinavian languages, a variant called Scandinavian (swe:skandinaviska), or 2) English which is the leading language of international discourse, and has acquired use as lingua franca in many other regions.
To give up the struggle in keeping the Nordic speech community intact and start to use English instead seem to be the most convenient option. But many people fear that it will be the beginning of the end for Nordic co-operation all together. There is no need in denying that the fellowship of language is one of the things that binds Nordic co-operation together. And the situation is such as a bit over 80 per cent of Nordic residents have Danish, Norwegian or Swedish as the language they control the best. About 20 per cent speak Finnish and Icelandic, and, in addition, a great number of minority languages are spoken. To be able to keep the community together in one piece, the minority seemingly have to adjust to the majority. Therefore, Danish, Norwegian and Swedish are the working languages in official Nordic co-operation (Nordic Council of Ministers homepage). If English would to be used an important administrative domain within the Nordic co-operation would be lost and something that rests on a thousand years of history as its backbone would shatter to pieces. One of the advantages also for the Nordic co-operation is that the North is a sc. natural co-operation platform with a common history, common culture, and more or less common communication system. This is of course an advantage that the European or African co-operation models do not share in the same way and it ought to be something that should be worthwhile maintaining. But this has also to come with a greater understanding and respect for smaller languages that thrives within the Nordic region.
However, maintaining the Nordic speech community requires constant development of the possibilities for strengthening language comprehension. Here the school systems are important tools in order to guide the way – whatever way might to be desired.
Geeking out ’bout a geek movie Posted on October 11, 2010 by tegis If you truly are a real geek, you notice (and care about) these goofs in the new upcoming Facebook movie – The Social Network. It hasn’t come to Sweden yet, but I think I will watch it in Reykjavik by the end of this week. Would be fun.
Posted in America |
Tagged geeks, The Social Network |
P-Floyd! <3 Posted on October 10, 2010 by tegis Went on a concert yesterday with the Swedish Pink Floyd cover band P-Floyd. It was magical!
Tagged P-Floyd, Pink Floyd |
Free Xiaobo!! Posted on October 8, 2010 by tegis The global left is pissed off. China is pissed off. The Vatican is pissed off. I’m ever so proud of the Nobel Prize Committee. :P
Democracy activist and dissident Liu Xiaobo received the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize. Or received and received, he’s incapable of receiving it since is is a sc. prisoner of conscience in China. He is not, however, the only prisoner of conscience in China and all of them should be released as soon as possible!
What is important with this award-winner is his long and non-violent struggle for fundamental human rights. Sadly, Xiaobo was sentenced to 11 years in prison and two years’ deprivation of political rights last year. Only two other laureates have won while in prison, one of them Burmese dissident Aung San Suu Kyi in 1991. I think it sends out very clear signals to oppressors all over the world that it is not OK to hinder people from talking and saying their opinion and advocate human rights and basic freedoms.
The best thing about this all is that the Nobel Peace Prize might have recovered a little at least from the errors which been made by awarding Barack Obama (commander of the biggest army in the world) and Al “ManBearPig” Gore etc. Sadly these earlier awards give the Chinese government an easier situation when discussing the Xiaobo- case back at home. Many people who likewise feel sorry for Xiaobo and do think his imprisonment is way over the line will also sympathize with the Chinese Government when they claim that this is just another attack by an American propaganda machine. Hopefully other well-deserved nominees will be awarded further on in the future. Next year I hope for someone from Africa!
This has, in short, been a great Nobel week for humanity. :)
Posted in Asia |
Tutu is retiring Posted on October 7, 2010 by tegis South African priest and human rights activist Desmond Tutu is finally retired.
“In the end the perpetrators of injustice or oppression, the ones who strut the stage of the world often seemingly unbeatable – there is no doubt at all that they will bit the dust.” (followed by roaring chuckle) “Wonderful! Wonderful! Wonderful! The texture of our universe is one where there is no question at all but that good and laughter and justice will prevail.“
A world without Tutu will be a bit darker, a little more dull. His legacy will be his life and the story of how this tiny pastor with a huge laugh from South Africa became our global guardian – much more than any American army could induce. Thank you Tutu for all these years and for what you did!
Posted in Africa |
Banned Books Week Posted on October 6, 2010 by tegis Last week was the Banned Books Week! I think it is a wonderful initiative that I support to the fullest, of course. The practice of banning books is a form of censorship, and often has political, religious or moral motivations. If government officials step in and ban or challenge literature that does not suit their likes, it is a certain sign on that something is not right with this society. However it is not only in the most obvious countries these things occur. In the States for instance, this week is very important because of the redneck Christian groups there supporting book burnings of the Quraan and of other books that are wrong according to them.
Chick with Books has been highlighting one book a day during that week – books that were banned or challenged in the US. She deserves a lot of cred for that!
According to her, the Christians at a 7,600-student school system in rural Virginia want to ban Anne Frank‘s remarkable diary. Why, you may ask? I asked the same question. Until it came out that Anne Frank wrote too much on sexual material and homosexual themes. Deary, deary me. Therefore, it seems that Culpeper County, Va. public school is not going to read Anne Frank at this level anymore but it will perhaps be brought up again as material at a different grade level.
Remember;
“Dort, wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man am Ende auch Menschen“
//Heinrich Heine
Danne Nordling
Ekonomistas
Föreningen Svenskar i Världen
Fredrik Malm
Herrskobloggen
Islandsbloggen
Jinge
Johan Hakelius
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Manligheter
Sakine Madon
Simon Strand
Sjálfstæðisflokkurinn
Stefán Friðrik Stefánsson
SvD Ledarbloggen
Tanja Bergkvist
Tradition & Fason |
Tulips of Holland
The tulip has come to be a loved symbol of the Netherlands. Many tourists visit the country just to see the bright coloured flower and the astonishing view over the bulb fields. The season begins in March with crocuses, followed by the daffodil and the yellow narcissi. In April the hyacinths and tulips blosssom to some time in mid May, depending on the weather. Later, in August it is time for the gladioli. Even when spring is over, the Netherlands is still a garden, visitors can enjoy flowers in the Netherlands all year round.
From April to September fantastic flower parades are held throughout the country. The Bollenstreek Flower Parade is the biggest parade and is held at the end of April every year. The origin of the parade dates 50 years back in time when initiators of various small parades in the villages of the Bollenstreek decided to go together and organize one big parade. Floats with 1.5 million of different flowers are created by enthusiastic volunteers who are working on this for months. Popular flowers for these floats are daffodils and hyacinths, but in some parts of the country, only dahlias are beeing used. The Bloemencorso Valkenswaard is a smaller parade which also includes folk dancing and street theatre.
The Kerstflora (X-mas Flora) Show is held every year in December, a five day show of house plants and flowers grown under glass. In Lisse, the Museum De Zwarte Tulp or The Balck Tulip, have a extensive collection of historical material on the flower. This includes information about the cultivation and the evolution, drawings, photographs, tools and a look into the bulb trading companies.
Aalsmeer, close to Amsterdam, is the home of the world’s biggest flower auction. The auctions are held early in the morning but they are still very popular. Many tourists put their wish of sleeping in aside for a visit here. And it is not just for tourists, local cultivaters and 1.500 foreign growers send their products to the auctions. The flowers are sold to buyers all over the world, more than 75% of the flowers and plants sold at the auction are exported.
Keukenhof, the world’s largest flower garden (32 hectares) is located between the two towns of Hillegom and Lisse south of Haarlem. The park attracts 800.000 people during the open hours of eight weeks each year and it is one of the most photographed sights in the world. For the season of 2003, 7 million bulbs have been planted making the flower season someting very special to look forward to.
In 1949 the then mayor of Lisse, Mr. W.J.H. Lambooy, together with ten leading bulb-growers came up with the idea of a permanent annual open-air flower exhibition. They found the ideal site for this in the Keukenhof Estate, a former part of the enormous estate belonging to the castle of Slot Teylingen. The Countess of Holland, Jacoba van Beieren lived here in the 15th century and she used part of her estate as a herb and vegetable garden. Here, every day, the countess personally gathered the fresh ingredients for her kitchen. This has given Keukenhof its present name, which literally means Kitchen Garden.
The garden and landscape architects ‘Zocher & Son’ were commissioned to develop the park in 1840. They were well-known for their talents after designing the Vondelpark in Amsterdam. Some things has been added since the area became a flower garden but the original design can still be seen in the area surrounding the Beukenlaan, in the majestic trees and the pond. The first year 236.000 people visited the exhibition. Famous people who have visited the garden are the US Presidents Eisenhower and Clinton and Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain. Keukenhof also had the honour of providing the décor for the first public appearance of Princess Máxima, who at the time was still the fiancée of Crown Prince Willem-Alexander. |
Release of Innocent Man Shows Huge Flaws in Sexual Assault Prosecutions
in Australia, bigotry, courts, human rights, International, law enforcement, misogyny, patriarchy, race and racism, rape and sexual assault, violence against women and girls
In Australia, a man named Farah Jama was recently released from jail after spending 15 months there on a wrongful conviction for rape. Jama (pictured left) had an alibi for the night, was not seen by any witnesses at the scene of the alleged crime, and was not identified by the alleged victim, who was found unconscious and remained unsure as to whether or not a sexual assault was committed against her. Jama was convicted on the sole basis of DNA evidence — evidence that was later found to be contaminated.
In a scathing independent review of the “disastrous” case of Farah Jama, former Supreme Court judge Frank Vincent found a miscarriage of justice had occurred when the DNA evidence that prosecutors used solely to convict the Sudanese man was contaminated and forensic procedures did not adhere to national standards.
He also found that “warning bells” about the lack of evidence in the case were overlooked by police investigators and prosecutors because they were so blinded by the DNA evidence.
“In this present case, the obviously unreserved acceptance of the reliability of DNA evidence appears to have so confined thought that it enabled all involved to leap over a veritable mountain of improbabilities and unexplained aspects that . . . could be seen to block the path to conviction,” Mr Vincent wrote.
Mr Jama spent 15 months in jail after a sample of his DNA contaminated one taken from a 48-year-old woman believed to have been raped at an over-28s nightclub in Melbourne’s southeastern suburbs.
The 22-year-old was not seen by any witnesses in the nightclub or in the area, the alleged rape victim had no memory of the sexual assault and Mr Jama had an alibi for the night of the incident. Despite this, police went ahead with the prosecution and a jury found Mr Jama guilty.
“It is almost incredible that, in consequence of a minute particle . . . by some mechanism settling on a swab, slide or trolley surface, a chain of events could be started that culminated in the conviction of an individual for a crime that had never been committed by him or anyone else,” Mr Vincent wrote.
I take issue with the assertion that an assault never occurred — while that may be the case, evidence that no rape was ever committed is not presented here. In any case, it does seem incredibly clear that unlike most cases, where a lack of evidence or failure to convict does not mean that the accused was not actually guilty, Jama is indeed innocent on all charges. Further, if Vincent is correct that no assault took place, and there was never any legitimate evidence from the rape kit that an assault was committed, that just makes the conviction here even more negligent and appalling.
Obviously false rape convictions are bad. They’re not what we want, and do a far better job at allowing rape to continue than at stopping it. To be clear, police here initially did the right thing — even though the woman did not recall an assault, women are raped while unconscious all the time. A rape kit was certainly in order, so long as she willingly consented to one. But evidence is not found in all rape kits. And clearly, DNA evidence still has its flaws, especially when a police force was not using sealed rape kits at the time. (The mind, it boggles.)
But my interest in this case extends beyond the horrible injustice suffered by Mr. Jama. Because I think it’s also excellent evidence of the many flaws present in current judicial systems, and the rape myths that allow those flaws to go unchecked until something utterly atrocious happens, as did here.
Jama was not just convicted of a crime that he did not commit, based on nothing other than contaminated DNA evidence — he was wrongfully convicted on those grounds in a climate where actual rapists go free all the time. He was convicted in a world where rape victims who have genuine forensic evidence to back up their claims, and who remember their assaults and can name their assailants, are openly disbelieved and mocked, told that they wanted it or deserved it. Victims who know they were assaulted by real rapists who don’t have alibis walk away without punishment, vindicated in the public eye and attempting to shame their victims as liars. And here, Jama was convicted based on the claims only of “science.”
What this case tells us is that faulty, improperly kept DNA evidence1 is worth more in many criminal justice systems than the word of women.
Victims are disbelieved; really, truly awful forensic “evidence” is trusted. Victims are called liars and whores with regrets about a wild night; contaminated rape kits are treated as gospel truth. By police, prosecutors, and juries, those who point out an assailant and say “he raped me” are looked upon with extraordinary, condescending skepticism; by police, prosecutors, and juries, all other evidence is overlooked in the face of some DNA. Juries let rapists go, reasoning, “well, she willingly went home with him”; juries convict innocent men, reasoning, “all of those crime TV shows can’t be wrong.”
This is not just about the fallibility of DNA evidence: it’s also about who and what we trust.
He said the magistrate didn’t throughly question the complete lack of evidence in the case while the committal hearing simply rubber stamped the case for trial.
Police also treated his client like he was guilty and showed no interest in assuming his innocence, he said.
When asked if he felt the jury was also prejudiced in the case, he said: “I certainly do.”
Jama’s conviction took place in the context of a country where, like in all Western nations, racism is still incredibly prevalent against non-whites. Further, Jama is a black African Australian (some news sources say he is Somali, others Sudanese) in a country where African Australians are still a very tiny minority and perceptions of African-descended black people are very largely drawn from American depictions, which still regularly portray black people in a rather negative light.
This combination of misogyny against women rape victims and frequent racism against both victims and perpetrators (depending on the races of the accused and accuser) leaves current judicial systems oppressive and highly unreliable. And that impact is not just felt in relatively rare cases of wrongful convictions like Jama’s, but very largely by the victims those systems claim to represent. |
The First Year Teacher’s Thoughts on Grammar
One of my best friends, Lisa, is in her first year of teaching both high school and college, with the occasional kindergarten class. She’s started a great blog detailing some of her experiences called First Year Teacher Resources. The other day, she wrote about outdated grammar rules and why she considers them to be that way.
Here’s a selection:
6. “He’s taller than me.” This is something I OVERHEAR all the time, and it’s starting to become a case of the who vs. whom debate. The “grammatically correct” term is “He’s taller than I” or “She’s smarter than I.” However, if someone is on the phone and a person asks, “Who is it?” The correct response would be “It is I”, when it’s really more socially acceptable (and much less haughty) to say, “It’s me.” Another issue of our language evolving, perhaps.
Click here to read the rest of them.
This is one subject on which I’m torn. I don’t think that people are wrong when they say, “It’s me.” To put it simply, there just following language as it has evolved. There is only one time when I think I’ll do so — when I say “This is she” when answering the phone.
This entry was posted in Discussions, Other Writers, Word Choice Errors. Bookmark the permalink. ← A nice glass of “ice tea” |
A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of meeting Judith Parks of The Pampered Lady because of a message she had on her t-shirt. When I read the words “Change Starts With A Woman”, I thought to myself, she’s talking about me and every other woman who agreed with that message. I believe that words have power and that you can change your life based on the words that you let take root in your heart.
Founded in 2010, The Pampered Lady is an online merchandising company and brand. The mission of the company is to use the vehicle of merchandising to promote the ideals of self-confidence, self-esteem, self-empowerment, and goal achievement among women and young girls throughout the world. The Pampered Lady accomplishes this by combining uplifting and empowering messages of inspiration and common, accessible items such as attractive, flattering t-shirts; journals; mugs; posters; greeting cards; baseball caps; jackets, baby/children’s clothing, and many other items.
Judith Parks is on the road to success and she’s using the The Pampered Lady to encourage, inspire, and motivate women one message at a time.
Get to know Judith Parks….Next up is my Q & A with The Savvy Sistah!
Savvy: What inspired you to start The Pampered Lady?
Judith: As an engineer and operations researcher* by training, I quickly discovered how having a strong education in mathematics – how having strong math skills – helped to provide me with the confidence to begin learning about, and dealing with, my own finances. The more I worked on familiarizing myself with, and optimizing, my finances the more enjoyment I got out of learning how to do such things as creating financial goals for myself, developing investment plans, and crafting spending plans. So, it was the confidence that I gained and the enjoyment that I felt from getting my own finances in order, that then gave me the confidence to take the risk of starting my first business, which I did in 2006.
Through becoming a voracious reader of all things personal finance and business ownership, in addition to learning from others including mentors, I realized that I had received so many positive benefits from the experience of running my first company, that I wanted to develop a way to encourage others who have big dreams that they want to accomplish (whether its in personal finance, business ownership, weight loss, etc.) to go after them. I particularly wanted to encourage women and young girls to do this because as a human being and a woman, I certainly understand how challenging finding such encouragement can be in a world where too many people tell you ‘No, you can’t do that’. Additionally, I wanted to do this in a way that was fun and appealing, in a way that people could easily connect with. So, after thinking through a few ideas, I came up with the idea of having ‘words of encouragement’ placed on common items such as attractive and flattering t-shirts, journals, travel mugs, and the like. That way, we have a fun, practical, and attractive way for us to “wear inspiration” – to be inspired and encouraged anytime, day or night, wherever we go.
Savvy: What was the first message you put on one of your t-shirts? Why did you choose it?
Judith: The first message that I put on a t-shirt was: “World’s Fiercest Future Millionaire”
One reason that I chose this message was because it was a bold and provocative statement that I thought would resonate with people.
More importantly though, was that a key part of the inspiration for creating The Pampered Lady company was to inspire within women, the desire for financial independence, freedom from consumer debt, and continuous investment in their financial education. I wanted to inspire within women, the belief that they could achieve these goals. It seems that people in general are scared to talk about money…especially their own. They seem to be afraid to face the truth about their financial circumstances. Yet, I believe that the more you talk about what admittedly is an emotionally charged subject, the more you learn about finances – budgeting, consumer debt avoidance/elimination, financial planning, investing, cash flow, the differences between assets and liabilities – the better your chances of building confidence surrounding your personal finances, and taking back control of your financial life. So, the message “World’s Fiercest Future Millionaire” is meant to be a source of inspiration, and a daily reminder to maintain the kind of attitude and belief in yourself that gets you to that goal.
Savvy: Where do you see The Pampered Lady in five years?
Judith: I see progress in 2 main areas:
1) Having the messages translated into multiple languages, beyond English, so that we can better target specific countries and cultures. We are particularly interested in countries and cultures where there is an emerging educated female middle class.
2) We would like to develop a stronger kid’s line so that we can introduce the concept of financial literacy and education to younger age groups. It is my belief that one of the ways that the gap in math and science test scores for US children can be closed is by making those subjects fun, interactive, engaging, and relevant to the environment in which they live. But it often takes looking at the child’s entire environment in school as well as outside of school – including such things as what they wear, what they play with, and what they read – to spark a child’s imagination in that direction. We could call it, sparking their “I-Math-Ination”.
Savvy: What encouraging words do you have for other women who desire to start a business?
Judith: The short answer is – GO FOR IT! Win or lose, it will only serve to enrich your learning - if you allow it to.
The longer answer is that doing so starts with believing in yourself. It starts with developing the belief that you have what is takes (or can find what it takes) to be a great success at your chosen endeavor.
After that, I would say that it’s about creating a compelling vision for yourself and your business; Be willing to develop your leadership skills and your ability to inspire others; Commit to regular investments in your financial education – both in time and in money; Finally, make sure to surround yourself with a great team of competent, uplifting people. Surround yourself with your “Dream Team”. Do not try to carry the load alone, to do everything by yourself. At the end of the day, it’s really about being willing to hold yourself accountable and take 100% responsibility for the results that you achieve, as well as any mistakes that you make in the process.
I am a big fan of not just swinging for the fences, but swinging beyond the fences. When you do that, you certainly risk making mistakes and striking out. But I say, ‘embrace these mistakes’, learn from them. Once you have done that, then develop the confidence, self-esteem, and self-belief to recover, then you become that much bigger, better, and stronger for having gone through the process.
Judith Parks of The Pampered Lady is using messages to inspire, encourage, and motivate women and that’s why she’s The Savvy Sistah of the Week. |
Some Situational Sources of Longer Life
Posted by The Situationist Staff on August 31, 2007
In the latest edition of New York Magazine, Clive Thompson has a fascinating article, “Why New Yorkers Last Longer.” Below we have excerpted portions of the article which includes several situational explanations — from “smart public policy and sheer luck” to “the very structure of the city.” * * *
Last winter, the New York City Department of Health released figures that told a surprising story: New Yorkers are living longer than ever, and longer than most people in the country. A New Yorker born in 2004 can now expect to live 78.6 years, nine months longer than the average American will. What’s more, our life expectancy is increasing at a rate faster than that of most of the rest of the country. . . . When these figures came out, urban-health experts were impressed and slightly dazed. It turns out the conventional wisdom is wrong: The city, it seems, won’t kill you. Quite the opposite. Not only are we the safest big city in America, but we are, by this measure at least, the healthiest.
The “average life expectancy” of a city is a statistically curious number. It’s not really a prediction about how long you’re going to live. It’s an average of how long everyone here lives—and thus it forms a good barometer of the overall health of the city. . . .
And this is precisely what the city has done, through a combination of smart public policy and sheer luck. All the boons of the nineties—the aggressive policing, the dramatic drop in crime, the renaissance of the city’s parks and street life, the freakish infusion of boom-time wealth—played a part.
Homicide, AIDS, and drugs are characteristically New York ways to die young, of course, so it’s no surprise that when we sharply decreased the fatalities they caused, we caught up with the rest of the country. But here’s the thing: It’s not just that we’ve conquered these urban blights. Cancer and cardiac arrest are down, too. The number of people in the city dying from heart disease has dropped by a third in the last twenty years, and cancer rates have slid by nearly a fifth. And again in these cases, New York is getting healthier faster than the rest of the U.S.
In essence, there is a health gap emerging between our massive metropolis and the rest of the country—some X factor that’s improving our health in subtle, everyday ways. . . . Like many New Yorkers, I’d moved here with some trepidation—always figuring that the stress, pollution, and 60-hour workweeks would knock about five years off my life. I was wrong—precisely wrong. But where, exactly, is our excess life coming from?
I take this question to Thomas Frieden, New York’s commissioner of public health. Frieden is a wonk’s wonk—a handsome, energetic doctor who has gained a nationwide reputation for his aggressive effort to push New York’s average-life-expectancy figure ever higher. The smoking ban of 2003? The trans-fat ban of last year? You can thank Frieden for both. . . .
But even Frieden admits that public policy can’t account for all the gains. When I ask what the X factor is—where the “excess life” is coming from—Frieden goes over to his desk and returns with a clear plastic statuette. It’s from the American Podiatric Medical Association and Prevention magazine: BEST WALKING CITY, 2006.
“We’ve won it a couple of years in a row,” he tells me with a grin. He’s got a bunch of them kicking around.
Walking? This isn’t quite as facile an explanation as it sounds. Scientists who study urban health argue that it’s not just that we walk more—it’s the way we walk that has a surprising spillover effect on life spans. . . . Eleanor Simonsick, a Baltimore-based epidemiologist, knew that regular walking is a powerful way to maintain your health. But she began to wonder, a question very germane to us in New York: Does the speed at which you walk also affect your health?
She decided to conduct an experiment to find out. She and a group of scientists assembled 3,075 seniors in their seventies and asked them to traverse a 400-meter course, walking as fast as they could. They monitored their subjects’ health over the next six years, during which time 430 of the geriatrics died and many more fell ill. When Simonsick crunched the data, she found that the ones who were dying and getting sick were the ones who walked the slowest. For every minute longer it took someone to complete the 400-meter walk, he had a 29 percent higher chance of mortality and a 52 percent greater chance of being disabled. People who walk faster live longer—and enjoy better health in their later years.
“Walking speed absolutely reflects health status,” Simonsick says. . . .
The thing is, as Simonsick points out, New York is literally designed to force people to walk, to climb stairs—and to do it quickly. Driving in the city is maddening, pushing us onto the sidewalks and up and down the stairs to the subways. What’s more, our social contract dictates that you should move your ass when you’re on the sidewalk, so as not to annoy your fellow walkers. (A recent ranking of cities found that New York has the fastest pedestrians in the country.) As Simonsick sees it, the very structure of the city coerces us to exercise far more than people elsewhere in the U.S., in a way that is strongly correlated with a far-better life expectancy. Every city block doubles as a racewalking track, every subway station, a StairMaster. Seen this way, the whole city looks like a massive exercise machine dedicated to improving our health while we run errands.
This idea of the city as a health club is fairly revolutionary. Back in the beginning of the industrial revolution, cities were regarded, quite correctly, as lethal places to live. . . . In the first decades of the twentieth century, cities began to clean up their acts drastically, when sanitation standards emerged and inoculations began to aggressively squelch infectious diseases; the actual life spans in cities began to catch up to and exceed those of people in rural areas. But the idea of urban rot remained strong, so the cultural bias against urban life lived on. It didn’t help when the seventies and eighties ushered in waves of urban crime, recession, and drug epidemics, and cities like New York and Detroit and Chicago sharply curtailed public-health services. Cities, more than ever, seemed like cesspools of dread and early death.
By 2000, though, the perspective looked altogether different. With a sharply reduced crime rate, runaway gentrification, and a geyser of boom-time dough, Manhattan had largely conquered the homicide, AIDS, and overdose problems that were pulling down the average life-expectancy figure. A trio of New York–based urban-health academics—Nicholas Freudenberg, David Vlahov, and Sandro Galea, professors at Hunter College and the New York Academy of Medicine—began to wonder if the “urban health penalty” still made sense. As they examined the most recent data about health in cities versus health in rural and suburban areas, they noticed that the cities were, contrary to theory, pulling ahead. . . . Death rates for 1-to-24-year-old males are 60 per 100,000 in cities, versus 80 in rural areas. Perhaps worst of all for the suburbs, obesity is rising far more rapidly than in cities.
“We were just walking around New York and thinking, Wait a minute,” Vlahov says. “People in New York are in better shape than ever. So there’s obviously got to be something about cities that’s good for you.”
The urban health penalty, they decided, had inverted itself. The new reality was that living in the suburbs and the country was the killer. In January 2005, Vlahov and his colleagues penned a manifesto they cleverly called “The Urban Health ‘Advantage,’ ” and published it in the Journal of Urban Health. Cities, they posited, were now the healthiest places of all, because their environment conferred subtle advantages—and guided its citizens, often quite unconsciously, to adopt healthier behaviors.
Three years ago, Lawrence Frank, a professor of urban planning at the University of British Columbia, set out to measure this effect, examining 10,858 people in Atlanta and the type of neighborhood they lived in. . . . When he checked the results, the health difference was shockingly large: A white man who lived in a more urban, mixed-use area was fully ten pounds lighter than a demographically identical guy who lived in a sprawling suburb.
“The more you drive, the more you weigh,” Frank tells me after I call him to talk about it. He was unsurprised when I described New York’s increases in life expectancy. “You put people in an environment where public transportation is rational and driving is almost impossible, and it would be shocking not to see this outcome,” he says. Other scientists suggest that New York’s benefits do not occur merely because the city is walkable. It’s also because New York is old and filled with attractive architecture and interesting street scenes—since, as it turns out, aesthetically pretty places lure people out of their homes and cars. A 2002 study by the National Institutes of Health found that people living in buildings built before 1973 were significantly more likely to walk one-mile distances than those living in areas with newer architecture—because their environments were less architecturally ugly.
At the same time, New Yorkers are also more likely to visit parks than people who live in sprawl, because the parks are closer at hand. And proximity matters, as a study by Deborah Cohen, a senior natural scientist at the rand Corporation, discovered. When she examined the use of several parks in Los Angeles, she found that almost half the people using any given park lived no more than a quarter-mile away. In contrast, only 13 percent of the people using the park had come from more than a mile away. “The farther you are, the less willing you are to go to the park,” she notes.
Interestingly, urban theorists believe it is not just the tightly packed nature of the city but also its social and economic density that has life-giving properties. When you’re jammed, sardinelike, up against your neighbors, it’s not hard to find a community of people who support you—friends or ethnic peers—and this strongly correlates with better health and a longer life. Then there are economies of scale: A big city has bigger hospitals that can afford better equipment—the future of medicine arrives here first. We also tend to enjoy healthier food options, since demanding foodies (vegetarians and the like) are aggregated in one place, making it a mecca for farm-fresh produce and top-quality fish, chicken, and beef. There’s also a richer cultural scene than in a small town, which helps keep people out and about and thus mentally stimulated.
At times, talking to Frieden and some of the other scientists, I wondered if all the talk about how healthy cities had become might be the latest species of boosterism, of civic mythmaking, partly because he’s staked his legacy on such aggressive policies as bad-food bans. And urban theorists have begun a fierce beat-down on the suburbs, castigating them endlessly for being the epicenter of the obesity epidemic. As it happens, this is the argument of Matthew Turner, an economist at the University of Toronto. Last year, he decided he was a bit sick of hearing about the health benefits of cities. The “urban health advantage” sounded to him like mere self-congratulation—the skinny, attractive folks in the megalopolises crowing about their innate superiority, and recoiling at the barbarisms of the SUV-driving, Wal-Mart-shopping exurban masses. It seemed too much like blue-state snobbery. So Turner devised a new experiment to test the power of the urban health advantage.
If it’s true that cities impose inherently healthier behavior on you, Turner reasoned, then people who move from cities to suburbs should get fatter—and vice versa. He began hoovering up data on 6,000 young Americans in their twenties to forties, tracking where they lived over a six-year period. He used satellite imagery and tallies of shops and churches to determine the level of sprawl in each subject’s neighborhood, then gathered information on each one’s weight.
When he examined the data, he discovered something surprising: People who moved between dense and sprawling neighborhoods didn’t change weight. Despite the claims of the new urbanists, Turner saw no evidence that one’s built environment has an impact on one’s health. “This idea that the built environment affects how much you weigh,” he told me, “is just wrong.”
But then why do cities harbor slimmer people who live longer and healthier than those in sprawl? Because, Turner argues, the populations are self-selecting. Highly active people who don’t like to drive—and who crave to make boatloads of money—naturally gravitate to places like New York, because that suits their chosen lifestyle. If we walk a lot here, it’s because we’re drawn to cities that force us to do so. The converse is also true: People who are heavier and less fit gravitate to suburbs precisely because that’s where they won’t need to walk—where nothing is possible without getting in a car. (Mind you, Turner’s rival scientists are not convinced by his argument. As one pointed out to me, moving to a differently dense area might take years to change your weight—longer than Turner’s time frame.) In Turner’s view, the logic of the urban health advantage is not only wrong, it’s backward. It’s not that New York makes us healthier. We make it healthier, by flocking here to live.
Ultimately, I’ve come to believe that Turner is likely correct—but so are the proponents of the urban health advantage. The two theories are not mutually exclusive. A city can be good for your health and, at the same time, attract healthy people. |
Perceptions of Racial Divide
Posted by The Situationist Staff on July 30, 2008
Sam Sommers has another terrific post (this one titled “Obama and the Racial Divide”) on the Psychology Today blog. Here are some excerpts.
[T]he Times poll indicates that a majority of White and Black Americans think progress towards racial equality is being made, but only Whites seem to be getting more optimistic over time regarding the general state of race relations. Why is this? Well, in large part it seems to be the case that Whites and Blacks use different reference points in answering these questions.
In a series of research studies, Yale social psychologist Richard Eibach has observed the comparable result that White Americans typically perceive more progress towards racial equality than do Blacks. One reason for this racial gulf is that Whites typically answer the type of question found in the Times poll by comparing the present to the past, whereas Blacks tend to answer it by comparing the present to the racial ideals they envision for the future.
In other words, when you ask White Americans about race relations in this country, on average they tend to respond by thinking, well, things are certainly better now than they used to be, so I’ll say we’re doing OK. Blacks, on the other hand, are more likely to think about their personal experiences with prejudice or current racial disparities in important outcomes like health, income, or employment. Accordingly, Blacks more typically think, things still aren’t as good as they could or should be, so we’re not doing so great.
So some of this racial disparity reflects different reference points used by Whites and Blacks in answering these questions. Anytime you ask someone for a global assessment of anything—whether marital happiness, job satisfaction, or the state of the economy—the reference point they choose to use is hugely important in determining the answer they give. . . .
But there also remains a more pessimistic interpretation of this racial divergence in opinions. Some of it clearly has to do with self-interest. In another set of studies, Eibach concludes that many White Americans view gains in racial equality as personal losses, whereas Black Americans see them as personal gains. Of course, it’s hard to get people to support movements that they see as working against their self-interests, suggesting that this gulf between Whites and Blacks can’t be bridged completely by getting everyone to focus on the same point of reference. |
Tamara Piety on Market Manipulation
Posted by The Situationist Staff on September 18, 2010
In response to Adam Beneforado’s terrific post this week, “Breaking Up Is Easy to Do: When Corporations Dump Consumers,” Situationist friend Tamara Piety wrote another excellent comment, a portion of which we’ve posted below. * * * To me, one of most offensive examples of this type of channeling is the price discrimination practice involved in rebate/coupon schemes. Rebates and coupons are used as a way to expand the customer base by attracting a few more customers by virtue of the illusion (for most) of a lower price point. We see it in electronics all the time – “Laptop $999 [with $250 rebate]” There are several things at work here at once. One is that the seller ( or whoever actually pays the rebate) has your money for some period of time ranging from 30 days to 6 months as an interest free loan. Second is the anchoring effect that makes $999 seem some how much less than $1,000. But the principle objection for me is that they are actually creating a staggered pricing program. Again, this might not be a problem if it simply involved selling to as many customers as possible on the basis of the price that they will want to buy. The problem is that in order to do this companies make the process of obtaining the lower price (i.e. the with the rebate price), much more onerous than it appears to be through a variety of devices that are intended to take advantage of the psychological effect of the lower price and then relying on consumer inertia, lack of attention, recalculation of the efforts and so forth to avoid actually making good on that promise. Getting the rebate usually involves fair amount of time and effort (filling out the rebate form, mailing it back, waiting for the check, etc.) and uncertainty (if you fail to observe deadline, miss a requirement in the fine print, fail to send in the original, etc.) you lose. None of these difficulties are simply bureaucratic obstacles which have the ancillary effect of depressing the number of rebates redeemed. They are intended to have this effect. And sometimes the rebate is “paid” in the form of a “gift card” rather than in a cash or check which further draws out the redemption process by providing an expiration date for the card, limitations on where it can be used, or even a restriction limiting its use to other products from the same seller.
Every single step in this process is calculated to generate some failures to complete the redemption process so that the customer doesn’t actually receive the advertised price. And this is seen as a perfectly legitimate set of strategies to maximize the sales of the same good across a range of consumers – from those who don’t care about the rebate, to those who do and intend to redeem and then fail to do so, to those who intend to try redeem and try to do so but fail to successfully jump through all of the hoops of the conditions imposed, to those, finally, who intend to redeem and successfully do so. Some percentage of the last three groups are consumers who presumably wouldn’t have brought the product but for the promised (but in at least two instances) undelivered rebate. And the difference between groups 2 and 3 and group 4 are explained by the seller as being entirely attributable to some character “flaw” (lack of attention, lack of diligence, etc.) or a “choice” not to redeem when that “choice” has been structured to take advantage of consumers’ psychological vulnerabilities (or their dawning realization that the time and effort required to pursue the rebate is not really “free” and thus it might be more rational to abandon the effort.) It is disingenuous and unfair to describe these consumer “choices” as unmediated.
Bottom line all these tropes – “control,” “choice,” “information,” as they are currently used and understood by many, operate to absolve the seller of any responsibility for their role in driving these choices even as several full-blown, mature industries’ very existence (advertising, marketing, PR) is predicated on the proposition that it is possible to manipulate and channel consumer choices. It is a feat of sleight-of-hand to argue (in essence) that entire industries’ efforts are of no consequence whatsoever even as billions of dollars are spent in plain sight on those efforts. |
Posted on Jan 7 2014 - 8:23pm by Editor Tweet
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108 Related Colombia’s Breadbasket Feels the Pinch of Free Trade U.S.-Colombia Labour Rights Plan Falls Short Colombia’s victims of conflict ‘a priority’ for the state Santos sees Colombian reelection race tighten Medellín gives voice, support to armed conflict victims Colciencias Launches “Time to Return” And What Happens Post-Petro? The fall of the major drug lords and the dismantling of illegal armed groups haven’t stopped money laundering in Colombia.
Luis Edmundo Suárez, director of Colombia’s Financial Information and Analysis Unit (UIAF): “Money laundering is a difficult crime to identify, and the abundant amounts of cash that are being handled seduce people from all sectors of society.” (Ernesto Suárez Gómez for Infosurhoy.com)
A total of US$18 billion wasn’t collected by the Colombian government because of money laundering in the Andean nation in 2012, according to Luis Edmundo Suárez, the director of Colombia’s Financial Information and Analysis Unit (UIAF).
The amount exceeds total foreign investment for that year – US$15.82 billion – according to the Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Tourism.
The crime of money laundering is a process through which illegally obtained goods enter the legal economic system and are given the appearance of having been legally obtained.
Worldwide, this crime accounts for an annual sum of US$17.6 trillion, according to a 2011 report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).
In Colombia, money laundering has been a crime since the rise of drug trafficking in the late 1970s. It’s estimated that Pablo Escobar – the biggest drug lord of all time – had a fortune of US$30 billion when he died in 1993.
Money laundering was further defined as a criminal offense following the United Nations Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances of 1988.
One hundred-thirty countries have financial intelligence units associated with the Egmont Group, which coordinates investigations in response to the emergence of transnational criminal networks.
In Colombia, the UIAF was created in 1999 with the aim of detecting, preventing and generally combating money laundering in all economic activities.
In July, 2013, Colombia received the most important financial intelligence award in the world, which is issued by the Egmont Group, for the best case brought forward by a unit. Finland and Russia won the award in its first two editions, respectively.
The UIAF presented the case of the Álvarez Meyendorff brothers, two low-profile money launderers whose assets are worth an estimated $1.2 billion pesos (US$618 million).
Through the intelligence work of the UIAF, the Attorney General’s Office was able to take precautionary measures against 205 assets located in different cities and municipalities throughout the country, including apartments, houses, automobiles, hotels, businesses, properties, service stations, ranching consortia and thoroughbred horse-breeding operations.
The case of the Álvarez Meyendorff brothers has been the most substantial in the fight against organized crime in Colombia.
“Money laundering is a difficult crime to identify, and the abundant amounts of cash that are being handled seduce people from all sectors of society,” said Suárez, who received the award from the Egmont Group in July in South Africa.
For every US$100 laundered, only US$0.20 are recovered Despite these efforts, for every US$100 laundered worldwide, authorities are able to recover only US$0.20, according to the UNODC.
Negocios Responsables y Seguros (NRS), an alliance made up of public and private entities such as the UNODC, the Ministry of Justice, and the Bogotá Chamber of Commerce (CCB), together with the UIAF and the commerce superintendencies, has made efforts to detect crime and diminish its impact on the economy.
Colombia’s strict control of its financial system and the drastic requirements for opening a simple bank account have forced money launderers to dabble in a variety of economic activities to launder their money, reducing the level of bank involvement, according to Asobancaria and the Bogotá Chamber of Commerce.
The model for detecting money laundering and terrorist financing advocated by the CCB seeks to guide the business sector so that it can detect suspicious activities by partners, suppliers and customers.
For example, when entrepreneurs offer products that are well below the market price, it may be a warning sign, particularly when unrelated to the dynamics of the business or lacking a reasonable justification. |
No Surgery Required For Some Stabbing, Shooting Patients
When it comes to a gunshot or stab wound in the stomach, surgeons will almost reflexively open up a patient's abdomen to look for damage. But that's starting to change as doctors rethink how best to manage trauma cases. A team of researchers pored over the National Trauma Data Bank and examined more than 25,000 cases of penetrating injuries to the abdomen (about 12,000 gunshot cases and 13,000 stabbings) in the U.S. between 2002 and 2008. They found that more hospitals are trying a no-surgery option when possible. That's helping to reduce the number of unnecessary operations, prevent complications and save money, according to Dr. Adil Haider, senior author from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. "Patients are coming in to hospitals and recovering without any surgical intervention," Haider tells Shots. "Across the country, more and more people are doing non-operative management." The findings appear in the British Journal of Surgery. The key is figuring out which patients are OK to treat without surgery. The first question: Is the patient stable? "If they aren't, then they will probably move straight to surgery." Dr. Amy Rushing, a co-author of the study, tells Shots. "If the answer is yes, now you have time to do diagnostic testing." Diagnostic testing is fancy lingo for a more thorough physical examination, some blood work and, often, a CT scan — all tests to better determine if an operation is needed. If doctors deem surgery unnecessary, patients get monitored by a trained team while they heal, Rushing says. If the patient's condition deteriorates, Rushing says emergency surgeons are ready to jump in and help. About 22 percent of gunshot-wound patients and 34 percent of stab-wound patients between 2002 and 2008 were treated without immediate surgery, researchers found. "The length of stay in a hospital for patients drops significantly, as well," Haider says of the treatment. In the early days of medicine, the lack of infection control prevented exploratory surgery for traumatic wounds. The idea that injured people needed surgery just to take a look inside stems from World War I. That's when exploratory surgery became the standard for care and, in turn, led to better survival rates, the researchers say. Events in South Africa helped push the pendulum back, Haider says. When riots over apartheid erupted in Johannesburg, hospitals were flooded with patients who had been stabbed. Doctors operated first on the patients who looked closest to death. By the time they got to the healthiest-looking individual, that patient often would report feeling well enough to walk out, according to Haider. That got doctors thinking about nonsurgical options for the treatment of stabbing victims. Haider and Rushing caution that forgoing surgery in some cases isn't easy to do. Hospitals and doctors need to have a well-thought-out plan and make sure everybody is ready. "If it fails, it's a big price to pay," Haider says. "The consequences are dire."Copyright 2012 National Public Radio. To see more, visit . View the discussion thread. |
EDUCATION Ph.D. in Physics
(Temple University, 1982)
in Physics (Temple University, 1975)
in Physics (Carnegie-Mellon University, 1964)
Professor of Physics [9/94]; Associate Prof. of Physics [9/89]; Assistant Prof.
of Physics, University of Hartford
[9/85]
Visiting Assistant Prof. of Physics; Temple University [1/82-6/85]
Assistant Prof. of Physics; Penn State University (Ogontz) [7/84-8/84]
4. Math
Instructor; Philadelphia College of Textiles & Science [9/79-6/82]
Assistant Prof. of Physics; Beaver College [1/80-6/80]
Programmer and then Chief Programmer, Polytechnic Institute of New York
[1/70-6/72]
Research Associate, promotion from Associate Engineer; Machlett Laboratories
(now a division
of Raytheon), Stamford, CT [9/67-11/69]
8. Copy
Editor for the Physical Review; American Institute of Physics [9/64-6/66]
Undergraduate courses taught include: Interdisciplinary
—Seeing Through Symmetry
(course created by me, All University Curriculum), Reasoning in Science,
Science & Society (team taught). Lower-level physics—Musical
Acoustics, Astronomy, Physics for Medical Technology, Physics for Radiology
Technicians, Introductory Physics (calculus based 2-semester sequence). Upper-level
physics —Introduction to
Materials Science, Classical Mechanics, Special Theory of Relativity, and
Modern Physics I. Independent-study —Modern Physics II, Calculus of Variations
(course combines the physics with its history) and Topics in General Relativity
(course involved using the symbolic programming language MACSYMA� along with
the text "Gravitation" by Misner, Thorne and Wheeler), Computers in
Physics and Physics Education (course created by me, involves the enhancement
of both classroom skills and physics background through the integration of
physics-based computer material in a laboratory setting).
Graduate courses taught: Mathematical
Physics (2-semester course), Practicum in Teaching Physics, and an
independent-study course on the Nonlocal Variational Calculus.
"An Adaptable Flask" (1/14/61; patent not applied for).
Adequate speaking knowledge of German and some acquaintance with French and
Playing the violin, reading and writing poetry,
swimming, and occasional bicycling and sailing.
of Symmetry in Einstein�s Relativity�; Abstract in Symmetry Festival 2006; program and CD (Budapest, Hungary; 8/13/06). (b)
�Issues in
Science and Religion: A Critical Evaluation,� in Science, Religion, and Society: History, Culture, and Controversy, edited by Gary Laderman and Arri Eisen (M.E. Sharpe, NY, 2007) [Forward by the Dalai
Lama.] article completed 1/7/05 and solicited based
on an invited talk (quantum theory and brain) given at Vassar College],
pp. 81 - 90 [invited].
Science XI, edited by
Bruno J. Gruber, Giuseppe Marmo, and Naotaka Yoshinaga (Kluwer Academic
Publishers, Boston, 2004), pp. 227-238. [invited] [based
on an Invited talk given in Bregenz, Austria (July 2003)]
�Aspects Of �Seeing
Through Symmetry�— An Interdisciplinary Multimedia Course�, Symmetry: Culture and Science 14, 99-105 (2003). (e) �Integrating
Science and Math into the Freshman Engineering Design Course� (with D. Pines,
M. Nowak, H. Alnajjar, and D. Benardete), Proceedings of the 2002 American
Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition (June, 2002).
(f)�Seeing
Through Symmetry — As Seen Through Its Labs,� Symmetry: Culture and
Science 8, Nos.
3-4, pp. 401 - 408 (2001) [invited] (g)
Is Symmetry That Educators and Students Should Be Mindful Of It?" Book
chapter for Interdisciplinary General Education: Questioning Outside the
Lines, Marcia Bundy
Seabury, Editor (College Entrance Examination Board, NY,
1999), pp. 105 - 122 [invited].
"Faraday�s
Legacy: The Joys of Scientific Methodology," Guest Editorial for QUANTUM (November/December 1998), pp. 2–3.
(i) "Reflections
of the Relevance of Nonlocality to Cognitive Science and the Philosophy of
Mind," from New Directions in Cognitive Science, Proceedings of the International
Symposium (Saariselka, 4-9 August 1995, Lapland, Finland), edited by Paavo
Pylkk�nen and Pauli Pylkk� (Finnish Artificial Intelligence Society, Helsinki,
1995), pp. 104 - 114. This article
generalizes both the neural dynamical model and the ontological model through
the replacement of interaction terms, in the fundamental dynamical equations of
those theories, by integrals; thus yielding integro-differential equations as
the more natural descriptors for brain processes.
(j) "Quantum
Dynamics and Neural Dynamics: Some Analogies between the Formalisms of Bohm and
Pribram," an invited paper (Fall 1994) for Scale in Conscious
Experience: Is the Brain too Important to be Left to Specialists to Study, 3rd Appalachian Conference Proceedings
on Behavioral Neurodynamics (Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, NJ, 1995), pp. 339 -
348. This demonstrates how it is
possible to make advances in studying the neural dynamical formalism of
Pribram, et al by casting that formalism into the framework of the ontological
model of quantum theory as formulated by Bohm.
"Computer
Algebra for Lagrangian, Hamiltonian, and Autonomous Systems" (to be
re-submitted). This describes, in
part, how one can obtain symbolic solutions to any set of the fundamental
equations of motion, Hamilton's equations, that are used to describe
many-particle systems (such as those exhibiting chaos). A user-friendly program written in
MACSYMA (and being converted into
Maxima 5.12) enables one to obtain such solutions. The program also
interrelates the Hamiltonian and Autonomous routines with those for
Lagrangians.
(l) "Towards
a More Causal Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics: The Ontological
Interpretation of David Bohm," Arkhimedes 45, No. 2, 144
Societies and the Finnish Mathematical Society; with articles in Finnish,
Swedish, and English]. This article
brings in the relevant philosophy of science to explicate Bohm's causal
interpretation of quantum mechanics. (m) "Response
to Mayants' Note on Bohm's Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics" (with B.J.
Hiley, University of London), Physics Essays 6, No. 1, 129 - 132 (March 1993)[an
international journal dedicated to fundamental questions in physics; its editor
is from Canada's National Research Council and one of the Associate Editors is
from Princeton's Plasma Physics Lab]: This paper clarifies David Bohm's
"quantum potential" interpretation of Quantum Mechanics and answers
one of its critics (L. Mayants). Basil Hiley is Bohm's main co-worker. Bohm himself has gained an eminent
standing in the world of physics in general (partly for the "Aharanov-Bohm
effect") and for his work in the foundations of quantum theory in
particular. (n)
"Nonlocal
Generalized Angular-Momentum Balance Laws and Equations of Motion," International
Journal of Engineering Science 30, 1417 - 1432 (1992): This research goes beyond the usual
local treatments by showing how one can determine rotational properties
associated with a wide variety of nonlocal physical systems; such properties
are, along with energy and momentum, very important for understanding physical
systems. One of the applications
is for multiparticle systems with "spin."
"Balance
Laws Associated with Nonlocal Equations of Motion for Theories Containing One
Dependent Variable," International Journal of Engineering Science 28, 459 - 468 (1990): [Editorial Board contains 1 Nobel Laureate] This research is on the same topic as
the following one but for systems described by equations of motion
characterized by a single primary variable. One of the applications determines the energy associated
with the membrane-like material covering the wing of an ultralight plane.
Conserved Quantities, Balance Laws, and Equations of Motion," International
Journal of Theoretical Physics 28, 335 - 363 (1989): [Editorial Board contains 7 Nobel LaureatesThis
paper pertains to my formalism
showing how the motion of a system can be used, more easily than current
methods, to arrive at properties of the system which remain constant through
time. An example given is in
Quantum Mechanics where the system's motion, determined by a wave function from
Schr�dinger's equation, is used to obtain the system's energy. The value of this energy remains
constant through time and represents important information for understanding
the system. Consequently, some of
the systems amenable to this formalism can be found at the atomic scale. Since atoms are constituents of human
beings, as well as of galaxies, the research results can therefore lead to a
better understanding of the nature of each of those systems.
"Estimating
the Speed and Distance of a Plane" (with C. Waiveris), The Physics
Teacher 29, 108 - 111 (1991): [one of the most widely read journals in physics
education]The article is based on a few years' research that includes
determinations of the speed and distance of jet planes through simple measurements
carried out by observers on the ground. It is thus an enjoyably instructive activity for both high school and
college students. (r) "Audio-Visual
Aids in Materials Science and Engineering: A Current Overview," Journal
of Materials Education 11, 169 - 180 (1989)[an international journal whose Editorial Board is comprised of
distinguished workers in the field of Materials Science; also published in
Japanese]: This paper not only explains the variety of multimedia aids
useful in teaching Materials Science but also describes some utilized in my own
teaching of the subject.
(s) "The
SUNY Potsdam Miracle? Some Lessons for Physics," Journal of College
Science Teaching XXI, 348 - 351 (1992)[a primary journal
published by the National Science Teachers Association]: solicited by the Journal�s editorDescribes the
interactive methods and philosophy of teaching utilized by the mathematics
department of the State University of New York at Potsdam. Describes how such
techniques have been applied to my own classroom work for our first two
introductory calculus-based physics coursesPHY 112
and PHY 113.
(t) "Air
Track with a Distributed Infrared Detector System" (with H. Workman), American
Journal of Physics 56, 739 - 744 (1988):[current Editor of Journal mentioned there is a 60% rejection rate]
This paper explains details of the novel computer-based infrared-detection air
track system utilized in some of our introductory physics laboratories. It also describes and gives data for
some of the experiments that have been done using this air track.
Local and Professional Organizations and
International Workshops
(a) �Albert Einstein: Myth and Magic,� Avery Heights retirement
community (Hartford, CT; 8/22/05) — celebrating the 2005 Einstein
Centennial Year.
(b) �Albert Einstein: Myth and Magic� [educational outreach
celebrating the Einstein Centennial Year], Prosser Public Library (Bloomfield,
CT; 3/22/05).
(c) �Research
Activity in Computational Physics� for the Caltech/Jet Propulsion Laboratory�s
Ultracomputing Group (June 2004; NASA-JPL, Pasadena, CA).
(d) �Seeing Science
Through Symmetry: An
Interdisciplinary Multimedia Course� for the Symmetries in Science XIII conference (Bregenz, Austria; 7/20-24/03).
(e) �A
Quantum-Like Nonlocal Model with Possible Application to Brain States� for the
international workshop: Can
there be a Science of Consciousness? (University of Sk�vde, Sweden; 20 - 22
June 2000).
(f) �Continuous
Weight Functions and Implications for Nonlocal Dynamical Equations and Balance
Laws of some Quantum-like Neural Networks�(3/2/00)
for the Special Session on Field Computation (Continuum-Limit Neural
Computation) at the 4th International Conference on Computational Intelligence
and Neuroscience (Atlantic City, February 27 - March 3, 2000). (g) �Computer Algebraic
Run-Time Studies of some Nonlocal Associative Neural Networks� (2/29/00)for the Special Sessions on Quantum and
Neuro/Quantum Information Processing at the 4th International Conference on
Computational Intelligence and Neuroscience (Atlantic City, February 27 - March
3, 2000). (h) "Use of Generalized Nonlocality in Synergetic
Associative Neural Networks" for the Connecticut Space grant College
Consortium 1998 Conference (Legislative Office Building; Hartford, CT, November
2, 1998).
(i) "A
Program for the Application of Generalized Nonlocality to the Study of
Synergetic Associative Neural Networks" for the Neuro-Quantum Information
Processing Session at the 3rd International Conference on Computational
Intelligence and Neuroscience (Research Triangle Park, NC, October 24-28,
(j) "Reflections
Mind," New Directions in Cognitive Science, an International Symposium sponsored by
The Academy of Finland Research Group in Cognitive Science (Saariselka, 4-9
August 1995, Lapland, Finland). I also chaired the session on Musical Cognition in which a paper was presented by Brian
Josephson, Nobel laureate in physics
(k) "Computer
Algebra for Lagrangian, Hamiltonian, and Autonomous Systems": Edelen Symposium
at the 31st Annual Technical Meeting of the Society of Engineering
Science (Texas A&M, 10/10-12/94). (l) "Relating
Nonlocal Equations of Motion to Gauge-Oriented Balance Laws"
(International Summer School on Topology, Geometry and Gauging in Field Theoretic
Models of Condensed Matter; Jablonna, Poland; 9/1/89)I
was also asked to Chair the morning session on 8/31/89. (m)
Angular-Momentum Balance Laws and Equations of Motion": Eringen Symposium
at the 28th Annual Meeting of the Society of Engineering Science (University of
Florida at Gainesville, 11/6-8/91).
(n) Session
titled "Keeping the Vision Alive: The Pursuit of Physics — A Female
Perspective"; created, organized, and chaired for the AAPT Committee on
Women in Physics — Winter Meeting of the AAPT (New Orleans, 1/4/93)One of the six women physicists who spoke is the widely
known Editor of Physics Today, Gloria
and Discussion Leader about �Global Warming� following the matinee of An
Inconvenient Truth at Cine Studio (Trinity
College; 9/9/06).
(b) �Albert Einstein:
Myth and Magic� — university-wide talk (Department of Physics &
Astronomy; Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA; 3/23/06).
(c) �A Causal
Program For Quantum Physics: De Broglie to Bohm� — quantum seminar
(Department of Physics & Astronomy; Louisiana State University, Baton
Rouge, LA; 3/24/06).
(d) �Albert Einstein:
Myth and Magic�; Smith College (Northampton, MA; 11/14/05) — celebrating
the 2005 Einstein Centennial Year.
(e) �Albert
Einstein: Myth and Magic�; Quinebaug Valley Community College (Danielson, CT;
3/21/05) — celebrating the 2005 Einstein Centennial Year.
(f) �Wanderings Through
Symmetry� — Physics Colloquium talk (University of Connecticut, Storrs,
CT; 4/2/04).
(g) �Computer Algebra Program for Lagrangians,
Hamiltonians, and Autonomous Systems� — informal seminar, Math Department
(University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ; 12/6/02).
(h) "Can
Quantum Physics Tunnel Its Way Into Consciousness?" — colloquium at
Vassar College (Poughkeepsie, NY; 4/21/99).
(i) "Computer
Algebra for Lagrangian, Hamiltonian, and Autonomous Systems" —
seminar at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (California Institute of
Technology/NASA, Pasadena, 3/17/99).
(j) "Generalized
Nonlocality, Brain Nets, and Neural Nets" — seminar at the Jet
Propulsion Laboratory (California Institute of Technology/NASA, Pasadena,
3/18/99).
(k) "A
Causal Program For Quantum Physics: De Broglie to Bohm" — seminar
(Physics Department, Trinity College, 2/27/98).
(l) "Boundary
Conditions Associated with a Class of Nonlocal Dynamical Equations" at the
Fourth Meeting of Current Ideas in Mechanics and Related Fields (Collegium
Maius of the Jagiellonian University, Krakow, 8/28/97).
(m)"Reflections of the Relevance of
Nonlocality for Physics, Cognitive Science and the Philosophy of Mind: Bohm,
Pribram and Beyond" — seminar (Department of Mathematics
—Faculty of Mathematics and Physics — University of Ljubljana;
Slovenia, 8/13/96).
(n) "Computer
Algebra for Lagrangian, Hamiltonian and Autonomous Systems" —
seminar (Department of Mathematics — Faculty of Mathematics and Physics
— University of Ljubljana; Slovenia, 8/6/96).
(o) "Computer
Algebra for Lagrangians, Hamiltonians, and Autonomous Systems" —
colloquium lecture (Institute for Theoretical Physics, University of Helsinki,
8/15/95)During my stay in Finland I was also a guest
of the Institute for Theoretical Physics (July 19 - August 16, 1995).
(p) "Using
Competing Species towards a Nonlocal Model for Neural Nets" and(the first main talk of the workshop) "An
Overall View of Quantum Mechanics"; at the international workshop titled
"Brain, Mind and Physics" (Charles University; Prague, 9/13-17/93local expenses paid)There
were 14 invited talks, including one by Sir John Eccles (Nobel Laureate in
physiology and medicine.
(q) "Physics
and Philosophy concerning the Application of Variational Principles toward
Relating Dynamical Equations to Conservation Laws" (Oxford University;
England, 6/17/91)There were about 9 scholars present
at my lecture. Several were
visiting Oxford from abroad. One
of these was Simon Saunders from Harvard's philosophy department.
(r) "Lecture
Program in Finland" (September and October 1992):
i. "The Basic Features of the
Ontological Interpretation of Quantum Theory in View of its Application in
Connectionism" (Sept. 12th) and ii. "The Situation in Modern
Physics" (Sept. 14th);
(s) both for
"Physicalism Connectionism and Consciousness: An International Symposium
on the Foundations of Cognitive Science" [The University of Helsinki
Centre for Continuing Studies, Siuntio].
i. "Bohm's Model of Quantum
Reality" (Sept. 16th) [at a public seminar celebrating the publication of Science,
Order, and Creativity by David Bohm and F. David Peat; University of Helsinkimain building]. ii. "Relating Equations of Motion to
Associated Balance and Conservation Laws" (Sept. 24th) [theoretical physics seminar, Research
Institute for Theoretical Physics, University of Helsinki].
iii. "Towards a more Causal
Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics: The Ontological Interpretation of David
Bohm" (Sept. 24th) [paper read to theDepartment
of Philosophy seminar, University of Helsinki].
iv. "Causal Program for Quantum
Mechanics: From de Broglie through Bohm" (Sept. 25th) [technical-physics
seminar, Helsinki University of Technology].
v. "Philosophical Ideas in Bohm's Model
of Quantum Physics" (Oct. 1st) [natural-philosophy seminar, University of
Helsinki].
Space Grant College Consortium travel award to present a paper, "Use of
Generalized Nonlocality in Synergetic Associative Neural Networks" at the
3rd International Conference on Computational Intelligence and Neuroscience
(Research Triangle Park near Durham, NC, October 24-28, 1998)
(k) As
Principal Investigator/Project Director, NSF Instrumentation and Laboratory
Improvement Grant for my All University Curriculum course "Seeing Through
Symmetry" (National Science Foundation; Washington, D.C.) [Total amount: $114,308, half of which is matched by the
University, 5/14/93 - 11/95. Co-Principal Investigator: Donald P. Buckley, Biology Dept.] (l) Grant to
the University of Hartford Sigma Xi Club to sponsor Sheila Tobias' lecture at
our school (National Sigma Xi Office, Fall 1990)As
president of the Club, I initiated the grant with the Treasurer Prof. E. Gardow
(Mechanical Engineering Department) D. HONORS
Yale Visiting Fellow (History of Science and Physics depts.), History of
Science (1991/92); working in the area of symmetry in physics
Yale Visiting Fellow (Philosophy dept.), Foundations of Physics (1988/89);
working in the foundations of relativity and of quantum theory
Who'sWho in Science and Engineering,
Who'sWho in the World, and Who'sWho
The Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences (as of 11/13/96)
Member of Sigma Xi and President of the University of Hartford Chapter
Pi Mu Epsilon (national honorary mathematics society)
Grant Results� for NASA Awards meeting (Bradley Air and Space Museum, CT;
5/7/01) (d) �Neuro-Quantum Information Processing for the
Exploration of Space� for NASA Space Day poster session (Boston Museum of
Science; 11/3/00).
(e) "Musical
Symmetry" for the composers' forum series, Music for Our Time (The
Hartford Conservatory, Hartford; 5/1/99).
(f) "Macsyma in Teaching
Linear Algebra" for an evening seminar at the AMS/MAA summer Mathfest
conference (University of Seattle; Washington, 8/11/96).
(g) "Seeing Through Symmetry Multimedia
Presentation" to the Philomorph Society (Harvard University; Cambridge,
12/4/95). (h) "Seeing Through Symmetry: A Multimedia
Course" (talk co-authored with D. Buckley), at Symmetry: Natural and
Artificial, Third Interdisciplinary
Symmetry Congress and Exhibition of the International Society for the
Interdisciplinary Study of Symmetry (14 - 20 August 1995, Washington, D.C.).
(i) "Seeing Through
Symmetry" — a description of my course (East/West Invitational
Seminar on New Technologies in Education; Charles University; Prague,
Czechoslovakia; 8/20/91). (j) "Update of
Teaching Films for Materials Science and Engineering" (Meeting of the U.S.
Materials Education Council; Boston, 11/28/89).
(k) "A-V Teaching Aids in Materials Science
Education and Peripheral Topics on Applied Exterior Calculus and Nonlocal
Continuum Mechanics" (Meeting of the U.S. Materials Education Council;
Boston, 12/2/88).
(l) Report on the SUNY
Potsdam math program and collaborative learning techniques (Meeting of the U.S.
(m) "The SUNY Potsdam Miracle? Some Lessons for
Physics" (Joint Annual Meeting of the AAPT & the APS; Atlanta,
1/21-25/90).
(n) "Report on the Mathematics Program at SUNY
Potsdam as a Model to Encourage Women in Physics" to the AAPT's Committee
on Women in Physics (Summer Meeting of the AAPT at Cal Poly; San Luis Obispo,
Universities (other than U. of H.)
(a) �Albert
Einstein: Myth and Magic� — general talk (Trinity College; Hartford, 2/3/06).
(b) �Symmetry Demo� — luncheon presentation at the
Wright Center for Innovative Science Education (Tufts University, 10/18/01).
(c)"Science
Through Symmetry" — seminar (Physics Department, Trinity College,
10/5/01).
(d) �Seeing Through Symmetry� course lectures at the
University of Skoevde (Skoevde, Sweden, 5/29-6/16/00).
(e)�Seeing
Through Symmetry: An Interdisciplinary Multimedia Presentation�: Physics
Colloquium (Stockton State College, New Jersey, 2/28/00).
"The Role of Assessment Tools in
Educational Technology Learning Environments in the Biology Curriculum"
(talk co-authored with D. Buckley), as well as "Symmetry in Physics &
Biology — Part of a Multimedia Course" (talk co-authored with D.
Buckley),to the Educational Technology group at the Weizmann Institute for
Science (9/16/98, Rehovot, Israel).
(g) "Symbolic
Computation: Applications of Macsyma & Mathematica in Physics and Earth Science": CCSU Public Science
Lecture (Central Connecticut State University; 4/23/96).
(h) "Seeing
Through Symmetry": Special Seminar (Department of Physics, University of
Denver; 1/11/94).
"Computers
in Physics Education": Special Seminar (Department of Physics, University
of Denver; 1/12/94).
3. University of
(a) �Percy Bysshe Shelley�
for Survey of English Literature class (2/26/07).
(b) �Symmetry� lecture for a photography class (10/15/04)
(c) �Assessing the
Scientific Evidence�: lecture as participant in a Forum on Iraq (2/26/03).
(d) "Conservation
Law Paradigms in Philosophy and Physics": lecture to "Mind and
Nature" philosophy class (10/9/95).
(e) "Finland:
A Journey into Academia, and Elsewhere!" to the Society of Physics
Students (10/27/92).
(f) "To
See a World in a Grain of Sand": Humanities Center Fellowship lecture
(4/18/90). (g) "Displays
of Symmetry in Art and Nature": seminar for Student Fellows of the
Humanities Center (10/13/89).
(h) "Science
in the Renaissance" to a class on The Italian Renaissance (11/21/88).
4. Secondary Schools
(a) "Remarks on 'An
Inconvenient Truth' and Related Issues�; a 1-hour presentation to students and
faculty (about 100 attended) for a Global Warming Teach-In (E. O. Smith High
School; Storrs, 4/25/07)
(b) Panel Discussion about Global Warming; I was one of the
2 �skeptics� for a Global Warming Teach-In (E. O. Smith High School; Storrs,
(c) �Science versus
Religion�; talk and discussion with high school students� Philosophy Club (Hall
High School; West Hartford, 3/14/03)
(d) "Alice in Warpedspacetimeland: Relativity from S
to G" to high school students and teachers (Granby Memorial High School;
CT, 3/12/91).
(e) "The Cosmic
Background Explorer" to a physics class (Weaver
High School; Hartford, 3/8/90).
(f) "Black
Holes, Relativity" to 11th and 12th grade students in a college note
taking course (Manchester High School; CT, 5/30/89)
B. DEVELOPMENT OF NEW
TEACHING/ASSESSMENT MATERIALS
1. "EROs Program":
This linear algebra program enables the user to perform elementary row
operations (EROs) on a matrix defined outside the program or within the
program. It also saves the final
matrix, obtained through the EROs, so the user can employ it in further
calculations (e.g., the saved matrix can be used as input to a new run of the program).
2. "Seeing Through
Symmetry": This course integrates disciplines from across the University in order to introduce students to fascinating
ideas from the sciences and math. It has an original Syllabus and Laboratories have begun to acquire both
national and international interest. The Symmetry Prod! lecture-note summary of certain physical concepts
employed in the course enables students to re-create for themselves where
symmetry concepts enter. 3. "Some Guides to
using MACSYMA for Linear Algebra": An 8-page set of comments, along
with computer-generated examples, so students can apply the symbolic-algebra
software package to my Linear Algebra course (summer 1993). |
UNITAID launched
For many years, the international community has been looking for new tools to ensure sustainable financing for development and the fight against hunger and poverty. In this spirit, Brazil, Chile, France, Norway and the United Kingdom have taken the initiative in creating UNITAID, an international drug purchase facility, which will help scale up access to drugs and diagnostics to fight AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis for people who need them most in developing countries. This new initiative is funded primarily by innovative financing mechanisms such as the tax contribution on air tickets.
UNITAID was officially launched on Tuesday 19 September on the day of the opening of the 61st session of the General Assembly of the United Nations. The event was opened with a statement by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, followed by a series of statements by Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, French President Jacques Chirac, Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stolenberg, Chilean Foreign Minister Alejandro Foxley Rioseco and British Minister for Development Gareth Thomas. Congolese President Sassou N’GUESSO spoke in his capacity as Chairman of the African Union.
“UNITAID is a model of its kind for many reasons. It is an approach that can be made to work rapidly. It is flexible, in that more countries can easily join the original members. And it is a lean mechanism which complements the existing global architecture for health, inside and outside the UN system,” said the UN Secretary General at the opening.
UNITAID is the culmination of long efforts on the part of the international community to mobilize a portion of resources generated by globalization to benefit development.
In 2004, over a hundred countries acceded to the New York Declaration on Action against Hunger and Poverty and 79 countries endorsed the Declaration on Innovative Sources of Financing for Development that was adopted on 14 September 2005 at the United Nations in New York.
The Paris Conference, held on 28 February and 1 March 2006, resulted in the establishment of a pilot group of 44 countries that committed to work on implementing such financing. It was at the end of the Paris Conference that France proposed to create the international drug purchase facility.
“New innovative sources of financing are absolutely necessary,” said UNAIDS Executive Director Dr. Peter Piot on the occasion of the Paris meeting. “The demand for ARVs will constantly rise in the next few years. More and more people will get sick and more and more people will know they have HIV. That’s why it’s so important that we develop long term sustainable funding mechanisms which will allow us to continue treating people in 20 or 40 years,” he said.
At the High Level Meeting on AIDS that took place at the UN Headquarters in New York on 2 June 2006, Brazil, Chile, France and Norway drafted a Joint Declaration on UNITAID outlining its mission, key principles and objectives. Since then, the founding countries and partner organizations have identified priority activities for each disease and determined the way in which UNITAID is to operate.
As of today, 19 of the 44 pilot group countries have taken initial steps to introduce an air-ticket solidarity levy: Brazil, Chile, Cambodia, Cameroon, Congo, Côte d’Ivoire, Cyprus, France, Gabon, Guinea, Jordan, Luxembourg, Madagascar, Mauritius, Mali, Nicaragua, Norway, South Korea and the United Kingdom.
Chile, Côte d’Ivoire, France, Gabon and Mauritius are already implementing a voluntary contribution mechanism. Other countries are preparing to join the UNITAID effort.
The United Nations system is working closely with UNITAID to support the initiative as it moves forward. UNAIDS’ Cosponsor the World Health Organization will host the Fund and the Secretariat of UNITAID. |
Power and decision-making
Politics and governance
The private sector
Population, households and families
Demographic composition of population
Formation and dissolution of unions
Fertility and contraceptive use
Health and nutrition of children
Mortality and causes of death
Health risk factors related to life style
Migration, displaced persons and refugees
Refugees and internally displaced persons
Physical and sexual violence against women
Integrating a gender perspective into data collection
Population and housing census
Agricultural censuses and surveys
Labour force survey
Time use surveys
Violence against women surveys
Analysis and presentation of gender statistics
Descriptive analysis of data
Presentation of gender statistics in graphs
Presentation of gender statistics in tables
Paths: Read in Order
Categorized as Chapter 3 - Integrating a gender perspective into data collection
Note: This section of the manual draws extensively on the United Nations publication Guidelines for Producing Statistics on Violence against Women: Statistical Surveys (Forthcoming). Readers are strongly encouraged to consult the above mentioned publication as more details as well as additional information are covered at length.
+ Uses of violence against women surveys for gender statistics
Surveys on violence against women have a unique role in measuring the extent, nature and consequences of all types of violence against women. Data collected in these surveys are necessary to (a) estimate the prevalence of violence against women; (b) identify the groups of women most at risk of violence; (c) identify the characteristics of perpetrators; (d) estimate the impact of violence on women’s physical and mental health; (e) identify the barriers faced by victims of violence in seeking support and services; and (f) understand attitudes towards violence against women. This information is crucial in efforts of prevention and response to violence against women.(a) Surveys on violence against women an effective tool to measure prevalence of physical, sexual, psychological and economic violence. Data are usually collected for four types of violence against women: physical, sexual, psychological and economic abuse. In dedicated surveys, these types of violence can be examined in depth, through detailed questions. Some other surveys that include modules on violence against women may not be able to include all types of violence. When surveys have limited space to accommodate questions on violence, psychological and economic abuses are often left out. On the other hand, administrative sources of data on violence against women are characterized by massive underreporting of violence, and therefore cannot be used as a reliable source of data for measuring the prevalence of violence against women. (b) Surveys on violence against women collect data necessary to identify the groups of women most at risk of violence. In particular, dedicated surveys have the advantage of using samples designed to represent various groups of women in sufficient number to allow the calculation of specific prevalence rates for each group. In all societies, women and girls from various social groups can be victims of violence. In many countries, there is even a cultural acceptance of violence. However, not all groups of women have an equal risk of being abused. Surveys on violence against women can identify the groups most at risk, by collecting information on the characteristics of women who experience violence and those who do not. Characteristics usually measured include age, age at first marriage, marital status, educational attainment or literacy, economic activity, place of residence, ethnicity, language or religion. Other data on women’s awareness of legal rights or characteristics showing women’s ability to access resources and live independently (such as regular and stable cash income, or ownership of property) may also be useful to understand women’s vulnerability to violence by intimate partner or other perpetrators. (c) Detailed information on perpetrators covering all types of violence and all types of victims are often collected only in dedicated surveys focused on violence against women. Data on characteristics of victims and perpetrators are the basis for designing strategies of prevention of violence and early intervention. Relationship to the perpetrator is a key element of any survey on violence against women. This characteristic is the basis of identifying perpetrators who are intimate partners (current or former) and other perpetrators (such as various types of relatives, acquaintances, friends, co-workers, local authorities or others). Slightly different data are usually collected on intimate partners and on other perpetrators. For intimate partners, a minimum recommended list of characteristics includes age, educational attainment and literacy, economic activity, substance abuse, and witnessing partner violence in the family of origin. These characteristics should be collected for current partner as well as for the most recent previous partner. Characteristics of non-partner perpetrators that could be accurately recalled by respondents include sex and relationship of the perpetrator and location where the violence occurred. (d) Surveys on violence against women are a source of representative and comprehensive data on impact of violence against women. Data collected may refer to frequency of violence by type of violence, types of physical injuries and the need to seek medical attention. Additional data on mental health impact relying on self-evaluation may refer to being afraid, depressed, experiencing anxiety and suicidal thoughts, being unable to perform paid or unpaid work, or turning to alcohol or drugs. It is also important to identify violence that took place at specific life stages, such as during pregnancy, and whether the violence resulted in miscarriage. All this information is crucial in order to plan appropriate services for victims and effective response to the violence. (e) Surveys on violence against women may be the only source of data on the proportion of victims of violence seeking help and receiving informal and institutional support and services. Barriers faced by victims of violence in accessing support and services can be identified based on data on victims seeking help from family, friends, or institutions; and data on using medical or social services, both combined with data on individual and household characteristics. The information obtained is crucial for development of policy and programs that more effectively respond to the needs of the victims of violence, such as emergency housing, counselling, medical assistance, prevention of sexually transmitted diseases or unwanted pregnancy.(f) Surveys and modules on violence against surveys can collect data on the extent to which violence is tolerated in the wider community. The information obtained can be used to design strategies of zero tolerance toward violence against women directed to the general public or targeted to groups of women most at risk of violence.Additional sources can be used by national statistical offices to collect data on violence against women. Data on prevalence of violence and additional related topics can be collected in modules attached to more general household sample surveys focused on health, such as DHS and MICS, or crime, such as victimization surveys. Considering the sensitivity of the topics addressed, health surveys in particular provide a feasible vehicle for a module of questions measuring women’s experiences of violence. Although these surveys may not be able to accommodate the detailed range of questions needed to study violence against women in all its complexity, they may be a practical alternative for measuring violence against women when the budget is limited. Other sources of data regarding violence against women are administrative and include but are not limited to health and medical services, agencies of the criminal and civil justice systems, social services, legal aid services, research and documentation centers, and services designed specifically to respond to women who have experienced violence such as shelters or refuges, rape/sexual assault centers, crisis telephone lines, women’s groups and advocacy organizations, and women lawyers’ associations. These agencies and organizations collect data about women experiencing violence as part of their daily recording practices. The data collected provide an indication of societal responses to reported cases of violence against women and available services for victims. However, acts of violence against women go highly unreported and those that are brought forward to agencies and services are often amongst the most severe and affect the most disadvantaged women. Therefore data collected are not representative of the full extent and nature of the problem and cannot be used to measure the prevalence of violence against women taking place within a population.
+ Avoiding bias in data collection
The following paragraphs focus on data collection issues specific to surveys on violence against women, organized into four categories: concepts and measurement; questionnaire design; sample coverage; and selection and training of interviewers.
+ Concepts and measurement
Prevalence of violence against women should be measured based on questions listing different acts of violence for each type of violence. Detailed, behaviourally-specific questions are needed to ensure that respondents consider a wide range of acts in their responses that they might otherwise omit if they are left to speculate about the meaning of a more general term. For example, physical violence encompasses all acts of intentional force that have the potential to cause injury or death (not including forced sexual contact). Questions measuring the prevalence of physical violence should lists acts such as hitting with a fist, open hand or hard object; kicking; biting; pushing; squeezing; pulling hair; repeated hits that result in beating; choking; burning; holding the person down; threatening to use a gun, knife or other object used as a weapon; and actually using a weapon. This list and other suggested lists of behaviours needed to measure each other type of violence (sexual, psychological and economic) as well as the definitions of all concepts used are presented in the United Nations Guidelines for Producing Statistics on Violence against Women: Statistical Surveys (Forthcoming). Severity of violence should not be assumed based on specific acts of violence. Similar acts of physical violence can have very different consequences due to a number of circumstances (prolonged violence as opposed to a single incident, for example). Severity should be assessed separately according to the consequences suffered by the victim, including frequency, injury and other impacts that make it difficult for the woman to carry out usual daily activities. Emotional consequences, such as fear of the perpetrator, for example, could also be incorporated as indicators of the severity of intimate partner violence. Broad concepts of marital status and intimate partners should be used in order to adequately estimate the prevalence of violence by intimate partner. Recording of marital status should extend beyond relationships that are socially or legally sanctioned and cover forms of informal unions specific to each country. Also, the definition of intimate partner should not be limited to legally married partners, but kept as broad as possible and include, for example, boyfriends and dating partners. Testing of the questions and training of interviewers is essential to ensure that responses are recorded accurately. Probing questions should be used if necessary.
+ Questionnaire design
The questionnaire design is instrumental in ensuring participation in the survey; establish rapport and trust; ensure disclosure of sensitive information and safety of the respondent; and reducing the risk of emotional trauma. Of particular importance are the presentation of the survey, the introductory sections of the questionnaire, the sequence of questions in the questionnaire and the wording used.The presentation of the survey in the initial approach to a selected household and subsequently to a selected respondent should not put the respondent’s safety in jeopardy. It is common practice to introduce the survey to the household not as a survey on violence against women but as a study on women’s health, safety, or other issues of particular relevance to women, without specifically mentioning violence. This is done to avoid raising suspicion from other family or community members and to encourage participation in the survey. Interviewers will not know in advance if the woman has experienced violence or is currently living in an unsafe situation; therefore precautions must be taken at all stages not to disclose the specific objectives of the survey to anyone in the household or community. Introductions to various sections of the questionnaire are essential for building rapport and trust, ensuring disclosure, and setting the context. At the beginning of the questionnaire, the respondent should be provided with information about measures that have been put in place to ensure her safety while she responds to sensitive questions, such as re-scheduling to another time or switching to a neutral questionnaire if a family member comes on the scene. Careful introductions should be designed for the sensitive sections. For example, sensitive questions on intimate partner violence should be introduced by first assuring respondents that relationships have both good and bad moments to avoid the risk that only socially desirable responses are given. At the same time the respondent should be reassured that their answers will remain confidential and the participation in the survey remains voluntary. Introductions are also important for setting the context of a particular section in the questionnaire. For example, an introduction to questions about violence involving individuals other than intimate partners should help the respondent consider a wide range of actors, including violence by male or female relatives, friends and acquaintances, or strangers.
The flow of the questionnaire should be from topics and questions that are non-threatening and less sensitive to topics and questions that are more personal and sensitive. This gradual transition is critical for disclosure of experiences of violence; reducing the risk of participants to terminate prematurely the interview; and reducing the risk of emotional trauma. Questions about family composition, health, social networks, personal characteristics and partner characteristics can be situated prior to modules about experiences of violence. Situating questions about psychological and economic abuse by partners prior to questions about physical and sexual violence is important for providing a gradual lead-up to these more sensitive questions. It is good practice to place questions about forced sexual acts after questions about physical assaults because of the difficulty many women will have disclosing these very personal experiences to an interviewer. Questions concerning childhood experiences of violence may also be placed toward the end of the questionnaire. Within each section covering a type of violence, the behaviourally-specific questions should also range from less serious to more serious acts of violence.
Careful wording is essential in reducing underreporting of experiences of violence. As a general principle, value-laden and stigmatizing terms such as “rape” and “violence” must be avoided in the questions or introductions as they lead to under-reporting of experiences of violence. Instead, detailed behaviourally-specific terms, which yield much higher disclosures of identical experiences, should be used. Survey questions and introductions to various sections of the questionnaire should cue respondents to consider a variety of different settings (eg., home, work, school, outside locations, etc.) and specific categories of perpetrators (eg., current partners, former partners, other male relatives, males in positions of authority, etc.).
Drafting of the introductory sections of the questionnaire and development of the right wording of the questions can greatly benefit from focus group discussions engaging local women. Preferably, focus groups should include women identified as experiencing partner violence and sexual violence. These women can be recruited from shelters and counselling groups, for example. It is also important that women participants in the focus group represent various social groups, including immigrants and other minority groups.
+ Sample coverage
All significant subgroups of population should be represented in the sample in number large enough to allow analysis at their levels. The expected prevalence of types of violence in the sample population and the requirement to conduct analysis for subgroups of population, such as different age groups, geographic areas, or ethnic minority groups, are important factor in deciding the sample size and sample design. In order to produce prevalence estimates of specified precision for subgroups, the sample size will have to be increased considerably or higher sampling fractions may need to be applied to the smaller subgroups.
Method of data collection should not prevent the possibility of covering specific groups of women. Women living in violent situations may be prevented from using the telephone or may not take the risk of undergoing detailed questioning over the telephone if their movements are monitored by a violent partner. As another example, web-based and disk-by-mail surveys require wide ranging computer ownership, Internet access, and literacy.
It is recommended that only one woman is interviewed in each household For safety reasons, it is recommended that only one woman is interviewed in each household. Violence against women surveys that interview all women in the household should take extra precautions to ensure the safety and privacy of all respondents.
+ Selection and training of interviewers
All interviewers for a survey on violence against women must be female. Utilizing female interviewers increases disclosure of sensitive information, particularly experiences involving sexual victimization and violence perpetrated by male partners. Field supervisors must be female in face-to-face interviewing situations since they must travel with interviewers periodically to oversee their work. However, in forming teams of field workers, project managers must take into account local norms prohibiting women from working in public spaces, and other barriers female interviewers may face when approaching households to obtain an interview. In these situations, teams of male and female interviewers working in tandem have been shown to improve household contact, lower refusal rates, and be beneficial in ensuring the safety of female interviewers. In telephone situations, it is possible to have male supervisors if they do not have contact with respondents and if they have the required skills and training to further train interviewers and support them through regular debriefings.
Age is an important factor to consider when selecting interviewers. Interviewers that are seen as too young may experience distrust from respondents, which can lead to outright refusal to participate in the survey or reluctance to disclose personal information. In some locations, it would be considered inappropriate for a young woman to pose questions related to violence to an older woman. While there is no recommended specific age limit or range applicable across all settings, many respondents perceive older female interviewers to instil more warmth and reassurance compared to younger women. Other characteristics of interviewers that may affect participation and disclosure rates should be taken into account when selecting interviewers and during training. Particularly important in obtaining accurate information from the respondents are non-judgemental and empathetic attitudes, good interpersonal skills, and sensitivity and knowledge of gender issues and issues related to violence against women. These skills should be further developed through extensive training. Training of interviewers is a crucial step in reducing bias in data collection. Training is essential to ensure that interviewers understand the purpose of the survey and know the structure of the data collection instrument well; are skilled in conducting the interview and developing a rapport with the respondent; understand the ethical requirements of the survey, including confidentiality, safety and support for respondents; are aware of the possible dangers women face when responding to questions concerning their experiences of violence; are able to ensure the safety and emotional wellbeing of respondents; and guard the confidentiality of the information collected. All interview training should be in accordance with the guidelines for addressing ethical and safety issues in violence against women research established by the World Health Organization.
Sensitivity training is an important component of interviewers’ training. Sensitivity refers to interviewers’ ability to pose very delicate questions about experiences of violence in a respectful manner, accurately assess the feelings or reactions of respondents in a variety of situations, and respond appropriately. Sensitivity training must facilitate the understanding of gender issues related to violence, the dynamics and causes of male violence against women, and the impacts of violence on women’s health and wellbeing. Training techniques can be used to reduce the chances that interviewers will respond with judgmental or blaming comments when interacting with respondents. Such techniques are: listening to and discussing in-depth testimonies of abused women and advocates for abused women; discussion of general or local stereotypes, prejudices and myths regarding female victims of violence; discussion of interviewers’ own biases and stereotypes concerning women who have experienced violence; and role plays. Role play scenarios are particularly important in preparing the interviewers for situations where women refuse to participate in the survey; or situations that may compromise the safety and wellbeing of respondents and the confidentiality of information (such as interruptions of the interview by other household members, including threatening husbands; or emotional reactions of respondents to the disclosure of experiences of violence).
Training in controlling the interviewing environment to ensure the safety and privacy of respondents and the confidentiality of the information disclosed The potential that women may be put at risk of violence for participating in a survey cannot be underestimated. It is essential that respondents are in a position to answer freely and without fear of repercussions. As mentioned before, selecting only one female member of the household to be a respondent is one of the mechanisms used to ensure that women who have experienced violence from intimate partners or other family members are able to respond in a manner that will not jeopardize their safety. Other strategies oriented toward the safety and privacy of respondents should be developed by survey designers and covered in interviewers’ training. It is recommended that interviews should take place at a time when other household members, particularly male partners, are not present. Interviewers should be prepared to switch to a neutral questionnaire if a household member comes on the scene. In some contexts, it may be advisable for escorts accompanying the main interviewer to conduct interviews with other family members to distract them from the main focus of the survey. When the privacy of the respondent cannot be ensured, the interview should be re-scheduled. In telephone surveys, respondents should be offered a toll-free telephone number they can use if they have to hang up suddenly or want to continue the interview at another time. Interviewers can establish a safety plan with respondents so that respondents can stop an interview at any time they feel unsafe. Interviewers should also check in with respondents periodically during the interview to confirm that they are able to proceed.
Interviewers should be trained to identify and respond properly to respondents’ emotional trauma. Given the personal and delicate nature of the information requested in surveys on violence against women, respondents can be expected to react in a wide range of ways. Some respondents may be open to disclosing their experiences and may view the survey as an opportunity to allow them to make their experiences known. Others, however, may be fearful that a violent partner might learn of their participation in the survey; feel disturbed by the content of the interview; be traumatized by recent experiences of violence; or feel embarrassed or stigmatized when disclosing their experiences. Interviewers should be trained how to react to this multitude of possible reactions. It is important that the reaction to emotional distress is in a warm, empathetic but neutral manner. Interviewers must be instructed not to counsel respondents themselves. They should be able to refer respondents to a list prepared in advance consisting of agencies in the local community who can provide assistance. Where few resources exist locally, the survey design may need to take into account the development of short-term support mechanisms.
Interviewers should be trained to identify their own emotional reactions and reduce their own stress. In violence against women surveys, interviewers will be engaged in emotionally draining work. Interviewers should be trained to identify their own emotional reactions to the numerous disclosures about violence and helped to develop skills that manage and reduce their stress. Supervisors should also be trained to recognize emotional trauma among interviewers during fieldwork. Strategies to prevent burn-out should be considered, such as regular de-briefings by supervisors or counsellors specially engaged as part of the project team, or offering interviewers the chance to participate in less taxing administrative tasks between interviews.
United Nations, Forthcoming. Guidelines for Producing Statistics on Violence against Women: Statistical Surveys. DESA, Statistics Division, New York. Walby, S. & Myhill, A., 2001. New survey methodologies in researching violence against women. British Journal of Criminology, 41(3), 502–522.Watts, C., Jansen, H. A. F. M., Ellsberg, M., Heise, L., & Garcia-Moreno, C., 2007. WHO multi-country study on women's health and domestic violence: Interviewer's manual (Rev. 18 ed.). Geneva, Switzerland: World Health Organization.Watts, C., Heise, L., Ellsberg, M., Jansen, H. A. F. M., Morison, L., & Garcia-Moreno, C., 2007. WHO multi-country study on women's health and domestic violence: Study protocol. Geneva: World Health Organization. |
California fails to pass genetically modified foods labeling initiative
By Alexandra Sifferlin, TIME.com
Proposition 37 would have enforced labeling of genetically modified foods known as GMOs.
The debate over Proposition 37 became political in recent months
Supporters argue citizens have the right to know what's in their food
Opponents say it would stigmatize foods evidence shows are not harmful
(TIME.com) -- At every election, California's ballot is filled with initiatives, but none received more attention this year than Proposition 37.
After the polls closed, Prop 37 -- also known as the "Right To Know" initiative to require labeling of foods that have been genetically modified -- failed to pass. If approved, California would have been the first state to require such labeling for foods sold in the state, and would have prohibited products containing genetically modified ingredients to be labeled or marketed as "natural."
Although the issue was ostensibly about food, the debate over Prop 37 quickly became political in recent months, with grassroots-based food purists supporting the measure and a well-funded agriculture and industry opposition campaigning against its passage. As the San Francisco Chronicle reports, Prop. 37 opponents, largely from industry and agriculture, raised over $45 million while the Vote Yes campaign, which was largely backed by consumer groups and the organic industry, raised about $6.7 million.
TIME.com: Prop. 37: Why California's ballot initiative on GM food is about politics more than science
"We've said from the beginning of this campaign that the more voters learned about Prop 37, the less they'd like it. We didn't think they'd like the lawsuits, more bureaucracy, higher costs and loopholes and exemptions. It looks like they don't," the No on Prop. 37 spokeswoman Kathy Fairbanks told the Associated Press.
Prop 37 supporters argued that citizens have the right to know what's in their food and make educated decisions on what to feed their families, especially since long-term health effects are hazy. They wanted to see labeling, according to the ballot initiative, either on the front or back of packages "if the food is made from plants or animals with genetic material changed in specified ways."
Opponents from the biotech industry and Big Ag companies like Monsanto called the labeling deceptive and argued it would stigmatize foods that scientific evidence shows is not harmful. They also estimated that the cost of the labeling requirement would trickle down to California households, forcing families to pay $400 more in grocery bills each year. As TIME's EcoCentric noted, however, that figure, which became a highly debated part of the campaign, assumes manufacturers would be replacing currently unlabeled genetically modified (GM) products rather than slapping new labels on them.
TIME.com: Making sense of food labels
In the end, however, public health experts hope that it was the science that helped voters to make their decision. So far, there is little evidence suggesting that GM foods pose any harms to people that would warrant a label informing them of the modification.
Major medical groups like the World Health Organization and the American Medical Association, in addition to the American Association for the Advancement of Science note that people have been eating genetically modified foods (about 85% of corn sold in the U.S. are man-made hybrids) for nearly 20 years with no serious adverse effects.
So what is the push for labeling really about? In California in particular, it may be about a new-found appreciation for issues that many of us take for granted, including sustainable farming and animal rights.
Opinion: Kids take up fight for 'real food'
In the New York Times Sunday Magazine, writer Michael Pollan says the movement has "revitalized local farming and urban communities and at the same time raised the bar on the food industry, which now must pay attention (or at least lip service) to things like sustainable farming and the humane treatment of animals." He also admits the movement still has hurdles before it can establish itself as a campaign that will appeal to enough people to pass as a ballot initiative.
But despite the defeat, the Prop 37 supporters see the campaign as a victory of sorts. "Prop 37 is a really important and historic opportunity for an emerging food movement. It will fundamentally change the conversation about food and agriculture here in the U.S.," says Dave Murphy, founder of Food Democracy Now. "It will also change how food companies have to respond to the millions and millions of Americans across the country who want to know what they're eating."
TIME.com: Vital farms: Raising the ultra-organic egg
Murphy says the campaign has highlighted Americans' increasing distrust of the food industry and the lack of transparency surrounding what goes into the food they eat. Given that 50 countries already label GM foods in Europe, Australia, Japan, Russia and China, he hopes American skepticism will continue to hold food manufacturers accountable.
"We have a massive social movement for change to achieve labeling of genetically engineered foods in the United States. We understand that [this] loss...that's politics. The largest, most powerful corporations have spent millions of dollars to deceive the California voters," he says. More states will consider labeling laws in coming years, and Washington state and Oregon will likely have ballot propositions in the next two years.
"We will go to Washington and demand labeling from the next administration. We are not going away. We are just getting started," says Murphy.
California fails to pass GM foods labeling initiative |
My First Artist
The Baby Boomers among you will surely share a common memory of sitting in front of an old black-and-white television set and watching in thrall as a goateed man in a plaid shirt -- who signed his name boldly and with great authority -- brought random lines together into coherent images on LEARN TO DRAW, the first-ever art instructional program on TV.Before most of us knew the names of Van Gogh, Manet, Rembrandt, or Da Vinci, we knew the name of Jon Gnagy.Checking the IMDb, I was astonished to learn that today, January 13, would have been the 100th birthday of "America's Original Television Art Teacher." Surely I'm too young to have had a teacher celebrating a centenary! Yet these are the facts... What I find almost more incredible is the revelation, according to his biography, that on the day television was first transmitted to the public at large from the antennae atop the Empire State Building -- May 13, 1946 -- Jon Gnagy was the very first performer on the very first show ever broadcast.Happily for those of us who have long craved to see one of his lessons again, the artist's daughter, Polly Gnagy Seymour, has launched a website to perpetuate the memory of her father, who died in 1981. There you can find ten different video clips, glorious samples of his painting, three complete lessons from Gnagy's printed art instruction, and even a link to a company that continues to sell the original Jon Gnagy art kits! Maybe you had one! (Donna did.) Today of all days, if you remember the thrill of seeing his hand poised over those blank sheets of paper, ready to create something out of nothing, you should visit Polly's site and sign her guest book with your remembrances.Why not follow the link and... learn to draw! Posted by
Anita Strindberg as the dissolute Julia Durer.LIZARD IN A WOMAN'S SKINUna lucertola con la pelle di donna1971, Shriek Show, DD-5.1/2.0/MA/SUB/+, 103m 19s, $19.95, DVD-0One of the earliest Italian gialli produced in the wake of Dario Argento's hugely successful THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE, Lucio Fulci's LIZARD IN A WOMAN'S SKIN was a far steeper plunge into surrealism and strangeness and, as such, proved just as influential as -- if not moreso than -- Argento's Antonioniesque shocker.Florinda Bolkan stars as Carol Hammond, the bourgeois daughter of respected lawyer-politician Edmund Brighton (Leo Genn), introduced as a careworn figure pushing through people crowded into the passageway of a train, who turn naked as her dream segues into an erotic, wind-tossed encounter with Julia Durer (Anita Strindberg). Once Carol regains consciousness, we realize that Julia is her nextdoor neighbor in a London apartment complex, socially snubbed by most residents for her psychedelic orgies -- a woman to whom Carol has never actually spoken, as she confesses to her psychiatrist (George Rigaud). One night, a particularly loud party inspires Carol to dream of murdering Julia. The morning after, Julia is found dead in exactly the manner dreamed, with Carol's fur coat and letter opener left at the scene of the crime. In Carol's dream, she realized after stabbing Julia that there were two witnesses to her deed, two white-eyed hippies gazing at her from a mezzanine within the apartment. This aspect of the dream also proves real when Carol's stepdaughter Joan (Ely Galleani, billed as Edy Gall) makes the acquaintence of these hippies, whose behavior subsequently turns calculatedly predatory. No description of the film's plot can really do it justice, as it was made to be experienced -- almost in the Jimi Hendrix sense of that phrase. Though conceived and executed by a director who reportedly hated hippies and despised the drug culture, LIZARD IN A WOMAN'S SKIN is a decidedly psychedelic entertainment, graced by one of Ennio Morricone's most volatile yet sensual giallo scores.Co-scripted by Fulci and frequent collaborator Roberto Gianviti, with additional credit extended to José Luís Martínez Mollà and André Tranché to mollify Spanish and French co-production quotas, LIZARD is overly contrived on an explicatory level but dazzles as a cinematic construction. In this way, it deceptively appears to be as indebted to Brian De Palma as to Argento or Hitchcock, though it braves into areas of sensuality and technique (split screen, split diopter shots, etc) two full years before SISTERS and almost a decade before DRESSED TO KILL, the De Palma film LIZARD most sleekly resembles. If the film's resolution seems needlessly obscure and distended, one reaches it through a procession of marvelously disorienting suspense sequences in which one can see the pictorial influences of Francis Bacon and Salvador Dalí, among others. In the extended sequence in which Bolkan is pursued through the now derelict Alexandra Palace by Mike Kennedy, the vast emptiness of the place suggests not only the spectral landscapes of some Dalí paintings but also sequences in Hitchcock in which characters are dwarfed by the passive countenances of national landmarks, as in the British Museum sequence of BLACKMAIL. The frequently impressive cinematography was the work of Luigi Kuveiller (DEEP RED, A QUIET PLACE IN THE COUNTRY, FLESH FOR FRANKENSTEIN), assisted by Mario Bava's former operator Ubaldo Terzano. Carol (Florinda Bolkan) could kill that noisy neighbor of hers... but does she?When Shriek Show first released LIZARD IN A WOMAN'S SKIN in February 2005, it provoked a storm of controversy within Internet discussion groups. While preparing this earlier release, Shriek Show's disc producers were aware that the English language print they had acquired -- titled SCHIZOID (95m 33s) and originally released by American International -- was far from complete, even after two separate English source elements had been cobbled together. They sought to smooth over its shortcomings by adding a second disc featuring a cropped, softish, standard framed transfer of the Italian version (97m 48s PAL, 101m 58s real time), subtitled in English, which contained additional material exclusive to the Italian version.In the wake of its release, Italy's Federal Video issued a Region 2 disc of the film that included the far handsomer, anamorphic presentation of a unique edition -- essentially the Italian cut, with some footage exclusive to the AIP version seemingly ported back into the continuity via the Shriek Show presentation. It ran 98m 8s in PAL, or 102m 19s in real time. This version's reliance on the SCHIZOID edition was most obvious during the scene of Julia's murder, which AIP had treated to a distorting ripple-like optical to obscure the nudity of Bolkan and Strindberg and details of the film's pivotal stabbing; the Federal DVD presented the scene in a combination of rippled and unrippled footage, evidently because the aptly-named SCHIZOID included individual shots not found in the Italian cut. The R2 disc also offered a "deleted scene" not edited back into the picture. Despite this oversight and the fact that the Federal DVD offered nothing in the way of English subtitles, Media Blasters/Shriek Show was raked over the coals in Cyberspace because a superior-looking element had been found to exist, which the company was berated for not importing and subtitling.Shriek Show is hoping to make good for their earlier release by issuing a new and improved single-disc remaster of Fulci's classic psycho-thriller that, they hope, will provide the best of all possible Lucertoli for the film's admirers. Having been given a first look at the new disc, I can attest that this new version is -- like the Federal presentation -- a unique cut of the film that was likely never shown in any theater anywhere in the world. It runs a full minute longer than Federal's earlier composite and is certainly the most complete version of the film likely to surface on DVD. I've heard that Studio Canal are the current custodians of the film's original negative, but while a negative would ensure the best possible picture quality, it would carry no guarantee of being more complete. Only the scenes included in the SCHIZOID cut were actually dubbed into English, under the direction of AIP line producer Salvatore Billetteri. Also, mind you, it is unlikely that Studio Canal would allow any negative out of their hands, so anyone licensing the film from them would be required to accept the transfer they were given. The only way to arrive at a complete version of this film would appear to be by cobbling together the English and Italian versions, as Shriek Show has done here with the help of a new Italian print element.Mike Kennedy and Penny Brown as the tripping witnesses to murder.So how does Shriek Show's second go at LIZARD IN A WOMAN'S SKIN differ from, or improve upon, their first? The following is a breakdown of some points of comparison between the new version and its predecessors, which has been assembled with the help of Shriek Show's Richard York:2:08-2:30 The scene of Carol walking through the masses of naked people in the train's passageway has been lengthened by 22 seconds.4:00-4:30 During the first lesbian encounter between Carol and Julia, there is an additional shot exposing Florinda Bolkan's backside as Anita Strindberg pulls the fur coat off her shoulders. This shot appeared in neither version of the film included in Shriek Show's previous release, though an abbreviated version of the shot appeared in SCHIZOID. It should be mentioned that Federal's R2 version was lacking some moments of Bolkan writhing and moaning in her bed before she wakes up, which were included in SCHIZOID.9:08-9:18 and 9:48-10:16 During these time codes, some shots not seen in SCHIZOID -- most of which involved nudity of some sort -- were reinserted into the quick-cut montage.10:38-11:04 The scene of Strindberg removing her top, walking toward a man and kissing him was not in Federal's R2 version but was included on their DVD as a "deleted scene." The scene was already present in SCHIZOID.17:09-17:30 The Francis Bacon-inspired nightmare sequence in SCHIZOID omitted the shot in which a blue-faced Ely Galleani was shown to be cradling a tumult of gooey intestines spilling from her midsection, as well as much of Carlo Rambaldi's gigantic swan-thing. This material was reinserted.17:32-19:26 As mentioned earlier, in SCHIZOID, the murder of Julia by Carol was treated to a rippling optical effect, presumably to obscure nudity and violence -- and possibly to heighten the ambiguity of whether or not it's a dream. On the Federal R2 disc, this scene cuts back and forth between rippled and non-rippled material in an effort to reincorporate footage found only in the SCHIZOID cut. The Italian master provided to Shriek Show contained the entire scene unrippled, which is what they have opted to include in their new release -- providing a wholly unobstructed view of the proceedings.26:10-26:21 The scene of Jean Sorel, Ely Galleani and Silvia Monti walking and talking, expressing concern for Florinda Bolkan's character was not previously included in SCHIZOID or the Italian version included on Shriek Show's original release. The dialogue scene exists only in Italian and thus had to be inserted into the otherwise English-language film in Italian with English subtitles. 26:22-30:06 Immediately following the above scene is the paranoid dinner sequence during which Carol receives the phone call from her neighbor, then frantically looks for her notes. This scene was in Shriek Show's earlier standard-framed Italian version, but not in SCHIZOID.30:24-31:19 A tense-looking Florinda is smoking cigarettes on a sofa while Silvia sits at a table. Ely brings Silvia a drink and some brief dialogue is exchanged. This nearly minute-long scene was likewise not on any previous version and had to be subtitled. This scene leads up to Florinda barging in on the crime scene.32:17-32:24 Inserted back into the scene of Carol's visit to the crime scene were 7 seconds of her being conforted by her husband (Sorel) and a disquieting close-up of Julia's dead body.53:53-54:06 This scene of Sorel and Monti's extramarital lovemaking was extended by 13 seconds of additional kissing and rolling around.58:26-59:12 Finally, the infamous scene of Carol's accidental discovery of the clinic's room of conscious, vivisected dogs -- not included in SCHIZOID -- has been reinserted.Inspector Corvin (Stanley Baker) brings cold comfort to Carol as she mourns a relative.Shriek Show's forthcoming release thus improves upon earlier attempts in meaningful ways and warrants recognition as a significant upgrade -- indeed, it's the most integral version we're likely to see. Nevertheless, the disc has some modest faults that must also be noted.When compared to the Federal DVD, there is no question that the Italian disc is cleaner, sharper-looking, with more realistically modulated color. (Mind you, it's also incomplete and in Italian only, with some faux compositing -- like the on/off rippling -- that favor AIP's preferences over those of Fulci. Though LIZARD is of Italian origin, it was set and shot in London and acted almost entirely in English, with some principals like Baker and Genn doing the actual dubbing, so the English track takes precedence above any other.) For some reason, Shriek Show opted to brighten the feature's overall color, as I suppose was in keeping with their predominant source, the SCHIZOID element; I felt it necessary to turn the color settings of my monitor down a notch or two, to a more realistic, less distracting register, after which the film-like quality of the anamorphic image was very pleasing. That the new master made use of more than one source element is not particularly evident, showing that great pains were taken to achieve a consistent look throughout. I noticed brief instances of glare and grain, possibly inherent in the source elements rather than the transfer, but no cause for common complaints like overdone edge enhancement. Certain scenes are mildly marred by fine bluish scratches, which I didn't find objectionable, as it's better to have such reminders of 35mm film stock than too much digital cleanup. In comparing footage shared by this new transfer and Shriek Show's earlier SCHIZOID transfer, I found the new transfer more vivid. The audio options are English 5.1 and 2.0 mono, and Italian 2.0 mono (viewable with English subtitles). My sampling of the 5.1 option found that it didn't do much but send the mono signal equally from all five channels, which I found spatially disorienting and quickly did without. Perhaps I gave up too early, as I'm told the track does include some directional effects, particularly during the film's celebrated bat attack sequence.With the exception of the several Fulci trailers carried over from the previous release (including the one featuring a ponderous epigraph by author "M. Hawthorne"), the new disc's extras have all been imported from the R2 disc and given English subtitles. These consist of a generous 31m discussion of Fulci and this particular film by Prof. Paolo Albiero, co-author of the book IL TERRORISTA DEI GENERI: TUTTO IL CINEMA DE LUCIO FULCI (something I need to acquire). Albiero's talk, at once intellectual yet entertaining and approachable, I found quite engrossing; it deals with LIZARD on conceptual and generic levels, places the film intelligently in context with Fulci's other work (Albiero feels that Fulci's horror films were "his ruin," in the overall story of his career, though he discusses them with obvious appreciation), and Albiero speaks with warmth and confidence. The talk is followed by Albiero's concise history of the film's censorship problems abroad (5m 51s). The feature's original Italian title sequence is also included.Having compiled such a nearly definitive package, it's all the more regrettable that Shriek Show chose not to go all the way by carrying over from their original release Kit Gavin & Mike Baronas' "Shedding the Skin" (33m 44s) -- a terrifically thorough and entertaining featurette including interviews with the surviving cast and effects men, as well as visits to original shooting locations. The absence of this most valuable labor of love from the new release makes it essential that fans of the film either hold onto, or belatedly acquire, the original Shriek Show two-disc set. Bear in mind that this article is a preview; Shriek Show's LIZARD IN A WOMAN'S SKIN will not street until March 17. Minor quibbles aside, it's an impressive disc with absorbing extras -- and likely to stand out as one of the most important genre film restorations of the year. Where this title is concerned, we're never going to get completeness and perfection, but this presentation comes remarkably close to achieving just that.
I 3 VOLTI DEL TERRORE reviewed
John Phillip Law as hypnotist Dr. Peter Price, offering three fellow train passengers glimpses into their fates in 1 TRE VOLTI DEL TERRORE.I 3 VOLTI DEL TERRORE"The Three Faces of Terror"2004, Pulp Video/Xploited Cinema, DD-5.1/2.0/MA/16:9/LB/SUB/+, 84m 35s, $21.95, DVD-0The spirit of Mario Bava may live on in today's Italian horror cinema but -- judging by this anthology from special makeup effects artist-turned-director Sergio Stivaletti -- in name only. The title and format of this digitally-shot feature are plainly indebted to Bava's 1963 I TRE VOLTI DELLA PAURA ("The Three Faces of Fear"), also known as BLACK SABBATH; it toplines John Phillip Law, the star of Bava's DANGER: DIABOLIK, who is featured in the wraparound story and plays different characters in all three principal stories; and there is also an amusing cameo by Lamberto Bava, who appears in the second story as the director of "DEMONI 7." Stivaletti's heart may be in the right place, but he could have paid greater tribute to Bava by aspiring to the standards of craftsmanship he established, rather than with tongue-in-cheek name-and-trivia-dropping and a troika of lame stories.Scripted by Stivaletti and Antonio Tentori, I 3 VOLTI DEL TERRORE is most obviously indebted to the 1965 Amicus production DR. TERROR'S HOUSE OF HORRORS, and also the 1985 low-rent anthology NIGHT TRAIN TO TERROR, which also featured Law. Three strangers (Riccardo Serventi, Ambre Even, Emiliano Reggente) travelling in an otherwise unoccupied traincar are joined by Dr. Peter Price (Law), who introduces himself as a hypnotist. He carries with him a silver ball that is the agent of his hypnosis, popping open in the palms of the passengers to reveal spinning mirrors that offer frightening glimpses of their futures, which turn out to be reminders of their immediate pasts. In "L'Anello della Luna" ("The Ring of the Moon"), Law plays a wealthy relics collector who pays a small fortune to two men to loot an ancient tomb, but one (Serventi) decides to keep the dead man's ring, which cuts into his finger and infects him with lycanthropy. (Popular keyboardist/composer Claudio Simonetti makes a cameo in this segment, as a victim of the werewolf.) In "Un Viso Perfetto (Dr. Lifting)," an actress (Even) escorts her best friend (Elizabetta Rocchetti) to a plastic surgeon (Law, actually named Dr. Fisher -- whose office and waiting rooms are stocked with film reference books and video guides!) and is taken aback when her friend expresses a wish to look more like her. In "Il Guardiano del Lago" ("Guardian of the Lake"), Law plays a half-masked boatman who warns three lakeside visitors to abandon their campsite because the surrounding waters harbor danger. The stories are not only flimsy, but made to seem weaker than they are by the film's ill-considered structure, which cuts them off before they are properly finished -- giving the impression of weak endings all around; the proper story endings are withheld till a procession near the end of the movie, after certain facts about the wraparound story (already glaringly apparent to anyone halfway familiar with the horror genre) have been made sledgehammer clear. Riccardo Serventi wishes he hadn't stolen "L'Anello della Luna."Though inspirationally rooted in the 1960s, everything else about this picture -- Stivaletti's gooey Change-O-Head transformation effects, the prog rock-oriented soundtrack, the blue-and-black-colored atmospherics, the stumblingly phonetic supporting performances, the dated-looking CGI effects, an unnecessary sex scene (to call it "gratuitous" would indicate that it actually delivered some cheap thrills) -- all this seems a hapless hommage to 1980s Italian horror, the kind that always went straight to videocassette, courtesy of labels like Media Home Entertainment and Lightning Video back in the day.If the film is worth seeing for any reason at all, it's to enjoy the sweet and somewhat sentimental scenery-chewing of John Phillip Law, who gets to play a range of characters in a range of dramatic modes. As Dr. Peter Price, he seems to be reprising the "old man" disguise he wore as Diabolik while reclaiming the emerald pendants from the crematorium; elsewhere, he can be found effectively underplaying in "L'Anello della Luna" and chortling his way wildly over the top in classic Grade Z mad scientist tradition in the final moments of "Un Viso Perfetto" (which recalls his work in Sergio Bergonzelli's insane BLOOD SACRIFICE. Even more to the picture's credit is a well-done stop-motion animation sequence (supervised by Fabrizio Lazzeretti and Gaetano Polizzi) involving a sea monster that briefly harkens back to the Harryhausen and Danforth fantasies of the early 1960s, a spirit which should have infected this enterprise a bit more.As previously noted, I 3 VOLTI DEL TERRORE was shot on digital video and it looks here about the same as many 1980s Italian efforts shot in 16mm or Super 16mm; the lighting is a trifle glaring at times, the color is adequate, and the picture quality is a bit soft with occasional haloing. It's viewable in Italian with optional English subtitles or in English, which plays more awkwardly but at least preserves the vocal performances given onset by Law and his co-stars. The Italian track is playable in Dolby Digital 5.1 (an impressive mix) and 2.0 surround, while the English track is presented only in Dolby Stereo. The English subtitles are an oddity, punctuated with several instances of transcribed Italian muttered (ad libbed?) onscreen. The copy under review also evinced quite a few audio glitches on the English track. Elizabetta Rocchetti gets what she asked for in"Un Viso Perfetta."No fewer than three different editions of the film are available on import DVD, including a single-disc no-frills edition, a single-disc edition loaded with extras, and a three-disc edition containing a second disc of even more bonus materials and a CD of the musical score; all three are available from Xploited Cinema. The disc under review here is the single disc with extras, which already seems like much ado about fairly little. The bonus materials include deleted scenes, an unsubtitled 13m behind-the-scenes featurette, two trailers (the English one is a charmer, including original footage of Law in character), various photo galleries, an audio commentary by Stivaletti and Tentori (in Italian, without subtitles), and more.I thought Stivaletti's earlier WAX MASK showed promise, but it was a real movie; I 3 VOLTI DEL TERRORE seems less an actual feature than a Digicam lark made on weekends by fans who happen to be professionals. I wish I liked this concoction better, but I can only recommend it -- with reservations -- to Italian horror buffs interested in checking in with John Phillip Law's career. And if an Italian horror booster like myself can find so little joy in it, I can't commend it to the attention of anyone whose genre interests may be more tempered. Posted by
Collecting THE RIFLEMAN
A disarming promo shot of THE RIFLEMAN's Johnny Crawfordand Chuck Connors. With THE RIFLEMAN starting anew on Encore Westerns this evening (at 7:00 pm eastern), I know I'm not the only collector who's wondering which episodes I still need. With this idea in mind --instilled in me by fellow McCain rancher Larry Blamire -- I decided to sit down with the six extant MPI Home Video box sets (now officially out-of-print, though still available), find the correct season and episode numbers for each program therein, and use that information to determine which shows were still missing.The listings below present of the volume number for each MPI box set, followed by the episode titles in that set, each show followed by its correct season and episode number in parentheses. (The episode numbers are sequential; in other words, Season 2 begins with Episode 41, not Episode 1.) These are followed by a final, season-by-season accounting of the 48 episodes not issued on DVD by MPI. I have also color-coded the seasons, to make their episodes easier to identify at a glance: Season 1, Season 2, Season 3, Season 4 and Season 5.The good news: If you bought the MPI sets, you won't have to start recording for awhile.VOLUME 1Sharpshooter (S1 E1)Home Ranch (S1 E2)End of a Young Gun (S1 E3)The Marshall (S1 E4)Duel of Honor (S1 E7)The Angry Gun (S1 E13)The Sheridan Story (S1 E16)The Money Gun (S1 E33)The Mind Reader (S1 E40) Bloodlines (S2 E42)Day of the Hunter (S2 E55)The Vaqueros (S4 E111)Knight Errant (S4 E117)The Long Goodbye (S4 E119)High Country (S4 E122)Man From Salinas (S4 E130)Two Ounces of Tin (S4 E131)Waste: Part I (S5 E143)Waste: Part II (S5 E144)The Deadly Image (S4 E132)VOLUME 2The Boarding House (S1 E22)The Brother-in-Law (S1 E5)The Bullet (S5 E163)Dead Cold Cash (S3 E85)The Hero (S2 E59)The Indian (S1 E21)Lariat (S2 E67)Mail Order Groom (S2 E56)The Martinet (S3 E83)Miss Bertie (S3 E90)The Most Amazing Man (S5 E151)New Orleans Menace (S1 E10)One Went To Denver (S1 E25)The Prodigal (S2 E71)The Safe Guard (S1 E8)The Schoolmaster (S3 E86)Three-Legged Terror (S1 E30)The Wyoming Story 1 (S3 E96)The Wyoming Story 2 (S3 E97)The Young Englishman (S1 E12)VOLUME 3The Patsy (S2 E41)The Blowout (S2 E43)Obituary (S2 E44)Tension (S2 E45)Eddie's Daughter (S2 E46)Panic (S2 E47)Ordeal (S2 E48)The Spiked Rifle (S2 E49)The Letter of the Law (S2 E50)Legacy (S2 E51)The Babysitter (S2 E52)The Coward (S2 E53)The Surveyors (S2 E54)A Case of Identity (S2 E57)The Visitor (S2 E58)The Spoiler (S2 E61)Heller (S2 E62)Meeting at Midnight (S2 E74)Nora (S2 E75)The Hangman (S2 E76)VOLUME 4Trail of Hate (S3 E77) Eight Hours to Die (S1 E6)The Sister (S1 E9)The Apprentice Sheriff (S1 E11)The Gaucho (S1 E14)The Pet (S1 E15)The Retired Gun (S1 E17)The Photographer (S1 E18)Shivaree (S1 E19)The Dead-Eye Kid (S1 E20)The Deadly Wait (S1 E26)The Wrong Man (S1 E27)The Challenge (S1 E28)The Woman (S1 E32)The Angry Man (S1 E31)A Matter of Faith (S1 E34)Blood Brothers (S1 E35)Stranger at Night (S1 E36)The Raid (S1 E37)Outlaw's Inheritance (S1 E38)VOLUME 5The Trade (S1 E24)Boomerang (S1 E39)The Hawk (S1 E29)The Horsetraders (S2 E60)Jailbird (S2 E73)The Grasshopper (S2 E63)The Fourflushers (s2 E72)The Deserter (S2 E65)Smoke Screen (S2 E68)Shotgun Man (S2 E69)Old Man Running (S5 E166)Old Tony (S5 168 - final episode)Quiet Night, Deadly Night (S5 E146)Suspicion (S5 E157)Which Way’d They Go? (S5 E167)Gun Shy (S5 E153)I Take This Woman (S 5 E148)Incident at Line Shack 6 (S5 E156)Lou Mallory (S5 E145)Mark’s Rifle (S5 E150)VOLUME 6The Vision (S2 E66)Woman From Hog Ridge (S3 E78)Sins of the Father (S2 E70)The Illustrator (S3 E88)Baranca (S3 E82)The Actress (S3 E94)A Time For Singing (S2 E64)Seven (S3 E79)The Long Trek (S3 E93)Flowers By the Door (S3 E92)Face of Yesterday (S3 E95)Miss Millie (S3 E84)The Pitchman (S3 E80)The Promoter (S3 E87)Silent Knife (S3 E89)Six Years and a Day (S3 E91)Strange Town (S3 E81)The Second Witness (S1 E23)And Devil Makes Five (S5 E161)Anvil Chorus (S5 E154)SEASON 1 - Complete.SEASON 2 - Complete.Still Needed:SEASON 3 - Closer Than A Brother (98), Lost Treasure of Canyon Town (99), Dark Day at North Fork (100), The Prisoner (101), The Assault (102), Short Rope for a Tall Man (103), The Clarence Bibs Story (104), The Score Is Even (105), The Mescalero Curse (106), Stopover (107), Lonesome Bride (108), Death Trap (109), The Queue (110).SEASON 4 - First Wages (112), Sheer Terror (113), The Stand-In (114), The Journey Back (115), The Decision (116), Honest Abe (118), The Shattered Idol (120), Long Gun from Tucson (121), A Friend in Need (123), Skull (124), The Princess (125), Gunfire (126), The Quiet Fear (127), Sporting Chance (128), A Young Man's Fancy (129), The Debt (133), Tin Horn (134), None So Blind (135), The Jealous Man (136), Guilty Conscience (137), Day of Reckoning (138), The Day a Town Slept (139), Millie's Brother (140), Outlaw's Shoes (141), The Executioner (142).SEASON 5 - Death Never Rides Alone (147), The Assailants (149), Squeeze Play (152), Conflict (155), The Sidewinder (158), The Sixteenth Cousin (159), Hostages to Fortune (160), End of the Hunt (162), Requiem at Mission Springs (164), The Guest (165). 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What's Old West is New Again
This past weekend, Encore Westerns hosted 24-hour marathons of the popular 1950s teleseries THE RIFLEMAN (Saturday) and BAT MASTERSON (Sunday). Happily, these round-the-clock broadcasts were preamble to the announcement that both shows are joining the channel's regular broadcast schedule this week.Effective Monday, January 8, BAT MASTERSON will be airing in hour-long, two-episode blocks from 5:00-6:00 pm weekdays, with THE RIFLEMAN airing in hour-long, two-episode blocks from 7:00-8:00 pm weekdays (eastern time). I understand there will also be Saturday showtimes; for these, consult Encore Westerns schedule here. Both programs will be shown complete and uninterrupted, and (importantly for perfectionists like us) in their original broadcast order.Encore Westerns' acquisition of THE RIFLEMAN is welcome news, as it signals the show's rescue from the Hallmark Channel, its home for the past several years, where episodes were hacked to pieces to accommodate commercials and often interrupted at dramatically inopportune moments. Arguably the greatest of all television Westerns, THE RIFLEMAN is also the warmest and frequently the most profound. At heart, it's about the father-and-son relationship of widowed rancher and expert marksman Lucas McCain (Chuck Connors in the role he was born to play) and his son Mark (Johnny Crawford, who's an able young horseman as well as one of the most gifted child actors ever), but the show also tackled difficult subjects like prejudice and mob violence and equally rigorous situations, including more than one episode in which Lucas was required to survive strandings in the desert without food or water. A number of outstanding first season episodes were helmed by Sam Peckinpah, who shocked audiences from the get-go by allowing the show's hero Lucas McCain (Chuck Connors) to be felled by a bullet at the end of the first episode he directed -- none of the show's characters, including Paul Fix as stoic Marshall Micah Torrance, was bullet-proof. THE RIFLEMAN was also the site of the earliest collaborations between Peckinpah and Warren Oates, who guests in several episodes. GUN CRAZY auteur Joseph H. Lewis also directed many episodes.The right to a second chance was another of the show's recurring themes, and the quality of its writing is exemplified by a moment in the episode "The Sheridan Story," in which Lucas takes on the help of a wretched homeless man (Royal Dano) whose state literally repulses the McCains. When the boy asks his father if he hired the vagrant because he was so far gone, Lucas replies, "No, son... because we were so far gone" -- in other words, so far gone that their instincts were to turn away from a fellow human being in need. The show's writing is sometimes startlingly resonant in its simplicity and humanity, and the second act of this episode features dialogue that is positively Shakespearean in its crafting. Other episodes can be just as surprising and pleasing in the degree of their tongue-in-cheek playfulness. Akim Tamiroff, Sammy Davis Jr., John Carradine, Lon Chaney Jr., and Dennis Hopper are among the show's most memorable guest stars.THE RIFLEMAN (which ran for five seasons) is one of the classic television series worth owning in its entirety. Six 20-episode box sets have been released on DVD by MPI Home Video; the intact episodes look fine, but unfortunately, this collection got off on the wrong foot by initially collecting the "best of" compilations MPI originally issued as single discs -- so the MPI box sets do not represent entire seasons, nor are the episodes presented in original broadcast order; the final episode was included in VOL. 5, and some first season shows continue to turn up as late as VOL. 6. This is a problem because the program did observe a certain continuity, sometimes referencing earlier episodes in the dialogue, and the sequencing of the discs can become distracting as Johnny Crawford grows or shrinks an inch or two in height between episodes. Furthermore, the half-dozen MPI sets in release are a substantial 48 episodes shy of the complete run, and MPI's press rep has sadly informed me that the company's rights to THE RIFLEMAN expired with the coming of the New Year. Therefore, there won't be any additional MPI sets, and even if you've been collecting them in the hopes of acquiring them all, your only hope now of securing the complete series -- and in its original broadcast order -- is to record the Encore Westerns broadcasts.BAT MASTERSON (which ran for three seasons, beginning in 1958) is one of those programs I've heard about all my life, but didn't actually see until yesterday. To the best of my knowledge, it's been off the air for many years and not commonly found in syndication. Gene Barry stars as real historical figure William Barclay "Bat" Masterson, a dapper gunfighter so nicknamed because of his self-defensive abilities with a gold-capped walking stick. The first episode, "Double Showdown," I didn't find very interesting until a premature finale led to an out-of-character appearance by Barry, who explained that history recalls this particular adventure of Masterson ending two different ways... at which point, the episode gives us the other version, as well. Subsequent episodes not only held my interest; they held me in thrall until 5:00 in the morning. I left the balance of the marathon's offerings in the capable hands of my DVD burner's hard drive.I don't recall ever reading about Barry's portrayal being any kind of precursor to the screen version of James Bond, but I find the comparison (and debt) glaringly obvious. Barry's Bat is debonair and worldly, a professional gambler, a connoisseur of fine wines and fine living, a ladies man (he not only gets around, but seems to have previously known every woman of visible experience to appear in each episode... and gets around to knowing some of the innocent ones too), and armed with a ready quip at the most daunting moments. Strapped to a tree with rawhide bonds and left behind as bear bait, Masterson tells his farewell-bidding adversary, "I'd shake hands, but I'm all tied up." (One of the episodes is even called "License To Cheat.") Make no mistake: Sean Connery wasn't the first hero to punctuate his prowess with smug remarks like "Shocking" -- Gene Barry was doing it years earlier, in high style, and the memory of this show probably helped to inspire the later cult series THE WILD WILD WEST.As with THE RIFLEMAN, the guest stars alone provide good reason for watching. The episodes of BAT MASTERSON I watched last night featured Allison Hayes, Yvette Vickers, Gloria Talbott, Marie Windsor, and Louise Fletcher (they all got kissed) -- as well as Elisha Cook Jr., William Conrad, Ross Martin, Walter Barnes (who appears uncredited in "Bear Bait"), Joe Turkel, Barry Atwater, and Hank "Fred Ziffel" Patterson.Tune in or set your timers: the adventures of these Western heroes are habits you'll find well worth acquiring. |
Financial Assistance for Elderly Veterans and Their Widows Is A Well Kept Secret.October 31, 2011|
by Sonja Kobrin, M.P.S.
Ask an elderly Veteran if they are aware they may be eligible for a pension from the Department of Veterans Affairs and they will tell you “I’m not eligible because I was not injured in the War.” This is a common misconception which keeps many Veterans from tapping into a benefit they well earned by serving our country. The fact is elderly, disabled Veterans and their widows may very well qualify for large sums of money, but they have to apply for the funds. There are several Veteran pensions, but the pension designed to help elderly Veterans and Veteran’s Widows pay for costly Home Health Care, Assisted Living Facility or Nursing Home fees (if the Veteran is not covered by Medicaid) is called Special Monthly Pension with Aid and Attendance. The pension can pay a married Veteran up to $2,054.00 per month, an unmarried Veteran up to $1,732.00 per month and a Veteran’s Widow can receive up to $1,113.00 per month. The amount one receives is based upon their medical expenses and their current financial and medical status. The pension is paid by check directly to the Veteran or Veteran’s Widow every month as long as they meet the criteria.
The Special Monthly Pension with Aid and Attendance is the government’s best kept secret. I cannot tell you how many seniors have told me that they called the Department of Veterans Affairs and were actually told that this pension does not exist or that they do not qualify. Since 1993, I have assisted Veterans and Veteran’s Widows in obtaining these funds – they really do exist.
To get the maximum pension amount, a Veteran must qualify medically and financially and must have served their country for at least one day during “War Time”. Also the Veteran must have been honorably discharged. Every case is considered individually. If a Veteran or Veteran’s Widow feels they may qualify, they can apply for the pension. The pension can take many months to actually be approved. The average waiting period is three to eight months, sometimes much longer. The first pension check will be paid retroactive to the month after the application arrived at the Department of Veteran Affairs, therefore the first check may be for thousands of dollars. Subsequent checks will arrive monthly for the approved amount. This pension money can mean the difference between affording adequate care for an aging Veteran/ Widow or having no care at all.
As with any governmental program, success is all in the paperwork. The pension application is several pages long and some of it is in essay form. It is the exact wording used in the essay areas that mean the difference between approval and denial. Also, the Department of Veterans Affairs does not tell Veterans about all the supporting documents that they would like to see. The better the medical and financial records, the better the chances are of approval. Including the right medical forms signed by a doctor is very important for approval. Also typical of governmental red tape is the frustrating lack of communication. Once the application is filed and in the process of being reviewed, it is nearly impossible for the applicant to receive an update or check on the status of the application. For most of our clients, they are too ill or too confused to make a call like that.
In a perfect world, financial assistance for those who qualify should be easily accessible. The reality is that government agencies are inherently complicated and their application processes are never self explanatory or simple. Ignorance of the rules is no excuse and no one will tell you the rules. The rules are written in a handbook, but the Department of Veterans Affairs is not allowed to give them to you. Seasoned elder care professionals can often navigate these processes for you. The Department of Veterans Affairs and and other Veteran Service Organizations employ staff to help Veterans and their Widows apply for these pensions for free, but it is these very people who have told so many seniors that they do not qualify, when in fact they could qualify if they made one small change. Those working for the Department of Veterans Affairs or other veteran organzations are forbiddne to let you know how to adjust your income or assets in order to qualify. Many times a person must just spend more on medical care to be awarded the pension, but if they are not told, they will be denied. Perhaps the Department of Veterans Affairs is afraid that if they made it easy for every Veteran to apply, the pension fund would go broke. Given that War Time includes the Gulf War Era which began in 1990 and has not ended yet, I anticipate the pension fund will one day be either broke or impossible to get. For now, the money is very much available and attainable.
Here are the Special Monthly Pension with Aid and Attendance eligibility criteria for the year 2013.
Currently has medical or psychological condition which make the Veteran or Veteran widow dependent on the aid or assistance of a non- family member in order to meet their daily care needs or they reside in an Assisted Living Facility or Nursing Home (not on Medicaid). This claim must be supported by physician signed forms, financial data and medical records.
Financial Criteria: Have assets in their own name below $80,000 (if married) or below $50,000 (if single). The car and house does not count as an asset. Monthly income below $1,732,.00 (if single) or $ 2,054.00 (if married) and $1,113.00 if an un-remarried widow. After all medical expenses such as insurance premiums/co-pays, assisted living facility fees, paid caregiver salary, medications, medical transportation/ supplies, certain housing expenses, etc.
Note: Income figures are AFTER COUNTABLE , RE-OCCURRING MEDICAL EXPENSES. VA may require someone of advanced age to have fewer assets than quoted above. We have seen this when applicants are over 80 years old.
In many cases, if a person has a paid care giver, such as a nurse’s aide, or if they pay an Assisted Living Facility, or they pay out of pocket for a nursing home, those expenses impact so greatly on a person’s net income, that they will meet the criteria for the income level.
If a Veteran or Veteran Widow has cash assets above the limit, they are allowed to place those assets into certain investments in order to have them “sheltered”. This sheltering does not have a penalty or “look back period” associated with it at this time. Proper asset sheltering for Special Monthly Pension with Aid and Attendance should be done under the supervision of an elder care professional or attorney well versed in Medicaid planning because one could easily ruin the chances of ever getting Medicaid if the V.A. Pension planning was done incorrectly.
With a little professional planning, many Veterans and Veteran Widows can receive pensions that make a significant difference in the amount of care they receive. After all, the reason for this particular pension is to assure that a Veteran or Veteran Widow does not live in a substandard environment in their old age. It takes a little work to apply for this pension, but anything worth having usually does. |
Introduction Units
Becoming Free and Independent States
• Disagreement and Disillusion
• The Revolution Begins
• Fighting the Revolution
Forming a More Perfect Union
Securing the Blessings of Liberty
The Thirteenth Amendment
• A Number of Valuable Slaves
• Death or Liberty
• Forever Free
The Fourteenth Amendment
• The Law
• Drawing the Color Line
• Protest
The Fifteenth Amendment
The Nineteenth Amendment
• In Most Humble Manner
• All Men and Women Are Created Equal
• Far-reaching Changes
The Virginia government in Alexandria adopted a state constitution in 1864 that abolished slavery in the state. Related documents:
Fifth Virginia Revolutionary Convention Called for Independence, May 15, 1776
First Virginia Constitution, June 29, 1776
Emancipation Proclamation, January 1, 1863
Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, 1865
, Enslavement
, Politics: Commonwealth of Virginia
« Return to Forever Free
Virginia Constitutional Convention Resolved to Abolish Slavery, March 10, 1864
After Virginia seceded from the United States in the spring of 1861, Virginia men loyal to the Union met in Wheeling and voted to restore Virginia to the Union. In conventions in May and June they declared the statewide offices vacant by reason of their occupants' serving in the government of the state that became one of the Confederate States of America. The conventions in Wheeling elected a new governor, lieutenant governor, and attorney general, and a special session of the General Assembly that met in Wheeling in July elected two United States senators. They and two members of the House of Representatives served in the United States Congress as representatives of the state of Virginia that remained one of the United States of America. On July 4, 1861, the president of the United States of America recognized the government in Wheeling as the legal and loyal government of the Commonwealth of Virginia.After West Virginia was admitted to the Union as a free state in June 1863, the Virginia state government that was part of the United States moved its capital from Wheeling to Alexandria, and Governor Francis H. Pierpont recommended that the assembly call a constitutional convention to redraw the legislative and judicial district boundaries that were fixed in the 1851 state constitution and to abolish slavery. Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation was not in force in the state of Virginia that remained in the United States. Thus, the governor and the army acted under conflicting responsibilities in treating the many enslaved men, women, and children who left their owners during the war and sought freedom outside of the Confederacy. From February 13 through April 11, 1864, seventeen delegates, some of whom were owners of slaves, wrote a new constitution for Virginia. When they voted on March 10 to declare that "Slavery and involuntary servitude (except for crime) is hereby abolished and prohibited in the State forever," church bells rang throughout the city, and men fired a hundred guns in celebration.On February 9, 1865, the General Assembly of the Restored government of Virginia, meeting in Alexandria, ratified the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States that ended slavery throughout the nation.The surrender of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia in April 1865 effectively ended the Civil War and brought an end to the Confederate States of America. The officials of the state government in Richmond had abandoned their offices and the capital by that time, and the government of the state that had been part of the Confederate States of America under the Constitution of 1851 ceased to exist along with the Confederacy. The government in Alexandria moved its capital to Richmond later in the spring, and from then until July 1869 the Constitution of 1864, which abolished slavery, was the constitution of Virginia. Questions
Journal of the House of Delegates of the State of Virginia for the Session of 1864–5 (Alexandria, Va.: D. Turner, printer to the state, 1865), 56.
"The Restored Government of Virginia—History of the New State of Things. Alexandria, Va., Wednesday, June 22, 1864." New York Times, June 26, 1864, p. 3.
Tuesday, March 8th, 1864.Convention met at 12 o'clock, M.The minutes of the previous meeting were read and approved.Mr. Watson stated that as the Report of the Committee on Emancipation was not thoughtto be as perfect as it might be made, he moved to recommit to the Committee. The motion wasconcurred inOn motion of Mr. Hauxhurst the Committee was then instructed to report by Thursdaynext.Mr. Downey submitted an Ordinance defining treason, and for the punishment of thesame, which was laid on the table and ordered to be printed.On motion the Convention adjourned until 10 o'clock A.M., to-morrow.LeRoy G. EdwardsPresident of the ConventionW. J. CowingSec'y of the ConventionWednesday, March 9th., 1864.Convention met at 10 o'clock, A.M.The minutes of the previous meeting were read and approved.Mr. Watson, in behalf of the Chairman of the Committee on Emancipation andEducation, submitted the following report:"Your Committee on Emancipation beg leave to introduce the following as a part of theConstitution of Virginia, to be inserted in the same under the caption of "Slavery or Freedom."Sec. 1st. Slavery and involuntary servitude (except for crime) is hereby abolished and prohibitedin the state forever.Sec. 2nd. Courts of competent jurisdiction may apprentice minors of African decent on likeconditions provided by law, for apprenticing white children.Sec. 3rd The General Assembly shall make no law establishing slavery or recognizing propertyin human beningsW.W. Wing, ChairmanR.B. Wood. }CommitteePhilip G. Thomas.A. Watson.Laid on the table, and on motion of Mr. Webb, was made the special order for to-morrow.Mr. Downey submitted the following resolutions, which were laid on the table andordered to be printed:Resolved, "That the money or monies obtained from the sales of confiscated propertyshall be applied first. to the payment of loyal persons for all the losses they have sustained, byand through this rebellion; second. to be applied to free school purposes; third, if a surplus, itshall be applied to the payment of the state debt or on internal improvements.2nd,—The Legislature shall provide by law for the same at the first session after theadoption of this Constitution.Mr. Downey also offered the following resolutions, which were referred to theCommittee on Education:Resolved, That the Legislation shall, as soon as conveniently may be, provide by law, fora general system of education throughout the state, in such a manner that the poor may be taughtgratis.2nd.—That the arts and sciences shall be promoted in one or more seminaries or collegesof learning.Mr. Webb, Chairman of the Special Committee on the contested seat of Mr. George R.Boush, made the following report, which was unanimously adopted:"The Committee to whom was referred the claim of James W. Brownley, Esq., ofPortsmouth, to a seat in this Convention in place of George R. Boush, beg leave to report thatthey have examined carefully the papers filed, and are of the opinion that Mr. J. W. Brownley isnot entitled to a seat in this ConventionL.W. Webb. ChairmanR. B. WoodWm. P. Moore, Jr. } CommitteeJames H. DowneyS. Ferguson BeachMr. Downey submitted an Ordinance providing for amendments to the Constitution bythe Legislature after the year one thousand eight hundred and seventy laid on the table andordered to be printed by the following vote: ayes 7; nays 5.Mr. Hauxhurst then moved to take up the ordinance previously introduced by thegentleman from Loudoun. (Mr. Downey), defining and punishing treason, and submitted asubstitute for the same, The subject was debated at some length by Messrs Hauxhurst, Penn,Downey, and Webb, after which it was laid on the table, ordered to be printed and made thespecial order of Tuesday next.On motion the Convention adjourned until 10 o'clock A.M., to-morrow.LeRoy G. EdwardsPresident of the ConventionW. J. CowingSec'y of the ConventionThursday, March 10th, 1864Convention met at 10 o'clock, A.M.The minutes of the previous meeting were read and approved.The report of the Committee on Emancipation being the special order of the day, thesame was taken up and read.The subject was then debated at considerable length by Messrs. Downey, Boush,Hauxhurst and Watson in favor of its immediate adoption.Mr. Beach desired to make an explanation. His name did not appear on the report of theCommittee on Emancipation from the fact that he was absent when the Committee made itsreport. As he endorsed the report and should vote for its adoption, he asked that his name mightbe recorded with the balance of the Committee. The request was granted and his name sorecorded.Mr. Penn said as there seemed to be no opposition, he would now move the unanimousadoption of the report.Mr. Webb desired the ayes and nayes taken, and they were recorded as follows:Ayes—Messrs. Beach, Boush, Downey, Dix, Edwards, Gover, Henshaw, Hauxhurst,Penn, Thomas, Tennis, Webb, Wood, Watson, Wing—14Nayes—Mr. Moore.So the report was adopted.Mr. Watson offered the following resolution, which was adopted:Resolved, That a committee of three be appointed to wait upon Gen. Slough and requestthat a salute be fired in honor of the passage of the act of Emancipation.The President appointed the following named gentlemen as said committee:—Messrs.Watson, Penn and Gover.Mr. Downey submitted the following resolution, which was also adopted:Resolved That a special committee of five members be appointed to prepare a schedule ofthe Constitution.On motion the Convention then adjourned until 11 o'clock, A.M,. to-morrow.LeRoy G. EdwardsPresident of the ConventionW. J. CowingSec'y of the ConventionFriday, March 11th, 1864.Convention met at 11 o'clock, A.M.The minutes of the previous meeting were read and approved.The Report of the Committee on the Executive Department and Judiciary being thespecial order of the day, the same was taken up for consideration. As many members wereunavoidably absentMr. Webb moved to postpone the consideration of the report until Wednesday next, The motionwas concurred in.On motion the Convention adjourned until Monday next, at 10 o'clock, A.M. |
Montrose Students Viewed As 'Pioneers' of New Educational Technology
Sep 05, 2013 | 3805 views | 0 | 48 | | IPAD EDUCATION – Columbine Middle School teacher Keith Obsheatz and his class are participating in a Montrose School District experiment with integrating iPads into the curriculum. (Photo by William Woody) slideshow
90 Students and Many More Will Benefit With the Use of iPads, Officials Say MONTROSE – Nearly 100 seventh-grade students at Columbine Middle School have spent their first few weeks of the 2012-14 school year learning to operate and care for the world's most popular tablet computer, thanks to a donation from Montrose residents Jim and Sharen Branscome. "It's a pilot program,” said Columbine Middle School Principal Ben Stevenson. “Hopefully, it'll be successful, and create something the whole district can model after." Stevenson said that all of the school's 32 teachers have also received the computer. As part of the curriculum, Stevenson said, students in the program will spend the first quarter learning to handle iPads responsibility, and learn good "digital citizenship." "First and foremost,” Stevenson said, “people have to understand this is an educational tool. They're great tools, but they don't take the place of strong instruction, and quality teachers." At a winter school board meeting early this year, Jim Branscome voiced concern about the fact that some students were waiting upwards of 20 minutes just to log on to the internet, in a class that lasted just 55 minutes. Deeming the lag-time a waste of potential, Branscome donated $64,000 toward fixing the problem. "Sharen and I think its a pretty innovative project which will improve the ability of the student to excel," he said of the program. The machines are not for the students’ entertainment, but are viewed rather as essential support mechanisms for the development and enhancement of skills in such complex areas as communication, new media literacy, creativity and student-centered learning. The goal is for students to learn and interact with one another while their teachers monitor success and learn to identify, in real-time, students who need more help. The iPads feature controlled computer algorithms allowing teachers to monitor student performance, and keep them from accessing inappropriate material. "You get to assess them on the spot,” said Columbine teacher Keith Obsheatz, whose class is participating in the program. “We can take a quick quiz or assessment, and you get immediate feedback on your computer." Obsheatz said the devices allow him the ability to teach in ways he has always wanted to teach. "The program itself is phenomenal. It's a 21st century skill that they need," he said. Obsheatz said that initially, the kids wanted to play with iPads, but they are now learning to treat them as a learning tool. "Once we set down the groundwork with them, they started to understand they have to take care of them like they would a textbook," he said. According to Stevenson, it will be awhile before students are allowed to take the tablets home. With more instruction, students will be able to bring the technology home for curriculum work outside of school. "It's cutting-edge,” the principal said, adding, “We want all our kids to be exposed to this technology.” Obsheatz is looking forward with sending the kids home with videos and powerpoint lectures that will let them learn and understand material at their own pace, as opposed to trying to "cram" curriculum in a short amount of time. "It's going to level the playing field," Obsheatz said of students with learning disabilities. With the use of modern technology, Columbine, like many schools across the country, is investing in wireless internet capability to meet access demand required from such devices. Stevenson said some of the $64,000 Branscome donation went to better construct modern Wi-Fi access in a school built nearly 60 years ago. In the U.S., billions are currently being spent on Information Technology and digital textbooks, with the bulk of that spending in middle and high schools. Recent surveys indicate a majority of college students prefer a digital format for their curriculum. "It's the wave of the future," Stevenson said, adding that the participating Columbine students are "pioneers" in a new era of Montrose public education. District officials hope the new technology will help bridge a generational gap between parents – who remember a time before the internet – and their children, who have never known a world without it, to better prepare for a global learning environment. Branscome said the use of iPads poses a stark difference to the one-room school house of his childhood in the Appalachian area of southwestern Virginia. During his travels around the world, Branscome said, he and Sharen have seen the uses and benefit of similar devices help impoverished or remote students to improve and catch up, in areas from "fractions to geography." Branscome said education and economic development are "tied together," and that an increasingly technologically savvy community will attract the right companies to Montrose. He and his wife have received everything from thank yous to comments from many parents who wish their children could participate in the iPad program. Some parents of Columbine seventh graders did not want their children to participate in the iPad program, however, a resistance that has tasked administrators with explaining to skeptics why the iPads are a sound educational investment. In addition to Columbine’s seventh grade iPad users, Stevenson said one eight-grade class will have access to the iPads, and that a pool of iPads will be available to students on a check-out basis. In recent years, schools in the Montrose County RE-1J District have had to cut millions from their budgets. Stevenson said it will take about a year to see if test scores show the iPads are making a powerful difference in the classroom. A Community Technology Challenge Grant was created following the Branscome's donation as a way for others to participate in purchasing iPads for Montrose students. A $600 donation will purchase an iPad with curriculum and support for awaiting Montrose students. For more information about the tax-deductible donation, contact the Montrose Community Foundation at 970/249-3900. Delta County schools have a similar program. [email protected] Twitter.com/williamwoodyCO www.williamwoody.tumblr.com/ |
MATHEMATICS AND STATISTICS (Div. III)
Chair, Professor OLGA R. BEAVER
Professors: ADAMS, O. BEAVER, BURGER*, R. DE VEAUX, GARRITY, V. HILL**, S. JOHNSON, MORGAN*, SILVA*. Associate Professor: LOEPP. Assistant Professors: CHKHENKELI, DEVADOSS, WITTWER. MAJOR
The major in Mathematics is designed to meet two goals: to introduce some of the central ideas in a variety of areas of mathematics and statistics, and to develop problem-solving ability by teaching students to combine creative thinking with rigorous reasoning. Students are urged to consult with the department faculty on choosing courses appropriate to an individualized program of study.
REQUIREMENTS (nine courses plus colloquium)
Calculus (two courses)
Mathematics 104 Calculus II
Mathematics 105 Multivariable Calculus
Except in unusual circumstances, students planning to major in mathematics should complete the calculus sequence (Mathematics 103, 104, 105) before the end of the sophomore year, at the latest.
Applied/Discrete Mathematics/Statistics (one course)
Mathematics 209 (formerly MATH 210) Differential Equations and Vector Calculus or Mathematics 210 Mathematical Methods for Scientists (Same as Physics 210)
Mathematics 251 Discrete Mathematics or Statistics 201(formerly MATH 243) Statistics and Data Analysis or Statistics 231(formerly MATH 244) Statistical Design of Experiments or
a more advanced elective in discrete or applied mathematics or statistics, with prior departmental approval: Mathematics 305, 306, 315, 346, 354, 361, 433, 452, or any Statistics course 300 or above or an appropriate course from another department as listed in the notes below.
Notes: Mathematics 251 is required in Computer Science, and Mathematics 209 (formerly MATH 210) is recommended in other sciences, but double majors should understand that no course may count toward both majors. Core Courses (three courses)
Mathematics 211 Linear Algebra
Mathematics 301 Real Analysis or Mathematics 305 Applied Real Analysis
Mathematics 312 Abstract Algebra or Mathematics 315 Groups and Characters Completion (three courses plus colloquium)
The Senior Major Course is any 400-level course taken in the senior year. In exceptional circumstances, with the prior permission of the department, a student may be allowed to satisfy the Senior Major Course requirement in the junior year, provided that the student has completed three 300-level mathematics courses before enrolling in the Senior Major Course (if it is a statistics seminar, one of the 300-level courses may be replaced by Statistics 201). Two electives from courses numbered 300 and above or Statistics 201.
Weekly participation as a senior in the Mathematics Colloquium, in which all senior majors present talks on mathematical or statistical topics of their choice.
In some cases, an appropriate course from another department may be substituted for one of the electives, with prior permission of the Mathematics and Statistics Department. In any case, at least eight courses must be taken in mathematics and statistics at Williams. These can, with prior permission, include courses taken away. Students with transfer credit should contact the department about special arrangements. APPLIED MATHEMATICS OR OTHER SCIENCES
Students interested in applied mathematics or other sciences, including economics, should consider Mathematics 209 (formerly MATH 210), 210, 251, 305, 306, 315, 323, 342, 354, 361, 433, or Statistics 201, 231, 346, 442, and additional appropriate courses from outside Mathematics and Statistics, including possibilities such as Chemistry 301, Computer Science 256, Computer Science 361, Economics 255, Physics 201, Physics 202, Physics 210 or more advanced physics courses.
Students interested in careers in business or finance should consider Mathematics 170, as well as courses in statistics and related areas such as Statistics 101, 201, 231, 331, 344, 346, 442, 443. Since these courses address different needs, students should consult with the instruct |
Reducing the Risk of Autism
Living With Autism
There are no guidelines for preventing autism. This is because the cause is unknown. Scientists are actively searching for a better understanding of autism and ways to prevent it.
Resource Guide for Autism
Treatments for Autism
Talking to Your Doctor About Autism
Symptoms of Autism
Screening for Autism
Risk Factors for Autism
Medications for Autism
Lifestyle Changes to Manage Autism
http://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/autism/index.html
Updated August 7, 2012. Accessed May 14, 2013.
Autism spectrum disorders (pervasive developmental disorders). National Institute of Mental Health website. Available at:
Updated May 14, 2013. Accessed May 14, 2013. |
Symptoms of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS)
Symptoms of chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) may occur suddenly after you have a
bronchitis, hepatitis, or an intestinal infection. Symptoms may follow a bout of infectious
(mono), which is caused by a virus that temporarily saps your energy. CFS can also begin after a period of high stress. Sometimes it develops more gradually, with no clear illness or other event noted as a starting point.
Unlike flu symptoms that usually go away in a few days or weeks, symptoms of CFS persist or recur in cycles for at least six months in 50% of time. CFS symptoms vary from person to person. Since 1994, the guidelines for diagnosing CFS include, in addition to a six-month history of fatigue that is not relieved with bed rest, at least four of the following eight symptoms:
Muscle aches
Joint pain without swelling or redness
Trouble with short-tern memory or concentration, forgetfulness, or confusion
Tender lymph nodes
Trouble sleeping or not feeling rested after sleep
Worsening symptoms 24 hours or more after exercise
In addition to the eight diagnostic symptoms, patients with CFS can also suffer from:
Irritable bowel
Sensitivity to many chemicals
Lifestyle Changes to Manage Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS)
Treatments for Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS)
Talking to Your Doctor About Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS)
Screening for Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS)
Risk Factors for Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS)
Resource Guide for Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS)
Reducing Your Risk of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS)
Other Treatments for Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) |
Protect Your Skin: How to Avoid Sun Exposure
You may feel healthier with a bit of a tan, but your skin does not appreciate it. The sunlight that warms our bones and makes flowers grow contains ultraviolet (UV) radiation that can damage the skin.
Exposure to UV radiation from sunlight can lead to:
Sunburn—This is the most obvious and most immediate sign of too much sun. Your skin will be red and tender, and it may swell and blister. You may even run a fever and feel nauseous from a sunburn.
Premature wrinkling and uneven skin pigmentation—Over time, too much sun exposure will cause your skin's texture to change. The skin can become tough and leathery, and you may notice more wrinkles. In addition, the sun can cause sun spots—discolorations in the skin's tone that may be brown, red, yellow, or gray.
Skin cancer—This is the most serious result of too much sun. The more sun exposure you have, the more your risk of skin cancer increases. Learn about the proper way to check your skin for any changes in the size, texture, or color of a mole. The Skin Cancer Foundation recommends you should check your skin every month.
To help protect your skin when you are in the sun, follow these simple tips:
Try to avoid sun exposure between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. This is when the sun's rays are most damaging.
Do not deliberately sunbathe.
Do not use tanning devices, like tanning booths or tanning lamps.
Always wear a broad spectrum sunscreen with a sun protection factor (SPF) of at least 15. Broad spectrum sunscreens absorb UVA and UVB rays of the sun.
Apply sunscreen to all exposed areas approximately 30 minutes before sun exposure. Use the amounts recommended by the manufacturer. Do not forget the back of your neck, rims of your ears, and tops of your feet. Reapply aevery two hours, or after swimming or excessive sweating.
Choose hats and clothing with a high UPF (Ultraviolet Protection Factor). This is the amount of the sun's UV rays that are being absorbed by your clothing before they get to your skin. A rating of 50+ offers a lot of sun protection.
Choose clothing made from tightly-woven fabric. This will absorb more of the sun's UV rays. Darker colors absorb rays better than light colors. Hold clothes up to the sun to see how much light comes through. Clothes that do not let much light through will be more protective. For example, a dark denim shirt offers more protection than a white t-shirt. Long-sleeved shirts and long pants will give more protection.
Wear a wide-brim hat and sunglasses. A hat with a six inch brim all around is best. Choose sunglasses that block both UVA and UVB rays.
Consider clothing that has been treated to offer more sun protection. Some clothing may be treated with special UV absorbers or chemical sunblock. Be careful, as these may lose their sun protective qualities over time.
The UV Index
The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the National Weather Service put out the UV Index. This is a daily report on the UV radiation levels in different areas in the country. Here is how to interpret the number:
0 to 2—Low danger from the sun's UV rays for the average person. If it's a sunny day, wear sunglasses. If you burn easily, make sure you apply sunscreen and wear clothes that protect your skin. 3 to 5—Moderate risk of harm from unprotected sun exposure. If you plan on being outside, wear sun-protective clothing. Avoid being outside around midday. 6 to 7—High risk of harm from unprotected sun exposure. Use sunscreen and wear sun-protective clothing, a hat, and sunglasses. Reduce your exposure to the sun between the hours of 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. 8-10—Very high risk of harm from unprotected sun exposure. Follow the tips above, but be even more careful, epecially during peak sun hours. You can burn quickly. 11+—Extreme risk of harm from unprotected sun exposure. Avoid sun exposure and try to remain in the shade as much as possible. Keep in mind that bright surfaces, such as sand, water, or snow increase UV exposure by reflecting light.
Play It Safe in the Sun
Skin cancer: prevention. American Academy of Family Physicians Family Doctor website. Available at: . Updated February 2011. Accessed March 6, 2014.
Preventing skin cancer. Skin Cancer Foundation website. Available at: Accessed March 6, 2014.
Prevention guidelines. Skin Cancer Foundation website. Available at: Accessed March 6, 2014.
UV index scale. United States Environmental Protection Agency website. Available at: Accessed March 6, 2014. |
HHS Announces State Balancing Incentive Payment Program Guidance and Application
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius recently announced a new program to encourage states to offer home and community-based services as a long-term care alternative to nursing homes. The State Balancing Incentive Payments Program, created by the Affordable Care Act (PL 111-1480), is an opportunity for participating states to receive a temporary enhanced federal match rate, or FMAP, to help rebalance Medicaid spending by increasing the percentage of home and community-based expenditures for long-term services and supports under the state Medicaid program.
The balancing incentive program is to run from October 1, 2011, to September 30, 2015. States are encouraged to apply using this application.
Additional guidance is available online.
New Scorecard on Long-Term Care Released
A new state-by-state scorecard on long-term care, developed by AARP, The Commonwealth Fund and The SCAN Foundation, was released last week and puts eight states - Minnesota, Washington, Oregon, Hawaii, Wisconsin, Iowa, Colorado, and Maine - at the top when it comes to providing long-term services and support for older adults and people with disabilities. A report, Raising Expectations: A State Scorecard on Long-Term Services and Supports for Older Adults, People with Physical Disabilities, and Family Caregivers, was also released along with the scorecard.
The State Long-Term Services and Supports (LTSS) Scorecard's researchers say the scorecare is the first to take a multidimensional approach in measuring performance in long-term care at the state level. It's designed to "begin a dialogue among key stakeholders so that lagging states can learn from top performers and all states can target improvements where they are most needed," says the report.
The scorecard looked at four aspects of long-term care:
Affordability and access
Choice of setting and provider
Quality of life and quality of care
Support for family caregivers
Session Titles/Descriptions for the Annual Conference & Meeting Available Online
Sign up for an Pre-Conference Intensive Workshop at the 2011 Consumer Voice Annual Conference & Meeting
Planning on Celebrating Residents' Rights Month? Purchase the Residents' Rights Month Community Outreach Kit, featuring postcards with Resident Voice artwork and quotes, buttons, stickers, wristbands and a collection of all of the Residents’ Voice entries promoting residents' rights and this year's theme. These kits can also be helpful awareness tools and giveaways for your Residents' Rights Month luncheons, press activities, visits with residents and other activities.
Featured Long-Term Services and Supports Resources
Care.com's Senior Care Guide Index
Care.com's The Senior Care Guide: A Printable PDF
Care.com's Guide to Senior Care (PDF version)
Federal Emergency Management Agency's Resolve to be Ready in 2011 website
September is World Alzheimer's Month.
September 11-14: National Home and Community Based Services Conference, Washington, DC
September 14, 9:00 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. EST: Protecting Our Most Vulnerable Residents: A Forum on Emergency Preparedness for Service Providers - The DC Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency (HSEMA) is holding this forum to help individuals better prepare for emergencies or disasters as it impacts senior clients, residents or customers.
September 18: 4th Annual National HIV/AIDS and Aging Awareness Day
September 21: Alzheimer's Action Day
September 23: 4th Annual Fall Prevention Awareness Day
October is National Residents' Rights Month!
October 25-28: 36th Consumer Voice Annual Meeting & Conference, Grand Rapids, MI
November 15: National Memory Screening Day |
Turning Off The Spigot In Western Kansas Farmland
Share Tweet E-mail Print By Dan Charles Originally published on Tue August 27, 2013 2:49 pm
Listen An irrigation pivot waters a corn field in Nebraska. Many farmers in Nebraska and Kansas rely on irrigation to water their corn fields. But the underground aquifer they draw from will run dry.
Across the High Plains, many farmers depend on underground stores of water, and they worry about wells going dry. A new scientific study of western Kansas lays out a predicted timeline for those fears to become reality. But it also shows an alternative path for farming in Kansas: The moment of reckoning can be delayed, and the impact softened, if farmers start conserving water now. David Steward, a water expert at Kansas State University, says that he and his colleagues started this research project with a specific kind of person in mind: "The family farmer who's trying to see into the future, and trying to pass on his or her land to their grandchildren." Farmers in western Kansas have good reason to worry about the future. They know that big irrigated fields of corn in this part of the country are taking water out of underground aquifers much faster than rain or snow can fill those natural reservoirs back up. Steward decided to come up with better estimates for how soon the aquifers will go dry and how that will affect farmers. He got together with experts on growing corn and raising livestock. "We were trying to provide a little bit better glimpse into the future, so that people would have a better idea how to plan," he says. According to their calculations, if Kansas farmers keep pumping water out of the High Plains aquifer as they have in the past, the amount of water they're able to extract will start to fall in just 10 years or so. They'll still be able to continue harvesting more corn for another generation, though, because technology — better irrigation systems and genetically improved corn — will let them use that water more efficiently. But after that, even the latest technology won't save the corn fields. Irrigated fields will start to disappear, followed by cattle feedlots. The long expansion of agricultural production in western Kansas will end. Yet Steward and his colleagues also lay out some alternative paths that the farmers of Kansas could take. For instance, if farmers reduced their water use by 20 percent right now, it would take a big bite out of their corn production, but production then would resume growing. It wouldn't peak until 2070, and then it would decline much more gradually. "If we're able to save as much water as possible now, the more we save, the more corn we'll be able to grow into the future," Steward says. These predictions appear in this week's issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The exact numbers are new, but the issue of water conservation is a familiar one in western Kansas. Thirty years ago, local governments in several parts of the region set up groundwater management districts — essentially, committees for discussing ways to attack the problem. Mark Rude, executive director of the groundwater management district for southwest Kansas, says that discussion can turn emotional "because there's nothing more fundamental to the local family farm than the water supply." At the same time, he says, the families on those farms are worried about the future. They want their grandchildren to have plenty of water, too. Rude says, in his district, they've discussed lots of alternatives for how to reduce water use: cuts in irrigated acres; cuts in the amount of water used on each acre. But it's mostly talk so far, rather than action, for a very practical reason. His agency may not have the legal authority to force farmers to cut back on their water use. Those farmers own rights to water the way they own land. Any rule that tries to restrict that right could be challenged in court. "The last thing people really want to see is simply a whole lot of court cases," Rude says. The groundwater management districts have been trying to avoid that outcome by coming up with plans everyone can support. There's a model for this. In one small area in northwestern Kansas, farmers have agreed to use 20 percent less water for the next five years. "It's an experiment, and a lot of people are watching that," Rude says. "And of course, that figures prominently in the conversations about, 'If we were going to do it, how would we do it?' " If they can't come up with a plan for cutting water use, of course, eventually the natural laws of hydrology will step in. Farmers will use less water when the wells go dry.Copyright 2014 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/. Transcript DAVID GREENE, HOST: And now to a moment of reckoning in one farm state. Scientists in Kansas are predicting that agricultural production in Western Kansas will start declining in about 25 years because of a lack of water for irrigation. Scientists say farmers might avoid this by conserving water now. NPR's Dan Charles reports. DAN CHARLES, BYLINE: David Steward, a water expert at Kansas State University says he and his colleagues started their research with some specific people in mind. DAVID STEWARD: The family farmer who's trying to see into the future, and trying to pass on his or her land to their grandchildren. CHARLES: Every farmer in Western Kansas knows there's reason to worry. Big irrigated fields of corn in this part of the country are taking water out of underground aquifers much faster than rain or snow can fill those natural reservoirs back up. Steward decided to come up with better estimates for how soon the aquifers will go dry, and how that will affect farmers. He worked with experts on growing corn and raising livestock. STEWARD: We were trying to provide a little bit better glimpse into the future, so that people would have a better idea for how to plan. CHARLES: According to their calculations, if Kansas farmers keep pumping water out of the High Plains Aquifer at the current rate, the amount of water they'll able to extract will start to fall in just 10 years or so. Their harvest of corn will still keep growing until about 2040 because technology - like better irrigations systems and new corn varieties - will let them use water more efficiently. But after that, even technology won't save the corn fields. They'll start to disappear. So will cattle feedlots. The long expansion of agricultural production in Western Kansas will be over. Now Steward also lays out in his calculations some alternative paths that the farmers of Kansas could take. For instance, if they used 20 percent less water starting today, they'd cut their corn production a lot, but it would keep going for much longer. It wouldn't peak until 2070 and then it would decline much more gradually. STEWARD: If we're able to save as much water as possible now, the more that we save, the more corn we'll going to be able to grow into the future. CHARLES: These predictions appear in this week's issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Their forecast isn't really a surprise. Farmers in Western Kansas have been talking about the end of easy water for decades now. In some areas, wells have already gone dry. Thirty years ago, local governments in some parts of Kansas set up groundwater management districts to discuss the problem and also ways to solve it. Mark Rude, executive director of the Groundwater Management District for Southwest Kansas, says it can be an emotional discussion. MARK RUDE: Because there's nothing really more fundamental to the local family farm than the water supply to that local family farm. CHARLES: At the same time, he says the families on those farms do want to find solutions; they want their grandchildren to have plenty of water, too. Rude says in his district they've had discussions about various ideas for how to reduce water use. But it's mostly talk so far, not much action, for a very practical reason. His agency may not have the legal authority to force farmers to cut back on their water use. Those farmers own rights to water the way they own land. Any rule that tries to restrict that right could be challenged in court. RUDE: The last thing people really want to see is simply a whole lot of court cases. CHARLES: The only way to avoid that, Rude says, is to come up with a plan that everybody can live with. There's a model for this. In one small area in Northwestern Kansas, farmers have agreed to use 20 percent less water for the next five years. RUDE: It's an experiment. A lot of people are watching that, and of course, that figures prominently in the conversations of if we were going to do it, how would be do it? CHARLES: And if they can't agree to cut water use, eventually the natural laws of hydrology will step in. Farmers will use less water when the wells go dry. Dan Charles, NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR. |
Search Director-General of UNESCO appeals for protection of Syria’s cultural heritage
Mar 30, 2012 The Director-General of UNESCO, Irina Bokova, today called for the protection of the cultural heritage of Syria.
‘Following a number of media reports that Syria’s cultural heritage is threatened by the current conflict, I wish to express my grave concern about possible damage to precious sites and to call upon all those involved in the conflict to ensure the protection of the outstanding cultural legacy that Syria hosts on its soil. Damage to the heritage of the country is damage to the soul of its people and its identity.’
Syria’s history extends back over thousands of years. A succession of cultures has left an outstanding wealth of archaeological sites, historic cities, cultural landscapes, monuments and works of art that bear witness to the evolution of human ingenuity. Six Syrian sites - Damascus, Aleppo, Palmyra, Bosra, the Crac des Chevaliers and Saladin’s Castle, the Ancient Villages of Northern Syria - are inscribed on UNESCO’s World Heritage List . Many others are inscribed on the country’s Tentative List, such as Apamea -- where a number of journalists report that the Citadel of Madiq is being bombarded.
Earlier this year, UNESCO alerted the Syrian authorities, through their representative at UNESCO, about their responsibility to ensure the protection of cultural heritage. ‘This situation is becoming more crucial by the hour,’ stated the Director-General. ‘I urge the Syrian authorities to respect the international Conventions they have signed, in particular the 1954 Convention for the Protection of Cultural Properties in the Event of Armed Conflict, the Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property (1970), and the 1972 World Heritage Convention.
In the framework of the of the 1970 Convention, the Director-General has already contacted the World Customs Organization, INTERPOL, and the specialized heritage police of France and Italy to alert them to objects from Syria that could appear on the international antiquities market. She has also called for the mobilization of all UNESCO’s partners to ensure the safeguarding of this heritage.
‘UNESCO stands ready to assist in assessing reports of damage to the cultural heritage of Syria, including the World Heritage sites, and in preparing plans for their safeguarding, as soon as this becomes possible,” she concluded. |
Ruling Could Help Break The Nuclear-Waste Logjam
Share Tweet E-mail Comments Print By Christopher Joyce Originally published on Wed June 13, 2012 11:43 am
About 70,000 tons of used nuclear fuel sits mostly at power plants across the country. Much is kept underwater in spent fuel pools, but utility companies have been moving the fuel into concrete and steel casks like these in Richland, Wash. Energy Northwest CEO Vic Parrish (center) tours the facility with Reps. Doc Hastings (left) and Jay Inslee.
Pete Vavricka conducts an underground train from the entrance of Yucca Mountain in Nevada in 2006. President Obama canceled the planned nuclear waste repository there in 2009.
Isaac Breekken
The federal government promised almost 30 years ago to find a place to bury nuclear waste from power plants. It hasn't. So the waste is piling up at power plants around the country. Now a federal court says the government must prove that this temporary solution is truly safe. The decision could help break the nuclear-waste logjam. Most people agree that used nuclear fuel, which is highly radioactive, needs to be disposed of forever. But that's proving easier said than done. The government spent billions digging a giant hole for waste at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. Then President Obama canceled that project in 2009. The nuclear industry and many Republicans in Congress are fighting the administration to reverse that decision. In the meantime, 70,000 tons of spent fuel sits mostly at power plants. Where it goes next, nobody knows. Lawyer Geoffrey Fettus of the Natural Resources Defense Council helped convince the federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., to tell the government this solution may not be safe. "They're going to have to look at the environmental impacts of long-term storage on-site, potential disposal options, as well as the potential that they never even get a meaningful long-term disposal option," he says. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has argued that the waste is OK where it is — even for 60 years after a power plant closes. The NRC also says it will keep its promise to find a permanent waste dump "when necessary." But the appeals court says: Prove it. The NRC "apparently has no long-term plan other than hoping for a geologic repository," the court ruled in a unanimous decision. Nuclear fuel could stay where it is permanently, the court surmised, so NRC must assess the potential environmental effects of that outcome. Nuclear critics such as Fettus say an environmental review will have to focus on the spent fuel that sits in big water-filled pools at power plants. The water keeps the radioactive fuel from overheating and possibly burning. "We've been fighting for years with the NRC," he says, "urging them to require moving fuel from the pools as soon as it's able. The NRC so far has refused to do this." Utility companies have moved fuel out of pools into dry casks of steel and concrete. These are widely viewed as safer than pools. But most waste, at least three-quarters of it, is still in pools, many of which are packed to the legal limit. And the waste just keeps coming. Over the next 40 years, the amount of spent fuel is expected to double. Albert Machiels, a waste expert at the utility industry's Electric Power Research Institute, says the public didn't expect local power plants to become de facto dumps. "I think that it has a really large impact on the local communities," he says. "They never bought into the idea that the spent fuel was going to stay essentially beyond the lifetime of the power plant ... and it doesn't sell very well." Moreover, the government has been charging utilities and their customers a fee to pay for a permanent waste dump. So far, more than $30 billion has accrued, and it sits in the federal Treasury. David Wright, who runs the Public Utility Commission in South Carolina and is head of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners, says it's a rip-off. "They [the federal government] have chosen not to do anything," he says. "The federal government has our money; we have their waste." Wright says Yucca Mountain should be revived, but he says the court ruling in Washington requiring a reassessment of the status quo is one development where environmentalists and utilities can agree. "The fact that we are finally getting some movement — and recognition in the court system is movement — and I think it's a positive development," Wright says. The appeals court says the NRC must do an environmental assessment of all that waste. It did not, however, set a due date.Copyright 2012 National Public Radio. To see more, visit . View the discussion thread. |
Cyprus, Turkey At Odds Over Natural Gas Drilling
Listen The tiny eastern Mediterranean country of Cyprus is expected to become the fifth eurozone nation to receive a bailout. But the island-nation, which is about half the size of Connecticut, could soon access a massive treasure under the sea: natural gas. If all goes well, Cyprus could start making more than $25 billion a year — about the same as the country's current GDP — starting as early as 2015, says Solon Kassinis. Twenty years ago, few listened to the engineer when he said there was gas and oil under the seabed. "A lot of people, especially geologists, geophysicists, they didn't believe in the region. They didn't think that there was oil and gas," he says. But Kassinis, who's now the energy chief of Cyprus, insisted the conditions for gas and oil deposits — such as a thick sedimentary basin and sea steam — were there. Houston-based Noble Energy listened. Its engineers surveyed the area in 2008, and the company began exploratory drilling in 2011. The company worked on a block of the seabed called the Aphrodite gas field, located off the southern coast of Cyprus, says Fiona Mullen, an economist following the project. "Noble Energy did the drilling in September, and they announced in December that they had found an estimated 7 trillion cubic feet, which is enough to supply domestic consumption for something like 200 years," Mullen says. "So there's obviously spare for export." Troubled Politics But there's also a complication. Cyprus has frigid relations with its neighbor, Turkey, which has even threatened military action to stop the drilling. "Turkey's particularly sensitive about the area to the west of the island, because they claim some blocks there belong to its own continental shelf," Mullen says. "With the Aphrodite field, its argument is not as aggressive. Turkey says Greek Cypriots don't have the right to govern the Republic of Cyprus alone. They ought to govern with the Turkish Cypriots." Turkey has occupied the northern half of Cyprus since 1974. The division has embittered Greek and Turkish Cypriots, whose leaders tend to marinate in that difficult past, says Ergun Olgun, a former presidential adviser to the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyrprus, which is only recognized by Turkey. "Hydrocarbons can be a curse or a kismet," Olgun says. "The key to it not becoming a curse is to understand that we are interdependent. Interdependence means respecting each other, but that can only happen if we break from the past." Olgun says Greek Cypriots rejected a Turkish Cypriot plan to resolve the country's division before moving forward on hydrocarbons exploration. "Instead what we have is new alliances being built around Cyprus, which are making the conflict even more dangerous," he says. "The alliances, for example, with Cyprus and Israel, [and] Turkish Cypriots and Turkey deepening their own alliance by going into agreements with other." Not Just Economic Calculations Cyprus could save a lot of money by piping the gas directly to Turkey, which could, because of its proximity, be its biggest customer. Instead the Greek Cypriots plan to liquefy the gas and partner with Israel on a pipeline. Israel has fragile relations with Turkey, which is now drilling for oil on land in the plains of northern Cyprus. Supervisor Cem Cetin says his team arrived earlier this year at a drilling site for the state-owned Turkish Petroleum Corporation. "We import oil and gas from other countries," Cetin says. If the company finds hydrocarbons, he adds, "We are going to share with Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus." You can see the Turkish Petroleum rig from the nearby village of Sinirustu, where Turkish farmer Sabri Aydag has lived since 1976. Before 1974, most of the people who lived here were Greek. The Greek Cypriots still call the village Syngrasis. "The drilling will improve the village, since Turkish Petroleum has already given farmers 700 fields," Aydag says. "This village will turn into a proper town." Turkey is also planning to drill offshore, just like everyone else in the region, says Praxoula Antoniadou-Kyriakou, a Greek Cypriot and a former energy minister. "The whole of the eastern Mediterranean [is] loaded with hydrocarbons," she says. "Israel, Egypt, Cyprus and Lebanon now contemplate ... exploration." If the countries can put the past behind them and work together to manage hydrocarbons, she says, the region could become a place of peace and prosperity. But the history here feels thicker than the seabed, she says. And it's far more explosive than the gas that lies beneath.Copyright 2012 National Public Radio. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/. Transcript STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: Let's go next to the island of Cyprus in the Mediterranean, part of which is an independent country, and is becoming - close to becoming the fifth eurozone country to receive a bailout to help avoid financial collapse. This small island-nation has potential to do better. It may be sitting on large natural gas reserves. The trouble is how to get at that wealth without causing trouble with Turkey. The island is divided between its ethnic Greek and Turkish communities, and Turkey still controls part of the island. Turkey doesn't want the independent part of Cyprus to grab a windfall for itself and is threatening military action to prevent drilling, which is going ahead anyway. Joanna Kakissis visited Cyprus and sends this report. JOANNA KAKISSIS, BYLINE: Twenty years ago, a Greek Cypriot engineer named Solon Kassinis said the Eastern Mediterranean held a treasure of hydrocarbons. At the time, few people were listening. SOLON KASSINIS: Well, a lot of people, especially geologists, geophysicists, they didn't believe in the region. They didn't thought there was oil and gas. KAKISSIS: But Kassinis, who is now the energy chief of Cyprus, insisted that the conditions for gas and oil deposits were there. The Houston-based Noble Energy listened and began exploratory drilling in 2011. They worked on a block of the seabed called the Aphrodite gas field - located off the southern coast of Cyprus. Here's Fiona Mullen, an economist following the project. FIONA MULLEN: Noble Energy did the drilling in September and they announced in December that they had found an estimated seven trillion cubic feet - which is enough to supply domestic consumption for something like 200 years or something, so there's obviously spare for export. KAKISSIS: Solon Kassinis now says Cyprus could make as much as $25 billion a year by selling the gas. That amount is equivalent to the country's GDP. But there is a complication: Cyprus's frigid relations with its neighbor, Turkey, which has even threatened military action to stop the drilling. Turkey has occupied the northern half of the island since 1974. And division is a way of life here, says Ergun Olgun. He's a former presidential advisor to the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, which is only recognized by Turkey. Olgun says the Greek Cypriots could have used the hydrocarbons discovery to unite with the Turkish Cypriots. ERGUN OLGUN: Instead what we have is new alliances being built around Cyprus which are making the conflict even more dangerous, the alliances - for example, Cyprus and Israel, Turkish Cypriots and Turkey - deepening their own alliance by going into agreements with each other. KAKISSIS: Cyprus could earn more money by piping the gas directly to Turkey, which is the nearest market and imports most of its fuel. Instead the Greek Cypriots plan to liquefy the gas and partner with Israel on a pipeline. Israel has fragile relations with Turkey, which is now drilling for oil on land in northern Cyprus. (SOUNDBITE OF GENERATOR) KAKISSIS: This giant generator powers a drilling site for the state-owned Turkish Petroleum Corporation. Supervisor Cem Cetin says Turkey doesn't plan to give any oil and gas it discovers to the Greek Cypriots. CEM CETIN: If we can find any of them, we are going to share with Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. (SOUNDBITE OF BIRDS CHIRPING) KAKISSIS: The Turkish petroleum site is near a village called Sinirustu, where birds perch on an abandoned Greek Orthodox church. A Turkish farmer named Sabri Aydag lives nearby. SABRI AYDAG: (Foreign language spoken) KAKISSIS: The drilling will improve the village, he says, since Turkish Petroleum has already given farmers here 700 fields to grow barley and chickpeas. And Turkey is also planning to drill offshore, like many other countries in the region, says Praxoula Antoniadou-Kyriakou. She's a Greek Cypriot and a former energy minister. PRAXOULA ANTONIADOU-KYRIAKOU: The whole of the eastern Mediterranean now, it is evident that it is loaded with hydrocarbons. It's Israel, Egypt, Cyprus; Lebanon now contemplates to start exploration. KAKISSIS: If the countries decide to put the past behind them, she says, hydrocarbons could turn the region into a place of peace and prosperity. But she adds that the history here feels thicker than the seabed, and it's far more explosive than the gas that lies beneath. For NPR News, I'm Joanna Kakissis. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright National Public Radio. |
hide Genetically engineered cow makes anti-allergy milk
LONDON (Reuters) - Researchers in New Zealand have genetically engineered a cow to produce milk with very little of a protein that causes an allergic reaction in some children.
They hope the technique, which uses a process called RNA interference that reduces the activity of certain genes without eliminating it completely, can be used to control other traits in livestock.
With mothers breastfeeding less, cows' milk is an increasing source of protein for babies, but the different composition of cows' milk can cause an allergic reaction.
"In developed countries, 2-3 percent of infants are allergic to cows' milk proteins in the first year of life," the researchers said in a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Anower Jabed and colleagues at the New Zealand government-run AgResearch company said their genetically modified cow produced milk with a 96 percent reduction in the protein beta-lactoglobulin (BLG), a component known to cause allergic reactions.
While there are dairy industry processes that can reduce the allergenic potential of normal milk, they are expensive and can result in a bitter taste.
Another gene manipulation technique using a process called homologous recombination could theoretically knock out, rather than suppress, the gene that produces BLG but the researchers said that, so far, this has not worked.
Bruce Whitelaw, professor of animal biotechnology at the University of Edinburgh, said the New Zealand research "offers a good example of how these technologies can be used to provide alternative strategies to current manufacturing process".
He said that although RNA interference has been shown to work in manipulating plants and worms, "it has not worked in livestock before".
Whitelaw told Reuters that aside from accentuating or reducing genetically determined characteristics in farm animals, such as growth rate, the technique could be used to improve defence against infection.
"Time will tell how widely applicable RNA interference will be in GM livestock. But this is certainly a milestone study in this field," he said. |
Gay weddings 17 percent of Washington marriages
(AP) SEATTLE - Gay weddings made up 17 percent of marriages in Washington this past year, the first year gay marriages were legal in the state, state officials reported Wednesday. About 7,071 same-sex couples got married in Washington between December 6, 2012, and the most recent complete month of data, September 2013. There were 42,408 total marriages in the state during that time, according to the Washington State Department of Health. So far, most of Washington state’s same-sex marriages, 62 percent, were between two women. Washington is one of 15 states plus the District of Columbia where gay marriage is legal, but few have the kind of detailed data Washington released this week, in part because gay marriage is so new in most places. According to the 2010 Census, there were about 152,335 same-sex married couples and 440,989 same-sex unmarried couples in the United States. According to the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, during the first year and a half after gay marriage became legal, 8,181 same-sex couples got married. Between May 2004 and the end of 2012, 22,406 gay couples got married in Massachusetts. Both Washington and Massachusetts warn that these numbers are close estimates, but not perfectly accurate, since gender information was not properly entered on every marriage certificate. In California, the UCLA School of Law’s Williams Institute estimated 18,000 gay couples married in 2008 when same-sex marriage was legal for four and a-half months. Those numbers are not based on marriage license information because California, like many states, does not request gender information on license applications. One of the main sponsors of the Washington state law that led to gay marriage said the wedding numbers were higher than he expected. During the five years before Washington’s gay marriage law, when the state had what was affectionately called "everything but marriage," only 9,500 couples registered themselves as domestic partners, including about 950 who were not gay, said state Rep. Jamie Pedersen, D-Seattle. "In terms of the uptake in marriages, that’s a remarkable number," he said. Pedersen said he was also pleased to be proven right about a few others things: that gay marriage would drive tourism and that there was considerable interest in the institution among couples from across the state. All but one of Washington’s 39 counties _ Garfield County _ reported same-sex marriages during the first 10 months of the law. The top five counties were King, Clark, Pierce, Snohomish and Thurston counties. About a quarter of the gay couples who got married this past year in Washington were from another state. The biggest number, 524, came from Oregon. For 170 marriages, the couples live in Texas and 155 couples traveled from California to get married in Washington. In only 6 percent of marriages for opposite-sex couples, both spouses were from another state. ____ Contact Donna Blankinship at (Copyright 2013 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.) |
Adrian Carton, Macquarie University Patrick Manning, Northeastern University
The central challenge of a renewed world history at the end of the twentieth century is to narrate the world's pasts in an age of globality. It is this condition of globality that facilitates the revival of world history and establishes a point of departure in the "actually existing" world of the late twentieth century �2
- Michael Geyer and Charles Bright 1 Over ten years ago, Geyer and Bright predicted that globalization would facilitate the revival of world history. Despite this prediction, the teaching and learning of world history in the twenty-first century has still not become truly globalized. If we live in a truly global age, shouldn't we also teach world history in a global pedagogical context? Our international experiment between Macquarie University and Northeastern University arose from such a question, and also from two significant tensions that have arisen in recent years between the theory and practice of teaching world history.
2 The first tension relates to the teaching of world history from within a curriculum paradigm which remains tied to the notion of separate 'nations.' Indeed, even though world historians commonly seek to situate human being in contexts that transcend the nation-state, much of the world history curriculum is stitched together under the rubric of national interests. The second tension is the question of the cross-cultural experiences that equip students to be global citizens. While we teach the ethos and philosophy of global interactions, our day-to-day teaching practices remain anchored in one locality. In other words, while world history courses advocate mobility, flexibility, and the ability to reach beyond borders, students generally remain in a single class in one city in one particular country. Moreover, we teach world history within a specific cultural context bound by specific cultural practices such as the language of instruction. Thus the problem remains: how do we facilitate the transfer of academic and cultural skills from one culture to another, emulating the very contacts and interactions of world history pedagogy?
3 This article charts the recent initiative of Patrick Manning at Northeastern University in Boston and Adrian Carton at Macquarie University in Sydney to address this problem by providing an international framework for the teaching of world history across national boundaries. By taking advantage of the opportunities afforded by an electronic learning forum, students from parallel world history courses from Boston and Sydney joined an 'Atlantic World History' international tutorial in March and April 2005. What did we learn from this global initiative and what did our experience tell us about the pursuit of internationalizing world history teaching and learning? Did we replace national interests with a global approach to world history pedagogy? Does international internet learning create global citizens through equitable access or does it create greater disadvantage through the global commodification of education itself?
4 Creating an International Framework
One of the main issues that we wished to address by conducting the international tutorial was the question of the relevance and the portability of world history unit contents. How transferable are our world history courses across national boundaries? Since English is the medium of instruction for world history in both the United States and Australia, one would expect a fair degree of portability. By allowing both Australian and American course content to be set in international play in a controlled electronic environment, both can be tested and enhanced according to cross-cultural applicability. We envisaged that a "virtual forum" of American and Australian students would facilitate the internationalization of the unit content through mutual feedback and cross-fertilization between identical reading material and responses to facilitator questions. We theorized that an international framework might illuminate diverse responses to the same world history texts depending upon the cultural location of the students involved, and that it might lead to new cross-cultural understandings of the material through listening to alternative and divergent opinions and interpretations.
5 For teaching material dealing with the Atlantic world, this seemed particularly interesting. Atlantic world history courses have a long genealogy in the United States due to their "home-grown" status as regional histories of cultural exchange and interaction where the U.S. is positioned in a broader global paradigm. Hence, this area of world history teaching has straddled both the national curriculum and the need for studies that place America in a wider world. However, this sense of familiarity cannot be extended to Australia. The teaching of the Atlantic world in Australia is a relatively recent phenomenon, with no sense of physical or cultural proximity involved and, indeed, few "overlaps" with national interests or studies of Australia's place in its own region. 6 Hence, one can assume that studies of the Atlantic world in the U.S. and in Australia serve different ends and have been grounded in different pedagogical frameworks. While in the U.S. studies of the Atlantic world emerged from a re-evaluation and broadening of the national history paradigm, in Australia such studies are interwoven in the broader emergence and popularity of world and global histories per se. What happens when these two perspectives meet? Even if identical scholarly books and articles are used, are they read in the same way and with the same sets of cultural assumptions and investments?
7 Related to this desire to test the international portability of world history curriculum was our desire to encourage our respective sets of students to tackle the world history syllabus not only from the perspective as "Americans" or as "Australians" but also from the "bird's-eye" perspective of perceiving themselves as world historians.3 While world history students in their respective countries must learn the skills that enable them to compete and thrive in a local environment, there also remains a need to prepare our students with transnational skills that equip them with the necessary competencies to be citizens of the world. Hence, the creation of an international learning environment which facilitates the transfer of general skills in reading, writing, and the comprehension of historical processes on a global scale is the first step towards providing the framework for training in cross-cultural understanding.
8 Due to the sheer physical distance of Australia from the main centers of world history pedagogy in Europe and the U.S., physical exchanges with foreign countries have been the traditional modes by which Australian students acquire these cross-cultural skills. Exchange agreements and travel opportunities to other centers where world history is taught enable Australian students to feel as if they are a part of the global pedagogical scene. However, due to the relative expense of air travel, the highly competitive entry criteria for student exchange programs, and the time needed for the proper planning and execution of overseas travel, the tyranny of distance often hinders the full participation of Australian students in global learning initiatives. While international world history programs seem well-placed to respond to the contemporary demands of creating the environment needed for the internationalization of general skills, only a few world history students are given the opportunity to study abroad on exchange programs. Even then, the cost is high. Thus there remains a real urgency to make the internationalization of world history teaching and learning both accessible and more economically feasible.
9 The Globalization of Education: Democratization versus Disadvantage
In theory, online units of study promote information exchange and mutual support amongst students and enable skills to be updated and transferred to vocational settings. In countries such as Australia, sympathetic commentators on the viability of online learning say that it addresses educational disadvantage by widening educational opportunities to a broader and more diverse body of students while simultaneously addressing social isolation due to the sheer scale of physical distances.4 In the United States, online distance education courses have multiplied significantly in recent years with campuses making significant advances in the area of e-learning strategies to increase student numbers and reach students in rural areas.5 Likewise, in Australia, the promotion of external units of study to students who work during the day or who live in remote areas has resulted in the growth and sustainability of the Open Universities Australia (OUA) network.6 The University of Southern Queensland has pioneered the use of online learning as a means to offer courses to students living in remote areas of the Australian outback.7 10 Spain's Salamanca University, the University of Porto in Portugal, and the University of Groningen in the Netherlands have all been noted in the literature for their borderless e-learning environments that maximize the transfer of resources through unit content portability.8 However, the specific teaching and learning needs of world history require students to think and act in a global context due to the cross-cultural nature of the subject material, while current e-learning solutions often remain linked to local and national contexts. In this sense, the internet allows for the seamless delivery of information and seems to be well-placed (in theory) to offer world history teaching solutions in an environment that addresses the equity issues of international student exchange. It also provides a context for testing the portability and flexibility of world history programs. So we may ask: does the internet indeed provide the environment for cross-cultural learning without national limits?9
11 While this essay argues that technological advances in borderless electronic learning have facilitated new opportunities for world history learning across national boundaries, we nevertheless question both the logic and the promise of equitable delivery that are assumed in the "democratization" argument. On the one hand, the internet creates an international framework for the cross-cultural transfer of general skills and, hence, heralds an exciting new phase in the potential internationalization of world history curricula.10 As John Field argues, "as borders open up across the globe to traffic of almost every kind, so distance open learning flows increasingly across national frontiers."11 Robin Mason from the Open University in the U.K. goes further with his celebratory view: 12 At its most visionary, the ideal of global education is one of a movement away from the bounded classroom, seen as a haven from the world, to a dynamic synergy of teachers, computer-mediated instructional devices and students collaborating to create a window on the world.12
13 On the other hand, the promise that world history can be taught in a global utopia that widens international participation and enhances equity is contingent upon the premise that the historical move from localized and nationalized centers of learning to the "global virtual university"13 is a good one and is, indeed, historically inevitable.14
There are cognitive, educational and social arguments for caution to be displayed in the laissez-faire argument that the globalization of world history curricula based on American, European or Australian models will somehow widen participation and erase disadvantage. In his book, Digital Diploma Mills, for example, David Noble provides a sharp critique of the intention of online learning programs which are interwoven into the logic of the expansion of global capital where the unrestrained commodification of education for the pursuit of profit looms large. While online learning and teaching courses have multiplied across the world, as previously noted, they have done so in tandem with the privatization and corporatization of higher education per se. College campuses have often emphasized the "democratization" of education in order to justify the increase in online learning programs when their real intention is to tap into a lucrative international education market and reduce overall labor costs.15 The casualization of online teaching, questions concerning quality control, and the overall lack of standards has led Noble to draw parallels between these new learning "innovations" in the twenty-first century to the mechanization processes that accompanied the first phase of industrial capitalism in the West.16
The question of equity is a very important one. Do all of the world's college students have access to the internet in order to engage in a "global" learning environment? Do we want world history to become the "internationalized" preserve of the privileged? The challenges faced by students in the developing world as well as the question of the feasibility of internet classrooms for the socially and economically disadvantaged are very real in a global society where the gulf between the "information rich" and the "information poor" is widening at an ever-increasing rate. In this sense, the enthusiastic embrace of the "global virtual university" and "democratization" has serious socio-economic and socio-political implications.
In terms of the content and structure of our experiment, we were also aware that the obvious re-inscription of standardized approaches to world history learning and the fact that the mode of instruction and feedback is in English, meant that an "international dialogue" between the U.S. and Australia hardly constituted a "global interaction" in the broadest sense of that term.17 From a cognitive point of view, the move to these standardized interpretations of world history that can be applied to courses in Sydney, San Diego or Southampton could very well undermine the pursuit to provide cognitive recognition of cultural and linguistic difference. In social terms, the homogenization of world history teaching could lead either to the weakening of studies of cultural specificity and local perspectives or, indeed, to the erasure of the important role of a national perspective on education in postcolonial contexts where there is a real urgency to shake off imperial legacies.18
While the above problems are very real, we nevertheless maintain that the internet can provide an effective environment for conducting innovative cross-cultural teaching methods in world history that require us to think beyond the old binary of "national" versus "global" and to engage in a significant pedagogical network which brings local communities of world history students from different parts of the globe into dialogue with one another. This may lead, as Mason suggests, to a relativist comprehension of world history approaches that are not static or unitary, but multiple, contested and based on how one sees the world at a given place, time and context depending on where one is standing.19 Indeed, living with twenty-first century technology requires students to think and act in terms of both national and transnational identities. Furthermore, through a process of cross-cultural contact and interaction, online environments have the potential to create international spaces where the subject content will be interpreted in fresh and innovative ways.20
Cross-Cultural Dialogues: Benefits and Limitations
We began the planning for our international tutorial in August 2004 with the submission of a grant proposal titled "Fostering Global Interactions: Learning World History in a Borderless Electronic Age." The proposal was successfully awarded a Teaching and Development Grant in that year from Macquarie University. To implement the proposal, we decided to choose a block of five weeks in our parallel world history courses for an international experiment in cross-teaching that would be concerned with five identical topics in the area of Atlantic history. These weekly topics were called: (1) 1492 And All That: The Notion of "Discovery"; (2) Indigenous Cultures in the Americas; (3) Encounters and Conquests; (4) Pre-Colonial African Cultures and the Slave Trade; and (5) African-American Interactions. The topics were held during the same weeks in Boston and Sydney (March 7-April 8 2005) to coincide with the end of the winter teaching semester in the U.S. and the beginning of the new academic year in Australia. Following those five weeks, students had several weeks to give us their feedback on the idea of an international tutorial and to finish discussing issues that concerned them while participating in the initiative.
An existing online module designed to facilitate discussions amongst external students was built for the unit HIST299/399 at Macquarie which was accessed from the following URL: . Five separate folders were established with separate access requirements so that a sample of ten students from HIST110 at Northeastern and ten students from HIST299/399 at Macquarie could log-in to a discrete area of the online forum to form an inter-cultural and transnational class that would answer identical facilitator questions and consult identical reading materials. Thus, although the "international tutorial" was conducted concurrently with the Macquarie version of HIST299/399, domestic students in Australia could not access the international tutorial and, likewise, overseas guests logging on from Boston were not given access to the domestic version of the course. This was to create a unique and dedicated international electronic environment where the cross-cultural teaching initiative could occur without outside interruptions, to enable facilitators to give more thought to the processes of group dialogue and cohesion, and to monitor the ways in which the world history syllabus was being interpreted and analyzed. 20
The course conveners in Boston and Sydney facilitated the discussions together in the first week as an "ice-breaker" and then took the lead in alternate weeks. Julia Miller, a PhD candidate in world history at Macquarie University, acted as the "international tutorial facilitator" to stimulate discussion and to create a friendly dialogue between the two groups of American and Australian students. Miller was herself an external undergraduate student at Macquarie University who completed her degree off-campus through participating in on-line learning modules of this kind. As a student herself in an electronic learning environment, she had first-hand experience of the particular challenges of student-facilitator and student-student communication and could provide valuable assistance to the facilitators both in Boston and Sydney. On Mondays Boston-time (to coincide with Tuesdays in Sydney) some questions in relation to the week's theme and tutorial readings were posted to the discussion forum, and students logged in to respond and contribute to the discussion. Normally, the week's discussions ended on Fridays Boston-time (to coincide with Saturdays in Sydney). Both the facilitators and the international tutor went on-line frequently to gauge student responses, to reply to students, to add comments or suggestions for further reading or, most importantly, to moderate discussions between American and Australian students.
Perhaps the most significant outcome that we felt emerged from the international tutorial was the ability for wide and inclusive social interaction. At the most basic level, all participants in the International Tutorial interacted as "equals" in a virtual classroom where both social and cultural distances were bridged. The students ranged from eighteen-year-old first-year students to middle-aged students who had families and held degrees, from students living in remote areas of Australia to those living in inner urban Boston, from students who had traveled extensively to overseas countries to students for whom this was their first ever "international" experience. All read and responded to the same materials and engaged with the facilitator in regard to the same questions.
Remarkably, in the course of the five weeks no visible hierarchy emerged among the students, and the electronic discussion forum provided an arena where students from various social and cultural backgrounds living in two distant locations could engage in an in international and cross-cultural dialogue.
Nonetheless, conditions for the two groups of participants were somewhat different, and the conveners had to make adjustments for these differences. The International Tutorial came at the end of the semester for Northeastern students, and at the beginning of the semester for Macquarie students. While the Macquarie students were history majors in their second or subsequent year of studying history, Northeastern students were not history majors, and many were taking their first college history course. Another important difference was that those participating from Northeastern were physically in class and were involved as internally enrolled students, whereas the majority of those participating from Macquarie were external students who were not physically present on campus and for whom on-line discussions were a routine part of their dialogue with the University. 24
The time difference between Sydney and Boston (Sydney's time is usually 14 hours later than Boston's) is not conducive to "real time" dialogue: the best times for posting were 6 pm — 8 pm Boston time which correlated to 10 am — 12 pm Sydney the next day. Yet these issues aside, we discovered that once students had "broken the ice" with one another they gave particularly innovative and constructive responses to the material based on approaching the themes of the Atlantic world history course by using cross-cultural comparison. The first week dealt with the notion of "discovery" and the place of Columbus and 1492 in the historiography of the "New World." It sought to allow students to face both the philosophical and historiographical assumptions inherent in a global perspective which privileges European explorations while accepting that this was an extraordinarily important moment in world history. We spent a fair amount of time addressing these assumptions from two perspectives: the first was in relation to indigenous reactions to "discovery" through cross-cultural dialogue and symbolic exchange, while the second was in relation to the early modern notions of the English term "discoverie" and its place in the European imagination. Both sets of students were able to comprehend the changing role of Europe from its former position on the western fringes of Afro-Eurasia to a position where the opening of the Atlantic passage caused a spatial paradigm shift of extraordinary proportions.
On the whole, American participants found this to be familiar ground and were able to offer nuanced and grounded views on the meaning and significance of the first European encounters in the Americas largely due to the place of Columbus as a foundational mythic figure in the American national imagination. Students in Boston pointed out that there remained a disjunction between myth and reality: between the role of Columbus in the making of the American national narrative and the fact that the Columbus voyage is actually part of a story about Caribbean encounters which has colored subsequent historical representations. Australian students were able to learn from these views, but also offered some valuable insights based on a sense of critical distance from the U.S-centrism of much discussion on Columbus. This discussion thread was particularly interesting. Drawing from the cultural role of European explorers who "discovered" Australia in the making of a nationalist ethos, students in Sydney contrasted experience of Aboriginal peoples to the American experience.
When the class read Columbus' diaries, both sets of students were able to look into the universe of the Taino people and make sympathetic and imaginative portrayals of their "world view" without resorting to sentimentalism. This was a shared attribute in both American and Australian discussions. However, there were noticeable differences of opinion in regard to Mancall's comments that the indigenous peoples of the Americas should not be perceived as mere victims but should instead be perceived as historical agents facing specific circumstances. While both sets of students rejected the idea of a passive indigenous "other," there was considerable resistance to the idea of "mutual discovery" within a "cultural encounters" paradigm from students who stressed that, regardless of the motives of the Europeans, the ensuing massacre and devastation should not be diluted. This was termed the "invasion versus discovery" debate by one American student. Nevertheless, there was also some attempt to get into the mind-set of the symbolic universe of Europeans who were not equipped to deal with cultural difference. As one Australian student remarked poignantly, "were the ensuing tragedies the result of deliberate intent or horrible misunderstandings?"
Where American and Australian students converged was in their understanding of Eurocentric presuppositions and the idea of "discovery" not as a single act but as a series of events that were anchored in a wider world context. The ability to trace the Spanish explorations to the cultural effects of the "Reconquista" in Spain, to the broader global context of the Islamic control of the spice trade, and as an extension of the earlier conquest of the Canary Islands, shifted the discussions to a wider lens but still retained distinctive features depending on the national origin of the participant. While American students felt that they were able to relate this story to the narrative of their own national past, Australian students perceived it to be part of a broader and interconnected set of events.
In the discussions on the indigenous responses to European conquest in the Caribbean and North America in the second week, American students seemed to be at a distinct advantage in terms of their knowledge of indigenous cultures and patterns of settlement. For Australian students, this was possibly their first ever glimpse into the indigenous cultures of the Caribbean and the Americas and one 'Sydneysider' commented that she "had no idea that the Native Americans had so many diverse and co-operative societies interacting in such a civilized manner." In the case of cross-cultural insights into the indigenous experience, both American and Australian students employed local and national reference points in order to render more sensitive appraisals of the effects of European incursions on indigenous lifeways. For example, one American participant posted a lengthy commentary on the current state of indigenous health, education, and life expectancy on Native American reservations which Australian students found revealing and instructive while students in Sydney employed their own knowledge of the Aboriginal experience in Australia as a contrast. This became known as the "reservations today" discussion thread. Likewise, the parallel experiences of European colonization and British imperial expansion were also discussed in relation to localized American and Australian landscapes. Students were able to discuss mutual points of reference in regard to the shared histories of colonization and indigenous dispossession, gaining an appreciation for culturally specific and alternative historical trajectories by which to make global connections.
Both sets of students shared an insight into the destructiveness of European incursions but they also tended to acknowledge the ways in which indigenous peoples in the Americas have been romanticized in conventional histories. Moving beyond the paradigm of the innocent and pristine native wilderness, as Julia Miller has termed it in her teaching, enables us to view indigenous lifeways in a more realistic light, especially in terms of pre-European environmental degradation. 30
While there were mutual frames of reference by which both American and Australian students were able to understand European-indigenous encounters in the Atlantic world from their own localized historical experiences of settler colonialism, the same could not be said of the African experience. The slave trade and African interactions are vital components of the American national narrative, but these themes are distant to the story of Australian interactions with a world in which Africa remains largely absent. This difference was translated into the amount of cultural knowledge that each group of students possessed regarding the part played by the slave trade in the shaping of a new global economy and the Africanization of the Americas. For the students in Boston, the subjects of the Middle Passage, the Charter Generation, the cr�olization of Africans, and the historical genealogy of slavery in Africa were somewhat familiar. But these were new and exciting fields of exposure for Australian students who had little or no experience with African migration and cultural interaction. The discussion thread on this topic revealed that American students were reading the material through their own "localized" interpretations of the place of slavery in the Americas.
Despite the fact that the African-American experience was quite remote for Australian students, this was arguably the most popular topic for Sydney participants in the International Tutorial. The popularity of contemporary African-American popular culture forms (dance, music, and film, for example) amongst young Australians may account for such enthusiasm, but it was also very obvious that there were broader and more serious concerns for this interest. Pat Manning's questions for this week on "captivity" and the human dimensions of slavery were popular on both sides of the world since they urged students to engage with themes of universal suffering that transcend cultural differences: "Were the young captives afraid? Angry? Depressed?"
In this context, discussions of the slave narratives of Phyllis Wheatley, Ottobah Cugoano, and Olaudah Equiano turned into a dialogue on the universality of the human condition and the relationship between slavery and European modernity. Likewise, all students found the "Atlantic creole" thesis of Ira Berlin an interesting way to discuss the identities of a previous wave of Africans who were already culturally transformed through contacts and interactions with European merchants and missionaries.21
The other broad topic that stimulated much interest amongst both groups of students was the question of inter-racial marriage and inter-racial sexuality in the Americas in relation to the status of Africans in racial hierarchies. From this, both American and Australian students were able to reflect on the nature and power structure of their own racially hybridized societies. The question of gender also figured prominently, and students were very much aware that much of the literature on the Atlantic world and African slavery has largely been written from a male perspective. Terms such as "African culture" and "African slave" were historiographically deconstructed from the point of view of the African woman. As a result, the role of African women as transmitters of cultural identity within the domestic sphere, and their role as nurturers and protectors of white children on plantations, resulted in some very insightful interpretations which will shape future versions of the syllabus.
While English as a medium of instruction was a definite advantage for such an international collaboration between the U.S. and Australia, there were anomalies in vernacular expression that we did not envisage. In some ways, this interrupted the flow of a discussion thread when students from one side of the world misinterpreted the expressions used by students from the opposite group. Australian slang, for instance, or the tendency to be more casual when expressing ideas were difficult attributes for American students to adjust to. We also encountered a subtle complication in forms of address online or "the formality issue," as we came to call it. In the U.S., students tend to address faculty members by title ("Professor Manning"), while Australian students often address faculty members by their given name ("Adrian"). In addition, Northeastern students were in their early twenties, while Macquarie students were, on average, in their thirties. Northeastern students, uncomfortable with addressing their sixtyish convener as "Patrick" online, left some of their comments unaddressed or unattributed; some Macquarie students picked up the hint and shifted from "Patrick" to "Professor Manning." We never addressed the question explicitly online, but in one week Adrian took the Northeastern students and Patrick took the Macquarie students, to address the situation and this seemed to work well in getting students to feel that they could forge a more equitable relationship with their online teacher.
Student Responses
Our evaluation of this experience took the form of our own exchange and discussion, plus a comprehensive 25-question student survey which was prepared in collaboration with the Centre for Professional Development (CPD) at Macquarie. Before circulation to students the questionnaire went through a rigorous ethics clearance process at Macquarie before any feedback could be published, since the research was employing human participation.22 Nine of twenty students responded, eight from Macquarie.23 Of the nine students responding, eight were female, and five were over 35 years old. The Macquarie students were external, living not only in the Sydney area but also throughout Australia. Over half the students had experienced online learning. Asked about the web site, students were quite content with its functionality, but some wanted additional clarity in the timing of assignments.
What did students get out of an international tutorial such as this? They agreed generally that they did get important ideas from the tutorial, and they remarked that the questions from conveners helped them develop their own ideas. Students responded that the most important of these ideas, in ascending order, concerned cross-cultural interactions, the history of ideas and historiography, historical specificity, and issues surrounding global patterns. One Australian student remarked, "it is refreshing to get a global perspective on a period of history that is generally recognized from a Eurocentric point of view." Another submitted this pertinent reflection: "what I have enjoyed about this unit is the challenge that it has set to existing analysis. Rather than accepting that the history of the U.S. is one and the same as the history of the Atlantic world, we have used a cross-cultural analysis. We have looked at Atlantic history from the point of view of indigenous peoples, not just the impact on them, but their impact on Europeans and Africans." The respondents agreed that learning with students from another country helped them as world history students, and especially that it helped them appreciate alternative cultural viewpoints. As one American student remarked, "it was interesting to hear the opinions of the Australian students. Just the knowledge that they were non-American made me more interested in the tutorial." In a likewise manner, one Australian respondent said that the International Tutorial "helped me to appreciate different perspectives on 'American history' depending on how close you were to the subject matter."
The shared readings were seen as useful, and the discussions definitely stimulated further interest in the reading material. Almost all agreed that cross-cultural discussion helped them think about patterns in world history. In the words of one Australian student, "learning in a global environment with fellow students from a different University and culture helped me as world history student." Students felt comfortable communicating with the facilitators, but not all felt they could communicate clearly with students from the corresponding overseas group. This may have been due to the inability to translate colloquialisms and speech tone in written discussions but this, in itself, forced some students to stand back and reflect on some of their own unconscious cultural constructions. As one Australian student remarked wryly, "just the act of forcing myself to remember that our colleagues may not understand some of our 'Australianisms' made me more aware of cultural constructions."
Some participants reported that they were most likely to send a posting in response to a question or challenge from other students; others said they were most likely to send a posting to express their own strong feelings or in response to the readings. They said they were least likely to send a posting to very general statements, or when several others had already spoken up. Participants were asked whether discussion on each topic should be confined to one week, or allowed to continue. A majority favored confining discussion to a single week, but a substantial minority wanted each discussion to continue into a second week, especially as they sometimes fell behind.
Students were asked to suggest improvements. Suggestions included teaming up students for some purposes, either as U.S.-Australian pairs or as pairs in each country. Asked what they gained from the experience, students were generally positive. One commented: "it is important to connect globally in our studies�not just for the challenge to cultural paradigms, but as very real reminders of the value and diversity of opinion." One participant noted feeling disappointment when the tutorial came to an end. A Macquarie student responded to one question with an observation that we found insightful: "Northeastern students were more focused on North America whereas because it was all new to Macquarie students we were more flexible in that what we learnt and focused on related to both North America and South America."
In 1988, it appeared that the future had arrived when Tufts University and Moscow State University offered a joint course where students at both universities heard the same lectures, were assigned the same reading, and engaged in joint class discussions via a transnational television link.24 There was a pedagogical buzz in the air in regard to the potential relationship of technology and college instruction where a brave new world of global learning was about to be ushered in. Indeed, as Parker Rossman comments, it was assumed that the era of the "global classroom" had arrived.25 Twenty-eight years later, we know that this promise of a global teaching future was not only premature but faces vexed issues in relation to quality, social access, the corporatization of higher learning, and the complicities between online teaching and globalization. Moreover, even with the reality of teaching online units across national boundaries through the internet, the question remains about how "global" this initiative really is.
World historians commonly espouse an idealistic philosophy of global interaction which is not always possible in practice. In the International Tutorial, we experienced the outcome of a balanced cross-cultural interaction where local, national, and global perspectives were often in a field of contestation. The broader implications of this experiment for world history instruction are not yet clear. It does appear that the internet has facilitated a new kind of learning and teaching environment which remains both local and national but is still connected to a wider pedagogical context. The online discussions and types of cultural exchanges created through the International Tutorial fostered a virtual learning network where the "local" met the "global," even though the real talk remained very much anchored to national perspectives.26 By its very nature, world history teaching and learning programs seem well-placed to take advantage of this new "glocal" environment which equips students with cross-cultural skills through their dialogue on world history issues while enabling facilitators to manage group learning processes through their own national perspectives.
Certain individuals blossomed during the course of the tutorial, improving in both their use of the electronic technology and in the level of their discussion. Generally, of course, students do not undergo rapid transformations in very short periods, but both teachers and students can tell when students are motivated and inspired by the material and finding pleasure in that pursuit. We believe that students approached the reading material in a constructive and critical manner, and that their interest came not only from their personal interpretation of the readings or even from their consultation with an instructor from a different country, but also from the opportunity to connect at an international level with students from another continent. As one Australian student remarked, "it is important to connect globally in our studies — not just for the challenge to cultural paradigms, but as very real reminder of the value and diversity of opinion. It is also important to make personal global connections in the academic world." Having said this, however, the conveners on both sides of the world did not feel that the international engagement was truly "global" or that it led to greater "democratization" in world history teaching and learning as the protagonists of the "virtual global university" would have us believe.
Despite this hesitation, we did feel that course content was portable across national boundaries, and that it is worth repeating a revised version of the International Tutorial in 2006.27 The 2006 version will possibly include Wimba voice software (Voice Boards and Voice E-Mail) so that students in Boston and Sydney may be able to "hear" each other as if they were having a telephone conversation. We also expect to adjust the readings to emphasize global patterns as well as the regional specifics of Atlantic encounters. Of particular note will be the emphasis on the place of the Atlantic world from Asian perspectives by turning the gaze away from Europe to consider the ways in which China and the Philippines were pivotal players in the new global economy that linked Afro-Eurasia to the Americas. The role of the silver trade and the formation of an economic world system will also be emphasized to counterbalance the theme of cultural interactions. There will also be more emphasis on widening and interrogating the "Atlantic paradigm" from the Pacific perspective, bringing in Polynesian interactions through Easter Island and Hawai'i and looking at the ways in which linguistic and ecological exchange forged very different interactions to the story of European exceptionalism.
We will also look for devices to emphasize reflective discussion or cumulative exercises. We will look for a way to adopt the suggestion that we pair up individual students for one or two exercises: these "binational" pairings would put students into closer contact with one another, and ought to spark further discussion. Active participation in discussion by the two conveners remains a priority and we were gratified by the students' expressions of pleasure with our questions and discussion. Another issue we have discussed is the time zone difference. Would it be more effective to offer a three-hour block at a certain period in the day that would be mutually convenient for students in both the U.S. and Australia? While "real time" interaction is probably impossible, there may be ways of making it more enticing for students to participate if they were to receive quick responses to their queries and an electronic forum that allowed for a "chat room" type of exchange.
To be sure, on-line world history teaching across national boundaries through this type of virtual interaction has some viable and exciting outcomes which can be adapted and built upon by practitioners in the field. Whether to do so, however, at the expense of commodifying world history learning in an era where the "virtual classroom" is under greater scrutiny as a multinational commercial enterprise rather than as a global pedagogical tool is the more urgent question at hand. Geyer and Bright's prognosis that world history needs to be anchored in the "actually existing" world of the contemporary age sounds good enough in terms of fostering transnational interactions of the kind fostered in this experiment. However, the issues of cultural homogenization and the corporatization of higher education learning, and where world history programs should fit into this new virtual order, needs more sustained debate from practitioners in the field. Without careful consideration of the historical and economic context of late capitalism and its relationship to new online teaching collaborations, the project of globalization itself could risk being glorified in clearly unintentional ways. Geyer and Bright rightly predicted that "the central challenge of a renewed world history at the end of the twentieth century is to narrate the world's pasts in an age of globality," but it seems that the new challenge for the twenty-first century is to find a way of fostering global interactions in our world history teaching while retaining a commitment to fostering educational standards, widening social access, and observing cross-cultural ethics.
17 On the other hand, the globalization of education through the provision of online flexible delivery programs on the internet is not exclusively a feature of an English-speaking or Western perspective. An innovative example is the Distance Education program of the Tamil University at Thanjavur, India. Calling itself "Tamil Virtual University," it is designed to provide online learning solutions for the world-wide Tamil diaspora. See .
18 The importance of a national agenda shaping education curriculum in countries such as India and Algeria, for instance, is intimately associated with the need to address an imperial past in a postcolonial framework.
19 The view that "world history" needs to be re-considered with respect to cultural location and historiographical specificity is considered in Marnie Hughes-Warrington, ed., World Histories (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 5.
20 See Mihai I. Spariosu, Global Intelligence and Human Development: Towards an Ecology of Global Learning (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004), 8-9, 68-71, 104-105.
21 Ira Berlin, Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America (Cambridge, MA; Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1998).
22 Permission to use student responses for research purposes was granted by the Ethics Review Committee (Human Research), College of Humanities and Social Sciences, Macquarie University on 29 June 2005. Reference: HE27MAY2005-R04147.
23 Though the International Tutorial ended in April, the questionnaire was circulated in July, because of the time required for design and especially for ethics clearance. By this time Northeastern students were away from school on summer vacation. This provides a reminder of the additional complexities that come with collaboration among institutions with different calendars.
24 See Jay Chrepta, "Creating the Planet-Wide Classroom," Tufts Criterion, no. 15, Spring-Summer 1988.
25 Parker Rossman, The Emerging Worldwide Electronic University: Information Age Global Higher Education (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1992), 2.
26 See Linda Harasim, Online Education: Perspectives on a New Environment (New York: Praeger, 1990).
27 A second International Tutorial did in fact take place in March and April of 2006, though it met after this article was composed. The authors have concluded that the experience of the 2006 session largely confirmed the results described here. |
How Louisiana Became The World's 'Prison Capital'
In the past two decades, Louisiana's prison population has doubled.
Ellis Lucia
A new expose by The Times-Picayune of New Orleans calls Louisiana the "world's prison capital." The state imprisons more people per capita than any other state or country in the world, with one out of every 86 adults behind bars. Its rate of incarceration is three times higher than Iran's and 10 times higher than Germany's. How did Louisiana double its prison population in the past 20 years? And what differentiates it from other states? The difference, says Times-Picayune reporter Cindy Chang, is that more than half of the inmates in the state are housed in local prisons run by sheriffs, and the state's correction system has created financial incentives for those sheriffs to keep prisons full. "In Louisiana, the system has grown so that sheriffs house a lot of inmates who are serving state sentences," Chang tells Fresh Air's Dave Davies. "And the reason the sheriffs are willing to do that is because they get money in return for doing that." A majority of Louisiana's inmates are now housed in for-profit jails, which are run in many instances by parish sheriffs located in rural areas of the state. The sheriffs receive approximately $25 a day per inmate. In some instances, sheriffs outsource the prisons to for-profit companies who then operate the prisons themselves. In exchange, the sheriffs receive cash for their department, which allows them to hire more employees. "We went to Jackson Parish ... and what the sheriff there gets is a guaranteed $100,000 a year, whether the prison is making a profit or not," she says. "But what he really gets — and he was not shy about using this word — is the patronage. Because his department, prior to this, had 50 employees, and now it has 150 employees. In a place like that, 100 jobs with benefits is huge. And what he means by patronage, of course, is that he'll get re-elected if he keeps supporting these [prison] jobs." Conditions at the rural sheriffs' prisons differ remarkably from those in larger state institutions, says Chang. "They're usually dormitories, and there's typically 80 or 90 women or men sleeping in a large room in bunk beds," she says. "And the difference is that people are just lounging around that dorm. They will literally sit there day after day, year after year, until their sentence is over. Whereas in a state prison, which is where most states house almost all of their inmates, you're busy whether you like it or not — you have a job or you take classes or you're learning a trade that will help you get a job when you get out." Each inmate is worth $24.39 a day in state money. Housing the inmates cheaply and providing few services means there's more money left over for the sheriff's department, says Chang. "It's kind of a vicious cycle," she says. "If you can reduce the prison population, then hopefully you'll have more money to give the ones who are in the system more help. [But] the Sheriff's Association is one of the most powerful lobbies in the state. And they've consistently opposed any change that would reduce the prison population." Louisiana's prison sentences are among the harshest in the country. The state leads the country in the percentage of inmates who are serving life without parole and exceeds the national average for the number of nonviolent offenders behind bars. Chang writes that a two-time car burglar can receive 24 years without parole. Three drug convictions can send a prisoner away for life. Though the state's prison budget is $600 million, comparisons with other states are difficult, she says. "Twenty-five dollars a day is incarceration on the cheap," she says. "In Louisiana state prisons they spend, on average, $55 an inmate, so the average in Louisiana comes out to $38 per day, per inmate, which is the lowest in the country. So if you look at the size of the budget, it's very misleading, because we're incarcerating two people to every one person in another state because we spend so little on them."Interview Highlights On Louisiana's prison budget "A long-term consequence of our policies is that there has been less money to fund some of the very things that might keep people out of the prison system in the first place — like early childhood programs, schools, after-school programs, recreation programs." On the profits made by rural prisons and sheriffs "You're talking about rural parishes that before this were so underfunded that they were buying used patrol cars from Oklahoma, they were driving around in cars with 200,000 miles on them, they were sharing bulletproof vests. So [any profit] is going back into [the sheriff's] department, often to buy basic equipment for his deputies." On relocating inmates "I've talked to many inmates who were transferred multiple times and they don't know why. It's not because they were troublemakers or because they didn't get along with people. Sometimes it's just between the rural sheriffs trading [prisoners], and it can be that one sheriff needs a skilled mechanic and the other sheriff ended up with two."Copyright 2013 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/. Transcript TERRY GROSS, HOST: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. Our guest, investigative reporter Cindy Chang, writes that Louisiana is the prison capital of the world. The state imprisons more of its people per capita than any state in the nation and any country on Earth. Louisiana's incarceration rate is nearly five times Iran's and 13 times China's. In a series in The New Orleans Times-Picayune, Chang and her colleagues report that the state's high prison population is no accident. An approach which began as an effort to cope with prison overcrowding has led to a system where more than half of the state's inmates are housed in for-profit facilities with financial incentives for local sheriffs to keep prisons full. The state's prison sentences are among the harshest in the country, Chang writes, and both private prison operators and the Louisiana Sheriffs Association lobby the legislature to keep it that way. The series also finds that the state's meager spending on inmates leaves many inmates with few educational (technical difficulties) as they serve their time. Cindy Chang is a special projects writer for The Times-Picayune. She spoke with FRESH AIR contributor Dave Davies. DAVE DAVIES, BYLINE: Well, Cindy Chang, welcome to FRESH AIR. And Louisiana, as you described it, the prison system is different from a lot of places. A lot of places, state inmates, those who get longer sentences, are in big state-run institutions, you know, kind of often far from the homes of prisoners. What's different about Louisiana? CINDY CHANG: The big thing is that in Louisiana over half of state inmates are housed in local prisons, which are usually run by sheriffs. And what we tend to think of as county jails are for people who are awaiting trial and just can't make bail or weren't allowed to have bail so they're just waiting for their court date. But in Louisiana, the system has grown so that sheriffs house a lot of inmates who are serving state sentences. And the reason the sheriffs are willing to do that is because they get money in return for doing that. DAVIES: So they're kind of these prison entrepreneurs in a way? CHANG: Exactly. And how that came about was in the '90s there was an overcrowding problem and the Department of Corrections decided to solve that problem by offering incentives for sheriffs to build their own prisons. DAVIES: So you had county sheriffs who are - are they elected? We call them parishes. CHANG: Right. They're elected. DAVIES: Right. CHANG: Yes. DAVIES: So they're elected sheriffs in their county or parish, as it's called in Louisiana, right? CHANG: Yes. DAVIES: And so they looked around and said, hey, I can start a prison. I can get - what is it, like about 25 bucks a day they get from the state? CHANG: Right, per inmate. DAVIES: And so then there is an incentive once they build the prison to keep it full. Is that right? CHANG: Exactly. DAVIES: And how do they keep it full? CHANG: Well, it's very much under the radar and not regulated. Once somebody gets sentenced, say, in New Orleans, if they have a sentence of 10 years or more, they'll probably end up in a state prison. And everyone who has ever been through the system would much rather be in a state prison than a local sheriff run prison because the state prisons have lots of programs. You can learn a trade like welding or plumbing. If you're not taking classes, you have a job. You know, if you're serving time, you'd rather at least a busy every day and trying to improve yourself. But what happens if you have a sentence of less than 10 years is that your sheriff will likely send you to another sheriff, which tends to be in a rural area, because that's where this prison industry is really centered. And we spent a lot of time in Richland Parish in Northeast Louisiana. What the warden of the prison there does almost every day is, he calls his buddies in Jefferson Parish, which is a suburb of New Orleans, say, and says, hey, do you have a few to send over? DAVIES: So it's like hotels selling their extra beds on Priceline or something. CHANG: It really is exactly like a hotel. The sheriffs have invested in building these prisons often with the help of private investors. And once you build a prison or hotel, how do you keep it running? You have to keep the beds full. So that's a real - instead of the downward pressure on the incarceration rate, which a lot of states are feeling now with budget pressures, Louisiana has an upward pressure because they've got to keep the beds full. DAVIES: OK. So we have a local sheriff who's built a prison. He has fixed costs of maintaining the place and keeping the lights on, so he gets the revenue by keeping it full and getting the 25 bucks or so per day per prisoner that the state sends, right? CHANG: Yes. DAVIES: Does the sheriff in effect earn a profit if the beds are filled and he gets - more than covers his costs? CHANG: That's the whole idea. That's how they were encouraged to go into this business in the first place. You're talking about rural parishes that before this were so underfunded that they were buying used patrol cars from Oklahoma, they were driving around in these cars with 200,000 miles on them, they were sharing bulletproof vests. So any margin that they can skim off - and let me be clear, it's not going back into the sheriff's own pocket to buy him a mansion or anything. This is going back into his own department to buy often just real basic equipment for his deputies. DAVIES: Right. But there is then a budgetary incentive for them to keep the prison full and create a surplus, which they can then use to better equip their staff, hire more people, provide better services. CHANG: Right. Right. For sure. DAVIES: Now, do the sheriffs run the prisons themselves or - I mean there are companies now, private prison companies, that will build and operate a prison for you. Do they do that? CHANG: Right. Right. It's a mixture. Some of the sheriffs run their own prisons, others have partnered with private companies. There's two main companies. One is called LaSalle Corrections and one is called LCS, and they're both actually homegrown. They're not those national empires like CCA that most people have heard of. And there's a variety of arrangements. Like we went to Jackson Parish, which there prison is operated by LaSalle, and what the sheriff there does is he gets a guaranteed $100,000 a year, no matter whether the prison is making a profit or not, he just gets that money. But what he really gets - and he was not shy about using this word - what he really gets is the patronage, because his department prior to this had maybe 50 employees and now it has like 150. So it's three times as large. And in a place like that, 100 jobs with benefits is huge. And what he means by patronage, of course, is that he'll get reelected if he keeps on supporting these jobs. DAVIES: Uh-huh. So the sheriff then contracts with private prison operator, they put up the money and build it, but then the sheriff gets to decide who gets hired, right? CHANG: Right. DAVIES: And jobs are a real currency when it comes to politics. CHANG: That's right. DAVIES: Now, you said a moment ago that in their efforts to keep their prison beds full they sometimes - they call each other. Let's just cover that in a little more detail. How did these sheriffs go about finding inmates? If they've got 10 or 15 beds available for the next month, where do they find more prisoners? CHANG: Well, often it's the warden, not the sheriff, who actually does this grunt work. But, for example, we visited Tensaw Parish, which is also in Northeast Louisiana. And the warden there, he pulled out a sheet of paper and it looked like it had been thumbed over any number of times. It was all wrinkled and everything and it was a list of all of the other sheriffs in the state. And naturally an urban area, like New Orleans or Baton Rouge is going to unfortunately produce more criminals. And even though in New Orleans our sheriff houses a good number of state inmates himself, he doesn't have room for everyone who's getting sentenced in New Orleans Parish. So the warden in Tensaw Parish knows that there are certain places, like Baton Rouge, that he can call and might have a surplus that day to send him. DAVIES: So... CHANG: And there's also trade between sheriffs on any given day. And I've talked to a lot of inmates who have been transferred multiple times and they don't know why. It's not necessarily because they were a troublemaker or they didn't get along with people. Sometimes it's just even between the rural sheriffs trading. And it can be that one sheriff needs a skilled mechanic and the other sheriff maybe ended up with two, so... DAVIES: So they're like commodities. CHANG: Exactly. DAVIES: Now the conditions in the local jails run by these sheriffs where they have this incentive to keep them full for their own budgets, how did those conditions differ from the big state institutions? CHANG: The term that's often used as a warehousing. And if you've ever visited one of these places I think it's an apt term. And I called pretty much every sheriff has this type of industry going, a lot of them didn't respond. These prisons are not like what you think of with cells and maybe one or two people per cell. They're usually dormitories and typically about 80 men or women, whatever the case may be, sleeping in a large room in bunk beds. And the difference is that in the sheriff's prison you go in there and people are just lounging around that dorm. They're lying in bed in the middle of the day or watching soap operas. They will literally sit there, day after day, year after year until their sentence is over. While in a state prison, which is where most states house almost all of their inmates, you're busy whether you like it or not. You have a job or you take classes, or you're learning a trade, like welding or plumbing that will help you get a job when you get out. DAVIES: And the fundamental issue here is that a system has been set up - and this was done in the 1990s when there was an overcrowding problem - a system was set up in which local sheriffs were encouraged to build or get these prisons built on the notion that they could take care of them for 20, a little under 25 bucks a day, and it seems like as long as you do that there simply isn't going to be the money to really rehabilitate people and give them skills, is there? CHANG: Right. So now we've gotten this situation where we have the highest incarceration rate in the country, so we have lots of prisoners but they're being housed real cheaply so it's kind of a vicious cycle: how do you reduce? If you can reduce the prison population then hopefully you'll have more money left over to give the ones who are in the system more help. DAVIES: And the fact is that the financial incentives for local sheriffs is not to reduce the prison population, but to keep it high. CHANG: Absolutely. And the Sheriffs Association is one of the most powerful lobbies in the state and they have consistently opposed any sort of change that would reduce the prison population. Although, this year in the legislature there was a slight shift. I think that the budget problems, as in other states, have gotten so bad that there is pressure on the sheriffs and the district attorneys - who also traditionally oppose these things - to, at least, stand down on some of these cost-saving measures. DAVIES: We're speaking with Cindy Chang. She just completed a series on prisons in Louisiana for The New Orleans Times-Picayune. We'll talk more after a short break. This is FRESH AIR. (SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) DAVIES: If you're just joining us, We're speaking with Cindy Chang. She is an investigative reporter for The New Orleans Times-Picayune, where she has just completed a series on prisons and the prison system in Louisiana. Do you know what the prison's budget in Louisiana is and how it compares with other places? CHANG: It's about $600 million or so. And the comparisons are difficult because, as I said, the $24.39 is incarceration on the cheap. In Louisiana State prisons, they spent $55 an inmate, so the average in Louisiana comes out to about $38 per day per inmate, which is the lowest in the country. So if you look at the budget - the size of the budget, it's a little misleading because we're able to incarcerate many more people - I mean often two people to every one person in another state, because we spend so little on them. DAVIES: One of the interesting things about this is that, you know, I think Louisiana has for years had a reputation of a state with a lot of corruption, particularly rural corruption. What's interesting about the system as you describe it is that it came out of the problem in the 1990s where there was overcrowding, and it was the kind of solution, which at the time, you know, a lot of political scientists were embracing, you know, reinventing government, thinking outside the box, creating a different set of incentives, embracing the innovation of private enterprise. And they've set up something, which just has a lot of perverse effects. CHANG: Right. I think at the time it may have seemed like a reasonable ad hoc solution. You didn't have money to build another state prison and you're sitting there as the head of the Department of Corrections. You can't make the legislature reduce sentences or devise alternative programs to reduce the population. I mean, the prisoners just keep coming into the system so what are you going to do? And Richard Stalder who was the head of the Department of Corrections at the time, he actually is a trained economist. So he very consciously said, well, what can I do to get the sheriffs to want to house these inmates instead of complaining about it? And of course the solution was money. DAVIES: How do criminal sentences in Louisiana compare with other states? CHANG: They're pretty harsh. In Louisiana, right now, all life sentences are without parole. Louisiana leads the country in the percentage of its inmates who are serving life without parole. That means that you never get before a parole board and say, hey, I've changed. Give me another chance. So at Angola, which is where most of these people go, they have so many older inmates who are really on their deathbed who are costing the state so much money but there's very few mechanisms to release them. And on the lower end too, sentences are pretty harsh. For example, recently in St. Tammany Parish which is a suburb of New Orleans, there was a guy who got 24 years without parole for a car burglary. It was his - actually third offense, although he was prosecuted as a second offender, but we have pretty strict habitual offender law here as well. DAVIES: You can get 10 to 20 years for writing bad checks? CHANG: And people regularly do. I mean, yeah. They'll give five or 10 years for something like that. And it's usually not their first offense, but you rarely see something like that in another state. DAVIES: So what does the sentencing system do in terms of the mix of violent and non-violent offenders in these county jails? CHANG: Well, Louisiana has a much higher percentage of non-violent offenders in its prison population than the national average. And we have plenty of violent crime in this state. New Orleans leads the nation in murders. So that implies that our sentencing structure is putting more non-violent - particularly drug offenders - in the system, and those are the very offenders that tend to end up in the for-profit sheriff's prisons. DAVIES: Now, there's clearly a public appetite for harsh sentences. I mean, people are angry about crime. But you also have people - prison operators and local sheriffs - who seem to have a financial incentive for keeping the prison population high. Is there any evidence that either the prison operators or the sheriffs themselves play a role in keeping sentences harsh? CHANG: Sure. I mean, on the level of political donations the two big private prison companies - which are LaSalle and LCS - are pretty big donors to sheriffs, to the governor, to state legislators. And as I mentioned before, the Louisiana Sheriff's Association, as well as the District Attorney's Association, are very powerful lobbies. DAVIES: Did you talk to any sheriffs who look at the system and say this isn't exactly what we ought to be doing? CHANG: I think a lot of them are conscious of some of the moral issues that are raised. And we spent a lot of time in Richland Parish in northeast Louisiana and the sheriff there, he will tell anybody who asks him about the prison: we hate to make money off of the backs of unfortunate people but the fact is it's been good for the parish. You know, there are those jobs with benefits. The department has better equipment. He's about to retire but he's been in the department for, what, 30, 40 years? I mean, he was telling me about the old days when they used to share a bulletproof vests, when they used to drive these old clunky cars. And you've got to cover a lot of miles when you're patrolling a rural parish. DAVIES: Well, Cindy Chang, I hope you do get to continue this kind of work, and I want to thank you so much for speaking with us. CHANG: Thank you. GROSS: Cindy Chang spoke with FRESH AIR contributor Dave Davies. She's a special projects writer for the New Orleans Times-Picayune. You'll find links to the paper's series "Louisiana Incarcerated" on our website freshair.npr.org. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR. |
Law – Winning the case against discrimination
Posted on 07/07/2010 by wriglesworth 35% of UK in-house lawyers from non-white ethnic backgrounds
7% of lawyers in the UK describe themselves as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender (LGBT) according to legal recruiter Laurence Simons.
This research, which was published on the eve of Gay Pride in London, shows the UK’s legal profession is more diverse than the population as a whole. Government figures put the gay population of the UK at 6%.
Naveen Tuli, managing director at Laurence Simons said, “It is great to see diversity of sexual orientation so strong within the UK’s legal sector. Once upon a time, the law was seen as one of the stuffiest of professions. This bodes well in terms of gay rights in the UK and for further progress and acceptance in the future. We think the numbers are so high because London is the unrivalled gay and lesbian capital of Europe and also the continent’s leading financial centre which attracts the largest law firms. Traditionally law has been perceived as white, heterosexual and male – which put off LGBT applicants. Times have changed and diversity is now a major watchword. The profession knows it must attract the best talent from all walks of life and, as an industry, be representative of social demographics.”
Many modern large law firms run LGBT networking groups. These provide opportunities for employees to meet and mix. None of this existed ten years ago. 24 law firms entered Stonewall’s Corporate Equality Index as the best place to work for homosexual employees. Indeed, four made the top ten. Jason Horobin, director at Laurence Simons said, “Not only are firms actively recruiting and encouraging LGBT employees, thanks to organisations such as the InterLaw Diversity Forum for LGBT Networks, gay lawyers now have a voice. This has all helped make the legal profession much more attractive to this demographic. The results are clear.”
The research also shows 35% of the in-house lawyer workforce in the UK is now made up of ethnic minorities.
The figures underline the advances made by the industry, particularly within in-house legal departments, in recent years. As recently as 2003, ethnic minority groups accounted for just 10.7% of Practising Barristers and 7.9% of Practising Solicitors in England and Wales.
Legal firms and businesses have increased the levels of diversity among their employee base, as initiatives such as Diversity League Table, produced by the Black Solicitors Network, have helped to set an agenda for change in the profession. Calls by government bodies such as the Legal Services Consultative Panel in 2005 for firms to publish information on race and gender have been a further key driver.
While the latest figures show that overall representation has improved, ethnic minorities still only make up just over 3 per cent of those at partner level in the UK’s top 100 law firms, according to the latest Diversity League Table[3]. This figure actually decreased marginally from 3.65% in 2008 to 3.53% in 2009.
Jason Horobin said, “These figures should serve to dispel external views of the legal profession in the UK as a white male dominated environment. There are more ethnic minorities working in private practice and in-house than ever before, led by very strong representation in-house. This is a consequence of calls by industry and government for diversity and transparency in the legal community.”
ETHNICITY OF UK LAWYERS
He added, “But it’s not all good news for the UK profession. Black and Asian people are still woefully underrepresented in the higher levels of some of the largest and most prestigious law firms. And while it is great to see more ethnic diversity in the profession as a whole, it is much less evident amongst the partners of many of the UK’s top private firms and there is even evidence that the industry is moving backwards in this respect. Firms must do more to create legitimate opportunities for ethnic minorities in the upper echelons of the profession.”
The rise is partly due to an increase in the number of ethnic minority groups enrolled in legal training. The Law Society and The Bar Council each highlight that since 2003, around 20% of their trainees and those on pupillages have come from an ethnic minority background.
IMPORTING TALENT
But the rise in “home grown” domestic talent only tells half the story. The increase in ethnic minority representation has also been driven by the growing number of international lawyers finding work in the UK. Only 66% of in-house lawyers surveyed working in Britain are British, with a substantial proportion migrating from other parts of Europe and 6% describing themselves as African or Asian.
Naveen Tuli, “The six per cent of lawyers working in Britain who were born in Africa and Asia are boosting the numbers of black and asian lawyers – it’s not all about home-grown talent. It would be far better if we were to ensure the British legal system has solid, lasting foundations for the future by fostering black British candidates.” |
Are You Eating Too Fast? Ask Your Fork
Share Tweet E-mail Comments Print By Steve Henn Originally published on Mon January 7, 2013 6:19 pm
A electronic HAPIfork, which can monitor users' eating habits, is on display at a press event at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
Nvidia's Shield allows gamers to stream either Android games or PC games onto their big-screen TVs.
What's the coolest new gadget at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week? It's too soon to tell. But I have an early favorite for the title of oddest new gadget: the HAPIfork and HAPIspoon. They may sound like characters from a nursery rhyme, but this fork and spoon connect to the Internet and can monitor and record how you eat. The HAPI utensils measure how long your meals last, how long you pause between each bite and how many mouthfuls of food you consume. If these utensils think you are eating too fast, they will vibrate — it feels kind of like a silent ring on a cellphone — to let you know to slow down. Unfortunately, they are not yet programmed to beep or issue electric shock if you chew with your mouth open. However, you can plug them into your computer when you are done with your meal and upload the data about what you just ate. And you can share it all on Twitter. Sensors, Sensors Everywhere As odd as the HAPI utensils may be, they actually touch on a couple of major themes here this year. One is that computers and sensors are being built into everything from forks to ski goggles. The second trend that the HAPI utensils epitomize is the proliferation of gadgets designed to monitor your weight or how much you exercise or to keep tabs on your eating habits. Most of these little gadgets make it possible to post all of this information online — or analyze it on your smartphone. A company called Withings helped kick off this trend a couple of years ago by launching an Internet-connected scale. Withings is back with more monitoring devices. But it's a crowded field. There are at least a half-dozen companies from FitBit to Jawbone UP to Nike's FuelBand competing to make little gadgets or bracelets that can measure how fast you run or how many steps you take, your pulse, or even your sleep. I met one poor woman who worked for Withings public relations who has now been posting her weight on Facebook for years. All of which makes me wonder if these products really appeal to anyone. There are millions of dieters in America, but do they really want to share details about every pound lost or gained? And of course, there are hardcore athletes who want to collect detailed data on every workout, but that's not exactly a mass market. This category hasn't really broken through to the mainstream. So perhaps it shouldn't be surprising that some companies that make these devices are talking to health insurers and employers about using them to create employee incentive programs For me, though, that tiptoes right up to the creepy line. Convergence In The Living Room (Again) But enough about exercise and eating right. CES wouldn't be CES without something for the couch potato. There are literally acres of TVs in every possible flavor from 3-D to the new super-high-def 4K televisions. One of the tech trends I'm interested in is the ongoing effort to get your TV to play nicely with your smartphone, tablet or PC. So far, one of the most interesting and surprising things in this space has come from Nvidia. Its graphic processors power countless video games and the fastest supercomputer on the planet. But Sunday Nvidia launched its first ever consumer gaming device. It allows gamers to stream either Android games or PC games from this little tablet — the Shield — right onto their big-screen TV in their living room. But that's not the Shield's only trick. Basically the Shield is an Android tablet with game controllers attached. But it can also tap into PCs equipped with Nvidia's latest processors and can access all the movies and content in the Google Play store — and throw all of that content up on your TV. "You should be able to sit on your couch and if you decide that you would like to share the movie that you are watching on television you simply have to beam it to your television," said Jen-Hsun Huang, Nvidia's co-founder and CEO. For a device like the Shield to become a commercial success, it has to be incredibly simple to use. It just has to work. Judging from Nvidia's demo Sunday night, it's not there yet. There were some hiccups — long pauses and awkward moments — while executives onstage tried but failed to connect the device to a PC and a TV. But even if this particular gadget doesn't catch on, I think it's clearly pointing in the direction consumer electronics are headed.Copyright 2013 National Public Radio. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/. Transcript MELISSA BLOCK, HOST: From NPR News, this is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. I'm Melissa Block. AUDIE CORNISH, HOST: And I'm Audie Cornish. And time now for All Tech Considered. (SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) CORNISH: The Consumer Electronics Show is kicking into gear this week. The annual bacchanal for gadget junkies takes place in early January every year in Las Vegas. The show floor doesn't open to the public until tomorrow, but media were given a sneak peak over the weekend, and many companies are unveiling the products they hope will find their way into our living rooms in the coming year. NPR's Steve Henn is in Las Vegas and has been checking it all out. He joins us now. Hi there, Steve. STEVE HENN, BYLINE: Hey. CORNISH: So I'm jealous. What's the coolest gadget you've seen or heard about at the show so far this year? HENN: Well, I don't know about coolest, but the oddest gadget might just be the HAPIfork and the HAPIspoon. CORNISH: Is there any other kind? Is this... (LAUGHTER) CORNISH: They sound like nursery rhymes. HENN: Yeah. Well, actually, HAPI is spelled H-A-P-I. It stands for Health API. And this fork-and-spoon set are connected to the Internet, and they monitor and record how you eat. CORNISH: This sounds terrible, but I'm curious. How does it work? HENN: Well, basically, they measure how long your meals last, the pauses you take between bites, how many mouthfuls you consume. And if the HAPIfork thinks you're eating too fast, it will vibrate to let you know to slow down. CORNISH: Oh, God. Does it beep if you're chewing with your mouth open? HENN: Not yet, although after you're done with your meal, you can plug it into a USB port on you computer and upload all the data about your meal. CORNISH: So did anything else catch your attention? I know sometimes sort of themes emerge over the course of the show. HENN: Yeah. Well, one of the interesting things is the HAPI utensils actually touch on a couple of big themes. One of them is that computers and sensors are being built into everything, from forks and spoons to ski goggles. The second trend that the HAPIfork is right in the middle of is this proliferation of gadgets that want you to monitor your weight, your exercise and diet, and then make it possible for you to post all of this information online. A company called Withings helped kick off this trend a couple of years ago by launching an Internet-connected scale. They're back again this year with more monitoring devices. I actually spoke to a woman in their P.R. department who has now been posting her weight on Facebook every day for years. CORNISH: That is brave. OK, what I mean, who else... (LAUGHTER) HENN: Right. CORNISH: ...would this appeal to? HENN: Well, you know, honestly, I'm not sure - dieters I guess and there are millions of those. And then hardcore athletes might want monitors to get all the data about their workouts, but I think this category has really struggled to break through to the mainstream. And I've heard recently that some of the companies that make these devices are talking to health insurers and employers about using these gadgets to create employee incentive programs, which at least, to me, sort of tiptoes into the creepy. CORNISH: All right, Steve, we've been talking about food and exercise. Isn't there anything for the couch potato? HENN: Yes. Yeah. There are acres and acres of televisions, and one of the trends I'm going to be following is this effort to get your TV to play nicely with your smartphone and your PC. So one of the most interesting and surprising things I've seen so far at CES this year is a gadget for gamers called the Shield. It was introduced by Nvidia last night, and it lets gamers stream Android games or PC games from this little tablet, the Shield, right onto their big screen TVs. But that's not its only trick. Here's Jen-Hsun Huang, Nvidia's co-founder and CEO, introducing it last night. JEN-HSUN HUANG: Movies work. Frankly, it's a pretty terrific entertainment device. This set-top box, if you will, just can travel with me wherever I want to go, and with a connection to television, it replaces really just about everything I own. HENN: Basically, this little thing is a just an Android tablet with game controllers attached, but it can also tap into your PC and access all the movies and content in Google's Play Store, and then it can throw all of that stuff up onto pretty much any TV. HUANG: And so you should be able to sit on your couch, and if you decide that you would like to share the movie that you're watching on your Shield on television, you simply have to beam it to your television. HENN: So I think for anything like this little Shield to become a commercial success, it has to be simple to use. It just has to work, right? And I don't think Nvidia is there yet. There were some pretty major hiccups last night during Nvidia's demo. But even if this particular gadget doesn't catch on, I think it pretty clearly points in the direction consumer electronics are going to be headed. CORNISH: Steve, thank you. HENN: Oh, my pleasure. CORNISH: That's NPR's Steve Henn speaking to us from Las Vegas. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright National Public Radio. |
The mission of the American Academy of Ophthalmology is to advance the lifelong learning and professional interests of ophthalmologists (Eye M.D.s) to ensure that the public can obtain the best possible eye care.
The Academy evolved as part of the American Academy of Ophthalmology and Otolaryngology (AAOO), which was founded in 1896 primarily to provide continuing education to eye, ear, nose and throat doctors.
The American Academy of Ophthalmology was incorporated as an independent organization in 1979 when the AAOO was divided into separate academies for each specialty.
Founded in 1980, the Museum of Vision preserves the history of the Academy and strives to inspire an appreciation of vision science, the ophthalmic profession, and contributions made toward preventing blindness. Find out more about the history of ophthalmology and the Academy on the Museum of Vision website.
A detailed history of the origin of the Academy is also available online: Pioneering Specialists: A History of the American Academy of Ophthalmology
The American Academy of Ophthalmology is an association of Eye M.D.s dedicated to enhancing the quality of life for every individual they treat by helping each to see his or her best and by protecting their patients' vision and eye health throughout life. Academy members are committed to responding compassionately to their patients' individual needs and to advancing the highest standards of comprehensive eye care.
To enable its members to meet these goals, the Academy provides a wide variety of programs, products and services to Eye M.D.s and the patients they serve.
For more on the Academy’s current projects and new initiatives, read the 2013 year-in-review report.
The following information about the Academy is also available:
The Academy's primary functions and programs are discussed in Key Activities.
Information about the Academy's governing structure is included in the Governance section.
Learn about membership options and the various benefits of membership in the Academy on the Join page.
Information for medical students is provided in the Envision a Career in Ophthalmology section.
Information about the practice of ophthalmology is included in the About Ophthalmology & Eye M.D.s section.
Information about the eye health and eye care professions is included in The Eye Care Team. |
Is Early Baldness in Blacks a Clue to Prostate Cancer?
TUESDAY, March 26 (HealthDay News) -- Black men with early hair loss may have a heightened risk of developing prostate cancer, researchers report.This study of more than 500 black men found that those "who have baldness by age 30 are more likely to develop prostate cancer," said researcher Charnita Zeigler-Johnson, a research assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Center for Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, in Philadelphia.Researchers have looked at baldness as a potential risk factor for prostate cancer for years, but studies to date have produced conflicting findings. The new research is believed to be the first to focus only on blacks, Zeigler-Johnson said. Blacks in the United States get prostate cancer more often than other men and are more than twice as likely to die of the disease.For the study, published in the April issue of Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, the researchers evaluated 318 men with prostate cancer and compared them to 219 men without the cancer. All were enrolled in the Study of Clinical Outcomes, Risk and Ethnicity between 1998 and 2010. The men were asked about their hair loss, if any, at age 30. Options included: none, frontal (at the forehead or temples) and vertex (crown). They also supplied information on their medical history.If the men reported baldness by 30, "their likelihood of developing prostate cancer was increased by about 70 percent, compared to men with no baldness at age 30," Zeigler-Johnson said.While baldness of any type boosted risk, frontal baldness in younger men was most significant. "If they had frontal baldness at 30, men were 2.6 times more likely to be diagnosed with prostate cancer before age 60, compared to men at age 30 with no baldness," said Zeigler-Johnson. For men diagnosed before age 60, frontal baldness was also strongly linked with more advanced and more aggressive cancers, she found.Overall, 20 percent of those with cancer had baldness by age 30, but 13 percent of the group without cancer had baldness as well.While the study found a link between early balding and prostate cancer, it didn't prove a cause-and-effect relationship. It does suggest a need for further study, however, experts noted.This year, the American Cancer Society predicts about 238,000 new cases of prostate cancer will be diagnosed and that more than 29,000 men will die of the cancer.Besides race, known risk factors for prostate cancer include older age and a family history of the disease.Zeigler-Johnson isn't sure how to explain the association between prostate cancer and baldness, but said male hormones might play a role. "Perhaps it is related to androgens, in particular to dihydrotestosterone [DHT], a metabolite of testosterone," she said."We know an increase in DHT increases prostate cancer occurrence and progression," she said. "But it is also related to thinning of the hair follicles." That thinning makes it difficult for hair to survive. Dr. Otis Brawley, chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society, said the study provides "more evidence of a link that has been talked about since the '70s."The finding about balding in younger men is the newest information, he said.Another expert, Dr. Lionel Banez, a research investigator at Durham Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Durham, N.C., said the new findings are important "because this is the largest cohort of purely African-American men published which examines the link between baldness and prostate cancer." However, it is "quite premature" to use the findings to make any clinical recommendations about screening for the cancer, he said.If other research confirms the link, Zeigler-Johnson said doctors might decide to follow and screen balding men more closely for prostate cancer.One screening test for prostate cancer is the PSA (prostate-specific antigen) blood test, which measures normal and cancerous cells in the prostate gland. When PSA levels are high, it sometimes indicates cancer."We still do not know if prostate cancer screening saves lives," said Brawley. Currently, the American Cancer Society recommends informing men of average risk, without symptoms, of the known pitfalls (such as false "positive" results) and potential benefits (early detection) of prostate cancer screening beginning at age 50. They then can make a decision about screening. More informationTo learn more about prostate cancer, visit the American Cancer Society. 2013Health News Copyright © 2013 HealthDay. All rights reserved. Please be aware that this information is provided to supplement the care provided by your physician. It is neither intended nor implied to be a substitute for professional medical advice. CALL YOUR HEALTHCARE PROVIDER IMMEDIATELY IF YOU THINK YOU MAY HAVE A MEDICAL EMERGENCY. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health provider prior to starting any new treatment or with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. |
The American Meteorological Society (AMS) promotes the development and dissemination of information and education on the atmosphericAtmospheric sciencesAtmospheric sciences is an umbrella term for the study of the atmosphere, its processes, the effects other systems have on the atmosphere, and the effects of the atmosphere on these other systems. Meteorology includes atmospheric chemistry and atmospheric physics with a major focus on weather... and related oceanicOceanographyOceanography , also called oceanology or marine science, is the branch of Earth science that studies the ocean... and hydrologic sciencesHydrologyHydrology is the study of the movement, distribution, and quality of water on Earth and other planets, including the hydrologic cycle, water resources and environmental watershed sustainability... and the advancement of their professional applications. Founded in 1919, the American Meteorological Society has a membership of more than 14,000 professionals, professors, students, and weather enthusiasts. Some members have attained the designation "Certified Consulting Meteorologist (CCM)", many of whom have expertise in the applied meteorology discipline of atmospheric dispersion modelingAtmospheric dispersion modelingAtmospheric dispersion modeling is the mathematical simulation of how air pollutants disperse in the ambient atmosphere. It is performed with computer programs that solve the mathematical equations and algorithms which simulate the pollutant dispersion.... To the general public, however, the AMS is best known for its "Seal of Approval" to television and radio meteorologists.
The AMS publishes nine atmospheric and related oceanic and hydrologic journals (in print and online), issues position statements on scientific topics that fall within the scope of their expertise, sponsors more than 12 conferences annually, and offers numerous programs and services. There is also an extensive network of local chapters.
The AMS headquarters are located at Boston, Massachusetts. It was built by the famous Boston architect Charles BulfinchCharles BulfinchCharles Bulfinch was an early American architect, and has been regarded by many as the first native-born American to practice architecture as a profession...., as the third Harrison Gray Otis HouseHarrison Gray Otis HouseThere are three houses named the Harrison Gray Otis House in Boston, Massachusetts. All were built by noted American architect Charles Bulfinch for the same man, Harrison Gray Otis.-First Harrison Gray Otis House:... in 1806 and was purchased and renovated by the AMS in 1958, with staff moving into the building in 1960. The AMS also maintains an office in Washington, D.C.Washington, D.C.Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution...., at 1120 G Street NW.
Seal of Approval The AMS Seal of Approval program was established in 1957 as a means of recognizing television and radio weather forecasters who display informative, well-communicated, and scientifically-sound weather broadcast presentations. The awarding of a Seal of Approval is based on a demonstration tape submitted by the applicant to six members of a review panel after paying an application fee. Although a formal degree in meteorology is not a requirement to obtain the original Seal of Approval, the minimal requirements of meteorological courses including hydrology, basic meteorology & thermodynamic meteorology including at least 20 core college credits must have been taken first before applying (ensuring that the forecaster has at least a minimal required education in the field). There is no minimum amount of experience required, but previous experience in weather forecasting and broadcasting is suggested before applying. It is worthy to note that many broadcasters who have obtained the Seal of Approval do in fact have formal degrees in Meteorology or related sciences and/or certifications from accredited University programs. Upon meeting the core requirements, having the seal, and working in the field for 3 years that broadcaster may then be referred to as a Meteorologist in the broadcast community.
As of February 2007, more than 1,600 Seals of Approval have been granted, of which more than 700 are considered "active." Seals become inactive when a sealholder's membership renewal and annual seal fees are not paid.
The original Seal of Approval program will be phased out at the end of 2008. Current applicants may either apply for the original Seal of Approval or the Certified Broadcast Meteorologist (CBM) Seal until December 31, 2008. After that date, only the CBM Seal will be offered. Current sealholders retain the right to use their seal in 2009 and onward, but new applications for the original Seal of Approval will not be accepted after December 31, 2008.
Persons who obtained or applied for the original Seal of Approval before December 31, 2004 and were not rejected are eligible for an upgrade of their Seal of Approval to the CBM Seal upon the successful completion of the CBM exam and payment of applicable fees. Upgrading from the original Seal of Approval is not required. New applicants for the CBM Seal must pay the application fee, pass the exam, and then submit demonstration tapes to the review board before being considered for the CBM Seal. While original sealholders do not have to have a degree in meteorology or a related field of study to be upgraded, brand new applicants for the CBM seal must have a degree in meteorology or a related field of study to be considered.
In order to keep either the CBM Seal or the original Seal of Approval, sealholders must pay all annual dues and show proof of completing certain professional development programs every five years (such as educational presentations at schools, involvement in local AMS chapter events, attendance at weather conferences, and other activities of the like).
As of February 2007, nearly 200 CBM seals have been awarded to broadcast weather forecasters, either upgraded from the original Seal of Approval or granted to new applicants.
As a means of promoting "the development and dissemination of information and education on the atmospheric and related oceanic and hydrologic sciences and the advancement of their professional applications", the AMS periodically publishes policy statements on issues related to its competence on subjects such as droughtDroughtA drought is an extended period of months or years when a region notes a deficiency in its water supply. Generally, this occurs when a region receives consistently below average precipitation. It can have a substantial impact on the ecosystem and agriculture of the affected region..., ozoneOzone depletionOzone depletion describes two distinct but related phenomena observed since the late 1970s: a steady decline of about 4% per decade in the total volume of ozone in Earth's stratosphere , and a much larger springtime decrease in stratospheric ozone over Earth's polar regions. The latter phenomenon... and acid depositionAcid rainAcid rain is a rain or any other form of precipitation that is unusually acidic, meaning that it possesses elevated levels of hydrogen ions . It can have harmful effects on plants, aquatic animals, and infrastructure. Acid rain is caused by emissions of carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen....
In 2003, the AMS issued the position statement Climate Change Research: Issues for the Atmospheric and Related Sciences:
Human activities have become a major source of environmental change. Of great urgency are the climate consequences of the increasing atmospheric abundance of greenhouse gases... Because greenhouse gases continue to increase, we are, in effect, conducting a global climate experiment, neither planned nor controlled, the results of which may present unprecedented challenges to our wisdom and foresight as well as have significant impacts on our natural and societal systems. |
Frederic Franklin
Coppélia (staging)
Grand Pas Glazunov (staging)
Frederic Franklin was born in 1914 in Liverpool, England, and studied in London with Nicholas Legat and Lydia Kyasht, and in Paris with Lubov Egorova. He began his career in 1931 with Josephine Baker at the Casino de Paris. In England, he appeared with Wendy Toye and Anton Dolin in cabaret, variety, concert ballet, vaudeville, and theatre, and danced with the Vic-Wells (now The Royal) Ballet. In 1935, Franklin joined the Markova-Dolin Ballet. From 1938-1952, he was premier danseur with the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo where he performed over 45 principal roles, and was appointed Ballet Master in 1944. With the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, his created roles included the Baron in Gaite Parisienne, the Baron in Night Shadow (La Sonnambula), and the Champion Roper in Rodeo. With the Slavenska Franklin Ballet, he created the role of Stanley in A Streetcar Named Desire.
Together, Mr. Franklin and Alexandra Danilova created one of the legendary ballet partnerships of the twentieth century. Among the other ballerinas he has partnered have been Alicia Markova, Irina Baronova, Agnes de Mille, Ruthanna Boris, Yvette Chauvire, Moira Shearer, Rosella Hightower, Maria Tallchief, Tamara Toumanova, and Alicia Alonso. He has worked with such choreographers as Michel Fokine, Leonide Massine, Bronislava Nijinska, Frederic Ashton, George Balanchine, Agnes de Mille, Ruth Page, and Valerie Bettis.
Mr. Franklin was co-founder of the Slavenska-Franklin Ballet, and founding director of the National Ballet in Washington, and has staged works for companies throughout the world. His choreographic credits include Etalage (1958) and Homage Au Ballet (1963) for the Washington Ballet, and Tribute (1962) for the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo. From 1989 to the present, Mr. Franklin has served as artistic advisor to the Dance Theatre of Harlem, for which he has staged many works including that company's Creole Giselle which won the Laurence Olivier Award. Mr. Franklin's credits span Broadway, television, and film.
Mr. Franklin's awards include both the Capezio and Dance Magazine Awards, and the Laurence Olivier Award for the Dance Theatre of Harlem's Creole Giselle. |
10 Signs The U.S. is Becoming a Third World Country
The United States by every measure is hanging on by a thread to its First World status. Saddled by debt, engaged in wars on multiple fronts with a rising police state at home, declining economic productivity, and wild currency fluctuations all threaten America's future.
The general designations of the ranking system for world status date back to the 1950s, and have included countries at various stages of economic development. Since the Cold War, the definition has come to be synonymous with repressive countries where a wealthy class of ruling elites segment society into the haves and have-nots, many times capitalizing on the conditions that follow an economic crisis or war. While much of the world is still mired in poverty, the reduced cost of innovative tools such as computing and connectivity ironically puts traditional Third World countries at the forefront of a new lean-and-mean economy that is based on ideas of empowerment for the disenfranchised. For better or worse, the world is leveling due to Globalism. However, America and other over-leveraged countries face this re-balancing of the globe at a time when they have dwindling resources. We can speculate about who and what is to blame for America's fantastic fall, but for the purposes of this article we shall focus on the obvious signs that the United States is beginning to resemble a Third World country.
30,000 Section 8 wait for 455 vouchers
1. Rising unemployment and poverty: Unemployment numbers, food stamps, and home foreclosures continue to reach new record highs. The ugly reality of those numbers was recently on display when 30,000 people showed up to apply for public housing in East Point, GA for 455 available vouchers. Fights broke out, people were fainting from the heat while in line, and riot police showed up to handle the angry poor.
2. Economic dependence: The United States finished 2009 with a debt-to-GDP ratio of 85%, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The current trend projects the United States to finish 2010 at 94% and 2011 at 98%. The 90% level has become the IMF's make-or-break point for countries hoping to grow their way out of debt. If the government debt load climbs above 90% of GDP, economic growth slows so much that growth is no longer a viable solution for reducing that debt, and the IMF insists on austerity measures. Surpassing this debt threshold has also caused China's lead credit rating agency to cut America's credit rating.
3. Declining civil rights: Everyday freedoms are often a casualty of a society in collapse. As the anger of the populace mounts in response to declining economic conditions and political corruption, the government counters by increasing draconian measures that restrict the political rights and civil liberties of its citizens.
America is becoming a country like China, which has one of the lowest scores according to Freedom House. In America, private discussions and movements are monitored, free speech is corralled, the freedom to assemble for protest is by government decree, and independent thought that questions the political system is increasingly looked upon with suspicion. A final indicator is when the government insists upon secrecy for its own actions, while new laws and systems are created to put the individual under nearly constant surveillance.
4. Increasing political corruption: When political corruption becomes the accepted norm, as opposed to the exception, then there's a good bet your country resembles the Third World. Congress and all major institutions face a growing crisis in confidence, where a record-low 11% of the population believe Congress is doing a good job. It now seems obvious to all observers that big corporations directly control the agenda in Washington -- much like typically corrupt Third World countries. 5. Military patrolling the streets: The rise of a militarized police state is a hallmark of most Third World countries, particularly in times of rapid economic collapse. America's declaration of the War on Terror has created a constant threat to National Security that has allowed for the military to be deployed on American soil. Building upon the War on Drugs, this has created a fusion between the military and local police, where military-grade weapons and tactics are being used against American citizens in a cascade of violent confrontations over non-violent offenses. Military checkpoints are moving farther inland, away from meaningful border control functions, and a full-blown military presence in American cities has been planned by the U.S. Army War College. 6. Failing infrastructure: As 46 of 50 states are on the verge of bankruptcy, cities are going dark, asphalt roads are returning to the stone age, and nationwide budget cuts are leaving students without teachers, supplies, or a full-time education. These are common features one will see as they travel through the poorest of Third World countries. 7. Disappearing middle class: During the last presidential debate season, they argued that a family income of $250K was solidly middle-class. Well, Census data shows less than 15% of families make over $100K, and only 1.5% of families make over $250K. The income gap between the rich and poor has increased at a staggering pace, while many more middle-class folks join the ranks of the poor every day. Cavernous income gaps may be what Third-World nations are best known for.
U.S. Dollar Monetary Base
8. Devalued currency: The value of the Federal Reserve Note (U.S. dollar) has declined 96% since the inception of the Federal Reserve in 1913. The value of the dollar is based on its supply in circulation and, to a lesser extent, the demand for those dollars. For the last three years, the monetary base has spiked literally off the charts. It can be argued that the dollar has become America's top export as the world's reserve currency, and if the volatile dollar is scrapped, which the U.N. and IMF now suggest, then demand will plummet, killing the currency.
9. Controlling the media: A government-influenced media that censors information is a key component of Third World countries. In some countries it is openly owned by the State. In America, privately-owned major media is not as balanced or as diverse as it seems; the concentration of ownership has led to censorship when national and corporate interests have sometimes overlapped. The persecution of high-profile investigative journalists such as WikiLeaks is set amid a backdrop of the proposed Internet censorship of bloggers who wish to remain anonymous. The end of net neutrality creates a pay-to-play system that can lead to further corporate and government control of information and opinion. Cybersecurity initiatives are the final nail in the coffin, as the entire free flow of information can be vetted in a China-style system of "identity management." On the street, the police state and media control have converged in the recent rise of arrests for those who videotape the police. This is a huge blow to First Amendment rights and the role of photojournalists who wish to document public police behavior.
10. Capital Controls: Many nations have enforced capital controls as their economies collapse. It most recently happened in Argentina and Venezuela as they sought to keep the remaining wealth within their borders. The SEC already has adopted policies to allow money market funds to suspend withdrawals during a financial crisis, while the recent HIRE bill (HR 2487) puts restrictions on Americans moving capital to foreign countries. Some economists suggest that the national debt has gotten so high that the government must now force investment of private capital into U.S. Treasury debt.
Key economic indicators point to a situation potentially worse than the Great Depression. The land of opportunity for so many is devolving into a system of government corruption, corporate looting, and military rule that threatens to sink the American Dream. The capital flight from America has left a dwindling middle class holding an empty bag. This style of underinvestment in the foundation of society is similar to what already has led to the exodus from the rural Midwest. Now, there are ominous signs of a silent exodus of young, intelligent professionals seeking opportunities to realize their dreams outside of America; they are becoming known as Generation Xpat. Lastly, many skilled immigrants have returned to their home countries to seek a better quality of life, which might be the scariest indicator of all.
As long as banks are privately held, as long as currency is printed, circulated and controlled by private corporations and as long as usury, in any form or amount, remains legal, the transformation of earth into a third world planet will continue apace.The first thing that must happen is the nationalization of all banks, from the federal reserve down to the smallest local credit union. The printing, circulation and regulation of all currency must be controlled by the people through the office of their government.Simply put bbgb's. Bringbackgreenbacks. We must use a fiat currency of debt-free government notes backed by nothing more than its designation as legal tender. Money is not a commodity; it is an act of law, not of nature. It has no intrinsic value. Money is not wealth. Resources, and that includes human resources, are wealth and all resources belong to all the people.All lobbying and all corporate influence must be completely eliminated. All corporations must exist only as nonprofit entities whose function must be proven beneficial to all. Said existence must be allowed only by limited government charter and only for a predetermined time. If, after the stipulated period, a corporation cannot produce indisputable, factual data showing that its operation is contributing to the general welfare, its charter must not be renewed.The u.s. must withdraw from the international monetary fund, the world bank, and the bank of international settlements until such time as these entities become publicly held rather than private, for-profit, operations. They may continue to exist, not for profit, but in the interest of international commerce in a purely administrative capacity.Without these fundamental changes to the way in which we perceive money and its purpose, the population of earth will inexorably be transformed into a bilateral caste system of masters and servants.There will be no improvement but rather a steady decline in the quality of life as long as profit remains the motive for everything. Mammon has become the god of choice in amerika and the kapitalist jihad is spreading the worship of money and power around the world.The founders of america, some presidents and even politicians have warned of the coming of this day.“The end of democracy and defeat of the American Revolution will occur when government falls into the hands of the lending institutions and moneyed incorporations.The Bank of the United States is one of the most deadly hostilities existing against the principles and form of our Constitution. The system of banking is a blot left in all our Constitutions, which if not covered will end in their destruction. I sincerely believe that banking institutions are more dangerous than standing armies; and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity is but swindling futurity. “Thomas Jefferson“The Government should create, issue, and circulate all the currency and credits needed to satisfy the spending power of the Government and the buying power of consumers. By the adoption of these principles, the taxpayers will be saved immense sums of interest. Money will cease to be master and become the servant of humanity.”Abraham Lincoln"Some people think that the Federal Reserve Banks are United States Government institutions. They are private monopolies which prey upon the people of these United States for the benefit of themselves and their foreign customers; foreign and domestic speculators and swindlers; and rich and predatory money lenders."The Honorable Louis McFadden, Chairman of the House Banking and Currency Committee in 1933There is no way to Peace. Peace is the Way.
We were ruled by tyrants prior to 1776. When Americans lived in this country prior to 1950 we were a notion that offered some chance to improve one's status and rise to the middle class. Greed and self interest rule this country. Our education,legal,monetary and every other system is overseen by corrupt power hungry psychopaths who control the counting of the votes. Now do you want to take it back or keep hoping your vote counts? Anyone who gets into office at this point will be afraid of being killed if they try to rock the boat. We have to rock the boat, and rock it till it sinks. Stop cooperating.
For those who are interested in the truth, as opposed to rhetoric, it is: The US of A is toast until the "rule of law" is restored and, this is contrary to the interests of those who suppress freedom. "From all enemies, foreign and domestic" Hah!The "rule of law" is a precisely defined law. It is the highest law of mankind, stated below:“the suppression of forceful and fraudulent methods of goal seeking”“all are treated equally by the law”. This means ALL, including king and judges“absolute property rights”This in turn is based on the fact that human behavior (the topic of law) is about goal seeking. In the seeking of any goal, there are only three possible methods: force, fraud and honest trade. Any transaction that is not an honest, mutually agreed trade will cause a self-defensive response (conflict) from the victim whose survival has been affected."The Rule of Law" is the glue that keeps all of mankind acting together in common interest, tied together by mutual dependence of trade, on an evolutionary path to excellence. Force and fraud creates conflict and destroys civilizations. Mankind is now on a devolutionary path to extinction because the co-operation once forced by "the rule of law" has been replaced by legitimizing force and fraud for those who incorrectly believe they wield power.Rule of Law, Defined: Darwin PROVED: Survival EQUALS ability to adapt to environment EQUALS ability to choose correctly EQUALS freedom: Mathematics of Rule (explains current economic stall):http://www.nazisociopaths.org/modules/article/view.article.php/c1/32How to THINK and solve problems:Social Contract:Justice Defined: We are all free to profit or suffer and learn (adapt to excellence) by facing the consequences of our OWN choices. Injustice is to be forced to suffer the consequences of choices of unaccountable (irresponsible) others.."The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern. The law of liberty tends to abolish the reign of race over race, of faith over faith, of class over class." ~ Lord ActonBill Ross(Electronics Design Engineer)
I find it continually mind blowing that even after reading a thoughtful and well documented article, such as this one, that readers (citizens) still choose division over unity.I've only ever know the monetary system which I was brought up in, which has many negative side-effects - many mentioned above. I'm not sure of the answer to solve all of these problems, but I know that drawing lines between liberals and conservatives, using Communism as a "Rhetorical hammer" or blaming the poor for this mess are certainly not fruitful avenues to pursue.I'm of the Xpat generation who left after the 2000 election, and prior to 9/11. I am not a grass is greener kind of person, nor do I believe where I am is better. But what I can say is that since I left in 2000, the changes that have and are taking place in America scare me silly. Much of what is stated in the above article is clear as day if your critical mind is open. I'm proud to be American, and feel more American overseas than I have ever felt in my life. But years of being outside of the US, keeping a critical eye on the US and the world, it is clear that what was once known as the land of opportunity, is becoming more and more the contrary.What's my solution - start personal. Make individual changes. Meet others who are different, whether in belief or origin, find the common ground between liberal and conservative and start a dialogue that can help everyone change the lens we view the world through. We as Americans have been fed so much BS over the past ten years, only for the sake of division. Cooperation is way more fun, and certainly effective.Changing the way we speak about things, changes the way we deal with things. Peace and love are not silly things and making sure everyone has enough to eat is not a lot to ask. Civil rights, freedom of religion and speech, etc – have been gifts to this land for more than 200 years – let’s try to keep it that way.peace²
PART 1 ANSWER TO ACTIVIST WHAT ABOUT THE COMMUNIST GEORGE SOROS????THE DESTREUCTION OF AMERICA IS THE COMMUNIST GEORGE SOROS’ PLAN: HIS GREED AND THE DESTRUCTION OF AMERICA FINANCIAL SYSTEM IS AN OBSESSION, A COMPULSIVE DISORDER OF HIS MIND, TOTALLY MENTALLY ILL, HE SUFFERS FROM SERIOUS MENTAL DISORDER JUST LIKE ALL FAR LEFT LIBERALS; HE IS DRIVEN BY THE POWER OF GREED. HE MUST BE STOPPED !!! THIS IS A CBS RESEARCH OF INFORMATION THAT FOLLOWS BELLOW. MAYBE GEORGE SOROS’ AMERICAN CITIZENSHIP SHOULD BE REVOKED AND SENT BACK TO RUSSIA OR HUNGARY OR, BETTER YET, TO THE GUILLOTINE.COMMUNIST GRIDDY SOROS WANTS TO DESTROY AMERICA!!!!! HE HAS ADVERTISING ON TV [ ABC OR NBC] PROMOTING LEGALIZATION OF ILLEGAL DRUGS, USING BONO THE ROCK AND ROLL IDIOT DRUG ADDICT AND MONTEL TO PROMOTE DRUGS-COCAINE- DOPE, HEROINE, POPPI, ETC., ADVERTISING ON T.V. DURING THE DAY THER LEGALIZATION, TO KEEP AMERICANS SLEEP- DRUGGY, UNABLE TO THINK, WHILE HE RAPES THIS COUNTRY AND THE WORLD, WITH HIS CRONIES DIRECTING HIS CHARITY FOUNDATIONS TO CONTROL AMERICA. AND STEALS ALL THE MONEY IN THE WORLD AND PLACES HIS FREE SOCIETY [ ANOTHER CHARLES MASON- NO MORALS and NO VALUES SOCIETY THINKING ] - GOVERNMENT!!! WAKE UP AMERICA AND CONGRESS, DO SOMETHING TO STOP THIS MAN MADNESS!!!!!!!!!!! GEORGE SOROS brought the market down in 2 days. Here is what (CBS') Mr. (Steve) Kroft's research has turned up. Bit of a read, but it took 4 months to put it together. "The main obstacle to a stable and just world order is the United States ." George Soros."George Soros is an evil man. He's anti-God, anti-family, anti-American, and anti-good." He killed and robbed his own Jewish people. If George Soros isn't the world's preeminent "malignant messianic narcissist," he'll do until Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot are reincarnated. OBAMA IS A PUPPET OF GEORGE SOROS, HIS MONEY ELECTED OBAMA. OBAMA’S AGENDA IS SOROS’ AGENDA.. CLEALRY … TO DESTROY AMERICA.
PART 2 – GEORGE SOROS- DESTRUCTION OF AMERICA AND OBAMA,T HEIR COMMUNIST MARXIST AGENDA WITH MARX -STALIN-& HITLER ALL AMBEDED TOGETHER TO DESTROY AMERICA= OBAMAS PLAN- What we have in Soros, is a multi-billionaire atheist, with skewed moral values, and a sociopath's lack of conscience. He considers himself to be an elitist world class philosopher, despises the American Way and just loves to do social engineering (change cultures). György Schwartz, better known to the world as George Soros, was born August 12, 1930 in Hungary . Soros' father, Tivadar, was a fervent practitioner of the Esperanto a language invented in 1887, and designed to be the first global language, free of any national identity.The Schwartz's, who were non-practicing Jews, changed the family name to Soros, in order to facilitate assimilation into the gentile population, as the Nazis spread into Hungary during the 1930s. When Hitler's henchman Adolf Eichmann arrived in Hungary , to oversee the murder of that country's Jews, George Soros ended up with a man whose job was confiscating property from the Jewish population. Soros went with him on his rounds.Soros has repeatedly called 1944 "the best year of his life." "70% of Mr. Soros's fellow Jews in Hungary , nearly a half-million human beings, were annihilated in that year, yet he[SOROS] gives no sign that this put any damper on his elation, either at the time or indeed in retrospect."During an interview with "Sixty Minute's" Steve Kroft, Soros was asked about his "best year:" KROFT: My understanding is that you went out with this protector of yours who swore that you were his adopted godson.SOROS: Yes. Yes.KROFT: Went out, in fact, and helped in the confiscation of property from your fellow Jews, friends and neighbors.SOROS: Yes. That's right. Yes.KROFT: I mean, that sounds like an experience that would send lots of people to the psychiatric couch for many, many years. Was it difficult?SOROS: Not, not at all. Not at all, I rather enjoyed it.KROFT: No feeling of guilt?SOROS: No, only feelings of absolute power.In his article, Muravchik describes how Soros has admitted to having "carried some rather potent messianic fantasies with me from childhood, which I felt I had to control, otherwise they might get me in trouble."Be that as it may. After WWII, Soros attended the London School of Economics, where he fell under the thrall of fellow atheist and Hungarian, Karl Popper, one of his professors. Popper was a mentor to Soros until Popper's death in 1994. Two of Popper's most influential teachings concerned "the open society," and Fallibilism.Fallibilism is the philosophical doctrine that all claims of knowledge could, in principle, be mistaken. (Then again, I could be wrong about that.)The "open society" basically refers to a "test and evaluate" approach to social engineering. Regarding "open society" Roy Childs writes, "Since the Second World War, most of the Western democracies have followed Popper's advice about piecemeal social engineering and democratic social reform, and it has gotten them into a grand mess."In 1956 Soros moved to New York City , where he worked on Wall Street, and started amassing his fortune. He specialized in hedge funds and currency speculation.Soros is absolutely ruthless, amoral, and clever in his business dealings, and quickly made his fortune. By the 1980s he was well on his way to becoming the global powerhouse that he is today.In an article Kyle-Anne Shiver wrote for "The American Thinker" she says, "Soros made his first billion in 1992 by shorting the British pound with leveraged billions in financial bets, and became known as the man who broke the Bank of England . He broke it on the backs of hard-working British citizens who immediately saw their homes severely devalued and their life savings cut drastically, almost overnight."
PART 3 - GEORGE SOROS' PLAN TO DESTROY AMERICA AND OBAMA'S PLAN- OBAMA IS HIS PUPPET. NOTING IS DONE IN THE WHITE HOUSE WITHOUT SOROS' APPROVAL=In an article Kyle-Anne Shiver wrote for "The American Thinker" she says, "Soros made his first billion in 1992 by shorting the British pound with leveraged billions in financial bets, and became known as the man who broke the Bank of England . He broke it on the backs of hard-working British citizens who immediately saw their homes severely devalued and their life savings cut drastically, almost overnight."In 1994 Soros crowed in "The New Republic " that "the former Soviet Empire is now called the Soros Empire." The Russia-gate scandal in 1999, which almost collapsed the Russian economy, was labeled by Rep. Jim Leach, then head of the House Banking Committee, to be "one of the greatest social robberies in human history." The "Soros Empire" indeed.In 1997 Soros almost destroyed the economies of Thailand and Malaysia . At the time, Malaysia 's Prime Minister, Mahathir Mohamad, called Soros "a villain, and a moron." Thai activist Weng Tojirakarn said, "We regard George Soros as a kind of Dracula. He sucks the blood from the people."The website Greek National Pride reports, "[Soros] was part of the full court press that dismantled Yugoslavia and caused trouble in Georgia , Ukraine and Myanmar [ Burma ]. Calling himself a philanthropist, Soros' role is to tighten the ideological stranglehold of globalization and the New World Order while promoting his own financial gain. He is without conscience; a capitalist who functions with absolute amorality."France has upheld an earlier conviction against Soros, for felony insider trading. Soros was fined 2.9 million dollars.Recently, his native Hungary fined Soros 2.2 million dollars for "illegal market manipulation." Elizabeth Crum writes that "The Hungarian economy has been in a state of transition as the country seeks to become more financially stable and westernized. [Soros'] deliberately driving down the share price of its largest bank put Hungary's economy into a wicked tailspin, one from which it is still trying to recover. My point here is that Soros is a planetary parasite. His grasp, greed, and gluttony have a global reach.But what about America ? Soros told Australia 's national newspaper "The Australian" " America , as the centre of the globalised financial markets, was sucking up the savings of the world. This is now over. The game is out," he said, adding that the time has come for "a very serious adjustment" in American's consumption habits. He implied that he was the one with the power to bring this about."Soros: "World financial crisis was "stimulating" and "in a way, the culmination of my life's work."OBAMA HAS RECENTLY PROMISED 10 BILLION OF OUR TAX DOLLARS TO BRAZIL, IN ORDER TO GIVE THEM A LEG-UP IN EXPANDING THEIR OFFSHORE OIL FIELDS. OBAMA'S LARGESSE TOWARDS BRAZIL, CAME SHORTLY AFTER HIS POLITICAL FINANCIAL BACKER, GEORGE SOROS, INVESTED HEAVILY IN BRAZILIAN OIL (PETROBRAS). Tait Trussel writes, "The Petrobras loan may be a windfall for Soros and Brazil , but it is a bad deal for the U.S. The American Petroleum Institute estimates that oil exploration in the U.S. could create 160,000 new, well-paying jobs, as well as $1.7 trillion in revenues to federal, state, and local governments, all while fostering greater energy security and independance."
PART 4 – SOROS PLAN TO DESTROY AMERICA AND OBAMA HIS PUPPETA blog you might want to keep an eye on is SorosWatch.com. Their mission: "This blog is dedicated to all who have suffered due to the ruthless financial pursuits of George Soros. Your stories are many and varied, but the theme is the same: the destructive power of greed without conscience. We pledge to tirelessly watch Soros wherever he goes and to print the truth in the hope that he will one day be made to stop preying upon the world's poor, that justice will be served." Back to America . Soros has been actively working to destroy America from the inside out for some years now. People have been warning us. Two years ago news sources reported that "Soros [is] an extremist who wants open borders, a one-world foreign policy, legalized drugs, euthanasia, and on and on. This is off-the-chart dangerous." In 1997 Rachel Ehrenfeld wrote, "Soros uses his philanthropy to change or more accurately deconstruct the moral values and attitudes of the Western world, and particularly of the American people. His "open society" is not about freedom; it is about license. His vision rejects the notion of ordered liberty, in favor of a PROGRESSIVE ideology of rights and entitlements."Perhaps the most important of these "whistle blowers" are David Horowitz and Richard Poe. Their book "The Shadow Party" outlines in detail how Soros hijacked the Democratic Party, and now owns it lock, stock, and barrel. SOROS HAS BEEN PACKING THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY WITH RADICALS, AND OUSTING MODERATE DEMOCRATS FOR YEARS. THE SHADOW PARTY BECAME THE SHADOW GOVERNMENT, WHICH BECAME THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION.DiscoverTheNetworks.org (another good source) writes, "By his [Soros'] own admission, he helped engineer coups in Slovakia , Croatia , Georgia , and Yugoslavia . When Soros targets a country for "regime change," he begins by creating a shadow government , a fully formed government-in-exile, ready to assume power when the opportunity arises. The Shadow Party he has built in America greatly resembles those he has created in other countries prior to instigating a coup."November 2008 edition of the German magazine "Der Spiegel," in which Soros gives his opinion on what the next POTUS (President of the U.S. ) should do after taking office. "I THINK WE NEED A LARGE STIMULUS PACKAGE." Soros thought that around 600 billion would be about right. Soros also said that "I think Obama presents us a great opportunity to finally deal with global warming and energy dependence. The U.S. needs a cap and trade system with auctioning of licenses for emissions rights."Although Soros doesn't (yet) own the Republican Party, like he does the Democrats, make no mistake, his tentacles are spread throughout the Republican Party as well.Soros is a partner in the Carlyle Group where he has invested more than 100 million dollars. According to an article by "The Baltimore Chronicle's" Alice Cherbonnier, the Carlye Group is run by "a veritable who's who of former Republican leaders," from CIA man Frank Carlucci, to CIA head [and ex-President] George Bush, Sr. In late 2006, Soros bought about 2 million shares of Halliburton, ¬Dick Cheney's old stomping grounds. When the Democrats and Republicans held their conventions in 2000, Soros held Shadow Party conventions in the same cities, at the same time.
PART 5= SOROS PLAN TO DESTROY AMERICA AND OBAMA IS HIS PUPPET – BOTH ARE MARXIST COMMUNIST. In 2008, Soros donated $5,000,000,000 to the Democratic NationalCommittee, DNC, to insure Obama's win and wins for many other Alinsky trained Radical Rules Anti-American Socialist. George has been contributing a $ billion plus to the DNC since Clinton came on the scene.Soros has dirtied both sides of the aisle, trust me. And if that weren't bad enough, he has long held connections with the CIA. And I mustn't forget to mention Soros' involvement with the MSM (Main Stream Media), the entertainment industry (e.g. he owns 2.6 million shares of Time Warner), and the various political advertising organizations he funnels millions to. In short, George Soros controls or influence most of the MSM. Little wonder they ignore the TEA PARTY, Soro's NEMESIS.As Matthew Vadum writes, "The liberal billionaire-turned-philanthropist has been buying up media properties for years in order to drive home his message to the American public that they are too materialistic, too wasteful, too selfish, and too stupid to decide for themselves how to run their own lives."Richard Poe writes, "Soros' private philanthropy, totaling nearly $5 billion, continues undermining America 's traditional Western values. His giving has provided funding of abortion rights, atheism, drug legalization, sex education, euthanasia, feminism, gun control, globalization, mass immigration, gay marriage and other radical experiments in social engineering." Some of the many NGOs (None Government Organizations) that Soros funds with his billions are: MoveOn.org, the Apollo Alliance , Media Matters for America , the Tides Foundation, the ACLU, ACORN, PDIA (Project on Death In America ), La Raza, and many more. For a more complete list, with brief descriptions of the NGOs, go to DiscoverTheNetworks.org.Poe continues, "Through his global web of Open Society Institutes and Open Society Foundations, Soros has spent 25 years recruiting, training, indoctrinating and installing a network of loyal operatives in 50 countries, placing them in positions of influence and power in media, government, finance and academia."Without Soro's money, would the Saul Alinsky's Chicago machine still be rolling? Would SEIU, ACORN, and La Raza still be pursuing their nefarious activities? Would Big Money and lobbyists still be corrupting government? Would our college campuses still be retirement homes for 1960s radicals? AMERICA STANDS AT THE BRINK OF AN ABYSS, AND THAT FACT IS DIRECTLY ATTRIBUTABLE TO SOROS. SOROS HAS VIGOROUSLY, CLEVERLY, AND INSIDIOUSLY PLANNED THE RUINATION OF AMERICA AND HIS PUPPET, BARAK OBAMA IS LEADING THE WAY.The words of Patrick Henry are apropos: "Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!"These days, Patrick Henry's sentiment is more than just some quaint hyperbole from long ago. It's a slow burning, but intense, glow that fires our courage and heart. more on George Soros, SEE: =GEORGE+SOROS&s_it=keyword_rollover
Margaret.. It's ILLEGAL to donate $5 billion dollars to a political organization. The limit is higher for party donations than for donations to individual candidates. $2400 per candidate and $30,400 to a National Party. The National Party donation can be an end-run around the personal restriction because the party can, in turn, give all the money to one candidate.I can't tell if your post is a joke or a paranoid fantasy. I'm guessing you get your numbers from Whirled Nut Daily (I generally distain the school yard name calling but I really can't help myself with them).Soros is a boogy-man, created by the Right wing to terrify the low-information base. His net worth was estimated to be $11 billion in 2009 by the decidedly not-liberal Forbes magazine. According to you, he's apparently given away nearly half his fortune to the Democrats in one year.. which suspiciously would be about 5X more money than spent by both parties in the 2008 Presidential campaign (first to top 1 Billion dollars, or was that all races that year?)He has given ~6 billion to the Open Society Institute over the course of the last 31 years. You seem to have problems with numbers, so that's just over $190 million per year. The Open Society Institute is NOT an American political organization. It's a world wide charitable organization.I don't know if you're a comic or a moron. Look at the numbers, they don't make sense. I'm also curious why you're not so concerned by the 5 Billionaires (that I know of off the top of my head) that are much more active in Conservative US Politics??P.S. Soros doesn't own 2.6 million shares in Time Warner, the fund he manages controls the shares, and 2.6 million shares in TW is a paltry 2.6% of the outstanding shares.. far from controlling.
CAP AND TRADE IS ANOTHER IDEA TO DESTROY AMERICA= ON THE MATTERS OF GLOBAL WARMING AND THE FARCE ABOUT CO2, AND CAP AND TRADE: I DO NOT UNDERSTAND WHY THE BIOLOGIST S AND BOTANISTS AT THE UNIVERSITIES AROUND THE WORLD HAVE NOT MADE ANY STATEMENT OR PROTEST ABOUT THE CO2 MISINFORMATION CIRCULATED BY THE UNITED NATIONS AND BY THE GLOBAL WARMING LOONS SCIENTISTS AND THE LIBERALS LOONS IN THE USA. WHAT HAS BEEN GOING ON AMONG THE BIOLOGISTS AND BOTANISTS IS A MATTER OF CONCERN TO ME, AS A BIOLOGY AND MEDICAL SCIENTIST, THAT SUCH FALSEHOOD ABOUT THE CO2 CAN BE IMPOSED TO THE PEOPLE, JUST BECAUSE OF THE A BIG MONEY MAKING ENTREPRENEURSHIP PLANNED BY THE PROMOTERS OF SUCH FALSE THEORY. GOOD THING THAT SOMEONE WITH A CONSCIENCE BLEW THE WHISTLE BEFORE IT WAS TOO LATE FOR THE PASSING OF THE CAP AND TRADE REGULATION IN THE USA. EUROPE IS ALREADY DOOMED. CLIMATE IS A NATURAL FENOMENON THAT NO ONE CAN CONTROL, ECEPT WITH THE USE OF THE HAARP ANTENNAS FARM. THE POLLUTION OF THE AIR WITH CHEMICALS AND DIRTY PARTICLES IS A DIFFERENT STORY AND HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH GLOBAL WARMING, IT HAS TO DO WITH THE LACK OF PROPER WASTE DISPOSAL, JUST LIKE OUR WATER IS POLLUTED WITH ALL THE PRESCRIPTION DRUGS AND ILLEGAL DRUGS, SINCE ALL DRUGS TAKEN IN THE BODY ARE ELIMINATED IN THE URINE OF THE PEOPLE AND END UP IN THE WATER SYSTEM WE DRINK, YET, THE WATER DEPARTMENTS IN USA ARE DOING NOTHING TO ELIMINTE SUCH POISONS FROM THE WATER WE DRINK. THE TRUTH ABOUT CO2 = CARBON DIOXIDE IS THAT: CARBON IS THE MOLECULE OF LIFE ON EARTH. WITHOUT CARBON THERE CAN BE NO LIFE ON EARTH. AND ,THIS IS THE CARBON CYCLE WHICH IS VERY IMPORTANT FOR LIVE ON EARTH: The circulation [ cycle] of carbon in nature is as follows:1- Carbon dioxide [CO2] is taken from the atmosphere [air] by plants and trees for photosynthesis.(a)- Photosynthesis is the process by which plants make food with the sun light they absorbed and the carbon dioxide [ CO2], to nourish the plants and trees.2- During the photosynthesis process, the CO2 is broken down – separated by the plants and Trees’ leaves, and in the process the leaves expel – give out - the OXYGEN we need to live. THE OXYGEN PRODUCING MACHINE ON EARTH ARE THE TREES AND PLANTS FROM CO2. That is the reason we need lots of trees, forests and jungles, because the trees and plants clean the atmosphere and the earth of the CO2 to give US OXYGEN. CO2 is produced every time we breath!!!!! We inhale the air with oxygen, and we expel – breath out- the CO2 [ CARBON DIOXIDE]. WITHOUT CARBON DIOXIDE [CO2] WE CANNOT LIVE ON EARTH!!!So, in summary, CO2 is extremely important for life on earth and for animals, humans, plants and trees to exist, because without oxygen from the CO2 there can be no life on earth. God planned it all very well. Nature is GOD’S Masterpiece. Politicians know nothing about Biology [ life of animals] or Botany [ life of plants], nor do atmospheric scientists. Atmospheric scientists studies are in physics and not in Chemistry and /or Biology. So, please, AL GORE and OBAMA STOP THE NONSENSE OF “CLIMATE CHANGE” CALLED NOW INSTEAD OF “GLOBAL WARMING,” AFTER THE TRUTH OF THE FALSE REPORTS OF THE GLOBAL WARMING SCIENTISTS, [ STILL COVERING IT UP], WAS EXPOSED. IT IS ALL A FRAUD TO ENRICH THEMSELVES. LOOK AT ALL THE MONEY AL GORE HAS MADE AND THE PLANS OF OBAMA TO MAKE BILLIONS OF DOLLARS WITH HIS CARBON EXCHANGE CHARITY ORGANIZED IN CHICAGO = “ CHICAGO CLIMATE EXCHNAGE” TO BE TRADED ON THE STOCK EXCHANGE. WAKE UP PEOPLE!!! IF YOU WANT TO LIVE ON EARTH, WE NEED TO HAVE LOTS OF CO2 and, DO NOT TO CONFUSE PARTICLES OF DIRT [POLLUTANTS] IN THE AIR WITH CO2. ALSO, KNOW ABOUT The HAARP antenna farms WHICH are used for military and civilian purposes. They produce waves that change the weather in the atmosphere layers above. The HAARP waves push clouds and water above into space into the ionicsphere.
ffakr, please be informed that the numbers and information was researched done by journalists atNBC, you need to call them and tell them that they are paranoid and crazy, if you know how to read, the article states celarly it is a four month journalits investigation and interview by the journalists with Soros. they are liberal journalists, not republican. You are correct to indicate the amount of funds given by rsoros to world charities, his aim is to control the wolrd economics with his charitable organizations, read the article all parts again, learn to read!!!! who is the moron psychopath???? about the numbers all is public record and anyone can verify them, he does his dirty work via his charitable organization to funnel the billions of dollars to the communust democrats, he does not ige it directly, other people are in charge to do the dirty work for him. learn idiot, i have six university dregrees from top USA universities.. how many do you have?????????
cont- cap and trade - haarp antenas farms The HAARP waves push clouds and water above into space into the ionicsphere.They produce droughts, and scientists suspected that the Russians created the California drought, using ships off the coast with antennas producing the HAARP waves."This can be true because a friend of mine from Peru told me last year- 2009- that he is a very good friend with a retired Russian military general in Peru, and that the Russian said that the Russians had many shipping boats in the Pacific spying on the USA, equipped with the most sophisticated equipment available."The antennas wave force can also create massive floods, storms, and hurricanes,The antennas produce electronic waves that move up the water- humidity into the clouds into the ionicsphere around the world.""The antennas farms are in different places around the world: 1 in Russia, 1 in Norway, and 1 in the area of France and Germany in Europe.Also, there are trails on the sky = CHEMTRAILS [ they look like jet streams on the sky,]These CHEMTRAILS dispense chemicals in the atmosphere. Used by governments.CHEMTRAILS are used in connection with the HAARP antennas to induce drought and increase temperature 100% preventing rainfall." Observe that the north pole is melting [ near the antennas farms in Alaska and Russia] andThis explains clearly why the north pole is melting. It is not the CO2!!! the global warming idiots claim!!!
CONT- DESTRUCTION OF AMERICA CAP AND TRADE WILL DESTROY AMERICA BUT WILL MAKE AL GORE, OBAMA AND HIS CRONIES VERY RICH:This report from many news agencies shows what Obama and his friends are really all about. It's not hope and change, it is MONEY!.. [ VIA CAP AND TRADE]The first part give facts and The second part connects all the dots for you (it will open your eye!!! Of the frauds). The end explains how Obama and all his cronies will end up as multi-billionaires. A small bank in Chicago called SHOREBANK almost went bankrupt during the recession. The bank made a profit on its foreign micro-loans (see below) but had lost money in sub-prime mortgages in the US. It was facing likely closure by federal regulators. However, because the bank's executives were well connected with members of the Obama Administration, a private rescue bailout was arranged. The bank's employees had donated money to Obama's Senate campaign. In other words, ShoreBank was too politically connected to be allowed to go under. ShoreBank survived and invested in many "green" businesses such as solar panel manufacturing. In fact, the bank was mentioned in one of Obama's speeches during his election campaign because it subjected new business borrowers to eco-litmus tests.History: Prior to becoming President, Obama sat on the board of the JOYCE FOUNDATION, a liberal charity. This foundation was originally established by Joyce Kean's family which had accumulated millions of dollars in the lumber industry. It mostly gave funds to hospitals but after her death in 1972, the foundation was taken over by radical environmentalists and social justice extremists. This JOYCE FOUNDATION, which is rumored to have assets of 8 billion dollars, has now set up and funded, with a few partners, something called the CHICAGO CLIMATE EXCHANGE, known as CXX. It will be the exchange (like the Chicago Grain Futures Market for agriculture) where Environmental Carbon Credits are traded.
cont destruction of America= cap and tradeUnder Obama's new bill [ CAP AND TRADE], businesses in the future will be assessed a tax on how much CO2 they produce (their Carbon Footprint) or in other words how much they add to global warming. If a company produces less CO2 than their allotted measured limit, they earn a Carbon Credit. This Carbon Credit can be traded on the CXX exchange. Another company, which has gone over their CO2 limit, can buy the Credit and "reduce" their footprint and tax liability. It will be like trading shares on Wall Street. Well, it was the same JOYCE FOUNDATION, along with some other private partners and Wall Street firms that funded the bailout of ShoreBank. The foundation is now one of the major shareholders. The bank has now been designated to be the "banking arm" of the CHICAGO CLIMATE EXCHANGE (CXX). In addition, Goldman Sachs has been contracted to run the investment trading floor of the exchange. So far so good; now the INTERESTING parts. One ShoreBank co-founder, named Jan Piercy, was a Wellesley College roommate of Hillary Clinton. Hillary and Bill Clinton have long supported the bank and are small investors. Another co-founder of Shorebank, named Mary Houghton, was a friend of Obama's late mother. Obama's mother worked on foreign MICRO-LOANS for the Ford Foundation. She worked for the foundation with a guy called Geithner. Yes, you guessed it. This man was the father of Tim Geithner, our present Treasury Secretary, who failed to pay all his taxes for two years. Another founder of ShoreBank was Ronald Grzywinski, a cohort and close friend of Jimmy Carter. The former ShoreBank Vice Chairman was a man called Bob Nash. He was the deputy campaign manager of Hillary Clinton's presidential bid. He also sat on the board of the Chicago Law School with Obama and Bill Ayers, the former terrorist. Nash was also a member of Obama's White House transition team. (To jog your memories, Bill Ayers is a Professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He founded the Weather Underground, a radical revolutionary group that bombed buildings in the 60s and 70s. He had no remorse for those who were killed, escaped jail on a technicality, and is still an admitted Marxist).
cont. part 3 destruction of emarica- cap and trade When Obama sat on the board of the JOYCE FOUNDATION, he "funneled" thousands of charity dollars to a guy named John Ayers, who runs a dubious education fund. Yes, you guessed it. The brother of Bill Ayers, the terrorist. Howard Stanback is a board member of Shorebank. He is a former board chairman of the Woods Foundation. Obama and Bill Ayers, the terrorist, also sat on the board of the Woods Foundation. Stanback was formerly employed by New Kenwood Inc. a real estate development company co-owned by Tony Rezko. You will remember that Tony Rezko was the guy who gave Obama an amazing sweet deal on his new house. Years prior to this, the law firm of Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Galland had represented Rezko's company and helped him get more than 43 million dollars in government funding. Guess who worked as a lawyer at the firm at the time. Yes, Barack Obama. Adele Simmons, the Director of ShoreBank, is a close friend of Valerie Jarrett, a White House senior advisor to Obama. Simmons and Jarrett also sit on the board of a dubious Chicago Civic Organization. Van Jones sits on the board of ShoreBank and is one the marketing directors for "green" projects. He also holds a senior advisorposition for black studies at Princeton University. You will remember that Mr. Van Jones was appointed by Obama in 2009 to be a Special Advisor for Green Jobs at the White House. He was forced to resign over past political activities, including the fact that he is a Marxist. Al Gore was one of the smaller partners to originally help fund the CHICAGO CLIMATE EXCHANGE. He also founded a company called Generation Investment Management (GIM) and registered it in London, England. GIM has close links to the UK-based Climate Exchange PLC, a holding company listed on the London Stock Exchange. This company trades Carbon Credits in Europe (just like CXX will do here) and its floor is run by Goldman Sachs. Along with Gore, the other co-founder of GIM is Hank Paulson, the former US Treasury Secretary and former CEO of Goldman Sachs. His wife, Wendy, graduated from and is presently a Trustee of Wellesley College. Yes, the same college that Hillary Clinton and Jan Piercy, a co-founder of Shorebank attended. (They are all 'friends'). Interesting? And now the closing...
cont part 4 - destruction of america cap and trade-obamaBecause many studies have been exposed as scientific nonsense, people are slowly realizing that man-made global warming is nothing more than a money-generating hoax. As a result, Obama is working feverishly to win the race. He aims to push a Cap-and-Trade Carbon Tax Bill through Congress and into law. Obama knows he must get this passed before he loses his majority in Congress in the November elections. Apart from Climate Change he will "sell" this bill to the public as generating tax revenue to reduce our debt. But, it will also make it impossible for US companies to compete in world markets and drastically increase unemployment. In addition, energy prices (home utility rates) will sky rocket. But, here's the KICKER… (THE MONEY TRAIL) If the bill passes,[ CAP AND TRADE] it is estimated that over 10 TRILLION dollars each year will be traded on the CXX exchange. At a commission rate of only 4 percent, the exchange would earn close to 400 billion dollars to split between its owners, all Obama cronies. At a 2 percent rate, Goldman Sachs would also rake in 200 billion dollars each year. But don't forget SHOREBANK. With 10 trillion dollars flowing though its accounts, the bank will earn close to 40 billion dollars in interest each year for its owners (more Obama cronies), without even breaking a sweat. It is estimated Al Gore alone will probably rake in 15 billion dollars just in the first year. Of course, Obama's "commissions" will be held in trust for him at the Joyce Foundation. They are estimated to be over 8 billion dollars by the time he leaves office in 2013, if the bill passes this year. Of course, these commissions will continue to be paid for the rest of his life. Some financial experts think this will be the largest "scam" or"legal heist" in world history! Obama's cronies make the Mafia look like rank amateurs. They will make Bernie Madoff's fraud look like penny ante stuff. Look who are the peopel that are trying so hard to destroy america!! the ones America gave them freedom and life!!! traitors!!!!! they has no money, were hungry, had no place to live and had no life. now in gratitud they want to destory america and its opportunities and freedom and liberties!! darn communists, leave America, go back to your country, the DOOR IS OPENED, NO ONE IS KEEPING YOU HERE BY FORCE. WE ARE ALL FREE!!! GOD BLESS AMERICA!!!
To Margret,America is destroyed already. Wake up and smell the coffee as this artical we are commenting on stated. In my humble opinion you have just woken up and see the tipp of the iceberg with cap and trade(global warming carbon tax) and you are MAD and lashing out on this board. If you could believe that there is more to that tax and worst things. When you find out you might explode. Do you realize the the billions out of the 10 trillion you just mentioed are peanuts compared to the real figures and reasons for this tax? It is not America they want to tax it is the world. We must stop that but it is not the answer to our freedom. That is a global IMF world bank world government issue. There is sooooo much more. 10 trillion is missing from Iraq Afgan wars. Take a breath and look at the bigger picture. Rothchild family is worth 316 Trillion half the wealth of the world. How did they get that? Who control the IMF and World Bank? How much has the Euro lost since it was created 2002? over 50% was stolen called inflation in 8 years. They took 98 years 1913-2010 to steal 96% of the american dollar via banker made inflation. Now thats money! Stop the printing press. Take the government back.
AMERICANS ONLY HAVE THEMSELVES TO BLAME.
If people were to actually read what I wrote, do a little research and adhere to facts rather than succumb to ideology, there would be much less likelihood of pointless insults and oxymoronic statements. The moment one succumbs to faith, one abandons thought.I have never read a word of Marx. I have no use for philosophy. I prefer empirical evidence, facts, research and pragmatic solutions, not ideological, faith based dogma.I have no interest in nor love of "big government" or any of the isms so carelessly tossed about. The pseudo-government of amerika is responsible for our plight to the extent that it has surrendered all control to the kapitalist profit machine rather than restraining it, as it is obligated to do for the common good.In point of fact, there is NO government in amerika today. Nor has there been for several decades. There is only a wholly owned subsidiary of the corporatocracy, which is in turn controlled by the international banking cartel. All this is the product of your much vaunted neo-laissez faire kapitalism, which has converted this republic into a neo-fascist, plutocratic police state. The rest of the world will soon be similarly enslaved.All the knee-jerk insults hurled by the kapitalist apologists simply provide proof of ignorance and a willingness to submit to servitude in the NWO. As sycophantic toadies of the elite, perhaps they hope to attain some measure of security or at least avoid internment in labor camps and enslavement to the kapitalist masters. Their attitude makes clear they certainly don't want to stand with the "common" people."It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." J. Krishnamurti
That is happening about TEA party is controlled by the Elitists (Rich Billionaries - Rupert Murdoch, Michael Koch, so on) and AIPAC... This is 21st century Jewish are now control the American, European and Western societies (media, government, private companies, elitists & terrorists)and possessions around the world that it is called "Jewish & zionist Crimocracy". Crimocracy is a history of Jewish & zionist's conspiracry, rebellious (land's grab of American Revolution) and genocide created the racism, holocaust, and media, historical & political manipulation that you must remember Jesus is killed by Jewish Leaderships under Roman Republic. I'm feel strong to achieve anti-semiticism that it is important to understanding the history of semitic for the past years.... I believe that Jesus Christ is truly anti-semiticism and I know concerning no defamation about that... I feel sick & worried concerning expansion of Jewish and zionism in the foreseeable future...
It's not a conspiracy theory when the shit is actually true, I mean come on now. Sure, America isn't as bad as many countries of the world, but all of our problems are not blatant. Corporate media lies about the way things are, people who bring up issues of this country are "conspiracy theorists" or "nutjobs". Then when it actually happens, people act like they are surprised (when we told them it ahead of time).Too many sheeple in this country, it's rather sad.
Lets take Kenya as example of third world.1) There are no military patrolling the streets so point 5 does not apply.2) There is no state control of the media so point 9 does not apply. Attempts are being made but civil societies and the media itself has fought t off successfully so far. Ironically the USA sponsors and supports these efforts to maintain press freedoms3) there is no such thing as capital controls in Kenya so point 10 does not apply.Finally poverty in the USA is not the same as poverty in Kenya. I Kenya food is available for free because the rural folks grow their own. So they can survive on less than a dollar a day so long as there is no drought or war, however the world will still view them as poor. This is not the case in America where inspite of good weather the poor will line up for handouts.
Lets see now all governments are corrupt some worse than others.All religion is people control.As for you SHEEPLE oh im sorry people get it!!!!!!!!!!!!You just keep allowing it to happen over and over again!The world economy is breaking down and will continue to do so.Government wants total control just like religion does.Sheeple just allow it to happen!
Great post.If this is the state of USA, what else may be existent in other poor countries
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It's our immigration policy folks.When you let millions of no-skilled folks from 3rd world nations immigrate here ... there are no surprises. It's a shame, really, it all happened in only 50 misguided years.
America been a third world country when white folks to pure natural land away from the Indians. And start having the ideal that white folks own the world and nobody won't do anything to them. Everything that's bad that's happening to america is the greed of rich white folks and America deserves it.
Its not a matter of "IS" it has been since BUSH
I mean especially the politicians.
These are all signs that the US lost the Cold War. Our Politicians are all puppets...we no longer live in a free market economy. Our Debts and hence our policies are all controlled by our new Governor, China as if they were Colonial England. We have deployed huge resources to Cameras and Satellite Equipment to every traffic light in America to create a police state. Opportunity is now controlled by the Neo Polit Bureau, What I like to refer to as the Blinking Ear. And the Dollar is Now the New Prison System between the haves and the forced into servitude/slaves.
HAHAHAHHA wow no. I'm sorry this is not journalism. We have water, food, an existing economy...does anyone here even know what a 3rd world country is? Sad to see how bad the education is working though.
I HAVE LOST FAITH IN THE UNITED STATES. OTHERS RUN THIS COYNTRY AND WE PAY FOR ALL THE BULL SHIT THEY MAKE UP!!!!! THE NWO IS REAL AND WE ARE LIVING IN THE LAST DAYS!!!! THE ILLUMNITI IS REAL. ALL THE SHIT THAT THEY SAY IS REAL THE WORLDS RICH AND ELIETE RUN ALL COUNTRIES, THEY PAY FOR WARS,ETC THE OWN THE FEDERAL RESERVE, THEY ARE EVERYWHERE I BROUGHT A TEE SHIRT AND SEEN ALL THEIR SIGNS ON THE SHIRT AND THREW IT AWAY. I DO NOT NOR WILL I EVER WORSHIP SATAN!!!!! THIS IS REAL TO DEEP FOR ME TO GO OFF INTO IN DEPTH..... BUT ITS REAL AND THE SOONER PEOPLE WAKE UP AND STOP BEING BRAINWASHED THEY TO WILL KNOW THE TRUTH. THEY WANT ONE WORLD ORDER, THEY DONT CARE ABOUT THE PEOPLE ON MONEY POWER ,AND GREED!!! ITS SAD AS HELL BUT IT'S THE TRUTH. HOW CAN PEOPLE HAVE BILLIONS,TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS AND PEOPLE ARE STARVING????? THATS THE WAY THEY WANT IT. THIS MICROCHIPING OF HUMANS IS THE MARK OF THE BEAST, AND IT IS NOT OF GOD I WILL NOT LET THEM INPLANT THAT SHIT IN ME I STAND FOR WHAT I BELIEVE IN AND I WILL DIE FOR WHAT I STAND FOR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
NO NEW WORLD ORDER IF ALL PEOPLE WAKE UP YOU WONT BE USED ANY LONGER!!!! April 3, 2013 at 2:49 AM
THEY HAVE THE NERVE TO PUT COMMENT AS ANONYMOUS IT WILL NEVER BE THEY KNOW ABOUT US ALL IF YOU HAVE A PAPER TRAIL THEY KNOW WHERE YOU ARE ,AND WHO YOU ARE!!!! ITS SO CLEAR ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS LOOK ,LISTEN AND LEARN!!!!!
If you have not actually been to a third world country and lived there for more than a year you have a weak base for a comment re the third world comparison. how many of the people fully ragging on the US live in a nice house with heat in the winter and running water and a cell phone which when the push 911 someone will come to help them. All i hear in these blogs or is how bad shit is.. and i agree its bad, really bad but let's hear some solutions. May 2, 2013 at 5:57 PM
Lindaneff
I"ve been saying this for years and the people i tell this to look at me as if im crazy, thanks for getting the word-out lindaneff
Jim Stout
I agree. We need to be aware of the early warning signs and be ready to act as a nation! |
A newly discovered painting of King Charles I's wife by Anthony Van Dyck on display for the first time to public
Attributed to Van Dyck, Queen Henrietta Maria (1609 -69), as St Catherine. © Philip Mould Ltd.
LONDON.- Queen Henrietta Maria (1609 -69), as St Catherine is believed to be Sir Anthony Van Dyck’s final portrait of the Queen, lost for centuries and only recently re-discovered and the public will now be able to see Henrietta Maria as she returns to Banqueting House on Whitehall, a place that would have been very familiar to the French wife of King Charles I. Lent to Historic Royal Palaces the charity that looks after Banqueting House, by Philip Mould Ltd, and featured on last night’s BBC One's Fake or Fortune series, the small painting measuring only 76cm x 64cm is a half-length portrait of Henrietta Maria as St Catherine wearing the Imperial Crown. There is no early reference to this painting and up until now this image survived in a number of versions, none of them of high enough quality to be attributed with certainty to Van Dyck suggesting they were contemporary or later copies of a lost original by the artist. Van Dyck was the most important Flemish painter of the 17th century after Rubens, whose works influenced the young artist. Van Dyck was an extremely successful portraitist and painter of religious and mythological pictures and was also an accomplished draughtsman and etcher. He settled at the English court in 1632, where his authoritative and flattering representations of Charles I, his family and his court, set a new standard for English portraiture. He painted the King and his queen many times and the painting now on display at Banqueting House was recently discovered by Philip Mould and Bendor Grosvenor concealed within a larger painting of the queen that had been altered and over-painted in the 18th century. The decision was made to uncover the original painting which took almost 1,000 hours of conservation and required the use of over 500 scalpel blades to remove the later paint layers. It is not clear as to why the portrait was concealed. There is visible under-drawing in the hair and around Henrietta Maria’s hands so it may have been because it was unfinished. However, at the time it would have been politically sensitive to show a queen in the guise of a Catholic saint – St Catherine of Alexandria. In the years preceding the Civil War, Henrietta Maria identified herself with St Catherine as she tried to convert Charles, and others, to the Catholic faith. This was to become one of the main reasons behind the growing rift between the King and his Parliament. Henrietta Maria was born in Paris, the youngest daughter of Henry IV, King of France. She was fifteen when she crossed the Channel in 1625 to marry Charles I. After initial difficulties, the marriage proved close and lasting. The Civil War saw the queen return to France in 1644, never to see her husband again as he was to be executed just outside the Banqueting House in 1649. News of Charles’ death took over a week to reach her. Henrietta Maria was devastated, retiring from court to the convent where she had lived as a young girl; she was never to really recover. However, in 1660, the widowed queen finally returned to England to see her son restored to the throne as King Charles II. She stayed at Whitehall Palace, the scene of her husband’s execution, “a very little plain old woman”, as Samuel Pepys records. The painting will be on display until March 2013, for opening times visit hrp.org.uk Posté par Alain Truong à 08:57 - Arts anciens - Commentaires [0] - Permalien [#] |
When psychology trumps anti-obesity drugs
Patients who fail to lose weight while taking anti-obesity drugs do so because of their beliefs about themselves and about the difficulty of losing weight.
That is the conclusion of research being presented today, Wednesday 5 September, by Dr Amelia Hollywood from the University of Surrey at the Annual Conference of the British Psychological Society's Division of Health Psychology. The conference is being held at the Holiday Inn in Liverpool from 5-7 September 2012.
Dr Hollywood interviewed 10 people, who had put on weight over the 18 months after they were prescribed the weight-loss medication Orlistat, about their experiences.
Dr Hollywood and her colleague Dr Jane Ogden found that the women attributed their failure to lose weight to the mechanics of the drug. They highlighted the barriers to weight loss and talked about other weight-loss methods that had not worked for them.
Overall, the researchers found, these people saw their failure to lose weight as an inevitable part of their identity. They felt that it reflected their self-fulfilling belief that they would be perpetual dieters.
Dr Hollywood says:
"Weight-loss medication is widely prescribed, but with very mixed results. Many patients either do not lose weight or go on to regain any weight lost. We felt it was important to look at the experiences of these people who do not lose weight, or do not maintain the weight lost in the long term, with this drug.
Our research suggests that prescribing this type of drug should be accompanied by information that reinforces the reality of sticking to the low fat diet that is necessary to avoid the unpleasant consequences of the drug, such as anal leakage, and that these 'side effects' should not be attributed to the drug but to the individuals eating behaviour.
Unless we get the psychology right and change people's beliefs about themselves, their eating and the way the drug works, this medication is often going to produce disappointing results.
We hope our research will encourage the doctors to prescribe this medication more wisely and to provide patients with more support while they are taking it." |
by Randolph T. HolhutChief of AR CorrespondentsDummerston, Vt.December 31, 2010
On Native GroundPRESIDENT OBAMA'S STILL LOOKING FOR HIS MOJO
BRATTLEBORO, Vt. -- While too many of our leaders in Washington pretend that global warming, peak oil and the growing numbers of the hungry in our nation are just figments of the liberal imagination, I recently got a glimpse of a project that, when fully operational, will take care of all three problems and provide jobs in the process. How? A Vermont company called Carbon Harvest Energy is running a 250-kilowatt generator that takes methane gas from the former Windham Solid Waste Management District landfill in Brattleboro and turns it into electricity. A local utility is buying the electricity made at the site, which it estimates is enough to power 300 homes.
Landfill gas is the natural by-product of the decomposition of solid waste in landfills and is comprised primarily of methane - a potent greenhouse gas that contributes to global warming. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, municipal solid waste landfills are the second largest human-generated source of methane emissions in the United States.
A project like this one not only prevents emissions of methane, but uses these gases to produce energy and other by-products. But turning a dangerous gas produced by landfills into energy is only the beginning of what is planned for what Carbon Harvest calls the Brattleboro Renewable Energy and Sustainable Agriculture Project.
When finished in the next year or so, the waste heat from the generator will be used to heat a 20,000-square-foot greenhouse and aquaculture facility that will grow 100 tons of organic vegetables and raise 25 tons of fish year-round for local markets and the Vermont Foodbank, which supplies food for the shelves of soup kitchens around the state.
A commercial-scale algae farm is also planned for developing other products, including biofuels, a sustainable fish-feed replacement and nutraceutical applications. The facility will also serve as a green technology research center to be used by the University of Vermont and UVM Extension, Dartmouth College, Marlboro College and other institutions.
The whole project has an estimated price tag of about $2 million, and Carbon Harvest estimates it will show a return on the investment in about five years. The company has been investigating other former landfills around New England and New York to duplicate what they hope to start in Brattleboro.
"For the last 200 years, we've operated on a linear model of extract and deplete, consume and waste," said Don McCormick, Carbon Harvest's founder and designer of the project, at the project's grand opening last month. "We need to leave this model and move toward a circular model that is sustainable and wastes nothing."
For example, nutrient-rich water from the recirculating aquaculture system will be filtered and recycled as fertilizer for plants grown hydroponically, a technology known as "aquaponics." This water will also be used, along with CO2 from
the power plant, for a research project to grow algae for biofuels and feed.
It took a lot of planning, plus public and private investment, to make this project happen. As Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), who secured funding from the U.S. Department of Energy for the project, said, "This is the kind of responsible energy project that we need. I love the idea of Vermonters blending together the benefits of two of our strengths - organic agriculture and renewable energy - so we might be a model for others to follow."
Projects like these are likely to be endangered, as the incoming Republicans to Washington want nothing to do with small scale, local innovation that benefits communities instead of multinational corporations. But this is the type of innovation that is needed to create a sustainable economy.
Taking waste management, energy production and agriculture and combining it all into one integrated system is a great idea. And, because of the size of the project and the extent of how every element is so tightly integrated, it has a better chance to succeed. But in a way, as Vermont Secretary of Agriculture Roger Allbee told me, it is really just the continuation of a long tradition in this state.
"The history of agriculture in Vermont is one of adapting," he said. "This is really the old Vermont model of use everything, waste nothing and take our ingenuity to come up with ways to extend the growing season and keep producing food throughout the year." |
Springfield, Massachusetts, like many cities in the decades after the Civil War, decided it wanted a large public park. It no doubt was influenced by the popularity of New York's Central Park, designed by Calbert Vaux and Frederick Law Olmsted. By the late 1870s, Central Park had moved away from its former status as a reserve only for the wealthy into something used by all classes of the city. Springfield decided to build its park beginning in 1882 and John Olmsted (no relation to Frederick Law Olmsted) headed the commission. The park, like those designed by Frederick Law Olmstead and his firm, worked to incorporate water and landscaping, forming a park from the natural material at hand. Building a park like this took many years longer than the original planners had envisioned; it was not really complete until the late 1890s. The park though, has persisted and by the early 21st century it continues to be thronged by the people of Springfield. |
Home » Edgar Allan Poe House And Museum Edgar Allan Poe House And Museum The primary item on display is the house itself, the place in which Poe penned his collection "Tales from the Folio Club". In addition, a number of pieces related to Poe are exhibited, including glassware and china belonging to John Allan (Poe's foster father), a telescope reputedly used by Poe, Poe's sextant, a traveling desk (or lap desk) he presumably used at the University of Virginia and a full-sized color reproduction of the only known portrait of Poe's wife, Virginia, done at her death in 1847. A set of Gustave Dore's 1884 illustrations for Poe's "The Raven" are featured on the second floor. |
(above) Workers break up a concrete layer in a building under construction on November 26, 2011 in south La Paz. Construction in Bolivia recorded an unusual growth as the result of an economic boom, the lack of options of productive investment and even due to resources from illegal activities--like smuggling and drugs. Photograph by: Aizar Raldes, AFP/Getty Images
LA PAZ — The skyline of Bolivia's Andean capital is being transformed by construction, reflecting general economic growth but also a less savory fact — an influx of cocaine money to one of South America's poorest nations.
The mountainous view from La Paz, nestled in a valley 3,600 meters above sea level, is gradually vanishing behind new apartment blocks, a trend seen in other cities such as Santa Cruz, Cochabamba, Sucre and Tarija.
Cement sales grew 12 per cent in 2008 and 13 per cent in 2009, according to industry figures, while construction has increased 10 per cent per year on average, double the country's growth rate.
"It comes from exports, helped by the spectacular price of raw materials," as well as remittances from Bolivians living abroad and favorable credit, according to economist Alberto Bonadana, of the University of San Andres.
The "exports" include minerals and hydrocarbons, but also cocaine, of which Bolivia has emerged as the world's third largest producer, with the area under cultivation increasing by 31,000 hectares per year.
"In countries with a lot of drug trafficking, one of the methods for laundering dollars is real-estate," said economist Napoleon Pacheco, of the Fundacion Milenio think-tank.
"It is possible that this factor is affecting the current boom."
There are no studies conclusively linking the real-estate expansion to drug smuggling, but the last major surge in construction, in the 1980s, also coincided with a peak in drug activity.
"For every eight dollars of legal exports, there is a dollar that is illegal," said Bonadana.
The UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) estimates that between 500 and 750 million dollars of drug money is laundered through the country each year, accounting for three to five per cent of the Bolivian economy.
The housing boom in La Paz in part reflects the city's topography, as the valley walls channel growth upward. In the eastern residential neighborhood Miraflores, houses have been razed in favor of five-story complexes.
City figures indicate that 70 per cent of La Paz's 200,000 properties have been built without permission, often on fragile soil, and around 1,500 homes were destroyed in February landslides.
Alvaro Cortez, of the Miraflores residents' association, pointed to a home he says has sunk five to six centimeters (more than two inches).
"This is what happens to the majority of homes that have the misfortune of being next to buildings under construction," he said.
City officials also worry that the speed of growth is outpacing any increase in the level of services for the population.
The new construction "requires the expansion of basic services, including transport. But given the topography of La Paz this is extremely complicated," said architect Javier Crespo, a consultant for the city.
"We are limited in the extension of the urban fabric," he added.
Bonadana, the economist, echoes those fears, saying a "housing bubble" is emerging that could eventually pop, leading many Bolivians into a new era of falling prices and deepening debt. |
Fresh cheese, made with cow's milk, or sometimes goat or ewe's milk is neither fermented nor matured.
Production and the craft >
Fabrication and maturing of each type of cheese
Read article Soft, bloomy rind cheeses
Soft, bloomy rind cheeses constitute a large family of cheeses with diverse methods of fabrication. The name comes from the characteristics of the pate of the cheeses and the development of the surface mould after it has been matured.
Read article Soft, washed rind cheeses
Washed rind cheeses are characterised by their rind which is a pale yellow, orange, reddish colour and their pungent smell. |
by Iraj Bashiri
Mohammad Ali Jamalzadeh, the founder of the European-style Persian short-story genre, was born in Isfahan into a middle-class family. The date of his birth is debated; but in Kitab-i Hunar, in his own hand, we find January 24, 1892, mentioned. It is noteworthy to add that, at the end of his life, even he himself was not quite sure of the exact year. The year 1895 has been traditionally used as his date of birth. Jamalzadeh's father, Sayyid Jamal al-Din Isfahani, a progressive mullah, rose against despotism and delivered fiery speeches against the government, speeches which inspired his son but landed himself in prison where he was poisoned. as for young Jamalzadeh, he lived in Iran only until the age of twelve or thirteen. Thereafter, he lived in Lebanon where he attended the Antoura Catholic School (1908) near Beirut, and in France (1910) and Switzerland. In switzerland, he read law at the University of Lauzanne and later on at Dijon.
After his father's death, Jamalzadeh's life became somewhat difficult but, thanks to his many friends who supported him and to occasional students who paid him tuition, he survived starvation. By the time that World War I came around, he was in his early youth. He joined the group of nationalists in Berlin and, in 1915, founded a newspaper Rastakhiz, for it in Baghdad. He also cooperated with the journal Kaveh (1916). In 1917, he published his first book entitled Ganj-e Shaygan (The Worthy Treasure). An overview of Iran of the turn of the century, Ganj-e Shaygan deals with Iran's socio-political as well economic situation, a major contribution bridging the gap between literature and the sciences. In the same year, he also represented the Nationalists at the World Congress of Socialists in Stockholm. His later years, until 1931 when he picked up residence in Geneva and worked for the International Labour Office are spent in make-shift jobs such as working for the Iranian embassy in Berlin.
During all these years, Jamalzadeh had very little contact with Iran. But that did not prevent him from learning Persian on his own. Rather, drawing on his meager experiences gained at a tender age, he wrote about the lives of his contemporary Iranians. His preoccupation with language use and his Dickensian style including repetitions, pile up of adjectives, and popular phrases quickly remind the reader of his background and of his sincerity to contribute. Yet his very distance from the sources of events described compromises the accuracy of his works. His disregard for form and lack of a desire to revisit his works and make revisions compounds the difficulty. Jamalzadeh's major work is entitled Yeki Bud Yeki Nabud (Once Upon a Time). Published in 1921 in Berlin, Once Upon a Time |
Five years after Katrina, new data are illuminating the best ways to help children after natural disasters.
By Rebecca A. Clay July/August 2010, Vol 41, No. 7
When Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, psychologist Joy D. Osofsky, PhD, lost her office and had to provide her services aboard a cruise ship that had been pressed into duty to house first responders. Despite Osofsky’s own losses, what haunts her are the children she encountered aboard the boat.
One family was more upset about the closing of the daughter’s school than the loss of their home and a job. A set of grandparents was alarmed by the sudden hyperactivity of their grandson, a boy who had been separated from his family and landed in three homes in as many weeks. A teenager revealed he had spent weeks convinced his parents were dead.
“It gives me chills every time I think about that story,” says Osofsky, a professor of pediatrics and psychiatry at Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center.
But in addition to these memories, the experience gave Osofsky a new understanding of how to meet the needs of children and adolescents after a disaster. Now she and other psychologists are using lessons learned during Katrina’s aftermath to inform the response to future disasters. They’re collecting data on Katrina’s youngest victims that suggest how children in disasters elsewhere will fare. And they’re exploring how lessons learned after Katrina may contribute to the global understanding of disaster response.
A growing sophistication
Psychologists’ understanding of disasters’ impact on children has become more sophisticated in recent years, says Annette M. La Greca, PhD, a University of Miami psychology and pediatrics professor and co-editor of “Helping Children Cope with Disasters and Terrorism” (APA, 2002). Until relatively recently, she says, psychologists in the United States assumed children’s post-disaster distress was fleeting.
“When we started work after Hurricane Andrew in 1992, it wasn’t clear whether children had any significant reaction,” says La Greca, who chaired APA’s 2008 Presidential Task Force on PTSD and Trauma in Children and Adolescents. Because of storm-related disruptions, it took three months before La Greca and her colleagues could conduct their first assessment. “Even we thought that was probably too late, that children would already be settling back into their routines and be fine.”
That assumption turned out to be false. La Greca’s research after Hurricanes Andrew and Charley and more recent findings by psychologists tracking children post-Katrina have shown that while most children are resilient, many do have significant reactions. And it can take a long time to recover.
In a study of 7,258 Katrina-affected children published in 2009 in the American Journal of Orthopsychiatry (Vol. 79, No. 2), for example, Osofsky found that half the children surveyed in the 2005–06 school year had symptoms of post-traumatic stress and depression severe enough to meet the cut-off for referral to mental health services. The following year, the number was still high, with 41 percent meeting the criteria.
Four years out, says Osofsky, the number is still a little high but dropping.
“According to the disaster literature, after three years, the percentage should be pretty much back at the normal level,” she says. “We’re still a little above normal.”
That’s to be expected, she says, given the magnitude of disaster Katrina brought. And Osofsky attributes the drop in part to the lack of subsequent serious hurricanes. Children in earthquake-wracked Chile, Haiti and China may not be so lucky because aftershocks can stir up feelings of trauma again, warns Osofsky, who is working with Chilean psychologists and other members of the country’s disaster response field.
Certain factors put children at greater risk. In a study published in 2009 in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (Vol. 48, No. 11), researchers found that death of a loved one had the strongest association with serious emotional disturbances in children who had lived in New Orleans before Katrina. For the rest of the sample, exposure to physical adversity, such as the destruction of homes and schools or the loss of possessions or pets, was the biggest predictor of problems. Poverty and parents with mental health problems also increased children’s risk.
Those findings may have implications for children in low-income countries, says co-author John A. Fairbank, PhD, co-director of the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration-sponsored National Center for Child Traumatic Stress at Duke University Medical Center.
“If you think about children who have a high level of exposure to a disaster, live in an economically challenged situation and have parents who are struggling with the ability to provide and function, it’s logical these children would be at high risk of developing serious emotional disturbances,” he says. “We should be paying very close attention to how they’re doing and mobilizing resources to provide assistance.”
When asked what advice they would give to psychologists and other responders in other recent disaster sites, disaster-response researchers offer several suggestions:
Acknowledge children’s distress. Even today, says La Greca, “parents underestimate children’s levels of distress.” Since parental support can mitigate that distress, she says, lack of awareness can have serious consequences. To help parents understand what their children are going through and help them work through issues together, La Greca has created free guides, including After the Storm: A Guide to Help Children Cope with the Psychological Effects of a Hurricane. The manual has been translated into Spanish. Another widely disseminated, school-based manual is an earthquake-oriented version that has been translated into Japanese and Taiwanese. La Greca is working with the Australian government to create a version about bush fires.
Keep developmental stages in mind. While all children need support, consistency and routine to get back on track, says Osofsky, different age groups have different reactions and needs. Adolescents’ needs are often neglected, she says, adding that Chile’s disaster response community is worried about substance abuse and other forms of risk-taking among teens. To forestall problems, Osofsky recommends focusing on strengths and putting adolescents to work helping others and rebuilding their communities.
Use schools as resources. “Post-disaster, schools can be a means of helping children reclaim normalcy, routine and structure,” says Ryan P. Kilmer, PhD, a psychology professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and co-editor of “Helping Families and Communities Recover from Disaster: Lessons Learned from Hurricane Katrina and its Aftermath” (APA, 2010). Kilmer offers the example of an East Baton Rouge Parish elementary school that reopened in Katrina’s immediate aftermath and focused on meeting students’ emotional needs and families’ practical needs. The principal also sought to develop a sense of community with parents and have the school serve as a central source of information and resources. To that end, the school hired a full-time parent liaison, for example, who helped communicate with parents, held events for them and worked to increase their awareness of supports and services in the area. The school also capitalized on partnerships in the community to host informational and resource fairs to help families learn about academic and social services, as well as help available from federal agencies and others. The approach worked, says Kilmer. Although many students entered the school a grade or two behind, he says, they demonstrated significant gains. Many reached grade level academic functioning or better. “We have to make sure we don’t just attend to the three Rs,” he says. “Even in this time of high-stakes tests, the principal recognized the need to focus on kids’ psychological needs first.”
Be aware of ancillary consequences. Disasters can often set into motion a cascade of problems for children. One area that La Greca is exploring is how disasters affect children’s physical health. “We’re finding that children have much more sedentary behavior if they’ve been affected by a hurricane,” she says. “Neighborhoods may be unsafe because they’re full of debris, and children may have lost possessions like bikes and rollerskates that keep them active.” Stress related to a disaster and recovery can also cause conflict or tensions in parents’ relationships that can eventually lead to separation or divorce and interfere with children’s support systems, adds La Greca.
Be sensitive to cultural differences. Adapting interventions to specific cultural contexts is crucial, emphasizes Melissa J. Brymer, PhD, PsyD, director of terrorism and disaster programs at the National Center for Child Traumatic Stress at UCLA. Take American Samoa, where Brymer has been helping communities cope after the 2009 tsunami.
“Kids are struggling. Some of them lost a parent, some lost siblings, some lost homes,” says Brymer. Normally, psychologists and other mental health professionals would talk directly with the children, but that approach doesn’t work in American Samoa, where children aren’t supposed to speak in the presence of elders. Because of that cultural prohibition, says Brymer, counselors hoping to help kids must first introduce themselves to the village high chief, explain why their program is important and ask permission to meet with children separately. “That’s the only way the kids have the opportunity to talk,” says Brymer.
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APHA Endorses the World Health Organization’s Global Code of Practice on the International Recruitment of Health Personnel
Policy Date: 11/1/2011
Policy Number: 201117
Related PoliciesAPHA Policy Statement 2006-16: Ethical Restrictions on International Recruitment of Health Professionals to the United States[1]APHA Policy Statement 2008-9: Strengthening Health Systems in Developing Countries[2]APHA Policy Statement 2009-4: Ensuring the Achievement of the Millennium Development Goals: Strengthening US Efforts to Reduce Global Poverty and Promote Public Health[3] APHA Policy Statement 2005-3: Expenditure Ceilings Imposed on Poor Countries Must Be Lifted to Achieve the Millennium Development Goals[4] At the World Health Assembly meeting in 2010, international health leaders from 193 countries made history by adopting new guidelines to mitigate the negative effects associated with the health worker “brain drain” from developing countries.[5] All 193 World Health Organization (WHO) member states unanimously (through a consensus process) adopted the voluntary WHO Global Code of Practice on the International Recruitment of Health Personnel, which sets ethical principles for the international recruitment and migration of health workers. It is only the second time in the assembly’s history that nations have agreed to such an instrument.[6,7] The code is the culmination of a 6-year effort on the part of national governments, international organizations, and global health advocacy groups, including the Health Workforce Advocacy Initiative. The code acknowledges the right of health workers to migrate, as well as the right of all people to the highest attainable standard of health. It recognizes the responsibility of rich nations to meet their own internal demands for health workers without relying on other countries—most often poor nations—that can least afford to lose health workers.[8] The critical shortage of health workers in developing countries is staggering.[9] The nation’s capital, for instance, enjoys twice as many doctors as the entire country of Ethiopia.[10] Yet Washington, DC has a population of 600|000 compared with Ethiopia’s 80 million people. Active recruitment from developing countries systematically deprives entire populations of their right to health.[11] Low-income countries invest significant resources to train health workers, relying on tax dollars along with foreign assistance to support medical and nursing schools.[12] The loss of these investments equates to a form of reverse foreign aid that is simply contradictory.[13] History of the CodeThe code has been in development since 2004. The following items describe its development since that time.• 2004—WHO member states called on WHO’s director general to develop a code to address the negative impact of health worker migration.• 2008—WHO’s Executive Board requested that a draft of the code be presented at the 2009 board meeting.• 2009—In January, the first draft of the code was reviewed by the Executive Board; additional consultations and revisions were requested. In February, the Health Worker Migration Initiative Global Policy Advisory Council issued a recommendations report.• 2010—The Executive Board reviewed and approved latest draft for the 63rd World Health Assembly.In May, at the World Health Assembly, a drafting committee was formed to negotiate the final language of the Code of Practice. On May 21, after deliberation, the Code of Practice was submitted and unanimously adopted—only the second time in history.• 2011—WHO held a Web-based public hearing on draft guidelines for implementing the Code of Practice and called for all member states to identify their designated national authorities for code implementation by the end of June.Content of the CodeThe code calls on WHO’s director general to develop guidelines for a minimum data set each country should report. It further directs the director general to compile information on each country’s relevant laws and regulations at the national and international levels pertaining to health worker migration. In addition, the code asks the director general to develop suggestions for information exchange mechanisms. The director general must report to the 2013 World Health Assembly and make subsequent reports at least every 3 years. Member states are encouraged to—1. Establish a national authority on reporting (the WHO will maintain a registry of these national authorities);2. Establish national workforce migration research programs;3. Develop frameworks that strengthen health systems by mitigating the negative effects of migration;4. Ensure that recruiters and employers observe fair and just recruitment and contractual practices in the employment of migrant health personnel, including discouraging active recruitment from developing countries with critical health worker shortages;5. Recognize the right to the highest standard of health as well as the right to migrate;6. Promote fair labor standards for migrant health personnel while ensuring recruited health workers meet any binding obligations in their home countries;7. Develop sustainable ways for all nations to meet workforce needs;8. Promote circular migration;9. Develop bilateral agreements between sending and receiving countries. (Note that the group Realizing Rights has prepared sample bilateral agreements.)United States’ Responsibility in Global Health Worker Migration TrendsGiven that 1 in 4 physicians in the United States is trained abroad (64% of these in a lower-income country),[14] and that the proportion of foreign-educated nurses hit a high of 13% of newly licensed nurses in 2007,[15] the United States bears a special responsibility with regard to the recruitment of international health professionals. Workforce advocacy coalitions have produced 2 related ethical codes regarding health worker issues in low-income countries. Along with the new Code of Practice, these voluntary codes comprise a package of guidelines to ensure ethical global health practices with regard to human resources for health.• Voluntary Code of Ethical Conduct for the Recruitment of Foreign-Educated Nurses to the United States. (This code was developed by the Alliance for Ethical International Recruitment Practices,[16] a nonprofit organization working to ensure that recruitment of foreign-educated nurses to the United States is conducted in an ethical, responsible, and transparent way. This group monitors adherence to its code through surveys of migrant nurses. It is currently expanding its code to include other health care professionals.)• Nongovernment Organization (NGO) Code of Conduct for Health Systems Strengthening.[17,18] (This code was developed at University of Washington’s Health Alliance International, in conjunction with other progressive, international nonprofit health organizations.) Principals involved with these codes are also involved with the current effort to support the WHO Code of Practice. Some countries have already moved to curb their active recruitment practices. In 2007, Norway developed a “framework on global solidarity,” pledging to refrain from recruiting health workers from developing countries.[19] In 1999, the United Kingdom made a similar commitment.[20,21] Canada has significantly ramped up training programs to create less demand for foreign-trained health workers.[22] As an initial step, to comply with the code, countries must track health worker migration at national and global levels. Current US data systems are fragmented and privatized. The only national data source on physicians is proprietary—available for sale to researchers or marketers by the American Medical Association. Nurse licensure data are available only on a state-by-state basis.[23] It is anticipated 50.7 million uninsured Americans[24] will soon be eligible for care under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA). This new demand for services will make more evident the problem of uneven distribution of the US health workforce across urban and rural areas. In addition, the primary care workforce is too small. The US Council on Graduate Medical Education has predicted the United States will be short approximately 85|000 physicians by 2020.[25] The implementation of PPACA will increase demand for health workers of all types, highlighting the need to implement and monitor recruitment practices and to develop bilateral agreements with primary source countries. Further, current migration patterns threaten to undermine the nation’s own global health foreign aid and President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) investments, because the loss of health professionals from high-poverty countries threatens the success of our initiatives to strengthen health systems. Calls to increase the sizes of medical school and nursing school classes have gone largely answered; to do so requires costly investment in higher education. We do, however, have programs that could be expanded to address US workforce problems, such as the National Health Service Corps and state loan repayment programs. In addition, federal legislation and programs (such as PEPFAR, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Medical Education Partnership Initiative) offer opportunities to address US workforce problems while strengthening medical education in low-income countries. In 2010, the United States, along with 192 nations, supported WHO’s Global Code of Practice on the International Recruitment of Health Personnel. Now the United States must show strong leadership by acting decisively to effectively implement the Code of Practice. The Way ForwardEfforts are currently under way by the WHO Health Worker Migration Initiative and other groups to ensure the effective implementation of the Code of Practice by individual member states and nonstate groups. Discussions are currently being held to determine which indicators should be used and what systems will be needed to support various elements of the Code of Practices—in both developed and developing nations. Article 7 (Information Exchange), for instance, calls for data reporting of “laws and regulations related to health personnel recruitment and migrations” to be submitted to WHO every 3 years, with an initial report due 2 years after the code’s adoption. Several organizations in the United States have written a collaborative letter (dated September 10, 2010) to the US secretary of health and US secretary of state, stating We the undersigned, wish to applaud the Administration’s support of the World Health Organization’s new Code of Practice on the International Recruitment of Health Personnel, which, after six years of discussions and preliminary drafts, was adopted by the World Health Assembly in Geneva on May 21, 2010. As organizations and individuals with a longstanding interest in this area, we are enthusiastic about supporting the Administration as it considers ways to encourage compliance with the Code. … The undersigned organizations and individuals have a long-standing interest in the ethical implications of the U.S. reliance on foreign educated health professionals. We stand ready to assist the national authority designated by the U.S. government for purposes of implementing the WHO Code of Practice on the International Recruitment of Health Personnel.[26]Action StepsThe American Public Health Association, in supporting the Code of Practice on the International Recruitment of Health Personnel, urges the US secretary of health and human services and US secretary of state to work together in the following ways:1. Appoint leadership. Designate key people who will meet to draft a list of eligible “national authority” agencies and work with other stakeholders to sketch out how the lead agency and supporting task force members might be designated and work together.2. Assemble a task force. Assemble a task force to identify the data required to make good-faith reports to WHO within the next 1 to 2 years. This task force would examine existing data sources to identify, coordinate, open, link, and report information, and identify new data sources.3. Create a research program. Fund a research program to examine the intersections between domestic and international workforce production, recruitment, deployment, and retention.4. Set a policy agenda. Invite the national authority task force to recommend modifications to US policy that arise from the WHO Code, such as our heavy reliance on foreign-trained physicians and nurses, the need to expand our own domestic production of health workers, and the need to better distribute the workforce we currently have.Discussion of Opposing ArgumentsThere are those who believe the US health system is in need of health workers trained abroad, and that in a world of free trade, under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, health workers have the right to seek jobs abroad and US private sector health employers are under no obligation to consider the right to health in developing countries.These arguments have been well rebutted, however. Health professionals from low-income countries with a tertiary education have been prepared for professional service by 15 to 20 years of education. Their emigration takes with them the expensive training afforded them by the institutions and governments of their home countries. Those investments are made, in part, to improve the living conditions of the collective citizenry of the country. Educational investments are afforded by a collective contribution of taxes and donations by all (or many) of a state’s citizens. Public school tuition almost never pays anything approaching the full cost of a public university education in any country. In the United States, the primary policy vehicle for luring foreign-trained physicians is the Medicare subsidy on residency training positions by establishing substantially more residency positions available than the number of US medical school graduates each year.[27] This arrangement is tolerated by all, including physician guild interests, because it is widely understood that international medical graduates in their residency training years are employed in America’s large urban hospitals, where acute care and long-delayed attention to chronic conditions are meted out to America’s poor and uninsured populations. Indeed, the top states that import African physicians are New York, California, Texas, Maryland, and Illinois—all states with big inner-city hospitals.[14]The United States could also address the factors of low pay and poor working conditions for doctors and nurses in low-income countries. In part, this could be done by reversing the externally imposed public spending austerity programs of the international monetary institutions that the United States leads or controls. APHA has called for that policy change in policy 2005-3, “Expenditure Ceilings Imposed on Poor Countries Must Be Lifted to Achieve the Millennium Development Goals.”[4] These International Monetary Fund and World Bank policies of market fundamentalism have restricted the amount of public spending allowable in highly indebted poor countries, especially for health care and education, to increase their capacity to repay significant debts.[28] Reversing these policies could free resources to rapidly increase the pay rates of health care providers and improve working conditions.The United States has long profited from the fruits of the reverse foreign aid by avoiding the cost burden of training its own physicians, or the political burden of better controlling the distribution of those physicians.Despite Immanuel Kant’s groundbreaking ethical assertion in 1784 that common ownership of the earth entitles world citizens the right to free movement, it would be ideal if the majority of people were content in their own countries so that few would migrate during their high-productivity years.[29] Liberal democratic states that confront big immigration pressures would do best if they adopted policies that addressed the underlying conditions of poverty, unemployment, working conditions, pay structures, natural disasters, disease, war, and repression that create much of the desire for migration. Despite its idealistic ring, if wealthy countries adopted that approach (coupled with a commitment to invest in the medical education of their own citizenry[30]) it might actually be the most efficient and practical policy in the long run.[13] References1. American Public Health Association. APHA Policy Statement 2006-16: Ethical Restrictions on International Recruitment of Health Professionals to the United States. 2006. Available at: http://www.apha.org/advocacy/policy/policysearch/default.htm?id=1340. Accessed November 29, 2011.2. American Public Health Association. APHA Policy Statement 2008-9: Strengthening Health Systems in Developing Countries. 2008. Available at: http://www.apha.org/advocacy/policy/policysearch/default.htm?id=1375. Accessed November 29, 2011.3. American Public Health Association. APHA Policy Statement 2009-4: Ensuring the Achievement of the Millennium Development Goals: Strengthening US Efforts to Reduce Global Poverty and Promote Public Health. 2009. Available at: http://www.apha.org/advocacy/policy/policysearch/default.htm?id=1388. Accessed November 29, 2011.4. American Public Health Association. APHA Policy Statement 2005-3: Expenditure Ceilings Imposed on Poor Countries Must Be Lifted to Achieve the Millennium Development Goals. Available at: http://www.apha.org/advocacy/policy/policysearch/default.htm?id=1308. Accessed November 30, 2011.5. World Health Organization. WHO Global Code of Practice on the International Recruitment of Health Personnel. World Health Assembly, May 21, 2010. Available at: http://www.who.int/hrh/migration/code/full_text/en/index.html. Accessed November 29, 2011.6. Global Health Workforce Alliance. Sixty-third World Health Assembly unanimously adopts the WHO global code of practice on the international recruitment of health personnel. Alliance members and partners applaud Member States. May 24, 2010. Available at: http://www.who.int/workforcealliance/media/news/2010/codestatementwha/en/index.html. Accessed November 29, 2010.7. Medicus Mundi International Network. Code of Practice on International Recruitment of Health Personnel Adopted by World Health Assembly. Available at: http://www.medicusmundi.org/en/contributions/news/2010/code-of-practice-on-international-recruitment-of-health-personnel-adopted-by-world-health-assembly. Accessed November 29, 2010.8. Mills EJ, Schabas WA, Volmink J, et al. Should active recruitment of health workers from sub-Saharan Africa be viewed as a crime? Lancet. 2008;371(9613):685–688. 9. World Health Organization. 2006 World Health Report, Working Together for Health. Geneva, Switzerland: World Health Organization; 2006.10. Mullan F. The metrics of the physician brain drain. N Engl J Med. 2005;353:1810–1818.11. Friedman E. An Action Plan to Prevent Brain Drain: Building Equitable Health Systems in Africa. Cambridge, MA: Physicians for Human Rights; 2004.12. Hagopian A, Ofosu A, Fatusi A, et al. The flight of physicians from West Africa: views of African physicians and implications for policy. Soc Sci Med. 2005;61(8):1750–1760.13. Hagopian A. Recruiting primary care physicians from abroad: is poaching from low-income countries morally defensible? Ann Fam Med. 2007;5:483–485.14. Hagopian A, Thompson MJ, Fordyce M, Johnson KE, Hart LG. The migration of physicians from sub-Saharan Africa to the United States of America: measures of the African brain drain. Hum Resour Health. 2004;2(1):17.15. Pittman P, Aiken LH, Buchan J. International migration of nurses: introduction. Health Serv Res. 2007;42(3 pt 2):1275–1280.16. Alliance for Ethical International Recruitment Practices. Voluntary Code of Ethical Conduct for the Recruitment of Foreign-Educated Nurses to the United States. Available at: http://www.fairinternationalrecruitment.org/images/uploads/THE%20CODE.pdf. Accessed November 29, 2010.17. NGO Code of Conduct for Health Systems Strengthening Initiative. Non-governmental Organization (NGO) Code of Conduct for Health Systems Strengthening. Available at: http://ngocodeofconduct.org. Accessed November 29, 2010.18. Pfeiffer J, Johnson W, Fort M. Strengthening health systems in poor countries: a code of conduct for nongovernmental organizations. Am J Public Health. 2008;98(12):2134–2140.19. World Health Organization. Address by Jens Stoltenberg, Prime Minister of Norway. May 15, 2007. Available at: http://www.who.int/mediacentre/events/2007/wha60/stoltenberg/en/index.html. Accessed November 29, 2010.20. Batata A. International nurse recruitment and NHS vacancies: a cross-sectional analysis. Global Health. 2005;1:7.21. Buchan J. International recruitment of nurses: policy and practice in the United Kingdom. Health Serv Res. 2007;42(3 pt 2):1321–1335. 22. Labonté R, Packer C, Klassen N. Managing health professional migration from sub-Saharan Africa to Canada: a stakeholder inquiry into policy options. Hum Resour Health. 2006;4:22.23. Diallo K. Data on the migration of health-care workers: sources, uses, and challenges. Bull World Health Organ. 2004;82(8):601–607.24. US Census. Income, poverty and health insurance coverage in the United States: 2009. Report issued September 16, 2010. Available at: http://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/income_wealth/cb10-144.html. Accessed November 29, 2010.25. Council on Graduate Medical Education. Physician Workforce Policy Guidelines for the United States, 2000–2020. 16th Report. Washington, DC: US Dept of Health and Human Services; 2005. Available at: http://www.cogme.gov/16.pdf. Accessed November 29, 2010.26. Community of Interest on the Code of Practice on the International Recruitment of Health Personnel. Letter to the US Secretary of Health and Human Services and US Secretary of State. September 10, 2010. Available at: http://ngocodeofconduct.org/wp-content/uploads/codeofpractice_sign-onletter10sept10.pdf. Accessed January 1, 2011.27. Brotherton SE, Etzel SI. Graduate medical education, 2005–2006. JAMA. 2006;296(9):1154–1169.28. Kim JY, Irwin A, Millen JV, Gershman J. Dying for Growth: Global Inequality and the Health of the Poor. Cambridge, MA: Common Courage Press; 2000.29. Baubock R. Ethical problems of immigration control and citizenship. In: Cohen R, ed. The Cambridge Survey of World Migration. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press; 1995:551–556.30. Mullan F. Doctors and soccer players—African professionals on the move. N Engl J Med. 2007;356(5):440–443. |