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UPDATE 1-U.S. fiscal cliff, Europe's debt woes worry G20
* US budget uncertainty looms large over Mexico meeting
* Ministers to discuss global debt, financial regulation
* Talks precede US election, China Communist Party congress
MEXICO CITY, Nov 4 (Reuters) - Finance chiefs of the world's leading economies are ringing alarm bells over the U.S. fiscal cliff and Europe's debt woes at a meeting in Mexico this weekend as they look to push back deficit reduction targets to help boost growth. Unless a fractious U.S. Congress can reach a deal, about $600 billion in government spending cuts and higher taxes are set to kick in on Jan. 1, threatening to push the American economy back into recession and hit world growth. But with the U.S. presidential election looming on Tuesday, dealing with the fiscal cliff has been delayed. ``The Americans themselves acknowledge that this is a problem,'' a G20 official said on condition of anonymity. ``The U.S. administration says it doesn't want to fall off the fiscal cliff, but right now it can't tell us how exactly it will address it because that issue is on ice ahead of the election.'' Tax cuts, including those enacted under President George W. Bush, are set to expire in January, when automatic spending cuts designed to put pressure on lawmakers to strike a long-term budget deal are also set to kick in. ``What remains a sort of key aspect is that the United States is not respecting the current commitments (to reduce its deficits) and does not have a credible fiscal consolidation plan,'' one European official said. Germany has come to the meeting calling on the United States and Japan to shoulder with Europe responsibility for ensuring global economic stability. ``The United States and Japan bear as great a responsibility for (ensuring stability) as we Europeans,'' German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble told Reuters ahead of the meeting.
The U.S. Congress will also soon have to raise the nation's debt limit to avoid a default. Policy makers are scrambling to stem a new global slowdown as the economy is still limping after the 2008/9 financial crisis. An initial consensus around the need for urgent action to prevent a new depression has given way to deep differences over issues such as spending to boost growth and the right pace of belt-tightening to tackle high debt levels. The International Monetary Fund last month cut its forecast for global growth to 3.6 percent for 2013, citing ``familiar'' forces dragging on advanced economies: fiscal consolidation and a weak financial system. Even Germany, which powered through the first two years of the euro zone debt crisis, has cut its growth forecast to just 1 percent for next year and countries such as Spain and Italy are already back in recession. Jose Angel Gurria, head of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, said on Saturday the G20 should appeal to the United States to avoid the` fiscal cliff, but added he was optimistic that Congress would strike a deal. ``I still believe it is not going to be applied,'' Gurria said in an interview before the meeting of G20 finance chiefs, which formally starts on Sunday. Officials are also concerned about Japan's own version of the fiscal cliff, a crippling funding shortfall just as it risks sliding into recession, and recognize that previous commitments made by developed countries to cut their budget deficits in half U.S. and European officials are also likely to come under pressure from G20 peers for dragging their feet on implementing the so-called Basel III accords on financial regulations, the world's response to the 2007-09 financial crisis. Countries who fail to introduce the rules, which are aimed at safeguarding the global banking system from another financial crisis, could face sanctions, a senior Mexican finance official said. Despite the issue's prominence, a G20 source said Russia wants to keep financial regulation discussions at a more technical level when it takes over the presidency of the group from Mexico after this meeting, which ends on Monday, possibly pushing the issue onto the back burner. With several heavyweights like U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner - who is expected to stand down soon after the U.S. elections on Tuesday - European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi and top Chinese officials skipping the meeting, few expect any major agreements. Spain's reluctance to seek financial aid is stoking worries that Europe's debt crisis could further hurt world growth. The government is under pressure to seek a bailout as it struggles to cope with high public debt and the cost of recapitalizing its banks. Euro zone sources say they expect Spain to seek financial aid from the euro zone in November. A government source told Reuters on Wednesday that Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy had not ruled out applying for a rescue, but Rajoy has signaled he will not rush unless market conditions deteriorate significantly. | <urn:uuid:225e24b7-1dd1-415a-9cc3-55dffc81d339> | 2 | 1.679688 | 0.023784 | en | 0.953829 | http://www.cnbc.com/id/100085227 |
At IDF Shanghai, Intel's vision of chips
In addition to processor-centric topics, Intel will use its developer forum in China to push its notion of a connection nirvana.
While the marquee processor theme at IDF Shanghai is "milliwatts to petaflops," Intel is also set to offer a vision of universal connectivity.
The main theme for the event, which starts Wednesday, Beijing time, refers to "very, very big to very, very small and low power," according to Pat Gelsinger, senior vice president and co-general manager of Intel's digital enterprise group, speaking in a video.
(See: Intel rolls out five new Atom processors .)
"Milliwatts" refers to chips such as Atom, a tiny low-power, low-cost processor destined for ultramobile devices and low-cost desktops typically running either Linux or Windows XP. The first Atom chips will launch in June.
"Petaflops" refers to high-performance computing--what used to be called supercomputing. ("Peta" is quadrillion, or a thousand trillion; "flop" is floating-point operation.) Intel is targeting petaflop supercomputers that would compete with the fastest supercomputer in the world: IBM's Blue Gene/P machines.
Though more technology and product details will certainly emerge in the next two days in Shanghai, the main chip themes are already out there. Gelsinger spelled them out at briefing earlier this month.
Intel Dunnington processor
The specs for Intel's Dunnington processor Intel
The chip buzzwords are: Tukwila, a new quad-core chip with 2 billion transistors, a whopping 30MB of cache, and a new interconnect technology called QuickPath; Dunnington, a six-core chip for multiprocessor computers that can support four or more processors (in this case, each with six cores); Nehalem, a follow-on to the current "Penryn" processors, it is a new 45-nanometer chip microarchitecture due in the fourth quarter that scales up to eight cores; and Larrabee, a visual-computing architecture that uses many cores ("many" usually means many more than a typical quad-core computer).
In addition to Atom, the processor spotlight will likely fall on Nehalem and Larrabee. Nehalem is a relatively known quantity; Larrabee, a relatively unknown quantity. So interest should focus on the latter.
Nehalem boasts increased parallelism, better branch prediction (to move instructions more quickly through the instruction pipeline), and an on-chip memory controller for increased memory performance--what Intel calls "memory latency reduction." Something, by the way, Advanced Micro Devices already has in its chips.
Larrabee is a graphics processor scheduled for the 2009-2010 time frame. It will include a new vector instruction set to improve the performance of graphics and video applications. Larrabee will be compatible with Intel's popular x86 instruction set, theoretically making life easier for software developers.
On another front, Intel is evangelizing universal connectivity, always a problematic proposition, simply because it invariably promises more (sometimes much more) than it can deliver. Intel puts it this way: "Imagine a day when a single device small enough to fit in your pocket...knows your tendencies and preferences and can adapt and optimize its interfaces to match what you are doing at any point any time...Imagine a day when this device...can dynamically become a hybrid combination of other computing and multimedia devices in close proximity." You get the picture. Intel calls this "Carry Small, Live Large."
On a slightly more practical level, the Cliffside technology is being demonstrated from the Mobile Products Group; it enables a single Wi-Fi adapter to function like two independent Wi-Fi adapters. The hope is that this technology could sync your MP3 and video files without a USB cable, directly and wirelessly connecting your notebook to your TV to view HD movies. More here.
There is also a demonstration of wireless device discovery and setup. This demonstration shows how to detect and connect to nearby wireless displays, using the familiar FnF7 (Function F7 key combination).
Click here for more stories on IDF Shanghai.
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The 10 Biggest Data Center Stories Of 2013
When is a server a server? When someone says it is. The very definition of what a server is changed significantly in 2013. No longer merely computing devices with a processor, memory, storage, etc., in an enclosure that provide files or servers to other computers, servers now include:
-- Converged devices that, in addition to doing what a server does, also perform storage and networking operations. Examples include the Dell VRTX and the SimpliVity OmniCube.
* Cartridges, like the HP Moonshot modules based on Atom, ARM, and Opteron processors.
* Microservers, which take all sorts of liberties with server form factors.
* Servers built to the Open Compute Project specifications originally proposed by Facebook for servers that can be ordered by the container-load and tossed rather than repaired if there are any problems.
| <urn:uuid:f033082b-356b-443c-bba0-468609885ce5> | 3 | 2.953125 | 0.034197 | en | 0.920568 | http://www.crn.com/slide-shows/data-center/240164777/the-10-biggest-data-center-stories-of-2013.htm/pgno/0/4?pgno=2 |
Klebsiella pneumoniae (Source:
Source: International Business Times
Comments Threshold
RE: Mother nature fights back
By geddarkstorm on 11/18/2011 1:20:35 PM , Rating: 2
Thankfully it isn't all bleak. We are always several steps ahead with our drug developments. And despite this article, there are more types of antibiotics than carbapenems or beta-lactams (penicillin family). Additionally, most types of antibiotic resistance (for instance, resistance against streptomycin), actually weaken the bacteria when in a non-antibiotic environment (streptomycin resistant bacteria have a much lower production speed of proteins than non, making them grow slower and compete less). So, out in nature, resistance is very low in the population--it's just in hospitals and cities where antibiotics are being misused everywhere that the frequency of resistance is being greatly increased due to the constant selective pressure we are imposing, without giving a breather for the non resistant bacteria to come back and take over the population.
In short, if we stop using a type of antibiotic for awhile, bacteria become resensitized to it. Now, this isn't always or completely true (I'm looking at you tuberculosis), but it does come to our aid.
None the less, if we didn't misuse antibiotics, we wouldn't be selecting for these superbugs (at least not at this rate) in the first place. We really need, as a world, to address this issue before we do start falling behind...
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| <urn:uuid:40a73762-7b4b-4bdc-8993-063ea85d0af5> | 2 | 2.28125 | 0.414314 | en | 0.937069 | http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=23317&commentid=732108&threshhold=1&red=396 |
Bridge Circuit Measurements
What are the differences among full bridge, half-bridge, quarter bridge circuits and voltage or current excitation of these Wheatstone bridge circuits?
There's enough difference to present you with a six (6) page detailed application note! Please enjoy the read.
The following link takes you to Dataforth's newest application note AN117, "Basic Bridge Circuits". This app note explores many of the mathematical relationships among the various topologies of bridge circuits and provides you with enough background information to prepare for the next Dataforth Application Note on Strain Gage measurements.
Dataforth Application Note AN117 - Basic Bridge Circuits (404kb pdf)
| <urn:uuid:2ced9665-c511-47e5-a59d-284482c8ff4a> | 2 | 2.171875 | 0.154338 | en | 0.844927 | http://www.dataforth.com/document.view.aspx?doc_id=1412 |
United States Department of Defense United States Department of Defense
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War and Transformation: The U.S. Military's Story
By Jim Garamone
American Forces Press Service
WASHINGTON, Feb. 14, 2003 – Transformation of the U.S. armed forces is at the heart of the president's fiscal 2004 defense budget request. Yet at the same time, America must fight a global war on terrorism.
Many pundits question whether the United States military can do both at once. They argue that resources used to transform the military are best used fighting the war.
But history shows they are wrong: The United States military has had long experience in transforming the military at the same time fighting a war.
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Air Force Gen. Richard Myers said during a January briefing that not only should transformation continue as the United States fights the war on terror, "but it's absolutely imperative that we do this."
Myers pointed out that the U.S. military has done this in the past. "We did the same thing in World War II; we transformed while we were fighting a global war," the chairman said.
The World War II example is illustrative. Gen. George C. Marshall became the Army's chief of staff on Sept. 1, 1939 the day Nazi Germany invaded Poland. Under his command he had roughly 227,000 soldiers but only enough equipment to arm 75,000.
Further, the Nazi Blitzkrieg exposed shortcomings in strategy, tactics and doctrine that made obsolete much of what the U.S. military thought.
And it wasn't just the Army. The Navy had been wed to the idea that battleships would be the decisive factor in any war in the Pacific. The Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, and the sinking of the British battleships Prince of Wales and Repulse on Dec. 10 put that idea to rest.
So the American military in World War II had to not only grow in size, but change in thinking. The Army and the Army Air Forces had to devise ways to fight together. The Navy had to devise battle plans around aircraft carriers, because military planners had taken notice of Japan's effectiveness with these platforms. And the Army and Marine Corps worked with the idea of amphibious warfare on a grand scale.
By 1945, the Army and Army Air Forces had 10 million soldiers. It was, without a doubt, the best fighting force on Earth. The U.S. Navy dwarfed all other navies in the world. The services had indeed fought a global war and transformed themselves at the same time.
World War II was not the only instance of this transformation. The American Civil War was an example of what happens when technology changes, but thinking does not.
Union and Confederate soldiers were armed with rifled muskets. That, plus advances in artillery, made a frontal attack suicidal. Yet military thinking was based on Napoleonic era tactics where soldiers were armed with unrifled muskets that were complicated to load and not very accurate the effective range was about 50 meters. The tactics then were to march shoulder- to-shoulder to within 50 to 75 meters, fire two or three massed rounds, then charge with the bayonet.
In 1860, a trained soldier using a rifled musket could fire three aimed rounds per minute. These weapons were far more accurate and the killing distance was increased to about 300 meters. Add in the destruction that 1860-era artillery could inflict and one has to wonder how any frontal attack ever succeeded.
Yet the Napoleonic tactics remained intact: March shoulder-to-shoulder, then charge.
The enlisted men saw the futility of these tactics before the generals did. By the mid-point of the war, the battalion fronts had expanded to where there was more space between soldiers. They also saw the necessity of earthworks and, if ordered into an area, would dig what a later generation called foxholes and expand those into trenches. Yet in 1864, long after the futility of these attacks was apparent, Union Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant ordered a Napoleonic charge at Cold Harbor, Va., as did Union Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman at Kenesaw Mountain, Ga., and Confederate Lt. Gen. John Bell Hood at Franklin, Tenn.
The change in thinking was tough to overcome. On the equipment side, the Union could have outfitted its troops with breach-loading repeating rifles early in the war. Senior officers ignored this advantage.
But still the U.S. military fought a major war and transformed at the same time. The Union Army grew from a small frontier-based fighting force to the best on Earth by 1865. The riverine wars on the Mississippi and operations on the South's seacoast forced the Union's Army and Navy to cooperate in ways no other nation on the globe could duplicate.
But perhaps the most impressive example of transformation while fighting a war occurred during the Revolutionary War. When the Continental Congress formed the Army in 1775, Gen. George Washington took over a motley band of militiamen and then proceeded to challenge the greatest empire in the world. Great Britain's army was well-equipped, well-trained and well- led. The Continental Army was truly, in the words of then-British Prime Minister Lord North, a "rabble in arms." Washington had to train the men, arm them and build the whole logistics base while fighting a war.
It was further complicated by the fact that a sizable American minority was still loyal to the crown. This was transformation by necessity, and the fact that Washington succeeded is a testament to his qualities as a leader and manager.
And today the military is transforming once again. "We came into this century not particularly well-prepared for the security environment that we found ourselves in," said Myers. "We kind of knew that; September 11th told us for sure we knew that, and that there was a sense of urgency that we had not had before regarding that."
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has made military transformation a priority. "Current and future enemies will seek to strike the United States and U.S. forces in novel and surprising ways," Rumsfeld said in a report on the issue. "Now is precisely the time to make changes. The attacks on Sept. 11 lent urgency to this endeavor."
The secretary has six overall transformation areas that the military must address:
• Protect the U.S. homeland and defeat weapons of mass destruction and their means of delivery;
• Project and sustain power in distant environments;
• Deny enemies sanctuary by developing capabilities for persistent surveillance, tracking and rapid engagement;
• Leverage information technology to link up joint forces;
• Protect information systems from attack; and
• Maintain unhindered access to space and protect U.S. space capabilities from enemy attack.
On this two-pronged approach of fighting the global war on terrorism and transforming at the same time, Myers said, "Nobody said it's going to be easy, but that's what we've got to do.".
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Friday of the Seventh Week in Ordinary Time
(Click here for readings)
Jesus came into the district of Judea and across the Jordan. Again crowds gathered around him and, as was his custom, he again taught them. The Pharisees approached him and asked, “Is it lawful for a husband to write a bill of divorce and dismiss her.”
The War On Women. It began long before last year’s Presidential race, and it has branched out to include the unborn, marriage and feminine dignity. The war on women actually began soon after the fall, when man began to look at a woman in an entirely new and selfish way.
Moses permitted a husband to write a bill of divorce and dismiss her. But Jesus told them, “Because of the hardness of your hearts he wrote you this commandment. But from the beginning of creation, God made them male and female…equal, yet distinct.
Christ’s words must have created a mini earthquake in the minds of his male listeners, including His disciples. But in one sentence, the Lord just tipped the balance of power away from men. Good for Him!
Sacrifice and love. Selfishness and selflessness look similar from the outside. There appears to be an imbalance of sorts. But where selfishness is self-centered and self-serving, selflessness is self-emptying and self-giving. Another name for selflessness is love, and what makes love possible is sacrifice.
Love and Sacrifice go hand-in-hand, like Christ on the Cross. They are nailed together and were meant to stay together until death do us part.
Love is Sacrifice’s skin. It makes ugly things look beautiful and attractive.
A few weeks ago I celebrated a funeral Mass for an elderly woman. She was 89-years-old and was married for over 50 years. She had six children and 20 grandchildren. As I read her obituary I wasn’t particularly impressed; that is, there was nothing that really caught my attention. But then I meet her children and grandchildren and was deeply moved. They were all in tears, visibly shaken and visibly sad. They loved their mom and grandmother very much. But why? What did she do?
Well, for years she worked in dirty places: fields, factories, etc… And even though she came home filthy every night, she just shined in the eyes of her children. From an early age they understood she was doing it all for them. And when the grandchildren had their sports events, it was grandma who was sitting there: smiling, cheering and clapping. And the grandchildren just loved it.
What were the Apostles thinking about when they saw Jesus nailed to that cross, or when his torn body came down from the Cross? What did they think? “How ugly?” “How gross?” “How disturbing?” No, not at all. I’m sure they were thinking: “How beautiful!” “How incredible! “How inspiring!” Why??? Because they knew what He was saying as he died on that Cross: “YOU’RE WORTH IT…You’re worth every bit of this pain.”
They understood this because they had spent time with Him. (0)
Fr. Alfonse (876 Posts) | <urn:uuid:84449c7f-f5ba-4913-943b-227f43898926> | 2 | 1.890625 | 0.027414 | en | 0.959136 | http://www.dfwcatholic.org/mk-101-12-ugly-and-beautiful-96146/.html |
That section of the act currently says:
Hate messages
2001, c. 41, s. 88.
While I recognize that there are different points of view on this, I believe we should not invoke the Streisand effect and draw attention to (and thus promote) hateful speech by trying to censor it. I'm not sure if this section came into effect in 1985, but it clearly pre-dates modern communications technology such as the Internet and is extremely counter productive.
Trust me when I say that I am not a supporter of hate speech, or of the political views of those who spread such speech. As someone in a mixed marriage I am the type of person that these types of folks love to hate. I just believe that these laws, and the people who may have been abusing them, are very counter-productive to the cause of protecting us from harm.
I hope that after the government cleans up this antiquated aspect of our Human Rights Act that they will get to work with the provinces to clean up defamation law which is similarly outdated. As a politically active person online for decades I have received threats from lawyers for speech that is no more harsh than the language we see in Question Period in the house of commons every sitting day, or in any political news show. We need to take this weapon away from people who will abuse it to stifle legitimate political speech. | <urn:uuid:b262a7e0-3181-442f-a0d2-5ea4424639d6> | 2 | 1.570313 | 0.020859 | en | 0.96043 | http://www.digital-copyright.ca/node/5425 |
DIY Network
Building a Birdhouse
Learn how to create a birdhouse using recycled pine boards from an old barn with a rustic look, and practically no expense.
More in Decorating
Making a birdhouse is a perfect project for a beginner; it can be built from recycled lumber and the construction doesn't have to be exact.
Materials and Tools:
recycled or scrap lumber, cut to size
hammer and nails, or air-powered nail gun
cordless drill with screwdriver attachment
wood screws
In this project, a board was used for the back that was about 18"in length. Two shorter boards are cut at an angle so that the roof will angle downward allowing rainwater to drain off.
Two identically cut side-pieces are attached to the back board using an air-powered nail gun. The board can also be attached using a hammer and nails. Three nails are used to attach each of the two side-pieces.
After attaching the two sides, use the same technique to attach the bottom using two nails to secure each side to the bottom piece.
With the back, sides and bottom all attached, next install the roof. The roof piece should be slightly wider than the body of the birdhouse to offer adequate protection against rain. Attach the roof to the slanted side-pieces using two nails per side.
The final element for the birdhouse is the front with the circular entry door. The size of the circular door is important. An opening of 1-1/2"in diameter is large enough for bluebirds, finches and other smaller songbirds, while being small enough to keep starlings from entering or nesting in the box.
Install the front board using only two screws connecting it to the sides of the structure, near the top. This will allow the front to be flipped open for cleaning out the birdhouse between nesting seasons. Drill pilot holes in each of the sides -- each at the same height.
Install a single screw in each of the two pilot holes, resulting in a "hinged" front that can swing open for cleaning.
Finally, install a single securing nail at the bottom of one side extending into the swinging door. Attach the nail loosely in a pre-drilled hole to serve as a latch to keep the front piece secure while it's closed.
Safety Alert: Power tools should never be used by young woodworkers except with close adult supervision.
Safety Alert: Always wear safety glasses to protect your eyes when working with wood and with power tools.
Note:Except for the diameter of the entry hole, the dimensions for a birdhouse are not critical. Some of the dimensions for the boards used in this project but you won't necessarily need to follow these dimensions exactly.
Q:Can you stain a fiberglass door to look like a wood one?
A: Yes, but you have to be sure you're using the right kind of stain. Regular thin-bodied stain won't stick to the surface; instead, you should use a thick-bodied gel stain that's made especially to go on fiberglass. It works especially well on fiberglass that has been textured to look like wood.
Q: How do you seal particleboard to make it waterproof?
A: All you need to do is brush on a thin coat of polyurethane (a mixture of 30 percent mineral spirits and 70 percent polyurethane). It's a good idea to seal particleboard because the glues that are used to make it can seep out and create unhealthy fumes.
Q: How can I remove mildew and moss from my wooden roof?
A: Carefully! Remember: A roof can be a slippery place to work. A power-washer is a good tool to use for a job like this; if the roof slopes, start at the top and work your way down. And use bleach only if all the plants around the house are covered to protect them. | <urn:uuid:06b73590-9abe-47a0-b25f-b9eb62eca1f6> | 3 | 2.875 | 0.03411 | en | 0.937809 | http://www.diynetwork.com/decorating/building-a-birdhouse/index.html |
Monitor brightness and printing?
Started Nov 18, 2012 | Discussions thread
C Spyr
Forum MemberPosts: 65Gear list
Re: You are confusing 'luminance' and 'brightness'
In reply to PicOne, Nov 27, 2012
Calibrate your monitor to the luminance level that matches your prints. For some, it's 120 cd/m^2. For others, it's 100. For you, it's 107. For me, it's 97.
In theory, what you're suggesting is that there is ONE setting for luminance that would be correct for a given model of inkjet printer.
No, this is where the intensity of the light under which you evaluate your prints comes into play. If the luminance of your monitor is set very high and the light under which you view your prints is rather dim, your prints will always look too dark; a common discussion topic on this and other forums. In an ideal situation, monitor luminance should be set to a level at which a white canvas (e.g. in Photoshop) has the same perceived brightness as an unprinted sheet of paper under the light your viewing it. Described in detail in this excellent article:
But, doesn't one's eyes adjust to whatever luminance has been set. I suppose an experiment would be to stare/work on an image at eg. 140 cd/m. Walk away. Some 'gremlin' resets the luminance to 120 cd/m. Stare/work on this same image for a while.. don't your eyes/brain accommodate this change (physically with pupil dilation and mentally)?
Your visual system will adapt, but only partially. I tried different luminance levels on my monitor and there's a difference in how you edit (exspecially the shadows). You can try it yourself: edit a picture (not a high key one) so that it looks right at a certain luminance level, then print it. Do something else for a while, then calibrate your monitor to a markedly lower luminance level and start over with the editing. Then print it again. Shadows will look different, maybe even the overall brightness of the picture.
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Christian Spyr
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Getting Started with the Cloud: Amazon Web Services
Provisioning an EC2 Instance
EC2 images are bare bones propositions, so you have to provision them — that is, install whatever software you want running on them. Thus, you'll need to log into the EC2 images via SSH. And to do so, you'll need an EC2 private key pair created before you fire up an image. The easiest way to get the keys is to create them via the AWS management console.
For example, once you've signed into the AWS Management console, select the EC2 tab. From there, you should see a Key Pairs link in the left-hand navigation bar, as shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1.
If you click the Key Pairs link, you will be presented with a view containing a button labeled Create Key Pair, which if you click, will allow you to name a key pair and consequently download it. Alternatively, you can also create a key pair using AWS's command-line tools. Configuring these tools is fairly simple, provided you're comfortable with the command line and altering your path. Once you've installed these tools, you can create a key pair effortlessly; like so:
$>ec2-create-keypair my_new_keypair
This script will output an RSA private key, which you'll need to copy and paste into a file — in this case, I'd call the file "my_new_keypair.pem"; don't forget to run chmod 600 on the file, so that it is indeed kept private.
Next, you'll need to create a security policy for your running image. In EC2 terms, this means specifying what ports are open to traffic. For the purposes of this article, I'll be enabling SSH and HTTP/HTTPS. If you need other services, like FTP or non-standard ports for HTTP (like 8080) open to the outside world, you'll need to explicitly enable those ports.
To define a security group, click the Security Groups link in the left-hand navigation bar of the EC2 tab. As with key pairs, there will be a button labeled Create Security Group, as in Figure 2.
Figure 2.
Click it and you'll be asked to name your security group; what's more, you can then create rules for inbound traffic.
Security group rules are a bit confusing at first, but they are simple to define. For instance, a source of means from any outside request, which is probably what you want for now. You can see though that you can fine tune your security policies using this scheme (Figure 3).
Figure 3.
Once you've defined a security policy and created a private key pair, you are ready to fire up an EC2 AMI in one of two ways. You can programmatically fire one up or you can start an EC2 AMI via the AWS management console.
As I mentioned earlier, there are several languages to choose from when it comes to programmatically interacting with AWS and you are free to use AWS provided SDKs or open-source independent implementations.
Using the AWS Java SDK, for instance, is fairly easy to start an AMI — all you need to do is tell AWS which AMI you'd like to start, what type of instance you'd like to provision, what security policy to apply, and finally what private key pair (Figure 4) to use:
AmazonEC2 ec2 =
new AmazonEC2Client(new BasicAWSCredentials("....", "..."));
RunInstancesRequest runInstancesRequest = new RunInstancesRequest()
RunInstancesResult runInstances = ec2.runInstances(runInstancesRequest);
Figure 4.
Alternatively, you can sign into the AWS management console, and within a few clicks, launch an AMI. The provided wizard makes it very simple to select an AMI, an instance type, and you're free to select existing key pairs or even create them then and there.
For instance, from the Instances link on the left navigation bar, you can click the Launch Instance button, which starts a handy wizard (Figure 5).
Figure 5.
Finally, you can also provision an instance via the command line —using the ec2-run-instances command, you can specify an AMI, key pair via the -k flag, and security group via the -g flag, to name a few of the available options.
ec2-run-instances ami-46f4092f -k dr_dbs_pair2 -g AMI-Def
It should be noted that with the command line, you can start an EC2 instance without any security group (in which case the default group will be added, which is to say no port is open!). You later add authorized ports via the ec2-authorize command.
The EC2 AMI that I tend to favor these days is ami-46f4092f, which is an Ubuntu image provided by the Ubuntu team. Ubuntu has quite a few official AMIs to choose from running various versions of Ubuntu as well as AMIs for i386 or AMD64 architectures.
Of course, firing up an AMI on EC2 is the easy part —making use of it is another story. When you provision a Linux AMI with EC2, like ami-46f4092f, you can SSH to it using the key pair you assigned to that instance. To do so, you tell SSH which key to use:
ssh -i .ec2/dr_dobbs.pem
Most AMIs provide instructions on whom to SSH as, for instance, Ubuntu images use the ubuntu user, who has sudo privileges. Of course, once you're on your EC2 instance, you need to do something with it. In this case, I'm going to install a few packages —namely, Java 1.6, Git, and a few system utilities.
Installing core libraries and platforms, such as Java or Ruby on an Ubuntu image can be somewhat of a pain; consequently, I ended up creating a series of scripts that make this process pretty simple. The project containing the scripts is hosted on Github and is dubbed ubuntu-equip. To install Java, for example, once you are on your desired EC2 instance via SSH, type
wget --no-check-certificate && bash
This script will install a few core libraries along with the official Sun (now Oracle) Java 1.6 JDK; what's more, this script also installs Git. At this point, you've got an EC2 instance running in the cloud ready for deployment of a Java application!
EC2, like the rest of AWS, is a game changer. The ability to rapidly provision a wide range of computing resources on a pay-as-you-go basis has ushered in a new era of innovation. Whether you're tinkering in a garage or working for a large company, you have a low-cost option to put working software into production. And should that application become the next Twitter or Facebook, it can quickly scale it to meet user needs.
In a future article, I'll get into the topic of running your own apps on the AWS instances.
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| <urn:uuid:973dc245-2b3f-46f6-87bf-4b707283ef64> | 2 | 2.3125 | 0.018694 | en | 0.87086 | http://www.drdobbs.com/open-source/getting-started-with-the-cloud-amazon-we/231601598?pgno=2 |
I have a bit of philosophy I’d like to pass in to your fellow developers at Motorola/Google regarding people who root phones. It something that people there should really think through.
Google and Motorola have taken a root hostile position and I think that is a mistake. I think that your companies should do a 180 on that and embrace the rooting community and take advantage of a lot of talent rather than seeing us as if we were criminals from breaking into our own phones.
I would point out first that Android is really just Linux which is an operating system that comes from our world. It is not only free but the license requires all improvements to also be free. You get for free and you have to give back for free. Because of this license an environment was created where most all the biggest corporations on the planet and tens of thousands of individuals came together to build the single most dominate operating system on the planet. And all those Linux developers were root.
In contrast Apple started with BSD which is also open source operating system but with a different license. With BSD you can grab the code and turn it into a closed OS which is what Apple did. I remember early iPhone user who got root access had their phones bricked by Apple who sent out an update that deliberately destroyed their phones. Steve Jobs was an evangelist and Apple has its cult following much the same way L. Ron Hubbard started Scientology. When I look at the iPhone all I see is the same one button mindset that reflects the one button mouse that Apple still has on their laptop computers. An Apple breakthrough is something Android has been doing for years. Some day they might even get widgets.
What it comes down to is evolution. Evolution is the principle designing force on the planet, not just for life – but for companies – and for technology. Humans developed a cooperative model that allows us to link our minds together and share knowledge. That’s what makes us the dominate species on this planet. Similarly Linux evolved into the dominate operating system (except in the consumer world in PC computers) and it was because it is intrinsically cooperative.
Root users is where the cool development lives. Instead of fighting us you should encourage us, embrace us. Allow the evolution to continue. This is after all the single advantage you have over Apple, and without the hacker community Google will become just another big dumb company like Apple. You can take advantage of free development that is just sitting there wanting to help. You could even buy some of our technology which would encourage even more development. There are some of us who you can’t hire because we like the freedom of self employment. We live outside the box. Our world is the world of new ideas and innovation.
So – getting to the point – I recommend that when you release Jelly Bean that you don’t include the root hostile code that is in this release and that you make the system root friendly and that you embrace the root community and take advantage of the evolutionary forces that got you where you are today. Otherwise the open source world will develop its own Linux based operating system for phones and Google will be left behind.
Something to think about.
1. Jeanne says:
The problem may not be Google’s willingness to embrace rooting, but Verizon’s, AT&T’s, etc. Google may feel that, until they become their own cellular company, they don’t have much choice.
2. Marc Perkel says:
That might be the case but from what I understand Verizon and AT&T don’t actually write the code and I think the influence is on the side of Google.
3. Arkyn1 says:
Most companies WANT to be just another big dumb company like Apple. Apple has tons of money, a customer base that borders on religious fanaticism, and a marketing department that is second to none. What you threaten Google with is what they might consider to be the ultimate goal.
4. sargasso_c says:
Apple stock is in decline, their market share is shaky, their boardroom politics increasingly resembles Stalin’s Kremlin and they just bought a clock for $20 million.
5. Sergei says:
How is Google being root unfriendly? All the Nexus branded device can be unlocked and rooted in few easy steps. As far as I know up until now, the source code for Android 4.1.2 has been released and it has been merged in CM10 for example. The same thing will probably happens with the new 4.2, so what are you complaining about exactly?
• Marc Perkel says:
Because I know something you don’t that I can’t talk about.
• MikeN says:
Well isn’t this awkward.
• Deckard Cain says:
And what would that be? Oh that’s right, you can’t tell, so why even bother to make a post like that?
Dude you are cool, you have inside info!
There I said it, now if you excuse me I need to go and update my phone and tablet to the official version of CM10.
6. What? The moth is always drawn to the flame? says:
All I know is that my iphone 3G works better at reading emails and listening to podcasts. Maybe Apple has the patents that enable the 3G not to suck. But I’m tired of my Google Nexus Jellybean and its crappy user experience.
7. The0ne says:
someone having a bad weekend,
8. Kahless says:
Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t the “anti-root” code in the form of locked bootloaders from the handset manufacturers? And if that’s the case, there isn’t much Google can do about it, is there? And extending that, wouldn’t the fact that Google offers the Nexus lines with unlocked bootloaders be evidence that Google is, in fact, embracing those that root their phones?
Also, this whole thing has the classic signs of zealotry that isn’t based in reality.
“Similarly Linux evolved into the dominate (sic) operating system (except in the consumer world in PC computers) and it was because it is intrinsically cooperative.”
Market share numbers put Unix (including Linux) somewhere between 40% & 60% of the market, and desktop Linux share around 2%. While the server share is large, it’s hardly dominant.
Let’s be real here. Android is open source. If you think there is anti-root code that you don’t like, do the Linux thing and roll your own distro. Why is that Google’s responsibility? They pay plenty of smart people to work on Android. I’m pretty sure there isn’t anyone sitting at Google saying, “Gee, if only we had that one guy from XDA Developers Android would be so much better.”
Time for Perkel to get his head out of the clouds and his feet back in reality.
• Kahless says:
Wish I had an edit button. I meant to say 40% to 60% of the server market.
9. Correctotron says:
Apple laptop computers don’t have one button mice. The trackpad isn’t exactly one button either, if that’s what you mean.
10. msbpodcast says:
You are partly to blame too.
You demand absolute reliability as if the phones were still wired and stupid but you can’t expect that absolute reliability in the DIY world of alleged Smart Phones where you phone is lying there legs spread wide saying fuck my slutty ass.
Apple attempts to control its ecosystem and gets a lot of crap from the Android development community, but got almost none since the iPhone’s introduction from the hundreds of millions of users.
• The Monster's Lawyer says:
I’d rather hang out with the fun (slutty) girls than the prigs.
Beware when your friends say:
“You should try iPhone, she’s got a good personality.”
11. Joel C. says:
I agree with the spirit of your argument, but must disagree on one point of fact. Mac laptops do not use “one button.” Some of the older ones might, but for the last several years you’ve been able to left-click, right-click, and use all kinds of other gesture controls.
That aside, you have a valid point and here’s why. When the popular online game “World of Warcraft” came out 8 years ago they did something no major game had really done before and they let the user’s write their own UI code. So, you had thousands of user’s writing UI mods and other addons. Every now and then an update would come out that would break or block some of the user creations, but many and more were subverted by the game’s developer and made into “official” parts of the game. I’ve always thought this was a brilliant move since it basically gave Blizzard access to a legion of coders who were essentially working for free.
As long as the legal documents are in place to keep a “root” developer from suing Google or one of its partners then Google is stupid not to exploit what is essentially a free labor force.
12. shooff says:
Why Root? I used a stock OG EVO for 30 months. It’s a phone/fancy radio. Convienient research tool. I added maybe 40 apps.
Now I have a NOTE 2, it also is a phone/fancy radio/camera that is easy to read.
What doesn’t it do? Sure I have a rebroadcaster (iheart) but I did not feel the need to root these devices.
It seems like customizing a car. The more custom the car or phone the higher wow factor. However, it main use is still transportation/communication and the dealer warranty is more important than the lift/lowering kit.
There are so many wallpaper apps I can’t decide. It seems like endless apps for everything. Playbooks for coaches, to phasers for geeks.
I would love to know besides stealing Wi-fi node from your provider, why root?
I’m open to suggestion. What ultimate productivity tool is only available with root access on the Note 2? Considering the phone is worth about $650 retail. Is there a program that will make me $650 more productive in Root?
• Alex says:
Transferring gameplay levels to new devices.
Getting Google Now on an un-updated by carrier phone.
I don’t expect to see full Google influence on Motorola till 24 months after purchase.
I really hope Nexus stay bootloader unlocked.
• Captain Obvious says:
Locked bootloaders are a good idea. And you do realise that Nexus devices come with a locked bootloader?
• Alex says:
Yup, out of the box sure the boots are locked, but are very easily unlocked with one a line ADB command.
Why should bootloaders be locked?
13. Kintaar says:
Dominate and dominant are two different words. Run a spell check before you post.
• noname says:
Spell check catches misspelled words not incorrect words.
Please use your brain before posting!
You sound like a programmer, unable to logically understand a problem, but full of Cheetos and advice!
14. Beth Pugh says:
As long as android rooting programer suing with google we can cross them and maybe they will have a partnership. The problem may not be Google’s willingness. | <urn:uuid:88701a95-db32-4760-b029-549806da6f8e> | 2 | 1.773438 | 0.052821 | en | 0.95681 | http://www.dvorak.org/blog/2012/11/11/my-open-letter-to-google-about-rooting-android-phones/ |
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European Union
Resistance grows in EU to new Russia sanctions
As the European Union considers tighter sanctions against Russia, some member states raise concerns about effects on their economies - and the temperatures in their living rooms.
The EU is horrified. It is becoming more and more evident that the Russian military is present in eastern Ukraine - and the number of its soldiers is growing. All offers of talks in Moscow have produced nothing more than a brief respite and a few warm words from President Vladimir Putin, while the Russian advance continued during the negotiations. But EU countries have ruled out military intervention as well as weapons deliveries to the Ukrainian army.
Instead, they want to tighten the sanctions screw even further. The EU has has already reached its third level of sanctions. These affect not only individuals and companies, but entire industries, including finance, armaments and other key technical sectors. For its part, Russia has responded with an extensive embargo on European food that hits some countries hard.
France can deliver warships later
French Mistral ship
France decided not to deliver the first of two helicopter carriers
Until now, European businesses and trade unions have more or less reluctantly supported the sanctions. But the closer a concrete decision on new sanctions comes, the greater the resistance.
France has stopped the delivery of the first of two helicopter carriers to Russia. The ships were built in a French shipyard, with the first set to be handed over to the Russian navy in October. Although the EU has in fact banned such classical weapons shipments since July, the EU leaders decided France could complete deliveries that had already been ordered.
This is a matter of more than a billion euros that the ailing French industry could well use, but that didn't stop criticism from raining down on the French government before its decision to stop the delivery. Some MEPs even made the desperate proposal that the EU should buy the ships from France to deny Russia such effective offensive weapons.
Only now has the French government taken action. President Francois Hollande said in a statement: "The conditions for delivery are not met. Russia's recent actions are aimed at the foundations of European security."
But Hollande has not ruled out a later delivery. That would be covered by the sanctions, though highly controversial politically.
The problem of gas dependency
Opposition to new sanctions is now coming from Austria, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, among others. Many Austrian banks have extensive business deals in Russia. The Czech Republic fears for its engineering exports. It fears it will be difficult to distinguish between permitted civilian use technology and banned military use equipment. Slovakia, for its part, wants to keep selling steel tubes to Moscow and at the same time is suffering from the Russian import ban for its fruit.
Poland, however, is perhaps even more concerned about food exports, but is willing to accept the downturn in sales. It is among the countries pursuing a particularly hard line against Moscow, partly because Poland still remember its time under the Soviet yoke. Other EU countries have a special problem: Finland and the Baltic states are almost completely dependent on Russian gas supplies and would be directly affected if Moscow turned off the gas tap in retaliation.
Understanding on the left for Putin
A market in Moscow
Photo: DW-Korrespondent Egor Winogradow
A Russian ban on many European foods is hitting some countries hard
But the opposition to new sanctions, at least at this stage, comes from the European Parliament, even from the highest levels. In an interview with the German daily "Hannover Allgemeine Zeitung," Parliament President Martin Schulz said he was not against further sanctions, but insisted they must not "tear the thread of conversation with Russia in times of crisis."
Schulz said the sanctions already in place hit Russia hard. At present, the focus of efforts was "to avoid an escalation." That sounds like a sign he wants to wait before implementing any additional measures targetting Russia. Social Democrat Knut Fleckenstein advised the EU governments to adopt further sanctions "only after careful evaluation of the progress towards a political solution." Putin's peace plan should be "given a chance."
The Left Party in the European Parliament is vociferously opposed to sanctions. Not only that, the group sees a conspiracy against Putin unfolding. Their foreign and security policy spokeswoman Sabine Lösing said it is not the Russian president who is involved in "saber-rattling," but the EU and NATO: "Putin is being systematically stylized as an ice-cold, megalomaniac weirdo - demonization of political opponents is a well-known means of media manipulation."
The EU also faces the problem of unanimity: Only one of the 28 Member States would have to say "no" to derail enhanced sanctions. The threshold for a decision is thus high. At least outwardly, the EU intends to show both determination and unity. The result may be a decision that tightens sanctions only slightly and doesn't not hurt EU member states too much, but also has little effect on Russia.
DW recommends | <urn:uuid:63eff259-b9e8-47b0-b882-a9480813e91d> | 2 | 1.78125 | 0.032086 | en | 0.96588 | http://www.dw.de/resistance-grows-in-eu-to-new-russia-sanctions/a-17903208?maca=en-rss-en-eu-2092-rdf |
Brief History of
Murray League and
Ore City, Texas
by David Williamson
Before there was a Murray League, or Ore City; Even before there were any people here at all there was the land: streams, creeks and rivers, hills and forests. This area has been called, "The Land Between the Forks of the Cypress."
The first people who lived near the Cypress Bayous were the Caddo Indians, a peaceful tribe, growing crops and living in villages. We know they passed through this area because a major trail we know as the "Caddo Trace" passed through where Ore City is now situated.
France, Spain and Mexico all laid claim to the land where we now live at various times, but the first people to settle here in permanent homes came from the United States. After Texas gained independence, and even more after Texas became a state of the Union in 1845, many people from the Southern states poured into the area. It was at this time that towns such as Coffeeville and Jefferson began to prosper.
In the early 1850s some friends, neighbors and relatives from Haywood County in Western Tennessee settled on a large tract of land which had been divided into individual homes and farms. The land was part of a grant of a "league and labor of land" made by the Republic of Texas to a "William Murray." As far as we know, he never saw the land, but he had it surveyed and the survey still bears his name.
The settlers from Tennessee were all members of the same church, The Methodist Episcopal Church, South. They immediately formed a congregation and school in their new community in East Texas which they named, "The Murray League Methodist Episcopal Church, South" and "The Murray Institute."
The Reverend Joshua J. Clark and Mr. William L. Coppedge were leaders in the church and school. James Harvey Armstrong, brother-in-law of W. L. Coppedge was also a leader of the church and community. Armstrong bought 500 acres at the northwest corner of the Murray League survey.
James Harvey Armstrong
Home Page | Page 2 | Page 3 | Page 4
800 South Mimosa Road
Ore City, TX 75683-2720
Phone: 903-968-2551 | <urn:uuid:6377b205-8f9c-48be-bae5-2515fac2509d> | 3 | 2.75 | 0.026287 | en | 0.9789 | http://www.dw4u.net/ |
EPIBuilding a Sustainable Future
Lester R. Brown
Chapter 12. Building a New Economy: New Industries, New Jobs
Describing the eco-economy is obviously speculative, but less so than it might seem simply because its broad outlines are defined by the principles of ecology. The specific trends and shifts described here are not projections of what will happen, though the term “will” is often used for the sake of efficiency. No one knows if these shifts “will” in fact occur, but it will take something similar to this if we are to build an eco-economy.
Building a new economy involves phasing out old industries, restructuring existing ones, and creating new ones. For example, coal use is being phased out, replaced by efficiency gains in many countries, but also by natural gas, as in the United Kingdom, and by wind power, as in Denmark and Germany. 61
The world automobile industry faces a modest restructuring as it shifts from the gasoline-powered internal combustion engine to the gas-electric hybrid, the diesel-electric hybrid, or the high-efficiency diesel that is so popular in Europe. This will require both a retooling of engine plants and the retraining of automotive engineers and automobile mechanics.
The new economy will also bring major new industries, ones that either do not yet exist or are just beginning. Wind electricity generation is one such industry, incorporating three subsidiary industries: turbine manufacturing, installation, and maintenance. Now in its embryonic stage, this promises to become the foundation of the new energy economy. Millions of turbines soon will be converting wind into cheap electricity, becoming part of the landscape, generating income and jobs in rural communities throughout the world.
As wind power emerges as a mainstream low-cost source of electricity, it will spawn another industry—hydrogen production. Once wind turbines are in wide use, there will be a large, unused capacity during the night when electricity use drops. With this essentially free electricity, turbine owners can turn on the hydrogen generators, converting the wind power into hydrogen. This can then be used to run power plants now fueled with natural gas, as gas becomes too costly or is no longer available. The wind turbine will replace the coal mine, the oil well, and the gas field.
Among the many changes in the world food economy will be the continuing shift to fish farming. Aquaculture, the fastest growing subsector of the world food economy, has expanded at 9 percent a year since 1990. The farming of fish, particularly omnivorous species such as carp, catfish, and tilapia, is likely to continue expanding rapidly simply because these fish convert grain into animal protein so efficiently. With this aquacultural growth comes the need for a rapidly expanding aquafeed industry, one where feeds are formulated by fish nutritionists, much as they are for the poultry industry today. 62
Bicycle manufacturing and servicing is a growth industry. As recently as 1965, world production of cars and bikes was essentially the same, with each at nearly 20 million, but as of 2003 bike production had climbed to over 100 million per year compared with 42 million cars. This growth in bicycle sales reflects growth in the ranks of those reaching the bicycle level of affluence, principally in Asia. Among industrial countries, the urban transport model being pioneered in the Netherlands and Denmark, where bikes are featured prominently, gives a sense of the bicycle’s future role worldwide. 63
As bicycle use expands, interest in battery-assisted bikes is also growing. Similar to existing bicycles, except for a tiny battery-powered electric motor that can either power the bicycle entirely or assist elderly riders or those living in hilly terrain, its soaring sales are expected to continue climbing. 64
Yet another growth industry is raising water productivity. Just as the last half-century was devoted to raising land productivity, this half-century will be focused on raising water productivity. Irrigation technologies will become more efficient.
The continuous recycling of urban water supplies, already started in some cities, will become common, replacing the “flush and forget” system.
As oil prices rise, teleconferencing gains appeal. To save fuel and time, individuals will be “attending” conferences electronically with both audio and visual connections. One day there will likely be literally thousands of firms organizing electronic conferences.
Other promising growth industries are solar cell manufacturing, light rail construction, and tree planting. For the 1.7 billion people living in developing countries and villages that lack electricity, the mass production of solar cells is the best bet for electrification. As people tire of traffic congestion and pollution, cities throughout the world are restricting car use and turning to light rail to provide mobility. As efforts to reforest the earth gain momentum, and as tree plantations expand, tree planting will emerge as a leading economic activity. 65
Restructuring the global economy will create not only new industries, but also new jobs—indeed, whole new professions and new specialties within professions. Turning to wind in a big way will require thousands of wind meteorologists to analyze potential wind sites, identifying the best sites for wind farms. The role of wind meteorologists in the new economy will be comparable to that of petroleum geologists in the old economy.
There is a growing demand for environmental architects who can design buildings that are energy- and materials-efficient and that maximize natural heating, cooling, and lighting. In a future of water scarcity, watershed hydrologists will be needed to study the local hydrological cycle, including the movement of underground water, and to determine the sustainable yield of aquifers. They will be at the center of watershed management regimes.
As the world shifts from a throwaway economy, engineers will be needed to design products that can be recycled—from cars to computers. Once products are designed to be disassembled quickly and easily into component parts and materials, comprehensive recycling is relatively easy. These engineers will be responsible for closing the materials loop, converting the linear flow-through (throwaway) economy into a recycling economy.
In countries with a wealth of geothermal energy, it will be up to geothermal geologists to locate the best sites either for power plants or for tapping this underground energy directly to heat buildings. Retraining petroleum geologists to master geothermal technologies is one way of satisfying the likely surge in demand for geothermal geologists.
Another pressing need, particularly in developing countries, is for sanitary engineers who can design sewage systems using waterless, odorless, composting toilets, a trend that is already under way in some water-scarce communities. Yet another growing demand will be for agronomists who specialize in multiple cropping and intercropping. This requires an expertise both in the breeding and selection of crops that can fit together in a tight rotation in various locales and in agricultural practices that facilitate multiple cropping.
Corporations will obviously be challenged by economic restructuring, but so too will universities. Economic restructuring means a demand for new professions such as wind meteorologists, energy architects, and recycling engineers and thus for courses to train tomorrow’s professionals.
Previous Table of Contents Next
61. Coal and natural gas consumption from BP, BP Statistical Review of World Energy (London: Group Media & Publishing, 2005), pp. 26, 33; European Wind Energy Association, Wind Energy—The Facts: An Analysis of Wind Energy in the EU-25, Executive Summary (Brussels: 2004), pp. 2, 7.
62. Aquaculture growth calculated from U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), FISHSTAT Plus, electronic database, at www.fao.org/fi/statist/FISOFT/FISHPLUS.asp, updated March 2005; fish protein conversion from Rosamond L. Naylor et al., “Effect of Aquaculture on World Fish Supplies,” Nature, vol. 405 (29 June 2000), p. 1,022.
63. Michael Renner, “Vehicle Production Sets New Record,” and Gary Gardner, “Bicycle Production Recovers,” both in Worldwatch Institute, Vital Signs 2001 (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2001),
pp. 68–71; Ward’s Communications, Ward’s World Motor Vehicle Data 2004 (Southfield, MI: 2004), p. 216; John Crenshaw, Bicycle Retailer and Industry News, email to Danielle Murray, Earth Policy Institute, 19 August 2005.
64. Gary Gardner, “Bicycle Production Rolls Forward,” in Worldwatch Institute, Vital Signs 2002 (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2002), pp. 76–77.
65. United Nations, “New UN Report Outlines Indicators for Sustainable Energy Use,” press release (New York: 15 April 2005).
Copyright © 2006 Earth Policy Institute | <urn:uuid:1a113875-d76f-4e42-ab99-c910a2e7b3af> | 3 | 3.3125 | 0.034913 | en | 0.92261 | http://www.earth-policy.org/books/pb2/pb2ch12_ss6 |
Managing outside the span of control
A supervisor has many managerial responsibilities, such as worker crews, materials, equipment and the work site as a whole. However, let’s focus on what often is most difficult: things outside the span of control. The key is to elicit the desired response from others.
To clarify, remember supervisors manage people. If they want to manage materials or equipment, they manage those handling the materials or running the equipment. If they want to manage the schedule, they must manage the people contributing to the work on that schedule. If they want to manage the site, they must manage the people who control the site, defining what goes where and when and what happens where and when.
For example, the work of other contractors on-site affects a supervisor, and it is outside of the supervisor’s direct control. Other examples include supervisors and managers on the project higher in the chain of command or people in the supervisor’s company that are resources to his work: They provide something the supervisor’s craft workers need to get their job done. Also outside the supervisor’s control are contributors to the project who are both outside the supervisor’s company and farther up the chain of command, such as the electrical engineer, the architect or the owner.
Managing within the supervisor’s span of control is more science than art. Supervisors can put together procedures and forms, and through training and vigilance, they generally can ensure those working for them can move the work forward. Certainly, this employs many nontechnical skills, such as leadership, communication and motivation.
Additionally, supervisors have authority, both direct and implied, if someone reports to them. That person must conform to the supervisor’s direction. Implied authority means a subordinate must do what he or she is asked to do. Direct authority means if the subordinate balks at following direction, the supervisor has authority to require the subordinate to conform or suffer consequences.
On the other hand, if someone is outside the supervisor’s span of control, authority disappears. Gaining performance of those things that need to be done is now dependent on such skills as leadership, persuasion, communication and motivation. A supervisor cannot compel someone outside the span of control to act. The supervisor must depend much more on influencing their actions through compelling arguments and persuasion. This must be done in a timely manner. The action sought must be well-defined and communicated clearly. The response must be monitored to ensure the appropriate action is taken, and if it is not, the supervisor must engage again.
In addition to persuasion, supervisors occasionally can add some coercion by indirectly gaining the assistance of someone in a more authoritative position. For example, if the project will be held up if the submittals on the designer’s desk are not more rapidly reviewed and returned, a supervisor could let the owner know, who could in turn ask the designer to work on more timely review of submittals. This approach can be very powerful but needs to be wisely and infrequently used, or relationships with the one to whom pressure is being applied might suffer.
The success of managing outside your span of control depends on building the proper environment well in advance. There must be an environment of honesty, trust and professional respect, so when the supervisor asks for something, the other person will take the request seriously. A supervisor’s subordinates must recognize the request is based on a commitment to the wellbeing of the project and the success of all project participants.
Finally, when action has been taken and the job has been moved forward, a supervisor should express appreciation and provide recognition for the contributions of all.
Subsequent articles in this series will focus on the skills required to be a successful supervisor, many of them listed above, because each is a topic on its own.
As an experienced supervisor, what you are beginning to recognize is today’s highly sophisticated construction environment is taking place in a vastly different culture than that in which our parents and grandparents worked. Therefore, managing those within our span of control is accomplished most effectively if it emphasizes the skills used to manage those outside the span of control and de-emphasizes coercively exercising authority.
Look for the opportunity today to hone your skills of leadership, persuasion, communication and motivation, and observe how effective these can be. EC
ROUNDS is the AGC endowed chair and professor of civil engineering at the University of New Mexico. He has worked with electrical contractors in training focused on field supervision and project management for 20 years. He can be reached at segner is a professor of construction science at Texas A&M University and has taught at the university level for 30 years. Contact him at | <urn:uuid:49686801-9563-4113-8dbf-330a0f66f722> | 3 | 2.796875 | 0.221326 | en | 0.959131 | http://www.ecmag.com/section/miscellaneous/tactful-leadership?qt-issues_block=0 |
Norway and the environment
Binge and purge
See article
Readers' comments
In fact I think the article is too weak in its critique of Norway. Yes indeed the Norwegian policy is to brag about their green targets while shopping for cheap carbon credits abroad to keep extracting oil and gas at home. But the article makes it look like Norway actually IS doing something at home. Unfortunately they are not, and Jens Stoltenberg is one of the main reasons why. A comparison with Sweden is revealing: two social democracies with a lot of climatic and historical similarities, but while Sweden have CUT emissions by 8,7%, Norway have INCREASED by 11%. Of course oil and gas extraction has a great share in this, but why have emissions from road traffic increased by 28% as compared to the Swedish 10%? Emissions from landfills and agriculture and industry have all gone up more than in Sweden. The Norwegian Pollution Control Authority clearly state that the most important measure in Norwegian climate policy is the CO2tax, which was introduced in 1991! And since that almost nothing has happened! In comparison Sweden has spent billions of kroners on a ten-year local investment programme, there are local energy advisors in almost all municipalities, they have a green certificate electricity production scheme, and they have made a green tax shift worth 30 bill. SEK. Norway has the lowest level of green taxes in Scandinavia, Denmark and Sweden are far ahead. Lunar landings and pilot projects for salt power is great, but it's not generating any emission cuts in Norway, and the amounts of public money spent on this kind of research are microscopic compared to the research money spent to increase extraction of oil reserves. Jens Stoltenberg is the man who said no to a new marke based system for green power (green certificate together with Sweden), and he was the one who knocked over the previous government by forcing through a weakening of the Pollution Act.The fact is that emissions are rising fast in all sectors, not just oil. If you want to see a country who's actually spent their money on doing stuff, not just talking about doing stuff, look to Sweden!Best from Norway
Another example of your trademark ironic tone in
your environmental reporting. Why don't you use the same
tone in your business and finance reporting -- these
sectors deserve it far more than the competent good global citizens of Norway.
Yankee Doodle
I'm not arguing anything. Kyoto sounded good so Europe went for Kyoto. Kyoto set goals that Norway (and Europe) ignored. Why didn't these goals get met? Money, cash, euros. Europe talked a lot, but did less than the United States did in regard to the Kyoto goals. Fact pskor, this is a fact.
Norway lied - or Norway foolishly signed a treaty that Norway lacked the funds to meet. Which was it pskor?
Your argumentation isn't impressing anyone either yankee doodle. Nor is your country. Hopefully president Obama might change the course of the US. My money is on him, and I wish him the best.Too bad he won't be able to change you yankee...
Yankee Doodle
The fact remains that Europe signed Kyoto and then ignored it. The US is closer to meeting the Kyoto goals than is most of Europe.
Why doesn't Norway meet Kyoto? Signing while knowing all of the time that Norway would ignore Kyoto does not impress anyone.
minomusiI know exactly what 'letters' I am looking for, if you had actually read all the posts you would have realized it. And, as I already pointed out, Switzerland is not a member of the EEA; and A in place of a C makes all the difference in the world, hence the claim that the EEC still exists cannot be correct. The EEC and the EEA are (were) two completely different organizations. In fact, EEA countries must comply with the EU's (formerly known as EEC) internal market rules, but have no say (voting power) in deciding what the rules are (fax-democracy).
Lyn Oslo
My dear Englishman....
I can assure you there's not a single drop of nationalism running through my veins, especially as my background is just as much lappish (a minority not always kindly treated by Norwegians in the past)and I have spent large parts of my life abroad. My point is this; with the EFTA-agreement you should be able to go back and live in your native Engand (or Sweden) and still be entitled to your pension. If money stretches further in England, surely this would be the rational choice ?
And surely, things aren`t always that easy in the UK either. When I started working in London some years ago with a MsC in Economics from Japan and being fairly fluent in Japanese, English and Norwegian (and with a good command of German and the other Scandinavian languages), all I was able to fetch when was Nkr 14,000 monthly (before tax), working 09.00 to 20.00 most weekdays. With the prices on transport and accomodation in London, that wasn't exactly easy, but I was still grateful that I had a job. I would agree with you anytime that London in particular and the UK in general is a more liberal and inlusive place than most Scandinavian countries.
The problem with the welfare state is that it`s a bit like shooting on a target with a shotgun, especially the way the welfare state is set up in Scandinavia. Too many benefits going to people with no needs of support (one example being child support, where the super-rich benefits just as much as those in the low income brackets) rather than those in need. I do hope your lot improves as you seem to be one of those people clearly willing to work and not being given the chances one deserves in life is truly unfair and awful.
Lyn Oslo
I have never sort to comment on one of your articles before. But I must now. This article is one of the most unreasonable I have ever read, and am amazed to find it in the Economist. I can only echo the sentiments of others and say that it is completely unfair to criticise Norway for doing its best to be carbon neutral, while exporting its gas and oil to others. Who in their right mind would choose not to? Any government that did would surely be thrown out, post-haste. I hope to never read such ultra-liberal drivel again in what is normally such a fine magazine. I expect a more balanced and economically-realistic view from the Economist.
thundermax & mathias: The three letters you are looking for are EEA, the European Economic Area. Mathias' writings are correct if you substitute that C with an A.englishman in norway: It's sad you don't like it here, but I find it strange that you are too old to move, but have been studying double time. Also, you haven't exactly picked our top educational institutions. Sweden is open to you, appearently much more tolerant and generous, so bon voyage. I'll help you into the bus. Although we do have our share of racism, it isn't worse than other European countries, and anti-english sentiments are virtually non-existant (I have English friends living here, so I know.) As a foreign national enjoying welfare benefits in Norway, I'm not so sure you should be the first to complain about the size of them. Anyway, English ex-pat bitterness is just as relevant here as the jew question raised earlier. As for your estimates on Norways fossile reserves, the oil is starting to run out, but the gas isn't for many decades to come. Norway ARE greener than most countries, and without a question greener than other oil exporters. Still, at the Economist points out, there are many sides to this story. We do live on selling fossile energy, and our flying and heating habits are utterly unsustainable. If we put our money where our mouth is more than other nations, it's because we have the money and we have the moral responsibility.As for the latter, this goes for the US as well. Yankee Doodles attempts to greenwash the US are laughable, but one thing is clear: if we're ever going to get out of this mess, it will be because the US turned around and put its power to work. So, you are indeed more guilty than pretty much all other nations, but you are also the hope of the world. By the way, Sweden, without the fossile fuel bank of Norway, has done far more impressive things than Norway. Those damn pragmatic, industrious, clever, responsible, good looking swedes...The Progress Party was mentoned in the article, and I'd like to mention that the reason they are shunned by many other parties are not spiteful ones. While a wide part of the Norwegian political spectre, even the socialists, promote responsible spending, the PP promises money right and left at every election. Their main strategy is fearmongering against immigration and muslims. They are the only Bush loving party in Scandinavia, and have only reacently admitted that there might be something to this global warming thing... not that they consider it more important than building those broad new motorways and getting the price of alcohol, petrol and tobacco down.Oh, and cycle paths are utterly rubbish, so bad research there. Look to Denmark and Netherlands for that.
It is indeed a valid line of thought arguing that the Norwegians should cut their own omissions when they are exporting so much oil. However, I'd rather buy my oil and gas from the Norwegians, a democratic country with a peace-keeping image, than from some predatory state with nuclear weapons and a bad human rights reputation. Having the Norwegians producing the stuff is as geopolitically sound as it gets. So many countries with vast natural resources have such poor track records in human rights, and the revenue generated from it only favours the elite. The Norwegians put it in an "ethically invested" fund and saves it for their children. I'd rather let Norwegian children have my money than some ambitious president and his chums in a country that strangles political opposition and threatens its neighbours (there are a few of them).
Mathias.HPerhaps you refer to the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) of which those countries are indeed the remaining members. Norway, Iceland and Lichtenstein (but not Switzerland) are also part of the EU Internal Market through the European Economic Area (EEA).As of February 1992, in fact, the EEC is no more, having been replaced by the EU (see Maastricht Treaty)
David Arneson
Its nice to see that some Norwegians notice the rank hypocrisy of their position, but I am very tired of them lecturing the world about their own piety when they are no better than a drug dealer who goes to church on Sunday and then heads over to the school yard on Monday to push their wares. Kudos to the Economist for shining a light on this, and shame on the Norwegians for their evil, earth destroying greed.
Wow Yankee doodle you are some piece of work. You have stars and stripes in your eyes and probably when you smile too. This could be because you sat on an american flag as a child.
Check out the recommends on your comments. Is that you and your mum?
Here is something priceless:
"George W. Bush tried to explain to you that our atmosphere is global - and that only a global solution would work. Why can't you grasp this concept, that we all live on the same globe with the same atmosphere? The fools and the frauds did not understand this wisdom, or pretended not to. Americans will not follow these same fools and frauds, it is time to accept new leadership on global climate change"
I tried to use the words George W Bush and wisdom in the same sentence once before and a small black hole appeared and started sucking everything in. Looked like an american at a buffet.
Yes we all live in the same world, although you seem to be somewhere in space. Here is an idea to help control the "worlds" problem. Stop america producing 22.2% of the carbon emissions in the world. As most of it goes to feed their fat, overweight, lazy bodies as they shove the hopes and dreams of island nations into there mouths, you people could benefit from it too.
People in greenhouses shouldn't throw stones you moron.
Are you in fact hired by the economist to drum up some heated debate? Put down the processed food and pick up some lateral thinking.
Graham Sinclair @ESGarchitect
Comparing the state of progress is worthy. Based on the briefing, Norway has gone beyond the thinking - or the talking - that many countries have done, to put in 18 years of experimentation with carbon taxes, making a switch to cap-and-trade an informed decision. We hope Finance Minister Trevor Manuel in South Africa will have read carefully, having expressed an interest in carbon taxes in the 2008 Budget. The position of the Norwegian sovereign wealth pension fund and it's USD200 billion in AUM is expressed through the filter of the ethical committee that earns highest marks for best practice in transparency, and they have contributed to the discussion on long term investor roles. Reliance on any global norms or standards will offer tensions in any investment team, or multi-stakeholder approach, and I have no confidence in any one "standard" or initiative proving any activity. The proof of the pudding remains in the eating. But to actively integrate environmental, social and corporate governance factors into investment decisions - irrespective of the market or implied value in the minute - is the appropriate measure to cover all risks and returns opportunities in 21stC investing [more at]. The merits of the HBS study on Norges and Wal-Mart may be debated elsewhere.GSSRI-Extra
Economist Missed!Even the Economist shows a human side. A briefing called "Norway and the environment" in the Economist's most recent issue fell for a line of argument that distorts the real picture of the environmental situation here. By falling for the easy, but wrong-minded, take, the Economist missed the real story....
Who can blame the Norwegians for not joining the EU?
Only the Economist can argue that Norway's efforts at environmentalism is a contradiction.I say, even if guilt is the motivating factor for the Norwegians, they are still doing something for the environment. Maybe the writer(s) for the economist might like to have a salary of $100,000, live in a clean city and feel proud of their country but they don't. Green with envy you could say.
Yankee Doodle, the political details of the US budgetary process are really not of interest here. The point is that hundreds of billions of dollars were spent in Iraq to secure further supplies of fossil fuels rather than to develope a global system to prevent their damaging effects on our planet's atmosphere. While the United States was busy making sure it would have enough oil to spew CO2 into our atmosphere for a few decades more, Europe and Asia successfully implemented a compromise on emissions reductions as a first step toward a global agreement. Yankee Doodle's statement "The EU suggests that it was a waste of resources in regard to Europe" is clearly false given that the EU has invested large efforts in improving and streamlining regulations for the 2008-12 Kyoto commitment period. This is an unambiguous sign of support for Kyoto and its successor.And by the way, what in the world does the absence of a EU constitution or president have to do with emissions reductions? The EU developed an emissions trading system (ETS) which is used by member nations to meet their individual Kyoto obligations. The American RGGI (based on ETS) is used by northeastern States for emissions trading yet Connecticut doesn't have a president. So what?Pity that Yankee Doodle has no qualms spending "a small fraction of one percent of US GDP" for the invasion of Iraq and the deaths of tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians while he cannot bring himself to spend a similar amount on the stabilisation of our planet's climate to help all the world's people.
Yankee Doodle asks "Any nation that signed Kyoto has changed our climate for the better by signing?" Just by signing of course not - even the United States managed to muster enough courage to sign. However, when it came to developing mechanisms and markets to actually reduce emissions, Europe took the lead while the US quit the game. Signing and not ratifying on the grounds of reduced global competitiveness was a copout of the first order. Is this the American way - play the game only if you set the rules and are assured of victory?On to your next question. "Any nation that instead insisted upon a global approach to a global problem destroyed our climate?" As a matter of fact, this perfectly describes the United States. The negotiations for a global post-Kyoto system are currently deadlocked precisely because the world's two largest polluters cannot agree on details. China rightly argues that since 1850, the US has emitted a total of 4 times more CO2 into the atmosphere than it has. Yet the US demands that China immediately submit to drastic emissions reductions as part of a global deal. So if you consider the US as a nation which is "insisting on a global approach" then it is in fact destroying our climate by blocking a deal which would have it accept responsibility for its past actions. A thief who steals 4 cars should rightly be penalised more than a thief who steals one car.Will the US once again quit the game as soon as the going gets tough? At least Europe can be counted on to keep plugging away, even without a perfect game plan.
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ESC Con 2015
Limit inrush current in high-power applications
JB Castro-Miguens, Cesinel, Madrid, Spain, and C Castro-Miguens, University of Vigo, Vigo, Spain; Edited by Martin Rowe and Fran Granville -February 03, 2011
Limit inrush current in high-power applications figure 1A high-power offline supply is nothing more than a half- or full-bridge dc/dc converter. Rectifying the ac line yields a dc voltage that feeds the converter. At power-supply turn-on, the bulk capacitor of the uncontrolled rectifier is completely discharged. It results in a huge charging current for a high instantaneous line voltage because the discharged bulk capacitor temporarily short-circuits the diodes of the rectifier stage. The high inrush current can trigger a mains circuit breaker, burn a fuse, or even destroy a power supply’s rectifier diodes unless you take precautions. The circuit in Figure 1 limits the inrush current.
At turn-on, if the instantaneous rectified ac-line voltage, VACR, is greater than approximately 10V, Point A in Figure 2, MOSFET Q2 turns on, forcing thyristor Q1 off. In this situation, a little current flows through R1 and Q2, injecting a small charge into bulk capacitor CO, Path A to B in Figure 2.
Limit inrush current in high-power applications figure 2When VACR−VO≤8V or so, where VO is the output voltage, Q2 is off, letting Q1 conduct. In this situation, the bulk capacitor receives the necessary charge through Q1, Path B to C in Figure 2, to match VO to VACR. After this point, VACR falls below VO, and the bulk capacitor alone must support any power the dc/dc converter demands until VACR−VO≥5V or so, Path C to D in Figure 2. At Point D, VACR−VO≈5V and thyristor Q1 triggers, which conducts the capacitor’s charge current and the current the dc/dc converter demands until VACR matches the sinusoidal peak at Point E.
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Design Ideas
When VACR falls, thyristor Q1 cuts off, and the bulk capacitor alone feeds the dc/dc converter. The thyristor conducts again when VACR matches VO to the sinusoidal peak. This process then repeats. Use a nonsensitive gate thyristor with a breakdown voltage of at least 400V for an ac voltage of 220V rms (root mean square) and with twice the rms-current rating of the rectifier diodes.
This circuit uses a TYN610 thyristor. You can calculate the value of R1 using R1=(6.8−VGT)/IGT−20°, where VGT is the minimum gate-cathode voltage necessary to produce the gate-trigger current for Q1 and IGT is the minimum gate current to trigger Q1 down to −20°C. The NTD4815NHG MOSFET is suitable for this circuit. A MOSFET with a different threshold voltage may require different values for R2 and R3.
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One of the coolest things about studying the WoW economy -- at least for me -- is that there are a lot of interesting parallels between the fictional game world of Azeroth and the real world. Today, we're going to examine a very curious topic we've never discussed here before: cartels.
Writer Nick sent in an email last week, posing a very interesting hypothetical question:
Let's say you have a max level druid, I use druid as an example as they can fulfil all roles. To the best of your ability, you contact as many druids as possible on the server, which ideally would spread via word of mouth, and recruit your server's entire populace of druids into a single guild, a druid cartel if you will. From then on, if ANYONE on your server wants a druid for their raid, arena etc. they pay a premium to the guild in which profits are pooled, and all benefit. Perhaps you could have a comprehensive price structure in which say an ilvl 397 druid is at a higher premium than an ilvl 384 druid.
Do you think this idea is at all feasible, and does it go against any Blizzard rules? I can't help but giggle at the potential repercussions of something like this on any given realm.
The great druid cartel
In economics, a cartel is an agreement between competing sellers or producers to try and increase the price at which they sell their goods. This agreement usually requires these sellers to either limit supply (to drive up prices through supply/demand mechanics) or increase prices.
You've probably heard of OPEC, the world's powerful oil cartel. It consists of 11 countries, all which are able to pull more oil out of the ground than each country can use itself. These countries meet regularly to agree on how much oil they should sell to maximize their revenues. OPEC countries aren't the only sellers of oil out there, but since they represent 44% of the world's crude oil production, their machinations have a major effect on the market.
In general, Western law considers cartels to be bad things. They represent a conspiracy against the public, a perversion of the free market process. Cartels simply aren't fair, or so popular opinion goes. In the United States, it is illegal to form a cartel. Internationally too, a number of regulatory bodies disallow this type of cooperation between competing firms. OPEC is still able to dominate the global oil market. Mostly because ... what are we going to do, not buy oil?
What you need for a cartel
That actually brings us to a pretty important point. For a cartel to work, you need to have certain conditions occur:
• A significant number of participators in the given market need to be part of the cartel. Nick's cartel won't work if only a few druids are on board with it. You'd need to get most druids on the server to join in -- enough to minimize the impact of those straggler druids who don't take part.
• The members of the cartel need to be loyal to the cartel. OPEC would fall apart if member states didn't agree to the quotas. This is a much more tricky requirement than it sounds. Participating in a cartel is a prisoner's dilemma situation -- member countries get more money exceeding production quotas so long as they're the only ones doing it. But if everyone does it, then the quota is meaningless and the cartel is powerless to keep prices buffed.
• The number of participants in the cartel matters. Part of what makes OPEC successful is that there are only a few countries out there who are net sellers of oil. It's easier to wrangle sheep when there are only a few sheep out there to wrangle.
• The good being offered needs to be unique. OPEC is a success at what it does because the alternatives to oil are more expensive or less convenient. You can't have a ham sandwich cartel, because people could just go around eating turkey sandwiches instead. Yeah, yeah, I know -- they're not the same. But no one needs a ham sandwich.
A number of those points represent challenges to creating a druid cartel, but it's the final point that's the most damning. Druids aren't unique. Bears make for good tanks, but there are other classes out there who can tank. Other classes can heal. And my little shadow priest can certainly DPS better than any lousy boomkin can. Druid buffs are replicated by other classes. Remember that bring the player, not the class thing? That philosophy is why a druid cartel won't work.
That said, another type of cartel might work, at least in theory ...
Healers for sale (or rent), PST
Last year, a new guild began popping up on my server. Someone was wrangling up healers best they could, recruiting them into a for-profit guild. It was a simple idea: Instead of the guild's members queuing for random heroics, they'd instead sell their services via trade.
This too was a cartel -- the more healers get recruited into this guild, the longer queues would be for the rest of us. Healers would be creating a market and, at the same time, taking cartel-style control over it. But could this type of guild stand the test of time?
The answer, it turns out, was no. And the reasons provide good instruction as to why these kinds of guilds and cartels just aren't built to stand the test of time.
There's no real motivation to hold a cartel together. In the real world, cartels make their participants money, and lots of it. Money is a damn powerful motivator -- to quote Cabaret, "money makes the world go 'round." WoW gold pales in comparison. It's just not worth enough. Participants in the cartel have to sacrifice their own time in order to make money, staying out of a queue and delaying their gameplay.
The second problem: loyalty. OPEC struggles to maintain agreement between its member states. Saudi Arabia was notorious for (quietly) selling the United States more oil than its quota allowed it to. Now, consider this: If world countries find it difficult to find agreement and stay loyal to an agreement, what hope does a guild have who relies on the efforts of, in some cases, teenagers and trade chat trolls?
Third, there are just too many players out there to make a healer cartel work. WoW has 10 million subscribers and an even larger number of individual characters. That's a lot of people to wrangle into an agreement. Even if you're talking about one individual realm, you're still looking at the need to sign up tens of thousands of players. It's hard enough playing the prisoner's dilemma game with two people; it's damn near impossible playing it with 50,000.
This article was originally published on WoW Insider.
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Jigs are good for fall fishing in rivers
October 9, 2008
By Bob Jensen - Fishing the Midwest Fishing Team
Rivers, both large and small, criss-cross the Midwest. Many of those rivers are full of fish in a wide variety of species. Those fish can be caught using a number of techniques, and they can be caught winter, spring, summer and fall. Here are some ideas for catching those fish right now.
Most Midwest rivers are home to several species of fish, but there generally is a dominant predator specie. In many rivers that dominant specie is the walleye: In lots of other rivers smallmouth bass are more prominent.
Usually though, a certain area of a river will have a dominant specie. In one stretch walleyes will be most abundant, as we move into another stretch of river, smallmouth will be more prominent. If we want to be as successful as possible, we need to employ the technique that will be most effective for the specie of fish that is most abundant.
One presentation that will take pretty much any type of river fish pretty much anywhere in the river is a jig. We can tip the jig with either a minnow or soft bait.
In the toughest of conditions it's tough to beat a jig/minnow combination, but almost all of the time a jig/soft bait presentation will do the job very well. Many anglers, if limited to one jig presentation in the river, would choose a jig tipped with a three inch Power Grub. This rig will take almost every specie of gamefish found in a river.
It is very important to use a jig that is heavy enough to stay within a few inches of the bottom but light enough that we can hold it just off the bottom with our rod tip. There are times when it's productive to hold the jig just off the bottom with our rod tip raised.
The Power Grub has a very active tail. By holding our rod tip in about the 10 o'clock position, the current will move the tail while the jig stays in place, not moving forward or backward. This will make fish bite when they aren't aggressive.
Select a jighead that is made for soft bait. The Lip-Stick Jig-Worm and the Mimic Minnow head have keepers that prevent the soft bait from sliding down the hook.
Color can be an important consideration anytime you go fishing, and fall is no different. It works well to use a jig that is one color with a tail of another color. By doing so, you're showing the fish two different colors, which increases the odds of showing the fish the color they want.
Fall fish will be moving in rivers. You might find a group of them on the tip of a wing-dam, you might find another group on the downstream side of an island. There will be some deep and some shallow. As autumn progresses, the fish will group up more and more, and they'll also usually be found deeper as we get farther into the fall season.
There are lots of ways to catch river fish, but if you put a jig close to them, you're probably going to get bit. But don't take my word for it, find out for yourself next time you get the chance.
For more fish-catching information, visit
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If your ingrown toenail has become infected, you shouldn't attempt to treat it yourself. "The first thing is, if they're infected, they need to be seen by a podiatrist," says Alan K. Mauser, DPM, a podiatrist in Louisville, Ky.
1. Try a foot soak. Allow your sore toe to soak in a warm salt water bath for 15 minutes a couple of times every day. This soak can help relieve pain and swelling in an ingrown toenail. Dry your foot completely after each soak.
2. Keep your foot dry except when soaking.
3. Take an over-the-counter pain-relieving medication, like acetaminophen or ibuprofen.
4. Gently pull the skin away from the nail using a small nail file or other blunt device that won't cut or hurt the toe.
5. Stuff tiny pieces of clean, moist cotton between the ingrown toenail and the skin to help separate them and provide a little cushioning to the skin. You can soak the cotton in a bit of water or an antiseptic cleanser first.
6. Rub your toe with antibiotic ointment to help reduce your chance of developing an infection.
8. Choose shoes that are easy on your toes. Shoes made of soft fabrics with a wide toe are a good choice — try wearing sandals if you can. Avoid shoes that pinch the toes or place pressure on the ingrown toenail.
10. See a podiatrist if you see signs of infection, or if your ingrown toenail keeps coming back.
Ingrown toenails are often a recurring problem. "If it's a problem, if it's recurrent, you should see a podiatrist who can fix the problem," says Mauser. "It's a small surgical procedure where you permanently remove the ingrown corner of the nail.
Prevention is often your best method for controlling the pain of ingrown toenails. There are numerous ways to prevent toenails from curving over and digging into the skin of your toe. Buying properly fitting footwear (it shouldn't squeeze the toes) and cutting your toenails correctly (not too short and in a straight line across), are two easiest methods. "Once you start digging down the sides you're probably going to get an infection," says Mauser.
| <urn:uuid:60643649-1c91-4466-82e7-50e313694aaf> | 2 | 1.992188 | 0.346891 | en | 0.932917 | http://www.everydayhealth.com/foot-health/treating-ingrown-toenails.aspx |
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Obama's phone conversation with Putin
President Obama did not hold back in his phone conversation with Vladimir Putin.
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President Obama did not hold back in an hour long phone conversation with Vladmir Putin, according to ABC News, on March 6. Mr. Obama warned Putin that his invasion of Ukraine is an affront to that nation's sovereignty and "territorial integrity."
President Obama strongly encouraged Putin to seek a diplomatic solution to the Ukranian matter. The President characterized the diplomatic solution as one that would be beneficial to the Russians, the Ukrainians, and to the "international community."
In its explanation of just how Mr. Obama's proposed diplomatic solution would play out, the White House made reference to the usage of "international monitors" who would make sure that the Ukrainian people's interests are upheld in the process. The White House stated:
Just hours before the phone conversation between the two leaders, the Obama Administration had imposed visa restrictions on Russians who oppose the current Ukrainian government. This action cleared the path for sanctions against those who are fueling the crisis between Russia and Ukraine.
Yesterday's phone conversation between Obama and Putin was the second one in about a week. Last weekend the two leaders had a stressful phone conversation that lasted about ninety minutes. | <urn:uuid:ce370b63-33d4-4f91-8c16-c6c8c158b344> | 2 | 1.875 | 0.280247 | en | 0.965067 | http://www.examiner.com/article/obama-s-phone-conversation-with-putin?cid=rss |
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The Dying of the Lord Jesus, 2 Cor. 4:10-14
The Dying of Jesus to Jerusalem and the Temple Cultus
The Dying of Jesus to Jerusalem and the Temple Cultus
Bigstock Photo
Understanding the Bible depends a lot upon the context. A part of the context is audience relevance. In other words, to whom were the words originally spoken and what did they mean to that audience. Many would be expositors treat the Bible as though it has no historical or cultural context. This leads them to impose all kinds of applications that are beyond what the writer ever intended.
In our verses listed above, i.e. 2 Cor. 4:10-14, they are found within the context of "covenantal change". By that, we mean a transition from the Old Covenant to the New Covenant. This change is not consecutive but concurrent. One covenant is on the way to obsolescence while the other is being inaugurated. (Heb. 8:13). Failure to grasp this fundamental contextual background creates errors in interpretation.
In chapter three, the text discusses a change from the Covenant of Moses to the Covenant of Christ. Such terms for the Old Covenant are:
• Letter
• Death
• Condemnation
• Glory (fading)
• Bondage
• Veiled Image of Moses
On the other hand, the New covenant is describe in terms such as:
• Spirit
• Life
• Righteousness
• More Glory (eternal)
• Unveiled Image of Christ
The Hope of the Gospel
The transition from the Old Covenant to the New Covenant is the one hope of the gospel. That has a deeply significant implication. Since the covenant and the promises belonged to ancient Israel, Rom. 3:1-2; 9:4-5, (not to be confused with the modern state). Israel's hope was resurrection from the dead, (Acts 24:14-15; 26;6-8), which is deliverance from sin-death for this is what defines the death of Christ and the Parousia, (Rom. 6:10; 11:26-27; Heb. 9:28)
The transition from the Old Covenant to the New Covenant is is described from a Greek term from which we derive our word metamorphosis. It means a change in form which occurs after the original or initial form. The change being initiated was carried on through the eschatological Spirit, meaning the Holy Spirit poured out in the last days according to Joel's prophecy, (Joel 2:28-32; Acts 2:16-20).
However, Micah defined the time frame of the work of the Holy Spirit as according to the days of Israel's coming out of Egypt. That means, it would occur over the 40 years beginning on the Day of Pentecost in Acts 2 and continuing to the destruction of the Jewish temple in 70AD. It amounts to one generation.
Covenant Change Preceded By A Change of the Priesthood
According to Hebrews 7:11-12, a change of the covenant must be preceded by a change of the levitical priesthood. In other words, it is impossible for a covenant change to occur without first changing the priesthood. And, a change of priesthood and covenant also demands a change of the tabernacle.
This point helps one to understand why the Apostle spoke of the tabernacle (the tent or house made with hands) being dissolved in chapter 5:1. It stands over against the house not made with hands which is the kingdom of God, (See Dan. 2:34, 45; Acts 7:48-50; Heb. 12:28.
Now many people believe that Paul spoke of shedding our flesh as in dying physically or what is styled as biological death. This interpretation is forced because of a lack of understanding and appreciation for the covenantal change we've describe above. It stems from a surface versus careful reading of the text. One example of attempting to force-fit a biological death interpretation is seen when attempting to interpret 2 Cor. 4:10-12.
The Dying of the Lord Jesus
Paul wrote of their eschatological sufferings and said "we" are always carrying about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body.
The dying of the Lord was death to sin. For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God. (Rom. 6:10)
If it is the case that the dying of the Lord Jesus is death to sin, then it follows that the "life of Jesus" is resurrection from that death or salvation from sin.
Otherwise, the next verse would make no sense at all. "For we who live are always delivered to death for Jesus' sake, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh." So then death is working in us, but life in you". (2 Cor. 4:11-12).
How can physical death work in some members of the church but not in others? Are not all men appointed to die? Paul certainly did not teach that some who lived in the first century would not die.
We Versus You
The key to understanding Paul's language is to grasp the significance of his "we versus you" antithesis. "We" refers to the remnant from Judah. They were died to the law and were being transformed to the New Covenant of life. However, they could not receive their life until the goy, i.e. the Gentiles received. They are Paul's "you" in whom life was working. They were not under the law and were not allowed to enter that covenant. Thus, they were not dying to it. So death to the Old Covenant was working in the remnant while life was working in the Gentiles.
Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us (for it is written, 'Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree')", that the blessing of Abraham might come upon the Gentiles in Christ Jesus, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.
God Will Raise Us Up With You
It was the hope of the remnant as expressed through Paul's "we" to be raised up with those who "lived" described as the "you." As we have established this is not a biological demise of the body, it therefore cannot be a resurrection to biological life. That which distinguished the difference between the "we" in whom death was working versus the "you" in whom life was working are the two covenants and the relationship of the believers to them.
Remember according to Acts 15 that some came down from Judea to Antioch saying that unless the Gentiles were circumcised and kept the law they could not be saved. After Paul and the elders met at the Jerusalem conference, they determined that this was an error and that they commanded no such thing.
Rather, Peter asked why tempt God by putting a yoke on the neck of the disciples which neither we nor our fathers were able to bear, Acts 15:10. This is proof positive that the gospel distinguished for a time between the requirements for Judeans versus that of Gentiles (goy).
After Peter makes the statement, Peter said, but we believe that through the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ we shall be saved in the same manner as they." Thus, as the Jews were dying to the Old Covenant, they hoped to receive the "life of Jesus" as the Gentiles, i.e. separated and apart from the Law.
The Outward Versus the Inward Man
In the next section, Paul discusses the inward versus the outward man. He says the outward man is perishing while the inward man is being renewed day by day. Commonly, it is believe that the outward man is the physical body, while the inward man is believed to be the soul or spirit as separate from the body.
Greek and Gnostic concepts of body and flesh versus a Hebraic mindset view the body as evil which the Hebrews did not. Man is fearfully and wonderfully made.
Paul uses outward and inward as covenantal terms. "For he is not a Jew who is one outwardly, nor is circumcision that which is outward in the flesh; but he is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the Spirit, not in the letter; whose praise is not from men but from God. (Rom. 2:28-29).
How can there be an inward Jew and an outward Jew? Weren't they both circumcised, members of respective tribes, etc. Nothing in appearance distinguished them. It was the respective covenant which determined an outward Jew versus an inward Jew. The outward Jew did not have the Spirit of God. He had not submitted to the righteousness of God through the gospel. He was yet in the flesh (Old Covenant).
On the other hand, the inward Jew had accepted Christ, received the Spirit and began the process of dying to the Old Covenant aeon through the Spirit. (2 Cor. 3:7-18). The inward man is the new man or the Lord Jesus Christ. See Eph. 4:22-24.
Light Affliction
The light affliction through which those who were the following the inward man experience are the birth pangs and tribulation spoken of as preceding the new age. See Isaiah 26:16-21; Matt. 24:8, 21; Rom. 8:20-23.
The great tribulation would precede the parousia (return of Christ) and is directly connected to the resurrection of the dead, Dan. 12:1-3; Rev. 7:13-17.
From this context, Paul begins a discussion in chapter 5 further expounding upon the distinctions between the two covenants houses which he describes as the tabernacle made with hands, versus that made without hands.
Thus, the dying of the Lord in 2 Cor. 4:10-14 Jesus refers to the remnant of Israel who were dying to the Old Covenant or "body of Moses" and entering into the "body of Christ". The transition and transformation occurred over the 40 years between the interim of Jesus' death on the cross and his ascension until the Parousia of Christ when it was complete. This change of the two covenants is the outward man who was perishing while the inward man was being renewed. Eschatological resurrection is not a biological event of physical bodies rising from the graves but a covenantal change from the ministration of death to the ministration of life. | <urn:uuid:eab3ceb2-f9f7-4f6d-b7b9-11b4173e6121> | 2 | 2.453125 | 0.019581 | en | 0.962872 | http://www.examiner.com/article/the-dying-of-the-lord-jesus-2-cor-4-10-14?cid=rss |
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Underrated Hall of Famer?
I want to start this note out with a thought. I know, everything in life is the result of a thought. But in this case, the point I think is a valid one that bears some time devoted to it. Within this world there are often accolades accorded to a great many people for dubious efforts. The reason is very simple. They know how to play the game of life. What many don't understand, especially in this day and age talent and effort mean very little to most people. What matters is who you know.
As I was thinking back throughout the history of rock and roll I began to consider those who, even though they may have achieved the status of stardom and even entrance into the genre's questionable Hall of Fame, I really do not believe they have received just rewards and the accompanying regard. There is a long list of those who are not in the Hall. A list that is as shocking as it is embarrassing. Certain things should be a no brainer. And yet those same things prove the people involved may not have the necessary brain in the first place.
But today I'm writing with regard to a group from the 1960's that not only may well have been the most influential band to invade from Britain outside of the Beatles but also a band that without a doubt invented an entire subsection under the rock and roll genre. The Yardbirds are of course a major part in the history of rock and roll. And yet, in too many ways, I think they roster of former members tends to overshadow the actual work of the band.
As most of you know, the band began in the early 1960's with a very young Eric Clapton establishing his credentials as "god". Actually, that's only partly correct. The band actually started out with a guitarist named Top Topham, who, unlike any that would follow, is currently in the line up. Clapton was followed by Jeff Beck who himself was replaced by Jimmy Page. Three of the greatest and most influential guitar aficionados in the history of rock music. Yet to me, the Yardbirds were a band not a group of great guitar players. For me, the music was always the thing! Though the line up invariably changed throughout the years, the music has always been the thing. The Yardbirds were, by almost every estimate and perspective, the first heavy metal band. Their influence went far beyond just the establishment of guitar as a dominant instrument. Their song list is to many as great as any band that graced the music scene in the 1960's. "Heart Full of Soul", "Shapes of Things", "Over Under Sideways Down", "Happenings Ten Years Time Ago", "For Your Love", "You're a Better Man Than I" and "I Ain't Got You" to name a few, were all songs that illustrated how blues could become pop and how the electric guitar was a force to be reckoned with. They were on the playlist for most every hard rock garage band and I suspect still are. And yet, when people look back at the band they often ignore the incredible vocals of the late Keith Relf, the drumming of Jim McCarty, the bass work of Paul Samwell-Smith and later, Chris Dreja who jumped back and forth from rhythm guitar to bass as the need arose. And then there were the songs. Though listed as group compositions most were written by the "supporting" band not the guitar players exclusively. So it is very possible the band would have been successful no matter who was on guitar. That is supported, I think, because the band prospered and made a great accounting of themselves no matter who was playing the six string. Yes, Clapton, Beck and Page are three of the all time best on their respective instrument. But again, the songs are what make a band great. Remember, Cream wasn't just Clapton's band. And Led Zeppelin wasn't great only because of Jimmy Page. They were part of mix to be sure. But again, a band like the Yardbirds had a focus and they stayed true to that focus throughout their most dominant years. They deserve to be considered more than just the starting place for three great guitarists and I hope history will properly pay homage to them. | <urn:uuid:02b7db74-fe9c-4531-be88-8b11da327b75> | 2 | 1.632813 | 0.02351 | en | 0.986343 | http://www.examiner.com/article/underrated-hall-of-famer?cid=rss |
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. -- It's something that more than one million Floridians experienced between 2012 and 2013 - having their driver licenses suspended or revoked.
Lots of them came from non-moving violations and lawmakers set out to change that with a new bill.
A recent state report shows that out of those 1.3 million Florida driver licenses revoked or suspended in a year, 167,000 had nothing to do with driving.
"If you have your license taken away, how are you're going to get to work and stuff like that?" Asked Tavin Crawford, a Tallahassee resident.
That's how most state lawmakers feel. This session the legislature approved a measure changing how licenses can be sanctioned.
The bill prevents judges from suspending a license for a first offense of not appearing in court for a worthless check charge. It also reduces the length of a revoked license for drug related convictions from two years to one year.
Only three lawmakers voted against the measure and some agree with it passing.
"I think it's a good thing now that they've changed it to where you won't be penalized for those things that didn't have anything to do with your driving rights," Crawford said.
According to the state report, here's a list of non-moving violations causing people to lose their licenses:
- Failure to pay court fees
- Not paying child support
- Conviction of a drug-related offense and more.
The numbers will drastically go down with the new law, which has yet to be signed by Governor Rick Scott.
"Definitely hands down I think it's a good move," Crawford added.
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Are You Food-Smart? | Fit Pregnancy
Are You Food-Smart?
Take our pregnancy-nutrition quiz and find out.
7) e. A California roll made with cooked crabmeat (not raw fish) is the safest choice on this menu. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration warns that swordfish, shark, king mackerel and tilefish may contain unacceptable levels of mercury. The raw egg used in classic Caesar salad dressing may harbor salmonella (though plenty of so-called Caesar salads are not made using raw eggs, so investigate further). While not raw, seared ahi tuna usually is served very rare. Raw and undercooked fish, meat and poultry pose a food-poisoning risk, so carpaccio (raw beef) is off-limits. Avoid unpasteurized cheeses, such as Camembert, brie, feta, any blue-veined and soft Mexican-style cheeses. Also stay away from unpasteurized milk, fruit or vegetable juice.
Most Popular in nutrition | <urn:uuid:410f57b1-1401-4f14-a16d-154786884aa1> | 2 | 1.9375 | 0.021025 | en | 0.8595 | http://www.fitpregnancy.com/nutrition/prenatal-nutrition/are-you-food-smart-0?page=3 |
Monday August 15, 2011 9:38 am
Astronomers find the darkest known planet, TrES-2b
Posted by Andru Edwards - Categories: Science
TrES-2b planet
"It's not clear what is responsible for making this planet so extraordinarily dark," said Princeton University professor David Spiegel, co-author of the paper that first reported the planet's existence. "However, it's not completely pitch black. It's so hot that it emits a faint red glow, much like a burning ember or the coils on an electric stove."
As for how Kepler was able to deduce that TrES-2b even existed, the spacecraft is designed to look for the variations in brightness caused when planetary bodies pass between a star and Kepler's vantage point. The intersection reduces a star's brightness, which slowly grows as the planetary object continues its orbit and passes behind the star itself.
In the case of TrES-2b, the dimming and brightening cycle caused by the planet's orbit around its star varied the star's total brightness by around 6.5 parts per million.
"This represents the smallest photometric signal we have ever detected from an exoplanet," said lead paper author and Harvard astronomer David Kipping in an interview with National Geographic. And the drop in brightness when TrES-2b passed directly in front of its star was, "so small that it's like the dip in brightness we would see with a fruit fly going in front of a car headlight," he added.
Current computer models suggest that these hot-Jupiter stars should reflect approximately ten percent of the light they receive. The discovery of TrES-2b might force a little change in these estimations, but it'll mostly keep astronomers busy assessing similar instances to determine what, exactly, is making this planet–or these planets–so dark.
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News Release 28 September 2005
GSA Release No. 05-32
Contact: Christa Stratton
October Media Highlights: Geology and GSA Today
Boulder, Colo. - Topics in the October issue of GEOLOGY include: a new method of tracing ancient fluid flows that may provide insights into the history and evolution of Earth's crust; and analysis of an ancient fault zone between the Adirondack highlands and lowlands of New York state. The GSA TODAY science article offers spectacular images of inner Earth captured with 3D seismic reflection profiling.
Isotopic dating of the migration of a low-grade metamorphic front during orogenesis
Birger Rasmussen, University of Western Australia, School of Earth and Geographical Sciences, Crawley, Perth, Western Australia 6009, Australia; et al. Pages 773-776.
The migration of fluids in the Earth's crust controls the distribution of mineral and petroleum resources. Tracing ancient fluid flow has proven notoriously difficult, but now, researchers using recently developed dating methods have mapped the former passage of hot, aqueous fluids over vast regions (>100,000 km2) of an ancient continent. Researchers estimate that fluids were driven outwards at ~5.0 millimeters per year by an advancing mountain chain that developed during continental collision ~2.2 billion years ago. The dating method is likely to be widely applicable and will provide important new insights into the history and evolution of the Earth's crust.
Central Andean rotation pattern: Evidence from paleomagnetic rotations of an anomalous domain in the forearc of northern Chile
Graeme K. Taylor, University of Plymouth, School of Earth, Ocean and Environmental Sciences, Plymouth, Devon PL4 8AA, UK; et al. Pages 777-780.
The Andes are one of the world's great mountain chains, and the major bend (or orocline) in the chain in central South America is one of its most outstanding features. The way in which the rotation of the limbs of the bend occurred has been studied to detect the rotation of the crust since it formed. The overall pattern of rotations confirms that the bending is in response to crustal shortening during the past 20 million years. In northern Chile, however, Taylor et al. have found an anomalous zone that shows much greater rotations (up to 50 degrees in a clockwise sense) than predicted. They argue that this rotation pre-dates the creation of the bend and postulate that it relates to a period of markedly oblique convergence between the Nazca and South American tectonic plates between 55-40 million years ago. This, in turn, will help researchers' understanding of the tectonic evolution of this mineral-rich region of the world.
Granite emplacement during tectonic exhumation: The Adirondack example
Bruce Selleck, Colgate University, Geology Department, Hamilton, NY 13346, USA; et al. Pages 781-784.
An ancient fault zone forms the boundary between the Adirondack Highlands and Adirondack Lowlands of New York State. Since the fault extended to great depth, the rocks within the fault zone were plastically deformed like warm taffy rather than being crushed into fine powder. Molten granite magma intruded the fault zone at the same time the rocks within the zone were deformed at depths of 25-35 km. Uranium-lead dating of zircon crystals from the granite demonstrate that the fault was active around 1.045 billion years ago. Rocks on the northwest side of the fault, which form the modern Adirondack Lowlands, were moved downward over more deeply buried rocks of the Highlands. The intrusion of granite during motion along deep fault zones occurs in modern mountain belts like the Himalayas and Andes.
Amplitude and timing of sea-surface temperature change in the northern South China Sea: Dynamic link to the East Asian monsoon
Delia W. Oppo, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Geology and Geophysics, Woods Hole, MA 02543-1541, USA; and Youbin Sun, University of Tokyo, Department of Earth and Planetary Science, Tokyo, Japan. Pages 785-788.
Oppo and Sun present 145,000-year-long proxy records for surface temperature and salinity changes from a sediment core from the northern South China Sea (SCS). Abrupt temperature changes during the past 15,000 years appear synchronous with events in East Asian monsoon rainfall, suggesting that variations in monsoon winds and their influence on surface circulation of the western Pacific exerted a strong control on northern SCS surface temperature. Oppo and Sun suggest that this linkage persisted for the previous 130,000 years, when orbital-scale 2-3 °C temperature changes and several small abrupt events occurred in the northern SCS. The results provide evidence of a redistribution of moisture from the East Asian landmass when the summer monsoon is strong, to the western Pacific during times of weaker summer monsoon, during this time interval. Finally, the results weigh in on the controversy related to the timing of the penultimate deglaciation. If northern SCS warming during penultimate deglaciation was also synchronous with the well-dated change in East Asian summer monsoon rainfall, the suggested timing of a proxy for ice volume change, measured in the same sediment core, indicates that ice sheet demise during penultimate deglaciation did not precede Northern Hemisphere summer insolation increase, as other investigators have argued.
Orbitally forced Lofer cycles in the Dachstein Limestone of the Julian Alps (northeastern Italy)
Andrea Cozzi, Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich, Institute of Geology, Department of Earth Sciences, Zürich 8092, Switzerland; et al. Pages 789-792.
The long-debated origin of the m-scale peritidal carbonate cycles of the Dachstein Limestone Formation are investigated using time-series analysis of gray-scale pixel scans of field photographs and detailed sedimentological observations. Cozzi et al. show that the depositional pattern of the Lofer cyclothems have a distinctive, periodic pattern, with time-frequency characteristics that are specific to orbital forcing from the Precession index. While such a forcing has been suspected for nearly half a century, no one has been able to detect a clear signal to confirm it; this has led to a protracted debate on the exact nature of the origin of the cyclothems. In this respect, Cozzi et al. report a novel result that contributes significantly to the Lofer debate.
Intracratonic crustal seawater circulation and the genesis of subseafloor zinc-lead mineralization in the Irish orefield
J. Wilkinson, Imperial College London, Department of Earth Science and Engineering, South Kensington Campus, London SW7 2AZ, UK; et al. Pages 805-808.
Wilkinson et al. report how their analyses of microscopic droplets of 350-million-year-old hydrothermal solutions trapped inside quartz crystals provide new insights into the formation of zinc and lead ore deposits. They studied samples from ores that were precipitated in limestones laid beneath the tropical seas covering Ireland in the Carboniferous period. Their results show that the solutions that transported and deposited the metals were derived from evaporated seawater that had circulated to depths of at least 5 km into the Earth's crust via faults and fractures in the rock.
Variability of Southwest Indian summer monsoon precipitation during the Bølling-Ållerød
Kevin Cannariato, University of Southern California, Earth Sciences, Los Angeles, CA 90089, USA; et al. Pages 813-816.
Cannariato et al. shed light on how Indian Monsoon rainfall varied over a 4.5-thousand-year interval when the Earth was emerging from the last ice age (~15,000 years ago). The precipitation reconstruction indicates that the strength of the Indian Monsoon varied over hundreds to thousands of years synchronously with variations of the East Asian Monsoon. Because a portion of the stalagmite grew very rapidly, the scientists have been able to document Indian Monsoon rainfall variations over this interval at unprecedented temporal resolution (<2.5 years) for the deglaciation. These high-resolution results indicate that multi-decadal rainfall variability was, in fact, an important aspect of Indian Monsoon behavior in the past. The similarity of the frequencies of multi-decadal rainfall variability during the deglaciation to those of climate variability in the recent past suggests that similar climate dynamics may have been responsible even though the boundary conditions of these two time intervals were very different.
Mercury isotope fractionation in fossil hydrothermal systems
Christopher Smith, University of Michigan, Geological Sciences, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1064, USA; et al. Pages 825-828.
Mercury is a volatile, toxic element that is highly mobile within Earth reservoirs. Smith et al. present the first data on the fractionation of stable isotopes of mercury in fossil hydrothermal systems. Significant fractionation is demonstrated within individual systems indicating that low-temperature geochemical processes occurring in the near surface environment can affect mercury isotopic compositions. Indeed, the range of fractionation recorded at the sites studied is comparable to that of much lighter metal isotope systems, presenting the potential for mercury isotopes to become a useful tool for exploring the cycling of this element in the Earth.
Grain growth control of isotope exchange between rocks and fluids
Michihiko Nakamura, Graduate School of Science, Tohoku University, Institute of Mineralogy, Petrology and Economic Geology, Aoba, Sendai, Miyagi 980-8578, Japan; et al. Pages 829-832.
Minerals in rocks and meteorites contain much useful information — such as flow of groundwater and ascent of magma — about Earth and other planets. Nakamura et al. propose a new mechanism by which this information is recorded in the minerals. Such topics are very basic and instrumental in understanding the genesis and evolution of Earth. Even though the mechanism investigated in the current study is found to be more efficient than the traditional ones, it has been overlooked for a long time.
(226Ra)/(230Th) excess generated in the lower crust: Implications for magma transport and storage time scales
Josef Dufek and Kari Cooper, University of Washington, Department of Earth and Space Sciences, Seattle, WA 98195. USA. Pages 833-836.
Excesses of radium over its parent isotope of thorium in arc lavas have previously been interpreted to reflect deep mantle processes; this, in turn, implies very rapid (1000 m/yr) ascent rates of melt from the source region. Previous investigations suggested that lower-crustal melting produced insignificant Ra-excesses. Dufek and Cooper demonstrate that, when the timescale of melting is explicitly incorporated into the model, incongruent melting of amphibolite in the lower continental crust can produce significant Ra-excesses and therefore reduce inferred vertical transport rates.
Geologic processes in sedimentary basins inferred from three-dimensional seismic imaging
Richard J. Davies, 3DLab, School of Earth, Ocean and Planetary Sciences, Cardiff University, Cardiff CF10 3YE, UK, and Henry W. Posamentier, Anadarko Canada Corporation, Calgary, Alberta T2P4V4, Canada. Pages 4-9.
New views of inner Earth: The same technology that the medical industry uses to gain views of the human body (CAT scans) is used by the geoscience community to gain new insight and understanding of Earth. Termed "three dimensional seismic reflection profiling" and widely used by the petroleum industry, the technology uses sound waves to produce images of Earth's interior, both on land and at sea. In the October issue of GSA Today, Richard Davies and Henry Posamentier present spectacular images derived from formerly proprietary data sets that show striking examples of deep sea channels in the Gulf of Mexico, of how igneous intrusions are emplaced in the North Sea, and of how natural gas moves in the subsurface. This is just a glimpse of the high tech world the petroleum industry has at its fingertips, offering new advances both in petroleum exploration and in understanding how Earth works.
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I once had a girlfriend who was very shy when it comes to sex. Her shyness was not about the act of sex but she had hard time talking about it. I have to admit that this approach of hers made me more curious.
One day, I asked her if there is anything particular in men that turns her on. She was again shy for a moment and then immediately she told me that she was an apple fetishist. It was my first year in the USA and my English was not very good at that time. Noticing my astonishment she pointed my throat and touched that obscure lump that I never thought I should take a look at it before going out for the night.
Gogus olculeri
She said, she did not know why but a man with a beautiful Adam's apple can turn her head and made her look at him more carefully. I examined my Adam's apple with my fingers. So, there were beautiful and not so beautiful Adam's apples in this world.
I had two questions in my mind at that point: What makes an Adam's apple beautiful, and whether I had one of those beautiful ones. She had no answer for the first question. Her answer for the second question was a question itself. "Why do you think I accepted your offer for a coffee in the beginning?"
I was relieved. I could comfortably start my research on Adam's Apple. Why do men have an Adam's apple? There is not a definitive answer to this question. In fact, not all men have Adam's apples. That is to say that it is not so much visible. And to make thing more complicated, some women have an Adam's apple very much visible too. The Adam's apple is actually the cartilage that surrounds the human "voice box", the larynx.
Both men and women have it but it is more prominent in men than in women. Some say that the reason for this visual difference comes from the angle that the two cartilages meet at the throat. The angle in men's throat is close to 900 whereas in women it is close to 1200. However, this does not explain why some women have Adam's apple visible as in men.
How about the word itself, what is the etymological mystery behind my cartilage lump? Why is it called Adam's apple? Well, guess what, it is another biblical reference. According to the story from the Book of Genesis, Adam had had the bitter taste of the "forbidden fruit" which was handed to him by Eve.
"Both men and women have it, but more prominent in men."
Popularly, the fruit has been identified as an apple (while some others say that it could be grapes, pomegranate, or figs). Whatever the fruit was, it was forbidden and a piece of it got stuck in Adam's throat. He probably got astonished and choked. Maybe that is why even today when a man is surprised his Adam's apple moves up and down. Gulp! This is the myth behind the Apple's apple. | <urn:uuid:a0fc5607-3a2e-4664-85d1-08cae6a6af6d> | 2 | 1.789063 | 0.783922 | en | 0.99087 | http://www.girlsaskguys.com/social-relationships/a9-why-do-guys-have-an-adam-s-apple |
Name: Ferdinand Porsche
Nationality: Austro-Hungarian Empire
Born in Bohemian, which is in the modern Czech Republic but was then a part of the Austro-Hungarian empire, Porsche was drawn to the capital Vienna where, in 1898, he joined Jacob Lohner's recently-formed automobile company. This was Austria's first production car company but Lohner believed in electric cars and Porsche designed a car which had an electric motor fitted to each wheel. The Lohner-Porsche was exhibited in the Paris Exposition of 1900 and attracted international attention. The cars were briefly put into production. In 1905 Gottlieb Daimler asked Porsche to replace his son Paul Daimler as chief designer at Austro-Daimler, the Austrian offshoot of Cannstadt-Daimler. Porsche began building a new range of cars and these were successful on the Prince Henry Tour, an important reliability trial of that era. During World War I the Austro-Daimler company was associated with Skoda, the vast Austro-Hungarian weapons-making firm (which later became a car company), Porsche becoming the general manager for military vehicle production.
After the war the Austro-Daimler company returned to car-building and Porsche began to produce successful high-performance touring cars but in 1923 Porsche was asked the take over from Paul Daimler as chief engineer for the Mercedes company, a Daimler subsidiary. Soon afterwards Mercedes began to merge with the Benz company and Porsche produced a highly-successful line of sporting touring cars called the S, the SS and the SSK.
Porsche, however, was becoming and more interested in the idea of building a small car for mass-production and in 1931 he left Mercedes-Benz and established a company called Porsche Konstruktionburo fur Motoren-Fahrzeug-Luftfahrzeug und Wasserfahrzeugbau in Stuttgart, his aim being to design engines for cars, planes and ships. He did a variety of design work for the Wanderer, Zundapp and then NSU and in 1932 the success with the Wanderer 2-liter car led to Porsche being asked by the newly-formed Auto Union consortium (Horch, Audi, Wanderer and DKW) to design a Grand Prix car. He produced the radical mid-engined Auto Union A-Type for the 1934 season. It was not the first such car, Porsche having designed a similar vehicle for Mercedes-Benz in 1923 (the Tropfenwagen). The car began to show well in the hands of Hans Stuck and in 1935 Porsche designed a B-Type, developing his ideas. Stuck was joined by a new rising star called Bernd Rosemeyer and the cars became increasingly successful. The C-Type continued the development but in 1937 Porsche was replaced by Karl Feuereissen and he concentrated on his new project - the Volkswagen.
His idea of a people's car had received enthusiastic support in 1934 from the new Chancellor of Germany, Adolf Hitler. The prototype Volkswagen cars were finished in 1936 and small-scale production began the following year in Porsche's new workshop at Zuffenhausen, in Stuttgart. In the years before World War II began Porsche was busy building streamlined versions of the cars which he hoped to use in sportscar racing. These were to be the prototypes of the postwar Porsche sportscars.
In 1939 work began on a Volkswagen factory at Wolfsburg, near Hannover, in the north of the country but the outbreak of war meant that German industry had to support the war effort. Porsche worked on military designs, notably the Tiger Tank. When the war ended Porsche was taken prisoner by the French. His son Ferry and daughter Louise had set up a factory in Gmund, Austria, after the war and began a series of design projects to raise money to buy the release of their father. These included the Cisitalia Formula 1 car. Porsche Sr. returned to Austria in 1948 by which times the first Porsche sportscar was ready to be built.
Ferdinand Porsche died in Stuttgart at the start of 1951 as the company bearing his name began to mass produce the Porsche 356. By the time production was suspended in 1965 78,000 of them had been built. | <urn:uuid:757e3173-cfd5-461d-be26-f9b6c4ac2b82> | 3 | 2.640625 | 0.349403 | en | 0.976023 | http://www.grandprix.com/gpe/cref-porfer.html |
HASA Resources
Places in Middle-earth
Bill Ferny's House
Type: Buildings, Halls, Houses
Region: Bree/The Shire
Location: In Bree, the last house along the Great East Road, just inside the South-gate.
Strider had changed his mind, and he decided to leave Bree by the main road....
But as they drew near to the further gate, Frodo saw a dark ill-kept house behind a thick hedge: the last house in the village. In one of the windows he caught a glimpse of a sallow face with sly, slanting eyes; but it vanished at once.
'So that's where that southerner is hiding!' he thought....
Over the hedge another man was staring boldly....
Sam turned quickly. 'And you, Ferny,' he said, 'put your ugly face out of sight, or it will get hurt.' With a sudden flick,... an apple left his hand and hit Bill square on the nose. He ducked too late, and curses came from behind the hedge.
'And there are some folk in Bree who are not to be trusted... Bill Ferny, for instance. He has an evil name... and queer folk call at his house.'
'[The Black Rider] seemed to make off up the Road, eastward,' continued Merry. 'I tried to follow.... I went round the corner and on as far as the last house on the Road.'....
'Anyway, I went, and suddenly I heard voices by the hedge. One was muttering; and the other was whispering, or hissing.... Then I felt terrified, and I turned back,... when something came behind me and I... I fell over.'
'I found him, sir,' put in Nob.... 'I went... back up towards South-gate. Just nigh Bill Ferny's house....'
So it was that near the end of a wild and wet evening... the five travellers rode up the climbing road and came to the South-gate of Bree....
When they came to Bill Ferny's house they saw that the hedge there was tattered and unkempt, and the windows were all boarded up.
Contributors: Elena Tiriel 23Oct05
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Coping with the coop
Deep litter method keeps chickens healthy, happy and avoids constant cleaning
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• A good friend of mine prides herself on how immaculate her chicken coop is. Granted she only has about five chickens, but it seems as though the droppings have only barely hit the floor before they’re cleaned up. She cleans it morning and evening and it’s so clean you can eat off the ground (OK, not really).
Then there's my coop.
We have a little over 100 chickens and I clean my coop once. No, not once per day. Once per year. Disgusting you say? Healthy is what I say back.
The Deep Litter Method
The Deep Litter Method is sweet and simple. Put straw or any other carbonaceous material onto the floor of the coop (dirt floors aren’t necessary, but some drainage is good). I use straw and collect fallen leaves every autumn and use them as well as weeds, hay, wood chips, wood shavings, wool and anything else I want composted.
You should keep your litter at least 8 inches, according to Joel Salatin, the guru of small farmers. As the chickens mess and compact this litter, you just add a fresh layer.
Why the Deep Litter Method?
Contrary to common sense, it’s actually better NOT to clean your chicken coop every day.
The Deep Litter Method has been around for many years and is used by some small farmers as well as industrial ones. It has very few disadvantages and many advantages.
It’s easier. The biggest benefit is it makes you work less.
Instead of constantly cleaning, you only have one cleaning a year. Granted, that one day is going to take you a long time. It’s literally a year’s worth of cleaning. However, it does cut down overall time spent on this chore.
For example, you cut out the time it takes you to get and put away your tools, say five minutes each time you clean. That adds up over the year.
It provides free food. As chicken poo and straw (or whatever other carbon material you use) builds up, so does the amount of little critters living in it. Everything from microbes to worms will love this compost buffet and your chickens will love to scratch through it and eat the buggies.
Since we started doing this as well as keeping our compost pile in the chicken coop, it’s dropped our feed costs in half.
It decreases the death rate.
According to Salatin, the Deep Litter Method decreases the death rate significantly, especially with chicks. Research supports him. As mentioned earlier, microbes begin to proliferate in this compost and these microbes provide a lot of benefits to the health of your chickens.
The microbes produce valuable waste products: Vitamins B12 and K, natural antibiotics and immune-enhancing substances, which the chickens eat along with whatever it is they find so interesting in the litter.
The microbes also help prevent infestations of lice and mites in your flock.
It kills flies. Along with all the other wonderful critters that begin to thrive in the deep litter, this also becomes a perfect environment for parasitic wasps and other fly parasites that kill fly eggs. Additionally, all the carbon material will help to absorb the manure that attracts flies and the microbes help to break manure down faster.
It provides heat. As the deep litter begins to break down, a lot of heat gets produced. So much in fact that compost piles occasionally catch on fire. We don’t want this heat in the summer, of course, but since you start allowing the litter to build up in late spring, you don’t have much heat production until winter when the heat is very appreciated by the flock.
Deep litter concerns
But what about pathogens?
Chicken poo doesn’t actually harbor as many pathogens as other manures, such as cat. The microbes that grow in the litter help to break down these pathogens as well. Many people are concerned about their chicks in particular being in “filthy” conditions, however just like human children, the more pathogens the young ones are exposed to, the stronger their immune system.
Ironically, the more you protect, the more dangerous life is for the one being protected.
Chicks raised on the deep litter method have significantly higher survival rates.
Won’t it stink? I remember driving past the industrial dairy operations as a child. My Midwestern dad would roll down the window to torture us kids and take in a whiff. “Mmm,” he'd say with a big smile, “that's the smell of money.”
This is a common attitude for people used to the industrial farming system. But it’s wrong.
If your coop stinks, there is a problem. Salatin has said “If you are around any livestock operation, regardless of species, and you smell manure — you are smelling mismanagement.” This means that if your coop is stinking when you’re using the Deep Litter Method, you are doing it wrong.
Usually smells come from lack of drainage such as with a cement floor, or not enough carbon materials.
Do it!
Give it a try. There are so many benefits and so few disadvantages that I don’t understand why anyone manages their chicken manure in any other way. This is one time your animals will actually thank you for being lazy.
Have a question about farming? Ask Serina at [email protected] visit www.FlipFlopRanch.com or stop in at facebook.com/flipflopranch.
Serina Harvey is a farmer at Flip Flop Ranch in Lucerne Valley. She and her family raise rare, endangered breeds of livestock. They sell farm-fresh meats and offer day tours and farming workshops by appointment only.
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Doctors dished them out like sweets until, like opium, they got the masses hooked
The "opium of the masses" was how Professor Malcolm Laser, a psychopharmacologist, described benzodiazepines in an article in the late 1970s, one of the first to warn of the dangers of addiction.
By 1988 about 400,000 Britons were thought to be dependent and they remain the most commonly misused prescription drugs in Britain.
Now, however, the victims of addiction to tranquillisers such as Valium and Ativan are fighting back through the courts.
Reg Peart, a former atomic scientist, is one of those hoping to win compensation from the manufacturers.
Now 62, he began taking Valium in his late 30s for attacks of nausea and vertigo and has only latterly begun to piece his life back together. As his addiction took hold he lost his career, his marriage, and ended up one step from living on the streets. He says that at his lowest point he had a mental age of 10. The only reason the majority of people continue to take benzodiazepines for more than a few months, he believes, is because they are addicted.
When he was eventually, abruptly, taken off the drug in 1985 he went into cold turkey and given repeated electro-shock therapy to treat his withdrawal symptoms. It took until 1992 until he began to feel right, although tests showed he was still suffering 20 per cent intellectual impairment. "It was like a car running on low-grade petrol and then it runs out. The car won't start."
A number of the litigants in person suffer from agoraphobia and most do not work. Michael Behan, a 42-year-old former teacher, began taking Ativan in 1981 after getting panic attacks in lifts and underground trains. He says he became addicted in a couple of months, but his doctor took the view that his original illness was getting worse.
"You are told you are not addicted and you can't understand why you feel so awful if you stop taking it. So you stay on drugs year after year." The addiction lasted seven years.
However, where the ultimate responsibility lies is unlikely to ever be tested in a British court.
Up to 40 victims plan to press on with their claims against the makers of Valium and Ativan, despite the spectacular collapse of what was once tipped to be the biggest group negligence action ever.
The claimants are facing an uphill task to persuade the Court of Appeal to reverse a little-noticed decision last month in which Mr Justice Ian Kennedy, the High Court judge in charge of the litigation, struck out the remaining 70 writs in an action originally numbering more than 5,000.
Dr Peart and other claimants in the Victims of Tranquillisers group are protesting that the striking out was unfair because it was due to early problems in the organisation of the group action, not on the merits of individual cases.
If necessary, the complaint will be pursued to the European Court of Human Rights, Dr Peart said.
Last month's ruling was the latest of a series of blows to claimants in the benzodiazepine litigation which was launched in 1988 on behalf of thousands of Britons who had become dependent on Valium, Ativan and other tranquillisers and sleeping pills in the benzodiazepine group.
More than 17,000 people came forward and 13,000 were initially granted legal aid after a group of lawyers announced plans to sue the multinationals which developed and marketed the drugs on the ground that they should have known about the risk of addition and warned of it. The Government had warned in 1988 that prescriptions should be longer than two to four weeks.
But after the Legal Aid Board withdrew funding for claims against Roche Products, makers of Valium, Mogadon and Librium, in 1993 and for those against John Wyeth and Brother, makers of Ativan, the following year, the group litigation effectively collapsed.
Around pounds 35m of public money had been spent on legal costs without a penny reaching those who claimed to have been damaged through taking the drugs. The 70 had soldiered on, all bar one as litigants in person without legal representation. But Mr Justice Ian Kennedy struck their claims out as an "abuse of process" because, among other reasons, the Legal Aid Board had deemed them not reasonable to support and the costs of a complicated and strongly contested trial would be enormous compared with any small amounts of damages recovered. There had also been "inordinate and inexcusable delay" in progressing the cases.
The two drug companies, which have always strongly denied liability, and had hoped that the July decision would finally close the issue, promised they would not enforce orders for costs they have been granted since legal aid was withdrawn - but on condition that the 70 litigants do not appeal last month's ruling. About 30 are expected to conclude that they would risk losing assets such as their homes, but up to 40 consider they have nothing to lose.
In any event, claimants would have to exhaust all their UK legal remedies before applying to Strasbourg. The Legal Aid Board refused funding for the appeal last week.
Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights says that "in the determination of his civil rights . . . everyone is entitled to a fair and public hearing within a reasonable time". Dr Peart said the litigation had showed that the English legal system was totally inadequate to cope with group actions. In the United States drug companies have paid out billions of dollars to patients claiming they were injured by their products. In Britain no group action against a commercial company has reached trial, although the 1,200 victims of the Opren anti-arthritis drug secured pounds 2.275m in an out-of-court settlement in 1987.
The remaining claimants complain that they have been denied the right to pursue their actions because the costs would dwarf any damages. The root of the problem was that investigation of cases viewed as unwinnable both slowed down the progress of the case and clocked up enormous costs.
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Which is more likely to work and which is more based on fact, the modified alcubeirre warp theory or the hiem hyperdrive
Which is more likely to work, the alcubierre drive which allows for superluminal travel using a
Jupiter's mass of energy or the superconducting gravito-photon effect that powers the theoretical hiem theory hyperdrive?
kelseymh4 years ago
As the professional physicist on this site, I guess it's time for me to weight in. Neither one is based in fact.
Alcubierre's work is a solution to the standard field equations of general relativity. Is it not a "warp drive" in any propulsive sense, in that he makes no claims about how to actually create the "bubble" he analyzes. His solution presupposes the existence of a bubble of flat spacetime surrounded by a soliton (a localized wave), and works out how that bubble travels through the metric. It is therefore meaningless to ask about whether it "works" or not.
Heim (not "hiem") is a crackpot. The vast majority of his work was self-published and self-promoted, with nothing accepted (and most likely not even submitted) to peer-reviewed journals. He's thrown a few things onto the arXiv, but that's about as close to "accepted scientific publication" as a forum post here on Instructables. His theory is basically nonsense; if you really want to understand why, I recommend a good series of graduate courses in quantum field theory and general relativity.
What ? I thought this WAS "peer reviewed" ;-)
amelius (author) kelseymh4 years ago
Any chance you could explain what is wrong with both? There were theories I found online that claim how manipulation of micro dimensions predicted by string theory can create a similar effect to the alcubierre drive but without the requirement of negative matter.
And I have yet to find any clear explanation of heim theory except that the use powerful magnets to manipulate photons into gravitophotons or something.
I am mainly interested in the possible aspects of theses theories that allow for faster than light travel without time dilation and actual relativistic speeds. If you could explain both it would be a great deal if help.
The easiest way to explain what's wrong is for you to have a graduate level understanding of both quantum field theory and general relativity. Both of those are covered in first- or second-year courses in a physics masters or Ph.D. program.
As Orksecurity said, somethings can only be explained "briefly" if you already have sufficient understanding that all of the past century's worth of research doesn't have to be re-explained to you.
There is actually nothing wrong with Alcubierre's analysis. It's a perfectly reasonable solution to the field equations. The point, which all of the crackpots don't seem to recognize or understand, is that Alcubierre's study is not a "constructive solution" -- that is, there is no mechanism by which his soliton can be created (or destroyed). If it already exists, then it has the properties he demonstrated.
Heim's model, on the other hand, is pure crap. Some people would be more polite, but there are times when it's most useful to call a spade a spade. What Heim did, basically, was to pick and choose a bunch of really cool-sounding words in modern physics, string them together in ways that sounded like sentences, and pubish them. You might as well talk about how a collection of green and goldenrod cats could partake of equinoctal rainfall to generate happiness beams.
"use powerful magnets to manipulate photons into gravitophotons or something" -- Gibberish, as far as I know. There's no such thing as a gravitophoton, at least by any currently credible theory, and using magnets to manipulate photons is pretty much covered by electromagnetic theory without gravity getting involved at all.
The fact that you can't find a clear explanation is also a strong indication that it isn't considered particularly credible/interesting by the experts.
Re explanations: Some things can't be explained briefly unless the person hearing the explanation already understands a lot of the background theory. Which is presumably why Kelsey suggested that you might need a few college-level classes, to provide that background.
And if it can't be answered reasonably briefly, it's probably not a good question for this venue.
Thank you; that's what I thought I was seeing. BEST ANSWER, definitely.
seandogue4 years ago
I'd offer a third option, the Bussard ramjet.
amelius (author) seandogue4 years ago
That is subluminal
Perhaps, but although it's pretty much out of our scope, at least it has some limited degree of practicaility behind it, even if slim (there are a lot of gaping problems with the Bussard ramjet, specifically encountering anything larger than an atom and actually generating the magnetic net)
Theorizing about going thru black holes and what dark matter is and will we make transporters are neato questions, but they're not grounded in realworld practicalities. First the moon, using big old ugly ships and clumsy spacesuits, Mars next..No jump starting, no friendly alien dwarf who hands us a hyperdrive craft with swimming pools and Holodecks and food-replicators and transporters and bridges with carpeting suitable for a high-rise office, no amazing stargates found in Egyptian ruins, no extraspeshul crystals in Mayan temples...Space is going to be a brutal place for quite a while. Necessary, but brutal.
Personally, I'd rather get there at 7/10th the speed of light rather than never getting there at all because of indoctrination to unrealizable fantasy technologies offered by Hollywad and speculists who, imo, actively serve to stop us from pursuing space by using these both unrealizable technologies and forwarding unrealistic expectations rather than promoting it by explaining the necessity and being frank about what to expect.
And guess what else, you won't be getting a first class stateroom like they have on the Starship enterprise. Pure management class frivolity and absolute elementary-school fantasy for anything approaching near term. In other words, it's neato to imagine, but it's far more neato to conceive of things that CAN be done.
Even all this chatter about solar sails is practically absurd except as an academic exercise, since you'd be limited to space well inside the Kuiper belt and they'd even get torn to shreds by all the things flying about when operating for any appreciable period of time well inside.
BTW, lol to "just bending space time" how very trivial...
Honestly, one of the reasons we're not getting anywhere wrt space is because too many people think that the only way to be practical is to be completely unpractical. Too much movie and scifi series and too little realizing that the early explorers did not hop into a first class barkolounger and get flown to the places they discovered by a team of shortskirted skygirls that handed them fresh G&Ts as they sat down in their ubercomfie seat and plugged in their balckberry into the console. They got there by using the things at their disposal. We need to start thinking that way again instead of living as though the TV wasn't telling us a boatload of convenient lies to satisfy our need for entertainment..
amelius (author) seandogue4 years ago
Sure that is why many people wish for interstellar travel, but there are few like me who only wish to see the actual stars and see something that no eyes have ever seen. Nothing else has ever had any interest in life for me. I do not want a "hollywood" solution i want to find and if i have the honor to implement a real solution. I ask about these theories because they are the closest thing i have found to actual research on this subject.
If I were to suggest something practical that needs improvement, I'd say it's ion propulsion. It's real, it works, but it has a lot of room for improvement, and it will need serious attention for quite a while to garner the next step in our development. (imo)
That is, if you feel you could contribute, it might be a good direction to follow that might lead to serious gains, and in the process, you develop the skills necessary to professionally evaluate and or pursue these alternate theories.
BTW, I am no enemy of scifi. Love the stuff. It just needs to be remembered that a whole lot of it is true and pure fiction, just as many of the wild theories that it itself spawns amongst some people who don't read the fine print.
amelius (author) seandogue4 years ago
Is funny then how alcubierre's theory is a clear solution and while without an actual way to be implemented basically says "this can happen". there is an old saying "todays science fiction is tommorow's reality" i wouldnt hold my breath but at least that one has a basis in fact.
Not exactly, what Alcubierre's solution (it's not a theory, it's a particular solution to the GR field equations) says is that "if such a soliton already exists, it will continue to exist and to propagate in such-and-such a way." Not only does it not provide any sort of construction (or destruction, meaning you can't get out of the bubble!), his solution requires pre-existence of the solition.
I liked reading that.
caarntedd4 years ago
Dr Kelsey just dissed Instructables! Let's get him!
Burf4 years ago
I'll put my money on the "Superman Reverse Continuum." That is, fly around the earth in a counter-clockwise direction at faster than light speed until time itself is reversed. It worked in Issue #135 of Action Comics.
amelius (author) Burf4 years ago
that is unrealistic
Uh, huh. And your point is?
Burf amelius4 years ago
Really? 8-)
orksecurity4 years ago
I think what you need to do is find a practicing high-energy physicist and ask them... since most of the rest of us are not competent to have an opinion.
The former has a Wikipedia entry. It is described as a "speculative mathematical model of a spacetime continuum", meaning that (at best) the math is self-consistent but it may or may not have anything to do with reality. Particularly see the section labelled "difficulties" which discusses what the problems are with this proposal.
Wikipedia has nothing on the second. Others are welcome to go hunting for a citation and/or analysis; I''m not sufficiently interested to dig further. I will say that any time something has that many buzzwords in its name you should be especially skeptical.
And remember: Both are looking for loopholes in accepted theory. Until and unless someone derives experimental tests from them, they're an interesting idea but not much more than that. If it isn't testable, it may be interesting math and/or philosophy but it isn't science.
"... since most of the rest of us are not competent to have an opinion."
Gee that never stopped some of us before.
Since both appear to be vanishingly close to impossible anyway, either option may be right.
amelius (author) steveastrouk4 years ago
Neither are impossible, heim drive uses a strong magnet and disks supposedly, and alcubierre warp is just bending spacetime, and the modified theory does not require negative energy. Anyone have an actual helpful comment that answers the question and not just run away from the question?
Why do you think "neither are impossible"? I would be very grateful for any peer-reviewed citations, as I'm primarily an experimental high-energy physicist, not a theorist.
. Although we do just happen to have an honest-to-goodness Physicist that frequents this site, for the most part, if you want answers to questions about cutting-edge theories, you'd be better off asking at a site that is oriented more toward the scientific than DIY.
Re-design4 years ago
Neither principle seems to have even the tiniest chance of working a least in this lifetime. | <urn:uuid:e31ec664-7561-42f5-bc1e-53882b4b37b8> | 2 | 2.0625 | 0.599408 | en | 0.957223 | http://www.instructables.com/answers/Which-is-more-likely-to-work-and-which-is-more-bas/ |
Picture of tattoo machine out of household material
build a prison style tattoo machine out of househeld items.
tools: needle nose pliers, knife, philips head screwdriver
parts: toothbrush, ball point pen, guitar string, mechanical pencil eraser, and electric motor from tape recorder
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Step 1: Find a motor
Picture of find a motor
i found mine in a tape recording machine. I heard that tape machine motors were the standard, but i have also heard of tattoo machines made of nintendo 64 rumble pack motors. When you find your motor, rip it out and take note of the positive and negative wires. Also rip off the stock gear attached to the motor crank. You will be replacing the stock gear with a mechanical pencil eraser fitted to the guitar string needle.
Step 2: Make the frame
Picture of make the frame
I used a plastic tooth brush. First I cut off the head with the bristles. Then i melted a 90 degree angle in the top of the brush for the motor to rest on.
Step 3: Cut up a pen for the tube
Picture of cut up a pen for the tube
find a normal ball point pen and take out the ink and the tip to use the shell for the tube of your needle. Get those guts out and then tape the tube to the outside of the toothbrush. Then connect the toothbrush frame to the motor so that the eraser gear hangs over the edge of the toothbrush. Take your guitar string and bend it in a 90degree angle. Then stick the angled string through the eraser stuck to the motor near an edge. Next cut the needle so that it only pokes through the tube when the motor is turned on.
Step 4: Get stoked, you're done
Picture of Get stoked, you're done
I have my motor connected to a power source with alligator clips, but it would work better with a power foot switch . Connect it, dip it in ink and you're ready to go ruin lives.
1-40 of 43Next »
This cannot POSSIBLY be safe. Tattoo parlors (you know, where you go and pay a PROFESSIONAL who's taken classes and earned certificates and knows how to handle the bodily fluids and proper disposal of equipment and such-like) can get shut down for not having sanitary working conditions - what makes you think your house is clean enough? I'm willing to bet that if you're making a tattoo gun with sewing machine needles and parts from a tpe player, you're not paying any attention to sterilizing your equipment, buying actual tattoo ink, and cleaning your skin before tattooing it. Are you trying to contract staph infection from those nasty bugs that live on your skin?
professionals dont take classes the most they would do i have had an apprenticeship or maybe taken art classes but there is no such thing as a tattoo certification for everywhere the most is to get certified to tattoo at one shop
he asked you how did u make a needle to go up n down n not in circle? ;) itz not spanish,itz bosnian language lol :D
it is bent at a 90 degree angle where it connects to the eraser.
have fun with your hepatitus
i like the ible and i like the stiletto in picture one i got one too
the circular action of the motor is converted to an eliptical one by the use of a cam. this is why the needle is able to travel up and down.
dsman1952766 years ago
this is a very bad idea. good job on making it but i would never use this. you could get STAFE infection.
i allways clean mine withh iodine
It's Staph Infection, and if you use sterile tat needle bars you'll be fine.
oops, i am not a expert on the subject. all i know is that it is called a STAPH (my typing used to be really bad, so i missed that typo) infection, and you can get it from tattoos with out sterile needles.
eyerobot5 years ago
Finally someone made sense out of the guitar string method for me, Good job chris.
The string is seated off center, On an eraser, Attached to a horizontally mounted motor shaft, Then bent downward towards the tube.
The off center movement of the guitar string forces it up and down.
Just in case someone else cant wrap their brain around how this thing works.
One question i dont see answered in any of these instructibles about tattoo machines is, How deep should the needle penetrate into the skin?
A minimum distance would do for a start position, As I realize skin has different thicknesses, But one setting for all skin types seems possible, And a far sight safer than eyeballing it.
I just dont like the idea of gouging someones muscles, Just to learn how far is too far.
dmwl5 years ago
I'm trying to do this can someone tell me how I get the motor to go I took it out of an old radio and it wont run on battery's or any thing else (I even tried to plug it straight into the wall nearly killed myself) :)
the motor is probly froze. id go to a thrift store or yard sales and look for r.c. cars. they have good motors. and the bigger thr r.c. the bigger the motor.
veverica5 years ago
kako si uradio da se igla ne okrece u krug vec gore dole ja pokusavam al nemogu
I see you don't. That's not spanish. :)
420 4 life5 years ago
i blue my hand of will making a gun....not fun!!
MUNCHINE5 years ago
BlondGuy1015 years ago
This looks mighty cool, how does it perform versus, say, a Dreamer Liner/Shader? Also I'm not sure why some commenters seem concerned about skin or blood infections etc. the use of sterile practise and proper needles/inks as well as aftercare means there is no problem
tom irons5 years ago
dude are you serious, from a tape player?! sweet!! maybe next we can make one outta a excersize bike!! then upload your finished tattoos to !! holler!
i made one out of a motor from a electric razor that was battery powered and weighed under a pound fir perfectly in your hand of course i did tatt's with it using pen ink so they fade out after about 3 months you just change out the batteries and guitar string though and it worked perfectly
NinjaSloth5 years ago
One of my friends made a tattoo gun out of the motor from one of those chattering teeth toys, some guitar string, and a few other things and gave himself a cotton mouth kings emblem tattoo on his left arm.
you might want to include the "power source" as part of your materials, at first i thought you had the motor plugged directly to the wall!
you use the power supply from the stereo and attach it to the leads with allegator clips.
whitedem0n6 years ago
must the electric motor be from a tape recorder
Nope, any will do... they're just about the right size.
A video of it working would be cool, but it looks dangerous.
Mine works great
i made a pacman tattoo with this gu n and it worked great
You tattoed yourself?! OMG I would never do this ever times pi squared to infinity!
i thought my dremel mite work and it did
Eidolonmyst6 years ago
Use a sewing machine foot pedal
CapnTac6 years ago
Or, you could just shell out 75 dollars and buy one, and that way you won't catch diseases. =-(
Sgt.Waffles6 years ago
Old. Also, enjoy your hepatitis.
Will do [:
blindrage6 years ago
Good instructable, but you should have titled it "Fun with blood-borne pathogens!"
mrmath6 years ago
I second the sterilization thing. Also, what do you use for ink? I would think that if you could get the guitar string needle to go into the plastic instead of an eraser, that might last longer, but what do I know.
india ink
jnixon6 years ago
1-40 of 43Next » | <urn:uuid:723bbf1c-efc4-4ca1-a501-da3bdcc4b951> | 2 | 1.6875 | 0.029613 | en | 0.923205 | http://www.instructables.com/id/tattoo-machine-out-of-household-material/ |
Dinosaur - Brachiosaurus
Of all the dinosaurs, Brachiosaurus was the tallest. It's name means 'arm lizard.' Unlike most of its neighbors, Brachiosaurus' front legs were longer than its hind legs (so it's easy to tell the difference between him and, say, Apatosaurus.) This didn't stop it from walking on all four legs.
When You're This Big They Call You Brachiosaurus
When you're this big there's nothing to fear - except maybe heights. Healthy adults probably had no predators. The largest known meat-eaters during the Jurassic period when Brachiosaurus roamed were Allosaurus, Ceratosaurus and Torvosaurus. These dinosaurs weren't even half the size of a Brachiosaurus. They probably picked on easier targets like Stegosaurus. Its unusual front legs and long neck made Brachiosaurus sorta look like a giraffe except this dino was up to 50 feet (16 meters) tall. The other dinosaurs must have looked like ants to these guys. It was about 85 feet (26 meters) long, including its tail.
Brachiosaurus - Mystery Dino
There is a lot of info about dinosaurs we still don't know including whether or not Brachiosaurus spent most of the time in water. Some scientists think the shape of each foot wouldn't support such a heavy animal in the mud. Other scientists believe the large nostrils on top of its head helped it to breathe better when swimming. Most evidence suggests Brachiosaurus were land animals.Brachiosaurus also had five toes on every foot with fleshy pads, which is weird cuz most reptiles only have four toes.
Brachiosaurus - Back From the Dead
The first Brachiosaurus fossil was found in Grand River Valley, western Colorado in 1900. It was an incomplete skeleton but the paleontologist who discovered it, Elmer Riggs, named his new find Brachiosaurus in 1903. In 1909 another man found several Brachiosaurus fossils in Tanzania, Africa. Since then Brachiosaurus fossils have been found in North America and Africa.
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play online games | <urn:uuid:58c91932-c1e6-459b-8627-3a57b3859b5a> | 3 | 3.15625 | 0.034165 | en | 0.956475 | http://www.kidzworld.com/article/730-dinosaur-brachiosaurus |
A visionary with a dream to re-live his art-filled Moroccan days, the flamboyant Coutts did not stop with the recapturing of his physical existence in Tangier with Dar Marroc, but his social existence as well. Coutts hung his paintings in the library, where he regaled his guests with tales of adventure. Dar Marroc quickly became a gathering place for musicians, visiting artists such as John Lavery, Agnes Pelton, Nicolai Fenshin and Grant Wood and celebrities such as Rudolph Valentino and Errol Flynn. It is rumored that even Winston Churchill has painted in the villa's Artist Studio.
J. Carol Naish, an early silent-screen star and neighbor to Coutts, owned the 1930's Mediterranean villa. The Naish property blends the charm of Southern Europe with North African accents throughout its structure. The main house boasts an impossibly romantic master suite, high wood beam ceilings, an indoor/outdoor bathroom and a massive fireplace.
Using a variety of textures and colors, the outdoor area of the Naish property lends an exotic feel to its poolside experience. Within the sun-drenched pool area itself, the villa and bungalows' exterior walls greet visitors with a vivid blend of earth-tone hues, that range from deep ocher, rusts to tawny yellows and stone.
The Orchard House is a rare 1918 California adobe. Two 1940s steel windows have been welded together to create a dramatic pivoting window wall. The whitewashed stone wall encloses a grove of citrus trees.
Rescued from disrepair in 1989, Dar Marroc was renamed Korakia (Greek for "crow") and crafted into a Mediterranean-style pensione. The resort, now housed in two lovingly restored historic villas, rests on 1.5 lush acres, consisting of bungalows, guesthouses, gardens and pools. From Korakia's distinct keyhole-shaped grand entrance housing a set of ornately carved Moorish wooden double doors to the antiques and handmade furniture found in every room, everything blends harmoniously to create an oasis in the California desert. With citrus blossoms, olive trees, oleander bushes, date palms, bougainvillea vines, gorgeous Moroccan fountains and a stone waterfall spread across the main courtyard area, every aspect of the villas have been restored to the artistic ambiance of their halcyon days.
Today the legacy of the original historic Dar Marroc lives on. What the art community once favored during the 'old Palm Springs era' continues. Korakia remains a popular rendezvous for an eclectic crowd, including renowned actors, writers, producers and photographers. The unique environment has become a favorite photo shoot location for top photographers. Dramatic photo spreads of Korakia have graced the pages of such leading publications as Architectural Digest, HIP Hotels and Condé Nast Traveler as well as Vogue, Elle, Marie-Claire and their European counterparts. The New York Times has called the Korakia "One of the sexiest hotels in America." | <urn:uuid:17626462-1742-4331-9f0d-7f421be3392c> | 2 | 1.71875 | 0.027217 | en | 0.945235 | http://www.korakia.com/history |
When water is released from the Caballo Dam, the pumps could easily extract water that belongs to the Rio Grande Project -- more specifically, Texas.
"It doesn't look normal," said Harringer. "You can obviously see it's right in the Rio Grande itself, it's pumping from the floor of the river.
According to Commissioner Gordon, the lawsuit was 30 years in the making -- well before he began his work with the Rio Grande Compact. It's garnering more attention because the drought is being compared to the worst our area has ever been subjected too. Some say this is beginning to look worse than the infamous drought of the 1950s.
The lawsuit isn't simple though.
With New Mexico "delivering" it's water to Texas on New Mexican soil, there is confusion over what Texas is required to do.
Gordon said the lawsuit looks to ensure that Texas receives the proper amount of water that it's expected to get, but said the feeling he gets from New Mexico is that they have fulfilled their obligation once they release the water from Caballo Dam.
Gordon's concern lies within the 90 miles where New Mexico farmers can pickup water bound for Texas that isn't necessarily there water to take. Water is calculated for the Elephant Butte Water Improvement District, and the El Paso Water Improvement District has gone as far as making a compact with the New Mexico district to ensure they both receive the proper amount of water, but New Mexico attempted to invalidate the agreement. In other words, New Mexico went against a water district within it's own state.
ABC-7 reached out to New Mexico's Governor Susana Martinez for comment. An interview was not granted. However statements have been made out of her office in the past, the most recent in January where a spokesman said: "We will continue to strongly defend New Mexico's water rights. We are reviewing the Texas lawsuit and will decide how best to protect the water that is so vital to New Mexican families and businesses. We won't cede a single inch of New Mexico water to Texas."
The lawsuit may take between five and 10 years to settle assuming the U.S. Supreme Court decided to hear the suit. According to the compact made in 1938, any dispute between the states involved in the pact would have to be settled there. | <urn:uuid:611aa057-04ec-429f-9114-f0e9ec3766f2> | 2 | 2.5 | 0.024118 | en | 0.982708 | http://www.kvia.com/news/abc7-investigates-water-pumping-in-new-mexico/19971268?item=1 |
W. Stands for Wrongful
Al Gore has had a crummy week, but popular sovereignty in America has had a catastrophic one. In Tallahassee, Judge N. Sanders Sauls ruled that a lagging campaign could not contest the outcome of an election by having a court inspect uncounted ballots. At the U.S. Supreme Court, Justice Antonin Scalia asserted during Fridays oral arguments that There is no right of suffrage [in presidential elections] under Article II of the Constitution -- that is, state legislatures have given their citizens the right to vote in presidential elections, and can take it away if the spirit moves them. And though the court carefully avoided a political firestorm by remanding the recount decision to the Florida Supremes for reconsideration, Scalias insistence on the non-existence of the publics right to vote for president was reflected in his courts decision.
Two contradictory lessons, then, are emerging from Novembers presidential election. One, in view of the excruciating closeness of the contest, is that every vote counts. The other, propounded by conservative jurists at play in the fields of 18th-century law and values, is that its not even the case that any vote counts. Or at least, that theres no constitutional right to vote for president.
Its not news, of course, that the Supreme Courts one-person, one-vote standard applies to reapportionments but not to the selection of presidents. The inequities of the Electoral College are a constant of American electoral life; its only when we get a squeaker of an election that they matter. In this election, since W. won a disproportionate number of the smallest states, they mattered a great deal: Among the 18 states (including the District of Columbia) with three, four or five electoral votes, W. prevailed by a 42-to-26 margin over Gore. That is, the Electoral College, which awards every state two votes at the outset for its U.S. senators, padded W.s total. Take that senatorial two out of each states vote in the total electoral tally, and Gore wins the Electoral College -- even with W. taking Florida -- by a 225-211 margin. Its this small-state padding that explains the difference between the Electoral College vote, which will go to W. by a 271-267 margin if he carries Florida, and the popular vote, which Gore leads by about 337,000 -- three-tenths of 1 percent of the total vote.
But we knew this was a ticking time bomb. Political scientists and Democratic operatives have been writing for years that in an extremely close election, the Republican presidential candidate could prevail even though losing the popular vote because of this electoral affinity for small states. What we didnt know until this week -- what, to my knowledge at least, nobody was writing about at all -- was that the very right to vote for president is still entirely a creation of state legislatures, that it is not, fundamentally, our own.
There are many ways to give the weight of law to an anti-democratic bias, of course, and Judge N. Sanders Sauls found one on Monday that was likely less constitutionally grounded than Scalias. Sauls rejected the vice presidents petition to count untallied ballots, and to look again at some dubiously tallied ones, in a ruling of such vehemence that Gore could count himself lucky he didnt actually draw jail time.
The key to Sauls decision was his finding that if he ordered a re-counting, There is no credible statistical evidence and no other competent substantial evidence to establish by a preponderance a reasonable probability that the results of the statewide election in the state of Florida would be different from the result that Katherine Harris certified. Sauls had already made sure this would be the case, first by refusing to inspect the 9,000 ballots from Dade County that the Gore attorneys argued could turn the election around, and second by forbidding David Boies from cross-examining a pro-W. statistician on what those ballots would show if they reflected the already counted ballots in Dade County. In short, Sauls ruled that Gore had failed to demonstrate that which he had refused to allow Gore to demonstrate.
But Sauls was the kind of routine contempt for scrupulous elections that over the past month has become all but synonymous with Floridian democracy in action. Antonin Scalias case against popular rule, on the other hand, was a genuine bolt from the blue. Certainly, no attorney for W. had argued that the Florida Supremes had erred in assuming a constitutional bias toward suffrage in presidential elections. With the Gore folks constantly intoning, Let every vote count, it hardly seemed politic for W.s guys to respond, Actually, theres no right to vote for president. That kind of argument, repeated often enough, might just dim the luster of W.s appeal for votes during the next presidential campaign.
Antonin Scalia, of course, doesnt face voters, and his entire career seems bent on giving new life to every obscure anti-democratic statute that others have happily let slumber. The mistake of the Florida Supremes, he asserted, was their apparent belief in a popular franchise independent of the legislature. Theres a right of suffrage in voting for the legislature, he told Gore attorney Lawrence Tribe during Fridays arguments, but Article II makes it very clear that the legislature can, itself, appoint the electors.
This case was made at greater length last week during the hearing that Floridas Republican Legislature convened to see if it could indeed appoint its own slate of electors just in case a court-ordered recount ended in the intolerable anomaly of a Gore majority. Boalt Hall law professor John Yoo, a former clerk for Clarence Thomas, argued that the legislators would be remiss if they didnt prepare themselves to appoint a slate. Writing this week in the friendly confines of the The Wall Street Journal editorial page, Yoo elaborated his argument that the very notion of popular sovereignty is a partisan plot. Contrary to Democratic rhetoric, he asserted, the people have no right to vote for president or even the Electoral College; that power is only delegated to them by the grace of the legislature. In appointing the electors itself, the legislature would be directly taking up its constitutional functions again. Like Scalia, Yoo cites what is apparently the Supreme Courts only previous decision on this point -- in 1892, for McPherson vs. Blackmer, which leaves the choice of presidential electors unambiguously in the hands of the legislatures.
In sum, the now month-long democratic dysfunction in Florida is likely to result not only in W.s presidency, but in the reassertion of one of the most elitist and anti-democratic features of our governmental structure, justly and understandably repressed for many decades. No wonder W. is in hiding: Hes taking power by virtue of votes not counted, because of the Electoral Colleges bias against one-person, one-vote, and now on the wings of a ringing assault on popular rule.
We Americans have a hit-and-miss record of enlarging our democracy. Lincoln took Jeffersons assertion of human equality and expanded it so that slavery came to be seen as inconsistent with the nations defining principles. Another hundred years had to pass before all citizens were assured of their right to vote (though weve learned from Florida in the past couple weeks that even that right is inconsistently applied).
Many of our original structures of government plod along unaltered to this day, though they are rooted in assumptions and biases that have been not only rejected, but in many instances forgotten. In 1892, when the court affirmed the power of the legislatures to choose electors, it was still the case that those legislatures elected United States senators. Not until the 17th Amendment to the Constitution in 1913 was that right given directly to the people. As for the Electoral College, it is a direct outgrowth of slavery. Had the constitution mandated a popular vote for president back in 1787, the North -- with a far larger population of white males than the South -- would have seen its presidential candidates routinely prevail. By apportioning electors in accord with a states population, however -- that is, by counting bodies, not voters -- the predominantly Southern drafters of the constitution enabled slave states to dominate presidential elections.
Today, conservatives like Scalia and Yoo cheerfully defend the rights of legislatures over people, but prudently decline to invoke the demophobic and aristocratic beliefs that led to the establishment of these rights. Conservatives like George Will defend the Electoral College but omit any glowing references to slavery when they make their case. No account of W.s rise, however, should rely on such a sanitized version of history. If he prevails, the first president of the 21st century will owe his office to the institutional legacies of the most repugnant biases of the 18th. The past, as Faulkner reminded us, isnt dead -- and when it comes to selecting our presidents, apparently it isnt even past.
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Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English homepage
Language: Old English
Origin: hwil
2 noun
while2 S1 W2
a while
a period of time, especially a short one:
It takes a while to recover from the operation.
in a while
Mr Thomas will be with you in a while.
for a while
At last, he could relax for a while.
a little/short while
Wait a little while before deciding.
We talked for quite a while (=a fairly long time) on the phone.
all the while
all the time that something is happening:
He examined her thoroughly, talking softly all the while.
She continued working, all the while keeping an eye on the clock.
➔ (every) once in a while
at once1 (8)
; ➔ be worth somebody's while (to do/doing something)
at worth1 (5)
; ➔ make it worth somebody's while
at worth1 (6)
Dictionary pictures of the day
Do you know what each of these is called?
Explore our topic dictionary | <urn:uuid:6152fd5b-b571-4e7b-8b26-6f85019b41a3> | 3 | 2.671875 | 0.037551 | en | 0.886724 | http://www.ldoceonline.com/dictionary/while_2 |
From The Beginning of Time
Manifest Destiny, in its many forms, existed throughout history. It controlled America's destiny and was responsible for man's travels throughout history. With this said, America would not be America without the phenomenon of Manifest Destiny. The philosophy that built American history was the rationalization that expansionists everywhere used to justify territorial growth. Some used the Manifest Destiny Doctrine as a political philosophy stressing tradition and social stability, while others used it as a simple reason to explore new lands. Expansionist experienced minimal interference of governmental institutions in private economic activities with Manifest Destiny leading their way.
Americans used Manifest Destiny as their proclamation of superiority and insisted that their conquests merely fulfilled the divine mission that man is impelled by forces beyond human control. Manifest Destiny was responsible for creating American history. Without it, American territory would be as big as the property surrounding its first settlement. It was the movement responsible for American Independence and American expansion. Because of the notion of Manifest Destiny, America's drive to explore and conquer new lands will never die. | <urn:uuid:4181ad89-f9eb-4c25-a275-5b8370ab2b40> | 4 | 4.15625 | 0.607054 | en | 0.957628 | http://www.let.rug.nl/usa/essays/1801-1900/manifest-destiny/from-the-beginning-of-time.php |
Lecture 57, Paul Tried Before Festus (Paul Appeals to Caesar):
Some people have a five year plan for their lives. But who of us actually thinks about our lives over one hundred years from now? Where will you be in eternity? The Apostle Paul knew where he would be and spent two years in prison warning Roman rulers of the coming judgment. In this message, Dr. Sproul reminds us of Paul’s resolve to preach the gospel whatever the circumstances. | <urn:uuid:8589e98f-2771-4fd4-a1f5-5a74dda52b53> | 2 | 1.867188 | 0.301926 | en | 0.92701 | http://www.ligonier.org/learn/series/book_of_acts/paul-tried-before-festus-paul-appeals-to-caesar/ |
Issei Immigration
World War II Exclusion
Little Tokyo traces its origins to the first business started by a Japanese seaman named Kame
who opened a restaurant on Los Angeles Street, near First Street. The Japanese population grew
slowly until the immigrants, known as Issei, decided they want to settle in Los Angeles and raise
families. A population surge (over 30,000 Japanese came to America in 1907 alone), fueled by
arranged marriages, changed Little Tokyo from a bachelor enclave into a community. Many of
the local Japanese were involved in agriculture and that led to the establishment of wholesale
produce markets near Little Tokyo. Despite discrimination, the Japanese built their own
churches, temples and hospitals and established many business and community organizations. | <urn:uuid:c5980f0e-3a98-4188-8227-13fd1419fd8f> | 3 | 3.140625 | 0.103673 | en | 0.958884 | http://www.littletokyola.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1981%3Ahistory&catid=13%3Abasic-info&Itemid=165&lang=en |
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FAQs about Understanding Data in the ALD and other Records
These are frequently asked questions (and answers!) about Understanding the Data in the ALD and other Records.
What languages are the records in natively?
Pre 1840 vital records are written in Polish. Pre-World War I records are in Russian Cyrillic. Jewish vital records are in Cyrillic and duplicated in Hebrew or Yiddish. Post-World War I records are in Lithuanian. However, there can be exceptions. Pre-World War I records in the Memel (Klaipeda) Archive were written mainly in German. (One-third of those records are now in the Lithuanian Central State Archives (LCVA), one-third are in a small town in Eastern Poland, and the remaining third in an archive in Berlin, Germany.)
Is there any more data than I find in the ALD for a given record?
Generally speaking when LitvakSIG databases data from records, we database all available data from the records. Occasionally though there are things like signatures at the bottom of a page or some additional information like the amount of a tax paid that wasn’t translated. Some of our lists are indexes. For those records we’ve indexed, there very well may be additional data, such as photos or whole paragraphs of descriptive information in the example of Farmers Lists. Once you have found your family in records, it makes sense to research what data is typically on the records you have found (See Types of Records in the ALD and drill down) and to write to the archives for copies of the actual records.
Q. I had a married female ancestor who was married to X, as indicated by personal knowledge and/or family and revision lists, her marriage record, and/or the birth records of her children. However, according to the translation of her death record, it says that X was her father. That does not appear to be correct.
A. Most of the vital records were translated by someone who is not Jewish, does not know Hebrew/Yiddish, and can translate only what is in the Russian record. In many vital records, the Russian version was not exactly clear who was the father, or son. The vital records were recorded by a Rabbi who was probably more fluent in Hebrew/Yiddish than in Russian. The Hebrew version is more clear on the precise relationship of others to the deceased. For best results, a researcher should obtain copies of the original vital records that were either microfilmed by the Mormons, or from the archive, and have both the Russian and Hebrew/Yiddish translated.
What is a Family Number in a Revision List? What is its significance?
Family numbers in Revision Lists and other lists are important because they are carried forward through time, allowing you to connect different branches of the family from one Revision or Family List to another. These lists often have former family number fields.
How do I get a paper copy of a record?
Write to the archives for a copy. See the information in the FAQ about the Research Process and Contacting the Archives for more information. Also see these pages on our website: Archives and Repositories and ALD Source References.
Why does a record say my ancestor was “illiterate?”
Your ancestor may have had an excellent command of Hebrew and/or Yiddish including reading and writing. However, if he was not able to read and write in the Russian language, the Russians considered him illiterate.
My ancestor’s name was “Moshe.” Why does the record say “Movsha”?
You will find many variations in spelling of the same name depending on whether the name was spelled in Yiddish, Hebrew, Russian, or Lithuanian. Most of our ancestors spoke Yiddish in their daily lives and prayed in Hebrew. But most of the official documents were in old Russian Cyrillic. Clerks transliterated their Yiddish names into Russian letters. Then, in our databases, we transliterate into English! There is information on the Translation, Transliteration, and Database Standards for the ALD as well as a Database of Lithuania Given Names on this website if you want to delve deeper into this topic.
I found records in the ALD for people with the same surname and shtetl as my family but I don’t recognize some of the given names. Is it likely these are relatives?
Depending on the size of the shtetls or town (as long as we’re not talking Kaunas or Vilnius here or maybe one of the bigger district-named cities), it’s highly likely you have found previously unknown relatives. It is best to keep the information from those records. You may have thought your great-grandfather had only one brother when, in fact, he had three brothers and two sisters. At a later date, you will probably receive other records that will enable you to verify who they were and which of your ancestors they were related to.
What is the meaning of “Age Last” on a Revision or Family List?
Usually, the "Age Last" refers to the previous MAJOR revision list, i.e., the 1858 list or the 1834 list. However, that is not always the case. Using an 1874 Family List as an example, for some towns additional lists were recorded for years between 1858 and 1874. The "Age Last" on the 1874 list could refer to the 1858 list but it could also refer to one of the additional lists. In some cases, those additional lists were destroyed and no longer exist so there is no way to check it out.
The archivists in the Lithuanian archives have very little confidence in the ages stated in the "Age Last" column because there is no way to know which previous list is referred to. An exception is, if the list states which year the "Age Last" refers to. this is rarely recorded but is present on some lists.
Where my ancestor was listed on a Revision List there is a notation that he was called to the army in a particular year, Section X, and a number. Can the archives find his Russian Army record from this information?
No. Recruitment Committee records do not exist in the Lithuanian archives. The Kaunas Archive has some personal files of men who tried to escape conscription, or had a legal reason to avoid military service, but these records are unindexed and the place of residence is not noted.
Return to Main FAQ page | <urn:uuid:3591977d-cf64-47f7-bcb9-bd3e2a988224> | 2 | 2.40625 | 0.086646 | en | 0.967148 | http://www.litvaksig.org/faq/faqs-about-understanding-data-in-the-ald-and-other-records |
The Yes Man: A World Without No
Can you imagine a world where the word "No" didn't exist? Imagine a world where you never turned anything down, never refused anything but instead said "Yes" to everything anyone ever asked of you. We take a look at the experiment of British comedian and author, Danny Wallace, who did exactly this.
What’s it gonna be? Lomograph by takuji
Before Danny Wallace, a freelance radio producer in London, began his unique experiment he’d recently been dumped by his girlfriend and was in a situation probably a lot of us can relate to. He was saying “No” to a lot of things. He found himself avoiding people, sending SMS messages to friends when he could have called them. Things like that. He found that he was saying “No” way too much.
Find yourself saying this too much? Lomograph by adamscott
One night a mysterious man on a bus told him to “Say Yes More”. He took this advice extremely serious and made a pledge to say “yes” to literally everything for an entire year. So, for an entire year he found that he had to say “yes” to anything and everything. His mail box was overflowing with credit card offers he had said “yes” to, if someone handing out pamphlets offered him something on the street, he took it. He said “yes” to every single invitation, whether it was out drinking with friends or a super-important business proposition. In the end he even ends up attending meetings with a group that believes aliens built the pyramids in Egypt. He became the “Yes Man”.
“Say Yes More” Lomograph by schmartypanz
He was so shocked and surprised by the amount of things that this experience led to that he wrote a book about his experiences. Ultimately his experiment leads to him becoming a best-selling author, meeting the girl of his dreams, becoming a successful TV presenter and even having a Hollywood movie made about him. His story was adapted to become “Yes Man”, the box-office movie featuring Jim Carrey. Not bad, hey?
But what if you applied this to your own life? How many times a day to you find yourself saying “no” to something you could have said “yes” to? If any of you have ever done it let us know! Why not give it a whirl in your Lomographic life too. Should I give some redscale film a go? Sure! How about a boating trip with my Diana Mini? You bet. It would definitely make for an interesting experiment. Why not give it a go Lomographers?
Become a Lomographic Yes Man or Woman. Lomograph by brettac
written by devoncaulfield on 2011-03-04 in #lifestyle
1. eva_eva
eva_eva ·
I often say 'No' especially to my boyfriend! This article had remind me once again the movie 'Yes Man' which is super inspiring and it's time for me to say 'Yes' indeed :) Thanks for sharing! :D
2. nural
nural ·
I want to be that person!!! I always get the feeling that I could say to a lot more things!! I actually did a lot of yes when I first got the spinner, but I got lazy again :(
3. pangmark
pangmark ·
Yes! Does that mean I'm not cheating cos I had to say yes? Kind of a free license isn't it? Of course you must say yes.
More Interesting Articles | <urn:uuid:d3ea2508-ae51-4d09-9432-5d9a42ca7a31> | 2 | 1.953125 | 0.460599 | en | 0.982331 | http://www.lomography.com/magazine/63216-the-yes-man-a-world-without-no |
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The Twilight Saga: A Mathematical Perspective
Of course, the success of this franchise should not be viewed in isolation, but as just a part of the larger vampire pop culture renaissance. HBO’s True Blood, also based on a book series involving a girl who knocks boots with the undead, is going strong into its third season this summer, and the CW’s Vampire Diaries will return for a second season this fall. And just when I thought the market for vampire-themed programming had become saturated, ABC premiered its own summer show featuring blood suckers called The Gates. Clearly there is a trend here, with the ever-growing popularity of the vampire at its center. No doubt Eddie Murphy is rolling in his undead grave for not releasing Vampire in Brooklyn 10 years later.
While there are many words that could be used to describe these shows and movies that place supernatural love triangles at their center, “realistic” is not one of them. Nevertheless, there are a handful of people who have taken a critical eye to the vampire phenomenon and have used mathematical models to gain insight into how the populations of such creatures might behave in real life. Just like the fights between Team Edward and Team Jacob, however, the debate over whether vampires could actually exist rages on.
Not long ago, an article went around the web purporting that a team of physicists had proven that vampires could not exist. The physicists, Costas Efthimiou and Sohang Gandhi, posted a paper to the arXiv in which they purport to use physics to dispel pop culture portrayals of ghosts and zombies, in addition to vampires. Their argument for debunking vampires rests on the following assumptions:
1. When a vampire bites a human, that human becomes a vampire (we will return to this assumption later).
2. Vampires need to feed on a human once every month (a conservative estimate when compared to what popular culture would have us believe).
3. Assume the first vampire came into existence in 1600, when the human population was roughly 500 million.
4. Ignore human mortality rates due to other factors, and ignore human birth rates as well.
With these hypotheses, they show that vampires would wipe out humanity in just 2 1/2 years. In fact, no matter the size of the initial human population, their model will lead to humanity’s extinction in a short amount of time. This is true even if we assume a more conservative estimate on the length of time vampires can go between feedings.
The reason is simple. Using their model, the first vampire will feed after one month, creating a new vampire (by assumption 1). After 2 months, those 2 vampires will each feed, giving us a total of 4 vampires. After 3 months, those 4 vampires will feed, giving us a total of 8 vampires. The pattern continues – after n months, the vampire population will be 2n. In other words, the population of vampires will grow exponentially. Moreover, because of the assumption on the birth and mortality rate of mankind, we see that as the population of vampires grows exponentially, so too must the population of humans shrink exponentially. This means that at some point (sooner than you might think), humans would be wiped out.
The careful reader, however, will note a number of problems with this analysis. For one, ignoring the birth rate of humans means that the model’s date of extinction is premature. However, Efthimiou and Gandhi point out that even if we include the birth rate, that rate would not be high enough to counteract the explosion in the vampire population. A more serious flaw, however, is in not considering the mortality rate of the vampires themselves. After all, once people realize there are vampires in their midst, wouldn’t they fight back, or at least defend themselves so that not all of the vampires could feed? Assuming that every vampire would be able to feed whenever necessary seems unrealistic.
What’s more, assuming that vampires can only satisfy themselves with human blood, it seems unreasonable to assume that vampires would feast so carelessly, without regard to the diminishing supply of their food. If vampires killed all humans, they in turn would die (again), and so it seems reasonable to expect that vampires would apply a better strategy, one in which they kept the human species afloat so that they could themselves continue to exist. Just ask Ethan Hawke.
In a brief article for Math Horizons, mathematician Dino Sejdinovic addresses these issues and highlights an article from 1982 that modeled the vampire outbreak more realistically, by including the human birth rate and vampire mortality rate. In doing so, the mathematics becomes less fit for a general audience, but it also gives us a more interesting picture – regardless of the collective desire for human blood, vampires can act in a way that the ratio of vampires to humans reaches an eventual equilibrium. In other words, it doesn’t seem right to throw out the idea of vampires based on purely mathematical arguments.
Interestingly, though, all of these analyses rest upon assumption (1), which states that humans always become vampires once bitten. In the modern incarnation of these creatures, however, this assumption no longer appears to be valid. For example, in both True Blood and The Vampire Diaries, the process of turning into a vampire requires consent (I guess it’s more romantic that way); not only must the vampire drink the human’s blood, but the human must also drink the vampire’s blood. In this case, it is possible for vampires to satiate themselves without killing humans (provided the vampires can show enough restraint) or increasing their own population.
There also appear to be rules governing population control in vampire communities. For example, in an episode of True Blood, one vampire is tasked with creating a new vampire as penance for murdering one of his own kind. Are such rules keeping the population stable widespread? How might such rules, in conjunction with a weakening of assumption (1), alter the vampires’ optimal strategy? I will leave it to the curious reader to discover the answer. | <urn:uuid:15fda7eb-f3a7-4fd5-a9b5-7d754ecb2a2a> | 2 | 2.46875 | 0.310348 | en | 0.929642 | http://www.mathgoespop.com/2010/06/the-twilight-saga-a-mathematical-perspective.html |
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Analysis of Those Winter Sundays
Robert Hayden’s “Those Winter Sundays” is a poem that has a lot to say in a small amount of space. It uses one event to describe a father’s whole relationship with his son. “Those Winter Sundays” is a poem written for Robert Hayden’s father. Although at first, the poem does not seem to be a great tribute to his father, Hayden’s admiration and love for his father become apparent as we look deeper. In this poem, Hayden uses many descriptive words to set the scene for his work (e.g. blueblack cold, cracked hands, banked fires blaze). His vivid words make me conjure up visions in my mind of this hard working father up alone in the cold darkness. When Hayden writes “cracked hands that ached” (Roberts 759), he is using the “cracked hands” as a symbol for hard work and a symbol for all the pain and discomfort the man is willing to go through for his family. Hayden described sounds as well as images in the same descriptive way when he writes “I awoke and heard the cold splintering, breaking” (Roberts 759). Maybe what the boy heard was really the fire crackling, or ice melting off of the windows. Either way, this choice of symbolism is used to show the power of the father—he had the power to “break” the cold, and to “drive it out” for the sake of those he cared for. The warm house on the winter Sundays served as a symbol for the father’s love for his son, although the son did not make this connection until later in his life. The element of self-sacrifice is clear in the description of the father’s “cracked hands” 2 (Roberts 759) and how he disregards his own pain to warm and light the home for his family. When he was a child, he took it for granted, as the poem says “No one ever thanked him” (Roberts 759), and that he would “speak indifferently to him” (Roberts 759). Hayden appears to be upset at himself and his family for not being more appreciative of his...
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Analysis of Those Winter Sundays. (1969, December 31). In Retrieved 11:44, March 04, 2015, from | <urn:uuid:17c95b99-3b94-4dd5-a86d-d3f5dc0b43b4> | 3 | 2.671875 | 0.130665 | en | 0.976727 | http://www.megaessays.com/viewpaper/28051.html |
Memphis: Fourth-Most Affordable City
By Jennifer Johnson Backer
(Daily News File/Lance Murphey)
It is based on more than 90,000 prices covering 60 different items for which prices are collected quarterly by chambers of commerce (including the Greater Memphis Chamber), economic development organizations and university applied economic centers in each participating area.
New York (Manhattan), Honolulu, New York (Brooklyn) and San Francisco rounded out the top four most-expensive cities.
“Memphis’ Cost of Living Index was the lowest among all of the top 100 metropolitan areas in the United States, including cities like Jacksonville, Fla., Louisville, Ky., and Oklahoma City, Okla., all nearly the same size as the Memphis metro,“ said Adrienne Johnson, director of research at the Greater Memphis Chamber.
Johnson said Memphis’ No. 4 ranking helps market the Bluff City to businesses that are considering relocating to the region.
“Even a CEO looks at how much money they are going to save when they are moving from one place to another,” she said, adding that the ranking also helps lure young talent to the area.
“Having a low cost of living is paramount to young professionals,” Johnson explained. “Lower basic living costs equals more money for dining out, shopping and vacations.”
Least Expensive:
1. Harlingen, Texas
2. Norman, Okla.
3. Pueblo, Colo.
4. Memphis, Tenn.
5. Youngstown-Warren, Ohio
6. Temple, Texas
7. Omaha, Neb.
8. Jonesboro, Ark.
9. Sherman-Denison, Texas
10. Idaho Falls, Idaho
Most Expensive:
1. New York (Manhattan), N.Y.
2. Honolulu, Hawaii
3. New York (Brooklyn), N.Y.
4. San Francisco, Calif.
5. New York (Queens), N.Y.
6. San Jose, Calif.
7. Hilo, Hawaii
8. Stamford, Conn.
9. Orange County, Calif.
10. Washington, D.C. | <urn:uuid:7216b476-96da-4427-9425-34cd0e62a5de> | 2 | 1.828125 | 0.51326 | en | 0.882074 | http://www.memphisdailynews.com/news/2013/aug/21/memphis-fourth-most-affordable-city/print |
Talc for Plastics and Rubber
Highly pure, laminar talc for plastic and rubber enhances the performance of polyolefin compounds such as polypropylene (PP).
The possible applications are virtually infinite. Talc is not only used in automotive plastics and household appliances, but also in food packaging such as acid-resistant keep-fresh packs and yoghurt pots, in laptop housings and in window profiles.
For example, used in PP pipes, say, for sewage water, talc increases rigidity, creep strength and impact resistance (particularly at low temperatures). This makes PP/talc the environmentally friendly alternative to PVC.
In motor vehicles, talc in polymer compounds stabilizes fenders and makes dashboards more scratch-resistant. It gives the plastic parts under the hood the strength they need.
Over the last 20 years, the market for wood-plastic composites (WPCs) has also developed strongly. Here too, talc offers decisive advantages in combination with the natural fibre: it reduces water absorption, shrinkage, deformation and creep. The elasticity modulus and shape retention temperature are improved.
Talc increases the modulus of elasticity of PP compounds and thus the stiffness of structures. This is the main function of talc in plastic. Talc grades with a high aspect ratio, i.e. an especially platy, laminar structure, are most efficient here. The fineness of the talc particles and the filler content (the proportion of talc in the overall mixture) also influence rigidity.
Impact Resistance
The addition of mineral fillers does not generally increase impact resistance. There are however, exceptions, such as the use of fine talc (like Finntalc M05SL) in polypropylene bumpers. In this case, 5 - 10% is added. Greater proportions result in a renewed drop-off in impact resistance.
Dimensional Stability
Polypropylene/talc compounds are moulded into plastics parts, e. g. automotive bumpers. It is important that the parts are dimensionally stable and exhibit as little shrinkage as possible after moulding. The same goes for warpage or thermal expansion. A pure talc, with a low loss of ignition and a high aspect ratio, helps keep plastics parts dimensionally stable.
Colour Consistency
PP compounds are dyed in all imaginable colours. To enable reproducible colour hues, the colour of the talc should vary as little as possible. Finntalc from the talc manufacturer Mondo Minerals is purified using a highly sophisticated, self-developed talc flotation process that is closely monitored to ensure that the product is highly consistent.
Scratch Resistance
Pure, soft talc acts as a lubricant, reducing the mechanical impact of the scratch as it happens. Grey talc can reduce the visibility of scratches.
Production Rates
Talc provides much higher heat conductivity than polymers. The heating and cooling of compounds is accelerated, cycle times are reduced, and productivity is improved.
Low Abrasion
Talc is the softest mineral of all, with a Mohs hardness of 1. Pure, chlorite-free talc grades result in extremely low abrasion values and thus high tool service life in compounding and extrusion.
Creep Strength
Talc and particularly pure, fine, laminar grades significantly improve the creep strength of polymers. From our studies, we can make long-term predictions of creep strength with a high level of confidence. This is important, for example, with pipes that are buried in the soil, under load. Enriching polypropylene with talc is essential in order to prevent such products from deforming over the long term.
The crystallization of polypropylene is efficiently promoted by small amounts of extremely fine talc (e.g. with a median particle diameter of 2 µm or less). After the addition of talc, nucleation sets in at a higher temperature. Thus, the advantages of partial crystallization can be utilized in a much more targeted manner where desired. The addition of small amounts of talc also improves impact resistance.
Rubber Reinforcement
Talc improves the mechanical properties of rubber compounds. It reduces gas permeability and electrical conductivity, increases resistance to UV radiation and provides good compression resistance. Also, processing is improved because of a decrease in rubber viscosity. | <urn:uuid:1dbc4a5f-0d90-42b1-b9fa-3d57f1651d52> | 2 | 2.453125 | 0.076181 | en | 0.904384 | http://www.mondominerals.com/en/talc-applications/plastics-rubber/ |
Herbal Remedies: The Restorative Properties of Garlic, Slippery Elm and Alfalfa
Slippery elm, garlic and alfalfa have been used for centuries to treat common medical conditions such as sore throat, infections and diabetes.
February/March 1995
Garlic is good for much more than simply seasoning your food.
If one herb crossed the boundaries between food and medicine it is garlic (Allium sativum). Garlic has been used for as long as humans have recorded historical events. It may even have been the secret to building the Egyptian pyramids. Herodotus (484-425 B.C.), the Greek historian, known as the 'Father of History;' wrote of an inscription on a pyramid that records the quantities of radishes, onions, and garlic consumed by the laborers who constructed it. Garlic cloves were even found in the tomb of the ancient King Tut.
Some are surprised to learn that garlic is not known from the wild. Horticulturists term it a “cultigen” a plant that has actually evolved under cultivation, rather than in Mother Nature itself. Its nearest wild relatives occur in the Asian steppes, and it was known under cultivation in the Middle East at least 5,000 years ago. The word garlic is derived from the Anglo-Saxon “garleac” meaning “spear plant.” Garlic is a member of the genus Allium in the lily family (Liliaceae). There are more than 700 species of Allium, which includes onion, too. Allium is the ancient Latin name of garlic, meaning “hot” or “burning.” The first century physician, Pliny the Elder (23-79 A.D.), wrote, “Garlic has powerful properties, and is of great benefit against changes of water and of residence,” suggesting it is good for warding off intestinal problems while traveling in the ancient world. The ancient Chinese first recorded its medicinal use around 510 A.D. Then as today in China, its primary use was to treat dysentery and diarrhea, and in many countries garlic is still used for the treatment of intestinal diseases caused by microorganisms. In various world cultures it is also used for colds, fever, symptoms of flu, coughs, earache, bronchitis, headache, sinus congestion, high blood pressure, stomachache, hypertension, and many other health conditions.
Garlic has been the subject of numerous scientific studies. In 1858, Louis Pasteur, of “pasteurization fame, was the first to document garlic’s well-known broad-spectrum antibacterial activity. Indian researchers published a 1984 study that showed garlic was a promising antibacterial agent in eight out of nine strains of clinical bacteria that were highly resistant to antibiotics. Physicians are still unlikely to prescribe garlic over penicillin; however, that trend could change.
Over 1,000 papers on various aspects of the chemistry, pharmacology, and clinical applications of garlic have been published in the past 20 years. Research has focused on the potential and use of garlic for the treatment of high blood pressure, atherosclerosis, high cholesterol, as well as blood thinning activity comparable to aspirin. An analysis of 28 human studies measuring the effect of garlic on human cholesterol was recently prepared by physicians at the New York Medical College in Valhalla, New York. They concluded that one- half to one clove of garlic per day (or its equivalent in a dietary supplement product) decreased the total serum cholesterol levels by 9 to 12 percent, depending upon study design, types of preparations, dosage, and target populations.
While the FDA treats garlic as a food in the United States, German health authorities allow garlic preparations to be sold as over-the-the counter drugs. In Germany, sales of garlic preparations top $250 million per year and the minced bulb and other preparations, calculated to an average daily dose of 4g (fresh garlic), are used for supportive dietary measures to reduce blood lipids and as a preventative for age-dependent vascular changes, primarily atherosclerosis.
Slippery Elm
When the coming of spring is still a hopeful thought, and the outcome of the groundhog's appearance awaits indication, the russet downy buds of Slippery Elm unfold inconspicuous petal-less blooms, then set mature seeds, before most trees leaf out. The slippery or red elm is the only one of the five or six North American elm species with rough hairy twigs and fuzzy red buds, making it easy to identify. Slippery elm occurs in a variety of habitats but generally prefers moist limey stream banks. It ranges from Maine through the St. Lawrence Valley to the Dakotas, south to Texas, and east to Florida.
Botanists call slippery elm Ulmus rubra. Ulmus is the old fashioned name for elm trees. “Rubra,” meaning red, refers to the rust color of the buds. Elm is the ancient name from Anglo-Saxon, Celtic, Gothic, and Teutonic dialects, remaining unchanged in modern English.
Slippery elm was one of the most useful medicinal plants of the American wilderness. The inner bark, stripped from the tree in early spring while the sap is rising, is the part of the tree that is used. Indians from the Missouri River Valley decocted the fresh inner bark to make a soothing laxative. To render the tallow out of buffalo fat, the Omahas cooked the fat with inner bark. The process gave the fat a better flavor and helped prevent rancidity. Bear's fat, butter, and lard were also preserved with slippery elm. A poultice of the bark was utilized by the Greeks as a toothache remedy. The fibrous inner bark was also twisted into cords and ropes. The Osage and other tribes applied slippery elm bark poultices to extract thorns and gunshot balls. Surgeons of the American Revolutionary War used poultices of the bark as their first and primary treatment for gunshot wounds.
Aside from medicinal use, slippery elm inner bark, in the form of a gruel or porridge, has a reputation as a tasty and palatable wild edible. During the American Revolution one soldier was separated from his company and survived in the wilderness for 10 days on slippery elm and sassafras bark. In the War of 1812, when food was scarce, British soldiers fed their horses slippery elm bark. Nineteenth century physicians recommended slippery elm broth as wholesome and nutritious food for infants and invalids, a use still commended to this day in the British Herbal Pharmacopoeia.
What sets it apart from other elm species that may not be used interchangeably with Slippery Elm, is the high level of mucilage in the inner bark. When mixed with water, the powdered bark produces a slimy mass that is soothing to irritated mucous membranes of the mouth and digestive tract. Herbalists have long used it to treat inflammation and ulceration of the gastrointestinal tract, including gastritis, colitis, as well as ulcers.
Slippery elm is one of the few American medicinal plants that is actually approved as an over-the-counter drug by the FDA. Slippery elm lozenges, available in many health food stores, are useful for soothing a sore throat. This is one simple, safe herb that has stood the test of time.
Alfalfa (Medicago sativa) is best known as animal fodder, but has long been recommended by herbalists as a dietary supplement. Native to western Asia and the Mediterranean region, alfalfa is now grown the world over. It has been one of the most extensively studied plants in terms of its chemistry. It is rich in saponins plus numerous vitamins and minerals including A, B1, B6, B12, C, E, and K1, niacin, biotin, folic acid, calcium, potassium, phosphorus, magnesium, and zinc. Alfalfa contains dozens of amino acids, yielding 15 to 25 percent protein in dried alfalfa meal.
Alfalfa saponins are destructive to red blood cells and interfere with the utilization of vitamin E. It is believed to be on the causes of ruminant bloat in farm animals. The same saponins are found in concentrations of up to 85 in commercial alfalfa sprouts.
Oral toxicity in humans is considered low because saponins are not absorbed by the gut and therefore do not enter the bloodstream. Alfalfa leaf saponins have been shown to lower plasma cholesterol, decrease intestinal absorption of cholesterol, and prevent atherosclerosis. However, to get such benefits from alfalfa a human would have to eat alfalfa like a horse. One study with monkeys, for example, showed that alfalfa did lower fat in the blood which reduced atherosclerosis, but only if the diet was enriched with 50 g (nearly 2 ounces of dried alfalfa meal daily.
Many people advocate the use of dried alfalfa and alfalfa sprouts to enhance health. Its purported benefits in conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis and diabetes and as an appetite stimulant and general tonic remain unsubstantiated. What's more, alfalfa seed sprouts, high in a toxic compound known as canvanine, can produce systemic lupus erythematosus, also known as Cazenave’s disease, which can cause scarred lesions on the face and scalp. Persons predisposed to the condition are advised to curtail or eliminate alfalfa sprouts from their diet.
While alfalfa sprouts and dried leaf products remain popular, the scientific jury is still out on whether alfalfa has any measurable health benefits for humans, beyond supplying protein and small amounts of vitamins and minerals.
Disclaimer: The information contained herein should not be considered as a substitute for the advice and consultation of your health care professional. | <urn:uuid:8cb4cdec-a345-4279-bb1e-c9931dc57feb> | 3 | 2.953125 | 0.042666 | en | 0.949447 | http://www.motherearthnews.com/print.aspx?id=%7B14A59B09-64C4-4619-AC2E-37AB669F4BE6%7D |
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מחפש את שורשי משפחת קורץ מויזניץ בוקובינה kurz
zvi kurz
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משפחת קורץ משה ופיגה בנם מאיר לייב שנולד ב1906 בויזניץ היו לו כ12 אחים ואחיות
My grandfather Kurz Meier (Leib) was born in wiznith 1906,His mother's name was feige , and his father's name was moishe(mo'zes). Meier had twelve brothers and sisters . As far as I know one sister named Papy survived the holocaust and came to Israel . ( During the 70's we lost touch). My grandfather had marrid klara haia to the house of Klinger of storojint born in 1907 , her mother was called Shprina to the house of zomer , her father moishe owned a little farm on the river bank .She had tow more brothers , Jacob and Zvi Hersh who was murdered in the Holocaust ,even though he had the permit to stay in strozinich and maintain his job as a blacksmith he chose to be together with his family , he was shot to death along the side way . My father Moishe (Mo'zes) was born in the year 1940 , they used to live in Noywalld st. in Strozinich . My grandfather worked as a baker , and grandmother sold milk proclucts in the city of chernovich . During the war they were sent to Breshed Transiteria and there they were forced to do hard labor in a Concentration Camp . After the war they came back to Strozinich and from there they went to Bucharest there they had met again following immigration in an illegal immigrantship called: "Pen York and pen Kresent", they had been arrested in the island of Cyprus by the British army , and finally they had reached their final destination Haifa , Israel in 1948 . Meier continued his work as a baker in " Ahdoot Bakery " in Haifa . Meier Kurz died at 1975 at the age of 69 , Klara (Klinger) kurz diseased in 1992 at the age of 85 . Written by the grandchild Kurz Zvika now lives in "Nesher " near haifa .P.O. BOX :14357 Email Add .
zvi kurz
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Trust For Public Land Buys Land To Protect Access To Zion Narrows Trail At Zion National Park
Erik Weihenmayer, the famed blind adventurer who has climbed to the top of Mount Everest, was part of the effort to save nearly 260 acres at the top of the Zion Narrows Trail from development. Trust for Public Land photo.
To reach the start of the Zion Narrows Trail, a 16-mile-long route that enters Zion National Park through a slender rift in the Earth carved by the Virgin River, you need to cross a ranch. While developers were eyeing that ranch for plots of homes, the Trust For Public Land has purchased it to preserve it as is.
At times running throught a slot canyon 2,000 feet deep and only 20 feet wide, the Zion Narrows is one of the iconic hikes on the Colorado Plateau, if not the entire West. But to reach the trailhead, you've had to cross the Chamberlain Ranch to the east of the national park.
Erik Weihenmayer, the famed blind adventurer who led a hike of the Zion Narrows as part of the effort to save the trailhead, said, "The Narrows is easily one of the best, if not the best, hike I've ever been on. It is an amazingly unique and dramatic environment, changing with every turn and different with every season. At one point, thigh deep in cold rushing water, I reached my trekking poles out to each side and felt smooth overhanging canyon walls which went up 3,000 feet on each side and blocked out the sun. It was such a privilege to be part of this project to help more people get to experience it. Now that a blind guy has braved it, there are no excuses."
The 258-acre Chamberlain Ranch, two miles east of Zion National Park, is the main route into the Zion Narrows. Developers planned to subdivide it into smaller home sites, but The Trust for Public Land paid $1.41 million to buy development rights, meaning no subdivision will occur.
"Our mission is to provide access to the outdoors for all Americans, and making sure hikers can get to one of the most spectacular trails in Red Rock country is a great example of that," said Will Rogers, president of the Trust. "It was a team effort by Erik and all our partners. Now people who want to visit the Zion Narrows won't have to go through a subdivision to get there."
Five years ago, developers won approval to break the ranch into smaller "ranchettes," but the recession halted the effort and the property faced foreclosure. The landowner and the State Bank of Southern Utah agreed to sell development rights.
The purchase was paid for with money from the federal Natural Resource Conservation Service's Farm and Ranch Lands Protection Program, the state of Utah, the New Venture Fund, and the Utah Division of State Parks and Recreation Non-Motorized Trail Matching Fund Program.
What exactly does development rights mean?
I think it means the Chamberlain ranch had some good lawyers. You get the crooked county commision to approve "ranchettes" so your property increases in value a thousand fold over night. Then you threaten to develope it. You then sell the develomental rights for millions but still get to keep your property.The tax-payers are left holding the developemental "bag". At least that's how it's done here in Florida......
Gutz is right. Have you ever visited the approach to the Narrows trailhead over the ranch's land?
Anyone who would want to buy a house on any of that land should have their head examined. It is some of the ugliest landscape available and is located in the bottom of a rather narrow, flood prone canyon. And it's located in Kane County, Utah.
Gutz and Lee you both have valid points.Sadly that's the way the system works | <urn:uuid:c12d0f56-4bc8-44c3-a7c3-40d0d52d5f3c> | 2 | 1.9375 | 0.022031 | en | 0.958465 | http://www.nationalparkstraveler.com/2013/06/trust-public-land-buys-land-protect-access-zion-narrows-trail-zion-national-park23492 |
Natural Nordic Nutrition
Natural Nordic Nutrition
Natural Nordic Nutrition journey in life is full of new discoveries, this web site attempts to explore the geographical location of the Nordic region, and seek out the features that are unique to the northern hemisphere.
The proximity of the far north to the Arctic has evolved over time to create its unique environment, flora and fauna. The local biodiversity with food ingredients have evolved over a long time period, they exist there naturally for a reason, and they support the inhabitants of the area.
The early pioneers were a nomadic people; they grazed, traveled, hunted and fished to stay alive as nomadic people do. There was a deep respect to their environment; the land, the soil, the vegetation, the trees, the climate, seasons, their elders and their beliefs and mythology.
Life on our planet has changed dramatically over the last 5000 years, even more so in the last 500 years and also with the modern extreme push of technology in the last 100 years.
Some things are constant; the need for food and nutrition, good health and life style is one of them, importance of knowing Which Food is Good is critical.
An obvious change that has occurred in the last 5000 years is how people found food, and how and when they consumed the food that they found. The nomadic people often traveled and grazed during their travels. More so during the summer season, food was much more plentiful during the spring, summer and autumn season. They would have taken advantage of that natural supply; the bright berry season only came around once in a year similar to other ingredients and food items that peaked at a certain various time of the year.
The modern day life style is a stark contrast to the above, the food supply today is artificially manufactures, stored and supplied. People are no longer reliant on the natural cycles and natural provisions, the natural work and the seasons. This can be confusing to the human mind at a deep level, and also to their physical being. Artificially fed food, supplied artificially to a large storage areas (shops), food created for the pleasure of the experience that food can provide (restaurants), and not for the nutritional needs and health, that food can supply. Also the physical activity as being necessary for strength and stamina for everyday travel on foot, and to burn the fuel that is stored on the human body as fat.
Food has always being part of social events and annual celebrations, e.g. as a community, the spring festival and the autumn harvest festival. Also other festivals during the summer, they could have been around anything; the berry festival, the Cod festival, the Baltic Herring festival, the salmon festival, the crab festival or the summer solstice. There has always been the event, occasion and the pleasure associated with consuming food. It has ballooned exponentially in the last few hundred years, if you consider the contrast between a nomadic tribe feasting on a whole roasted deer, to the indulgence of the French Cuisine aboard the ship Titanic.
The point is this, the essential Nutritional requirements of the human body, with the need for all of the 7 nutritional types. When food was being fished and hunted, picked and foraged, planted and grown, there was a personal investment of time and effort in the involvement of finding, planting, preparing, cooking and storing of food items, and they were also handed down from parents to children. It was very much ingrained in the culture and tradition from one generation to another.
In today’s society there are supermarket shelves full of sugar loaded insulin spiked items, with bright artificial colors and additives, they are colored bright to attract and fool the naive, inexperienced young, and hungry person, that it has the same color as a strawberry, or raspberry, or maybe a bilberry, so it must be good for you. Their designed ultimate objective is to give the consumer passive pleasure while they watch the TV or their favorite movies.
Nature has a lot to offer and teach, it knows the full story from the beginning to the end, it has observed, watched and fed the environment and everything in it since the beginning of time. It is only relative recently that the modern society has started to isolate themselves from Nature and the natural cycles of the seasons. Obsessed western society with blind consumerism and mindless grand scale building projects does not meet the essential needs of humanity and their well being.
Natural Nordic is a virtual trip to a specific and unique geographic area, it has it’s own history, story, culture, tradition and the essential ingredients. The early pioneers of the north traveled, explored, lived and interacted daily with Nordic Nature. Much of that environment and nature is still alive today and can be , explored, traveled and enjoyed and interact in the same way as the early pioneers did so many years ago.
You may be an editor, publisher, writer, journalist or tourist. No matter what your role, you may have need for information and digital images of the Nordic region.
Please contact Natural Nordic Nutrition by email to request the images you are interested in purchasing.
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Int J Food Sci Nutr. 2009;60 Suppl 5:60-70. doi: 10.1080/09637480802400487. Epub 2008 Oct 22.
Vitamin D deficiency in healthy children in a sunny country: associated factors.
Author information
• 1Department of Medical Statistics & Epidemiology, Hamad General Hospital, Hamad Medical Corporation, Doha, State of Qatar.
The objective of the present study was to determine the factors associated with low concentrations of 25-hydroxy vitamin D (vitamin D deficiency) in healthy children in Qatar.
The survey was a cross-sectional study conducted at the Primary Health Care Clinics over the period from August 2007 to March 2008. Subjects The study was carried out among healthy Qatari nationals, male and female, aged below 16 years. A random sample of 650 healthy subjects who visited the Primary Health Care Centers for any reason other than acute or chronic disease were approached and 458 subjects gave consent; a response rate of 70.5%.
Face-to-face interviews were based on a questionnaire that included variables such as socio-demographic information, assessment of non-dietary covariates, assessment of dietary intake, vitamin D intake, type of feeding, clinical manifestations and laboratory investigations. The subjects' health status was assessed by medical conditions, family history, body mass index, past or present clinical manifestations, 25-hydroxy vitamin D, calcium, alkaline phosphates, phosphorus, HbA1C, Parathyroid Hormone (PTH), magnesium and creatinine analysis.
The study revealed that vitamin D deficiency was highly prevalent in Qatari adolescents (11-16 years old; 61.6%), followed by the 5-10 year olds (28.9%) and those below 5 years old (9.5%). Vitamin D deficiency increased with age and there was a significant difference between vitamin D-deficient and normal children in their age groups (P =0.013). The body mass index was significantly lower in vitamin D-deficient children (19.6+/-3.6; P =0.019). A family history of vitamin D deficiency was more frequent in children with vitamin D deficiency (33.7%) than in normal children (24.5%). Most of the vitamin D-deficient children had no physical activity (60.6%) and no exposure to sunlight (57.5%). There was a significant difference between both groups in terms of family history of vitamin D deficiency, physical activity, exposure to sunlight and duration of time spent outside under the sun (P <0.05). The mean values of vitamin D serum concentration, calcium, alkaline phosphates, and phosphorus were very low in vitamin D-deficient children. Vitamin D-deficient children had a very poor diet for vitamin D (cod liver oil, 56.5%; milk fortified with vitamin D, 27.3%; fortified food, 24.1%; and seafood, 5.7%) compared with normal children. Fractures (P =0.006), delayed milestones (P =0.013), rickets (P =0.017) and gastroenteritis (P =0.020) were significantly higher in vitamin D-deficient children.
The study findings revealed that Qatari children are at high risk for vitamin D deficiency. Lack of exposure to sunlight, outdoor activities under the sun, and physical activity and vitamin D intake are the main associated factors for vitamin D deficiency in the young population of Qatar. Breast-fed infants need to take vitamin D supplements for a longer period.
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• examing the Principle of Simplicity
• Ludwig (no login)
Posted Nov 3, 2005 11:07 AM
The KISS-Principle. An examination .....(co read and re-edited online)
Every time has its heroes I believe it were the British who invented to make the decade-counting-method a tool (rule) in intelligence.
A decade can start any time and lasts for 10 years. It is usually invented kicking off a ball,
lucid minds are then hired to keep the ball in the air for ten years sometimes a
Rock-Legend (hitmaker) is set aside giving it a tune. One never knows who it is, but Robbie Williams (ex-army staff) could be such a one. Not all lyrics matter, but some do.
So the Sixties ended, when the Seventies started, etc. And as we know for some religions the Sexties prevail and the release of some documents can be read as Re-lease.
What where the Sexties ? They succeeded the Fifties, when OTAN (NATO) was created and as we all know today it is One of the most successfull organisations around, where the gathering of particular people is made possible (and impossible).
Another thing one has to know is that it was created while the world was an Atlas Shrugged.
This term deserves more attention and IF God allows it to happen, I am going to let more
thoughts flow over that later on.
Where is it based ? No one really knows. Who (which states) where among the founding members ? According to Atlas Shrugged, you could possibly not tell, unless Apocalypse Now becomes reality.
UK was present, but was Great Britain ? May be half of it. The other half was busy in other areas, decoding and deciphering the world. Life was good then. One Pound Stirling valued 6 Dollars. God had chosen its country. Was there a secret deal ? Of course not, stupid !
After the glorious victory in 1944 and 1945, when reckless soldiers landed there armoured vehicles in Normany, after having channelled there way through decade of wars.
60 years have passed and despite all rumours those who knew kept silent about the creation
secret titles of the emerging war-lords: Earl Angel Van Dam, from Veracruz and Dame C. Miller Lastlaugh where still too small then to know their fate. (doomed for each other ?)
Today we see a different picture: One standing accused for what the other could not prevent.
The KISS-principle stands for Keep It Simple + Stupid while some prefer to give it a different approach and substituting the + by a comma. Reading Keep It Simple, Stupid
We all know the taunting of jewish rabbies, when commanding: It´s the economy, stupid. As we know the jewish world is set into spheres and a story made of parables, not so simple at all. But modern jews like to keep it simple, after admitting that If there ever was a god, then he died in the holocaust . So life is quiet simple as this:
Two Sides Of The Coin to choose from. A two-dimensioned world.
Then came Einstein (enlightenend by god) , and added other dimensions, of which potentially everyone can profit.( remember the 60´s brought us Cubism in architecture)
Not so in the jewish world: goyims are all offered only one or the other side and forced to choose. Behind closed doors jews love to gamble words, numbers and most of all faces, though they would never admit
.
Back to politics and news. Katrina came like a weapon and hit the Gulf- Coast. Two horrible days passed until we saw the whole dimension of this attack by Air and Water. SHOCK and AWE came to my mind again !
How could this happen ? Was someone riding on the wind ?
If I were a letter-day-saint, I´d read it different. I´d put myself standing in the heart of U.S. and count the century to 19/84. While doing so I reach ´72, 12 letters missing.
How to get them back without embracing my enemy ? One way is to speak to the enemy of my enemy and POW ! There they are: the missing 12 letters to reach 1984 Orwell State !
But my enemy knew . He received a warning written in a dialect some years back. Quoting to be such a miserable dealer that he had to buy back what he once owned. Or was it just a mind game ? According to sources
. The race was started a new, opening the Blame Game. What could it mean ? Is it for the good or for evil ?
These days we are to witness among other events an unparalled gesture, when Dame C. Miller Lastlaugh and her C.A. Count Carlisle from British Midlands , riding on the wind to American soil, are making the news. No Mum to give shelter, this is a new kind of atmosphere of modern Judaism, following the principle of Keeping It Simple, stupid.
What will we see after a 26 Billion Amount invested vice versa in mutual trust has been made public from to beef up the economy ?
A New Deal without Roosevelt ? In the name of Josip Stalin, Tito or Goebel ?
Or will there be a commitment to help restoring the French Quarter in New Orleans from
This Great Nation, after handing over those Love Letters to Lord Warleasle in Parker Avenue (Aye, Aye to Sir Norman for fostering us)
Of course the French Quarter needs a restauration after being vandalised over years.
But must it really be this way ?
Adam & Eva Price
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A high price of wealth
Observations on Ireland
A small speedboat accident off the coast of Cork early this month led to the Republic of Ireland's largest-ever drugs haul. Sixty bales carrying €105m (£71m) worth of cocaine were recovered from the sea, but as the boat tipped a mile offshore in rough weather, the real amount could actually be much higher.
Most of the cargo appears to have been bound for the UK, but the incident highlights a growing problem in Ireland itself, where the quantity of cocaine seized in the past four years has jumped by 750 per cent. The country has Europe's fastest-rising death rate due to illegal drugs.
Perversely, Ireland's newfound peace and prosperity may have fuelled the illicit trade. Boosted by EU cash, liberal market reforms and the decline of the IRA, the country's wealth grew at a dizzying pace in the 1990s. Between 1995 and 1999 Ireland had the fastest-growing economy in the developed world. Last year GDP grew at triple the rate of the eurozone average.
But this leap meant that cocaine was suddenly affordable to a lot more people; use of the drug - which is not stigmatised as crack cocaine and heroin are - has skyrocketed. There are now about 75,000 cocaine users in Ireland, according to Jim O'Keeffe, justice spokesman for the opposition Fine Gael.
At the same time, a powerful deterrent against distributing the drug has disappeared. In the old days neighbourhood vigilantes - the "sort of people who'd done 20 years in prison for blowing up half of London" - would straighten out the dealers themselves, says John Mooney, the Sunday Times correspondent and author of several books on organised crime. "They'd grab some drug dealer, kidnap him, hide him for two or three days and torture him, and that would be that."
Mooney, who often worked undercover, has seen victims tied to kitchen tables and interrogated. "It used to be a cyclical event," he reminisces. "Every six or seven years when drugs were getting out of hand, communities and paramilitaries would react and kill a whole load of drug dealers." There were big clampdowns, he says, in 1989, 1995 - "but then it never really happened again. And lots of the same people who used to take the law into their own hands are on community boards now, running for elections."
Tough measures have been brought in to combat the trade, but the law will never be able to provide the same disincentive as the old system did. "You couldn't get legal aid when the paramilitaries decided you're no good," Mooney points out. "When Joey down the road was armed with an AK-47, the best lawyers that money could buy you weren't going to help."
To make current matters worse, the street value of cocaine has plummeted by almost 25 per cent in the past two years, making it an option now for people from all social backgrounds.
"When I went in [to prison] in 1996, cocaine was a white-collar drug, only for the rich," says Robbie, formerly a homeless heroin addict, who did seven years for burglary. "But when I got out, it was rampant - on the streets, where anyone can get their hands on it. Especially younger people."
At present the Irish health system has no services geared specifically towards cocaine abuse, and a health department recruitment freeze is making matters worse. "It's very frustrating," says Eamon Keenan, a consultant psychiatrist and director of the Drug Treatment Centre Board in Dublin.
Instead of getting treatment, drug users often get locked into a system of revolving doors, going in and out of prison. Eddie, 35, who has been in Mountjoy in Dublin three times, says that drugs are more readily available there than anywhere else. One of his friends who used to be "totally against drugs" acquired a habit in jail, and the guards turn a blind eye to it, he says, because "people who are stoned don't kick off so much".
"There's an old saying that a rising tide lifts all boats," says Tony Duffin, director of the Ana Liffey Drug Project, a treatment and support centre based in Dublin. "But I'm yet to see that with this so-called Celtic tiger."
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Brazil's Black Bloc Activists: Criminals Or People Power?
The protests that swept through Brazil last summer raised the profile of the Black Bloc — masked anarchists who use violence to get their anti-capitalist message across. The secretive members explain that their tactics are intended to shake up a corrupt and complacent government. But many regular protesters feel that the Black Bloc has hijacked their movement and that they do more harm than good.
And I'm Audie Cornish. The massive protests that took place in Brazil over the summer may be over. But smaller, near-daily demonstrations are ongoing and getting more violent. From Sao Paulo, NPR's Lourdes Garcia-Navarro reports on the shadowy anarchist group that's now playing a key role in the protest. It's called the Black Bloc.
LOURDES GARCIA-NAVARRO, BYLINE: The Black Bloc member won't tell us his name or anything about himself. To disguise his identity, he's wearing a black hoodie, a ski mask, and a bandana covering the lower half of his face. His eyes are even hidden by sunglasses. It's a dramatic outfit but a necessary one, he explains. The security forces view the Black Bloc as a criminal organization that destroys property and fights with the police. He also asked to have his voice disguised.
But he says far from being the perpetrators of violence, the Black Bloc is there to defend. He says the Black Bloc is necessary in Brazil because it's the way that the people found to fight back physically, to fight back the police. Police beat people up, he says. Police kill people. Police torture people nowadays in Brazil, he tells me.
Over the summer, massive protests broke out in Brazil; sparked by a bloody police crackdown on peaceful protesters looking to lower the cost of public transport. This Black Bloc member, and others NPR interviewed, say they were inspired to join the anarchist group, after seeing what happened on the streets.
Rafael Alcadipani is a professor at the Getulio Vargas Foundation - in Sao Paulo - who studies the Black Bloc. He says the group is decentralized with no leadership and only a few unifying principles. But he says its tactics have won many young Brazilians over.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: At a recent protest in Sao Paulo, the Black Bloc was, indeed, out in force. As frequently happens these days, the demonstrations devolved into violence, with masked anarchists battling with police and breaking into banks and stores.One of the members of the Bloc, a 19-year-old law student, explains why the banks are a particular target.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN: (Through translator) Banks are one of the main evils of society. They are leeches exploiting workers. For the bank, what matters most is the interest. It doesn't matter if people can't support their families. The banks are exploiters of society, and we are here to oppose them.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: But many regular protesters say the actions of the Bloc overshadow their aims. This protest was over education, says 24-year-old Juniane Fourno.
JUNIANE FOURNO: (Through translator) It would be easier to gain public support by being able to talk to the governor. But instead, there are clashes. And all the media will say is that the Black Blocs broke everything, and no one will discuss our legitimate complaints.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Across town, the Black Bloc member we interviewed privately says the media is deliberately distorting what they do, in an attempt to drive a wedge between the protesters. But he also adds, protesters who don't like the Bloc's tactics should just stay home. He says some people actually are afraid of violence. They're afraid of being arrested; they are afraid of being there. But we don't need people with fear. If you are scared, stay at home, you know, he says - because, he says, the Black Bloc is going to continue taking to the streets.
He says the Black Bloc is the one telling the states, you don't have the monopoly of force anymore, because the people have the power. You can have the guns, but we have the power, he says.
Lourdes Garcia-Navarro NPR News, Sao Paulo.
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• Winter light on the Fairweather Range
Glacier Bay
National Park & Preserve Alaska
The Marine Environment: Activity #1 - Setting The Scene
Glacier Bay contains a highly complex oceanographic system within a relatively small area. This in large part explains the unusual variety of marine life that is found here. The ocean's invasion as the glaciers retreated created a complex array of underwater environments, each hosting distinct but overlapping biological communities.
Student Resource: The Ocean-Glacier Bay
The Ocean-Glacier Bay National Park
1. The Complex Oceanography of Glacier Bay
Tell students that oceanographers classify Glacier Bay as a "recently deglaciated, tidally mixed, fjord estuarine system with [many] underwater sills."To help them better understand this description, have them read the Student Resource: The Ocean - Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve in groups.Then, briefly discuss their reading. What is meant by the terms deglaciated, tidally mixed, fjord estuarine systems and underwater sills.
Answer: Check the Marine Environment Glossary for the meanings of these terms.
2. Influences on the Oceanography of Glacier Bay
Next, put the following information on the chalkboard:
• Physical – tides, currents, salinity, temperature, light, precipitation
• Chemical – salinity, nutrients, density, pH
• Geological – glaciation, depth, sedimentation rates, marine substrate
• Biological – phytoplankton, zooplankton, fish, invertebrates, marine mammals, humans
Explain to students that each of the four topics is defined by the terms listed under them. For example, under Physical, you would list information about an ocean's tides, currents, salinity, temperature, light, precipitation, etc.
Note: Students will notice that salinity shows up under both Physical and Chemical. Under Physical salinity means the range of saltiness of the water in any given area of the bay. Under Chemical, salinity refers to salt's effect on the density of the water.
Ask students to find statements that describe the Physical, Chemical, Geological or Biological influences on Glacier Bay's ocean environment. As they make suggestions, write these under each category.
Student Worksheet: Interactions in the Oceans
Interactions in the Ocean worksheet
3. Interactions in the Ocean
Distribute copies of the Student Worksheet: Interactions in the Ocean to student groups.
Ask them to briefly discuss interactions they found as they read the Student Resource: The Ocean - Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve. For example, because Glacier Bay has a large sill at its entrance, (Geological) water entering the bay from the deep, cold and salty ocean is well mixed with water returning to the ocean from the upper bay (Physical).
Working in groups, have them complete the Student Worksheet: Interactions in the Ocean. They can use the Student Resource: The Ocean - Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve and any of the Internet Resources needed to report as many interactions as possible. They will need to read one or both of the following Internet Resources in order to find an interaction between the Biological parameter and the Physical parameter.
Answer: Answers to the worksheet are found immediately following the worksheet.
4. Glacier Bay - The Amazing Biodiversity Machine
After students have completed the worksheet, briefly introduce the idea of a Rube Goldberg machine (see Rube Goldberg http://www.rube-goldberg.com/). Explain to students that they are going to draw or build a Rube Goldberg machine that illustrates the interactions among all the elements of Glacier Bay's unique oceanography.
Note: Rube Goldberg machines are linear; that is, each cog in the machine affects one and only one other cog. Glacier Bay is non-linear; that is, cogs in the machine interact with other cogs often simultaneously and sometimes randomly.
Divide students into groups; give them time to examine the Rube Goldberg machines at the Internet site. Groups are expected to build or design a non-linear machine in which they illustrate the oceanographic interactions they found in Glacier Bay.
5. Resources:
GLBA: Nature and Science, Oceans
Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve: Intertidal and Subtidal zones
USGS Marine Habitat
Marine Substrates
(Student Resource based on the information in Geologic characteristics of benthic habitats in Glacier Bay)
Fjord Processes and Oceanographic Dynamics
(Recommended for Advanced Students Only)
Web of Life
Kelp Forests
Extension 1:
Using data from the Internet and Student Resources, challenge students to create a scale model or relief map of Glacier Bay's ocean floor topography (bathymetry). Use the model to illustrate the definitions of the following terms:
bathymetry turbidity mixing zones upwelling zones
contraction sill water column basin
tidewater glacier fjord intertidal zone subtidal zone
Extension 2:
(Recommended for Advanced Students)
Using a water table demonstrate why water at the mouth of Glacier Bay and at the Sitikaday Narrows are mixing zones. Next, using colored water to represent different salinities, illustrate the stratification of the water column in deeper basins.
>>Activity #2
Prime Real Estate for Phytoplankton
Did You Know? | <urn:uuid:46096853-8cee-4091-975e-ce22445c35ed> | 4 | 3.65625 | 0.024345 | en | 0.868655 | http://www.nps.gov/glba/learn/education/marine-environment-activity-1-setting-the-scene.htm |
Sunday, April 11, 2010
All is not lost
Cristóbal de Morales plainsong Parce mihi, Domine from his Officium defunctorum provides the opening for young Latvian composer Ēriks Ešenvalds' Passion and Resurrection and the unfolding story of Christ's crucifixion and resurrection is told using texts drawn from the Holy Scriptures and the liturgies of the Catholic and Byzantine churches. I was at Friday night's Norwich performance of Passion and Resurrection by the Britten Sinfonia, Polyphony and soprano Carolyn Sampson conducted by Stephen Layton, every one of them musicans at the top of their game. Rarely before have I sat in a concert hall and heard a new work that sounded so fresh yet so familiar. Passion and Resurrection is familiar not because it is derivate, in fact far from it - Ēriks Ešenvalds teachers include Michael Finnissy and Jonathan Harvey. It is familiar because it sounds so right. Music written from the heart as opposed to written to catch the prevailing wind of stylistic fashion will always sound right. And Ēriks Ešenvalds writes from the heart.
Back in 2006 I asked the question what exactly is a classic? Paths converge here as my question was prompted by Arvo Pärt's Passio, which tells the Passion story from St John's Gospel. Pärt's Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten was the opening work for the Norwich concert, and in a typically nuanced Britten Sinfonia programme J.S. Bach, the greatest Passion setter of them all, was the third composer of the evening. It is a telling measure of Ēriks Ešenvalds' music that it sat so comfortably alongside that of Arvo Pärt and J.S. Bach. In my post on Arvo Pärt's Passio I suggested that a classic composition is one that receives regular performances. By that criteria, or by any other, Ēriks Ešenvalds Passion and Resurrection is surely set to become a classic, a position Hyperion's forthcoming CD release of the work should consolidate.
Reader David Cavlovic added a comment to my recent post about BBC Radio 3 introducing classical charts which said "It’s the decline of the West as we know it". David may have had his tongue in his cheek when he posted that comment but I know exactly what he means. Turn on the radio or television, pick up a newspaper, look at the release schedules of the major labels or encounter the serial between the movements clapper we had to endure in Friday's concert and it is difficult not to conclude that we are indeed entering a cultural Dark Age.
In this new Dark Age marketing alchemists are hell bent on turning all challenging art into accessible entertainment and in the process destroying the very thing they are claiming to protect. But in the Dark Ages the monastic orders protected the flame of Western civilisation so that it could blaze again in the Enlightenment. And today the committed few such as Ēriks Ešenvalds, Stephen Layton and Polyphony, the Britten Sinfonia and Hyperion are keeping challenging art alive so that it can blaze once again in more propitious times. All is not lost.
Parce mihi Domine, nihil enim sunt dies mei
Quid est homo, quia magnificas eum?
Spare me, O Lord, for my days are nothing
What is a man that thou shouldst magnify him?
* If you have not already made the connection between my two images and Cristóbal de Morales' Parce mihi Domine I will give you a few more lines to come up with the answer. For a 'straight' take on the plainsong turn to John Eliot Gardiner and the Monteverdi Choir's Pilgrimage to Santiago CD. But Parce mihi Domine will be familiar to many readers from the opening track of ECM's Officium CD where the voices of the Hilliard Ensemble are joined by Jan Garbarek's saxophone. My header image is Roberto Masotti's photo from the cover of the ECM CD while the second photo is by Jim Bengston from the same album.
* The question as to whether Officium is challenging art or accessible entertainment had an outing here some years ago. In my book Manfred Eicher's experiment in Renaissance fusion is a classic because it has stood the test of time.
* I was going to ask Ēriks Ešenvalds in our pre-concert talk if he knew Jan Garbarek and the Hilliard Ensemble's take on Morales, but I decided against it in case he did not know the recording. I need not have worried: after the talk, which Ēriks handled like a 33 year old pro, I mentioned the ECM disc and he knew it well. And talking of the Roman rite it is confession time. Parce mihi Domine at the start of Passion and Resurrection did sound strange without the saxophone. Listen to my talk with Ēriks Ešenvalds here.
* More on Ēriks Ešenvalds' Passion and Resurrection here.
* Is another criteria of a 'classic' music that is pirated?
I received two free tickets for the Britten Sinfonia and Polyphony's Friday concert in return for presenting the pre-concert talk. All CDs mentioned in this post were bought at retail. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk
The Wound Dresser said...
and available here, though I doubt the biographical dating is quite accurate.
giovanni.peccati said...
Dear Pliable,
talking of Latvia and music, do not forget that Latvia is also known as "The Land that Sings", having a huge and magnificent tradition of popular choral songs that are sung, transmitted and cherished generation after generation.
There is also this incredible festival, with a choir of at least 10000 people singing through the night, in the middle of summer. Listen to "the Castle of Light"
Which brings me to a question: are you really sure that people clapping their hands between movements are one of the signs of western decline?
Have you ever felt that the ban on clapping is completely unnatural - and even goes against the spirit of the music?
Pliable said...
Giovanni, let me explain what happened at Friday's concert.
Arvo Pärt's Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten was not allowed to fade into silence. It was drowned by an outburst of applause that was more appropriate to Norwich City football team scoring one of its very rare goals. A more apposite example of going against the spirit of the music is difficult to imagine - the title of the work says it all.
Similarly the serial applauder at the back of the hall decided to make his presence felt between the movements of the Bach double concerto. Again his intrusive contribution after the Largo was totally against the spirit of that sublime music.
I was bracing myself for the stamping of feet after Parce mihi, Domine but thankfully there was silence.
This kind of behaviour has nothing to do with the spirit of the music. It was the work of someone who clearly craves attention, and for that we must sympathise with them. But I wish they would not seek attention during one of Bach's masterpieces.
giovanni.peccati said...
Dear Pliable,
I now understand much better the spirit of your post!
However, let me ask you one more thing: why should one always assume that clappers are slightly deranged individuals in search of attention, and not people that simply like the music and are not used to the concert-goers etiquette?
By the way, this etiquette is just a social thing, so it will probably change over the years, and maybe because of more and more clappers being involved into classical music.
(I personally find much more annoying the between-movements explosion of nervous coughs (and the ever-present blinding light))
(And, of course, thank you for this great blog: I discovered so many things thanks to your writing (Nielsen on Brilliant, Barbirolli's Gerontius, Rubbra's quartets...))
Pliable said...
Giovanni, you are quite right. Abstaining from intrusive applause is simply part of the concert-goers etiquette.
As is refraining from other activities which detract from the enjoyement of your fellow concert-goers, such as talking during the performance, reading the newspaper, making cell phone calls and breaking wind.
And yes, this etiquette may well change over the years.
In which case concert-going will certainly become interesting.
Pliable said...
Email received:
“Rarely before have I sat in a concert hall and heard a new work that sounded so fresh yet so familiar. Passion and Resurrection is familiar not because it is derivate, in fact far from it…It is familiar because it sounds so right. Music written from the heart as opposed to written to catch the prevailing wind of stylistic fashion will always sound right.”
That’s why Gorecki’s Symphony No. 3 sounds like it has always been there. And that must have also been the case during the premiere of Strauss’ Vier Letzte Lieder, or any of the other towering masterpieces of the past (and present).
David Cavlovic
Rick DeLano said...
Just listened to this wonderful piece on KUSC in Los Angeles.
Stunning and beautiful.
Is it possible that music is returning to the world?
It has been so long since there were composers.... | <urn:uuid:8088afe1-65f3-4c29-abfc-25f25b3404a8> | 2 | 1.578125 | 0.020361 | en | 0.957718 | http://www.overgrownpath.com/2010/04/all-is-not-lost.html |
The War Behind Closed Doors
homewatch the full program onlineanalysesinterviewschronologydiscussion
interview: john lewis gaddis
photo of gaddis
Gaddis is the Robert A. Lovett professor of military and naval history at Yale University and the author, most recently, of The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past (Oxford, 2002). In this interview, he discusses how the Bush administration's National Security Strategy [released September 2002] represents a sweeping transformation in U.S. foreign policy. Gaddis also places some of NSS's key elements -- preemption, American hegemony, a willingness to act alone, if necessary -- in historical context and assesses the current U.S. drive toward regime change in Iraq and how this fits into a larger grand strategy. This interview was conducted on Jan. 16, 2003.
The National Security Strategy (NSS) that the Bush administration released in September 2002, you describe it as a "grand strategy." Why is it a grand strategy?
... First of all, it responds to a crisis. And it is crises that generally generate grand strategies. So, just as the grand strategy that won World War II came out of the Pearl Harbor surprise attack, so this one did as well. This is not surprising that there would be a rethinking of grand strategic assumptions in the wake of something like the 9/11 attack.
I don't think that the general public completely understands the magnitude...the sweep of the Bush strategy. I don't think anybody understands what the costs of it may be.
Secondly, I think it's a grand strategy in the sense that it is comprehensive. It does not simply break up the world into regions and say that we have an approach for this region and an approach for that region, but these don't necessarily interconnect. I think that was often the tendency in the Clinton administration, a bunch of parts that did not completely add to a whole. And I think that this strategy does, in that sense.
I think it's also a grand strategy in the sense that it has both short-term and long-term objectives. This grand strategy is actually looking toward the culmination of the Wilsonian project of a world safe for democracy, even in the Middle East. And this long-term dimension of it, it seems to me, goes beyond what we've seen in the thinking of more recent administrations. It is more characteristic of the kind of thinking, say, that the Truman administration was doing at the beginning of the Cold War -- thinking not only about, what do we have to do tomorrow and what do we have to do next week? But, where do we want to come out at the end of this process? So, that's why I think it qualifies as a grand strategy.
And how is it an historic shift?
The Bush strategy is an historic shift for American foreign policy because it really is the first serious American grand strategy since containment in the early days of the Cold War. We went through the Cold War, the Cold War ended, and we got into a new situation without a grand strategy. We didn't really devise a grand strategy in the early '90s in the immediate aftermath of the Cold War. And that's not terribly surprising. We didn't do that either in the immediate aftermath of World War I. We went through the entire 1920s and even the 1930s without a coherent grand strategy. But the shock of Pearl Harbor forced us to devise one. And the shock of 9/11 did something like that as well.
And I would argue that the Bush grand strategy is the most fundamental reshaping of American grand strategy that we've seen since containment, which was articulated back in 1947.
Without an event like 9/11, could something this dramatic have been possible from any administration, or this administration specifically?
No. I think it took a shock like 9/11 to produce something that was this dramatic. Sooner or later, yes, we would have evolved policies to deal with a post-Cold War world. But I have to say that 10 years into the post-Cold War era, there was very little sign of a comprehensive grand strategy. There were strategies toward particular countries and with regard to particular issues, but very little effort to pull it altogether. 9/11 forced us basically to get our grand strategic act together. And that is the way it normally happens, it seems to me, in history.
How has the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction factored into the creation of this new National Security Strategy?
I think that proliferation of weapons of mass destruction changes the situation that we face in two different ways. There are two kinds of weapons of mass destruction. There is the kind that we have always worried about: nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons. That concern surely was there at the time that the Soviet Union fell apart some 12 years ago with regards to their weapons, and it's been there ever since. Nothing particularly new about that.
The other kind of weapons of mass destruction -- and this was the great surprise -- is that they turned out also to be box cutters and [people] sitting in airliners. These were not the kinds of weapons of mass destruction that we had anticipated or had been thinking about in the past. And that confronted us with the fact that we simply cannot take for granted our own domestic security.
The Bush administration's NSS represents an evolution of thinking. Describe how we got this doctrine, where it came from.
I think the history of this particular doctrine does go back to one particular individual. This is Paul Wolfowitz in his service in the first Bush administration and the defense review that was taking place in the last years of the first Bush administration, which Wolfowitz basically authored -- a doctrine of American hegemony; a doctrine in which the United States would seek to maintain a position that it came out of the Cold War with, in which there were no obvious or plausible challengers to the United States.
That was considered quite shocking in 1992; so shocking, in fact, that the first Bush administration disavowed it. But I think that indeed it did become the basis of that administration's thinking. I think tacitly it was the basis of the Clinton administration's thinking. I think ever since then, there has been either explicitly or implicitly the sense that we have to hang on to this remarkable position of preeminence that we have in the world. So that's one strain that has given rise to the Bush strategy here.
I think that the second [strain] has to do with the thinking that has evolved both in academic circles and in official circles about the causes of terrorism in the first place. The more the experts have thought about this, the more they've come around to the view that the terrorism that we see is not the result necessarily of poverty or injustice. Poverty and injustice exist in a lot of different places in the rest of the world, but the citizens of those places don't all get into airplanes and fly them into buildings. There's something that has happened in the Middle East.
I think the sense is that the persistence of authoritarian regimes in that part of the world -- more than in any other single part of the world, this is the one part of the world that has not democratized -- has led to a sense of resentment on the part of young men, particularly, in that population. No doubt [it has led to] a sense of resentment on the part of everybody, but [it's] the young men who tend to act, who tend to be prone to being recruited into terrorist organizations, animated by religious radicalism. So the sense has come around -- and I think this was happening even before 9/11 -- to the argument that the real problem is the persistence of authoritarian regimes in that part of the world. And that ultimately, if you're going to solve a problem of terrorism, you have to solve the problem of authoritarianism.
So, paradoxically, we have come around in a Republican administration to the sense that the task of this country, the great task of the early 21st century, really has got to be to complete the task that Woodrow Wilson started at the beginning of the 20th century and that is democratization. Because only democratization leads to a system that can accommodate the different desires of different groups and prevent this kind of frustration from developing.
Explain that. You write in your recent Foreign Policy article that the world, to some extent, approves of American hegemony. How so?
I think the world in part approves of American hegemony if you ask what the alternatives are. If you just say, "Do you approve of American hegemony?" probably people are going to say, "No." Then if you ask the next question, "Well, what would you put in its place? Would you put the old balance of power system in its place?" A lot of people would say, "No," because that would mean that the Europeans and the Chinese and the Russians would have to beef up their military budgets to a considerable extent at a time when they're interested in economic development. So maybe the balance of power system is not a very good alternative.
So, would you then go to the United Nations and say, "We rely on the United Nations to run the world?" Don't hold your breath on that. So that's a problem, you see. And you run through the various alternatives. Is anarchy an alternative? Well, not a very good one. So I think it's more the lesser of evils in the eyes of a lot of people than necessarily something that a lot of people would regard as a positive good.
But there is a historical basis for this. There had been other periods in which there has been a single dominant hegemony. The most famous example, of course, is Rome -- not necessarily an encouraging example, except the Roman Empire lasted for a very long time. But even in more recent history, in international economic policy or in international economic affairs there has been a dominant hegemony to keep the global economy going: Britain playing that role in the 19th century, and the United States playing that role through much of the 20th century. So, the idea of a single hegemony is not a totally new idea.
Can you talk about the debate out there between what's been called the "realists" -- the Scowcrofts, the Eagleburgers, I guess Colin Powell to some extent -- and the so-called Reaganites or neo-Reaganites, those who are moving towards the Bush doctrine?
There is an interesting debate, first of all, within the Republican Party and, secondly, within the conservative movement -- not necessarily the same thing -- about the future direction for American foreign policy. And the debate really is between those people who think that we should simply be wielding power without trying to achieve reform. This would be basically the realists' position that reform is implausible, impossible in some parts of the world, and the best you can do is to maintain your power, your position of superiority, and can install commerce.
And this is against another tradition, which is emerging within the Republican Party and within the conservative movement. It's actually been there for a long time; it goes back to Reagan, it seems to me. And that is an optimistic view of human nature, something that's quite astonishing for conservatives: the idea that American values are indeed transportable; that democratic values can be made to work elsewhere. This was certainly Reagan's position and I think it is definitely Bush's position.
So, by a kind of back-handed circuitous route, this swing of the conservative movement has come around to an old liberal position, which is that reform of other countries, reform in other cultures, is, in fact, possible -- not just possible, but is necessary.
But it disagrees to some extent with that old liberal position because it also says, "We'll batter you across the head if you don't agree."
Well, there is some element of "We'll batter you across the head if you don't agree." But part of the premise of the administration is that not a lot of battering is going to have to take place in order for this to work. And here is where, I think, they're drawing on the lessons of Afghanistan. Nobody knew what the response to American intervention in Afghanistan in the fall of 2001 was going to be. But what actually happened was a great surprise: the fact that we used force, we did intervene in that most unpromising country, and we were welcomed, we were cheered.
And I think that experience has had a profound influence on the thinking of the administration about Iraq and about other issues. The expectation is that, in fact, we won't have to do a lot of battering; the Iraqis will actually be quite happy that we have invaded their country; and that this will be a low-cost operation. Now this may be totally unrealistic. But, nonetheless, I think it is the thinking of the administration that not a lot of battering actually has to take place.
And there's another part to this debate -- a multilateral approach versus a unilateral approach.
I don't think there is necessarily a contradiction between being a hegemonic power on the one hand and functioning multilaterally on the other. I think that's largely the history of the American experience in the Cold War. We were clearly hegemonic compared to our NATO allies. Nobody in NATO was in the same league with us. And yet NATO is held out as a superb model of multilateral cooperation.
Well, it worked in part because the other members of NATO knew that the United States had an enormous amount of power and was willing to use it. But it also worked because the United States respected the views of smaller members of NATO and, at times -- in fact, more often than many people realize -- changed its own views and approaches in deference to them. So there was a very fruitful interaction, it seems to me, between hegemonic authority on one hand and multilateralism on the other. In NATO that's really what made it work.
And I think that's what has to happen now if we are going to achieve the same kinds of things we achieved in the Cold War. We obviously cannot do it alone. We obviously need allies. It seems to me that is what happened in the United Nations in the fall of last year with President Bush going and making a compelling argument to the United Nations on the need for intrusive inspection in Iraq, and then an extended debate, both in front of public scrutiny and behind the scenes as well, producing a unanimous resolution.
This is a pretty good model of how it should work. And there are always going to be those who would say, "Well, is it multilateralism if the unilateral hegemony gets what it wants?" And that's a very good question. But then the question equally could be, is it unilateralism if the multilaterals go along with what the unilateral authority wants to do? That's a good question, too.
So in the real world I think these two things are not always contradictory, and I think we've got a pretty strong historical record to show how they can be handled in such a way that is not contradictory. And I hope our leaders are thinking about that historical record as they try to deal with this new situation. ...
You say that the policy of preemption, which is another part of the Bush doctrine, requires hegemony. What do you mean by that?
The doctrine of preemption really has emerged in response to this new kind of threat that was demonstrated to us on 9/11. And it does go back to the argument that terrorists are not deterrable because they have prepared themselves to commit suicide. So the logic of this situation is that you have to go beyond deterrence and you have to be serious about trying to preempt before they can act in the first place. So the preemption doctrine, I think, is coming straight out of this experience of 9/11.
In order for preemption to work, you do have to be in a lot of different places at the same time, with a lot of different capabilities. So preemption does, at least in the thinking of the administration, presume hegemony. The fact is the hegemony was there before they came up with the doctrine of preemption. But I think what they're arguing is that a condition for preemption is hegemonic authority. And indeed, I think they're even arguing that this is one of the other things that the rest of the world should come to accept: that everybody has an interest in preempting terrorist attacks before they happen, and so there should be cooperation to make that preemption possible.
How dramatic or new is this doctrine of preemption?
Well, the doctrine of preemption has a long and distinguished history in the history of American foreign policy. Our doctrine throughout most of the 19th century -- at the time that we were expanding along the frontier and confronted European colonies along the frontier, confronted Indians, confronted pirates, confronted hostile non-state actors along the frontier -- was very much one of preemption.
Preemption is how we took Florida. Preemption is, in some way, how we took Texas. Preemption is how we took the Philippines, basically, in 1898. So to say that preemption is an un-American doctrine is not right historically. However, preemption has not been the primary American doctrine for a very long time, and it certainly was not during the Cold War for pretty obvious reasons. Because preemption ran the risk, of course, of nuclear war, equally damaging to both sides during the Cold War. So, very little was heard about preemption, at least in public, during the Cold War.
But the idea is coming back, and it's coming back for some of the same reasons that it was there in the 19th century: because, again, we face a situation of domestic insecurity, of being insecure in our own homes and work places, which was the condition of frontier existence in the 19th century. So, in that sense, it's not totally surprising that preemption would come back.
How does the doctrine of preemption create a problem -- or not -- in the way the world views America?
Well, one of the great problems with preemption, obviously, is that it makes people nervous. If there is one great power and the great power has taken upon itself the right to preempt and is choosing for itself when and in what circumstances it's going to do that, obviously it leads people in the rest of the world to wonder how far this doctrine extends. And if you preempt one country or one terrorist gang today, what are you going to do tomorrow? And how far are you going to carry this strategy?
The only solution to this, it seems to me, is to use it cautiously and to use it wisely, and to use it only in situations where there is a clear and compelling case for doing so. So it's got to be used very carefully. Otherwise it will generate resistance and fear.
How unusual is it that this administration would be the one that would put this doctrine into force?
Well, it's not unusual for an administration, when it gets in power, to speak and act differently from the way it spoke in the campaign. ... Probably the majority of American administrations in the 20th century have done that. Don't forget that Woodrow Wilson said shortly after taking office that it would be the greatest irony if his administration had anything to do with European affairs. So these things happen. Nobody can foresee what's going to happen on an administration's watch; administrations have to respond to these things.
There's been a learning curve, there's no question about that, with regard to international responsibilities -- a big learning curve with this administration. They were very [heavy-handed] when they came into office and generated a lot of unnecessary friction for themselves. So it's taken some learning. Again, this is not unusual in the first year or year-and-a-half of a new administration. It would be characteristic of most administrations in the past.
What's different about this one is that within just a few months of taking office, they confronted a huge national calamity and so were forced to move more rapidly than they otherwise would have.
Let's focus on Iraq. How does a war with Iraq fit into the war against terrorism?
Why wouldn't they be able to talk about that in public?
You write in your article that the strategies that won the Cold War, containment deterrence, they do not work fighting the war against terrorism. Explain that to me.
Well, the strategies that won the Cold War, deterrence and containment, of course were tailored to a particular kind of adversary. We knew who the adversary was. It was one big country, identifiable. So that in trying to deter there was somebody on whom you knew that you could make an impression, and you could target it in that way.
It seems to me the new situation with terrorism, particularly in the wake of 9/11, does present us with a different kind of situation because we're dealing with a much more elusive target than was the case in the Cold War. So, deterrence is difficult by way of targeting. Deterrence is also difficult in this current situation because the people who carried out the attacks on 9/11 were suicidal. And it's very difficult to deter somebody who is prepared to commit suicide. The Soviet Union definitely was not prepared to commit suicide in the Cold War, which is one reason why deterrence worked.
How does deterrence and containment relate to the situation with Iraq?
Iraq, as far as deterrence and containment, is a somewhat different situation, because here we are dealing with an identifiable state. My own view is that deterrence has worked with regard to Iraq. I think that the record would show that Saddam Hussein has been deterred quite a long period of time. And various reasons to think that this could continue to work, I think, in that particular situation.
But, I think the issue with Iraq goes into something beyond deterrence. This is an issue of United Nations resolutions that have been ignored. This is an issue of the world's collective security organization being able to enforce its mandates, which have been issued to Saddam Hussein. So, I think, this is another different situation than what we can find with Al Qaeda in that regard. So, I would say in this case, containment and deterrence have worked so far with regard to Iraq.
But, this still doesn't solve the problem of a state that brutalizes its own citizens, a state that has accumulated weapons of mass destruction in the past, and has actually used them in ways that other states have not done. But, most important, a state that has flouted the will of the United Nations. And to me that's the strongest argument for doing something about Iraq.
So, the situation in Iraq, containment does part of the job, but you end up with a more difficult problem -- the weapons of mass destruction?
Yes, with regard to Iraq it seems to me that containment can do a certain amount. But if, in fact, containment allows someone like Saddam Hussein to continue to accumulate, and build, and possibly disseminate weapons of mass destruction, then you do have to go beyond containment, it seems to me.
So, what's the next step?
I think that the next step with Iraq is the step that is being taken, even now. And this is the United Nations is enforcing an intrusive inspection regime with a certain amount of encouragement from the United States. It's not clear yet what the results of these intrusive inspections are going to be. There are two ways, obviously, to go if there is evidence of weapons of mass destruction still being present in that country. Presumably, there will be military action.
But, I can see another scenario, which is that the inspections don't really turn up anything that is significant. At that point, I think, the administration faces a difficult choice in determining what it wants to do with regard to Iraq.
Do you get to a certain point where you can't back out, when one is dealing with a country like Iraq the way that we've done so far?
Well, the problem of backing up is always awkward for a great power. But, it seems to me that a sophisticated grand strategist always builds in room for backing out. Because there are times when, in fact, you need to do this. We've seen the administration doing this just in the last couple of weeks with regard to North Korea. There always needs to be some wiggle room for backing up, or for reconsideration, or for backing down when the circumstances demand this.
Is there wiggle room in the Iraq doctrine?
I think there could be wiggle room in the Iraq doctrine. If the objective of the administration is regime change, as they've said, then there really are several different ways in which regime change could take place. One is through a war. One is through Saddam Hussein being assassinated. One is through Saddam Hussein going into exile. And significantly the administration has said that that would be an acceptable option under certain circumstances.
You can even argue that regime change has already taken place in Iraq as a result of the intrusive inspections, because this is a change for this regime -- to have U.N. inspectors with totally free access to any site within the country. So, in that sense, regime change has already taken place. So, there are a lot of ways you can get there, and military action, it seems to me, is only one.
And [returning to the larger Bush strategy] will dominoes continue to fall if we go in and are successful with Iraq? Where might this strategy end up?
Do you think the general public understands the magnitude of what we are about? And if they don't, do they need to?
I don't think that the general public completely understands the magnitude of or the scope or the sweep of the Bush strategy. I don't think anybody understands what the costs of it may be because nobody can estimate what those are. But I think the general public does understand very powerfully that something enormously important happened on Sept. 11. And we have in no way gotten over that shock. The psychological effect of that, the sense that we cannot go on business as usual in the aftermath of an event like that, I think, is extraordinarily powerful with the American public.
And so it seems to me that that sentiment, together with a reasonably plausible explanation to the American public -- and with always the proviso if things don't go badly wrong -- yes, I think this can be explained and sold.
Does the country have to be behind it? Do they have to fully understand the breadth of the doctrine?
Well, the country has to be behind the doctrine if the doctrine is going to work because the administration will come up for reelection in a couple of years. So, yes, public support is very important. Does Joe Six-Pack have to understand every nuance of the Bush National Security Strategy? No, no way. There are different levels of understanding. There are different levels of explanation that would be necessary. That was true of containment; that's been true of strategies in democracies of other [countries]. ...
This grand doctrine, these new directions. What could go wrong?
Well, a lot can go wrong. ... We go into Baghdad and Baghdad turns out to be Vietnam, ... or it turns out to be something like what Afghanistan was for the Soviet Union when they went in. A lot can go wrong, because the fact is we are not prepared for a long sustained war in Iraq. There certainly is not the commitment with Congress and with the public for that kind of [war] either.
So if things go wrong in Baghdad, a lot can go wrong with the strategy. If there is another or even a succession of 9/11s, who can say what the effect of that would be on what we can do in the world, what we can do with respect to our own economy? The economy could tank as a result of another such attack. It came close to doing it in the wake of 9/11.
There are a lot of things that could go wrong. But, again, what else is new? There are always a lot of things that can go wrong with any strategy, with any initiative, any new situation like this. So you have to live with that uncertainty. That's part of the game.
Should that give pause to the administration?
The possibility that things can go wrong obviously should give pause to the administration. The administration should be thinking long and hard about all of the possible things that could go wrong and it should have some scenarios for the more obvious things that could go wrong. But it also needs to recognize that there will be some things that will go wrong that we're not anticipating. You can never anticipate everything. So there has to be a sense of flexibility, of resilience, of being prepared for the unexpected, of redundancy to some extent in your capabilities for just this reason.
To say that you should not go ahead with a grand scheme like this because something could go wrong is to say that you should never go ahead with anything because that's always true in life: Things can go wrong. But obviously you should have people thinking about this.
If we do go ahead into a war on Iraq and we don't get the U.N.'s support, where are we?
Well, I think if we go into the war in Iraq without the support of the U.N. and without the support of allies, it's going to be very tough. If, in fact, we go in and we are overwhelmingly cheered and we get the response that the administration is expecting, then support from allies and support from the U.N. will be forthcoming. ...
But if we go in and we meet resistance on the ground, and at the same time we have gone in without the support of U.N. and allies, I think that's a very bad situation indeed. And I think it counsels reason for patience and reasons for making the effort to try to sustain the support that, so far, the administration has been able to obtain.
In the writing up of the National Security Strategy issued Sept. 17, 2002, how much do you think the Bush administration focused on the long term -- not just Iraq, not just terrorism, but where we would be 10 years down the line.
There are two or three things to say about the question of long-term focus on the part of the administration. I think the starting point is the sense that many members of the administration had: that a great deficiency of the Clinton administration is that it did not really have a long-term strategy. So I think with some members of the Bush administration, it was the presumption from the beginning that they wanted to have a more long-term, more serious strategy.
My own conversations with a couple of people who were involved in drafting the National Security Strategy statement have suggested that, in fact, they started work on this before 9/11 and, in fact, had made the decision that they were not just going to do a routine National Security Strategy statement, the kind that is mandated [every two years] by the Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986. ... They were going to take it as a serious opportunity to really rethink the post-Cold War strategy for the first time.
But the effort was underway even before 9/11. The context was that there was a sense in this administration that we were overdue for long-term reconsideration of a planned strategy of our place in the world. And then 9/11 came along and surely pushed that process along much more dramatically and much more rapidly perhaps than it would otherwise have happened.
If 9/11 hadn't occurred, would the 2002 National Security Strategy have been rejected like the Wolfowitz strategy of 1992?
I do think there was the presumption within the administration that it was time to rethink the planned strategy, that the Clinton administration had missed an opportunity to do that. But who can say in the absence of 9/11 how far and how fast and how substantial that effort would have been?
How do you read Colin Powell's role in this whole strategy?
It seems to me that Colin Powell has emerged as a very influential architect of this strategy. [His role] in the last six to eight months has been quite considerable in all of this. Colin Powell may not have been the most enthusiastic advocate of the Iraq strategy to begin with. But, I think, he's been enormously influential in determining how the Iraqi strategy was going to be carried out. If you'll remember back in the summer of 2002, an administration spokesman right up to the vice president seemed to be saying that there was no need to consult Congress or the United Nations. That seemed to be the high point of unilateralism, or at least unilateral pronouncements within the administration.
Since that time, the administration has gone in a completely different direction toward the consultation with Congress, toward the consultation with the U.N., and toward a remarkably successful outcome in that consultation with the U.N. And it seems to me this has to be Powell's influence. I think he works very well, very quietly, very persistently, often behind the scenes. But he's got a lot of staying power, it seems to me. And, I think, that this has been demonstrated in the last six months for sure.
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Strong Smelling Foods Help Weight Loss
Want to Eat Less? Eat Aromatic Foods, Study Says
The more you eat, the more likely you are to gain weight. That means if there's a way to encourage eating less, it can help people drop pounds and prevent weight gain. Researchers at the Wageningen University and Research Centre in the Netherlands may have unlocked the secret. In a recent small 10-person study published in the journal Flavour, participants who ate foods with strong aromas took smaller bites. Smaller bites = eating less = weight loss.
The study involved serving participants a regular sized dessert portion of custard through a tube while strong vanilla custard smells were delivered directly into the backs of the participants' noses. The custard eaters controlled how much dessert came out of the tube with a button. Researchers weighed the custard cup after each "bite" and found that the strong, pleasant smell encouraged smaller bites. Why? The scientists believe the participants cut back on the amount of food they consumed so their taste buds wouldn't go into flavor overload.
This study only focused on the one, sweet-smelling scent of vanilla custard. But the findings suggest changing how foods smell could result in a five to 10 percent decrease in intake per bite, indicating that eating strong-smelling foods in general might be the answer to help people eat less. The researchers suggest that infusing foods with stronger smells could fool the body into believing you've eaten more than you actually have, which would help control portion sizes. This brings up an important question. I'm all for eating foods that are naturally aromatic to encourage eating less, but how would you feel about eating strong-smelling foods that scientists create specifically for weight loss?
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IFAS | Freedom Writer | April 1994 | tactics.html
Tactics of the Religious Right
Writing frequent, emotionally charged op-ed pieces and letters to the editor in local papers, with the result that a handful of people appear more significant than their numbers warrant.
Claiming that they represent most parents, when no sizable group, such as the PTO, has chosen them as representatives.
Criticizing educators, school committee members, and other citizens by name in the press or in flyers to intimidate them.
Misrepresenting what people say and then criticizing the misrepresentation, rather than the actual statement.
Taking curriculum material out of context and publicizing it as "frightening" or "shocking"; quoting background material for teachers in teaching guides and representing it as something given to students.
Hiding links to Religious Right organizations outside the local community such as Family First, the Pilgrim Family Institute, or others, and vehemently denying such links even when confronted with factual information which establishes them.
Labeling people who expose their affiliations as "McCarthyite" or "religious bigots."
Using statistics based on faulty research methodology to disprove what their opponents advocate and to prove what they advocate.
Alleging that school systems' plans for sex education were made behind parents' backs, even when many community people have been involved in the process for a long period of time.
Demanding documents from school systems, citing the Freedom of Information Act.
Threatening or initiating litigation or legal action against school committees, as a harassment tactic, using the Open Meeting Law, the Freedom of Information Act, the Hatch Act, or alleged liability for condom failure.
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Wednesday 4th Mar 2015
Radiance Views Weekly
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The World is Too Big, Emraan Hashmi!
Religious Discrimination
Emraan Hashmi is not the first actor to be denied house in a posh Pali Hill residential area of Mumbai on the ground that he is a Muslim. Sometimes back the duo of Shabana Azmi and Jawaid Akhtar faced the same situation. Director Mahesh Bhatt was appalled that this has happened in that part of the commercial capital of India – and that too in the 21st century – where likes of Sunil Dutt and Nargis had spent their lives and Dilip Kumar and Saira Bano are still living. These two incidents are enough to answer the question raised by many in India: Why Muslims love to live in ghettoes?
If this can happen in the localities of the educated and so-called tolerant upper class of the society the less said is better for those living elsewhere in the country. But is it not a myth that the educated upper and middle classes are above religious, caste and racial bias? In fact many of them are more prejudiced than the humble and illiterate workers residing in the interiors of India. Not to speak of religion, housing societies are divided on caste and other lines too. Even in the most developed country of the world, United States, which boasts of being the champion of liberalism, Whites and Blacks often prefer to live in separate housing colonies. In spite of the so-called broadmindedness Blacks are treated like pariahs. Often a White shifts from his house after a Black comes to live in the vicinity.
Such discrimination on the ground of religion, caste or colour is no doubt wrong and condemnable, yet one has to live with it in this divided world. But what is more intriguing is the response of Emraan Hashmi today and Shabana Azmi in the past. Why do they insist on living in that particular posh locality having exclusive upper class Hindu population? Is there not any small plot left anywhere else in the commercial capital of India for Emraan? What Emraan needs to understand is that he would hardly find any Dalit in such housing societies though they too are human beings as well as Hindus.
Why is it that Emraan Hashmi is raking up the issue when it comes to him? Men and women like him do not find any fault with the same Hindu-dominated society when it comes to making films or doing other works or even getting married. They go to town with their complaints when they face some unpleasant situation in the society. Why should an average citizens of the country feel bothered about this cosmetic problem of Emraan when they face such challenges almost daily? In Mumbai, and in many other cities of India, there are posh housing societies of Muslims or those having mixed population. If Emraan is not getting any house in Pali Hill he should simply move to these places rather than create a scene in the media.
Living for example in Millat Colony of Mumbai or Zakir Bagh in New Delhi does not amount to living in a ghetto nor will it reduce his stature. Why is it that the celebrities want to flee from reality and then try to make big news by their activities. Emraan or Shabana seem to be disturbed over the polarisation in the country as now their personal rather than community identity is being questioned. Not getting a flat, house or a plot of land in any particular area dominated by elite of the country is no big news when compared to continuous torture and harassment felt by common people – Muslims, Backwards, Dalits and other downtrodden sections of society.
Emraan needs to be reminded that today he, or Salman, Amir, Shahrukh etc, are at least using their Muslim names in the film world and nobody is objecting to it. In just post-independence India, that is, before this generation of actors and actresses were born, Yusuf Khan – to give just one example – had to change his name to Dilip Kumar to work in Bollywood. His personal commitment to his motherland and secularism is well-known. Notwithstanding the fact that he was born in Peshawar he opted to live in Mumbai after the partition of the sub-continent. In spite of this he was labelled a Pakistani and harassed by police and intelligence. He had to hid himself as he was haunted by them. Dilip Kumar then tried to personally meet the then Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru – and that too in a gathering. This happened in early 1960s at the peak of his career. However, even this effort of calling on Nehru did not yield any positive result.
Dilip Kumar was no spoilt brat like Sanjay Dutt. He was an established and respected film star and citizen. Yet Yusuf Bhai’s case was worse than that of Emraan. So instead of shedding tears over what is now considered a non-issue in our society he must take a home somewhere in Mumbai and spend his life peacefully. Or if he really wants to champion the cause of secularism and sound a bit idealist he must start a crusade for a larger cause of restoring the dignity of countless Indians of this largest, the most cosmopolitan city and economic capital of India.
Vol. XLVII No.19, 2009-08-09
From Egypt to Bangladesh
Vol. LI No.20, 2013-08-18
Political Implications of Ban on Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami
Vol. LI No.19, 2013-08-11
Egypt's Al-Sisi Dragged the Country into Civil War
Vol. LI No.18, 2013-08-04
The Scourge of Alcoholism and Drug Abuse
Vol. L No.43, 2013-01-20
Arab Spring: Promises and Challenges
Vol. L No.21, 2012-08-19
Just World Order
Vol. XLIX No.43, 2012-01-29
Let Us Refuse to Be Provoked
Vol. L No.27, 2012-09-30
The Islamists and Western Blinkers
Vol. L No.15, 2012-07-08
Death, Disappearance and Despair in India
Vol. L No.13, 2012-06-24
Focus Issue
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In a keynote speech delivered Monday at the Future of Music Summit, U.S. Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R, Va.), a member of the House Judiciary Committee and co-chair of the Congressional Internet Caucus, said Congress won't "wipe the slate clean" to address how digital culture has made it easier than ever to distribute, copy, share and reconfigure music, movies, books and other creative works.
Both he and Maria Pallante, the register of copyrights and director of the U.S. Copyright Office, emphasized that the government is not eager to prosecute consumers for infringing activity in the privacy of their homes unless it's particularly egregious. Instead, they focused on a balanced, steady approach to monitoring illegal file-sharing and cracking down on rogue Web sites, most with offshore locations, that profit from contraband digital files.
"We have to keep pace with technology" in federal law, Pallante said, while still providing "a legal base for ... (artists) to make a living."
Easier said than done, perhaps. The stance surely struck many at this progressive-minded conference of artists, tech heads and entrepreneurs as frustratingly slow-moving for a culture that is changing with lightning speed in the last decade -- with even greater changes to come. But it also was somewhat reassuring in that the government is taking an even-keeled approach to solving what is essentially a private-sector problem.
Pallante and Goodlatte were in basic agreement on going after citizens who are infringing on artists' rights by sharing copyrighted digital files. Neither indicated the government is contemplating a more active role in cracking down on infringing activity the way the governments of several countries, including France, have in recent years.
Instead, Pallante said Congress is doing "a phenomenal job" of trying to find a "sweet spot between a flourishing Internet and stopping activity" that hurts artists.
Goodlatte said blatant copyright offenders will be prosecuted, but also advocated an increasing emphasis on educating the public about the consequences of illegal fire-sharing and using technology to enhance the value of copyrighted works. His response resonated most forcefully with the audience when he put the onus on private business to "understand what the consumer is looking for and change their business model to adapt." While underlining the fundamental protections provided by the Constitution, he challenged businesses that depend on intellectual property for their solvency to create legal platforms that are every bit as convenient and top-quality as rogue sites to attract consumers.
If nothing else, Goodlatte sounded more enlightened than the Recording Industry Association of America did in the last decade, when it sued its customers by the thousands in an attempt to stamp out file-sharing.
In addition, Pallante offered a quick overview of recent copyright activity, and noted that:
* The next frontier on the legal front is to provide safeguards for copyrighted songs that are streamed (as opposed to downloaded), as streaming is rapidly usurping downloading as the future of recorded music.
* A law, implemented in the '70s and now coming to fruition, that allows artists to terminate their copyright agreements with major labels and other publishing companies after 35 years is an exciting development for artists. Though labels are grumbling about losing a revenue stream if artists pull back their catalogues, Pallante said the provision provides an opportunity for songwriters to "exploit their rights" in "so many new ways" that couldn't have been imagined three decades ago.
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Voting: A Privilege and a Duty, not a ‘Right’!
Please go out and do your duty
It recently was reported that a school district in Florida was busing its 18-year-old students to register to vote, and then to the polls for early voting. So you wonder: What has happened to our notion of voting as a privilege and a civic duty undertaken by free individuals in our constitutional republic?
Should ‘the state’, in the form of the public schools, be taking anyone through the process of registration and voting?
The answer is no. If you wish to vote, you should go to the proper office in your town and register. You only need to do it once and you get to participate in elections for your whole life.
It comes down to the fundamental issue: “What is voting?”
Is voting ‘a right’ as Democrats seem to want us to think in order to justify actions like that of the Florida school district?
No. Nowhere in the Constitution is voting called ‘a right’. Because it is not ‘a right’.
Our real ‘ rights’ are freedom of speech, worship, assembly, gun ownership and the rest. Once you have secured those rights, you are afforded the privilege and duty to vote in a free nation.
The Constitution only outlined ways in which voting should be conducted, and how the privilege of voting is not to be usurped. The Founders never mentioned voting in the original Bill of Rights (Amendments 1 through 10) while the 12th Amendment sets up a system of electoral voting; the 15th Amendment establishes non-discrimination based on race; the 19th establishes non-discrimination on the basis of sex (suffrage); the 24th abolished poll taxes; and the 26th lowered the voting age to 18.
But never is voting described as ‘a right’ anywhere in the Constitution.
After all, dictatorships often have ‘elections’ where people have the ‘right’ to participate, but no freedom. Millions in Iraq voted for Saddam Hussein in the election of October 15, 2002, that actually was reported by some Western media as approval of the dictator. He got 100% of the vote. But Iraqis’ ‘right’ to vote had nothing to do with authentic God-given rights under constitutional rule.
The Democrat party, which repeatedly, intentionally and wrongfully calls voting ‘a right’, has used that argument to advocate voter participations that are friendly to the Democrat party like the Florida school district action. Also Democrats have advocated laws allowing people to register to vote at the Department of Motor Vehicles when they get a driver’s license. Which would be fine if the same Democrat party wasn’t doing everything in its power to give illegal aliens the right to acquire an American driver’s license.
Voter fraud, anyone?
Democrats advocate same-day voter registration where you register and vote on the same day, offering no time for election officials to verify who you are or that you are eligible to vote. That system is ripe for fraud.
A liberal judge in Ohio even ruled recently that homeless people could list the park bench where they sleep all day as their “address”. Is this the kind of people we want deciding elections?
Practices like early voting have watered down the essence of voting, which is that voting is something that you do on a specific day in honor of our freedom. Of course with large voter turnout expected today, one single period of multi-day voting might be a good change to our current system. How about the first weekend, both Saturday and Sunday, in November? That way voting would be held on two days when most people would be free one or both, so that voting would not have to be squeezed in before or after work on the first Tuesday.
The Democrat party has been involved in voter fraud for the last century, primarily in American cities. It is a historical fact that John F. Kennedy in 1960 was elected president only after the Chicago mafia rigged voting for him in that city.
The loser Richard Nixon did not complain. He knew he had been robbed, but he also was a gentleman, and knew that he would run in the future. He was elected president in 1968 and re-elected in 1972. That was the conservative and patriotic side of Nixon deciding not to complain. He felt that it would harm the nation to make a big issue out of the fraud, particularly with all the hoopla about the young and charismatic new president Kennedy.
Now go to 2000. George Bush won Florida by a disputed 537 votes and thus won the presidential election fair and square. Yet unlike gracious Nixon, Gore and the Democrats screamed and hollered like angry children, and are still complaining about Florida 2000 even though there was no voter fraud whatsoever. The ballots were counted over and over and over. Even Bush-unfriendly entities like The New York Times went down and counted the votes. Bush still won.
Democrats are the ones who always complain loudest about some mythical Republican bogeyman stealing elections and suppressing voters. But everyone knows that the Democrats have rigged elections in the cities for more than a century with dead people voting, people voting more than once, people being paid to vote, fraudulent vote counts, stuffed ballot boxes etc.
Virtually none. Except when Democrats are involved.
That was the case in 2002 when Democrat US Senator Tim Johnson was first elected in South Dakota after fraud was detected on the heavily-Democrat Indian reservations in rural parts of the state. His opponent Republican John Thune, who lost by only 524 votes, did not complain, being a good conservative. Like Nixon, he said he’d run again and he did. He ran in 2004 and unseated Democrat Senate minority leader Tom Daschle in a great display of poetic justice.
In 2004, Democrat Christine Gregoire was elected governor of the state of Washington on the third vote count. Her opponent, Dino Rossi, who is running against Gregoire again this year, won the first vote count and then a recount, but lost on the second recount which included many suspicious ballots from the heavily Democrat districts of Seattle. It was the closest election ever in American history, with Gregoire winning by 129 votes out of 2.9 million cast. The state legislature declared her the winner.
Another election genuinely stolen.
Democrats have pushed for public campaign financing for decades. They instituted the check box on the federal tax form to donate to the public system. They have said that we need to get the money out of elections. They want every kind of election reform. Yet Barack Obama broke his pledge to public financing and took his whole campaign private, raising more than $600 million, even getting contributions from illegal foreign sources. Meanwhile John McCain played by the rules with $84 million in public funding.
Some say that if McCain loses that it this was poetic justice for McCain who fathered the restrictive McCain/Feingold campaign law which conservatives say has illegally restricted free speech.
Democrats love to charge voter fraud everywhere that they lose. But they pull back their forces when they win. In the 2006 mid-term elections, Democrats had an army of lawyers ready to challenge the vote in every state. For months, they built up to the election, saying that there was going to be Republican fraud everywhere and that they were ready to challenge it. Yet when they won, suddenly there was no fraud at all.
Even worldwide, leftists never lose graciously. In Mexico, in July 2006, the hard-left presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador lost the general election by .56 points. His party charged voter irregularities and his followers held demonstrations and blocked important streets and roads, and even surrounded private banks. Their presence was menacing for months. Obrador stirred the pot by saying that “big changes in Mexico have never been produced through conventional politics, but in the streets” obviously a call for potential violence. His followers declared him the “legitimate president of Mexico”. Their mass actions bordered on riots.
Typical socialists. They think they are entitled to power even when they lose.Same thing in Kenya, where Barack Obama’s own cousin, communist/Islamist Raila Odinga refused to accept his December 2007 electoral defeat by 230,000 votes. His followers rioted and killed thousands of people, targeting Christians. He eventually worked out a power-sharing deal with the government.
What else have Democrats done? They have claimed that our voting system is open to fraud through the old punch-card ballot system. So they insisted we needed electronic voting. To fix the situation, many counties spent millions on electronic voting. And then the same Democrats said that the electronic systems were open to fraud and computer hacking. So now voting machines are being replaced again.
Democrats are paranoid about every vote. Yet it is they themselves who are committing virtually all of the voter fraud.
This year the outlaw voter-registration group ACORN, which Obama has been tied to for more than 10 years, is being investigated in 13 states for hundreds of thousands of fraudulent registrations. This is a far-left Democrat activist group. Has there been any suggestion that Republicans are involved in voter registration fraud? Yes. One guy in one instance in California. So Democrats say “Look, both sides do it!” which is the moral equivalence argument that they always make, that a thousand Democrat crimes are equivalent to one Republican crime.
Watch for big Democrat fraud this year. It is the way in which Obama hopes to steal the election.
And when McCain wins, watch for the Mexican-style street protests.
Please visit my website at www.nikitas3.com for more.
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Bond Market Confusion
Global stock markets are soft across the board as we swing into the first trading day of February. At first glance, this appears to be responsive to the constant drumbeat of terrible economic news, as economies and trade shrink in unison.
The action in the bond markets appears to be somewhat healthier. For several weeks, the theme underneath the surface noise in corporate debt markets has been gradual stabilization. Things are far from normal, but they’re inching along in the right direction. Spreads between corporate debt and government debt have been compressing, and the tone shows that risk tolerance is making a comeback in some sectors.
Here, and in the slightly-improving tenor of the short-term capital markets, you can see the positive impact of the Treasury and the Fed’s heroic stabilization efforts, including the much-maligned TARP.
The government debt market is where the real action is. The yield curve has been neurotically steepening and flattening as participants weigh the broadly offsetting influences on prices for governments: the steadily worsening economic news tends to support prices, and the gargantuan amounts of new issuance push the other way.
I think the friction and noise being generated as markets absorb new supply is the surface phenomenon, and the continuing strong demand for risk-free debt is the deep structure.
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Valerie J. Knows Nothing About Economy
In a recent oration, V. Jarrett proposed that
“People Who Receive that Unemployment Check Go Out and Spend It and Help Stimulate the Economy”
This is a totally absurd thought. Take this to a logical example. If a 3rd party, say a government, extorts a dollar from me, since I am a worker who own my own business. Let’s say I make pizza, and sell it for a dollar.
So the government takes a dollar from me and gives it to someone who is not working because, well, they aren’t working.
OK, so now that person spends it at my pizza shop to by a large cheese pizza.
According to V. Jarrett, that is stimulating the economy.
According to my accountant, I just sold a large cheese pizza for zero dollars.
My profit, zero. Which means that I must now either raise the cost of my pizza and risk going out of business
I can just go out of business.
So now, instead of a pizza shop employing workers, accountants, energy suppliers, delivery trucks, and suppliers of raw materials,
I am on unemployment asking for that dollar to buy a pizza for a dollar.
And the people I employed and the suppliers all feel the pinch.
So to say that the theft of a dollar is stimulating is Ignorance in it’s most basic format.
Perhaps all government employees and elected officials should be compelled to read
‘Economics in One Lesson’. Originally written in the ’40s it is amazingly relevant today.
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Sacred Texts Bible Bible Commentary Index
Judges Index
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Judges Chapter 18
jdg 18:0
Some Danites, seeking an inheritance, send five men to search the land, who arrive at the house of Micah, Jdg 18:1, Jdg 18:2. They employ the Levite, who served to his house as priest, to ask counsel for them of God, Jdg 18:3-5. He inquires, and promises them success, Jdg 18:6. They depart, and go to Laish, and find the inhabitants secure, Jdg 18:7. They return to their brethren, and encourage them to attempt the conquest of the place, Jdg 18:8-10. They send six hundred men, who, coming to the place where Micah dwelt, enter the house, and carry off the priest and his consecrated things, Jdg 18:11-21. Micah and his friends pursue them; but, being threatened, are obliged to return, Jdg 18:22-26. The Danites come to Laish, and smite it, and build a city there, which they call Dan, Jdg 18:27-29. They make the Levite their priest, and set up the images at this new city, Jdg 18:30, Jdg 18:31.
Judges 18:1
jdg 18:1
There was no king in Israel - See Jdg 17:6 (note). The circumstances related here show that this must have happened about the time of the preceding transactions.
The tribe of the Danites - That is, a part of this tribe; some families of it.
All their inheritance - That is, they had not got an extent of country sufficient for them. Some families were still unprovided for, or had not sufficient territory; for we find from Jos 19:40, etc., that, although the tribe of Dan did receive their inheritance with the rest of the tribes of Israel, yet their coasts went out too little for them, and they went and fought against Leshem, (called here Laish), and took it, etc. This circumstance is marked here more particularly than in the book of Joshua. See on Jos 19:47 (note).
Judges 18:2
jdg 18:2
Five men - men of valor - The Hebrew word חיל chayil has been applied to personal prowess, to mental energy, and to earthly possessions. They sent those in whose courage, judgment, and prudence, they could safely confide.
Judges 18:3
jdg 18:3
They knew the voice of the young man - They knew, by his dialect or mode of pronunciation, that he was not an Ephraimite. We have already seen (Jdg 12:6 (note)) that the Ephraimites could not pronounce certain letters.
Judges 18:5
jdg 18:5
Ask counsel - of God - As the Danites use the word אלהים Elohim here for God, we are necessarily led to believe that they meant the true God; especially as the Levite answers, Jdg 18:6, Before the Lord (יהוה Yehovah) is your way. Though the former word may be sometimes applied to idols, whom their votaries clothed with the attributes of God; yet the latter is never applied but to the true God alone. As the Danites succeeded according to the oracle delivered by the Levite, it is a strong presumption that the worship established by Micah was not of an idolatrous kind. It is really begging the question to assert, as many commentators have done, that the answer was either a trick of the Levite, or suggested by the devil; and that the success of the Danites was merely accidental. This is taking the thing by the worst handle, to support an hypothesis, and to serve a system. See the end of the preceding chapter, Jdg 17:13 (note).
Judges 18:7
jdg 18:7
After the manner of the Zidonians - Probably the people of Laish or Leshem were originally a colony of the Sidonians, who, it appears, were an opulent people; and, being in possession of a strong city, lived in a state of security, not being afraid of their neighbors. In this the Leshemites imitated them, though the sequel proves they had not the same reason for their confidence.
They were far from the Zidonians - Being, as above supposed, a Sidonian colony, they might naturally expect help from their countrymen; but, as they dwelt a considerable distance from Sidon, the Danites saw that they could strike the blow before the news of invasion could reach Sidon; and, consequently, before the people of Laish could receive any succours from that city.
And had no business with any man - In the most correct copies of the Septuagint, this clause is thus translated: Και λογος ουκ ην αυτοις μετα Συριας; and they had no transactions with Syria. Now it is most evident that, instead of אדם adam, Man, they read ארם aram, Syria; words which are so nearly similar that the difference which exists is only between the ר resh and ד daleth, and this, both in MSS. and printed books, is often indiscernible. This reading is found in the Codex Alexandrinus, in the Complutensian Polyglot, in the Spanish Polyglot, and in the edition of the Septuagint published by Aldus. It may be proper to observe, that Laish was on the frontiers of Syria; but as they had no intercourse with the Syrians, from whom they might have received the promptest assistance, this was an additional reason why the Danites might expect success.
Judges 18:9
jdg 18:9
Arise, etc. - This is a very plain and nervous address; full of good sense, and well adapted to the purpose. It seems to have produced an instantaneous effect.
Judges 18:11
jdg 18:11
Six hundred men - These were not the whole, for we find they had children, etc., Jdg 18:21; but these appear to have been six hundred armed men.
Judges 18:12
jdg 18:12
Mahaneh-dan - "The camp of Dan;" so called from the circumstance of this armament encamping there. See Jdg 13:25 (note), which affords some proof that this transaction was previous to the days of Samson.
Judges 18:14
jdg 18:14
Consider what ye have to do - They probably had formed the design to carry off the priest and his sacred utensils.
Judges 18:18
jdg 18:18
These went unto Micah's house - The five men went in, while the six hundred armed men stood at the gate.
Judges 18:19
jdg 18:19
Lay thine hand upon thy mouth - This was the token of silence. The god of silence, Harpocrates, is represented on ancient statues with his finger pressed on his lips.
Judges 18:20
jdg 18:20
Went to the midst of the people - He was glad to be employed by the Danites; and went into the crowd, that he might not be discovered by Micah or his family.
Judges 18:21
jdg 18:21
The little ones and the cattle, etc. - These men were so confident of success that they removed their whole families, household goods, cattle, and all.
And the carriage - כבודה kebudah, their substance, precious things, or valuables; omne quod erat pretiosum, Vulgate: or rather the luggage or baggage; what Caesar calls in his commentaries impedimenta; and what the Septuagint here translate βαρος, weight or baggage. We are not to suppose that any wheel carriage is meant.
Judges 18:24
jdg 18:24
Ye have taken away my gods - As Micah was a worshipper of the true God, as we have seen, he cannot mean any kind of idols by the word אלהי elohai here used. He undoubtedly means those representations of Divine things, and symbols of the Divine presence such as the teraphim, ephod, etc.; for they are all evidently included under the word elohai, which we translate my gods.
Judges 18:25
jdg 18:25
And thou lose thy life - This was argumentum ad hominem; he must put up with the loss of his substance, or else lose his life! It was the mere language of a modern highwayman: Your life or your money.
Judges 18:27
jdg 18:27
Unto a people - at quiet and secure - They found the report given by the spies to be correct. The people were apprehensive of no danger, and were unprepared for resistance; hence they were all put to the sword, and their city burnt up.
Judges 18:28
jdg 18:28
There was no deliverer - They had no succor, because the Sidonians, from whom they might have expected it, were at too great a distance.
Judges 18:29
jdg 18:29
Called the name of the city Dan - This city was afterwards very remarkable as one of the extremities of the promised land. The extent of the Jewish territories was generally expressed by the phrase, From Dan to Beer-Sheba; that is, From the most northern to the southern extremity.
Judges 18:30
jdg 18:30
The children of Dan set up the graven image - They erected a chapel, or temple, among themselves, as Micah had done before; having the same implements and the same priest.
And Jonathan the son of Gershom - Either this was the name of the young Levite; or they had turned him off, and got this Jonathan in his place.
The son Manasseh - Who this Manasseh was, none can tell; nor does the reading appear to be genuine. He could not be Manasseh the son of Joseph, for he had no son called Gershom nor could it be Manasseh king of Israel, for he lived eight hundred years afterwards. Instead of מנשה Manasseh, the word should be read משה Mosheh, Moses, as it is found in some MSS., in the Vulgate, and in the concessions of the most intelligent Jews. The Jews, as R. D. Kimchi acknowledges, have suspended the letter: נ nun, over the word משה, thus,
which, by the addition of the points, they have changed into Manasseh, because they think it would be a great reproach to their legislator to have had a grandson who was an idolater. That Gershom the son of Moses is here intended, is very probable. See the arguments urged by Dr. Kennicott, Dissertation I., p. 55, etc.; and see the Var. Lect. of De Rossi on this place.
Until the day of the captivity of the land - Calmet observes, "The posterity of this Jonathan executed the office of priest in the city of Dan, all the time that the idol of Micah (the teraphim, ephod, etc). was there. But this was only while the house of the Lord was at Shiloh; and, consequently, the sons of Jonathan were priests at Dan only till the time in which the ark was taken by the Philistines, which was the last year of Eli, the high priest; for after that the ark no more returned to Shiloh." This is evident; and on this very ground Houbigant contends that, instead of הארץ haarets, the Land, we should read הארן haaron, the Ark; for nothing is easier than the ו vau and final nun to be mistaken for the ץ final tsade, which is the only difference between the captivity of the Land and the captivity of the Ark. And this conjecture is the more likely, because the next verse tells us that Micah's graven image, etc., continued at Dan all the time that the house of God was at Shiloh; which was, till the ark was taken by the Philistines. Those who wish to see more on this subject may consult Calmet, and the writers in Pool's Synopsis. This chapter is an important supplement to the conclusion of the 19th chapter of Joshua, on which it casts considerable light.
The Danites were properly the first dissenters from the public established worship of the Jews; but they seem to have departed as little as possible from the Jewish forms, their worship being conducted in the same way, but not in the same place. Surely it was better to have had this, allowing it to be unconstitutional worship, than to have been wholly destitute of the ordinances of God. I think we have not sufficient ground from the text to call these persons idolaters; I believe they worshipped the true God according to their light and circumstances, from a conviction that they could not prosper without his approbation, and that they could not expect that approbation if they did not offer to him a religious worship. They endeavored to please him, though the means they adopted were not the most proper.
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AGAIN and again had the Lord of Pengerswick reversed the spells of the Witch of Fraddam, who was reported to be the most powerful weird woman in the west country. She bad been thwarted so many times by this "white witch," that she resolved to destroy him by some magic more potent than anything yet heard of. It is said that she betook herself to Kynance Cove, and that there she raised the devil by her incantations, and that she pledged her soul to him in return for the aid he promised. The enchanter's famous mare was to be seduced to drink from a tub of poisoned water placed by the road-side, the effect of which was to render her in the highest degree restive, and cause her to fling her rider. The wounded Lord of Pengerswick was, in his agony, to be drenched by the old witch, with some hell-broth, brewed in the blackest night, under the most evil aspects of the stars; by this he would be in her power for ever, and she might torment him as she pleased. The devil felt certain of securing the soul of the witch of Fraddam, but he was less certain of securing that of the enchanter. They say, indeed, that the sorcery which Pengerswick learned in the East was so potent, that the devil feared him. However, as the proverb is, he held with the hounds and ran with the hare. The witch collected with the utmost care all the deadly things she could obtain, with which to brew her famous drink. In the darkest night, in the midst of the wildest storms, amidst the flashings of lightnings and the bellowings of the thunder, the witch was seen riding on her black ram-cat over the moors and mountains in search of her poisons. At
length all was complete--the horse-drink was boiled, the hell-broth was brewed. It was in March, about the time of the equinox; the night was dark, and the King of Storms was abroad. The witch planted her tub of drink in a dark lane, through which she knew the Lord of Pengerswick must pass, and near to it she sat, croning over her crock of broth. The witch-woman had not long to wait; amidst the hurrying winds was heard the heavy tramp of the enchanter's mare, and soon she perceived the outline of man and horse defined sharply against the line of lurid light which stretched along the western horizon. On they came; the witch was scarcely able to contain herself--her joy and her fears, struggling one with the other, almost overpowered her. On came the horse and her rider they neared the tub of drink; the mare snorted loudly, and her eyes flashed fire as she looked at the black tub by the road-side. Pengerswick bent him over the horse's neck and whispered into her ear; she turns round, and flinging out her heels, with one kick she scattered all to the wild winds. The tub flew before the blow; it rushed against the crock, which it overturned, and striking against the legs of the old Witch of Fraddam, she fell along with the tub, which assumed the shape of a coffin. Her terror was extreme she who thought to have unhorsed the conjurer, found herself in a carriage for which she did not bargain. The enchanter raised his voice and gave utterance to some wild words in an unknown tongue, at which even his terrible mare trembled. A whirlwind arose, and the devil was in the midst of it. He took the coffin in which lay the terrified witch high into the air, and the crock followed them. The derisive laughter of Pengerswick, and the savage neighing of the horse, were heard above the roar of the winds. At length, with a satisfied tone, he exclaimed, "She is settled till the day of doom," gave the mare the spurs, and rode rapidly home.
The Witch of Fraddâm still floats up and down, over the seas, around the coast, in her coffin, followed by the crock, which seems like a punt in attendance on a jolly-boat. She still works mischief, stirring up the sea with her ladle and broom till the waves swell into mountains, which heave off from their 'crests so much mist and fciam, that these wild wanderers of the winds can scarcely be seen through the mist. Woe to the mariner who sees the witch !
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When smartphones became the standard and feature phones slowly faded into the background, early adopters were eager to experiment with the new technology advanced capabilities. Back then, Wi-Fi and 3G Internet connectivity were all the rage. Today, 4G coverage takes the spotlight. The fourth generation of mobile technology and data networks allows for significantly faster download speeds, better streaming video, faster website loading times, better reception, and ultimately, a better user experience. Although most consumers would opt for 4G coverage if their budget permitted, many don't fully understand what comes with such service. But those who do understand appreciate the service for its superiority and reliability. The overall quality of 4G coverage depends on multiple factors, such as the smartphone, carrier and location.
How fast is 4G?
Cell phone carriers have quickly rolled out 4G technology throughout the country for the last couple of years. The leader today is 4G LTE, or Long Term Evolution, which will likely become the first worldwide standard for mobile phone connections. This technology is designed to support download speeds of up to 100Mbps and upload speeds of up to 50Mbps. In reality, users can experience varying speeds depending on the aforementioned factors. In general, most users can expect speeds of 5Mbps to 12Mbps. Cities with large populations often have better coverage, with speeds of around 20Mbps.
Where to get 4G?
Most major cell phone carriers offer 4G coverage with the latest smartphone models. Older smartphones and feature phones may not be 4G compatible. Carriers like T-Mobile, Verizon, AT&T and Sprint are all committed to expanding 4G coverage and making it as widely available as 3G, but it could take up to three years to get to that point. For now, users can compare the 4G coverage in various cities using guides like CNET's 4G coverage comparison chart. Each individual carrier also provides coverage details on their websites.
Is it worth it to upgrade to 4G?
If you could choose between rags and riches, you'd probably go with riches, whether you're in need or not. The same could be said of 4G coverage. If you own a newer smartphone model, there's no reason why you should be held back with 3G—or worse, Wi-Fi only. All 4G devices can also use 3G because they fall back on 3G networks when 4G service is not available in that area. And 4G plans are no more expensive than 3G plans. In fact, there are many 4G compatible phones available for very affordable prices. Some carriers also offer unlimited 4G data plans. With a purchase of a two-year contract, you could score some great bargains including free accessories and rebate specials. | <urn:uuid:b4170315-4a7d-4eab-a361-07bceee68672> | 2 | 1.921875 | 0.053383 | en | 0.96323 | http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Why-Smartphone-Users-Prefer-4G-Coverage-4124506.php |
"Without the assistance of the banks in processing and sending electronic funds, these lenders simply couldn't operate," said Josh Zinner of the Neighborhood Economic Development Advocacy Project, which works with community groups in New York.
The banking industry says it is simply serving customers who have authorized the lenders to withdraw money from their accounts. "The industry is not in a position to monitor customer accounts to see where their payments are going," said Virginia O'Neill, senior counsel with the American Bankers Association.
Some state and federal authorities say the banks' role in enabling the lenders has frustrated government efforts to shield people from predatory loans.
Lawmakers, led by Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., introduced a bill in July aimed at reining in the lenders, in part, by forcing them to abide by the laws of the state where the borrower lives rather than where the lender is located. The legislation would also allow borrowers to cancel automatic withdrawals more easily.
A spokeswoman for Bank of America said the bank always honored requests to stop automatic withdrawals. Wells Fargo declined to comment. Kristin Lemkau, a spokeswoman for Chase, said: "We are working with the customers to resolve these cases." Online lenders say they work to abide by state laws. | <urn:uuid:30149ae0-3ada-4b56-aec3-6973ec890647> | 2 | 1.773438 | 0.020679 | en | 0.963514 | http://www.sfgate.com/nation/article/Banks-roles-in-online-loans-examined-4303530.php |
Halloween Candy That's Double the Trouble
I adore Halloween, but for a lot of my clients it can be a nutritional minefield. Even when you're an expert, it's easy to get tricked by your treats. Each of these Halloween goodies is similar in nature, but one is twice as scary, packing two times the calories, fat, sugar, or sodium than the other. Can you guess which? Scroll down for correct answers:
1. Which contains more than twice the calories as the other?
One fun-size packet M & M's Peanut Candies
Five individually wrapped Reese's Miniature Peanut Butter Cups
2. Which packs nearly twice the sugar as the other?
52 pieces of candy corn
Five rolls of Smarties
3. Which provides over twice as much fat as the other?
A half-cup of pumpkin ice cream
One slice of pumpkin pie (1/8 of a 9" pie)
4. Which packs more than twice the sodium as the other?
Two Halloween-sized Milky Ways
Two Halloween-sized Pay Days
1. Twice the calories: The mini-peanut butter cups at 220 vs. the M&Ms at 90. Both the peanut butter cups and M&Ms are made with peanuts, but pureed peanuts are a more concentrated source of calories.
2. Twice the sugar: The candy corn. Both choices are mostly sugar, but the candy corn packs 56 grams (vs. 30), the equivalent of 14 teaspoons of the white stuff. The American Heart Association recently recommended a daily cap of no more than 6 level teaspoons for women and 9 teaspoons for men.
3. Twice the fat: The pie at about 9 grams vs. the ice cream at 4 grams of fat. A lot of the fat is hidden in the crust though, which is typically trans-fat (aka partially hydrogenated), the worst kind for your waistline because it's tied to excess belly fat. Leave the crust behind and you'll slash the fat grams in half and save about 100 calories.
4. Twice the sodium: The Pay Days at 140 milligrams vs. the Milky Ways at 55 milligrams. Sodium isn't just a problem for blood pressure. There is some animal research to show that a high-sodium diet may affect the activity of fat cells, making them larger. And water is attracted to salt like a magnet, which means it can cause bloating, water retention and puffiness.
I'm certainly not recommending any of these as healthy, but did some of the answers surprise you? Do you tend to fall into unhealthy hidden Halloween traps? Please share your thought here or tweet them to @cynthiasass and @Shape_Magazine!
Halloween Candy That's Double the Trouble-2
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One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Table of Contents
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich Power Quotes
How we cite our quotes: Citations follow this format: (Paragraph). We used H.T. Willetts's translation.
Quote #1
But at that very moment the hand of authority whipped his jerkin and his blanket away. [...] Down below, with his head on the level of the upper bunk, stood the gaunt Tartar. (25)
It's interesting that the "hand of authority" is depicted as almost God-like here; it's not an actual person yanking Shukhov's blanket away, but some sort of omnipotent, or all-powerful and all-knowing, force. Or a mad parent. Either way.
Quote #2
Every portion was underweight - the only question was by how much. Twice a day you looked at it and tried to set your mind at rest. Maybe they haven't robbed me blind this time? (132)
Injustice is a constant theme throughout this text and the zeks have to confront, and largely let slide, various injustices throughout the day. There's no way to directly fight injustice in the camp, as we see with poor Buynovsky, who gets tossed in the hole after protesting his unfair treatment.
Quote #3
"Maybe it was in their day!" the captain snapped back. "Since then it's been decreed that the sun is highest at one o'clock."
"Who decreed that?"
"The Soviet government."
The captain took off with the handbarrow, but Shukhov wasn't going to argue anyway. As if the sun would obey their decrees! (363-6)
We don't get many direct mentions of the Soviet government in the book, but it's definitely the unspoken, and harsh, force behind the entire camp system. It is interesting that the Soviet government is invoked, or brought up, directly in relation to an illogical decree. Like the camps, the entire government itself passed a lot of irrational "decrees."
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Source: http://www.sing365.com
Planted Somewhere Hidden
------Dream On, Dreamer
Another day passed by
What made it different to all the others?
Yesterday's light was just as bright as the night.
Swallow all the things that cause your world to fall apart.
(Staring at the sky with no direction on your mind.)
With closed eyes we see how everything is dying inside.
(When you would be there then no one would stay aimless.)
Falling from a sky where only darkest clouds survive.
(We were once tall men and now we shiver at the sight of such stature)
When our heroes die away and our dreams begin to fade away.
Where are we meant to be? Nowhere but here.
This is the voice that you seem to hear when your mind is getting weaker.
All you can see is the breath of the night
Its time to capture the light.
Welcome to a world that's not even worth dying for
In a world where a king no longer needs a queen anymore.
Don't pretend you don't listen me.
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Subsets and Splits