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(Rana catesbeiana)
The largest frog species in the United States, the Bullfrog can reach lengths in excess of 20 cm, however, winter limits the size of specimens found in Minnesota. Often seen at the edges of Lake Sagatagan, this frog has green, rough skin sometimes covered in a brown web pattern on the back and sides. Bullfrog tadpoles can be seen swimming around shallow and weedy areas of the lakes year round. Males are easily distinguished by their oversized eardrum, while females’ eardrums are roughly the same size as their eyes.
The call of the Bullfrog is a loud and deep moan, usually repeated three or more times, sometimes ending with a spit-like “phoot” at the end, which is the male’s territorial call. When calling, the males' inflated vocal sacs can bee seen. As impressive as the loud, baritone breeding call is, both male and female bullfrogs give a high-pitched squeak while jumping into the water when frightened.
The natural range of bullfrogs extends up to the southeast corner of Minnesota, but they are now found in Stearns County due to introduction by humans. In many areas, presence outside of their native range has been disasterous to local aquatic diversity. Release of captive Bullfrogs in this area is strongly discouraged.
Back to Reptiles and Amphibians | <urn:uuid:f1a6f55a-fe9f-46e5-b7ba-cbd1ccc5b4b6> | 3 | 3.390625 | 0.023662 | en | 0.918246 | http://www.csbsju.edu/outdooru/abbeyarboretum/plantsandwildlife/reptilesandamphibians/bullfrog |
Uruguay Votes On Rights Abuses. But behind the amnesty referendum, threats of another showdown with the military
`VOTE green,'' urges one campaign, promising reconciliation. ``Vote orange,'' exhorts the other, hinting at the prospect of a military coup should the ``greens'' win. Pitted against each other in one of the hardest fought battles in Uruguay's democratic history are a citizens' group - demanding that military officers accused of human-rights abuses stand trial - and the government, defending an amnesty arrangement it made with the Army two years ago.
In a plebiscite on Sunday, citizens in favor of overturning the December 1986 amnesty law will drop a green ballot in the box. Those supporting the government's position will choose an orange slip. The latest independent polls suggest that the plebiscite could be close, but that the ``oranges'' will win.
``That should put a full stop to all discussion'' about trying Army officers on charges of torture and murder, says Vice-President Enrique Tarrigo. ``If anyone goes on talking about this issue after the vote, they will be totally isolated from society.''
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Should the ``green'' vote win, Mr. Tarrigo warns, ``we will have a situation of great uncertainty.'' recalling that ``when the [amnesty] law was passed in December 1986, the country was going through moments of particular tension.''
That tension arose as the deadline approached for the appearance of military witnesses at the first trial of an Army officer for human rights abuses.
(During the period of military rule between 1973 and 1985, nearly 50,000 people - in a nation of under 3 million - are said to have passed through jail, according to the human rights group Amnesty International. The Army's rights record is one of the grimmest in Latin America.)
Army chief Gen. Hugo Medina had bluntly ordered officers not to appear in court. Rather than risk confrontation, President Julio Mar'ia Sanguinetti backed down, and congress passed a law that effectively amnestied the armed forces.
``Why should people who were prepared to disobey [the courts] in December 1986 be ready to obey them now?'' wonders Tarrigo.
``Because the government would have another sort of strength after a categorical popular vote such as the plebiscite,'' answers Matilde Rodriguez, who led the campaign to hold the referendum.
``Victory for the `green' vote is not going to generate institutional risks that could destabilize the democratic system,'' argues Mrs. Rodriguez, whose own politician husband was kidnapped and murdered in 1976.
Rodriguez's campaign, backed by a range of left-wing parties, and the Communist Party's impressive agitprop machine, has been upbeat, full of smiling suns promising a happy future ``with everyone equal under the law.''
The government has chosen a more sober approach, showing clips of the Pope with President Sanguinetti on visits to Uruguay and of European leaders praising Sanguinetti's stewardship of the transition to democracy.
The military, meanwhile, has kept its own counsel, but its opinions are not hard to guess. A recent issue of the magazine ``Soldier,'' widely read among the officer corps, argues that ``those who want to attack or put on trial members of the armed forces are doing nothing less than attacking and putting on trial the whole institution of the military.''
This was seen as a veiled threat that if the trials do restart, officers will again close ranks on the grounds that the Army itself is under fire.
Should a majority of Uruguayans decide it is not worth running the risk of such a showdown, they will vote to maintain the amnesty. Should their anger at the military run strongly enough, however, they might well decide that justice must be done. And that would present Sanguinetti with an awkward last few months in office.
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Hunting bill splits West over value of a longtime rite
Currently before Congress, measure angers newcomers. Yet hunters, feeling besieged, see it as an important move.
For Tim Shinabarger, the autumn hunt is about more than meat for the dinner table. As the aspens glow, Mr. Shinabarger sees the big-game season as a necessary part of being a Westerner.
To this sportsman who makes a living as a wildlife artist, it's about gathering fresh material for paintings and bronze sculptures, stalking trophy animals for the den wall, and most important, communing with friends and family in the outdoors.
"I can't imagine not hunting," Shinabarger says. "It's like breathing."
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Hunting may indeed be part of Shinabarger's heritage, but across the West and other corners of wild America, an increasing number of people would rather keep hunters from tromping through the public's forests.
Here, a cultural chasm is widening between residents who grew up hunting on public lands, and urbanite newcomers who fear guns and learned more about nature from PBS, not pup tents. Into this environment comes the Hunting Heritage Protection Act, a bill currently before Congress intended to ensure that hunting has a permanent and prominent place in the future of federal lands.
Originally drafted as a largely symbolic measure to enshrine America's hunting history, the bill has become a Waterloo of sorts in the West, where the vast majority of federal lands lie. At issue are clashing views of where the region is headed - and the value of a centuries-old tradition.
"We all know full well that these traditional uses are coming under continuing, unrelenting assault," says Bill Horn, a pro-hunting lobbyist and a former assistant US Interior Secretary under George Bush. "We want to make the other side have to come and take it away from us."
The push for legislation is, in part, a response to gains that animal-rights activists have made in seeking the prohibition of sport hunts. During the past few years, numerous ballot measures have passed, ending activities such as mountain-lion hunting in California, black-bear hunting in New Jersey, and trapping in Colorado.
The heritage hunting act mandates that the total amount of federal land open to hunting in the US stay constant. In other words, if land managers close one area to hunting, they must open new areas of the same size to hunting somewhere else.
So far, mainstream environmental organizations - whose members include hunters and nonhunters - have been careful not to criticize. Yet other organizations have not been bashful in their condemnation. In fact, the Fund for Animals would like to see all hunting ended, says member Andrea Lococo.
Outside her home in rural Bondurant, Wyo., Ms. Lacoco can hear rifle fire around her in all directions as hunters search for elk, deer, and bighorn sheep.
"There are areas where people won't go into, even with blaze orange clothing on their backs, because they are afraid of getting shot," she says. "Not only are you dealing with resident hunters, but Wyoming attracts a lot of out-of-state hunters who are not familiar with public-lands boundaries or where hiking trails are located."
Hunting, after all, is a pillar of local economies in the autumn, providing a steady cash flow of millions of dollars to guides, stores, restaurants, and motels.
In 1996 (the most recent statistics):
* 11.3 million people hunted big game ranging from deer to moose.
* 6.9 million hunted small game such as rabbits and squirrels.
* 3.1 million hunted migratory birds such as doves and waterfowl.
* Of 14 million total hunters, the average individual spent 18 days hunting each year and an annual average of $1,475.
In states ranging from New Mexico to Pennsylvania, the opening of hunting has, in recent years, even been considered an official holiday for school kids to go hunting with their parents.
When Shinabarger was a teenager, his father would write the school a note, informing the principal that his son would miss a week's worth of classes.
"He figured I learned as much in the wilderness as I would in class," Shinabarger says. "It taught me discipline to get my schoolwork done before we left.... It gave me self-confidence being in the mountains. And, best of all, it gave me time to be with my dad."
Despite the nostalgia, hunting is increasingly on the defensive. When Lacoco opened the Fund's Rocky Mountain office a few years ago, she was met with hostility. Now, slowly, she says, "attitudes are definitely changing."
Terry Grosz sees the change, as well. The former game warden remembers being verbally attacked when he went into a restaurant wearing camouflage.
"I had been out in the field trying to bust wildlife poachers, but that day the owner of the restaurant took me for a hunter and let me have it," Mr. Grosz says.
Together with longtime ranchers, newcomers are now closing off vast swaths of private land that used to be open for hunting. As more hunters funnel into public lands as an alternative, they are encountering higher concentrations of hunters and antagonism from nonhunters.
Many are finding neither the solace nor the experience they once knew, so they are giving up, Grosz says. "I predict that within 20 to 25 years, hunting will no longer exist in many areas."
(c) Copyright 2000. The Christian Science Publishing Society
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Indonesia uses military solution to stop separatists
The Army kills Aceh rebel leader this week, the second rebel chief killed in two months
The recent deaths of two independence leaders, plus increasing harassment against activists and civil leaders, suggest that the Indonesian government is using the US-led counterterrorism campaign to justify its ongoing efforts to stamp out separatists.
In Aceh, Abdullah Syafii, commander of the Free Aceh Movement (GAM), died Tuesday in a gun battle with Indonesian troops, who tracked him down at his jungle camp. Analysts say the killing is a serious blow to GAM, which has been fighting for 25 years to win independence.
The latest military push comes as US and other foreign governments are leaning on Indonesia to find militants accused of plotting with terror groups linked to Al Qaeda.
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Despite a string of recent arrests in Singapore and Malaysia that point to the involvement of radical groups in Indonesia, the government has tended to tread softly for fear of provoking its majority Muslim population.
"From a military point of view, [Syafii's death] is a significant success," says Saad, who now heads a human rights foundation. "But will it contribute to a permanent solution to the problems of Aceh? I don't think so."
Analysts say the military has sought to paint Aceh, which has a conservative Muslim tradition and whose rebels are often portrayed as militant Islamists, as an antiterror crusade.
"It's in Indonesia's interests to say that any Muslim militants are essentially the same as Al Qaeda," says Harold Crouch, local director of the International Crisis Group, a think tank.
In West Papua, police are investigating the November abduction and murder of Theys Eluay, a pro-independence politician. The local police chief says that rogue troops may have been involved in the abduction, which occurred on a road dotted with military checkpoints. The government is assembling an independent inquiry team.
Activists claim Eluay was murdered by special-forces soldiers known as Kopassus which, under ex-President Suharto, were accused of operating death squads in trouble spots in Indonesia.
Although Syafii and his fighters lived by the sword, the clamp-down on separatists hasn't only been in the theater of war. Police have used antisubversion laws to jail activists who advocate independence for Aceh, and are currently pursuing a similar case against three members of an Irian Jaya group that was originally sponsored by ex-President Abdurrahman Wahid.
The Indonesian Army has increased troop numbers in Aceh over the past year and wants to install a special military command in the province, a move opposed by human rights activists.
"The space for human rights and democracy is getting narrower in Indonesia," says Hasballah Saad, an Achenese who served as minister of human rights under former President Wahid. Since President Megawati replaced Mr. Wahid in July, she has stepped up the rhetoric against separatists, telling troops to worry less about human rights abuses and get the job done.
Aceh and West Papua have benefited from new autonomy laws promising a greater share of revenues. Aceh's independence calls largely stem from human rights abuses by the military, and resentment over the sliver of its wealth that Jakarta gave it after exploiting its natural resources.
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| <urn:uuid:37a3e394-b589-4e22-bd8e-4f5507115619> | 2 | 1.609375 | 0.026797 | en | 0.965509 | http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0125/p08s01-woap.html |
No Sanctuary
Long delays in processing asylum claims leave Guatemalans in a bind
When he was 16, Cesar Ramirez was eating in a café in rural Guatemala when guerrillas threw a hand grenade into the restaurant in an attempt to kill the town's mayor. Ramirez recalls running from the explosion, bleeding from shrapnel wounds to his legs, hip and arm. Two people inside the café were killed.
The year was 1982, and the Central American country was in the throes of civil war. The sitting president was a general who'd taken power in a coup and was later accused of committing genocide against thousands of Mayan peasants.
Ramirez and his mother left their home in the capital to seek sanctuary in Texas, where one of his brothers already lived.
Attorney Angel Cruz represents Cesar Ramirez, who fled war-torn Guatemala at 16. At 40, he could be forced to return.
Brian Harkin
Now, after almost 25 years in the United States, the 40-year-old Spanish-language DJ who has spent more than 10 years in Dallas is likely to be ordered deported. Immigration officials in January recommended his asylum claim be denied, and he'll soon go before an immigration judge. The U.S. government has recently rejected thousands of Guatemalan asylum claims that had been pending for years, saying that since the country's civil war ended a decade ago, fears of persecution are no longer justified.
But civil rights groups, arguing that applicants aren't to blame for long paperwork processing delays, are challenging the orders.
"There are families who are losing their homes, losing their jobs—it's a terrible drama," says Byron Vasquez, director of the Los Angeles-based advocacy group Casa de la Cultura de Guatemala, which is preparing a class-action lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security demanding legal residency for Guatemalans who applied for asylum between 1990 and 1998. The organization has also filed a lawsuit in the Inter-American Human Rights Court against the Guatemalan government, charging that it should have engaged in talks with the United States to settle the refugees.
"The U.S. and Guatemala should have thought about what they were going to do with these refugees," Vasquez says. "All those who went to Canada and Mexico are citizens by now. The U.S. hasn't helped them, and the U.S. was the one backing the war." He's referring to the American support of successive military regimes responsible for kidnappings, torture and civilian massacres, involvement for which President Bill Clinton apologized.
Around 1 million people fled Guatemala's 36-year civil war, which pitted leftist guerrillas against government forces and ended in 1996. Advocacy groups estimate there are some 200,000 Guatemalans with pending asylum claims nationwide, though the number is hard to verify because the government didn't begin keeping records on them until 1995. This year 848 have been denied asylum or referred to an immigration judge, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, and 3,495 last year, up from 1,785 in 2005. Since special laws passed in the '90s made it easier for Guatemalans to get residency if they arrived before 1990, most of the people sent back had arrived after that date.
Ramirez arrived well before the cut-off for those special programs, but he and his lawyer, Angel Cruz, say he was rejected because in 1988, after overstaying his temporary visa, he was ordered deported and didn't leave. He says he first applied for asylum in the early '90s but didn't get an immigration hearing until recently. He missed the first hearing—he says he didn't receive the mailed notice for it—and finally made his case to local immigration officials in January. In a letter dated January 22, Asylum Office Director Marie Hummert explained the recommendation that his application be denied.
"An asylum-seeker must show actual past persecution or a well-founded fear of future persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion," the letter read. "The events you described do not constitute past persecution...The attack was directed at the mayor and you appear to have just been in the wrong place at the wrong time."
Ramirez is a DJ for Radio Jubileo, a Christian radio program in Spanish, as well as a former reporter for Univision. He's worked in radio since he was a teenager and testified that he'd received threatening phone calls while working as a journalist in Guatemala City (his older brother was a broadcaster and found him a radio job despite his youth). But the government letter said those threats "lacked detail and a motive."
Ramirez says he's afraid to return to Guatemala, especially as a member of the media. "The situation in Guatemala hasn't really changed," Ramirez says. "I'm a reporter—I can't stay quiet when I see injustice, and in Guatemala you can't speak freely without putting yourself in danger."
While political persecution isn't nearly as rampant in Guatemala now as it was 20 years ago, threats against human rights workers and journalists are common. Last fall, the Inter-American Press Association demanded investigations into a number of attacks, including the shooting of radio reporter Eduardo Heriberto Mass Bol, who was killed while driving home from a birthday party. The month before Bol's death, the host of a political radio show was shot in the face while jogging in the capital, and four newspaper reporters in the colonial town of Antigua reported that they'd received threats after covering official corruption. In 2003, the Committee to Protect Journalists expressed outrage when four reporters for Guatemala's largest daily were abducted and held for two days by former paramilitary members with ties to General Efrain Rios Montt, the dictator in power when Ramirez fled to Texas.
Cruz, Ramirez's attorney, is preparing for an appearance before an immigration judge, which has not yet been scheduled. Cruz says that hearing will give him more opportunities to explain and present evidence than at the preliminary hearing at the asylum office. He's not very optimistic, though.
"It's still very difficult, because what everybody's saying right now is that the circumstances have changed, that there haven't been many politically motivated killings in Guatemala lately," Cruz says. "But he came when he was 16—now he's 40 years old."
Cruz is also representing a Guatemalan woman who's been here since 1990. She was recently denied residency under a law passed in 1997 that offered immigration benefits to people seeking asylum from various Central American countries. Cruz says she was turned down because the government lost a key document that her former attorney had filed soon after she arrived. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services doesn't comment on specific cases, but Cruz says he's in the midst of preliminary hearings in her case.
Meanwhile, Ramirez, who's temporarily broadcasting at Radio Jubileo in Florida, says he plans to return to Dallas next month. He's determined to stay in the United States. "I'm continuing to appeal," he says. "What injustice—after all this time they reject my asylum. How many years have I been here working for this country, working for my community? I'm not a burden for the city. I'm a productive member of society."
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Emergency Medicine: Casts can hide some deeper problems
U.S. emergency departments see 7 million fractures a year.
Once a broken bone is diagnosed, we typically splint rather than cast because splints allow the injured limb to swell.
Placing the limb in a cast immediately, on the other hand, sets up the potential for reduced circulation. In other words, it’s essentially applying a plaster tourniquet to an injured arm or leg.
Once the splint is applied, the patient is referred to an orthopedic specialist who probably will apply a cast once the swelling has decreased, usually in a few days.
This is when life gets tricky for us. Casts are vexing to emergency physicians. Whenever a patient expresses concern about a cast, I need to figure out whether it has anything to do with their problem.
Most commonly, patients come to the emergency department with concerns about the cast itself. It’s too tight. It’s too loose. What is this stuff draining from it? Why are my fingers or toes tingling?
All of these are valid concerns and can frequently be evaluated only by removing the cast to examine the arm or leg.
We do this by sawing through the cast on each side and opening it like a clamshell. This allows us to look at the skin and make sure that there is no sign of blisters from ill-placed padding and no infection.
Removing the cast allows us to complete a detailed vascular and neurological exam and make sure the cast isn’t too tight.It also allows us to assess swelling and rule out serious complications that can occur if there is too much swelling.
A complication from swelling is called “compartment syndrome” and is most common in the lower leg. It can result in permanent damage to nerves and blood vessels if not recognized and treated with surgery.
Life-threatening complications associated with casts, such as deep venous thrombosis, are even more daunting.
My most-memorable case involved a 35-year-old woman brought in by paramedics after she complained at home of chest pain and difficulty breathing.
The symptoms had occurred suddenly while she was resting at home after breaking her tibia and fibula — the two major bones between the knee and ankle — in a car crash the week before.
Her shortness of breath was so severe that her family immediately called 911. By the time paramedics arrived, they noted that her oxygen level was dangerously low and her blood pressure was dropping fast.
By the time she reached the emergency department, she had stopped breathing, and her pulse was lost. Paramedics flew in the doors having just started CPR.
The cast on her leg was the biggest clue to what had caused her cardiac arrest: a blood clot.
The cast hid the physical signs we look for, including an engorged vein. The clot had become unstable and had broken off and traveled to her lungs.
There, the clot starved her lungs of blood flow and subsequently starved her brain and heart of oxygen.
Our resuscitation efforts, including administering clot-busting drugs and performing thoracic surgery to remove the clot, proved successful.
For every patient we save from cardiac arrest after a pulmonary embolus, there are many more we can’t save.
So have a healthy respect for casts and understand that an increase in pain associated with a broken bone might not be the natural process of the bone’s “mending.”
Be cautious and, when in doubt, have it checked out.
| <urn:uuid:0c9fb8e3-00da-411c-988d-89634ed4bcc5> | 3 | 2.84375 | 0.41152 | en | 0.967723 | http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2011/08/28/health/casts-can-hide-some-deeper-problems.html |
What is oligoasthenoteratozoospermia?
Oligoasthenoteratozoospermia (OAT) is a condition that includes oligozoospermia (low number of sperm), asthenozoospermia (poor sperm movement), and teratozoospermia (abnormal sperm shape). OAT is the most common cause of male subfertility. Subfertility is when a man cannot get a woman pregnant after 1 year of regular sex without birth control.
What causes OAT?
The cause may not be known. The following are possible causes of infertility:
• Medicines such as steroids and medicines used to treat high blood pressure, cancer, or depression may affect your fertility.
• Genetics may cause infertility. This means you may have been born with genes that caused your infertility. Genes may affect sperm production, movement, and transport.
• Abnormal hormone levels may affect sperm production.
• Antibodies may attack your sperm. Antibodies are proteins made by the immune system that attack viruses or bacteria.
• Infections of the male reproductive system, particularly in the prostate, may affect male fertility.
• Lifestyle choices such as smoking, drinking alcohol, and using illegal drugs may affect sperm production.
What are the signs and symptoms of OAT?
The main sign is that you did not get your partner pregnant after 1 year of regular unprotected sex. Other signs and symptoms will depend on what is causing your infertility. If you have a varicocele, you will have a mass or swelling on the scrotum that feels like a bag of worms.
How is OAT diagnosed?
Your healthcare provider will ask about your current health and your health in the past. He may need to know how long you and your partner have been trying to get pregnant. Tell him when and how often you have sex, and if you have any problems. You will also be asked if you drink alcohol or smoke, and what medicines you use. You may need any of the following:
• A physical exam will be done. Your healthcare provider will look for signs of any imbalance in your hormones. Examples include increased body fat, body hair, and breast tissue. The size and shape of your testicles will also be examined.
• Blood tests may be done to find the cause of your infertility or to get information about your overall health.
• Genetic tests may be done to look for abnormal genes. Abnormal genes may cause you to produce a low number of sperm.
• A semen analysis is a test used to check a man's fertility. This test may show an increased number of white blood cells in the semen that can cause problems with the sperm's movement and function.
• A sperm analysis tests the movement of your sperm through mucus. Your sperm count may also be measured.
• Spermatic venography is a test to check the position of the veins in the scrotum. During this test, a healthcare provider will put dye into your body and take x-rays to look for a varicocele. Tell the healthcare provider if you have ever had an allergic reaction to contrast dye.
• A scrotal ultrasound is used to find lumps and other changes in your testicles and scrotum, such as a varicocele.
How is OAT treated?
Treatment will depend on the cause of your OAT. You may have any of the following:
• Medicines may be given to treat an infection. Hormones may be used to treat a hormonal imbalance. Steroids may be used to treat infertility caused by an immune system problem. Antioxidants may be suggested by your healthcare provider to decrease damage to sperm caused by reactive oxygen species (ROS). ROS may affect normal sperm function. Antioxidants may include vitamin E, vitamin C, and glutathione.
• Percutaneous embolization is a procedure used to treat a varicocele. The blood flow in the enlarged veins is blocked to stop the flow of blood.
• Sperm extraction is a procedure done to remove sperm from the testicles or epididymis. The collected sperm may be saved or used to fertilize a woman's egg.
• Surgery may be needed to remove a varicocele.
When should I contact my healthcare provider?
• You have swelling or a lump in your scrotum.
• You have questions or concerns about your condition or care.
Care Agreement
Learn more about Oligoasthenoteratozoospermia | <urn:uuid:a9f20032-b8b5-4c0e-a8f5-f19a2a54100a> | 3 | 3.140625 | 0.02461 | en | 0.921779 | http://www.drugs.com/cg/oligoasthenoteratozoospermia.html |
Sometimes two consonants are combined to make a specific sound. Knowing how to articulate the sound makes it much easier to sing. The combinations of sounds listed in the table below are the few sounds that are made by closing the space in the front of your mouth when you’re singing.
They require special attention in practicing to be able to make the sound without totally closing down the space in the back of your mouth and changing the tone.
Shaping combination consonants
For the consonant pairs in the following table, your
• Tongue’s tip moves toward the alveolar ridge and the sides of your tongue touch the upper side teeth and gums at the side at the same time. You feel air blowing between the tip of your tongue and the gums. The tip of the tongue touches the alveolar ridge momentarily at the beginning of the CH and J sounds.
• Lips should protrude slightly forward. The protrusion is slight and the movement happens quickly. When your lips move for the ZH and J, you use your voice. The SH and CH are unvoiced.
The position of the tongue is important. The SH requires you to blow air between your teeth and tongue, whereas you make the CH by momentarily stopping the flow of air, by putting the tongue’s tip on the alveolar ridge and then blowing air.
Listen to a variety of singers and note the difference between CH and Y. You make Y by moving the back of the tongue, and you make CH with the tip of the tongue.
Practicing SH, ZH, J, and CH
show visual jump chump
plush pleasure June choose
shop measure age chance
The consonant G can be pronounced two ways, as in the words go and George. Here the pronunciation of the consonant G in the word go, the consonant J is used to describe the pronunciation for the consonant G in George.
ST and SH are often mistakenly interchanged. An example is the word street — it shouldn’t be shtreet. Practice sh-t and s-t so you can get it just right in your song and when you give your new friends your street address.
Singing combination consonants
Sing through the sentences in the illustration below, following the words under each note. Sing through each one until you feel the fluid movement from consonant to vowel. Doing so enhances your ability to keep your back space open as you momentarily close the space in front.
Sing through the consonants in the illustration with a legato (smooth and connected) line, and try not to anticipate the next consonant. Allow yourself time to extend the vowel before jumping to the next syllable and consonant. Anticipating the next consonant means closing down the space in your mouth too early, and that affects the shape and sound of the vowel you’re currently singing.
Notice that you have to use your voice to sing through the ZH, but the SH is unvoiced. You’ll feel the difference, because the SH is just flowing air, whereas the ZH requires you to make sound with your voice and move air. | <urn:uuid:8afff49f-a8f4-443d-a743-7a15bc399ed4> | 4 | 3.609375 | 0.334107 | en | 0.92267 | http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/shaping-and-singing-combination-consonants.html |
CODE CITATIONS: Article 110-Requirements for Electrical Installations; Article 210-Branch Circuits; Article 220-Branch Circuit, Feeder, and Service Calculations; Article 230-Services; Article 250-Grounding; Article 310--Conductors for General Wiring; Article 430-Motors, Motor Circuits, and Controllers
Conductor Derating
Q: We have a job to install a duplex pumping panel (two combination motor starters in a single enclosure) for two 5-horsepower motors driving sump pumps. An alternator switch is included in the pump starters that alternates starting of the motors each time the float switch reaches a predetermined level in the sump resulting from an increase in the height of the liquid in the tank. We plan to run eight conductors in a single PVC conduit from the controller enclosure to the motors. Do we have to derate the circuit conductors because there are more than three in the PVC conduit? What is the minimum size of the equipment grounding conductors? Do we need one or two equipment-grounding conductors? The voltage is 208-three phase.
A: The full-load current of a 5-horsepower, 208-volt three-phase motor is 16.7 amperes according to Table 430-150. The motor branch circuit conductors must have a minimum capacity of 125 percent of motor full-load current to comply with Section 430-22. This results in a minimum conductor ampacity of (1.25 x 16.7) 20.9. According to the Conductor Ampacity Table (Table 310-16) No. 12 copper with Type THWN insulation is suitable if derating is not required because of the number of current-carrying conductors in the raceway.
Many duplex motor controllers are internally wired so that both pumps will operate simultaneously if the liquid level continues to rise while one pump is running.
Because I am not sure about the control circuit wiring, I will assume that both pumps cannot run at the same time. The calculations and motor circuit wire sizes will also be done assuming that both pumps can operate at the same time.
If the factory installed control circuit only allows one motor to run, regardless of the height of the liquid in the sump, there are never more than three current-carrying conductors in the PVC raceway; therefore, there is no derating because of raceway fill. Derating for more than three conductors in a raceway does not apply because Table 310-15(b)(2)(a) applies only where there are more than three conductors carrying current at the same time. Under this condition the No. 12 Type THWN copper conductors are adequate.
The ampere rating of the circuit breaker in the combination starter that provides motor branch-circuit short-circuit and ground-fault protection is probably 40 amperes. According to Table 250-122, the minimum size equipment grounding conductor permitted with a 40-ampere overcurrent device is No. 10 copper, but Section 250-122(a) says that the equipment grounding conductor does not have to be larger than the circuit conductors. Therefore, a No. 12 copper equipment-grounding conductor may be used.
While on the subject of grounding, let's determine the number of equipment grounding conductors required to ground the two pump motors. The question states that two equipment-grounding conductors are provided in the single PVC conduit. Actually, Section 250-122(c) only requires one equipment- grounding conductor for the two motors. The six circuit conductors and one equipment grounding conductor (all No. 12 with Type THWN insulation) may be installed in one-half inch schedule 40 PVC conduit.
If the factory-installed control wiring allows both pump motors to operate at the same time, the wire size for each motor between the controller and the motor must be increased to No. 10 copper. This is because at some times there will be six current-carrying conductors in the conduit that serve the motors. Table 310-15(b)(2)( a) requires that the ampacities shown in Table 310-16 be derated to 80 percent where there are six current-carrying conductors in a raceway. Minimum branch circuit conductor ampacity before derating is 20.9. After applying the 80 percent derating factor, the minimum conductor ampacity
is slightly greater than 26. Therefore, No. 10 copper conductors must be used. If Type THWN insulated No. 10 copper conductors are used, the minimum conduit size is three quarters of an inch. The conduit size is obtained from Table C10 in the National Electrical Code. The equipment-grounding conductor must also be changed to No. 10 copper.
The size of the circuit conductors from the panelboard to the controllers and ampere rating of the overcurrent device in the panelboard depends on the operation of the motor starters. If the control wiring prohibits both pumps from operating at the same time, the branch circuit conductors supplying the controllers can be No.12 copper protected by a 40-ampere circuit breaker. On the other hand, if the factory installed control wiring allows both pumps to run at the same time, the supply conductors are a feeder and must be sized to comply with Section 430-24. This means that the ampacity of the feeder conductors cannot be less than (1.25 x 16.7 + 16.7) 37.6. According to Table 310-16, No. 8 copper conductors would be required. Motor short-circuit and ground-fault protection is covered in Section 430-62(a). A 50-ampere circuit breaker would be acceptable for this application. This ampere rating is based on the ampere rating of one motor short-circuit and ground-fault protective device plus the full load current of the other motor.
Temperature Limitations
Q: If twist-on connectors with a 60 degrees Celsius rating are used on conductors with 75 degrees Celsius insulation, am I limited to the 60 degrees Celsius ampacity given in Table 310-16?
A: Yes you are. Section 110-14(c) has this requirement: "The temperature rating associated with the ampacity of a conductor shall be selected and coordinated so as not to exceed the lowest temperature rating of any connected termination, conductor, or device. Conductors with temperature ratings higher than specified for terminations shall be permitted to be used for ampacity adjustment, correction, or both."
Where it is necessary to apply correction factors for elevated ambient temperature or more than three current-carrying conductors in a raceway or cable, the corrected ampacity is limited to the 60 degrees Celsius rating shown in Table 310-16 even though the corrected ampacity exceeds this value.
Circuit Breaker Handle Ties
Q: In a one-family dwelling unit may single-pole circuit breakers with or without handle ties be used to supply a 240-volt water heater, a 120/240 volt clothes dryer or range, or a multiwire small appliance branch circuit?
A: Single-pole circuit breakers with approved handle ties may be used for all loads indicated except possibly the small appliance branch circuits. Section 240-20(b)(1) and (2) are the references that permit handle ties on the circuit breakers for these loads. However, the multiwire small appliance circuit is another matter. If the small appliance multiwire branch circuit supplies split-wired duplex receptacles (two circuits connected to the same receptacle), a handle tie is required to comply with Section 210-4(b). If each ungrounded conductor and neutral are connected to duplex receptacles that are not split-wired, single-pole circuit breakers without handle ties satisfy the requirement of Section 210-4(b). Remember that Section 210-8 (a)(6) requires ground-fault circuit-interrupter protection for all receptacles that are installed to serve countertop surfaces in the kitchen.
Sizing Service-Entrance Conductors
Q: A commercial building is provided with four 200-ampere service switches that are supplied from a wireway. The service-entrance conductors feeding the wireway consist of two parallel copper conductors per phase. The phase conductors are 400 kcmil and neutral consists of two No. 4/0 copper conductors. Each switch has 200-ampere fuses. The conductors connected to the line and load terminals of each switch are No. 3/0 Type THWN copper. Is this installation code compliant? If it is, what prevents overloading the 400 kcmil service-entrance conductors?
A: The minimum ampacity of the service-entrance conductors must be calculated by using the appropriate rules in Article 220. If the result of this calculation indicates the load is 670 amperes or less, both 400 kcmil copper conductors with Type THWN insulation per phase are Code compliant. What prevents overloading these service-entrance conductors?
Sizing the conductors to handle the calculated load should prevent overloading. Adding electrical loads to the existing installation without increasing the size of the service-entrance conductors will result in overloading of these conductors.
Because service-entrance conductors are not protected from overcurrent at the point where they receive their supply, various Sections in Article 230 require that disconnecting means and overcurrent protection be provided outside of the building or as close as possible to the point where the conductors enter the building. Where this cannot be done Section 230-6 requires that the service-entrance conductors be encased in 2 inches of concrete.
The service neutral conductor ampacity is allowed to be less than the ampacity of the phase conductors by Section 220-22. However, the neutral conductor size cannot be smaller than given in Table 250-66. Section 250-24(b) explains the method to be used for determining the minimum-size grounded conductor (neutral). Since this service is for a commercial building, some thought should be given to Fine Print Note No. 2 following Section 220-22. This note advises that nonlinear loads connected to a three-phase, four-wire, wye-connected system may cause high harmonic neutral currents. Because of this possibility, it may not be proper to reduce the ampacity of the neutral to 460 amperes.
| <urn:uuid:864c1b41-f154-4aaa-8572-45b7790cb003> | 3 | 2.84375 | 0.021245 | en | 0.889362 | http://www.ecmag.com/section/codes-standards/branch-circuit-feeder-and-service-calculations-motors-and-their-circuits-and |
As the Great Blackout of 2003 rolled through the Northeast and Midwest, a lot of people were left in the dark. But the blackout turned on the lights for a group of National Electrical Contractor Association (NECA) member contractors in Michigan. They saw the blackout as opportunity knocking.
Banks, hospitals and other businesses need to protect mission-critical applications and human life. A properly installed UPS (uninterruptible power supply) is one of the foundations of a backup system.
“As with any job, the customer's needs are where you start,” said Jerry Gordenier, president of J G Squared, Chelsea, Mich.
When the series of major grid power failures hit, businesses sat up and took notice.
“With the huge blackout a year ago, there is a sense of angst about power,” said Michael L. Crawford, manager of the Michigan NECA Chapter, which has 12 divisions covering 70 counties. “For contractors, this represents a big potential source of business and revenue.”
“The chapter spent over $14,000 last year promoting and explaining backup systems,” Crawford said. The effort is paying off in more and larger jobs for electrical contractors.
Not everyone who requests installation of a UPS system does so because of the blackout. Hospitals have long known that human lives depend on a consistent, even, reliable flow of power, even when the national grid goes down.
While many businesses feel a steady supply of electricity is vital, any television station owner will tell you that being knocked off the air means death to the station. Viewers click away to competitors, while advertisers demand refunds.
Two of J G Squared's more interesting projects to date are the University of Michigan's Purple Power project and the Transmission Tower project for WPXD-TV.
Hospital UPS
The University of Michigan Hospital elected to install a system of orderly load shedding for its backup system.
“In essence, this was the ability to prioritize and automate the logic behind what gets powered when the supply becomes limited,” Gordenier said.
The generators and a substantial amount of infrastructure were already in place. However, everyone knew it would take a well-coordinated effort by all parties involved to do the job, as it had to be done with the hospital still fully operational.
There were many bid packs for portions of the multimillion-dollar undertaking. When the work began, five separate electrical contractors were awarded the project: J G Squared, AF Smith, Hatzel & Buehler Inc., Turner Electric and Shaw Electric.
Coordination was paramount in a mission-critical project of this size and complexity. The project manager for the University of Michigan Hospital, Ken Silverman, elected to hold one weekly progress meeting for all contractors involved. This was an interesting approach, he said.
“You'd think five electrical contractors sitting in the same room, talking about different pieces of the same job, should be a recipe for disaster, but it wasn't,” Gordenier said.
Gordenier said the jobs they do for such customers as the University of Michigan Hospital are typically designed by engineers, such as Ayres, Lewis, Norris, and Mae, and then installed per plans by the electricians.
The project, which lasted approximately 12 months, required several miles of 4-inch conduit and many more miles of 500 MCM wire.
Some of the work was quite literally on a giant scale. There were junction boxes large enough to stand up in. Those junction boxes had to be punched perfectly so 32 4-inch pipes would seamlessly enter from two different sides. When completed, they worked like a charm.
ASCO transfer switches were told what to do by logic from Cutler Hammer IQ 1000 system and software programming by Honeywell. “All of this was installed for a backup system that the customer actually hoped would never be used,” Gordenier said.
The crew did several things right, however. So well did they execute their plans that the project was nominated for and won a Pyramid Award.
TV tower … and fast
“The WPXD-TV station tower is more of a design/build where the overall scope of work and end result is defined but the means used to get there is left to the contractor,” Gordenier explained.
J G Squared's work on the WPXD project was designed to back up an 800A, 480V service that feeds transmission equipment for a 1,000-foot broadcast tower.
Completion of the project required a 500-kVa-generator set, RF filtering equipment, 35,000-volt DC transformers, cooling towers and ratcheting type voltage regulators.
“The design was diagrammatic, and there was a considerable amount of design time spent engineering the system,” Gordenier said.
Michigan gets a lot of snow and ice in the winter. Towers, especially those reaching 1,000 feet into the sky, require de-icing. So, in addition to protecting the electronics, a carport-type structure had to be built over the generator. This was to shield the generator from falling ice in the winter as the tower's de-icing system did its job.
Once they got going, management at the TV station decided they wanted protection right away. “The project was accelerated due to the customer wanting delivery of the system in eight days instead of the originally projected four to six weeks,” Gordenier said. A team of 10 electricians worked 12 hours a day to complete the task on the new schedule.
While power backup projects can be rewarding, both financially and psychologically, both electrical contractors and their customers often overlook the possibilities.
Increased demand
In Michigan, a string of power outages brought the idea of doing a better job of promoting power conditioning and backup to the business public. The Michigan Chapter invested some time, effort and money in looking at the markets.
According to Crawford, the Lansing area and western Michigan were identified as two prime areas for marketing commercial backup systems. Crawford noted that systems range from small, propane-fueled backups to the large diesel systems, to fuel cells.
“The $14,000 we spent last year was mainly on a TV ad in the Lansing area. It emphasized the need to hire a licensed electrical contractor and to use licensed electricians when installing backup power,” Crawford added.
Not all applications go as smoothly as the ones at the University of Michigan or WPXD. A number of businesses in the area have had significant issues with inappropriate installations.
Sizing issues
“The most accurate way to size a generator or UPS system is to calculate the peak demand load and plan for that plus 25 percent capacity,” Gordenier said. He noted that this often results in a generator fully capable of handling an entire building's load while still being sized significantly smaller than the service size for the building.
He said two points that are often overlooked when designing a generator system are location and sound.
“You must be certain that the exhaust is situated so it is never to be subject to entering the facility. You must also make certain that all local codes are met and there is ample clearance from doors, windows, fresh air intakes, and similar things are considered. If there is any doubt, involving a licensed mechanical contractor is a great way to get it right,” he added.
Contractors should check with local authorities with regard to sound and acceptable levels for the area. If there is a restriction, it usually is stated in decibels (DBs).
“Your generator specification should list the DBs of the intended machine,” Gordenier said. If the restriction requires quieting the machine down, custom sound shielding can be purchased to achieve almost any level of sound dampening required. Gordenier also said lead times on natural gas and diesel generators vary with typical generator sets up to 100 kVa.
“The price goes up as the sound goes down. We like to tell our customers, it is the best sound you will hear when the power is out,” he said.
| <urn:uuid:98463c17-e225-4e4b-9dee-03e307cfcf8a> | 2 | 1.96875 | 0.022641 | en | 0.965283 | http://www.ecmag.com/section/your-business/power-play-hard-knocks-or-opportunity?qt-issues_block=1 |
AS MANY British high streets have mouldered over the past few years, Regent Street in the West End of London has freshened up. A little more than a decade ago it was full of shops selling tartan cashmere and package holidays. It is now dotted with designer stores and with Apple’s largest shop in London. The Crown Estate, its landlord, has turned 142 shops into 115 bigger ones and has more say over who pitches up there. It is a sign of how London’s odd pattern of landholding has encouraged a retail revival.
Six major estates own large parts of central London (see map). They have done so for centuries; the Grosvenor family first acquired land in Mayfair and Belgravia in 1677. Until the 1990s most of these estates were run in a broadly similar manner. Residential properties were rented out on long-term leases and commercial ones were let to the highest bidder. Scant attention was paid to maintaining roads and parks or to the façades of buildings.
This began to change after the housing crash of the late 1980s. Marylebone High Street, part of the Howard de Walden Estate, was dotted with empty shops and failing businesses. The estate controlled only around a third of the shops; gradually it started to buy others back. The estate filled 24 shops with small independent retailers, a posh supermarket and a designer furniture store. Pavements and shopfronts were spruced up.
A change in the law in 2002 also affected the way the estates were run. The Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Act made it easier for residential leaseholders to buy their properties. So estates began to rent properties on short-term contracts instead. Developers and outside investors were brought in. Buildings were maintained more regularly. This increased professionalism spilled over into their dealings with commercial tenants too.
Estates have gradually become more and more hands-on. In 2003 the Cadogan Estate redeveloped an old army barracks on the King’s Road into an open-air shopping plaza. In 2011 the Grosvenor Estate spent around £5m ($8m) on Mount Street in Mayfair, filling it with restaurants and fashion designers. The Crown Estate is embarked on another redevelopment that will turn the southern end of Regent Street into a “restaurant quarter”. The Portman Estate is trying to gain control over more shops on the Edgware Road.
The shifting habits of British shoppers are driving them forward. Online shopping, which accounts for around 13% of all purchases in Britain, and the rise of new shopping malls on the fringes of London have challenged high streets, says David Shaw of the Crown Estate. The estates have responded by running their streets rather like shopping malls, seeking anchor tenants and encouraging restaurants. In July Regent Street will close to traffic on Sundays, turning it into something even closer to an open-air mall.
High streets will never be able to match indoor malls in every way, says Tony Travers of the London School of Economics (protection from rain, for example). But with cleaner streets, brightly lit shops, restaurants and pleasant outdoor spaces, they can at least compete with them. | <urn:uuid:3ce6d7a4-526c-48ae-a3a7-2e83ab441444> | 2 | 1.960938 | 0.02028 | en | 0.971635 | http://www.economist.com/news/britain/21579509-why-londons-main-streets-are-coming-resemble-shopping-malls-great-estates |
GREECE denied that it was planning to restructure its debt this week (see Economics focus), even as traders in the credit-default-swaps market made bigger bets that it would. A pattern of denial in the face of mounting evidence has been a recurring feature of the debt crisis.
That rationale was undermined by the work of Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff, who showed how countries had defaulted on their debts on many occasions in the past. Countries do have a much bigger credit limit than individuals but there is still a cap on their borrowing capacity. The economy must generate enough taxes to service the debt or must have safeguards in place to stop any attempt to inflate the debt away from spiralling into hyperinflation.
Some commentators followed a different tack, arguing that since every debtor is matched by a creditor, losses are offset by gains and so debt does not really matter. But when the debt is secured against an asset, lenders and borrowers can both lose. Suppose that Acme Finance lent $10m to Wile E. Coyote for the building of a roadrunner-meat processing plant. When the plant was built, Acme Finance might feel its loan was secured by an asset. But the coyote's repeated failure to catch roadrunners would leave the plant running idle. Eventually Mr Coyote would go bankrupt and Acme would be forced to write off the bulk of the loan.
As a result, you need to be suspicious of arguments that net debt ratios are more significant than gross measures. Net measures offset the value of assets owned by the debtor against the amount owed. But have those assets been accurately valued? Or is their value dependent on the easy availability of credit, as was true of American houses in the early 2000s?
The European sovereign-debt crisis has produced its own sequence of denials and recantations. Peripheral governments said at first that the banking crisis would not require a dose of fiscal austerity, blaming the rise in their bond yields on speculators and ratings agencies. When yields stayed high, despite austerity programmes, they denied that they would need to seek international financial aid. Once that aid was received, countries felt obliged to rule out the possibility of partial default, the stage that Greece has reached now. But Greece has a solvency, not a liquidity, problem and it is a matter of when, not if, creditors take a hit.
The lesson of this long process of obfuscation and retreat is to place no faith in official statements of reassurance. Debtors will usually claim (and may even believe) they can service their debts, just as alcoholics deny they have a drinking problem. In any case, an early admission of a solvency problem would be akin to informing your spouse of your intention to commit adultery: it would precipitate a crisis rather than avert it.
On April 18th Standard & Poor's put America's AAA credit rating on negative watch. Mary Miller, an assistant treasury secretary, sought to reassure the markets. “We believe S&P's negative outlook underestimates the ability of America's leaders to come together to address the difficult fiscal challenges facing the nation,” she responded. But she would say that, wouldn't she?
America is not Greece. It has a much greater chance of growing out of its debt and it has the “exorbitant privilege” of issuing debt in the world's reserve currency. At least its politicians now recognise that something must be done about the deficit, even if they disagree about the solution. But grand plans, like denials, need to be taken with a bucket of salt. Actions will be the best sign that the denial phase is over, not more words. | <urn:uuid:65f5384b-39a5-4495-9531-0bb6b56844c3> | 2 | 2.203125 | 0.052971 | en | 0.980245 | http://www.economist.com/node/18586816 |
@techreport{Gollier2009Expected, abstract = {Weitzman (1998) showed that when future interest rates are uncertain, using the expected net present value implies a term structure of discount rates that is decreasing to the smallest possible interest rate. On the contrary, using the expected net future value criterion implies an increasing term structure of discount rates up to the largest possible interest rate. We reconcile the two approaches by introducing risk aversion and risk-neutral probabilities. We show that if the aggregate consumption path is optimized, the two criteria are equivalent. Moreover, they are also equivalent to the Ramsey rule extended to uncertainty.}, address = {M\"{u}nchen}, author = {Christian Gollier}, copyright = {http://www.econstor.eu/dspace/Nutzungsbedingungen}, keywords = {D61; 330; discount rate; asset price; Ramsey rule; cost-benefit analysis; Kosten-Nutzen-Analyse; Dynamische Investitionsrechnung; Abzinsung; Zinsstruktur; Optimale Besteuerung; Theorie}, language = {eng}, number = {2643}, publisher = {CESifo}, title = {Expected net present value, expected net future value, and the Ramsey rule}, type = {CESifo working paper}, url = {http://hdl.handle.net/10419/30504}, year = {2009} } | <urn:uuid:818d414f-35cb-466e-b3b4-90a43a9d770f> | 2 | 1.546875 | 0.628963 | en | 0.798559 | http://www.econstor.eu/dspace/bibtexexport/10419/30504/Gollier2009Expected.bib |
Bloomin' Algae! (page 2)
based on 15 ratings
Author: Sarah Benton
Experimental Procedure:
1. Label the jars 1-7 with the masking tape.
2. Fill each jar with a mixture of ½ pond water and ½ spring water. Use the measuring cups to be sure you put the same amount of water in each jar.
3. Jar 1 will be your control. Do not add fertilizer or detergent to this jar.
4. Following the safety precautions on the fertilizer and detergent packaging wear gloves and wash hands as necessary as you follow the next steps.
5. Jars 2, 3, and 4 will be fertilizer jars.
6. Add ¼ tsp fertilizer to jar 2.
7. Add ½ tsp fertilizer to jar 3.
8. Add 1 tsp fertilizer to jar 4.
9. Jars 5, 6 and 7 will be detergent jars.
10. Add ¼ tsp detergent to jar 5.
11. Add ½ tsp detergent to jar 6.
12. Add 1 tsp detergent to jar 7.
13. Cut 7 squares from the cheesecloth, large enough to cover the openings of the jars.
14. Cover each of the jars with a square of cheesecloth and secure with a rubber band.
15. Keep track of what is in each jar by making a chart in your notebook. See the example below. (Table 1)
16. Set the jars in a sunny location.
17. Observe the jars for 14 days. You may want to take photographs of the jars each day to show the changes. Make a written observation of what you see in the jars each day. Keep your data organized in a chart. See example below. (Table 2)
18. On day 7 test the dissolved oxygen in each of the jars. Follow the directions that came with the dissolved oxygen kit. Note the dissolved oxygen measured in parts per million in your notebook.
19. Continue to make daily observations.
20. On day 14 test the dissolved oxygen in each jar again. Note the dissolved oxygen measured in parts per million in your notebook.
21. Use your observations and dissolved oxygen data to draw some conclusions about what is happening in the water.
22. You may want to use a line graph to show your results. See example below. (Figure 1)
Table 1
Jar 1
Jar 2
1/4 tsp fertilizer
Jar 3
1/2 tsp fertilizer
Jar 4
1 tsp fertilizer
Jar 5
1/4 tsp detergent
Jar 6
1/2 tsp detergent
Jar 7
1 tsp detergent
Table 2
Percentage of jar filled with visible algae
Figure 1
Terms/Concepts: Eutrophication; Algal bloom; Dissolved Oxygen; Phosphates; Nitrates; Fertilizer; Decomposition; Rain runoff; Point source pollution; Non-point source pollution; Experimental control; Variables; Line graph
Project adapted from: “Eutrophication Lab” D. Gioffre, Hillsborough Middle School, Hillsborough, NJ 08844Funded by the National Science Foundation, Biocomplexity in the Environment Program, Award #0120453
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Upper digestive system
The upper parts of the digestive tract – that is the mouth, oesophagus (gullet) and the stomach. These parts of the digestive system are responsible for the initial stages of digestion. This includes both physically breaking down the food by chewing and churning of the stomach contents, as well as producing digestive juices to chemically bre...
Found on http://www.encyclo.co.uk/local/20560
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Dirichlet eigenvalue
From Encyclopedia of Mathematics
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Consider a bounded domain with a piecewise smooth boundary . is a Dirichlet eigenvalue of if there exists a function (a Dirichlet eigenfunction) satisfying the following Dirichlet boundary value problem (cf. also Dirichlet boundary conditions):
where is the Laplace operator (i.e., ). Dirichlet eigenvalues (with ) were introduced in the study of the vibrations of the clamped membrane in the nineteenth century. In fact, they are proportional to the square of the eigenfrequencies of the membrane with fixed boundary. See [a9] for a review and historical remarks. Provided is bounded and the boundary is sufficiently regular, the Dirichlet Laplacian has a discrete spectrum of infinitely many positive eigenvalues with no finite accumulation point [a15]:
( as ).
The Dirichlet eigenvalues are characterized by the max-min principle [a4]:
where the is taken over all orthogonal to , and the is taken over all choices of . For simply-connected domains it follows from the max-min principle (a4) that is non-degenerate and the corresponding eigenfunction is positive in the interior of . For higher values of the nodal lines of the th eigenfunction divide into no more than subregions (nodal domains; this is Courant's nodal line theorem [a4]). Along this subject, notice the proof of A.D. Melas [a11] of the nodal line conjecture for plane domains (if is a bounded, smooth, convex domain, the nodal line of always meets ).
Weyl asymptotics.
For large values of , if , H. Weyl [a17], [a18] proved
where and are, respectively, the volumes of and of the unit ball in .
Pólya conjecture.
For any plane-covering domain (i.e., a domain that can be used to tile the plane without gaps, nor overlaps, allowing rotations, translations and reflections of itself), G. Pólya [a13] proved that
and conjectured the same bound for any bounded domain in (here is the area of the domain). Pólya's conjecture in dimensions is equivalent to saying that the Weyl asymptotics of , (a5), is a lower bound for , i.e.,
A result analogous to (a6) for the Neumann eigenvalues of tiling domains, with the sign of the equalities reversed, also holds (cf. also Neumann eigenvalue). The best result to date (2000) towards the proof of the Pólya conjecture is the bound [a10]
proven using the asymptotic behaviour of the heat kernel of (cf. also Heat equation) and the connection between the heat kernel and the Dirichlet eigenvalues of a domain (see, e.g., [a6] for a review and related results).
Kac problem.
Dirichlet eigenvalues are completely characterized by the geometry of the domain . The inverse problem, i.e., up to what extent the geometry of can be recovered from the knowledge of , was posed by M. Kac in [a8]. If , for example, and is smooth (in particular does not have corners), then the distribution function behaves as
as , where is the area, the perimeter and the number of holes of , so at least these features of the domain can be recovered from knowledge of all the eigenvalues (the first term in (a9) is just a consequence of Weyl's asymptotics). However, complete recovery of the geometry is impossible, as was later shown by C. Gordon, D. Web and S. Wolpert, who constructed two isospectral domains in with different geometries [a7].
Eigenvalues and geometry.
The inverse of the square root of a Dirichlet eigenvalue is a length that may be compared with other characteristic lengths of the domain . A typical such comparison is the Rayleigh–Faber–Krahn inequality. Another inequality along these lines is the following: If is a simply connected domain in and is the radius of the largest disc contained in , then there is a universal constant such that
(as of 2000, the best, not yet optimal, constant in (a10) is ; see [a2] for details and historical facts). For other isoperimetric inequalities, see, e.g., [a1], [a12], [a14]. In the same vein, one can also compare Dirichlet and Neumann eigenvalues (see Neumann eigenvalue).
Because of the connection between potential theory and Brownian motion, it is possible to use probabilistic methods to find properties of Dirichlet eigenvalues. One such property was found by H. Brascamp and E.H. Lieb [a3] for : If and are domains in , and one sets , then for all . Another example of the use of probabilistic methods is the proof of (a10) by R. Bañuelos and T. Carroll [a2].
To conclude, note that it is possible to define Dirichlet eigenvalues for much more general domains in (see, e.g., [a16], p. 263), and also for the Laplace–Beltrami operator defined on domains in Riemannian manifolds (see, e.g., [a5]).
[a1] M.S. Ashbaugh, R.D. Benguria, "Isoperimetric inequalities for eigenvalue ratios" , Symp. Math. , 35 , Cambridge Univ. Press (1994) pp. 1–36
[a2] R. Bañuelos, T. Carroll, "Brownian motion and the fundamental frequency of a drum" Duke Math. J. , 75 (1994) pp. 575–602
[a3] H. Brascamp, E.H. Lieb, "On extensions of the Brunn–Minkowski and Prékopa–Leindler theorem, including inequalities for log-concave functions, and with an application to the diffusion equation" J. Funct. Anal. , 22 (1976) pp. 366–389
[a4] R. Courant, D. Hilbert, "Methoden der mathematischen Physik" , I , Springer (1931) (English transl.: Methods of mathematical physics, vol. I., Interscience, 1953)
[a5] I. Chavel, "Eigenvalues in Riemannian geometry" , Pure Appl. Math. , 115 , Acad. Press (1984)
[a6] E.B. Davies, "Heat kernels and spectral theory" , Tracts in Math. , 92 , Cambridge Univ. Press (1989)
[a7] C. Gordon, D. Webb, S. Wolpert, "Isospectral plane domains and surfaces via Riemannian orbifolds" Invent. Math. , 110 (1992) pp. 1–22
[a8] M. Kac, "Can one hear the shape of a drum?" Amer. Math. Monthly , 73 : 4 (1966) pp. 1–23
[a9] J.R. Kuttler, V.G. Sigillito, "Eigenvalues of the Laplacian in two dimensions" SIAM Review , 26 (1984) pp. 163–193
[a10] P. Li, S.T. Yau, "On the Schrödinger equation and the eigenvalue problem" Commun. Math. Phys. , 88 (1983) pp. 309–318
[a11] A.D. Melas, "On the nodal line of the second eigenfunction of the Laplacian in " J. Diff. Geom. , 35 (1992) pp. 255–263
[a12] R. Osserman, "Isoperimetric inequalities and eigenvalues of the Laplacian" , Proc. Internat. Congress of Math. Helsinki , Acad. Sci. Fennica (1978) pp. 435–441
[a13] G. Polya, "On the eigenvalues of vibrating membranes" Proc. London Math. Soc. , 11 : 3 (1961) pp. 419–433
[a14] G. Polya, G. Szegö, "Isoperimetric inequalities in mathematical physics" , Ann. of Math. Stud. , 27 , Princeton Univ. Press (1951)
[a15] F. Pockels, "Über die partielle Differentialgleichung und deren Auftreten in die mathematischen Physik" Z. Math. Physik , 37 (1892) pp. 100–105
[a16] M. Reed, B. Simon, "Methods of modern mathematical physics IV: Analysis of operators" , Acad. Press (1978)
[a17] H. Weyl, "Ramifications, old and new, of the eigenvalue problem" Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. , 56 (1950) pp. 115–139
[a18] H. Weyl, "Das asymptotische Verteilungsgesetz der Eigenwerte linearer partieller Differentialgleichungen" Math. Ann. , 71 (1911) pp. 441–479
How to Cite This Entry:
Dirichlet eigenvalue. Rafael D. Benguria (originator), Encyclopedia of Mathematics. URL:
This text originally appeared in Encyclopedia of Mathematics - ISBN 1402006098 | <urn:uuid:b0b9c4c1-ed9d-4360-b3dd-b31bbf15699c> | 2 | 2.03125 | 0.024145 | en | 0.81271 | http://www.encyclopediaofmath.org/index.php/Dirichlet_eigenvalue |
Comparison of adjectives in English
Grammatical constructions used for comparing adjectives
There are three forms of comparison:
• positive
• comparative
• superlative
1. Comparison with -er/-est
clean → cleaner → (the) cleanest
We use -er/-est with the following adjectives:
1.1. Adjectives with one syllable
positive comparative superlative
clean cleaner cleanest
new newer newest
cheap cheaper cheapest
1.2. Adjectives with two syllables and the following endings:
1.2.1. Adjectives with two syllables, ending in -y
positive comparative superlative
dirty dirtier dirtiest
easy easier easiest
happy happier happiest
pretty prettier prettiest
1.2.2. Adjectives with two syllables, ending in -er
positive comparative superlative
clever cleverer cleverest
1.2.3. Adjectives with two syllables, ending in -le
positive comparative superlative
simple simpler simplest
1.2.4. Adjectives with two syllables, ending in -ow
positive comparative superlative
narrow narrower narrowest
1.3. Spelling of the adjectives using the endings -er/-est
positive comparative superlative comment
large larger largest leave out the silent -e
big bigger biggest Double the consonant after short vowel
sad sadder saddest
(although consonant before -y)
2. Comparison with more – most
all adjectives with more than one syllable (except some adjectives with two syllables – see 2.1. to 2.4.)
positive comparative superlative
difficult more difficult (the) most difficult
3. Irregular adjectives
positive comparative superlative comment
good better best
bad worse worst
much more most uncountable nouns
many more most countable nouns
little less least
little smaller smallest
4. Special adjectives
positive comparative superlative
clever cleverer / more clever cleverest / most clever
common commoner / more common commonest / most common
likely likelier / more likely likeliest / most likely
pleasant pleasanter / more pleasant pleasantest / most pleasant
polite politer / more polite politest / most polite
quiet quieter / more quiet quietest / most quiet
simple simpler / more simple simplest / most simple
stupid stupider / more stupid stupidest / most stupid
subtle subtler / more subtle subtlest / most subtle
sure surer / more sure surest / most sure
5. Difference in meaning with adjectives
positive comparative superlative comment
far farther farthest distance
further furthest distance or
late later latest
latter x
x last
old older oldest people and things
elder eldest people (family)
near nearer nearest distance
x next order | <urn:uuid:807abce5-1ce6-4dbb-af78-97f72e1a7fcd> | 4 | 3.578125 | 0.126516 | en | 0.77888 | http://www.englisch-hilfen.de/en/grammar/adjektive_steig.htm |
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Can biology explain the “winter blues” mood disorder?
Does winter give you the blues? Biology might be able to explain why.
Diedre Ribbens
With the recent decrease in temperatures, waning daylight, and growing snow banks it’s becoming apparent that winter is coming to Minnesota. While many people look forward to the change in seasons, a portion of the population also experiences a change in their mood. Seasonal Affective Disorder, or SAD, is “a type of depression that occurs at the same time every year,” according to the Mayo Clinic website. Many of us in Minneapolis are familiar with SAD, but what are the biological reasons behind this mood disorder?
Some evidence suggests that the prevalence of SAD depends on latitude – the farther north, the greater incidence of the mood disorder. There are theories that this correlation is actually caused by the amount of daylight, as regions to the north have a greater reduction in the amount of daylight hours. Support for this idea comes from the fact that patients with SAD are often prescribed early morning bright light therapy to alleviate the symptoms of their mood disorder. The light therapy is thought to adjust for the delay in dawn and therefore put the patient’s sleep/wake cycle back on track with a more summer-like time of year.
One population that defies this latitude-SAD correlation is the people of Iceland. Icelanders and their descendents have a comparatively low incidence of SAD. Some researchers think that this is due to the large amount of omega-3 fatty acids in their diet (Icelanders eat a lot of fish that contain these fatty acids), but other studies have suggested a genetic variation present among the Icelandic population that shows somewhat of an “adaptation” to long, dark winter days. There has been support for both of these ideas, and it could be that the combination of good genes and lots of fish makes the people of Iceland less susceptible to SAD.
An important conclusion that scientists have made about SAD is that your genetics and your natural circadian rhythm play a large part in your chances of experiencing this mood disorder. Circadian rhythm is a natural system present in your body that regulates your daily cycle. Over the course of a day, your circadian rhythm impacts when you feel tired or hungry, and is largely controlled by your genes. Circadian rhythm can be impacted by the environment, which is why bright light therapy can help SAD patients, but several studies have shown that your genes can predispose you to developing SAD. Several genes involved in circadian rhythm were shown to have slight genetic changes in patients with SAD when compared to a control group of patients without SAD. The two groups were matched for age, gender, and geographic location, so the researchers were confident that the occurrence of SAD was influenced by the genetic changes they observed. These changes were minor, but consistent, making a strong argument for a genetic component to SAD.
If you want to learn more about SAD, or if you are concerned that you might have this mood disorder, visit the Mayo Clinic website or talk to your doctor for more information. The “winter blues” are no fun, but it’s important to know that there are ways to combat these feelings and enjoy the beautiful winters of Minnesota.
Horrocks, L.A., Yeo, Y.K. “Heath benefits of docosahexaneoic acid (DHA).” (1999) Pharmacological Research 40: 211-225
Johansson, C., et al. “Circadian clock-related polymorphisms in Seasonal Affective Disorder and their relevance to diurnal preference.” (2003) Neuropsychopharmacology 28: 734-739
Magnusson, A., Axelsson, J. “The prevalence of seasonal affective disorder is low among descendents of Icelandic emigrants in Canada.” (1993) Arch Gen Psychiatry 50: 947-951
Magnusson, A., Axelsson, J., Karlsson, M.M., Oskarsson, H. “Lack of seasonal mood changes in the Icelandic population: results of a cross-sectional study.” (2000) American Journal of Psychiatry 157: 234-238
Mayo Clinic Website Information on SAD
McClung, C.A. “Circadian genes, rhythms, and the biology of mood disorders.” (2007) Pharmacology & Therapeutics 114: 222-232 | <urn:uuid:1dbf786d-3bac-4067-923e-81289f4327f2> | 4 | 3.609375 | 0.022167 | en | 0.941148 | http://www.examiner.com/article/can-biology-explain-the-winter-blues-mood-disorder |
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Distinguishing between good and dubious advice on how to spend your summer
An article on got me scratching my head and inspired me to write a quick piece about the best way to spend your summer if you are a high school student looking to augment your extracurricular resume for college applications.
One would think by reading the CNBC article that camp is where it's at for students to make the most of their summer breaks from school. I submit that nothing could be further from the truth; however, camp is not nearly as bad as doing nothing over the summer.
While that article is a very good public relations piece for the camp industry posing as a feature story, the truth is that students can find diverse ways in which to pursue their interests and/or passions over the summer without having to get their parents pay $700 a week for camp. Starting one's own business, website, or fundraising endeavor, earning an unpaid or even paid internship or job at the local hospital, doctor's office, advertising agency, or television station, or taking a formal class at a community college are all cheaper and in most cases better ways of pursuing one's potential interests over the summer. Why better? Well, how do I put this? If you have to pay for something that you could get for free (or far cheaper), what does that say about you? It certainly says something about your character, specifically your logic, earnestness, drive, aggressiveness, and overall quality if you need to engage in a pay for play relationship with no barriers to entry other than the size of your (or your parents') checkbook compared to a relationship in which you may be the one being paid or in which no money is transferring hands. Apply this principle to other realms of human existence and you begin to clearly see what I mean. Yet, somehow, the CNBC article fails to mention all of that.
There is no question that some specialty camps that provide students experiences and/or challenges unlike any students could receive elsewhere have a modicum of value. But, by and large, this represents a very small minority of camp experiences.
As a final note for now: remember that all college advice is not created equal. Ask as many people as you can ask about your planned summer activities before committing to them. That way you can ensure - if you want to - that you will be happy over the summer and that your undertakings will help, not hurt, your chances of college admission. | <urn:uuid:855a0105-c3b5-45e1-a9f2-3c5cbc2c40f2> | 2 | 1.757813 | 0.053633 | en | 0.972842 | http://www.examiner.com/article/distinguishing-between-good-and-dubious-advice-on-how-to-spend-your-summer?cid=rss |
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Florida Senate passes private-market flood insurance bill
This morning, March 26, 2014, the Florida Senate passed Senate Bill 542 which could enable private insurers to begin offering Floridians flood insurance. Many parts of the country are feeling the effects as the nationally subsidized flood insurance program (NFIP) scales back. The discussion has been heated in Florida as well as constituents turn to their state senators and state representatives for a way they can stay in their risky flood prone homes.
Libertarian John Stossel wrote a commentary for ABC News stating, "The subsidized insurance goes to affluent homeowners on both coasts — from Malibu Beach, where movie stars live, to Kennebunkport where the Bush family has a vacation home, to Hyannisport, where the Kennedy family has a summer home, to the Hamptons, where I bought my house. The insurance premiums were a bargain. The most I ever paid was a few hundred dollars. Federal actuaries say if the insurance were realistically priced, it would cost thousands of dollars. Why should the government guarantee water's-edge insurance? Why should the government be in this business at all?"
Today, Republican Florida Senate President Don Gaetz said:
“Senator Brandes’ innovative legislation paves the way for a private market for flood insurance in Florida, freeing homeowners from the dictates, irregularity and uncertainty of Washington bureaucrats. Under this legislation, Floridians will have a wide range of flexible options to choose from so they can reach an affordable level of coverage for their property.
“The bill emphasizes consumer choice and will let us control our own destiny in this critical market. This legislation makes Florida a national leader in the flood insurance marketplace and I am grateful to my colleagues for their overwhelming support.”
For years the NFIP has enabled Americans to build on real estate that is in flood zones offering taxpayer funded low-cost insurance to lessen their risk. This manipulation of the real estate market has put the NFIP billions of dollars in debt and Florida law makers were trying to find a balance, bringing in private insurers to pick up the slack. It is unknown how different the premiums will be, however they are expected to be considerably higher than those offered by the NFIP. As provided under SB 542, the insurance will offer options to flood area property owners as to the extent of insurance they are seeking. For instance, they could choose to have the remainder of the mortgage paid off, replace the cost of land improvements or get paid the cash value of their property. The insured will also have further options such as excluding various coverage or including things like reimbursement for living expenses, content coverage, replacement costs for secondary structures and more.
| <urn:uuid:ea54fa1b-a55f-4708-a6b7-c672bd3db269> | 2 | 1.601563 | 0.061091 | en | 0.961881 | http://www.examiner.com/article/florida-senate-passes-private-market-flood-insurance-bill?cid=rss |
Electricity and Magnetism
Magnetic Waves
MAGNETIC WAVES uses the magnetic field created by two large coils of copper. When electricity runs through coils, an oscillating current (AC) induces a quickly fluctuating magnetic field. The fine magnetic powder in the dish responds beautifully to this magnetic flux. Tracing the invisible magnetic currents, long rolling waves of magnetic powder arch and blossom as visitors create a near-infinite number of emerging patterns. | <urn:uuid:6f5eeff9-4c0f-4ff1-a4f6-85d7e07b55c9> | 3 | 3.421875 | 0.809998 | en | 0.849019 | http://www.exploratorium.edu/xref/exhibits/magnetic_waves.html |
America has Voting Fatigue
by Ekua Boateng // Published April 30, 2008
America is very democratic with elections every two years, with municipal elections in the odd years and presidential elections every four years. With this many opportunities to vote, it might lead to voter fatigue and voters rationalsing that it is only worth voting every four years. Therefore arguably the presidential elections cast a long shadow over all other competing elections at the municipal level. It would be a fallacy to say that presidential elections are not worthy of great attention, in saying that we should also remember that elected officials at the municipal level are more likely to have a day to day impact on the life of citizens. It would be wise to heed the adage not to put all your eggs in one basket, only voting in one election when there are opportunities to participate more often. The ironic thing is that the public has more confidence in local government versus the federal government, however municipal elections are most likely to be ignored by citizens.
Maybe voting is taken for granted, due to complacency? The United States has had a stable democracy for many years with no war on U.S. soil since the 19th century. Although there is a clash of civilizations going on, being "the war on terror", it's not part of everyday life but fundamental to the future of America and international relations. When the future development of your country depends on you casting a ballot, you don't think twice about not voting, you feel compelled to. Or has voting simply become irrelevant in an age of mass communication, email, text and social networking sites, is the only way to change opinion through protest and other non-conventional forms of political participation? Arguably protest is complementary rather than the antithesis of voting.
The most notable office of government and the highest office of government is the presidency, of course. However this is not to say that the other parts of government are any less worthy of citizen's attention. It is to this end that it is worth highlighting that state government is intimately and uniquely tied to the citizen in a way that the federal cannot be; it is the state government who deals with the administration of local and national elections, local school boards that help to shape the curriculum of schools, the municipal government who decides on the way waste is collected, it is the state who decides on how often to maintain the roads and decides the sales tax for their locality. It is the everyday and the mundane, but the crucial things that state government controls and makes scrutiny of their actions and policies worthwhile and there is no easier way to send a message to your elected officials than by voting in state and local elections. In light of the fact that there is an extensive set up at the local level, it's really worth thinking about whether or not voting at this level is not cost effective. Therefore voting in all elections is worthwhile and should not be a selective process, but an all embracing effort to support our civic duty to maintain a healthy and thriving democracy. | <urn:uuid:e5fc070d-9f56-4b52-8c78-1a7afa5eaa81> | 3 | 2.75 | 0.158103 | en | 0.971335 | http://www.fairvote.org/research-and-analysis/blog/america-has-voting-fatigue/ |
Radio Procedures
The radio is the heart of any fire department communications system. Your department may not have computerized dispatching, mobile data terminals in the rigs or voice alarms in the firehouse but it probably has a radio system. Your radio system may be operated by the fire department, a regional communications center or another agency such as the police department or sheriff's office. Some systems have as few as a dozen radios while a large system may have well over a thousand mobile, base and portable units.
Photo by Keith D. Cullom/IFPA
A basic function of any fire department radio system is to alert units, stations or personnel and to transmit and receive critical information. Here, chiefs, officers and aides from the Los Angeles County Fire Department keep in contact with companies operating at an incident.
Photo Courtesy of Valley News
A fire chief and an assistant chief use local communications SOPs to make contact with different agencies during an incident in Louisiana.
The radio system will be used every time the fire department is active, including fire and emergency incidents, training, community relations projects and inspection duties. As a result radio operating policies should be an important part of any fire department's standard operating procedures.
A basic function of any fire department radio system is alerting units, stations or personnel and making notifications to various officials and agencies. Another important function is to convey critical information between the units in the field and the base dispatcher. Messages from the dispatcher to the units may include the location of people trapped or in distress at a high-rise building fire, the properties of a chemical involved in a hazmat incident or the location of hydrants in a new industrial park. Examples of messages from the scene to the base may include instructions for incoming units, the extent of the incident and where injured firefighters are being taken.
Information that is being relayed must be the same information received from the source with no additions or subtractions. This applies to the base operator as well as units enroute or at the scene. If a message is complicated, its contents should be written down by the recipient don't trust it to memory.
Photo by Letitia Jenkins
Charlestown, NH, Fire Chief Gary Wallace communicates with other units upon his arrival at a multi-alarm fire. Radio operating policies are an important part of a fire department's standard operating procedures.
Any message should be given at regular speed and in a normal tone of voice. This is not the time or place for theatrical embellishments! Specific reports should be given, i.e.: "The occupant in Apartment 4E is having trouble breathing and the smoke is getting heavier" or "Have the power shut down on Track 2 between the Pine Street and Oak Street stations only."
A unit at the scene must maintain radio contact with the base even at what appears to be a minor or "routine" incident. Conditions can rapidly change (usually they worsen) and having someone by the radio can speed up the process of calling for additional assistance or receiving reports that indicate a situation is deteriorating.
A fire occurred in an electrical equipment room of a very large apartment house on a hot July night. In addition to the heavy smoke conditions extending throughout the building, the electrical system failed very rapidly. Numerous telephone calls were received by the fire department from people who were hot, in the dark and experiencing a worsening smoke condition. Some of the callers were on the verge of panic. The lone dispatcher on duty did an outstanding job of answering the telephone calls and calming the residents. In between taking the calls he attempted to contact any unit on the fireground to pass on the apartment numbers and locations of the people in distress.
After making more than a dozen attempts to contact a unit at the scene, he dispatched the only remaining engine solely to act as a radio contact. This made it necessary to call in a mutual aid engine to cover the district. All that was needed was one member designated to monitor the radio and pass along the information. The department involved in this incident had equipped most of its members with portable radios on both base and fireground frequencies; lack of equipment was not a cause of this problem.
This incident occurred a few years ago before the more widespread use of the incident command system and command posts. However, if no one at the command post is paying attention to the base radio, only to the fireground frequency, the same situation could occur. Many departments have begun to designate the pump operator of the second- or third-arriving engine as the radio contact. This is logical since the pump operator is usually close to the apparatus and can easily monitor the radio.
All department members should be trained in radio discipline. Picking up the microphone and blurting out a message over the air is poor practice since it could "cover" a more important message. This also applies to radio messages given at the scene on the fireground frequency. A unit should contact the dispatcher, wait for an acknowledgement and then transmit the message. If any message you receive is not completely clear to you, ask that it be repeated.
Everyone in the department should be familiar with the terms to be used in extreme situations "Mayday," "Urgent," "Emergency," etc. It should be made clear that these terms are to be used only in very serious situations. Routine use or overuse of this radio terminology will reduce its effectiveness. All unnecessary radio traffic should cease when a message of this type is given. The reason for giving this type of message should be quickly ascertained (collapse, firefighter down or loss of water supply, for example). At no time should a message prefaced by one of these terms be ignored or not acknowledged.
All radio messages should be acknowledged, something that is obvious but often not done. If the receiver does not acknowledge the message correctly, the sender usually has no choice but to repeat it. This results in unnecessary radio transmissions.
Leroy P. McKeever is a supervising dispatcher in the FDNY Bureau of Communications, assigned to the Bronx. | <urn:uuid:f5b6f060-a637-4d24-b465-4671fc967687> | 3 | 3.15625 | 0.024384 | en | 0.956973 | http://www.firehouse.com/article/10545106/radio-procedures?page=2 |
Win32/Adware.RK.AK is a popular trojan virus that can invade target computers without privately and drop corrupt files into Windows registry and even inundate the screen with annoying pop-ups. Like othere threats, this threat also allows remote access and capture sensitive information, especially credit card details, login number/password and so on. Some system files and processes on the computer will be corrupted stangely by this Win32/Adware.RK.AK threat. Web browser settings are also changed without your knowing and consent. Some malicious files or viruses are downloaded automatically on your computer to harm your system more. You should keep alert if you meet such kind of thing and remove Win32/Adware.RK.AK before it destroys your computer further.
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Download Spyware Doctor to remove Win32/Adware.RK.AK. | <urn:uuid:235c32c6-0702-4061-8471-c1bd6707c8d1> | 2 | 1.953125 | 0.02811 | en | 0.812042 | http://www.fixspywarenow.com/how-to-remove-win32adware-rk-ak-a-guide-to-remove-win32adware-rk-ak-from-your-pc/ |
General Question
Yetanotheruser's avatar
Do squirrels really "throw" objects?
Asked by Yetanotheruser (15196 points ) September 27th, 2010
In the video game Tak and the Power of Juju there is a part where one of the obstacles is a nut-throwing squirrel.
In my yard, there are two peach trees, which the squirrels love. They take a bite out of the peaches, and seem to try to drop the half-eaten fruit on my dog.
Is there any evidence that squirrels truly exhibit a behavior of aming or throwing objects at a target?
Observing members: 0 Composing members: 0
9 Answers
daytonamisticrip's avatar
My brother and a couple friends constantly piss of the squirrels so now the squirrels constantly throw acorns at them. They don’t attack anyone else. One time a squirrel was on the telephone wire and my brother was about to peck him with a rock the squirrel ran in the trees came back to the wire and whipped him with an acorn.
global_nomad's avatar
According to one of my friends, squirrels most certainly do throw objects as humans would. He witnessed his friend almost get beamed in the head with an object a squirrel threw at him. It literally leaped into the air and threw a nut at his face because he got too close.
Plus, I’ve seen squirrels do some other crazy stuff. I had to observe one for an hour for lab once and let me tell you, those guys are pretty smart.
SuperMouse's avatar
My boys were climbing a tree a couple of days ago and saw a squirrel grabbing acorns and throwing them on the car parked below the tree.
crisw's avatar
I know it’s a matter of semantics, but I doubt very much that squirrels throw objects. This requires muscle and bone structure that they do not have- as far as I know, primates are the only mammals that throw things. They may purposely drop objects to repel invaders; I don’t have any sources off the bat that say that they do, but some other arboreal animals do defend themselves this way.
WestRiverrat's avatar
@crisw they don’t ‘throw’ items the same way we do. They can propel items with amazing accuracy and some force. If people want to call it throwing, it works for me.
I had one that sat on my roof and threw walnuts at my dogs. Crossman cured that, and he made a great lunch.
weeveeship's avatar
Here is my personal experience with squirrel throwing things. It’s a true story.
So, one time, my friends and I went to play some golf at a nearby par 3 course. I hit the ball and it ricocheted off a tree and landed in the grassy area below the tree. When I went to hit the ball again, I felt something hit my head. It was a pine cone. I looked up and I saw this squirrel making a squeaky noise, like it was saying “Don’t mess with me” or something.
I thought it was going to throw another pine cone at me and it did. It missed this time. I hurriedly hit the ball, just eager to leave the squirrel.
Needless to say, the ball flew off at a weird angle.
Mom2BDec2010's avatar
They can throw things. I’ve seen tamed squirrels and wild squirrels doing it.
ArkansawTraveler's avatar
I have a large pecan tree in my back yard. Every fall, when I start picking up the pecans that have fallen from the tree, local squirrels who find my pecans delectable, “throw” pecans down at me to deter me from my task. I have been hit many, many, times. Sometimes, when I forget to put on a cap or hat, I come in from my pecan gathering and have blood trickling down my face and neck from minor injuries inflicted by the pointed ends of pecans striking my uncovered head. Squirrels are not the cute, cuddly, creatures some people think they are. They are very territorial and aggressive. They’ve even intimidated my dog…a large Chow-Labrador Retriever mix….by throwing pecans at him.
Valerie111's avatar
Yeah, supposedly they do. I still think they are cuties. :)
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Back to Building Envelope Theory Topics
Noise Reducing Barriers
Basics: What are Sound, Frequency, and Wavelength?
If you are not familiar with how sound works, the following brief refresher course may help.
Sound is a pressure wave traveling in air or water. A sound wave resembles the surface wave made when you throw a stone into a calm pool of water, except that the sound wave consists of tiny fluctuations in the air pressure rather than fluctuations in water height, a sound wave can travel in three dimensions rather than two, and the wave speed is much faster (340 meters per second in air).
Sound is usually generated by the vibration of an object or surface such as a speaker cone, a violin body, or human vocal cords. The vibrating surface “radiates” pressure waves into the adjoining air or water as sound. (Sound can also be generated by turbulent airflow, by bubbles collapsing, or by many other phenomena.)
The frequency (number of wave crests per unit time that pass a fixed location) measures the tone or pitch of a sound. For example, a bass guitar plays lower frequencies than a violin. The wavelength, or distance between wave crests, is related to frequency: lower frequencies have longer wavelengths. In air, all frequencies of sound travel at the same speed. When bending waves travel through a flexible structure, however, low frequencies travel faster than high frequencies.
Brief Summary of Sound Control and FOAM-TECH's Role
The reduction of sound transmission from one space to another can be achieved in two ways – sound absorption and sound isolation. The absorption method relies on trapping all of the sound generated in one room in fissures on the room?s surfaces. This is generally not practical in normal building construction, as its effectiveness depends on treating all of the wall, floor, and ceiling surfaces with deep-textured finishes (an example for a typical building application would be carpeting all of the walls, floor, and ceiling) to achieve order-of-magnitude differences in the overall room absorption (see “Exposing acoustical myths” by Richard Strong). The latter method, isolating sound, is the solution more commonly used. To achieve this, it is important to first understand the ways in which sound is transmitted from one space to another.
Generally, sound is transmitted through the boundary walls, ceilings, and floors of the space in which it is generated in three ways:
Penetrations: sound waves are transmitted unimpeded from the first space through openings (doors, windows), or holes (electrical outlets, fan units, etc.) into the second space.
Airborne: sound waves are transmitted through the air from the surface in the first space to the surface of the adjoining space, then re-radiated in the adjoining room.
Structure borne: sound waves are transmitted from the radiating source in the first space or room and impact the sound barrier (wall or ceiling) and are then conducted through structural members to the surface of the second space, then are re-radiated in the adjoining room.
It stands to reason that stopping sound from traveling unimpeded through penetrations is the most important. If sound is able to move directly through openings, the intensity of the sound is not reduced and it will negate the overall sound reduction measures. Gaps around the penetrations from doors and windows, and from plumbing and electrical components can have a devastating influence on the overall acoustical performance of walls, ceilings, and floors. The most carefully designed partition will perform only as well as its weakest link-a gap around a door or electrical box. Standard practice is to stuff these gaps with insulation. Although this approach provides sound absorption, it is not a barrier to sound transmission through (penetrations) and around (flanking) the wall or ceiling. Penetrations can be sealed and flanking transmission can be controlled to some extent by use the of suitable construction details (see the Canadian Housing Information Center [CHIC] “Flanking Sound Transmission in Wood Framed Construction”). To put the importance of properly attending to penetrations in perspective, a miniscule gap of 1/64 inch around the perimeter of a 3' x 7' door will effectively reduce the Sound Transmission Coefficient (STC rating) of the door from STC-36 to a STC-29. A reliable recourse is to use a sound-rated door which is manufactured as an integral unit with its frame and gasket. Sealing around the unit where it is installed into the wall is also critical. To apply this concept to penetrations caused by electrical boxes and plumbing pipes – merely stuffing the holes with absorbent insulation instead of sealing the gap can limit a wall’s overall performance significantly. Polyurethane foam is especially advantageous in this application for isolating sound because it can be used to provide this essential seal which blocks direct sound transmission. Polyurethane’s unique sealing properties enable it to provide an effective barrier to the direct transmission of sound, at the same time it contributes to sound absorption. This is an area where FOAM-TECH’s blower door, pressurized fog, and infrared testing capabilities can be used to locate and seal gaps and seams that compromise the performance of a sound isolation wall.
Airborne sound is more challenging to control than sound which travels through gaps, but easier to manage than structure borne sound. Foam and other fibrous insulation materials can be used effectively in reducing airborne sound. By filling the cavity inside an isolation wall or ceiling with any low-density material, the transmission of sound from one room?s surface through a wall or ceiling to the other room’s surface can be significantly reduced. The advantage of polyurethane in this application is that it serves the dual purpose of sealing penetrations as well as preventing sound from traveling from surface to surface through the air. Polyurethane foam also has the flexibility to be injected into, or spray-applied onto the surfaces in sound isolation bays of stud walls and between the joists of floors and ceilings.
A fact often overlooked when attempting to isolate sound is that structure-borne sound cannot be isolated in the same way as airborne sound. Insulating between studs with a particular insulation material to control airborne sound does nothing to control structure borne sound ? the sound transmitted through the framing. Structure borne sound cannot be controlled with foam or any other low- density infill materials. There are generally three approaches used to inhibit this type of sound transmission. One is nailing resilient channel directly to the studs/joists. Sound must then travel through this flexible channel, which weakens the intensity of the sound waves before they are transferred from the structural members to the drywall or other finishes. This practice is commonly used in the construction of ceilings in hotels, condominiums, and multi-family dwellings. A second method is the use of double-wall construction in which there is a minimum of structural bridging combined with an ample intervening air space. This is common in “party walls” between dwelling units. Finally, installing multiple layers of gypsum board or uninterrupted walls of solid masonry, where mass is the mechanism for reducing sound transmission, is an effective way to control structure borne sound.
Polyurethane Foam For Sound Control
It is important to realize that polyurethane foam can assist in reducing sound transmission, but must be used in conjunction with other measures to provide a totally effective sound barrier. Polyurethane foam, properly quality controlled, will stop sound leakage through mechanical penetrations and at open flanking paths around a sound separation wall, ceiling, or floor. Foam can also significantly reduce airborne transmission through the wall or ceiling cavity itself. Open-cell and closed-cell foams can both be used successfully in sealing penetrations; however, open-cell urethanes are more absorbent and are the best for reducing airborne sound.
To complete sound control measures, air sealing and airborne sound insulation must be supplemented by provisions to stop direct structure borne transmission through the framing. In most applications, this means the use of resilient channel or double wall construction details to break up the acoustic bridge created by structural framing.
Notes on High and Low Frequency Sound
It is much more difficult to keep low-frequency sound from going through a wall than high-frequency sound. Transmission loss (reduction) depends on the mass and stiffness of the surfaces and the thickness and the absorption characteristics of the air space between them. Structural separation of the surfaces on the two sides of the boundary is important where mass is low. For this reason, heavy, stiff, reinforced concrete or masonry are often used as major sound separation barriers in larger buildings to avoid the cost of constructing double walls and ceilings. In lighter wood-framed structures, controlling low frequency sound requires heavier finishes, double wall, or resilient channel construction with special attention to flanking path details.
Notes on Mechanical System Details
To optimize acoustical performance, how the materials are put together is often as important as what materials are selected. For example; while the placement of electrical boxes can cause degradation of stud wall sound isolation, the greatest reduction of sound insulation occurs when there is a short unimpeded path between back-to-back boxes. Larger cavity sizes which allow the installation of sound absorbing insulation between the boxes could reduce the effect of poorly placed electrical boxes, but planning locations spaced well apart will achieve the best results.
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Child abuse in Congo symbol of still more problems
Congolese people, like other believers, spend hours of worship services and believe in the Gospel of Jesus. But pastors are seen as businessmen and the name of Jesus is used for money. Worse, preachers now wear many hats and people do not know who is really speaking on behalf of God.
Pastors are having affairs with their secretaries, members and wives of their assistants and, even worse, with their own sisters-in-law. Congo has suffered a lot of pains in the last decades, from civil wars to economic meltdown. Churches have been a refuge to many people, not just a place of prayer but of fellowship, as well.
Members trust their leaders so much they sometimes loose their values and moral standing and find themselves believing in nonsense stories. Congolese children are victims of those inappropriate ways of treatment. Kids were kidnapped and forced to serve in the army by the militias and government.
The poverty in Congo is portrayed as an attack by the devil on families. Even government authorities, who are educated people, have forgotten basic economic theories and allowed some church leaders to mistreat kids and referred to them as signs of woes to families and causes of sufferings and poverty.
Many children in Kinshasa, the capital of Congo, are kicked out by their families, live in the streets and public places and are called sorcerers because some pastors say they follow dark practices. More than half these children are between the age of four to 15. Organizations are trying to help, but the concern is that some churches are the ones allowing this separation in families.
Church is God’s entity and bears the mission of assembling people of God. Unfortunately, lately some people use the name of Jesus to steal from people and say God will bless if you sell your house and give your fortune to the church. Some pastors keep members in their churches for more than seven days of prayers and fasting and some couples even consider the idea of divorcing because pastors create conflict among them.
These pastors sometimes tell women to stay in churches for additional times of prayers, which may range for one to two weeks or even a month, and support women or men who rebel against their families and spouses. Those new churches in Congo are just not helping.
I will not forget the work of those early missionaries that came from Europe and the U.S.A. to Congo to introduce the gospel of Christ, whether in Catholic, Protestant or nondenominational churches. Their tremendous work is still bearing fruit and we do not see from them these kinds of deploring behavior toward members.
The big question is where the Congolese government stands in this abuse and exploitation of its people by some pastors. Our government is the most irresponsible government of the planet. Elected in 2006, president Kabila has not achieved any of the goals he sold to voters during the campaign. One example of his mismanagement is a deal with Chinese investors. On the surface it sounds fine, with the Chinese agreeing to build $6 billion worth of roads and railroads and another $3 billion in mining infrastructure in return for rights to operate the mines. But the project never started and Kabila’s core constituencies are now questioning it because his term will end in 2011.
Where is the country heading? Nobody can answer this question, while Kabila uses the tactics of his predecessors to intimidate and arrest those who will speak out. The least government leaders could do is protect those kids who are lost and have no support from their families, but instead they quietly observe those inhumane acts. Africa in general suffers from this belief in witchcraft and politicians all over the continent are looking for evils spirits to challenge their opponents.
How shall we overcome these challenges my country is going through? Can the world stand with Congolese children and show compassion by condemning those acts? Can humanitarian organizations go to Congo and see how kids are treated? Can we use God’s message to change people’s live and not to condemn or steal from those suffering already?
How are we representing God to those who do not know Him yet? I just ask for the world’s compassion to children of Congo.
Doug Kulungu is from Kinshasa, Congo’s capital, and hopes to work in the government when he returns. | <urn:uuid:b2b82545-0d63-4788-8bd2-1934b682c058> | 2 | 2.078125 | 0.019332 | en | 0.969825 | http://www.fresno.edu/story/31209 |
Cross-compiling with Crossdev
Revision as of 18:53, November 2, 2014 by Sputnik (Talk | contribs)
Crossdev is a great feature of Funtoo that allows you to easily make a basic toolchain for your embedded devices and alternate platform computers. It can be used for distcc for example, so a slow x86 or ARM computer can be assisted on compiles by a much faster x86_64 computer(s). Some, but not all, packages can also be compiled stand-alone without distcc on the faster machine. You can also use the faster 64 bit machine to make kernels for these slower machines, a big advantage.
This is quite a big subject and the aim of this article is mainly to help new users with some Funtoo specific things relating to cross-compiling that are unique to Funtoo. So we won't waste time here on things that are covered elsewhere, only those specific things.
Let's get started!
The first step is to install crossdev. Crossdev is written by Mike Frysinger who is quite a busy fellow and does a superb job. But occasionally there are little hiccups with crossdev. If ever you are having a problem with crossdev it doesn't hurt to try downgrading to previous versions. I say this because on the date this article is written, 11-1-14, there are issues with the two latest versions of crossdev - 20140917 and 20141030 (see But version 20140729 works flawlessly. I have seen this happen from time to time, nothing to worry about.
# emerge -av crossdev
Funtoo Specific Considerations
The most important thing to understand is that Funtoo gcc ebuilds are different from Gentoo ebuilds. This is because Daniel Robbins has made improvements to gcc to help with general usage. Unfortunately, a side effect has been that they no longer work with crossdev. But not to worry, there is an easy way around this issue and my understanding is that Funtoo intends to rectify it at a later date.
Another issue is that you cannot have a toolchain with exactly the same minor number as the current gcc on your system. You must use an ebuild of a slightly different vintage. I believe this issue occurs for Gentoo users also. For example, at the present time Funtoo current uses sys-devel/gcc-4.8.2-r3. So you could use gcc-4.8.1, or 4.8.0 but not any version of 4.8.2 (the revision -rx doesn't matter, can't do it). If you try to do that gcc will compile and then fail in the installation phase due to file collisions. In some cases with embedded devices you may wish to use much older versions, in which case this becomes a moot point.
Finally, a general issue with using crossdev with any distro is that you must sometimes juggle the various versions of binutils, gcc, glibc and linux-headers so that they are compatible with one another. This is the easiest problem to deal with, just use versions of the same time vintage, in extreme cases you may need to start changing revisions to get all of them to compile.
That's it, that's what you need to know.
GCC Ebuilds
The workaround to make gcc compile is to use Gentoo gcc ebuilds. They are readily available at the Gentoo attic: Going back historically for as far as you'd ever need. Go to the sys-devel/gcc folder and right click on a version and copy the link. I suggest a version that isn't even in the Funtoo tree, then there is no ambiguity about what is being used. Next copy it to your local repository, we'll assume /usr/local/portage here. So if you haven't already got a sys-devel/gcc directory there you could do
# install -d /usr/local/portage/sys-devel/gcc
Now go to that directory in your terminal and wget <the link you copied>. At the end will be some fluff you don't want, delete all the way back to the word .ebuild and hit enter. In a second or so you'll have that ebuild in your repository. If you haven't done this before you'll need to link the files directory from the tree, so that it can find patches, etc. So do this
# ln -s /usr/portage/sys-devel/gcc/files .
Finally you must create the manifest
# ebuild gcc-<version>.ebuild manifest
And now you are ready!
Really, that's it?
Yes. Well, one other thing that you may need to do, if you've chosen a gcc version that is in the Funtoo tree, crossdev may get confused and try to install the tree version. At the beginning of the crossdev run it creates links in the crossdev repository, most people will just want this to be their local repository. So you can let crossdev run for a few seconds to create those links and then cancel it with ctl-c. Then go to the crossdev repository and delete the gcc link and replace it with a link to /usr/local/portage/sys-devel/gcc. Here's an example in my local repository:
# ls -l /usr/local/portage/cross-avr
total 0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 50 Nov 1 00:41 avr-libc ->/usr/portage/dev-embedded/avr-libc
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 47 Nov 1 00:41 binutils -> /usr/portage/sys-devel/binutils
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 32 Nov 1 00:41 gcc -> /usr/local/portage/sys-devel/gcc
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 42 Nov 1 00:41 gdb -> /usr/portage/sys-devel/gdb
Note that the link for gcc is different from the others, which point to the normal Funtoo Portage tree, it points to my local repository, where the Gentoo ebuilds are stored. Most of the time also you would be linked to sys-libs/glibc, avr-libc is a bit unusual but normal for avr cross toolchains.
Once the link is fixed (if it even needed fixing), just hit your up arrow to get the same crossdev command line again and let it run through this time. You'll be rewarded with a shiny new cross toolchain at the end..
Of course, there is a bit more to making a cross toolchain, but as stated at the beginning of this article, only the unique differences for Funtoo are shown here. You should find nearly all the rest you need to know at Only the top 1/4 page is needed.
One note, at the current time (11-1-14) you need to preface your crossdev command line statement with USE="-sanitize". This is a known bug (not Funtoo specific) that will soon be fixed in crossdev. You will find -sanitize in the package.use files, but you still must do it on the command line, else gcc will fail. For example the following command line was successful for me today
# USE="-sanitize" crossdev --binutils 2.23-2 --g 4.8.1-r1 --l 1.8.0 -t avr -P -v | <urn:uuid:5395952f-b91a-4ee1-beb4-dfacf40d4e6f> | 2 | 2.015625 | 0.074852 | en | 0.920864 | http://www.funtoo.org/index.php?title=Boot-Update&direction=prev&oldid=8276 |
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Frank V. Szasz (1926-1995) was an internationally noted portrait artist who brought his considerable talent and mastery of old world techniques to the study of the “great individual” archetype for The Creative Process.
Frank lived through violent and tumultous times and more than once he literally owed his life to his art.
Born in Budapest, Hungary, he worked for the underground making documents during WWII. Then, as a 19 year old art student, celebrating the end of the war, he was conscripted off the streets by occupying Soviet troops and transported to a forced-labor camp in the Soviet Union.
Frank V. SzaszFrank spent the next six years in the camp and would have likely died, as thousands did of hunger and exposure, had the camp commandant not learned of his skill as an artist. Reassigned to less rigorous duties, he made camp signs like, “Those who don’t work, don’t eat,” as well as an immense portrait of Joseph Stalin, which would later prove to open the door to America.
For extra food rations, Frank would do sketches of the guards. He learned however, to deliver the portrait unfinished because once done a guard would refuse to complete the trade with the promised bread. Years later Frank would tell the story to explain his habit of putting in the ears last.
Hungary 1967, National ArchivesIn 1956, after being released from the prison camp, he was forced to flee his homeland in the failed Hungarian Revolution. It was a hasty caricature of Stalin that verified his story to a skeptical US cultural attaché in Austria that won him entry papers to the United States.
Landing in New York in 1957, unable to speak English, Frank found work as a book illustrator and within a year had attracted a job offer from Hallmark Cards founder Joyce Hall. From then on Frank made his home in the Kansas City metropolitan area.
Frank eventually turned his attention to his first loves of portraiture and teaching. He painted such notable individuals as US Presidents Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Nixon and Ford, Egyptian President Anwar El Sadat and Mrs. Jahan Sadat, and Queen Noir of Jordan, as well as leaders in the arts such as violinist Issac Stern and pantomimist Marcel Marceau.
In addition to teaching painting at the Kansas City Art Institute and art history at Rockhurst College, Frank gave private lessons and lectured around the world. However his greatest joy came in introducing children to the wonders of art and the collegial relationship he formed with fellow artists who met regularly for many years in his studio to paint together.
Frank Szasz' Global PathMarker portraits are more than the physical likeness, they are also a record of his admiration for each person’s creativity and courage.
He is deeply missed.
Other portraits Frank painted for the Creative Process include Albert Schweitzer, Eleanor Roosevelt, Pope John XXIII, Count Basie, Sarah Vaughan, Franz Liszt, Johann Strauss, Chief Leon Shenandoah of the Iroquois, Chief Jake Swamp of the Mohawk, Hopi Messenger Thomas Banyacya and five other Native Americans portraits. They have been published in a limited edition “gold” biographical bookmark. Please contact for availabilbity.
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February 2012 Archives
The Gentlemen's Bar Car
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After I graduated from high school, I attended the University of Massachusetts in Boston. I used to take the New Haven Railroad from my hometown of Mansfield to Back Bay Station. Several of my friends from high school went to Northeastern University and other schools, and we used to play bid whist on the train ride. This meant reversing some of the seats so that we could sit opposite each other. As I recall, the cars were old and dirty. When the conductor passed from car to car, sometimes we'd get hit with a blast of cold wind, rain or snow. Frequently, there was no heat! I remember one of my friends telling me there was a snack car on one of the trains going home. Sometimes we'd get soda or coffee and a sandwich. The car had a bar counter on one side, and tables and chairs on the other. It was kind of a treat!
COURTESY: Shutter Stock
A few years ago, one of the Oral History interviewers asked me to do some research on the well-known bar car, which became something of a club for Greenwich commuters during the 1950s or so. This intrigued me, since I had a history of riding railcars earlier. This turned out to be a very interesting assignment! I found an Oral History transcript, which had a lot of information.The story starts in the 1950-1960 time frame. Many people from back country took the train into the city. One of these people did a favor for the President or another official of the railroad. In return, this official arranged for an express train to make its first stop out of New York the Riverside Station . That meant many riders from Old Greenwich and Riverside were able to take the 5:11pm train out of the city.
There were many powerful business and finance people who took the train. One of them decided to rent or buy a barcar, and hired the railraod to haul the car. He even hired a Pullman Porter to serve drinks and sandwiches. The bar car would be on the same 5:11 train every night. Although these were semi-private, the public was permitted to enter.
The car to Riverside was one-half Pullman bedrooms and one-half bar lounge. Commuters could use the bedrooms. The car was nicely furnished with upholstered chairs and paneled walls. However, there was no air conditioning. Windows couldn't be open due to the smoke, dust and dirt. Instead, a block of ice was placed in one end of the car and a fan blew cool air through the car! People would normally sit in the same seat, while others stood and talked with a drink in their hand.
Women executives were a rarity in the 1950s, but there were a few. One was Libby O'Brien, who served as "Den Mother". Libby liked to celebrate holidays such as Halloween, Thanksgiving, New Year's Day, St. Patrick's Day and July 4th. She would hang streamers and decorations. There were also hats, special plates and special food. Photos were taken, and some were framed and ended up on the wall.
At one point, the railroad decided to replace the rail car with a newer version. After all, the car that was being used had exceeded its lifetime, having travelled thousands miles. The new car had benches on the side. It was nowhere as comfortable or warm as the old car. One of the riders, Norton Mockridge, who was an editor for The World Telegraph & Sun, wrote a tongue-in-cheek article, lamenting the loss of the barcar. A representative of the President of The New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad met with Mockridge and offered a newer "old car" . It would had the same amenities. The only stipulation was that it had to be named like some of the other cars. Workers would paint the name opn the side. It was called "V:XI G.B.C." for the 5:11 Gentlemen's Bar Car. All the memorabilia in the old car (e.g. paintings) would be transferred to the newer car. Some people enjoyed the informal groups, and even had lapel pins, tie clasps and earrings made with the "V:XI" logo. It became a well-known clique.
Over time, attrition took its toll. Some riders retired or transferred out of the area. Others decided to travel by automobile. By the early 1960s, the club car began to lose its appeal. Major metropolitan areas still have trains to move people in and out of the cities. You may encounter a snack car on Amtrak or the Acela, but the Gentlemen's Bar Car (a way of life) is gone. We'd rather sit and read a book or newspaper than exchange anecdotes with our fellow passengers.
I remember a song by Arlo Guthrie from the 1970s titled "Riding On The City of New Orleans". Train workers are playing cards on a train while the train travels thousands of miles over the rails. The workers aren't even paying attention. Life is passing them by. Guthrie is lamenting the old days when rail travel was romantic. The railroads played an important role in history. Trains used to carry construction materials and the people to build our big cities. They even helped us expand into the western frontier. It reminds me of a much simpler time. Trains still carry people back and forth from major metropolitan areas; but they may never again play such a critical role in our countries history.
SOURCE: Commuting: Bar Car on Train, (Pearson, R.); OHP Transcript, 1992.
About this Archive
January 2012 is the previous archive.
March 2012 is the next archive.
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EDTA Chelation Therapy
The word chelate comes from the greek word chele which refers to the claws of a crab. Chelator molecules are molecules which are able to form claws or ring structures around heavy metals and other minerals. These molecules abound in nature, the most well known examples being the chlorophyll molecule and the hemoglobin molecule, which are chelator molecules for magnesium and iron atoms respectively.
EDTA (ethylene diamine tetra acetic acid) is a synthetic amino acid chelator molecule which has the ability to attach itself to metals and minerals, binding them with strong affinity. Subsequent renal excretion allows these metals to be removed from the body. EDTA is FDA approved for the removal of toxic metals ions, such as lead. EDTA is also typically used for a variety of heavy metal toxicities, including aluminum, cadmium, arsenic, etc. Small case control studies, epidemiological data and observational studies suggest that EDTA may be beneficial in treating vascular disease as well, although conventional physicians and medical groups do not support the use of EDTA chelation treatment for vascular disease at this time, since to-date no large randomized controlled clinical trials have been performed addressing this question.
EDTA Chelation therapy is given in a series of intravenous infusions in the physician’s office. This therapy is combined with a Whole Person Healing Assessment, which outlines a comprehensive medical management program based on the principals of Functional , Integrative and Holistic medicine. Under current treatment protocols, EDTA Chelation therapy is safe and relatively free of side effects.
I received training as a Certified Chelation Therapist from the American College for the Advancement of Medicine, which is the leading medical society offering rigorous training in the technique. Please see the ACAM website for additional information on EDTA Chelation therapy.
Link: www.acam.org
If you feel that EDTA Chelation therapy may benefit you, please schedule a Whole Person Healing Assessment for a comprehensive evaluation of your health and your potential treatment options. You can follow the link below to schedule your appointment. Love and Aloha.
Link: www.hawaiiwholepersonhealing.com/contact
1. L. Terry Chappell, M.D. Applications Of EDTA Chelation Therapy. Alt Med Rev 1997;2(6):426-432
2. Theodore C Rozema. The Protocol for the Safe and Effective Administration of EDTA and Other Chelating Agents for Vascular Disease, Degenerative Disease, and Metal Toxicity. Journal of Advancement in Medicine 1997; 10 (1): 5-100. | <urn:uuid:9ce8aad8-4b8f-4991-92e8-895d15aad6fa> | 2 | 2.328125 | 0.034285 | en | 0.918637 | http://www.hawaiiwholepersonhealing.com/hilo-chelation-therapy |
Two cities claim one conquistador
Published: Sunday, March 31, 2013 at 4:32 p.m.
Last Modified: Sunday, March 31, 2013 at 4:32 p.m.
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One of St. Augustine's three Juan Ponce de Leon stautues. Some historians say it should be pointing to the city of Melbourne.
But the backstage buildup to those events is slathered in the sort of controversy that provoked William Faulkner's famous take on human nature: "The past is never dead. It's not even past."
On April 2, 1513, the Spanish conquistador became the first European of record to see our lovely subtropical peninsula, which he named "La Florida." He slogged ashore the following day. Exactly 500 years later, in the absence of precise logs indicating where Ponce de Leon left bootprints, St. Augustine and Melbourne Beach will celebrate the milestone by sponsoring separate festivities roughly 125 miles apart.
"This wasn't about history," charges activist Sam Lopez, an ethnic Puerto Rican. "This had more of a racial tone to it."
"De Leon was a murderer and thief searching only for what riches and land he could claim for a queen on the other side of the world," Rebecca Howie said. "Nothing about his arrival on this continent justifies a celebration.
"In fact, so far as I would be concerned, a funeral march might be in order."
History, revised
Today, St. Augustine counts three Ponce de Leon statues.
"But legends die hard," Gannon said.
"As far as exactly where he came to shore no one really knows," says Kathy Catron, a spokeswoman for the St. Augustine, Ponte Vedra & The Beaches Visitors and Convention Bureau. "What we have are logs that show he marked 30 degrees 8 minutes north latitude, which is just north of St. Augustine."
"Unfortunately," adds St. Augustine's Kit Keating, "Dr. Gannon says he's satisfied with Peck's journey, but it had nothing in common with Ponce de Leon. Peck was in a 30-something-foot sailboat; Ponce de Leon had caravels 50, 60, 70 feet long, all heavily loaded."
Keating, marketing manager for the Fountain of Youth Archaeological Park, concedes that popular notions of Ponce de Leon searching for the Fountain of Youth is "just a myth."
But that's as far as he'll budge.
"I don't see how he could've sighted land at 30 degrees 8 minutes, north of St. Augustine," Keating says, "and landed the next day in Melbourne Beach."
Melbourne's claim
"I think it's mainly about celebrating an event that's going to come and go," says Rob Varley, executive director of Florida's Space Coast Office of Tourism. "St. Augustine is where they really enjoy history, and we can't take anything away from them on that end."
"Just a handful of people stopped it," Lopez says, "and it was a real shame.
"I remember one guy said Ponce de Leon was just like Hitler. He said he came here and murdered women and mutilated children, and I said, 'Wow, you don't know what you're talking about, prove it.' He said Ponce de Leon was being taught in a genocide class in Yale, but we got the information from Yale and there's nothing in there about Ponce de Leon, and I started asking, 'Isn't anybody going to stand up to these lies?'"
"Ponce de Leon, like everybody else, had flaws," says Ben Brotemarkle, executive director of the Florida Historical Society in Cocoa. "Yes, he was looking to enslave people when he came here. That's a fact. To say that wiping everyone out was his goal is an overstatement. But it's true that the door he opened led to the death of many people.
"The unfortunate thing, from a historical perspective, is that the island wound up not getting named anything at all," Brotemarkle said. "There's a misconception out there that Florida has shallow historical roots that run no deeper than a theme park when, in fact, we have more history than any other state."
When Brotemarkle contemplates Florida's pre-Columbian civilization, he thinks of the Apalachee, "the great farmers of the Panhandle" who developed storage systems for their harvests. He imagines the Calusa, the "very artistic mask-makers" who rewarded Ponce de Leon with a fatal arrow wound in 1521, along with many others.
"There were over 200,000 Timucua alone, from north Florida to the center of the state," Brotemarkle said.
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March 26, 2009
Does the U.S. Need a New Call to Public Service? Two Views
No: When government organizes public service, it cripples public spirit
What if public service made you more selfish? It's a counterintuitive notion, to be sure. President Barack Obama, after all, has promised to make public service "a cause of my presidency" to help get the country back on its feet. Ironically, though, his notions of "public" and of "service" are both heavily responsible for the very selfishness he wants to eradicate.
Following his proposals would not only fail to help the country -- it might even make things worse.
Far from "change," Obama's concept of "the public" dates back to the French Revolution and was popular a century ago among intellectual elites such as Woodrow Wilson, who considered former notions of public service outdated. To unleash the energies of the American people, Wilson said, Washington experts needed to coordinate them.
Yet that profound observer of America, Alexis de Tocqueville, knew better. He had seen centralized coordination of public service in pre-revolutionary France, and was aware that it crippled public spirit. Why? Because when everything was run by "a powerful foreigner called the government," Frenchmen saw no need for community at all.
Service was no longer a normal part of their everyday lives. Instead of aiding his neighbors when problems arose, the typical Frenchman waited for government to clean up the mess -- and grew selfish and individualistic. Why help the homeless man down the street when there was a government program for that?
In contrast, Tocqueville was amazed by the vibrant public spirit in America, where there was no centralized public service. An American believed that his town was his responsibility, and worked hard to make it better -- not because of some airy devotion to "the public," but because he had relationships with neighbors.
Unlike Tocqueville, who thought a large, diverse country was too complex for bureaucrats, Wilson thought it was too complex for its citizens. He wanted his fellow professors running the whole country, rather than small groups of Americans running their little parts of it.
Today, another professor is president, and he believes the answer is Wilson. Yet despite a barrage of Wilsonian public service programs from Presidents Franklin Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, the problems Obama identifies are largely the same problems Wilson saw -- too little public spirit, and too little government organizing it.
The solution, Obama believes, is taking those same programs and making them bigger. He wants to increase AmeriCorps from 75,000 to 250,000 workers, the Peace Corps to 16,000 and YouthBuild to 50,000. He wants to revive President Clinton's idea of giving college students a tuition break for participation in such programs, to reallocate 25 percent of work-study funds to favor public-service jobs, and to expand high school service-learning programs.
But if these programs, in so many generations, haven't solved the problems, why would they do so now? In reality, Tocqueville was right -- public spiritedness is best fostered through real responsibilities in a local community. Putting people in full-time government programs sends the message that public service isn't for everyone, and paying them defeats the whole idea of service.
Brian Brown is Research Associate in the Center for American Studies at the Heritage Foundation.
First Appeared in the Atlanta Journal Constitution
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Backgrounder #2542 on Energy and Environment
April 7, 2011
By Any Other Name, Energy Cuts Still Stink
Abstract: Eighty-five percent of the energy that fuels the American economy is from coal, petroleum, and natural gas. An unavoidable by-product of burning these fuels is carbon dioxide (CO2). Analyses of the Waxman–Markey cap-and-trade bill make clear that CO2-reduction targets will not be met through increases in renewable energy production. So, cutting CO2 means cutting energy use; and cutting energy use means throttling economic growth. The President’s recently proposed clean-energy standard (CES) seeks cuts that are just as severe as those under Waxman–Markey.
When cap-and-trade legislation died last year, President Barack Obama famously said, “There is more than one way to skin a cat.” This may well be true, but the cat gets the same bad deal either way. So it is with global-warming legislation and the economy. Government-forced cuts in energy use, whether by cap and trade or by a clean-energy standard, would cut incomes and destroy jobs.
While some ways of cutting CO2 emissions can impose greater inefficiencies than other ways, forcing cuts in CO2 pushes the economy below its best growth path. There are no silver-bullet solutions that avoid this problem.
Under cap and trade, the government creates an artificial scarcity of fossil fuels by limiting the CO2 emissions that burning these fuels inevitably creates, with impacts very similar to an energy tax. A CES can mandate identical CO2 cuts but implement these restrictions via an awkward and even less efficient set of mandates and regulations. The CES approach is at least as costly as the cap-and-trade proposals that Congress repeatedly rejected because of their extraordinary costs.
Taxing Milk
A hypothetical illustration may help clarify the economy-crushing impacts that a CES shares with a carbon tax or cap and trade.
Suppose the federal government imposed a tax on milk of $3 million per gallon. Further suppose that this tax suppresses demand such that only one person (presumably a very rich person) buys milk, and he buys only one gallon each year. The tax revenue would be $3 million per year—very small by Washington’s standards. In fact, some would claim that if a penny were rebated to all 300 million Americans, there would be no net impact from the tax, since $3 million would be both collected and distributed.
However, the dairy industry would be devastated by this tax as milk production drops from billions of gallons per year to a single gallon. The facilities that process milk would be shut down and their employees laid off. Dairy farmers would have to slaughter their herds and scrap their dairy houses. Innumerable other activities related to the dairy industry would stop, along with the jobs and value they generate for the economy. This lost economic activity (in economics jargon, the “excess burden” of the tax) is measured by lost national income—e.g., gross domestic product (GDP). This lost GDP, and not the $3 million collected and distributed, is the net cost of the tax. In addition, people would not have the health benefits and enjoyment of consuming dairy products.
Capping Milk
Suppose that instead of a $3 million per gallon tax, the government created a cap-and-trade program requiring a permit for each gallon of dairy products that is consumed. Further suppose that the permits are auctioned by the government to the highest bidder(s) and that they auction only one permit each year.
In this case, bidding for the permit (by the same rich consumer as in the tax example) would push its price to $3 million, and the impact would be identical to the $3 million dairy tax. The $3 million does its round trip through the government (the money comes from the one consumer and goes to whomever the government chooses) and the dairy industry is still decimated along with its jobs and contribution to GDP.
A Non-Dairy Agriculture Standard
Instead of using a milk tax or a cap-and-trade plan for milk, the government could create a non-dairy standard that specifies the fraction of agricultural output that must come from sources other than milk.
One gallon of milk represents about 0.0000000008 percent of total farm income. So a 0.9999999992 percent non-dairy standard for U.S. agriculture could also limit milk production to one gallon per year—decimating the dairy industry and cutting GDP as effectively as a $3 million per gallon tax or a one-gallon production/consumption cap. The only difference is that the government, in this case, does not collect and spend the $3 million.
Depending on how the standard is implemented, the price of milk may not rise. For instance, if the standard were achieved by mandating the use of disposable diamond-encrusted drinking cups for milk, the cost of drinking milk could be $3 million per gallon even though the price of milk may remain at $3.50 per gallon. Here the costly purchase of equipment necessary for consuming milk—not the milk’s price—is what drives the consumption down.
Why Mandated Conservation Is Costly
The average person needs about 1.5 gallons of water per day in direct consumption just for survival. Fortunately, most of us have access to many more gallons than that, and we can use water for all sorts of other valuable uses.
However, suppose the government set a target of limiting consumption for each person to 1.5 gallons. This goal could be met with a tax or cap-and-trade program—each of which would need a mechanism for significant transfers of wealth—or a simple but onerous law directing that no one can consume more than 1.5 gallons per day.
Because all water would be used for drinking, there would need to be alternatives for doing all the other important things currently done with water. Waterless laundry technology, waterless bathing technology, waterless industrial processes, waterless carwashes, etc., would all have to be developed and implemented. All of them would be costly, many very costly. In addition, there are likely some things for which there is no waterless substitute.
A program analogous to a CES for the water example would be to set standards that require use of the waterless technologies and ban activities where there is no waterless substitute. It might then be argued that consumers are saving money on water even though the overall cost of the various processes can be much higher.
In Hot Water
Proponents of efficiency standards often argue that even including the costs of the new, more expensive technology, the overall cost of the activities will fall over time. The implication here is that consumers and producers are unwilling to save money. A more likely explanation is that those contending that markets do not take full advantage of efficiency have themselves ignored other factors that should be included.
The author’s 1993 Maytag dishwasher used nine gallons of hot water and took 84 minutes to clean a normal load of dishes.[2] The current model Maytag dishwasher uses seven gallons of hot water and takes 120 minutes to clean a normal load of dishes.[3] This increase to a two- to three-hour cycle is typical and is the result of efficiency mandates that are met by using fewer gallons of water with much longer cycle times.[4]
A Clean Energy Standard
In his State of the Union address, President Obama set a clean-energy target of 80 percent. That means that 80 percent of electric power must be generated by energy that he defines as clean. If the energy source emits colorless, odorless, non-toxic, necessary-component-for-photosynthesis CO2, then it gets tripped up on the President’s definition of clean. Though he listed natural gas in his list of clean-energy sources, subsequent comments out of the White House suggest that natural gas will receive only partial credit. That is, a fraction of natural gas generation will count toward the “clean” 80 percent, while a fraction will go toward the catch-all 20 percent.
Since natural gas emits about 60 percent as much CO2 as coal on an equivalent energy basis, it may receive only a 40 percent clean credit. If so, then Obama’s CES starts to look more and more like cap-and-trade, especially given the intention of allowing producers to trade clean-energy credits.
Each unit of electricity from natural gas emits about 0.6 times as much CO2 as coal-fired electricity.[5] Counting about 40 percent of gas-generated electricity as “clean” puts the current overall power mix at about (coincidentally) 40 percent “clean” and 60 percent “dirty.” To meet the overall goal of 80 percent “clean” by 2035 means that two-thirds of this “dirty” power needs to be transformed to “clean.” In other words, the CO2 emissions from power generation need to be cut by two-thirds by 2035.[6]
Cap and Trade by Comparison
The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) analysis of the Waxman–Markey cap-and-trade bill projected CO2 cuts from electricity generation of about 60 percent by 2035. These cuts in electricity generation comprise about 85 percent of the overall cuts in CO2 emissions for the whole economy.[7]
Since the proposed CES seeks to cut 66 percent of CO2 emissions by 2035, the cuts proposed in the CES are comparable to, if not greater than, the cuts targeted under Waxman–Markey.
Further, the EPA analysis of Waxman–Markey projected a near doubling of nuclear power generation over the next 25 years. Given the Administration’s attempts to block access to developing the Yucca Mountain repository for nuclear waste, the fact that not one new nuclear power plant has been licensed for over 30 years, and the lack of nuclear regulation reform in the Administration’s discussion, building 70–100 nuclear power plants in the next 20 years is a heroic assumption. The recent events in Japan hardly increase the odds. In the absence of a nuclear renaissance, meeting the CES targets would be even more costly.
Costs of Cap and Trade
The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Data Analysis analyzed the economic impact of the Waxman–Markey cap-and-trade legislation. The bill would have had the following effects:
• Cumulative national income losses, as measured by GDP, of $9.4 trillion between 2012 and 2035;
• Single-year GDP losses reaching $400 billion by 2025 and ultimately exceeding $700 billion (note that the total economic damage from the recent earthquake and tsunami in Japan is projected to be $200 billion to $300 billion)[8]; and
• Net job losses of 2.5 million in 2035.
A Less-Flexible Waxman–Markey
Though a CES may sound innocuous, the CES proposed by President Obama has targets that are nearly identical to the Waxman–Markey cap-and-trade bill. Since it has less flexibility in meeting these targets, it can be expected to have economic impacts that are at least as great. In short, it seems that the President’s CES is not so much another way of skinning the cat as it is another way of saying it.
Show references in this report
[1]Congressional Budget Office, “The Costs of Reducing Greenhouse-Gas Emissions,” November 23, 2009, p. 5, at http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/104xx/doc10458/11-23-GreenhouseGasEmissions_Brief.pdf (March 30, 2011).
[2]Maytag Owner's Manual, p. 8, at http://www.kitchenaid.ca/assets/pdfs/literature/DWU8860AAE.pdf (March 25, 2011).
[4]KitchenAid, “Energy Efficiency Dishwashers,” at http://kitchenaid.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/1846/~/energy-efficiency-dishwashers (March 25, 2011).
[5]U.S. Department of Energy, Energy Information Administration, "Carbon Dioxide Emissions from the Generation of Electric Power in the United States," July 2000, at http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/page/co2_report/co2report.html (March 8, 2011).
[6]This view is overly kind to the CES because cutting emissions comes from switching fuels and cutting energy use. While most previous attempts at a CES (called a renewable portfolio standard since they did not include nuclear power or natural gas power) allowed some use reduction to count as clean energy produced, not all energy-use cuts will be included in this calculation. When emissions reductions from energy cuts do not count toward meeting the CES, the clean energy ratio, as defined, is lower—necessitating even further fuel switching to meet the CES target of 80 percent.
[7]U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Office of Atmospheric Programs, EPA Analysis of the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009, H.R. 2454 in the 111th Congress, June 23, 2009, p. 60, at http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/economics/pdfs/HR2454_Analysis_Appendix.pdf (March 22, 2011).
[8]Sarah Veysey, “Japan Quake, Tsunami Economic Losses Could Reach $300B: RMS,” Business Insurance, March 21, 2011, at http://www.businessinsurance.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20110321/NEWS/110329997 (March 23, 2011).
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In a state over a state in Andhra
It seems that all is over for the Congress and the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) in Andhra Pradesh. The recommendations of the Srikrishna Committee report made public on Thursday have complicated matters further. Instead of finding a solution to a problem created by a premature announcement about the creation of a separate state of Telangana on December 9, 2009, the committee has made things worse. Not that anyone expected the Srikrishna panel to come out with a magical solution. But the Congress and the TDP, the two main players in the state till now, will have a lot to worry about.
The possibility of a revolt in the grand old party over this is already being speculated upon. Whether that happens or not, the Congress, which came to power at the Centre on the strength of seats it got in Andhra Pradesh both in 2004 and 2009, is on a sticky wicket.
The Congress has been defeated in the polls even earlier on account of its own dissensions. But this time around, it is riding a tiger it cannot dismount and both the Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) and its chief K Chandrasekhar Rao and former chief minister YS Rajasekhar Reddy’s son, Jaganmohan, find themselves sitting pretty as the state is going through its worst crisis.
It is difficult to understand why the core committee of the Congress made this announcement on party president Sonia Gandhi’s birthday in 2009, when the mandate in the parliamentary and assembly polls held a few months earlier under the overall leadership of YSR was for a unified Andhra Pradesh. If this was done to marginalise Jaganmohan Reddy, it was foolish. Jaganmohan was in the Congress and should have been brought on board along with other key elected members of the state while the matter was being deliberated in the party.
It is being said that some top party leaders who were ignored by the late YSR during his lifetime and whose egos had been bruised influenced this decision. Another somewhat unbelievable theory is that some key Congress leaders who do not wish party general secretary Rahul Gandhi to assume more power strategised on how to keep him weak and dependent. But theories like this will obviously gain credence in the absence of any concrete plan to quell trouble in the state, which has been its main force during the past two parliamentary polls.
The logic initially given was that Chandrasekhar Rao’s fast had influenced the Congress decision. In fact, by announcing a separate state of Telangana, the Congress leadership strengthened Rao who was losing ground after YSR had marginalised him completely in state politics. What seems to be happening now is that both Rao and Jaganmohan are gaining ground in their respective areas at the expense of the Congress.
Had YSR’s politics been continued, there was a possibility of even actress Vijaya Shanti, a charismatic figure, joining the Congress. Now Rao too cannot afford to concede any ground since the entire Telangana region, particularly the students of Osmania and Warangal universities, will ensure that he stays where he is.
There also appears to be a tacit understanding between Jaganmohan and Rao that they would not cross swords for the time being and continue to agitate in their respective strongholds — Rao in Telangana and Jaganmohan in Rayalaseema and coastal Andhra.
For the majority of Congress MPs and MLAs, the worry is that they may get edged out in this eventual struggle. In order to ensure their survival, they may have to devise a strategy. Even Chandrababu Naidu and his TDP seem to be at their wit’s end. The TDP is on verge of disintegration since its stand on the issue has been ambivalent.
For the Congress, the challenge is to remain relevant. If that does not happen, the repercussions created by Andhra politics will be felt both in the state and Centre. Between us.
also read
Telangana Congress leaders leave for 'last' Delhi visit
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I haven't always been a businessman, Chamber of Commerce member and community booster type of person in the mainstream of society. When I was younger, I existed, for lack of a better word, on the margin, as I didn't fit into any cliques, mainstream or otherwise, during my school years.
Living on the margin, you meet interesting people, some that I wouldn't want to include in my clique, if I ever had any desire to form a clique, as they were just not nice individuals. One of the good guys, though, I met in my last year of college. He was sociable, witty, friendly and interesting in a good way. The reason his life existed on the margin was not his choice, but because he was openly gay.
Several decades ago, mainstream society marginalized gay people, at least the few that would acknowledge their homosexuality. Those who were identified as gay were routinely ignored, or, worse, condemned, feared or hated by the majority of people.
I had a collection of misfit friends in college that knew what it is like to be judged, so they didn't question my friendship with him, at least. As I got to know this individual better, I noticed that he would just disappear for lengths of time.
One day, I asked him about his lapses and he told me that he would check himself into a mental health facility to get help coping with life, sometimes using drastic measures.
That revelation still haunts me, although I hadn't really thought about him until recently when the debate about same-sex marriage in Minnesota came to the forefront. There is a push at the capital by legislators to allow same-sex marriage after voters last fall defeated an amendment to rewrite the state constitution to prohibit it.
Some opponents in the debate still say they believe that homosexuality is a choice. Yet, I ask myself why would an individual choose a so-called lifestyle that drives him to such deep despair? No one would choose that.
Although I have no idea what happened to him after college, as he wasn't a close friend, I now wonder how his life turned out. As gay people became more accepted in our society over the past few decades, did he find some inner, lasting peace so he wouldn't feel the need to disappear at times?
I also wonder if he found a partner to share in his life. If he did, would being denied the choice to legally declare this relationship a marriage also cause despair?
Some opponents of same-sex marriage argue that it will weaken traditional marriages. My wife and I have been married for more than 30 years. There are threats to our marriage, but gay couples showing their commitment through marriage isn't one of them.
In fact, I speculate that if this long-ago friend lived with a partner in our neighborhood today and was an important part of our lives, a real marriage for him could strengthen our marriage. With society accepting his committed relationship, perhaps that would help make him a whole person, one that could contribute fully to the community and add enjoyment to our married lives since he wouldn't have that anxiety looming over him.
I realize that in rural Minnesota, there is not much support for same-sex marriage, at least as evidenced by the vote totals on the constitutional amendment last fall.
That's because there aren't many gay people, at least openly gay people, living in rural Minnesota. When people meet gay individuals or when friends or family members come out of the closet, heterosexual people find out they are just as human as the rest of us and they often change their minds. Confronting the humanity of an issue will often overcome abstract, theoretical principles, which is why this issue is changing so rapidly across the country, even in rural areas, albeit at a slower pace.
This is also a religious issue for many. Yet, not all religions agree on this and a change in legal status wouldn't force religions to change their beliefs or practices. Besides, the religious argument seems to center around homosexuality, not marriage, and a change in the law won't change human nature. There will still be just as many gay people as before.
The difference with a change in the marriage status will be that gay people won't be treated as second-class citizens. They won't be denied the ability to take care of family issues, health care directives and other rights most of us take for granted.
It's time for Minnesota to join our neighbor to the south - Iowa, where little has changed for the worse in society since same-sex marriage was made legal four years ago - and other states that have opened the doors to gay couples.
I realize this stance has the potential to put me back on the margin of rural society. However, that's my choice and I know I'm fortunate to have that choice. However, I also feel the need to speak out for those decent, loving citizens that remain marginalized through no choice of their own. | <urn:uuid:2ba1873c-e801-4b27-b46c-ba096197a8f5> | 2 | 1.828125 | 0.044881 | en | 0.989507 | http://www.hometown-pages.com/Content/Spring-Grove-Herald/SGH-Opinion-Columns/Article/PUBLISHER-S-NOTEBOOK-Time-for-Minnesota-to-stop-marginalizing-gay-couples/26/186/48235 |
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Social Media: The Choice of a New Generation
Posted: Updated:
Not another set of rules? I'm afraid so. Today's new forms of social media -- Facebook, Twitter, blogging, Skype, texting, YouTube, Instant Messaging, and those indispensable smart phones -- require follow-us-wherever-we-go rules, and they are changing as you read this! Social media are the new e-mail. These networking tools have exploded in consumer popularity in both the business and social worlds.
Growing up, we were bound by our first set of rules: the basic courtesies of saying please, thank you, and may I. But online, social graces are even more important, as there is no face-to-face communication (with some exceptions). We don't always realize how much body language and facial expressions work to convey meaning and tone. Without them, the reader can only puzzle out words on a screen.
It's hard to over-emphasize the importance of the new social media in our lives. According to, Facebook has 500+ million users; its fastest-growing segment is 55- to 65-year-old females. The second-largest search engine in the world is YouTube. E-mail is old hat to generations Y and Z. There are currently over 200 million blogs; the majority of bloggers post or tweet daily. The great majority of companies use LinkedIn as their number-one tool to find employees. And there are currently over one billion iPhone applications.
Sherrick Murdoff of SRM Consulting ( helps companies of all sizes accelerate their growth through implementing Social Media. About Influence Marketing he says, "we control 50% of the relationship but influence 100% of it."
The Internet today means something very different than it did just a few short years ago. As with any culture (and cyberspace has a culture all its own), good online behavior is easy if you know the rules. If you don't, you're liable to offend friends and colleagues without meaning to do so. To make matters worse, we tend to forget that with each point and click there is a human face on the other end, not just numbers, pictures or characters.
So just what are the rules? Here are some basic Do's and Don'ts.
Do remember that your "digital signature" will be posted on the Internet from the minute you use any kind of social media.
Do use spell check. Although electronic messages are meant to be quick, proofread them as carefully as you would a handwritten note.
Do remember that deleted messages can be discoverable in a court of law. Just because you delete something doesn't mean it won't be seen later on.
Do try and respond to messages in a timely manner (ideally within twenty-four hours) so the message will not be lost.
Don't pass on jokes or attachments. Viruses are much too commonplace and can ruin a friendship or a hard drive.
Don't use capital letters except to highlight a positive word or statement.
The Ultimate Social Media Etiquette Handbook sums it up best: "Remember that social media communities are real relationships and real conversations, and you should treat them as such. It's not a me, myself, and I mentality. It's about the collective community, and the common good."
Focus on the Golden Rule as it applies to social networking: Don't ever put anything in writing that you don't want to see on the cover of the New York Times, especially if you ever plan to run for political office.
Lisa Mira Grotts is a recognized etiquette expert and the author of A Traveler's Passport to Etiquette. She is a former director of protocol for the City & County of San Francisco and the founder of The AML Group (, certified etiquette and protocol consultants. Her clients range from Cornell University and Microsoft to Nordstrom and KPMG. She has been quoted by The Sunday Times, the San Francisco Business Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and USA Today. She has appeared on various radio and television stations, such as ABC, CBS, and Fox News. To learn more about Lisa, follow her on and
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Syntax of Eph 4:11
Date: Thu Nov 14 1996 - 16:00:59 EST
On Tue, 12 Nove 1996 Rod Decker wrote...
On Thu, 14, Nov 1996 Demenico Lembo wrote...
teachers" are a single group: the fourth one in the series. It *must*
be so, just because there is a single article, which unifies "pastors
KAI teachers" as a single group. We have one slight ambiguity left.
Are the same people both pastors and teachers? Or are pastors and
teachers two different subsets of the whole group? Well, the common
way to express the latter thing would be to use TE ... KAI (TOUS ...
think of people that are both pastors and teachers. However, this is
strongly probable but not entirely sure. What the text means could
are pastors or teachers. In this case, the unifying perspective would
be a bit weaker and partly subjective. I.e., the fourth group would be
kind of a residue: the whole minus the first three. To say the same
thing without any ambiguity, the text should read "pastors H
I did a search through the LXX and found no exact parallels. It
appears though that the single article TOUS puts pastors and teachers together
and probably for the practical theological consideration that pastors
or shepherds (POIMENAS) lead the sheep to food and water, so
teaching (leading God's flock to spiritual food) is a function of
pastoring. In 1Tim 3:1, those DESIRING (EPITHUMIA) the office of
Bishop (the Elder or Pastor), he must be "able to teach."
Elsewhere "teaching" is a separate ministry gift (Rom
12:7 and I Cor 12:28).
Fred Haltom
Associate Professor of Christian Ministries
Central Bible College
Springfield, MO 65803
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Chapter I
Integrating Strategy,
Air Doctrines, and War Plans
World War II witnessed the first full application of strategic air power in war. At this writing, in fact, World War II has provided the only such full-scale application. Because that great effort was unique, it should be worth analytical examination, not only in terms of actions and effects, but more particularly in terms of objectives, strategic plans, and results of operations designed to achieve these ends. A brief review of the development of U.S. strategic air doctrines and their nature at the outbreak of American participation in World War II should serve as a useful prelude to discussion of the strategic air war itself.1
Air Pioneers
Airplanes were used, of course, in World War I, although on a very limited scale. But even with the limited use and, for the most part, inconclusive results of air operations, proponents of air power began to appear. One of the most notable of these early proponents of the virtually untried air weapon was Lt. Gen. Jan C. Smuts, who headed a
commission established by the British Cabinet to investigate the dual problems of air organization and home defense. The commission came into being largely as a result of popular dissatisfaction with the ability of the air defenses to deal with German Zeppelin and Gotha bombing attacks against London. The report, submitted to the British Prime Minister on August 17, 1917, stated:
It is important for the winning of the war that we should not only secure air predominance, but secure it on a very large scale; and having secured it in this war, we should make every effort and sacrifice to maintain it for the future. Air supremacy may in the long run become as important a factor in the defense of the Empire as sea supremacy.
Smuts himself said in submitting the report of his commission:
The day may not be far off when aerial operations, with their devastation of enemy lands and destruction of industrial and populous centers on a vast scale, may become the principal operations of war, to which the older forms of military and naval operations may become secondary and subordinate.
These were strong words regarding the potential of the new air weapon, coming as early as 1917. Smuts was a ground soldier speaking, not as one wedded to an historic art, but as a farsighted statesman. He was characterized by Air Marshal Sir John C. Slessor, Royal Air Force (RAF), in his memoir, The Central Blue, as "one of the greatest men of our time -- of all times." Significantly, the report of Smuts's committee led to the establishment of the Air Ministry in December 1917 and the Royal Air Force in April 1918. Then, of course, there was Maj. Gen. Hugh M. Trenchard (later Marshal of the Royal Air Force Viscount Trenchard), who fended off attacks on the fledgling RAF by the other services and postulated advanced notions concerning the possibilities of the air arm.
Support for what we call today "strategic bombardment" came from other directions as well. For example, as early as 1916 the Italian aircraft manufacturer Count Giovanni B. Caproni proposed to destroy German and Austrian naval vessels by bomber attack against fleet
bases. In January 1917, he argued that his large triplane bombers, if built in sufficient numbers, could destroy Austria's factories, thus ending the war with Italy's main opponent. In October 1917, Caproni, in collaboration with his friend Lt. Col. Giulio Douhet of the Italian Army, prepared a "Memorandum on the `Air War' for the U.S. Air Service," in which he suggested that mass attacks made at night by long-range Allied bombers against industrial targets deep within Germany and Austria could definitely overwhelm the enemy by substantially reducing his war production at the same time that Allied production was increasing.
More must be said about Douhet. Actually, he had begun to write about military aviation as early as 1909. During World War I, he was imprisoned for a year (1916-1917) for criticizing Italy's wartime military policy. But Douhet, like Brig. Gen. William "Billy" Mitchell of the U.S. Army Air Service, whose career was parallel, became more influential in the post-World War I period. Douhet's wartime court-martial was expunged in 1920, and he was promoted to general officer rank in 1921. He completed his first serious treatise on military aviation -- Il Dominio dell' Aria, or The Command of the Air -- in October 1921. In this essay, he proved to be a strong proponent of strategic air warfare. In essence, he advocated creation of an independent air force made up of a fleet of bombers, to be accompanied by "battle planes" -- bombers equipped with many guns to fight off hostile pursuit planes en route to strategic targets. This bomber force would win command of the air by attacking enemy aircraft factories and flying facilities and would destroy the enemy's will to resist by bombing his population centers.
Soon after the end of World War I, airpower concepts were deeply influenced by two other military strategists. One was the great British military historian Capt. B. H. Liddell Hart. In his book Paris, Liddell Hart pointed out that Germany had surrendered when her armies were still powerful and her borders were still intact. The military power to wage war was still there but the civilian "will to resist" -- to continue the struggle -- had collapsed. Liddell Hart contended that prosecution of war is a product of two fundamental factors: military
capability and political will to resist or persist. Either or both can be undermined, with resultant national defeat.
The other military strategist was Billy Mitchell. In the post-World War I period he was the most outspoken proponent of air power in our own country. The story of his advocacy of an independent air force and his insight into the potential of the air weapon has been told and retold and does not need repeating here. During the war, Mitchell had been exposed to ideas of other air pioneers, notably Trenchard, Douhet, and Caproni. He came out of the war convinced that an air force had a mission independent from the other services and, to be effective, air power should be concentrated in the hands of airmen. The extent to which Smuts, Trenchard, Caproni, and Douhet influenced Mitchell is speculative, but in the post-World War I period his espousal of a principal role -- a war-winning role -- for air power is indisputable.
Mitchell's ideas concerning air power came cascading in a stream of publications and public statements. So wide-ranging were his views, it is difficult to pin them down in one brief quotation. Perhaps, however, the principal thrust of his arguments was summed up in his statement before the House Committee on Military Affairs in 1926, when he declared:
There has never been anything that ... has changed war the way the advent of air power has. The method of prosecuting a war in the old days was to get at the vital centers of the country in order to paralyze the resistance. This meant the centers of production, the centers of population, the agricultural districts, the animal industry, communications -- anything that tended to keep up war. Now in order to keep the enemy out of that, armies were spread in front of those places and protected them by their flesh and blood. You had men killing there, sometimes for years before these vital centers were reached. It led to the theory that the hostile army in the field was the main objective, which it was. Once having been conquered, the vital centers could be gotten at ... In the future, we will strike, in case of armed conflict, when all other means of settling disputes have failed, to go straight to the vital centers, the industrial centers, through the use of an air force and hit them. That is the modern theory of making war.
War Department Doctrine While Mitchell advanced ideas on the potential of air power far in excess of the capabilities of the air weapon of his day, the Army General Staff continued to be nourished on the time-honored concepts of warfare, which proclaimed the infantry was the "Queen of Battle." Within the War Department, the two decades after World War I were a period of conflict between the traditionally minded Army members of the General Staff and a new breed within the Army, the upstart airmen of the Army Air Corps. The conflict concerned both the place within the Army for the new air arm and, more specifically, the role of air power. Gen. John J. Pershing, recently returned from Europe as head of the victorious American Expeditionary Force and Chief of Staff of the Army in the early 1920s, threw the weight of his considerable personal prestige against air power. In fact, airmen might have been squelched into oblivion if the American public had not shown an interest in aviation. Public clamor was at least partially responsible for forcing the government to convene a series of military and presidential boards and commissions to inquire into the role and organization of aviation. The reports of these various investigative agencies played no small role in keeping the question of military aviation alive.
With one exception, the report of the Lampert Committee, which in many respects endorsed Mitchell's ideas, the reports reflected a general consensus that the air arm could serve a useful purpose as an adjunct to the Army and Navy. However, there was no place for a separate air force in the military establishment, and certainly there was no separate air mission. The prevailing view was summed up in the July 1934 report of the Baker Board, perhaps the best known of the various boards. It contended: "Our national defense policy contemplates aggression against no nation; it is based entirely upon the defense of our homeland and our overseas possessions, including protection of our sea and airborne commerce." The purpose of the Army was "to hold an invader while the citizen forces are being mobilized. . . . The idea that aviation can replace any of the other elements of our armed forces is found, on analysis, to be erroneous.
Since ground forces alone are capable of occupying territory, the Army with its own air forces remains the ultimate decisive factor in war."
Jimmy Doolittle, a member of the Baker Board and an experienced Army aviator, filed a minority dissent. He said, "I believe that the future security of our Nation is dependent upon an adequate air force. This is true at the present time and will become increasingly important as the science of aviation advances and the airplane lends itself more and more to the art of warfare." He maintained that a separate air arm was needed for the proper development and employment of military aviation.
The issues between the advocates of air power and older services were clearly drawn. The Army and Navy would only acknowledge the airplane as a useful auxiliary to the surface forces in the battle to defeat the enemy. Smuts, Caproni, Douhet, and Mitchell advanced ideas and concepts that embraced a war-winning potential for air power and advocated air attacks against "the vital centers, the industrial centers, the centers of population of the enemy nation," in order to destroy the capability and the will of the enemy to continue the war.
But these visionary concepts of the air pioneers lacked specifics. How does one go about destroying or paralyzing these vital centers? Are cities really the best targets? Are there other targets? How should air power be controlled and employed? What effect is intended and expected? In short, what strategic and tactical doctrines were needed to accomplish the ends?
To my knowledge, the Army Air Corps had no official body of doctrine in the early 1930s. It was a part of the Army. What little guidance the Air Corps received for the conduct of its operations was contained in training regulations issued by the War Department. But these instructions could scarcely be called doctrines for the employment of air power. While other branches of the Army had boards -- the Infantry Board, the Cavalry Board, the Artillery Board -- the Air Corps had none at the time. In the absence of similar Air Corps agencies, the Chief of the Air Corps relied upon the Air Corps Tactical School as a center for producing concepts of airpower employment. So
in reality, the teachings of Air Corps Tactical School, as far as airmen were concerned, were the accepted doctrines of the Air Corps and served as guidance for forming strategic air plans. These American air doctrines and concepts of air strategy were evolved at the Tactical School in the 1930s.
Air Doctrine and Strategic Principles
The Air Corps Tactical School was established at Langley Field, Virginia, in 1920. Beginning as a Field Officers' School, it did not expand its scope of instruction and stress airpower employment until the end of the decade. Then, the school was blessed with a group of gifted leaders and independent thinkers -- Robert Olds, Kenneth Walker, Harold Lee George, Donald Wilson, Muir "Santy" Fairchild -- names honored by the Air War College, Air Command and Staff College, Air Force Academy, and throughout the modern Air Force. But there was another stalwart leader who has received less recognition, though he should be listed among the best. This was John F. Curry, Commandant of the Air Corps Tactical School from 1931 to 1935, a period when the principal texts were prepared for Air Warfare and Principles of Air Force Employment. Much of the basic strategy of American air power was developed under his regime. At a time when the War Department was threatening dire punishment from above, Curry protected the freedom of his faculty. He made possible the development of doctrines of air power which formed the basis for the creation of the Army Air Forces (AAF) and its employment in World War II. Under his leadership the school bridged the transition from broad generalities of pioneering air prophets to more pragmatic application of air power in attainment of specific objectives.
The early visionaries and proponents had made great claims for air power. Their strategic concepts all depended upon one basic tactical concept accepted by the Tactical School as a fundamental doctrine: bombers could reach their targets and destroy them. The strategic airpower doctrine fashioned at the school rested on five fundamental aphorisms:
1. Modern great powers rely on major industrial and economic
ROBERT OLDS, instructor
instructor 1931-1934;
department director 1936-1940
instructor 1938-1940;
department director, 1940
instructor 1932-1934;
department director 1934-1936
COL. JOHN F. CURRY, ACTS Commandant 1931-1935
systems for production of weapons and supplies for their armed forces, and for manufacture of products and provision of services to sustain life in a highly industrialized society. Disruption or paralysis of these systems undermines both the enemy's capability and will to fight.
2. Such major systems contain critical points whose destruction will break down these systems, and bombs can be delivered with adequate accuracy to do this.
3. Massed air strike forces can penetrate air defenses without unacceptable losses and destroy selected targets.
4. Proper selection of vital targets in the industrial/economic/social structure of a modern industrialized nation, and their subsequent destruction by air attack, can lead to fatal weakening of an industrialized enemy nation and to victory through air power.
5. If enemy resistance still persists after successful paralysis of selected target systems, it may be necessary as a last resort to apply direct force upon the sources of enemy national will by attacking cities. In this event, it is preferable to render the cities untenable rather than indiscriminately to destroy structures and people.
Since this philosophy had not been demonstrated in war, it was not universally accepted even in the Air Corps. There was little argument that nations needed industrial systems or that bombs could paralyze such systems. But the third premise ("the bombers will always get through") was vigorously protested by the pursuit people. However in 1932, when these concepts were first advanced, bombers rode the crest of technological achievement. They were just about as fast as the current fighters. Having the enormous advantage of the initiative, they could pick the time, place, altitude, and route of attack. Moreover, they could capitalize on the principle of mass, concentrating at the critical point. Defending pursuit planes possessed no such advantage. This was before the day of radar or even an observer corps. This still left one variable: Could the bombs be properly placed and, if so, how large a force was necessary to reasonably assure getting the requisite number of hits on the target? We worked up tables of probability based on peacetime, daylight, visual bombing practice. These served as a guide in selecting the size force that would assure the desired bomb hits and destruction.
Accepting these basic tactical precepts and doctrine, the Air Corps Tactical School turned to the problem of formulating strategic doctrines for the support of national policy with air power. National policy could vary within wide limits, and it was not feasible to cover all purposes and situations. The school concentrated its efforts on describing principles and doctrines involved in war with one or more modern, major powers. It accepted as the national strategic purpose the crushing of enemy opposition to the extent necessary for support or attainment of the nation's goals and aims. The school claimed that air power could break down the enemy's "will to resist" and "capability to fight" by:
1. Destroying organic industrial systems in the enemy interior that provided for the enemy's armed forces in the field.
2. Paralyzing the organic industrial, economic, and civic systems that maintained the life of the enemy nation itself. (Some of these systems supported both the capability to fight and to sustain a modern social and political structure.)
3. Attacking the people themselves, especially those concentrated in the cities. (The school considered this method an undesirable stratagem, one to be adopted only as a last resort.) The school recognized a fourth obligation of air power: the defense of one's own sources of power.
This was not, of course, the sole employment of air power. The flexibility of the air force enabled it to operate in parallel with or in support of the surface forces, and there would be occasions when this was the best employment. Still, the school believed the methods listed above constituted the unique contribution of strategic air power to the winning of wars. This line of reasoning ran directly counter to official War Department doctrine, which asserted the Air Corps had no mission beyond that of the army. The army alone could conquer and hold territory, the only way to win wars. To do this, the army would first have to defeat the enemy army, and the function of the Army Air Corps should be to support the army in this endeavor. The Tactical School did not deny the need of the army for air support. But it insisted there was another and vital function of air power-the waging of strategic air warfare beyond the scope of the battlefield.
Development of principles of strategic air warfare simply had to embrace offense and to consider basing of offensive air forces within range of foreign nations. But the War Department, reflecting national policy, strictly forbade any teaching other than defense of our borders. The school sought to overcome these limitations in two ways. If we were embroiled in a war involving major European nations, we could anticipate having allies who could furnish bases for our air forces. And official policy notwithstanding, strict adherence to defense would not win wars. The school therefore undertook to formulate doctrine for the air offensive against modern industrialized nations. In this regard, it introduced a subtle but very significant variation from the doctrines of Douhet and Mitchell. The latter advocated destruction of factories and industrial centers and population centers. The school favored destruction or paralysis of national organic systems on which many factories and numerous people depended, but also accepted the need for destroying a few highly important factories.
What were those critical organic systems whose destruction would paralyze a modern state? Being strictly forbidden to examine foreign countries, the Tactical School proposed to analyze the industrial might of America. An analysis of our own industrial, economic, and social complex and its vulnerability to air attack would serve for the development of doctrines and principles of air employment anywhere. Furthermore, the analysis would accord with national military policy, inasmuch as air defense was first priority and we needed to know what was most vulnerable to enemy air attack in order to plan defenses.
It soon became apparent that the very heart of our industrial system was the electric power system. Practically all our industrial and economic functions were totally dependent upon it. Then in order of importance were these systems: transportation, chiefly our railroads; fuel, including fuel-refining and distribution; food distribution and preservation; and steel manufacturing, the manufacturing process being vital to both the war-making capacity of the state, and to the operation of the economic and industrial functions of the state itself. In addition, there were a number of highly concentrated manufacturing factories whose destruction would add a crippling blow. Among these plants were electric generator, transformer, switch gear, and
motor manufacturing; locomotive manufacturing; shipbuilding; aluminum and magnesium.
Viewing this concept, as applied to our own nation, the Tactical School concluded:
Loss of any of these systems would be a crippling blow. Loss of several or all of them would bring national paralysis. As to repair of this devastation, it would seem obvious that any air force worthy of the name should be able to destroy faster than replacement could be effected.... The airplane gives us a weapon which can immediately reach the internal organization of an enemy nation, within range, and therefore bring about the defeat of that nation. The fundamental innovation lies in the fact that whole nations now lie within the combat zone.
As to strategic air intelligence, the school deemed it vital to planning and operations of strategic air warfare. It should be collected in time of peace and cover the economic, industrial, and social structure of potential enemies. On the question of counter-air force operations the school was moot. It was agreed that the "bombers could get through," but penetration of strong enemy defenses might prove intolerably costly. Defeat of the enemy air defense force might be necessary to assure the air offensive's success against the interior targets, and in any case would greatly increase the air attack's effectiveness. If so, the best method would entail air attack of enemy bases, enemy aircraft and engine factories, enemy sources of aviation fuel, and attrition through air combat attendant upon these missions.
The Tactical School took a look at one of our most troublesome problems -- direct attack against enemy centers of population (the cities). Others, including Douhet, had advocated direct attack on cities. The school opposed the concept which was generally described as an attack on enemy morale. The idea of killing thousands of men, women, and children was basically repugnant to American mores. And from a more pragmatic point of view, people did not make good targets for the high-explosive bomb, the principal weapon of the air offensive. People can scatter, be evacuated, or be protected in shelters. On the other hand, the cities were control points in the complex fabric
of the industrial structure -- the management centers and focal points of management communications. If their evacuation could be forced, the industrial structure would suffer a serious blow. Dropping high-explosive bombs on selected focal points might destroy vital civic systems, render the cities untenable, and force their evacuation. A study of New York revealed that a very small number of hits on a few sensitive spots could cause collapse of the life-sustaining vital systems. These points included such sensitive elements as water supply conduits and pumping stations; railroads that literally carried the daily requirements of food; highway bridges and tunnels; and terminal facilities of the river and harbor barge system that served as a vast distribution switchyard for distribution of goods and food. This seemed a far better application of air power than scattering bombs in urban areas.
The school sought to sponsor another doctrine, one dealing with the tactical need for and provision of escort fighters to protect the bombers. Here it was unsuccessful, running into the adamant opposition of the Pursuit Section and the Pursuit Board. With plausible reasoning, the fighter experts asserted that a fighter with the range to accompany bombers would be so large and heavy that short-range interceptors could easily outfly and outfight them. Progress toward developing a long-range fighter was the two-place PB-2 produced by the Consolidated Aircraft Company. But the rear gunner was merely an unnecessary burden with little firepower. Very fast and maneuverable for its day and with relatively long range, the aircraft might have been developed into an effective escort fighter. However, the idea for its tactical employment was fuzzy, and there was no charismatic leader to support its doctrine. It is tragic that this was so, for the lack of long-range fighters nearly halted the air offensive in 1943. Seeking the only avenue open to them, the bombers increased armament and massed defensive firepower from tight formations.
In putting forth the preceding arguments, airmen at the school contended that, in seeking the ends of strategic air warfare in pursuit of national goals, offensive air forces could be used in several ways. They could be used as the primary war-winning force, supported or followed by land and sea forces, as suggested by Air Marshal Smuts.
Or they could function as a collateral force, coequal with land or sea forces, operating against separate but related objectives. In either event, the strategic air forces would have to have strategic intelligence peculiar to their own needs. To be effective in the pursuit of these two air strategies, air power demanded concentration of effort and unified command and control by an airman at the highest echelon of command. The very flexibility of air forces made possible diversion of the strategic element to a third role -- support of land or sea force objectives. This could occur when there was a dearth of vital enemy industrial targets, the existence of an immediate national emergency, or the overriding authority of superior command. Hence strategic forces could be shifted to a support role. Still, if air forces were designed and structured solely for the role of supporting land or sea forces, they would be incapable of fighting effectively in a strategic war.
Besides the specific doctrines of air employment, the Air Corps Tactical School accepted and adapted the War Department Principles of War to air power. The most important were:
The Objective Determine clearly what you want to accomplish and stick to it.
The Offensive Only offensive action against the enemy will produce victory.
Mass Concentrate the maximum possible effort toward attainment of the main objective. Do not permit the effort to be diverted from the principal purpose.
Economy of Force The converse of the principle of mass. In all other operations use as little force as possible in order to concentrate mass on the principal effort.
Security Unless the base of power is defended and secure, it will be very difficult to sustain the strategic offensive and to continue to prosecute the war.
The Tactical School devised a form, the Air Estimate of the
Situation for Strategic Air Warfare, to assist in determining the optimum application of offensive strategic air power. The form's rationale was fairly simple, the most significant considerations being: define clearly the purpose, the goal -- what you want to accomplish; consider the obstacles and opportunities in the broad situation; list the actions (tasks) which, if successfully accomplished, would attain the purpose, in order of desired priority; consider the force needed to carry out each task; consider the capability of your own forces and determine which of the tasks come within your capability; consider the risks and possible losses of each task; select the tasks that will achieve your purpose most effectively without unacceptable risk and loss, and which come within your capability; prepare a plan to fulfill the selected tasks. We used this form in preparing all the strategic war plans. "Purpose" was the keynote: select targets that contribute most to the purpose. The rationale also underscored the principle of "Capacity of the Force." That is, do not attempt tasks beyond your capability. Keep your operations within the capability of the forces available. It is far better to destroy a few vital targets completely than to attack many targets inconclusively.
Though airmen at the Tactical School were slowly evolving a concrete body of doctrine for the employment of strategic air forces, the Army Air Corps had neither the organization nor the forces required to implement it. The closest the Air Corps came to achieve either in the 1930s was the establishment of General Headquarters Air Force (GHQ Air Force) and the appearance of the B-17 bomber.
The GHQ Air Force
In 1934 the Baker Board, while rejecting the concept of independent strategic air warfare, did recommend the creation of a consolidated, centrally controlled air strike force, the GHQ Air Force. GHQ would be the General Headquarters of the Army command in the field, and during wartime the Commander of the GHQ Air Force would be directly subject to the GHQ Commander. When the United States was not engaged in war, the GHQ Air Force Commander was responsible to the U.S. Army Chief of Staff. In keeping with the Baker
Board recommendations, the GHQ Air Force was activated in March 1935.
There were three views as to the purpose of the GHQ Air Force. One view saw it as GHQ Aviation Reserve. This was a role advocated for Army aviation after World War I. Parts of the GHQ Air Force would be apportioned out and attached to field armies and corps as the situation demanded. A second view saw the GHQ Air Force as a cohesive air-striking force to be employed as a unit in furtherance of the Army mission. Still a third view -- one held by airmen -- was that it was a unified striking force available for use beyond the sphere of activity of the Army as well as in support of the Army. In other words, airmen viewed the GHQ Air Force as an air force with missions of its own. The first Commanding General of the GHQ Air Force, Maj. Gen. Frank M. Andrews, felt no doubt about the issue and left no doubt in the minds of his associates. To General Andrews, the GHQ Air Force was an instrument of air power.
Actually, however, as the War Department underwent a series of reorganizations after 1939 in the face of the growing possibilities of U.S. involvement in World War II, the concept of a GHQ went out the window and with it the GHQ Air Force. The GHQ Air Force was too short lived to leave any outstanding legacy of air doctrine. But it had demonstrated in several dramatic flights that the bomber had superb flexibility and could quickly be deployed to remote bases. Significantly, despite the fight of airmen for acceptance of airpower theories, as late as 1939 the War Department was still saying: "The mission of the air component of the Army is to perform effectively the air operations devolving upon the Army in its assigned functions in the national defense.... Air operations beyond the sphere of action of the surface forces are undertaken in furtherance of the strategic plan of the commander of the field force."
American Strategic Air Doctrine
The Army Air Corps had no official basis on which to promulgate air doctrine. It was a part of the U.S. Army and doctrine was issued by the War Department for all branches of the Army. Nevertheless, by
the 1930s the teachings and texts of the Air Corps Tactical School were accepted as doctrine within the Air Corps. The Army Air Corps considered that strategic air warfare embraced five optional categories:
1. Direct attack on enemy armed forces, including air forces on the ground and in the air; on concentration of troops; on naval and maritime elements; and on logistics in the combat zone.
2. Local air defense of friendly military forces and bases.
1. Indirect air attack of enemy armed forces by destroying the industrial elements which supplied and supported the enemy armed forces. Target objectives included industrial systems that made war production possible, such as:
1. Electric power systems (generating stations, transformer and switching stations, dams and penstocks).
2. Natural fuel, refining, and transfer systems; synthetic fuel production systems; transportation systems (rail, highway, canal, sea).
3. Special factories and arsenals (aircraft and aircraft engine, tank, weapons, and ammunition factories; major interior depots; rubber production facilities).
4. Basic war-supporting materials (steel plants, aluminum and magnesium plants).
2. Local interior air defense of friendly forces and installations vital to munitions manufacture.
1. Direct air attack on the economic and social systems and structure of the enemy state, including destruction or neutralization of major supporting systems (electric power, communication, basic economic industrial production, water supply, industrial and economic transportation, food-handling, food-production, food preservation and distribution, and management control).
1. Many of the national industrial systems and economic systems supported the enemy capability to sustain the armed forces and the ability to continue to fight. These were also vital to the continued operation of the state itself as a modern industrialized society-systems bolstering the political will to resist of the enemy nation.
2. Industrial and economic systems of the national state body
were likened to the vital organic systems that give life and activity to the human body. Electric power was the heart, without whose continued function all directed activity is paralyzed. Transportation was the system of arteries carrying energy to the vital organs. Fuel systems were the metabolic functions that translate sources of energy to muscular action. Communications were the nervous system. All served the brain, the source of political decision. All were vital to the civil as well as to the military capabilities of the enemy state. Their paralysis undermine both the military capability of the enemy state and the social and political "will to resist." They were pertinent to both 2 and 3 above.
1. Direct air attack on enemy social centers, including cities and factory worker dwelling areas.
2. Strategic air defense of one's own urban, industrial, economic, and base areas.
Within the constraints imposed on them, the airmen were thinking more and more about sustained, high-altitude bombing of selected industrial targets and supporting systems in order to attain national goals in war. Yet that was just the beginning, the expression of an abstract concept. To think and plan in practical terms, it was necessary to consider: What were our national goals and purposes, and what were the threats to those goals? Who were our potential enemies, and where in their industrial and social structure lay the weak links? How vulnerable were these targets? What measures would the enemy probably take to protect them? How far were they from our air bases? What new air bases would have to be acquired?
The problem was vastly complicated for it presumed knowledge about a nation which that nation naturally tried to hide. Much of the value of the bombing offensive, should there be one, would of necessity rest on intelligence data and the conclusions planners gleaned from it. In truth these specific questions were beyond the competence of the Tactical School. Strategic air intelligence on major world powers would demand an intelligence organization and analytical competence of considerable scope and complexity.
Strategic Air Intelligence
In 1940 the Office of the Chief of the Air Corps had an Information Division dealing chiefly with public relations, but the Air Corps had no Strategic Intelligence Division. Military intelligence was the province of G-2 of the U.S. Army General Staff and its prerogatives were jealously guarded.
A simple example is illustrative. As a new member of the Information Division in 1940, I undertook to promote inquiries I thought might be useful. Japan was not yet at war with the West but she was aligned with Germany and Italy, and Nazi Germany was actively engaged in war on her Western Front. It seemed likely the war would spread and Japan would extend her operations in China and the China Sea. If we should be drawn in, we might find the coast of China blockaded by Japanese naval power and inaccessible to us. In that case, if we wanted to support China and establish air bases there for attack of Japan, we would have to approach from India and Burma. I prepared a draft paper proposing that U.S. Army engineers be sent to survey the Burma Road and report upon the possibilities of maintaining military logistic communications.
I took the draft paper to my friend and classmate Capt. Andral Bratton, Far East desk, G-2. He enthusiastically endorsed the proposal and asked to keep the draft memorandum for discussion with his associates. In due course it came back to me through portentous channels. Brig. Gen. Sherman Miles, G-2 of the War Department, had sent it to the Deputy Chief of Staff, Maj. Gen. William Bryden, with a complaint that the Office of the Chief of the Air Corps had no business intruding in such matters. The Deputy Chief had passed the complaint to the Chief of the Air Corps with the comment that if the officers of the Information Division had no more useful occupation for their energies than this, he was prepared to disband the Information Division and transfer its personnel to G-2 where their talents could be directed to some useful purpose. Even General Arnold was miffed -- and when he was miffed people soon found out about it. Doubtless he was embarrassed to be called down about an incident of which he had no knowledge. In sending the correspondence down to the Information
Division, he penned the comment, "I am inclined to agree with General Bryden." The incident passed, but it served to slam shut the door connecting the Air Corps Information Division and G-2.
Not long thereafter the relationship -- or lack of it -- surfaced again. General Arnold had an informal conversation with Lt. Col. Truman Smith, recently returned from Berlin as the Assistant Military Attache. Smith furnished General Arnold many details of the Luftwaffe and German aircraft production of which Arnold was ignorant. The general demanded to know why such information had not been passed to him previously. Obviously it was of vital importance to the Air Corps. He was informed that these and numerous other facts were reported to G-2. General Arnold went to General Miles, G-2, and posed the same question. He was advised that intelligence of this nature was restricted to members of the War Department General Staff (WDGS), and Arnold as Chief of the Air Corps was not a member of the General Staff and hence was not on the distribution list.
Arnold went directly to Chief of Staff Gen. George C. Marshall and requested authority to set up an air intelligence system with Assistant Military Attaches for Air at U.S. embassies abroad. General Marshall approved the request. Next, Col. Ira Eaker, Arnold's Executive Officer, sent for Maj. Thomas D. White and me. He described General Marshall's authorization, and said General Arnold directed us to get on with it. Tommy White was a gifted intellectual and a highly qualified Air Corps officer. Having extensive experience abroad, he was fluent in Chinese and French. He was also a recent graduate of the Air Corps Tactical School and the Army Command and Staff School at Fort Leavenworth.
After discussing the scope of the problem facing us, we divided the program into two broad parts: foreign collection, and strategic analyses. As Chief of the Air Intelligence Section, Tommy organized a system of Assistant Military Attaches for Air and the collection of information through them. He selected the attaches, brought them to Washington for orientation and instruction, and sent them abroad. He also arranged the channels for communication, which provided that
I undertook the area of strategic air intelligence and analysis. I set up three subsections, or branches: one devoted to foreign air forces, including size, composition, equipment, disposition, tactical doctrine, and proficiency; another dealing with airports and air bases throughout the world, together with maps and weather data; and a third engaging in economic-industrial-social analysis of major foreign powers, culminating in analysis and description of vital and vulnerable systems and, finally, target selection and preparation of target folders.
This latter activity involved a completely new venture. The Army's G-2 gave us no help whatsoever. On the contrary, we ran into vigorous opposition to the collection and analysis of such information on the grounds that it did not relate to the proper role of military intelligence. We had to proceed on our own, pioneering in one of the most difficult, critical, and challenging areas in the field of intelligence. We knew correct collection and analysis was vital to the success of the strategic air effort. Moreover, miscalculations of any significant magnitude could completely discredit the concept. I believed foreign industrial analysis and targeting was the sine qua non of strategic air warfare. Without such intelligence and analysis there could be no rational planning for the application of air power. Douhet's statement to the effect that the selection of objectives and targets was the essence of air strategy was patently true.
Our approach to industrial analysis as a basis for targeting was not started from scratch. At the Tactical School we had laid out the methodology and, since we had no foreign intelligence, we used the industrial structure of the United States as a working model. It was an abstract exercise lacking in practical results, but it did help to focus attention on the importance of certain systems and factories: electric power; rail transportation; fuel; basic materials such as steel; food supplies and processing; water supplies; and armaments and aircraft factories.
The rising concern in the United States about Hitler's Germany was of great value to us in our work. It led a number of gifted men to enter the service and contribute their special talents. Also, it made available modest sums of money for hiring civilian experts. We were fortunate to hire Dr. James T. Lowe, a specialist in diplomatic history and international relations. Another civilian-turned-military was Maj. Malcolm Moss, a man of broad experience in international business who had traveled extensively. We were also fortunate in enlisting the services of a man with a doctorate in industrial economics and one who was an expert in oil.
Our initial inquiries into the industrial-economic structure of Hitler's Germany focused attention on: electric power, as well as electric switching, transmission, and distribution systems, and sources of fuel; steel production, including sources and movement of raw material; petroleum production, distribution, and products, and synthetic processes; the aircraft industry, taking in engine and aircraft manufacturing plants and aluminum production; and transportation, the most prominent components being the railway, canal, and highway networks. Our analyses also encompassed Germany's nonferrous metal supply, machine tool production, and food processing and distribution.
Malcolm Moss made a particularly valuable suggestion with regard to the electric power system in Germany. He knew the electric power generating and distribution system of Germany was relatively new and had been built with capital borrowed largely from the United States. He also knew American banks did not lend large sums of money for capital equipment without carefully investigating the proposed structures. He suggested we inquire of the great international banks, particularly in New York, if they had drawings and specifica- tions of German electric plants and systems. The results were fruitful and rewarding. Using these sources, together with scientific journals and trade magazines, we put together a comprehensive target study on
the German electric power system and electric distribution system. It was even possible to prepare target folders, aiming points, and bomb sizes.
We also made substantial progress on information about petroleum and synthetic oil plants, partially through the same sources, in part from the oil industries, and to a degree through individuals. Fortunately, our civilian oil expert had worked in Germany, in the Rumanian fields at Ploesti, and in the Middle East. It was through his knowledge and analysis that we recognized the extreme importance and vulnerability of the German synthetic oil plants, and the related importance of the Ploesti refineries. Thus we were able to prepare target folders, aiming points, and bomb sizes for these target systems. In addition, we made an analysis of the German steel industry and its sources of raw materials. We were less successful in our analysis of German transportation, partly because of the extent of the rail and canal systems. But enough was discovered to place the transportation system high on the priority list of desirable targets.
Later in 1941, I had a chance to go to England as an observer. The express purpose of my visit was to explore British intelligence, in response to a generous invitation by the Royal Air Force, and bring home what I could. At the same time, I took a hard look at possible air base construction sites in England, since by this time British and American military leaders had met in Washington in what became known as the ABC Conferences. We knew if we should become involved in the war, we would probably be allied with Britain against Germany and that the bomber offensive, if we ever launched one, would probably be from bases in Britain.
My relations with the RAF and the Air Ministry were extremely gratifying. I spent much of my time with Gp. Capt. A. C. H. "Bobby" Sharp, and I was literally welcomed into the inner chamber of RAF intelligence. I had brought along digests of our own intelligence and was made more comfortable by the discovery that we had much to offer. On balance, we were better informed than the British on German electric power, petroleum, and synthetic products. The RAF was better informed on Germany aircraft and engine production, the German Air Force, and German transportation.
At the end of my visit I found myself happily loaded down with priceless gifts of intelligence. The burden was formidable. There was nearly a ton of it. Most of this was in the form of "target folders" rather than analysis of target systems, but it was very valuable and most gratefully received. I wondered how to get it back to the United States, since it was, for the most part, classified secret. In the end I was able to have it shipped back by air in an American bomber.
Planning for War
Immediately after my return to Washington in July 1941 I was transferred from the Strategic Air Intelligence Section, A-2, to the new Air War Plans Division. Thus I again came under Lt. Col Harold L. George and Lt. Col. Kenneth N. Walker. Until the division was enlarged, the task of organizing our efforts to meet the broad assignment of developing "overall plans for the control of the activities of the Army Air Forces" fell upon the three of us. In this crucial state of affairs, it was a formidable assignment embracing such questions as size, composition, equipment, disposition, and organization of the air forces. And these in turn invoked the need to adopt the optimum concept for the wartime employment of these forces. Moreover, it was axiomatic that employment must make its maximum contribution in support of overall national policy.
At the time, national policy was very difficult to define. Nowhere was it clearly and neatly described. It was apparent that President Franklin D. Roosevelt viewed the possibility of a Nazi victory with deep concern. For six months after the fall of France, Britain had stood alone. With the German attack on Russia in June 1941, Britain gained a breathing spell, but it seemed likely the Soviets would be defeated. If so, the whole might of the victorious German Wehrmacht would then be turned against Britain. Furthermore, the vast industrial complex of Europe would be available for the production of munitions, including the creation of massive German air forces. The prospect was ominous to say the least. President Roosevelt seemed to favor American intervention before the collapse of Britain should make it a lost venture.
The United States as a whole was nowhere near such a mood. Most Americans seemed to cling to the hope that we could save the remnants of freedom and democracy in Europe by providing material aid to Britain. They were even willing to extend such aid to Soviet Russia in the belief a surviving Communist regime was a much lesser threat than a triumphant Nazi Germany. They were willing to extend our naval screen far out into the Atlantic and to prepare for active defense of the entire Western Hemisphere. But they were not ready to take the step of active participation in the war in Europe. Roosevelt had to retreat from his semi-belligerent policies on several occasions when it was clear that most of the American people were not willing to go so far. His Far Eastern policies caused little public concern. The American people simply could not believe Japan would challenge the United States in open warfare.
Until American policy firmed considerably, the best we could do for guidance was to determine in broad terms the general characteristics of the force requirements America seemed most likely to need. For those characteristics, we naturally turned back to lengthy discussions we had had on the subject back at the Air Corps Tactical School. We had reasoned that armed forces, as instruments for the furtherance of national policy, might be called upon to perform in three ways. One was the active acquisition of foreign territory. This would place primary reliance on land armies, and this objective seemed remote. However, taking temporary military action abroad in support of our national interest seemed increasingly probable. If so, chief dependence might be on the air force, or it might rest upon land armies, with naval and air forces operating in support roles. The possibility that aggressive action by forces unfriendly to the United States might compel us to take some action to protect our national interests and to force a halt upon the aggressor seemed a distinct possibility and received careful consideration. Air power might play the dominant role here. The third possibility, national and hemispheric defense, would require primary reliance upon air power for air defense and might call upon air power to repel any invasion.
Three dictators hostile to the United States were driving toward domination of important parts of the world. They threatened completely
to upset the balance of power and with it world peace. Adolph Hitler and Benito Mussolini had completed the conquest of much of Europe and the Balkans and were verging on the conquest of western Russia and North Africa. England might either fall or be forced into a humiliating accommodation. On the other side of the world the Japanese warlords were tearing China and Southeast Asia apart. Meanwhile a fourth dictator, Joseph Stalin, though hardly a friend of America, was a most valuable asset in resisting Hitler. And it seemed likely he too would be overwhelmed.
Strategic Guidelines
If in mid-1941 there were no firm national policies on which to structure our national defense, there were at least certain strategic guidelines. In September 1940 the Tripartite Pact had brought Japan openly into the Axis camp. At about the same time, the unexpected collapse of France, followed by the epic Battle of Britain, had opened the eyes of many American political and military leaders to the possibility of a world dominated by Hitler in the West and by Japan in the East. As a result, the President decided to offer material aid from the "arsenal of democracy" to those fighting the Axis. Also, after consultation with the Secretaries of War, Navy, and State, the President concluded that some formal military staff conversations with the British were in order. There followed a series of secret joint meetings in Washington at the end of January 1941, conferences known to history as ABC-1.2
The British personnel attending were Rear Adm. Roger M. Bellairs and Rear Adm. Victor H. Danckwerts, representing the Royal Navy; Maj. Gen. Edwin L. Morris, representing the British Army; and Air Vice Marshal John C. Slessor, representing the Royal Air Force. The United States personnel attending were Rear Adm. Robert L. Ghormley, Rear Adm. Richmond K. Turner, Capt. Alan G. Kirk, and
Capt. DeWitt C. Ramsey, all of the U.S. Navy, and Col. Omar T. Pfeiffer, U.S. Marine Corps. Lt. Gen. Stanley D. Embick, Brig. Gen. Sherman Miles, and Brig. Gen. Leonard T. Gerow represented the U.S. Army, and Col. Joseph T. McNarney, from the War Plans Division of the General Staff, represented the Army Air Corps. Although there were "rated" air officers of the United States present, there was no official representative of United States air power in a position corresponding to that of the RAF representative.
On an informal basis the Plans Division and Intelligence Division of the Office of Chief of the Air Corps cooperated very closely with Air Vice Marshal John Slessor and members of his staff and with Colonel McNarney. One of the most vital and fruitful developments of this informal relationship was a detailed exploration of the potential air base capacity of the United Kingdom, a capacity found to be several times greater than air planners in the United States had anticipated.
Our informal plans for possible deployment of the U.S. Army Air Forces to England had been predicated upon and limited by an analysis of existing airports. After making allowance for RAF requirements for air bases, it appeared the remainder would drastically restrict American air force deployment. Group Captain Sharp, who was in Washington on logistic matters at this time, produced a survey of suitable sites in England on which air bases could be built. It completely revolutionized our ideas of the potential capacity for accommodating U.S. air units. This discovery had an immense effect upon the dimensions of the air offensive that might be sustained from Britain and the potential scope of American air participation. The results that might be obtained from such an air offensive became a major aspect of combined offensive strategy.
The agreements and conclusions reached by the ABC-1 conferees were furnished to Roosevelt and Churchill in March 1941. The results of these conversations on the subsequent strategic developments of the war were profound. As a consequence, the U.S. Air Force owes an immense debt to Sir John Slessor and Colonel McNarney. The salient features of these conversations, predicated on the contingency the United States might be compelled to participate in the war, included
these points: Since the Atlantic-European area was deemed to be the decisive theater, the primary effort would be exerted there. Offensive measures in the European area would embrace a sustained air offensive against military power, supplemented by air offensives on other enemy regions contributing to that power. Italy would be eliminated early on. Raids and minor offensives would be conducted initially against the Continent. Support would be given to all neutrals and belligerents who opposed the Axis. Forces would be built up for an eventual offensive on Germany, and positions from which the offensive could be launched would be captured.
This agreement was incorporated with the war plans being prepared by the War and Navy Departments, and on May 14, 1941, the Joint Army and Navy Board approved the war plan known as RAINBOW No. 5.3 It was subsequently approved by the Secretaries of War and the Navy. When the Air War Plans Division of the Air Staff came into being in July 1941, it found itself in solid accord with the ABC conversations and with RAINBOW No. 5, the overall war plan envisioning Great Britain and the United States standing against Germany, Italy, and Japan.
War in Europe
As Hitler's armies cut their paths of victory through Europe, a mounting wave of apprehension engulfed the Roosevelt administration in Washington. Programs for expansion of the armed forces were presented to a reluctant Congress. One such program called for expansion of the Army Air Corps to fifty-four groups. It was presented to Gen. George C. Marshall, Chief of Staff, early in 1940. On conclusion of the presentation by Capt. Laurence S. Kuter, General Marshall asked a penetrating question: "Why is this a fifty- four group program? Why not fifty-six, or sixty-four?" As usual,
General Marshall had gone directly to the root of the problem. What purpose was to be sought? What was the objective? Did it require fifty-four groups to attain that objective? Why? What was the strategic plan?
When the next opportunity arose for presentation of a major program, General Marshall's lesson was remembered. The planners asked themselves what was expected to be achieved with the force? What was the purpose?
Concern over Hitler's aggressive acquisitions in Europe produced other reactions in America. In June 1941 Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson, acting on General Marshall's recommendation, established the Army Air Forces. General Arnold, Chief of the Army Air Force, was permitted to set up a staff for the AAF resembling the War Department General Staff but at a lower level. It included Personnel, Intelligence, Operations and Training, Materiel, and Air War Plans Divisions. Lt. Col. Harold George at the time commanded the 2d Bombardment Group containing all the B-17s of the AAF (all thirteen of them). He was reassigned to Washington to organize and operate the Air War Plans Division of the Air Staff, arriving on July 14.
The next major force-structuring effort grew out of a new presidential inquiry. On July 9, 1941 -- some two weeks after Hitler had mounted his massive attack on Russia -- Roosevelt asked the Secretaries of War and Navy to prepare an estimate of "the overall production requirements required to defeat our potential enemies." There was as usual a short deadline for a reply. Because the Joint Army and Navy Board could not agree upon an operational strategy, the War and Navy Departments each put together its needs separately. The burden of writing the War Department's response fell upon the War Plans Division of the WDGS. That division proposed to estimate air requirements, coordinate them with ground requirements, and append the air details to its report as Annex 2, Air Requirements. Colonel George, Chief of the fledgling Air War Plans Division, asked that his division be allowed to prepare the Air Annex. General Arnold made the necessary arrangements.
The War Plans Group of the infant Air War Plans Division
consisted of two people: Lt. Col. Kenneth N. Walker as Chief of the Group, and myself, Chief of the European Branch -- two chiefs and no Indians at all. Harold George devoted his full time to the project, and that made three. He succeeded in having Larry Kuter, on duty with G-3 of the General Staff, temporarily assigned to the division. The four of us were faced with the task of preparing a strategic air plan for conducting war on a worldwide scale, and determining the forces to carry out such a plan. We would be constrained only by the physical capability of the United States to produce the recommended forces.
In this latter regard, we had the benefit of advice and counsel from the supply people at Dayton, with Maj. Max F. Schneider serving as a priceless liaison. By the time we got authority to proceed, there were just seven days left for submission of the plan and report. We had one definite asset going for us: We had spent years together as instructors in Bombardment and Air Force at the Air Corps Tactical School. We embraced a common concept of air warfare and we spoke a common language. Then, too, I had spent the past year as head of the Strategic Air Intelligence Section of the Office of the Chief of the Air Corps, amassing and analyzing economic and industrial intelligence on the Axis powers. That intelligence now proved invaluable.
Harking back to General Marshall's comments as well as to our own teachings, we realized the first requirement for our plan was a statement of purpose -- a strategic objective. What should the air force try to achieve? What was the overall purpose? That was the fundamental keystone to plans, requirements, and operations. But that purpose was not only missing from our instructions; it was exceedingly hard to define.
The President's letter had called for defeat of our potential enemies. This was important guidance. Although he did not specify who our potential enemies were, there could be little doubt they were the Axis powers. His call for defeat cleared the air of any compromise objective, such as containment or deterrence. And we had two other significant guidelines. In passing the air requirement responsibility to the Air Staff, Brig. Gen. Leonard T. Gerow, Chief of the War Plans Division, had stipulated that the provisions of joint British-American conversations (ABC-1) and the U.S. current war plan (RAINBOW No. 5) should be
followed. The ABC-1 report called for strategic offensive operations against the European Axis powers as a maximum effort and strategic defensive operations in the Far East, with minimum diversion of forces from the main effort. It said: Offensive measures in the European area will include a sustained air offensive against German military power, supplemented by air offensives against other regions under enemy control which contribute to that power.
But what should be the relationship of air power to the achievement of the national purpose and to land and naval forces? Air forces were flexible, but special types of aircraft were best suited to specific roles, and the selection and provision of aircraft would depend upon the major role to be assumed by air power. Even in defeating the European Axis powers there was a wide range of strategic air purposes to be weighed:
a. Should the "sustained air offensive against German military power" seek to crush the war-making capability of the Third Reich by air warfare alone? If so, it would be necessary to destroy not only the industrial structure supporting the German armed forces, but the industrial and economic structure upholding the state itself.
b. Or should the "sustained air offensive" seek to undermine the war-making capability of Germany and pave the way for invasion of the Continent, with subsequent strategic air operations weakening Germany's willingness and capability to fight, in a continuing strategic air effort coordinated with the land campaign?
c. Or should the sustained air offensive seek only to guarantee the success of the invasion, and devote its entire strength to the support and success of the land operations, which would become the sole reliance for final victory?
d. And what were the requirements for home defense?
The targets, the types and number of aircraft, and the organization of the air forces would vary with each of these options. Selection of a basic overall strategy was the sine qua non of air planning. And the problem was further compounded by the knowledge that the plan would have to pass through the gauntlet of the War Department General Staff, culminating in a presentation to General Marshall. If he did not approve, the whole scheme would simply be discarded.
Marshall was himself a farsighted, broad-minded leader who had shown strong support for air power. But many Army officers still adhered to the official statement of Army doctrine: the sole mission of the Army Air Forces was the furtherance of the mission of the mobile army.
We knew a strategy oriented solely to invasion and air support of ground warfare in Europe involved troublesome prospects, including long and perhaps disastrous delays. We knew the War Plans Division had concluded it would take two years to build a merchant marine capable of transporting and supplying the necessary ground forces. And it would take another six months to prepare them for invasion. An air offensive could be launched in half the time. Furthermore, the War Plans Division was frank in admitting that Hitler's seasoned war machine would have to be seriously weakened before we could hope to defeat the German Wehrmacht on the ground. In any event, the German air forces would have to be defeated before an invasion could be undertaken. There was general agreement that a successful air offensive, which would include defeat of the Luftwaffe, must precede any invasion. There was less unanimity as to what other purposes the air offensive should try to accomplish.
We wrestled as a group with this fundamental problem. The final solution was a statement of objective and a plan leaning heavily toward victory through air power. But it provided for air support of an invasion, and afterwards combined operations on the Continent if the air offensive should prove inconclusive. If the air offensive succeeded in destroying the German ability to support the war or in bringing about capitulation, so much the better. The closer the air offensive came to finality, the greater the ease and less the cost of invasion.
In the Air Plan we described the overall objective of the air mission in essentially these terms:
a. To wage a sustained air offensive against German military power, supplemented by air offensives against other regions under enemy control which contribute toward that power (ABC-1).
b. To support a final offensive, if it becomes necessary to invade the Continent.
c. In addition, to conduct effective air operations in connection with hemisphere defense and a strategic defensive in the Far East.
d. The basic concept on which this plan is based lies in the application of air power for the breakdown of the industrial and economic structure of Germany. This conception involves the selection of a system of objectives vital to the continued German war effort and to the means of livelihood of the German people, and tenaciously concentrating all bombing toward the destruction of those objectives. The most effective manner of conducting such a decisive offensive is by the destruction of precise objectives, at least initially. As German morale begins to crack, area bombing of civil concentrations may be effective.
e. It is improbable that a land invasion can be carried out against Germany proper within the next three years. If the air offensive is successful, a land offensive may not be necessary.
In the plan we acknowledged that the German Air Force, especially the German fighter force, would have to be defeated before an invasion could be contemplated. And such a defeat might also be necessary to the prosecution of the air offensive itself. Hence defeat of the German Air Force was accorded first priority among air objectives ("an intermediate objective of overriding importance"), to take precedence over the primary air objectives themselves.
As for primary objectives, the plan called for destruction and disruption of:
1. Electric power. Disruption of a major portion of the German electric power system.
1. Nearly all industry -- civil as well as military -- finds its roots in electric power. The German electric power system, the second largest in the world, was greatly expanded for this war. Even so, it is operating at a fifty-percent greater rate than that of Great Britain. It is vital to the German war effort and is highly important to civil life.
2. The electric power system might be likened to the neuromuscular system of the human body. Disruption would vitiate controlled action. It is estimated that destruction of fifty targets would bring about collapse.
2. Transportation. The German transportation system is carrying
an extremely heavy load, divided about as follows: seventy-two percent of German transportation is carried out by the railroads, twenty-five percent by canals and waterways, and three percent by long-haul truckage. The transportation system bears the same relationship to the German corporate body as the bloodstream to the human body. Without a free flow of transportation, raw materials could not reach processing plants, manufactured parts and supplies could not reach factories and assembly plants, and finished products could not reach consumers, whether they be armed forces or civilian institutions. Forty-one targets, consisting of marshaling yards, bridges, canal locks, and inland harbors are set up for the accomplishment of this objective.
1. Petroleum and synthetic oil.
1. German military vehicles and transportation, the German Air Force, the German Navy, and (a large block of) German industry are dependent upon petroleum products.
2. The blockade has cut off external sources, other than Rumania, leaving the Reich heavily dependent upon a group of synthetic oil plants. Twenty-seven synthetic plants plus the refineries at Ploesti in Rumania are set up to accomplish this objective.
In summary, the plan called for destruction of these target systems and targets:
German Air Force 18 airplane assembly plants
6 aluminum plants
6 magnesium plants
Electric power50 generating plants and switching systems
Transportation47 marshaling yards, bridges, and locks
Synthetic petroleum27 synthetic plants
Total154 targets
How many planes? -- How many people?
Bombing requirements for the destruction of each target, including repeat attacks to prevent restoration, were computed, using target dimensions and characteristics and tables of bombing probability. Force requirements were based on providing ninety-percent probability
of obtaining the number of hits to destroy each target. Accuracy was degraded by a factor of two and one-fourth to take care of bombing accuracy under combat conditions. Allowances were made for aborts and losses. Based on weather records, the monthly rate of operations from British bases was taken at five. Finally, the total of bomber sorties was computed, and the number of bombers needed to accomplish the entire task in six months at the rate of five missions a month was determined. The key element in the entire plan was the proviso that the full bomber force should devote its entire strength to these targets for six months after it had reached maturity. Invasion would follow if necessary. Requirements for hemispheric defense were also estimated. The allowances for the defensive measures needed in the Far East were skimpy, to say the least. It was presumed the U.S. Navy would be the primary agency for this requirement.
The air plan specified that the offensive be conducted chiefly from bases in England, using B-17s and B-24s, and from bases in Northern Ireland and the vicinity of Cairo, Egypt, using future long-range bombers (B-29s). But the plan covered a contingency that bordered on disaster. Hitler's armies were slashing into Russia and would soon approach the gates of Moscow. If Russia should be defeated, Hitler could rebuild his air forces using all the resources of Europe. He could then mass his forces for a final assault on Britain, and Britain might also succumb. If so, the British air bases would no longer be available. To meet this contingency, the plan envisioned the development and production of 44 groups of 4,000-mile bombers (B-36s) -- to press the war from bases in the Western Hemisphere. Still the strategic plan presumed British bases would in fact continue to be available. If these air operations against industrial targets were not conclusive, the plan suggested direct attack on cities as a last resort. But we never accepted attack on civilian populations as the main method of air warfare. We provided for air support of an invasion of France if the air offensive should not be conclusive after 6 months of undiluted effort. The air plan afforded massive additional tactical air forces for air support of an invasion and for subsequent combined operations on the Continent. Actually the Tactical and Air Defense Air Forces and Strategic Air
Forces were approximately equal in numbers: 12,000 first-line and unit reserve aircraft in each.
To pursue this strategy, the plan (Air War Plans Division I, or AWPD-1) called for some 61,800 aircraft (including 37,000 trainers), as well as 180,000 officers and 1,985,000 enlisted personnel -- a total of 2,165,000 men and women. The scope of the air proposal was simply staggering. The personnel strength of the Army Air Forces in 1940 stood at about 51,000. The plan proposed an expansion to 2,165,000 in 3 years, a 42-fold increase. The aircraft inventory in 1940 was about 6,000, about half of these were obsolescent combat aircraft and the rest trainers. The plan proposed a 10-fold increase in 3 years. Furthermore, it called for production capacity to replace the combat elements of the force (about 26,000 combat aircraft) every 5 months. The heavy bomber component called for nearly 11,000 4-engine bombers. Combat replacements would require 770 4-engine bombers per month for the air offensive against Germany alone, and 416 fighters. The Army Air Forces had received 61 4-engine bombers in 1940. Shortly before that, the War Department had told the Congress that the Army needed no 4-engine bombers at all.
Although strategic air operations could begin on a limited scale about twelve months after the outbreak of war, it was not expected that the air offensive would be in place at full strength in England until about eighteen months after M-day. Thus, the full six months of strategic air warfare would end about twenty-four months after the outbreak of war. The invasion force should be positioned by that time. There would ensue a period of two or three months during which the strategic air forces could be applied in direct assault preparatory for invasion, and the ground forces could make final preparations for amphibious invasion, if by that time it were still necessary to storm the coast of France. (See charts on page 117.) Even if effective German resistance were broken by the air offensive, an occupying force would be needed. It would keep order, support an interim government, and ensure adherence to peace terms. The opposition to such an occupying force might be considerable, but the enemy capacity for massive, organized resistance should be broken by that time.
The plan was completed and submitted to the War Plans Division, WDGS, before General Arnold returned from Argentia, Newfoundland, where he had gone with President Roosevelt and General Marshall to meet with Prime Minister Churchill and his staff. The plan had been checked with Robert A. Lovett, Assistant Secretary of War for Air, at literally the eleventh hour. As a document it was not impressive-looking -- pages typed and mimeographed; pen-and-ink corrections; charts black and white, hastily prepared and crudely pasted together. Finally, the entire War Plans document (including AWPD-1) was bundled off to the Government Printing Office.
The Air War Plans Division Plan No. 1 (AWPD-1) stipulated these total force requirements:
Heavy bombers (B-17, B-24)47
Very heavy bombers (B-29, B-32)24
Very long-range bombers (B-36)4 44
Others (Primarily for support of ground forces)82
(Including unit equipment and initial reserves)
Strategic Forces
Bombers, Heavy9,775
Heavy (B-17/24)3,995
Very heavy (B-29/32)2,040
Very long-range (B-36)3,740
Fighters (escort)2,000
TOTAL 11,775
Tactical and Air Defense Forces
Bombers Medium, Light, and Dive3,244
Reconnaissance Aircraft1,917
TOTAL 11,909
TOTAL 1,064
TOTAL 37,051
Once war had begun, it would be necessary to replace the combat units (Total Combat and Operational Aircraft 24,748) every 5 months to account for combat attrition. This would require production of approximately 59,400 combat aircraft per year.
The plan became Annex 2, Air Requirements, of the War Department report, which became "The Victory Program." But the Joint Army and Navy Board, in forwarding the full report, took scant notice of the air plan. The board said: "Naval and air forces may prevent wars from being lost, and by weakening enemy strength may contribute greatly to victory.... It should be recognized as an almost invariable rule that only land armies can finally win wars."
Finally on August 30 we faced the crucial test. General Marshall; W. Averell Harriman, the President's representative to Russia; General Arnold; Lt. Col. Muir S. Fairchild; several members of the General Staff; William S. Knudsen of General Motors, Inc., and other officials from war production listened to the presentation. There were questions and some expressions of dissent. Reserving his comment until all others had been heard, General Marshall said: "I think the plan has merit. I should like the Secretary and Assistant Secretaries to hear it." That statement by General Marshall to General Arnold marked a crucial turning point in the evolution of American air power. This was the moment of conception of the United States Air Force. General Marshall was its godfather. He could so easily have said: "The proposal is totally out of keeping with the program for the rest of the Army. Cut it in half!" Instead he said: "I think the plan has merit." It was a magnificent decision and a typical example of his towering character.
Briefed on September 1 with General Marshall present, Secretary of War Stimson showed a gratifying appreciation of the strategic concept. General Marshall offered encouraging comments. At last Stimson turned to Colonel George and said: "General Marshall and I like the plan. I want you gentlemen to be prepared to present it to the President." A tentative date for the meeting and intensive preparations for the presentation were under way, when Pearl Harbor threw all arrangements into disarray. Loss of the opportunity to brief the President on the detailed plans for strategic air warfare was a cruel disappointment. It is quite likely Roosevelt's quick intelligence would have prompted him to make detailed inquiries, and perhaps he would
have embraced the scheme with the same comprehension that characterized the reactions of Marshall and Stimson. Missing that presentation, the President never fully grasped the war-winning potential of air power.
Nonetheless, AWPD-1 became the basic blueprint for the creation of the Army Air Forces and the conduct of the air war. As part of The Victory Program it was approved for production. Since the production quantities were derived expressly from the plan of operations, approval for production clearly implied approval of the scheme of operations. In the absence of other guidance, AWPD-1 became the accepted and authoritative statement of air strategy until issuance of AWPD-42 a year later. Still, AWPD-1 was never formally endorsed by the Joint Chiefs of Staff. After the Pearl Harbor attack, the Air War Plans Division hastened to amend AWPD-1. One principal change was more air forces for the Pacific to help compensate for the loss of U.S. capital ships. Another was to add a large number of air transports, since it was apparent a heavy burden of overseas communications would have to be met by air. The new estimate was called AWPD-4, but it was not much different from AWPD-1.
BOMB DAMAGE TO THE BALL BEARING FACTORIES at Schweinfurt, Germany. In attacking this vital industry, the AAF attempted to slow down the wheels of the German war machine.
Table of Contents ** Previous Chapter (Fwd) * Next Chapter (2)
1. For a more detailed account of the origin and development of U.S. strategic air doctrine, see my The Air Plan That Defeated Hitler (Atlanta, Ga., 1972).
2. ABC-1 is the short title for the report of these British-American joint meetings. Starting on January 29 and ending on March 29, 1941, representatives of the two staffs held fourteen sessions and discussed military and naval strategy, joint operations, geographical responsibilities, force structure, command arrangements, and limited operational plans.
3. In 1939 American war planners adopted the term RAINBOW to describe a series of plans outlining the broad national strategic goals of the United States. They called the plans RAINBOW because earlier war plans, written in the 1920s and 1930s, had been labeled with colors "orange," "red," etc. The single-color plans had anticipated wars against a single nation. By 1941 the conquests by Germany, Japan, and Italy had altered the assumptions of all previous American war planning.
4. The B-36s were required in case Britain would collapse.
Transcribed and formatted for HTML by Charles Hall for the HyperWar Foundation | <urn:uuid:0a8a5536-1b07-4c69-b8fa-ffd0cb37f756> | 3 | 3.078125 | 0.035784 | en | 0.968749 | http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/AAF/Hansell/Hansell-1.html |
Once reserved for job-hopping executives and high-tech gurus, noncompete agreements are becoming standard in an unexpected range of businesses. From engineering firms in Massachusetts to companies that paint lines on Virginia highways, businesses of all sorts are pushing new hires to sign noncompetes, which restrict them from working for competitors. Indeed, in a nationwide review of court records, Jay Shepherd, an employment lawyer with Shepherd Law Group, in Boston, found a 37 percent rise in published court decisions from 2004 to 2006 involving noncompetes, and an 85 percent jump in the past decade.
Should noncompetes be in the stack of paperwork your company puts in front of new hires? As economists like to say, it depends. Noncompetes can be a valuable tool, keeping your most important assets--your key employees--from taking their expertise to a competitor. But those that are too broad or too restrictive will probably be thrown out in court. And many companies use noncompetes when their less onerous brethren, confidentiality agreements and nonsolicitation agreements, will do. Whereas noncompetes restrict workers' job options, the other contracts just prevent them from taking company secrets or client relationships with them when they go. It's an important difference, because companies that reach too far with their noncompete agreements often find they end up with no protection at all. The laws regarding noncompetes vary from state to state (see "The Legal Landscape"), but many state laws are friendly to employees. "Courts generally don't like the idea of putting people out of work," Shepherd says. "So you'd better have a pretty damn good reason for stopping someone from plying their trade."
For many companies, the value of a noncompete agreement lies in its psychological effect, not its enforceability. Andrey Tomkiw, an employment attorney with Tomkiw Dalton, in Royal Oak, Michigan, says some employers view noncompetes as a retention tool rather than a method of protecting intellectual property. Regardless of the document's legal standing, they hope it will deter employees from looking elsewhere for work. But a badly designed noncompete won't be enough to keep your best performers from leaving. Says Tomkiw: "If you only have a very low fence, people are going to hop over it." You will have to tread carefully if you actually want your noncompete to do its job. Here are four things to keep in mind.
Keep it local
People have a right to make a living, even after they stop working for you. Instead of treating your employees like indentured servants, specify a geographic area in which they will agree not to work and give a reasonable time limit for the restrictions to expire--generally two years or less. Tomkiw recently had a client who was offered a sales job with an international manufacturing company. The catch: The noncompete agreement prohibited him from working in sales for any company anywhere in the world for two years if he left. Tomkiw doubted the agreement was fully enforceable, but he advised his client not to sign it. Eventually, the employer agreed to a confidentiality agreement instead.
Sometimes a judge will throw out an entire noncompete agreement if parts of it are too broad. Take the recent case of Spivey Pavement Markings, in Chesapeake, Virginia. Theodore Wood, a Spivey supervisor, left in April 2006 and soon started a foreman job at a similar company, Mid-Atlantic Pavement Markings. A year later, Spivey sued, trying to enforce its noncompete agreement, which was intended to prevent Wood from taking such a job. Spivey argued that Wood had received training in a specific method of painting road markings, and Spivey didn't want him bringing that technique to a competitor.
But the judge rejected Spivey's request, calling the agreement "overbroad, ambiguous, and vague." The noncompete banned Wood from doing any type of work for a competing company, says Timothy McConville, Wood's lawyer. "It would have precluded my client from working even as a janitor for Mid-Atlantic Pavement Markings," he says. Spivey's attorney, Christopher L. Spinelli of Kalfus & Nachman, in Norfolk, Virginia, acknowledges that the agreement was broad. "The best approach would be something tailored to the specific job duties of specific employees," Spinelli says. "If Spivey does that, there's no reason it wouldn't be enforceable."
By contrast, Alan Kroll uses a narrowly drawn noncompete. Kroll, president of Space Care Interiors, a $15 million office furniture company, in Berkley, Michigan, wants to prevent members of his sales staff from switching jobs and taking Space Care clients with them. His noncompetes generally require employees to agree not to work for a competitor within a 50-mile radius for one or two years after leaving Space Care. Recently, Kroll threatened legal action against a former employee who violated the noncompete. The two parties negotiated a cash settlement.
Decide what to protect
Your noncompete will have a better chance of passing legal muster if it focuses on the information you're trying to protect rather than just proscribing the job options of your employees, says Tomkiw. Make sure your noncompete protects information that is truly proprietary. Do your employees use customized software? Have you trained workers in a unique manufacturing process that boosts productivity? Or are your client relationships your most important asset? "Ask yourself, What do we do or have that gives us a competitive advantage that no one else does or knows about?" says Tomkiw. "Then protect that."
Communicate with your employees
If your employees don't know that certain information is confidential, a judge is not likely to punish them for sharing it with a competitor. Make it clear to employees, in writing, what information is private. Whether it's a list of clients or code for proprietary software, your important information should be password-secured, and only certain employees should have access to it. "You have to put the information in a box of some sort," says Jon Meer, who chairs the employment practice in the Los Angeles office of law firm DLA Piper. "If you can't define what you were trying to protect in a way the court can clearly understand, it's going to be thrown out."
Don't treat your secretary like a CFO
One standard noncompete for everyone from the mailroom guy to the CFO won't cut it. Instead, identify positions that have clear access to proprietary information or clients and then tailor an agreement for each of those jobs. And if you're requiring agreements for your lower-level employees, you may want to reconsider. Noncompetes signed by blue-collar or administrative workers are hard to justify in court, since those workers usually don't know company secrets or develop customer relationships.
Last year, Integrated Process Technologies, an engineering firm in Devens, Massachusetts, claimed a pipefitter violated a noncompete agreement when he took a job with GMP Piping, in nearby Littleton. Shepherd's firm successfully argued that the worker hadn't stolen any trade secrets. "We kept saying, 'Come on, the guy's a $29-an-hour pipefitter,' " Shepherd says. If you force all your low-level employees to sign noncompetes, Shepherd adds, it may be harder for a judge to take you seriously when there's a major breach. In short, you may want to require noncompete agreements for the guy selling pipes but not for the one welding them.
For more information on noncompete agreements, check out the website of the Alexander Hamilton Institute at ahipubs.com | <urn:uuid:6eba0591-a83b-499d-840d-f7012a5b305d> | 2 | 1.570313 | 0.027601 | en | 0.96454 | http://www.inc.com/magazine/20080201/protecting-company-secrets.html |
Best of Show: Gavin Barraclough Flat 20, 83 Newton Street, Manchester, M1 1EP, U.K. Judges' Comments: To build and run (on any platform, without root privileges): make gavin To enjoy the results (on a Linux/x86 machine): su # Make a floppy with an ext2 filesystem (mke2fs /dev/fd0), # mount it under /mnt/floppy cp kernel fs.tar lilo.conf boot.b /mnt/floppy # If the version of your lilo is not 21.4, use the appropriate boot.b # If your floppy drive is not /dev/fd0, edit lilo.conf appropriately lilo -C /mnt/floppy/lilo.conf # Boot from the floppy on an x86 machine with a PS/2 keyboard and mouse # Move the window away from the corner vi gavin.c # Scroll the file with up-arrow and down-arrow sh # Can have several shell windows vi gavin.hint prim # Press and hold any key Over the years, we've seen a program that dumps core if executed on a "wrong" architecture immediately (1984/mullender), or after a while (2001/bellard). This entry will happily compile and execute on any architecture - the trick is that the result, to be useful, must be produced (and can only be enjoyed) on a particular architecture. We have not decided yet whether to disallow this for future contests. If you do not want to mess with a floppy and you use GRUB, see below in the author's notes. You can put additional text files in fs.tar for browsing with vi. If you do not want to bother rebooting your computer at all, see for QEMU (Fabrice Bellard is an IOCCC 2001 winner), but your experience will be limited (replace -DK=0 with -DK=1 in the Makefile, and you will have to move the mouse to trigger the initial screen update). The judges were able to write a few more programs to run on this OS What are the limitations for such programs? What you can do and what you cannot do in such programs? The program called "prim", written by the judges, computes and prints prime numbers. Selected Author's Comments: This is a 32-bit multitasking operating system for x86 computers, with GUI and filesystem, support for loading and executing user applications in elf binary format, with ps2 mouse and keyboard drivers, and vesa graphics. And a command shell. And an application - a simple text-file viewer. The OS has ended up as a traditional monolith with one entry point for syscalls, with apps treated as cooperative-multitasking tasks that can be sent different messages (e.g. 'initialize', 'key hit', 'render to buffer') through their main entry point, and which will return control to the OS having performed the necessary work. Applications are are passed a pointer to their task structure, which is partially defined by the OS, and partially for the application's own use. The program compiles into a tool to build a kernel image, so having built the program, the makefile will run it, piping the output into a file called 'kernel'. The makefile will then proceed to build a root filesystem image. This involves rebuilding the program with different compiler flags, then building a tar file containing the resulting programs (the filesystem format supported by the OS is the tar-file format). For further usage information see 'gavin_install.txt'. The filenames 'vi' and 'sh' are significant, and should not be changed. Known 'features'. Known issues are really too plentiful to list. If the mouse pointer goes off the left hand side of the screen it will reappear on the right, and vice-versa. If it goes off the top or bottom, it will go and corrupt some memory. The file system is kinda optimistic about matching names, so, for example if you type the command 'shell' into a command-line it will execute the program 'sh' - close enough a match for it. The elf binaries are not loaded at the correct address, and their entry point must be the start address of the text segment. The keyboard driver can cope with the basic alpha-numeric keys, but gets confused by fancy things like 'shift' or 'backspace'. In the text-file viewer, 'vi', the up/down and pgup/pgdn keys scroll up or down by one line. There is nothing to stop you [from] scrolling above the top of the file, and pressing any other keys may have an undefined effect. The x86 is bootstrapped into 32bit mode in 6 instructions, with 4 more to set up data/stack segments and a stack-pointer to allow C code to be run. On top of this there are also about a dozen instructions to switch the video card into graphics mode. All in all, a relatively tiny number of instructions next to the size of the C program. Also, the string is mostly composed of data - a Linux-esque kernel header for the bootloader, protected mode descriptor tables, keyboard maps, etc. (I should also mention that it contains mini functions to perform an x86 'in' and 'out' instruction - to allow the keyboard & mouse to be driven from C code). Porting to another architecture should be relatively easy* - the string simply needs be replaced with one containing data & code suitable for the new target platform. Accesses to data in the string are made relative to the define 'V', so these may need updating as appropriate (0x90200 is the address at which a Linux bootloader loads an x86 kernel image). * ;-) | <urn:uuid:25280093-45e0-4b25-9bf4-e1025ef98692> | 2 | 1.539063 | 0.162522 | en | 0.902032 | http://www.ioccc.org/2004/gavin.hint |
HomeEducationalThe Sun and Solar ActivitySolar CycleWhat is the Sunspot Number Wednesday, Mar 04 2015 02:50 UT
The Sun and Solar Activity
What is the Sunspot Number?
The abundance of sunspots on the Sun varies on timescales from a few hours to many years. Historically, an index called the 'sunspot number' has been used to quantify the abundance of spots. This index is still in wide use today, although for some purposes it has been replaced by more readily and consistently measured indices such as the 10.7 centimetre solar flux. The main advantage of the sunspot number is that it is the only index for which we have a long and detailed historical record.
Sunspot Number (here denoted R) is defined as:
R = K * (10 * G + I)
where G is the number of sunspot groups visible on the Sun; I is the total number of individual spots visible; and K is an instrumental factor to take into account differences between observers and observatories.
Sunspot Number as an index can be defined on a daily basis but because of the large day-to-day variation is usually averaged over longer periods, the most common being the monthly and the yearly average. When averaged over a year, the sunspot number varies smoothly charting the progress of the solar cycle. On the other hand the daily and the monthly averages exhibit considerable variation with respect to the yearly curve. This variation is due to bursts of rapid solar region growth often associated with solar flares and other interesting events.
The most widely quoted average sunspot number is the Zurich number (Rz) which was replaced from January 1981 with the International Sunspot Number (RI). The American Sunspot Number is another series to which the IPS Culgoora Observatory contributes its observations.
Material prepared by Richard Thompson
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96 Institut za razvoj obrazovanja - IFLA International Student Design Competition
IFLA International Student Design Competition
Kategorija obavijesti: Pozivi za dostavu radova
Zemlja studiranja: Nizozemska
Jezik: Engleski
Područje: Arhitektura, Biologija, Ekologija, Geologija, Šumarstvo, Turizam
Rok za prijavu: 01-05-2008
e-mail: [email protected]
Website: http://www.ifla2008.com
Opis natječaja: This competition is sponsored by the IFLA and directed by the Stichting IFLA 2008 (Stichting IFLA 2008 is the acting foundation of the Dutch Society of Landscape Architects - NVTL; www.nvtl.nl )
Throughout the world climate change is affecting the conditions of nature and local weather. Most people experience these changes as an imbalance between nature and the human environment. This IFLA student competition seeks to stimulate the discussion about the specific contribution of landscape and urban planning and design to realize a new balance between nature and the human environment.
Climate change and its impact on nature and weather conditions is a world-wide phenomenon, but in each region the impact is different. Especially where it concerns changes in water quantities and qualities. What could be the new inspirational ways of planning, new ways of designing flow systems (of water, transport, energy, materials, information, etc.) and designing new spatial environments, that would create new environmental conditions? Are concepts such as ‘utopia', ‘autarchy' or ‘cradle to cradle' still valuable?
Ispis Pošalji link
Priprema i polaganje TOEFL i GMAT testa
Strateski plan 2013-2015 | <urn:uuid:87c9c3fc-8f4b-4a04-b8ed-75a2978dd756> | 2 | 2.234375 | 0.048286 | en | 0.812821 | http://www.iro.hr/hr/info-servis/akademski-infoservis/pozivi-za-dostavu-radova/view-info-1430/ |
Sorghum is, generally speaking, something you only see in households in the upper Midwest. Sorghum, like sugar cane or wheat, is a grass. It produces heads the size of corn ears that contain small seeds, about the size of millet. Farmers once grew sorghum for cattle feed. The grain itself is nutritious, and the stalks can be stored and fermented into silage, i.e. edible compost that cows can live on during the winter.
Yet sorghum stalks have uses for humans too. Like sugar cane they can be broken up and boiled to extract their sap, which can then be reduced into syrup. Like cane juice, sorghum sap is composed primarily of sucrose, yet the boiling process creates a high enough proportion of invert sugar that it doesn’t crystallize easily.
These days sorghum is a minor crop in the US, though worldwide it’s still the fifth most abundant cereal crop. Being extremely hardy, it’s popular with subsistence farmers in Central America, Africa and Asia.
As for the syrup, it has a flavor you really need to grow up with to appreciate. I didn’t, and I find the stuff rather, um…pungent. Still, once upon a time it was the only syrup some Midwestern folks could afford. Not all that long ago it was common to find a jar or bowl of it on the kitchen table where it served as a general-purpose household sweetener.
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12 Responses to Sorghum
1. Chris says:
Sorghum is also a part of classic southern-Appalachian cooking. Real hill-country food, vis. November’s ‘Southern Living’ magazine. I’ve found it for sale in small stores in N. Georgia.
• joepastry says:
Interesting…I mostly remember seeing it in Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin and places like that. This is very good to know. Thanks!
- Joe
2. Linda says:
I too heard about sorghum when growing up in the South but mostly it was referred to as sorghum molasses. My cousin brought me a jar when she visited a couple of years ago. I always thought of it as a stronger molasses though not as strong as blackstrap.
• joepastry says:
I think that’s about right. A very different flavor to my mind, though. Kinda sour as I recall.
- Joe
3. ellenbakes says:
Yep, sorghum syrup is also a Southern thing–and, not just in Georgia. I’ve read that it was originally introduced to America by African slaves in the early 17th century.
4. Rachel says:
Sorghum syrup is also a VERY common ingredient in gluten-free beers, as a point of interest. Unfortunately, it has a very unique flavour as a fermented syrup, that many people don’t enjoy.
5. Frankly says:
I’m familiar with sorgum and it is something you do need to acquire a taste for, its flavors are stronger than molasses. The one place I really like it is in pecan pie. Not only do the dark notes add more interesting tastes but being less sweet it really allows the nuts to have a bigger impact.
6. Brian Shaw says:
Many years ago I saw some farmers making srghum syrup in a field near London KY. I stopped on the side of the road and watched, took pictures, and watched some more. The farmers didn’t seem to understand my fascination. I mentioned that to a “local” I was working with and mistakingly called it ‘sorghum molasses’… which immediately confirmed what they already knew: that I was a full-fledged Yankee.
• joepastry says:
Yeah the camera kinda gave it away I’m sure! ;)
I’ve seen it made in Indiana. Really until this week I had no idea that it was also a Southern thang.
- Joe
7. Angie says:
Growing up in western Kentucky, we always had a jar of sorghum molasses in the house. We always mixed it with softened butter and spread it on biscuits as either dessert or an indulgent breakfast. I’m in Tennessee now, and can find it at the local grocery stores. I guess it’s an acquired taste, but one that I have certainly acquired.
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Ireland to levy bagel tax
DUBLIN (JTA) — Irish bagel lovers aren’t having much luck: a 13.5 percent value-added tax will be tacked on to the traditionally Jewish favorite for the first time.
Under new plans by the Irish government to raise desperately needed revenue, bagels, croissants, garlic bread and other premium baked goods will be hit with the tax next month. Consumers are likely to bear the brunt of the cost.
Ordinary bread is exempt from tax in Ireland, but the Irish revenue service changed its determination on bagels this month, saying they were not "sufficiently bread-like" to be exempt from taxes on prepared or "value added" foods.
Bagels, a staple of Ireland’s small Jewish community since the late 1800s, started to become widely popular in the country in the late 1990s as consumer tastes changed amid rapidly growing prosperity. Since 2007, that prosperity has reversed dramatically, forcing Ireland into a financial bailout that has left the government scrambling for new sources of revenue. | <urn:uuid:b89e5855-3dd9-4c6c-b999-683b0ea17707> | 2 | 1.6875 | 0.037953 | en | 0.946706 | http://www.jta.org/2011/11/20/news-opinion/world/ireland-to-levy-bagel-tax |
ODOT Needs Better Planning for Success
ashland odotMEDFORD, Ore.– The future of road construction is in question after an audit by the Secretary of State’s Office.
The problem is two-fold. First, projected declines in gas taxes have led to a reduction in the staff size at the Oregon Department of Transportation. At the same time, temporary funding has increased the number of road projects, leading to the use of temporary workers. That means that ODOT inspectors and engineers are frequently spread thin in some areas.
The audit also reveals one-third of the state highway division workforce could retire in the next five years. The Secretary of State’s Office is warning that many of the experienced workers are not teaching younger employees the expertise and skills to oversee road projects and ensure quality.
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Digital Copyright Infringement
Digital Copyright Infringement, Peer-to-Peer, and File Sharing at KUMC
Why pay for something when you can get it for free? The answer is "when not paying breaks the law". Downloading the latest album from your favorite artist or having a friend make a copy for you on CD instead of paying for it can get you both into big trouble for copyright infringement. This site is devoted to educating KUMC faculty, staff and students about what constitutes digital copyright infringement and its consequences, what role peer-to-peer technology plays, and the University's stance on both.
What is copyright infringement?
Copyright infringement is the act of violating the exclusive rights of a copyright owner. Examples include copying or performing a work without the copyright owner's permission, or creating a work of one's own that derives from a copyrighted work. KUMC is committed to insuring that intellectual property rights belonging to the creators of original works are protected. Visit the Copyright Office website for more information, including KUMC's Copyright Policy and Guidelines.
What is file sharing?
File sharing is a general term for sharing digital files electronically. These files could be music or other audio recordings, movies, television shows, games or other computer software, or any other type of digital file.
Sharing any file of a work that you did not create yourself as an original work, that is not in the public domain, and for which you do not have permission to share, is a crime and can have serious consequences. Sharing in this context includes everything from sharing a multitude of files over peer-to-peer networks to copying a single work for a friend.
What is peer-to-peer?
Peer-to-peer (P2P) is a method of file sharing that allows millions of computers connected to the Internet to trade digital files with each other. By installing P2P software, you can easily scan for shared files on these computers and download the file of your choice. You can also share files or your entire hard drive so that others can download your files.
While P2P can have legitimate uses, the most predominant use is to find and download copyrighted movies, music, software and information. Both sharing and downloading copyrighted material that you do not have the right to share is a form of copyright infringement, as it violates the copyright holders' exclusive rights to copy and distribute their work.
One common misconception about P2P is that it's anonymous because you don't have to register or provide a name or email address. However, that's a falsehood - it is not anonymous, not secret, and your actions can be traced back to you. Additionally, installing P2P software can be very risky because many of these applications are bundled with spyware or other malicious programs that can compromise your computer's security. By installing these programs, you risk damage to your computer and files by viruses or malicious files, accidentally or unknowingly sharing private files on the Internet, or even the use of your computer in another illegal activity (such as identity theft, sending spam, or attacking other computers.)
Last modified: Apr 08, 2014 | <urn:uuid:c2b39d1c-720c-4288-9771-bf72f9306c00> | 3 | 3.1875 | 0.421965 | en | 0.924434 | http://www.kumc.edu/information-resources/standards-and-guidelines/digital-copyright-infringement.html |
Watch: Thunderstorms light up night skies over Hawaii
Watch: Thunderstorms light up night skies over Hawaii
The Canada-France-Hawaii observatory located atop the summit of the 13,800-foot Mauna Kea is there to be a "state of the art astronomical observing facility" and researchers have placed a few web cameras nearby to record the skies at night.
The observatory also posts daily time lapse videos of what their cameras caught.
But not every night in Hawaii is crystal clear -- being a tropical location, they get their share of thunderstorms.
And a storm Sunday night was a good one: (Note, there is a lot of flickering strobe-light-esque flashes in the video below, if you're sensitive to that type of light. There was a lot of close-up lightning.)
More Information:
Still Web Camera -- Note! If you change the switch next to "Guides" to "On", the video amazingly overlays the current constellations over the video
2 Hour Time Lapse
Time lapse video galleries
(Thanks to @Beward28 for enlightening me to this great time lapse resource!) | <urn:uuid:492f2aec-023a-42cd-9176-4bfc11886078> | 2 | 2.375 | 0.042601 | en | 0.891818 | http://www.kval.com/outdoors/Watch-Thunderstorms-light-up-night-skies-over-Hawaii-238272471.html |
Why Young People Have Deserted Obama
barack michelle kids
george packer
Randy Shaw: The GOP truly believes Americans will go back to the days of blaming themselves for high student loan debt, wage stagnation, and the inability to get a fulltime job. It’s just a question of finding the right message to convince them that it is their own lack of hard work and industriousness that put them in their situation.
Renewing California’s Labor-Tenant Alliance
yee deleon nunez perez
Randy Shaw: Organized labor promotes a broadly progressive agenda in Sacramento, but gives a pass to legislators who favor big landlords over working people. The once strong labor-tenant alliance is clearly broken, and must be renewed.
Why MSNBC Fell — And How It Can Rise Again
msnbc panel
Randy Shaw: What if activists closely following Keystone, immigration reform, the battle against federal budget austerity and other campaigns knew that each night MSNBC would have the latest on developments in all of these campaigns.
Can Obama Still Bring Real Change?
clinton obama bush
Randy Shaw: If activists continue mobilizing in favor of immigration reform and against Keystone, Obama’s second term could bring the real change that the millions who elected him have sought.
How Eric Garcetti Won
garcetti wins
Randy Shaw: Garcetti kept the progressive base he earned from this City Council record and combined it with conservative San Fernando Valley voters angry at the Valley-based Greuel for her campaign receiving million of dollars from unions representing Department of Water and Power workers.
As Cities Prosper, Poor People Relocate to Suburbs
suburban poor
IRS, Benghazi “Scandals” Won’t Hurt Dems in 2014
election day
Randy Shaw: Democratic success in 2014 hinges not on the impact of the IRS and other “scandals” but on passing comprehensive immigration reform, rejecting the Keystone XL Pipeline, and avoiding a budget deal that undermines Social Security.
Pushing Budget Reform State by State
obama advisors
Excessive Military Spending Crushes the American Dream
pentagon spending
Corporate Media Loves Thatcher Because She Broke Unions
Randy Shaw: Wealthy media chieftains love Thatcher for eliminating working class jobs, cutting funding for free school milk programs, and dramatically increasing income inequality; they define such actions as strength rather than immorality.
Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger... | <urn:uuid:887035e4-793a-42ef-bffd-cf3c7e0ccb9d> | 2 | 1.578125 | 0.0436 | en | 0.916132 | http://www.laprogressive.com/author/randy-shaw/page/5/ |
The Mongolian Ger as a Yanic Symbol
I met Sara in 2004 when she joined Gamma Phi Beta at Cal and became my first little sis. An architecture major passionate about design and creativity, Sara often joked that the world of architecture had too many phallic symbols and not enough yanic symbols. I remember her defining yanic as the female equivalent to phallic, and joking that the stadium stood alone as a prominent example of yanic architecture: round, inviting, and full of activity, with crowds of men paying to get in. | <urn:uuid:a1b62201-6ae4-44aa-b967-b1e3acb46249> | 2 | 1.515625 | 0.241293 | en | 0.974966 | http://www.leslieforman.com/category/mongolia/ |
Unemployment should be addressed carefully. Most people who are unemployed are not so because it’s their first choice, and it is therefore a sensitive subject. While it’s great to be there for your friends, there are some things that aren’t okay to say to them about their unemployment situation.
1. “You must have tons of free time now.”
There is a 99.99% chance that the person you’re talking to would much rather be using that time to earn a paycheck. While it can be tempting to say this in an attempt to look on the bright side and make your friend feel better, you should avoid bringing free time up at all. That free time is most likely becoming suffocating and very boring, so try to keep this out of the conversation. Similarly, don’t complain about how busy you are. Your friend probably understands that you’re busier because of your job, but mentioning it would seem rude.
2. “Maybe you’re just not doing…”
If you have good suggestions as to where your friend might be able to find employment, that’s great. But it’s inappropriate to say that he’s doing something wrong or that he’s not doing something that he should be doing. That just places blame on your friend, and that’s definitely not something he needs right now.
3. “One of my friends was in this situation and she did this… you should try it!”
It’s very likely that your recently unemployed friend has a completely different skill-set than your currently employed friend. Whatever your employed friend did worked for her because of a specific set of circumstances, including her contacts, skills, education level, and location. Your unemployed friend is in a completely different situation, so it’s unfair to think that telling him about your other friend would be helpful. It actually turns out to be more discouraging, as it seems the other friend is simply more successful.
4. “So how is the job hunt going?”
Every so often, it’s great to check in on your friend and see how he’s coming along. But asking repeatedly about his job search will just force your friend to say over and over again that it’s not going well. That isn’t a position you want to put your friend in. After a while, let your friend approach you about the topic.
5. “You’re lucky you don’t have to deal with this at work.”
No matter how bad your day at work was, don’t compare your fortune with your friend’s. While it may be that you wish you didn’t have to deal with something or someone at work, you’re still fortunate to have a job. Your friend is not likely to find himself fortunate that he doesn’t have to deal with something because he doesn’t have a job.
6. “Don’t worry, I’ll get this.”
It is likely that your friend isn’t making any money at the moment, but offering too often to pay for the tab would seem patronizing, even if that’s not how you meant it at all. There is a fine line between offering to help someone out and doing it to the extent that it bothers that person. If your friend needs help, he’ll ask.
7. “I know how you feel.”
If you are not currently unemployed, don’t say this. Don’t even think it. Your friend is in a unique set of circumstances. While it’s good to talk with your friend and try to understand what he’s going through, you’re not in a position to truly know what he’s experiencing. Saying that you know how he feels simply trivializes his situation and makes you seem out of touch with how hard it really is to be unemployed.
Featured photo credit: Scott Kellum via photpin.com
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- Programming (
- - How to include library directories? (
davee 03-12-2004 07:15 AM
How to include library directories?
I'm trying a simple QT tutorial. When I try and compile my helloworld app, it has trouble including the .h files (see below). Where and how do I include the directory containing these (I think it's /opt/kde3/qt/include)...
dave@davee:~/qt> qmake -project
dave@davee:~/qt> qmake
dave@davee:~/qt> make
g++ -c -pipe -O2 -march=i586 -mcpu=i686 -fmessage-length=0 -fPIC -DNO_DEBUG -Wall -W -O2 -march=i586 -mcpu=i686 -fmessage-length=0 -fPIC -DNO_DEBUG -DQT_NO_DEBUG -I/usr/lib/qt3//mkspecs/default -I. -I. -I/usr/include -I/include -o main.o main.cpp
main.cpp:1:26: qapplication.h: No such file or directory
cjp 03-12-2004 08:50 AM
I don't know much about qmake & QT, but I know that make uses a file called Makefile. Try to find the -I. -I/usr/include etc. arguments in Makefile, and add "-I/opt/kde3/qt/include". That should work, but I'm not sure if Makefile is auto-generated by qmake. If that is the case, then you should check qmake's input files / configuration to make sure that it also writes this argument in newly-written Makefiles
bigearsbilly 03-12-2004 08:56 AM
from man make
Append directory dir to the list of directories
searched for include files.
try adding -I blah/blah/include it to your CFLAGS variable.
bigearsbilly 03-12-2004 08:56 AM
oops! i mean 'man gcc'
deiussum 03-12-2004 10:00 AM
You seem to be under the impression that libraries and .h files are the same thing. Your title mentions library directories, then you ask about the directory containing .h files in the text.
A library and a .h file are NOT the same. A library contains object code that has the actual implementation of things. A .h file simply DECLARES the implementation of those things, it doesn't implement them.
So... even if you get your INCLUDE paths working, the next thing you will probably run into is linker errors because you don't have the LIBRARY paths setup. To tell the linker about a LIBRARY, you use -llibraryname and possibly -L/path/to/library if it is not in your search paths.
Sorry, if you are already aware of the distinction, but it was always a bit of a pet peeve of mine when people in my C++ classes in college would say they included a library, when what they really did was to include a header file... :) I think the confusion might have come from the fact that the standard C/C++ libraries are usually included by default so they never had to deal with actual libraries before.
woodywellhung 04-04-2004 05:53 PM
and dont forget that -llibraryname is not the actual filename either.
i.e. if you want to link a file called libMylib.a
you would actually use
gcc -l Mylib
cjp 04-05-2004 03:20 AM
you would actually use
gcc -l Mylib
Without the space between -l and Mylib. So, you should do this:
gcc -lMylib
woodywellhung 04-05-2004 06:41 AM
should be fine with or without the space but I was taught that not having one is depreciated.
| <urn:uuid:afd55c39-2e84-45b7-8b0d-e25899bbe73d> | 2 | 2.09375 | 0.176289 | en | 0.882346 | http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/programming-9/how-to-include-library-directories-156660-print/ |
From the Super Mario Wiki
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This article is about the Japanese company. For information about the development team, see here.
Nintendo Logo.svg
Founded September 23, 1889
First Mario Game Donkey Kong (1981
Latest Mario Game Super Smash Bros. for Wii U (2014
Current President Satoru Iwata
Nintendo (Japanese: 任天堂; Rōmaji: Nintendō) is a company in Japan which develops and manufactures its own line of video games and consoles. The name Nintendo means "leave luck to heaven" in Japanese. They are the creators of many popular series, including The Legend of Zelda, Pokémon, as well as their most popular series, the Super Mario series, plus many more. Nintendo also owns the Seattle Mariners baseball team. Nintendo's mascot is Mario himself. Nintendo revived the North American video game industry after the Video Game Crash of 1983.
Nintendo's highest-selling home and handheld consoles are the Wii and Nintendo DS.
Nintendo's regions (headquarters) in the world. In the Nintendo webpage's selector country ( appears the region and its countries' list.
He called only Miyamoto in because he was the only employee who had any time on his hands. Yamauchi asked Miyamoto to make a product for the arcade machine that would become a best-seller. Shigeru Miyamoto worked on the project he was thinking of for a while: Donkey Kong. When it entered the North American market, it became a best-seller. Nintendo started moving into video games and assigned Gunpei Yokoi to make a handheld console for enjoyment while traveling. Thus, Yokoi made the Game & Watch, which became popular in both Japan and the United States. Nintendo then made the Nintendo Entertainment System, which grew very popular among children, the most successful game being Super Mario Bros. The release of the system forever changed the focus of video game development from quantity to quality and cemented the company's place in history. Aside from video games, Nintendo is also the majority owner of the Seattle Mariners, a Major League Baseball team, which is now handled by Howard Lincoln. In 2002, Hiroshi Yamauchi stepped down from office, giving the position to Satoru Iwata.
Results of their work[edit]
The company's red logo from 1975 to 2006
Nintendo is the longest running company in the history of the video game console market and historically the most influential and best known console manufacturer. However, they do have business rivalry in Sony, Microsoft, and formerly their biggest rival, Sega (which is now reduced to third-party work). Nintendo, as a video game company, began in the Japanese market in 1983, the U.S. market in 1985, and the European market in 1986. Over time Nintendo has manufactured six TV consoles and nine handheld portables. They have also developed, and published well over 300 games, and have sold over 2 billion games worldwide.
Nintendo has also sold very well among other consoles. Yamauchi, when he announced the Nintendo GameCube, stated that people don't buy a console for the console, they buy it for the game they want. He also believed that a video game console should be solely for video games, never anything else, in opposition to the PlayStation 2's built-in DVD Player. These are the reasons he always made Nintendo's consoles the cheapest, compared to other consoles.
All recent official Nintendo merchandise are marked with the Official Nintendo Seal. Originally, the seal was applied to only video games.
Appearances in the Mario universe[edit]
MSM 1-1 Basketball.png
The Nintendo logo appearing next to a basketball at Mario Stadium in Mario Sports Mix.
The logo appearing on the sides at Nintendo Gamecube in Mario Kart: Double Dash!!.
Home consoles[edit]
A variety of Nintendo consoles.
Attachments and Remodels[edit]
Handheld consoles[edit]
Releases of these consoles in China usually replace "Nintendo" in the name with "iQue". Examples are the iQue DS and the iQue 3DS.
See also[edit]
Name in other languages[edit]
Language Name Meaning
Japanese 任天堂
The first name is the name of the company. 任 (nin) mean "responsibility", "work" or "obligation", 天 (ten) mean "sky" and 堂 () mean "stately" or "bless". Also 天堂 (tendō) mean "heaven" or "paradise". The second name is used for the Japanese name of some Nintendo's consoles, like Nintendo GameCube (ニンテンドーゲームキューブ, Nintendō GēmuKyūbu). The name can also be roughly translated to, "Leave luck to heaven."
Korean 닌텐도
Chinese 任天堂
Name used also for the Chinese name of the Nintendo's consoles.
External links[edit] | <urn:uuid:3d0b60a2-27ed-4f46-a9ae-8998ac042aee> | 2 | 1.929688 | 0.031768 | en | 0.95014 | http://www.mariowiki.com/Nintendo |
What is Koryo Gumdo?
HISTORY OF KORYO GUMDO: Koryo Gumdo is a Korean style sword martial art whose methods practiced today have evolved through the years. Korean gumdo has been established through the adoption of many philosophies and methodology that existed in Korea and surrounding countries over the last 2,000 years.
In Korea, the martial arts are thought to have developed as a result of internal conflicts and repeated attacks from the neighboring countries of China and Japan.
In an attempt to unite and stop foreign invaders, the various tribes formed alliances, which ultimately resulted in the development of the three Kingdoms Silla, Kokuryu and Paekche. This time was known as the Koryo Dynasty.
The military of these three kingdoms taught and train their soldiers and officers in different facets of martial arts including unarmed armed combat methods of Subak, Taekyeon, Tang soo,,,, along with armed combat methodology of Gumdo, Goong dong, Bong sui ..... and battlefield strategies.
Each kingdom had a system of warrior.
1.Koguryo kingdom: Ssabori warriors I Way of the warrior
2.Silla Kingdom: The Hwa Rang I The Flowering Youth
3.Paekche kingdom: The Chulgi I Iron horsemen
Korea is a peninsula that lies between Japan and China. Because of migration, conflict and the sharing of ideas and philosophies, many concepts have been introduced and adopted throughout the ages between these countries.
Historically there is evidence in Korea dating back to 70 BC of sword making techniques that are used in what is known as the samurai sword of Japan.
Around 600 A.D. the three kingdoms of SiIla, Kokuryu and Paekche united into what is known today as Korea. The martial arts of Taekyeon, Subakand Gumdo enjoyed great popularity and prestige at this time. This surge in popularity lasted until the Vi Dynasty overthrew the Koryo Dynasty in 1392. During this new dynasty period, the martial arts fell into decline as Confucism replaced Buddhism.
Warriors were banished and the practice of the martial arts was forbidden. The policy of "favoring the arts and despising arms" was adopted. Many Koreans thus took refuge to the Buddhist temples where the martial arts were taught and preserved secretly, with instruction handed down from father to son and teacher to student. In the 18 and 19th centuries, military training skills declined even further. The Yi Dynasty ruled until 1910.
On August 28,1910, Japan invaded Korea and Emperor Sunjong abdicated his throne and officially relinquished the thrown of Korea to Japan. The Yi Dynasty came to an end with the Japanese occupation of Korea. Japan began the systematic destruction of the Korean culture. It became illegal to teach Korean history. A revisionist history was written by the Japanese which replaced traditional subject matter and was taught in public schools. Korean martial arts were banished and replaced with Japanese sporting arts. Ssirum was replaced with Sumo, Subak and Taekyeon were replaced with judo and karate, and Koryo Gumdo was replaced with kendo.
With the end of World War II, and the liberation of Korea, Korea once again took control of its own martial arts. From the period of 1945-1955, there was a movement to unite the various Korean martial arts into unified national styles. Tae Kwon Do focuses on the ballistic art by utilizing blocking, kicking and punching, and has grown to become very popular over recent years. Hapkido incorporates offensive and defensive maneuvers that applies ballistic techniques with holds, releases, and throwing techniques.
Korean Gumdo is the art of the sword, which trains men, women and children in this ancient sword art of the koryo warrior.
Our school is under the World Koryo Gumdo Association founded by Grandmaster Dr. Duk Gun Kwon, 9th Dan Black Belt also founder of the USNTF and WTHA.
Gumdo Videos | <urn:uuid:e622a57e-45ca-47c3-8f53-923b46db736e> | 3 | 3.203125 | 0.124929 | en | 0.971035 | http://www.mastersmithama.com/gumdo.html |
Linda Matti
As an obstetrics nurse at Mayo Clinic, I had the opportunity to interact with a diverse population of patients. In the 1970s, we saw an influx of mothers from Southeast Asia. In the 1980s, we served an increased number of Eastern European patients, and in the 1990s, we delivered high numbers of babies to Sudanese and Somali women.
Often our department was the first point of access to Mayo that these patients experienced as newcomers to our community. As nurses, we realized that we didn't know enough about culturally competent patient-centered care to be able to provide care that the patients could accept and follow. We needed to learn more about their cultures and health practices. The experience awakened in me the importance of multicultural education, and eventually led me to my current role at Mayo.
We all have conscious or unconscious biases about people, especially if those individuals are different from us in some way. These biases are learned behaviors. As we are exposed to different situations and people, we find that some of our biases are validated and some of them are not. We often need to redefine and relearn how we interact with people who are different than we are.
Mayo is a learning organization, and it is a great place to explore the best ways to interact with patients and staff members who come from different ethnic backgrounds or age groups.
For the first time in history, we have four generations together in the workplace. We have people in their 50s and 60s with years of experience and specific expertise. They understand the cultural history of Mayo and can share it with new staff. We have people in their 30s and 40s who understand processes and are often technically savvy. The staff members in their 20s teach us how to work smarter rather than harder and how to operate successfully on a team. And new entrants to the workplace are the most diverse ethnically. They bring a new level of uniqueness and an ability to provide care in a culturally confident way that we can all learn from.
Just from the perspective of age diversity, I can't help but say it's a great time to work and learn at Mayo Clinic.
• Nov 11, 2010
• PRO608529 | <urn:uuid:15d1b1f7-1085-499c-86ed-618e6d0e5dd9> | 2 | 2.21875 | 0.028706 | en | 0.976188 | http://www.mayo.edu/people/linda-matti |
Turn Your Home into an Investment Profit Center
The key to successful tax planning is learning how to select the best tax-saving strategies to accomplish your specific goals.
Article From: 10/1/2007 Products Finishing,
My job is easy: pick the right strategies. Your job is tougher: Pick your goals. Goals change due to various events over a lifetime. You get married, have kids, start a business, you get the idea. One event that comes into the life of most successful people is buying a home. Almost every reader of this column who calls me for tax advice has goals that include: “Pay off the mortgage on my home(s).”
Okay, here’s the question: Is it smart to pay off your home mortgage? Or would it be smarter to borrow as much as you can (via a mortgage or home equity loan) using your home as collateral?
Let’s start with a few quotes from an article written by Steven Marshall and Mike Lowe titled, “How the Affluent Manage Home Equity.” “Thousands of financially successful people, who have more than enough money to pay off their mortgage, refuse to do so.”
The article goes on to say, “They go against many of the beliefs of traditional thinking. They put very little money down, they keep their mortgage balance as high as possible,… and most importantly they integrate their mortgage into their overall financial plan to continually increase their wealth. This is how the rich get richer… While paying off the mortgage saves us interest, it denies us the opportunity to earn interest with that money.”
The most thorough and simple explanation of this keep-your-mortgage-high-and-invest-the-extra-funds is in Ric Edelman’s book, The New Rules of Money. It’s a great read. Edelman tells the story of two brothers. Both earn the same amount and buy $200,000 homes. Brother A puts down $40,000 (all of his savings) and gets a 15-year mortgage at 6.38%. He also pays an additional $100 extra each month to his lender to eliminate his mortgage sooner.
Brother B only puts down 5% ($10,000) on his $200,000 home and invests the $30,000 balance (of his $40,000 savings). He secures a 30-year, interest-only mortgage at 7.42%. As a result, his monthly mortgage payment is $428 less than Brother A. So he invests $528 every month (the $428 plus the same extra $100 his brother is paying to his lender). Brother B’s investment account earns 8%.
Next, Edelman does the math, including tax savings. After 30 years, Brother A has $613,858 in savings and investments. Brother B has $1,115,425.
Sweet deal for Brother B. Of course, both brothers now own their homes mortgage-free. So Edelman points out that Brother B can once again mortgage his home and “Start fresh to enjoy the same benefits once again.”
Now for the reason I was motivated to write this: a series of articles in The Ruff Times, a delightful, easy-to-read investment newsletter, written by Howard Ruff.
“I will teach you in the next few issues why it’s a good idea to borrow as much of your costly, non-producing equity [in your home] as you possibly can and put it to work in safe, income-producing investments,” Ruff writes. “Your mortgage-loan interest payments are tax-deductible… It is also simple interest. Your can put the money to work, even at a lower stated rate, as long as it is a safe, secure place… because that will be compound interest.
“For example, in most cases you shouldn’t have an interest-only loan, but in this case maybe you should, because if you are merely paying interest, your monthly cash outlay will be lower, the tax benefits will stay the same. Just make sure you are earning more than you are paying out.
“So borrowing against the property and putting it to work is a sound strategy. Spending the money on ‘things’ is a bad strategy. I am now borrowing against my Northern Utah home…. I am now researching to see where I can get the biggest safe return as I put that mortgage money to work, producing income in excess of the cost of the mortgage.”
Let’s summarize the simple arbitrage strategy: 1) borrow against your home; 2) invest the mortgage proceeds in a safe investment that earns more than the cost of the mortgage and 3) enjoy the tax benefits of a mortgage interest deduction.
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CHARTS: Newspapers Don't Care When Notable Women Die
2012's notable death lists overwhelmingly feature men.
| Wed Dec. 12, 2012 6:03 AM EST
So is the issue that notable women aren't dying—or that newspapers aren't reporting it? "We simply choose the most prominent, the most well-known, the most influential, without regard to race, color, sex, creed," says Bill McDonald, the editor of obituaries at the Times. "It's a rearview mirror. The people we write about largely shaped the world of the 1950s, '60s and, increasingly, the '70s, and those movers and shakers were—no surprise—predominantly white men."
But legendary feminist activist Gloria Steinem says that doesn't tell the whole story. "The standards by which people are chosen still have a 'masculine' skew," Steinem wrote in an email to Mother Jones. Women who organized and pressured for social progress—like Mothers Against Drunk Driving, for example—are less likely to get notice, Steinem says, than men whose success can only be measured in wealth, like Donald Trump or the Koch Brothers. "Women are more likely to be credited with the personal than the political—and also put in one silo. Anything that only affects women is taken less seriously than anything that also affects men," she says.
Here are some charts and graphs that illustrate the situation:
Lesley Kinzel, an associate editor at xoJane (the website run by Jane Pratt, founder of the cult feminist magazine Sassy) points out that "most of the women who are profiled on these lists (with a few noteworthy exceptions) were performers of some kind, and many were known for their beauty as well as their talent as entertainers. That's fine, but it doesn't exactly challenge the status quo."
This year, the New York Times put four female authors on its notable death list, and 14 artists and musicians:
McDonald says that "were we to choose subjects based on demographics we’d be papering over the past, presenting a false picture."
But putting the obituary gender gap down to "oh, it's a generational thing," can be "a convenient cop out," Kinzel says. Doing so "lets these editors abdicate any responsibility for failing to do the legwork necessary to track down those women who maybe didn't get the attention they deserved."
Obituaries editors say that the percentage of women on their notable deaths lists will increase over time because women in more recent generations have had more opportunities to make an impact. "We're already seeing that happen," says the Times' McDonald. John Temple, a managing editor at the Washington Post, agrees that there will be "more women on the lists in the future."
I sent McDonald a version of the graph below, and he said that he was referring to day-to-day obituaries. "I haven't done a count."
Part of the problem is "the consciousness of the people decided what and who is newsworthy," Steinem says. Or as Erin Belieu, a professor at Florida State University and cofounder of VIDA's annual study on print byline inequality, puts it: "Wouldn't it be much more meaningful if the lists included all those women who have been doing good work all their lives—often with little recognition?"
| <urn:uuid:bb965954-74ea-49a0-9505-0f26ad88ce55> | 2 | 1.546875 | 0.023837 | en | 0.968787 | http://www.motherjones.com/media/2012/12/chart-newspapers-obituary-women-gender-ratio |
Taqi Al-Din Ahmad Ibn Taymiyya
Full name:
Taqī ad-Dīn Abu 'l-ʿAbbās Aḥmad ibn ʿAbd al-Ḥalīm ibn ʿAbd as-Salām Ibn Taymiya al-Ḥarrānī
Arabic name:
تقي الدين أبو العباس أحمد بن عبد الحليم بن عبد السلام بن عبد الله ابن تيمية الحراني
Date of birth:
Date of death:
Taqi Al-Din Ahmad Ibn Taymiyya (1263-1328) belongs to a family which has provided well known scholars such as his uncle Fakhr Eddin (d. 1225) and his paternal grandfather, Majid Eddin, (d. 1255). It was in Damascus where his father was the director of the Sukkariyya madrasa that he was educated and learnt Muslim sciences. He succeeded his father in his office and gave his first lesson there in 1284 and in 1285 he began to teach Quranic exegis at the Umayyad Mosque. During the Mongol invasion of 1300 by Il-khan Ghazan, Ibn Taymiyya was in Damascus preaching resistance. The same year another Mongol threat arose, and he was instructed to exhort people to the jihad and went to Cairo to ask the Mamluk sultan Muhammad B. Qalawun to intervene in Syria. He was present at the subsequent victory by the Mamluks on the Mongols in 1303.
Click here for more information. | <urn:uuid:2719f566-4cfe-4557-8c80-4aebb4f65898> | 2 | 2.46875 | 0.029935 | en | 0.959346 | http://www.muslimheritage.com/scholars/taqi-al-din-ahmad-ibn-taymiyya |
Editor's Note: Ringing in 2011
Every time I look at the date—2010, 2011, 20-whatever—I vaguely feel like I'm traveling through some kind of weird time warp or something. I'm a huge science fiction fan, and—especially in the older books from the 1950s and 1960s—they always painted the years after 2000 as some kind of futuristic society where everyone lived in eco-friendly high rises and drove hover vehicles and had personal jetpacks.
If we weren't living in technologically-advanced computer-run homes or apartments, we were of course off exploring other planets and setting up various colonies. Of course there were always those darker, blacker authors, who wrote about a much bleaker future where "Big Brother" watches over everyone and controls everything that goes on throughout the entire planet.
Now, while I know none of these fictional scenarios are greeting us as we enter 2011, there has been a tremendous amount of technological advancement—both in consumer electronic and industrial products—in the last two decades or so since the dawn of the wide-format inkjet market.
Remember the original mobile phone from the 1980 and 1990s? Just look at any of the television shows from that time period—I'm sure they're out on DVD box sets somewhere. The mobile phones were huge monstrosities with retractable antennas. And back then, they were considered cool. Now they just look ridiculous—especially since many of us have a cell phone smaller than our hands that can call anywhere in the world, surf the Internet, and if they're connected just right, turn on lights, appliances, house alarms, and cameras in their house when they're away from home. Okay, so maybe the "computer-run" homes aren't that far from reality nowadays.
On the industrial side, you can also look at the original LaserMaster printers back in the early 1990s and then compare them to some of high-tech wide-format printers we have on the market. Even the slowest and lowest quality of them blow the original printers out of the water.
Okay, so you might be wondering where this is going—and if I really did sip too much of the holiday eggnog I mentioned in my last editorial. Well, as we more into 2011, we've decided to change things up a bit. If you haven't already noticed, Wide-Format Imaging's logo has gotten a little sprucing up. It's sleek and modern and a little fun and funky. Additionally, I'm happy to announce that in 2011 you're going to see a lot more contributors to the magazine, ebook, and website. We have nine new columnists joining us this year who will be writing four new columns.
In the new "Industry Insights" column—debuting in this issue—SGIA, FESPA, IRgA, and ISA will be sharing the spotlight throughout the year to discuss some of the biggest and hottest issues effecting the wide- and graph format industry.
"The Sign Connection" column—focusing on the needs, issues, and challenges of the traditional sign shop—will be penned by two leading sign franchises: SignsNow and FastSigns.
To help industry leaders make better business decisions, InfoTrends and IT Strategies will provide industry commentary and statistics in the "Market Intelligence" column.
As it becomes more important for PSPs to incorporate QR codes, variable data, and Web 2.0 strategies in their businesses, Firespring will provide the "Interactive Elements" column touching on all of those pieces that can make print come to life through the web and mobile devices.
To me, 2011 is looking very exciting. It's a bold and brave new world. And there is lots more to come, so stay tuned! | <urn:uuid:1a2b657d-529b-4cd4-81d8-c11acc4d98e0> | 2 | 1.65625 | 0.055797 | en | 0.953597 | http://www.myprintresource.com/article/10211655/editors-note-ringing-in-2011 |
Shammas - details and analysis
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Wedad Shammas | <urn:uuid:15096134-881c-4566-beba-310f83fa6ad1> | 2 | 2.109375 | 0.033414 | en | 0.659259 | http://www.name-list.net/facebook/surname/Shammas |
Published on: January 24, 2014
Photography by: Redferns/Getty
When BEATLE PAUL McCARTNEY scrawled "Hey Jude" on a storefront window, he was accused of being an anti-Semite!
While the Beatles were finishing up their single "Hey Jude" backed by "Revolution' in 1968 their Apple retail store in London had been shuttered. In an attempt in failed publicity, Paul defaced it with a PR blurb and set off a furor!
On 7 August 1968, McCartney took his then- GF, Francie Schwartz, and the Beatles' personal assistant Alistair Taylor to the Apple Boutique, which had closed only a week before.
He promptly scarwled "Hey Jude" on its large plate glass window facing the street. Within a day, the hand-made promo was mistaken for an anti-Semitic graffiti and the window was promptly smashed.
Clueless Paul recalled the troubling incident in 1996 upon the release of "The Beatles' Anthology".
"The windows were whited-out, and I thought: 'Great opportunity. Baker Street, millions of buses going around ...' so, before anyone knew what it meant, I scraped 'Hey Jude' out of the whitewash.
"I swear it never occurred to me.
"I said: 'I'm really sorry," and on and on ...'Some of my best friends are Jewish, really. It's just a song we've got coming out..."
"If you listen to the song you'll see it's nothing to do with any of that – it's a complete coincidence," stated Paul.
Paul might have been a reader - of comic books as evidenced in "Help!" - but evidently he was no student of history. | <urn:uuid:906fdead-7d96-4a03-87d4-272060a58ffc> | 2 | 1.953125 | 0.031675 | en | 0.977968 | http://www.nationalenquirer.com/celebrity/beatle-paul-mccartneys-hate-crime |
Logo of frontintegneuroLink to Publisher's site
Front Integr Neurosci. 2013; 7: 83.
Published online 2013 Dec 5. doi: 10.3389/fnint.2013.00083
PMCID: PMC3851789
The functional significance of delta oscillations in cognitive processing
Ample evidence suggests that electroencephalographic (EEG) oscillatory activity is linked to a broad variety of perceptual, sensorimotor, and cognitive operations. However, few studies have investigated the delta band (0.5–3.5 Hz) during different cognitive processes. The aim of this review is to present data and propose the hypothesis that sustained delta oscillations inhibit interferences that may affect the performance of mental tasks, possibly by modulating the activity of those networks that should be inactive to accomplish the task. It is clear that two functionally distinct and potentially competing brain networks can be broadly distinguished by their contrasting roles in attention to the external world vs. the internally directed mentation or concentration. During concentration, EEG delta (1–3.5 Hz) activity increases mainly in frontal leads in different tasks: mental calculation, semantic tasks, and the Sternberg paradigm. This last task is considered a working memory task, but in neural, as well as phenomenological, terms, working memory can be best understood as attention focused on an internal representation. In the Sternberg task, increases in power in the frequencies from 1 to 3.90 Hz in frontal regions are reported. In a Go/No-Go task, power increases at 1 Hz in both conditions were observed during 100–300 ms in central, parietal and temporal regions. However, in the No-Go condition, power increases were also observed in frontal regions, suggesting its participation in the inhibition of the motor response. Increases in delta power were also reported during semantic tasks in children. In conclusion, the results suggest that power increases of delta frequencies during mental tasks are associated with functional cortical deafferentation, or inhibition of the sensory afferences that interfere with internal concentration. These inhibitory oscillations would modulate the activity of those networks that should be inactive to accomplish the task.
Keywords: EEG delta, attention, working memory, frontal lobes, inhibition, cognition
For several decades, electroencephalographic (EEG) recordings have been used for the study of cognitive functions. These oscillations have been classified by their frequency since the very early papers after the discovery of EEG by Berger (Adrian and Mathews, 1934). The technological development of digital EEG resulted in a more precise quantification of EEG frequencies and the definition of bands of frequencies that have the approximate following ranges: 0.5–3.5 Hz for delta, 4–7.5 Hz for theta, 8–12.5 Hz for alpha, 13–30 Hz for beta and higher than 30 Hz for gamma. A very slow activity, lower than 1 Hz oscillations, has also been considered (Steriade et al., 1993).
At the moment, a large body of evidence suggests that oscillatory activity in all frequency bands is linked to a broad variety of perceptual, sensorimotor, and cognitive operations (Basar, 1998; Aoki et al., 1999; Klimesch, 1999; Palva and Palva, 2007). However, in recent years, studies relating EEG oscillations with cognitive processes have focused on alpha and theta frequencies, beta and gamma frequencies and, more recently, very slow activity.
Only few actual references have studied the delta band during different cognitive processes. According to Knyazev (2012), functional delta oscillations appear to be implicated in the synchronization of brain activity with autonomic functions, in motivational processes associated with both reward and atavistic defensive mechanisms, in higher emotional involvement, and in cognitive processes related to attention and the detection of motivationally salient stimuli in the environment (Knyazev, 2007; Knyazev et al., 2009). Delta has also been related to behavioral inhibition (Kamarajan et al., 2004; Knyazev, 2007; Putman, 2011).
In sum, several cognitive neuroscientists consider delta oscillations to be involved in many cognitive processes (Basar et al., 2001).
Delta oscillations were also studied in the 1970s and 1980s. Vogel et al. (1968) reported a high correlation between the number of slow waves in the EEG during the performance of a task and the proficiency in the execution of the task. To explain the apparent contradiction between the increase of delta waves during mental tasks and the fact that this activity is the main characteristic of slow wave sleep, the authors postulated the existence of a type of inhibition that would selectively suppress inappropriate or non-relevant neural activity during the performance of a mental task.
EEG delta during the performance of mental tasks has not been studied intensively in the general literature for approximately 30 years. The current review is focused on delta oscillations to promote interest in this research topic and to increase the knowledge of a more general audience in relation to EEG oscillations and cognition. Readers interested in this area may consult different reviews in relation to theta (Klimesch, 1999; Bastiaansen and Hagoort, 2003; Babiloni et al., 2006; Osipova et al., 2006; Klimesch, 2012), alpha (Klimesch et al., 2007), beta (Pfurtscheller et al., 2005) and gamma activity (Jensen et al., 2007).
Following Vogel’s idea, my colleagues and I performed several experiments that showed increases in delta activity during the performance of different mental tasks. These findings will be described in the Experimental Data section, together with interesting papers relating meditation to delta. However, previous to this discussion, it is necessary to give a summarized review of the origin of delta waves, the basic aspects of electromagnetic oscillations, and their role in the modulation of cerebral networks. Knowledge of these issues is crucial to understand the main hypothesis postulated in relation to the functional role of EEG oscillations and to understand the interpretation of results described in Experimental Data. A summarized review of the attention networks has also been included because many interpretations for the increases in delta power have been related to the activation of one type of network and the inhibition of the other.
Our goal in this review is to present data and propose the hypothesis that sustained delta oscillations inhibited interferences that may affect the performance of the task, possibly by modulating the activity of those networks that should be inactive to accomplish the task.
The Basic aspects of electromagnetic oscillations and their role in the modulation of cerebral networks. (For a review, see Buzsáki et al. (2012))
In 1991, Lopes da Silva (1991) proposed in a seminal paper that an oscillation in neural networks was not simply a by-product of the activity of neuronal networks but may have a functional significance in brain function. He examined the fact that brain rhythms may have functional implications for the working of neural networks in relation to two cases: the possibility that oscillations may subserve a gating function and that those oscillations may play a role in the formation of assemblies of neurons that represent given stimulus patterns.
Each oscillatory cycle is a temporal processing window, signaling the beginning and termination of the encoded or transferred messages. The wave length of the oscillatory category determines the temporal windows of processing and, indirectly, the size of the neuronal pool involved. From this speculation, it follows that different frequencies favor different types of connections and different levels of computation. In general, slow oscillators can involve many neurons in large brain areas, whereas the short time windows of fast oscillators facilitate local integration, largely due to the limitations of axon conduction delays. Computation in the brain means that information is moved from one place to another. The path length of network connectivity is very critical in this process. Because the synaptic path and effective connectivity determine the possible routes for shuttling information from structure to structure, the cycle lengths (i.e., periods) of the oscillation limit how far information gets transferred in one step. Fast oscillations, therefore, favor local decisions, whereas the involvement of distant neuronal groups in distinct structures requires more time to obtain a global consensus.
To understand the recent proposals regarding the functional role of brain oscillations, the basic mechanisms that give rise to these oscillations will be summarized. In the brain, all excitable membranes, as well as all types of transmembrane currents, contribute to the extracellular field. This field is the superposition of all ionic processes, ranging from fast action potentials to the slowest fluctuations in glia. Thus, extracellular currents can emerge from multiple sources, with synaptic activity being the most important source. Na+ spikes were thought to not contribute substantially to the EEG; however, synchronous action potentials from many neurons can contribute to its high-frequency components. Long-lasting (10–100 ms) Ca2+-mediated spikes, currents flowing through hyperpolarization deinactivated cyclic nucleotide-gated channels (Ih currents) and low-threshold (hyperpolarization-induced) transient Ca2+ currents (IT currents), spikes after hyperpolarizations, gap junctions, changes in the membrane potentials of the glia cells, and ephaptic effects have been considered as potential sources of the EEG.
According to Jefferys (1995), there are three types of electrical communication between neurons: (1) electronic coupling between specific neurons through specialized “gap junctions”; (2) “ephaptic” coupling between closely opposed, but noncontiguous, neuronal membranes; and (3) “field” interactions, in which the geometry of a structure promotes the generation of large extracellular fields that alter the excitability of neighboring neurons when suitably oriented. This author delimitated between the last two possibilities, considering “ephaptic” coupling as the close apposition of neuronal processes from two or a few neurons, as in the mammalian Purkinje cells. “Field” effects (or interactions) are considered the electrical communication that depends on large voltage fields generated by the synchronous activity of many neurons with a suitable (usually laminar) geometry. The most common function of electrical transmission is neuronal synchronization. In the words of Buzsáki et al. (2012), “the resistivity of the extracellular medium in the mammalian brain and the highly transient nature of spikes, make unlikely that spikes from individual neurons greatly affect the excitability of nearby neurons through ephaptic coupling. However, the situation is very different when many neurons are simultaneously active, as such synchrony can generate strong spatial gradients in the extracellular voltage”. These authors further stated “Experiments have shown that small-amplitude, slow-frequency application of extracranial currents (trans-cranial electrical stimulation) has a detectable effect on neuronal activity and cognitive function; the small but effective voltage gradients brought about in brain tissue by such external fields are comparable to the voltage gradients produced by population patterns in vivo under physiological conditions”. In slice preparations of the primary visual cortex of anesthetized ferrets, (Frölich and McCormick, 2010) demonstrated that fluctuations in the extracellular potentials produced by the structured neocortical neuronal activity directly influence network activity by modulating the neuronal membrane voltage; this phenomenon forms a feedback loop between the neuronal activity and the endogenous electric fields. This significant susceptibility of the active networks to the extracellular fields that only causes small changes in the membrane potential in individual neurons suggests that endogenous potentials could guide neocortical network activity (Buzsáki et al., 2012).
The important point is that cortical neuronal activity changed under the influence of fields as weak as 2.5 mV/mm, smaller than the spontaneous slow potentials generated by the brain under physiological conditions (Jefferys, 1995). Therefore, field effects likely have some role in the physiological EEG, although assessment of its relative importance compared with the synaptic activity that occurs at the same time awaits more detailed cellular and network analysis.
The chemical synapse remains the key to the interaction between neurons. However, nonsynaptic mechanisms play significant roles in neuronal function. In general, the electrical interactions, gap junctions, ephapses, and field effects can mediate neuronal synchrony on a fast, millisecond time scale. In contrast, ionic and other chemical mechanisms operate over much slower time scales (i.e., tens of milliseconds and upwards (Jefferys, 1995)).
In the generation of the EEG, although all neuron types contribute to the extracellular field, pyramidal cells generate strong dipoles along the somatodendritic axis due to their geometry. Such dipoles give rise to an open field as there is considerable spatial separation of the active sink (or the source) from the return currents. This separation induces substantial ionic flow in the extracellular medium. The two most important determinants of the extracellular field strength are the spatial alignment of the neurons and the temporal synchrony of the dipole moments they generate. This last factor, the temporally synchronous fluctuations of the membrane potential in large neuronal aggregates, is extremely important. Synchrony, which is often produced through network oscillations, explains why different brain states are associated with dramatically different magnitudes of local field potentials (Buzsáki et al., 2012).
The origin of delta oscillations
During non-rapid-eye-movement sleep, the membrane potential of cortical neurons periodically shifts (0.5–1.5 Hz) between a hyperpolarized “down” state and a more depolarized “up” (that is, spiking) state. The largest amplitude up–down shifts of the membrane voltage occur in the fifth layer of the large pyramidal neurons; the large voltage shifts in the somata of the synchronously active–silent neurons have been proposed to induce the formation of an extracellular dipole between deep (infragranular) and superficial (supragranular) layers. At least part of the cessation of spiking during the down states can be explained by after hyperpolarizations of the synchronously bursting pyramidal cells in the up state. The temporally coordinated silent down state of nearby neurons is associated with a positive potential in the infragranular layers and a negative potential in the supragranular layers.
In an excellent large review (Knyazev, 2012), Knyazev quoted Murphy et al. (2009). These authors, using high-density EEG source modeling, showed that the slow waves during sleep (SWS), known as individual spontaneous slow waves (0.5–6 Hz), have distinct cortical origins, propagate uniquely across the cortex, and involve unique subsets of cortical structures. However, when the waves are examined en masse, diffuse hot spots of slow wave origins could be noted. These hot spots are centered at the left insula and the medial cingulate gyrus. Slow-wave propagation along the anterior posterior axis of the brain is largely mediated by a cingulate highway. The highest density of streamlines was in the anterior portions of the cingulate. As a group, slow waves are associated with large currents in the medial frontal gyrus, the middle frontal gyrus, the inferior frontal gyrus, the anterior cingulate, the precuneus, and the posterior cingulate. This topographic anatomical correspondence between the putative site of delta generation and the cortical terminal field of the mesotelencephalic dopamine system has been used as evidence for the hypothesis linking delta oscillations with motivation (Alper et al., 2006; Knyazev et al., 2009; Knyazev, 2012). Data supporting an increase of delta power in motivationally relevant states (see Knyazev, 2007; for a review) also support this hypothesis.
Studies correlating positron emission tomography (PET) and EEG indicate a positive correlation between waking delta and PET metabolism in the medial frontal cortex (Alper et al., 2006). This positive correlation contrasts with the negative relationship between the delta of SWS and PET metabolism (Maquet, 1997) or regional blood flow in the medial frontal cortex (Hofle et al., 1997). These apparently opposite relationships of delta to metabolism and blood flow in the medial frontal cortex in sleep vs. waking states have been used to argue the functional distinction between the waking and SWS delta (Murphy et al., 2009). However, Dang-Vu et al. (2008) discussed how source modeling and the correlation of EEG with PET and fMRI signals consistently show the location of both waking and SWS delta sources in the medial prefrontal, orbitofrontal, and anterior cingulate cortices.
In sum, “much evidence converges on showing that both waking and sleep delta waves mostly originate from the medial frontal cortical regions. Other hot spots include the insula, which is a higher association area for bodily signals (Mesulam and Mufson, 1982), the nucleus accumbens, and tegmental brainstem area” (Knyazev, 2012, p. 684). Unfortunately, most of these circuits are located deep in the brain, and their electrical activity is not directly accessible on the scalp. Although we may learn much from findings that come from fMRI, PET, and animal research, caution should be exercised when these findings are applied to the explanation of human EEG data.
The origin of delta waves during cognitive processes remains unknown. It has been hypothesized that low frequency oscillations of delta and theta ranges are associated with motivational and emotional processes (Knyazev, 2007). Considerable evidence confirms a link between theta activity and emotional states both in animals and in humans (Basar, 1998; Klimesch, 1999, 2012; Klimesch et al., 2007; Knyazev et al., 2009).
The role of delta waves during mental tasks has also been postulated to be associated with cortical deafferentation or with the inhibition of the sensory afferences that interfere with internal concentration (Fernández et al., 1995; Harmony et al., 1996).
Delta oscillations are a characteristic of sleep. From the standpoint of this review, sleep is an interesting natural model of functional decortications (Rial et al., 2007) when advanced operational brain systems are inactive. In this review, it is proposed that an alternative mechanism for ignoring inputs is through inhibition-based oscillations that can provide the prolonged periodic suppression of activity (Buzsáki, 2006). These inhibitory oscillations may modulate the activity of those networks that should be inactive to accomplish the task.
The attention networks
In 1890, William James, in his definition of attention, distinguished two different aspects of this process: attention to external objects and attention to internal processes, such as “trains of thought”. The ability to willfully and persistently maintain that selective content in consciousness is what we understand to be the capacity to concentrate attention.
A major advance in the neurobiological bases of attention has been the recognition that separate neural systems mediate different aspects of attention (Posner and Petersen, 1990). Currently, two functionally distinct and potentially competing brain networks have been identified, which can be broadly distinguished by their contrasting roles in attention to the external world vs. the internally directed mentation involving long-term memory (Corbetta and Shulman, 2002). The dorsal attention system has properties consistent with the system supporting externally directed cognition (Fox et al., 2006).
The second system—the hippocampal-cortical memory system or the ventral system—is part of a network of regions that are active during passive mental states linked to internally directed cognition, including the recollection of the past and thinking about the future (often labeled the default network (Raichle et al., 2001; Buckner et al., 2008)). This brain system includes regions in the ventral medial prefrontal cortex, the posterior inferior parietal lobule, the retrosplenial cortex, the posterior cingulate, and the lateral temporal lobe.
Several studies have shown that spontaneous activity within the dorsal attention system and the ventral memory system is negatively correlated, indicating the segregation of competing processes. Regarding the dorsal attention and ventral memory systems, this segregation may arise from their divergent roles in processing information from the external world vs. internal mentation. This intriguing observation raises the question of how these two systems interact and whether there are control systems that either integrate information from the two systems or regulate their activity.
Vincent et al. (2008) described a third system: the frontoparietal control system, which includes many regions identified as supporting cognitive control and decision-making processes, including the lateral prefrontal cortex, the anterior cingulate cortex, and the inferior parietal lobule.
In contrast, Fuster (2008) established that “attention has two complementary components: an intensive, selective component, and an exclusionary one. The first, as it applies to the initiation and execution of action, seems based primarily in dorsolateral frontal cortex. The exclusionary component of attention, on the other hand, is the equivalent of the inhibitory control of interference, which seems primarily based in ventral frontal cortex. In any case, a ubiquitously active cognitive function, such as attention, cannot be localized in any particular brain structure. Selective executive attention can be construed as a property of frontal networks in operation. The focus of executive attention would shift from one domain of action to another as different networks or their parts excite one another in the perception–action cycle…”. Fuster further states “Interference control is the third executive-attention sub-function of the prefrontal cortex. It is the exclusionary or suppressive aspect of executive attention. This function protects behavioral structures from external or internal interference. Among the important sources of interference are the sensory or executive memories that are similar to those in current action but inappropriate to it. By suppressing distraction, executive attention is served. Interference control is an inhibitory function based primarily in orbitomedial prefrontal cortex and exerted from there on a variety of cortical and subcortical regions, prominently the basal ganglia” (Vincent et al., 2008).
This assertion is supported by several neuroimaging studies that have shown that any task requiring concentrated attention activates areas of the lateral and medial prefrontal cortex in addition to the posterior cortical areas of the perceptual specialization (Kosslyn, 1988; Pardo et al., 1991).
In this paper, we propose that the mental tasks requiring internal concentration, as it has been described above, or internal mentation, as it was recently named, are accompanied by the apparition of EEG delta oscillations, which inhibit the other processes that interfere with the resolution of the mental task.
Experimental data
Mental calculation
In 1995, Fernández et al. (1995) described power increases in the delta band during mental calculation, and they proposed that this increase corresponded to what they called “internal concentration”. These authors later demonstrated that this delta activity is present in many other tasks that require internal concentration.
Harmony et al. (1996) recorded the EEG in normal subjects during two different conditions:
1. A complex arithmetic task that the subject had to solve and give the answer to verbally, e.g., (85/5)6.
2. A control stimulus with similar physic characteristics to the arithmetic symbols and to which the subject had to say “No”, e.g., (&&/&) &.
The stimuli were presented in a video monitor in random order and with equal probability. The EEG was sampled every 5 ms. For the analyses, EEG segments of 1024 ms prior to the presentation of the stimulus and after the presentation of the stimulus were selected by visual inspection. Only correct responses were considered.
Using a narrow band EEG analysis with a resolution of 0.78 Hz, the power in each frequency was averaged separately for the segments before and after the stimulus for both conditions. Repeated measures of ANOVA were computed considering two factors: stimuli (calculus vs. control) and the change in the EEG after the stimuli in comparison with the EEG before the presentation. The most important result was related to the interaction stimuli X change, that is, if there was a greater change in power during calculus than during the control condition. The results showed that increases in power were observed from 1.56 to 5.46 Hz only during calculus and not during the control condition. The results for the delta frequencies were interpreted as related to internal concentration, when it is necessary to inhibit all interferences. However, the results included not only delta but also theta frequencies. Theta increases have been associated with many processes: encoding and memory retrieval (Burgess and Gruzelier, 1997), activation of working memory (Gevins et al., 1997; Krause et al., 2000; Deiber et al., 2007) and allocation of attention related to target stimuli (Missonnier et al., 2006). Klimesch (2012) considered that theta and upper alpha are associated with top-down control processes in two large storage systems (i.e., working memory and long-term memory).
Using data from the same experiment, Harmony et al. (1999) calculated the distributed sources for all frequencies every 0.78 Hz between 0.78 and 18.72 Hz. Frequency domain variable resolution electromagnetic tomography (FD VARETA) was used. This is a distributed inverse solution, constrained by the Montreal Neurological Institute probabilistic atlas, that estimates the spectra of EEG sources. Using the values of all subjects resulting from the source analysis at each point of the grid (voxel) at each frequency, a repeated measures ANOVA was carried out for the following factors: task (calculus vs. control) and EEG segment (pre- vs. post-stimuli). The results showed significant differences (p < 0.001) for the condition and the interaction. In the task effect at 3.9 Hz, the maximum F-value was within the left inferior frontal gyrus (Broca’s area), whereas at 5.46 Hz, the maximum F-value was within the right prefrontal area. The interaction effects were maximal within the left parietal for 3.12 and 12.48 Hz and within the left parieto-temporal cortex for 3.90 Hz.
The significant differences between the sources for arithmetic and control tasks, observed at 3.9 Hz within Broca’s and left parietotemporal cortices, may be considered an increase in internal concentration during the production of internal speech to solve the arithmetic problem. However, this was not the interpretation given in the paper (Harmony et al., 1999) but a retrospective view to be congruent with other results from the same laboratory that were discussed in the present review, wherein the author decided to modify the original interpretation.
The increased current in the arithmetic condition at 5.46 Hz reached its maximum in the right frontal cortex. This result is congruent with previous observations, in which high amplitude theta rhythms over the frontal lobes have been associated with attentive states. Sasaki et al. (1996) also observed high amplitude 5.5 Hz theta waves in both frontal lobes, especially on the right side during mental calculation.
In another experiment (Harmony et al., 2004), the EEG of 10 normal male young adults was recorded during the performance of three different tasks: mental calculation, verbal working memory (VWM) and spatial working memory (SWM). The stimuli used in the three tasks were the same, only the instructions to the subjects were different. The tasks used in this experiment were designed following the model of Baddeley (1999) for the study of WM. The three tasks shared common processes, such as the activation of the Central Executive (CES), and differed in one or more processes. SWM activates the visuospatial scratch pad, and VWM activates the articulatory or phonological loop. Mental calculation includes VWM processes as well as other processes, such as the assignation of magnitudes to numerical quantities, mental calculation per se, the storage of intermediate results, and the retrieval of arithmetic facts from long-term memory.
The EEG segments were analyzed during two different intervals on each trial: “pre-segments” were selected 1280 ms prior to the presentation of the memory set; “post-segments” were selected 1280 ms prior to the presentation of the probe. The distributed sources were calculated with VARETA. Using the values of all subjects resulting from the source analysis at each point of the grid (voxel) at each frequency, a repeated-measures multivariate ANOVA was carried out for the following factors: task (VWM, SWM, calculus) and EEG segment (pre-stimuli vs. post-stimuli).
From 1.56 to 4.68 Hz, the frontal cortex showed current increases at the post-segment in VWM and calculus. As VWM is a task included in mental calculation, a common activation of the structures related to VWM in these two tasks was expected (Baddeley, 1999). At 1.56 Hz, the SWM task also activated the frontal cortex. Common processes to the three tasks are those related to the CES. Baddeley (1999) proposed that focusing attention is a main function of the CES. In this case, it is possible to suppose that sustained attention to internal processing is one of the common processes. Segment effects for the three tasks were also observed in the whole cortex for frequencies 7.8, 8.58, 9.36, 10.14 and 10.92 Hz, but no interaction effects were observed for these frequencies within the alpha band; this result indicated that the changes at these frequencies are more directly related to the generalized processes involved in the three tasks than to any specific process.
Only frequencies at 2.34, 3.12, 3.90, 5.46 and 6.24 Hz showed significant interactions. In general, for all frequencies, the interaction effect between segments and tasks was observed in the frontal and anterior cingulated regions. These cortices have been related to the inhibition of interferences during attentional processes, suggesting that delta frequencies indicate this type of inhibition. The interaction was also observed at 5.46 and 6.24 Hz in the entire cortex and in the left frontal lobe, respectively. As previously discussed, theta frequencies have been shown to increase during different cognitive processes, and the tasks used involved many different mental operations.
In this experiment, it was also observed that there were specific EEG changes in frequencies within the delta and theta bands; the specific topographies of these changes were related to the different components of WM, according to Baddeley’s model (Hitch, 1978; Baddeley, 1999).
Working Memory
The Sternberg paradigm for the study of short memory processes was used for the EEG recording of 10 right-handed young males (Harmony et al., 1996). In this experiment, a memory set of several digits was presented on a video monitor for 1500 ms, and 2 s later, a single digit (probe) was displayed for 300 ms. Two levels of complexity were evaluated: the memory set consisted either of 3 or 5 digits. The stimuli were presented on a video monitor in random order and with equal probability. EEG segments of 1024 ms before and after the presentation of the stimuli were analyzed. Thus, during this last segment, the subject maintained the 3 or 5 digits in memory, thereby activating processes related to internal concentration or attention to internal mentation. Only correct responses were used for the analyses. Using a narrow band EEG analysis with a resolution of 0.78 Hz, the power in each frequency was averaged separately for the segments before and after the stimulus for both conditions. Repeated measures ANOVA were computed considering two factors: stimuli (5 vs. 3) and the change of the EEG after the stimuli in comparison with the EEG before the presentation. The most important result was for the interaction, that is, if there was a greater change in power during the most difficult condition. Power increases were observed from 1.56 to 3.90 Hz; these increases were greater during the difficult compared to the easy condition (Gevins et al., 1997). During the period in which the subjects were maintaining the list of digits in their memory, the currents exhibited higher intensities, primarily in the left orbito-frontal regions, than currents during rest. The results obtained demonstrate that delta activity increases in regions related to the inhibition of interferences during the task.
Using the Sternberg task, Fernández et al. (2002) studied two samples of subjects: 25 normal, right-handed, 8–10 year old children (14 females) and 15 male, right-handed volunteers (20–26 years old). EEG recordings were made according to the 10/20 system. Each trial in this experiment began with a visual warning stimulus of 300 ms. After an interval of 2 s, a memory set of 5 digits was presented on a video monitor for 1500 ms, and 2 s later, a single digit was displayed for 300 ms. The interval between trials was 3 s. The subject had to respond with one button if the digit was in the memory set and with another button if it was not. Hand use was counterbalanced across the subjects. EEG segments for analysis were obtained before the presentation of the data set (pre-segments) and during the period prior to the presentation of the probe (post-segments). Only correct responses were analyzed. During this last segment, the subject maintained the 3 or 5 digits in memory, thereby activating processes related to internal concentration or attention to internal mentation. In adults, power increases were observed during the post-segments at 1.56, 2.34, 3.90, and 4.68 Hz in the frontal lobes, the anterior regions of the temporal lobes and the anterior cingulate gyri. The most significant change was observed in the prefrontal regions (Figure (Figure11).
Figure 1
Probability map for frequency 2.34 Hz. Sternberg task. Longitudinal slice of the region where the maximum difference was observed between the post segment (when the subject was maintaining the five digits in memory) and the pre EEG segments (before the ...
However, increases in power during the post-segment were also observed in other frequencies: at 6.24 Hz in frontal regions and at 12.24, 13.26, and 14.04 Hz in large areas of the cortex. Increases at 6.24 Hz are in agreement with previous references (Gevins et al., 1997; Missonnier et al., 2006) as well as the frequencies in high alpha and low beta (Klimesch, 1999; Palva and Palva, 2007; Klimesch, 2012) during WM tasks. Decreases in power were found at 7.02, 7.8, 8.58, 9.36, and 10.14 Hz in the bilateral occipital and temporal lobes; this effect may be related to activation by the visual stimuli.
In contrast, power did not increase in the delta frequencies in children; in this group, increases in power were observed within theta frequencies in the majority of the cortex and decreases in power were observed in the alpha band. The differences between the EEG responses in children and adults, mainly in the delta frequencies in the frontal lobes, which have been related to inhibition, may be related to the well-known fact that children have a deficient inhibition due to an immature frontal lobe.
Changes at 5.46 Hz were of greater intensity in children than in adults. The changes were in the prefrontal and anterior cingulate cortices, which have been related to the attentional role of the CES in working memory. A more pronounced effect in children than in adults may be interpreted as a greater effort for children because these frequencies have been shown to increase with memory load (Gevins et al., 1997).
Important differences between children and adults were also observed at 7.8 Hz in the frontal lobes. Power decreased in adults, while it increased in children. This result is in agreement with the hypothesis of an immature response in children.
Harmony et al. (2009) performed an experiment using a Go/No-Go task in 15 normal young volunteers (9 females and 6 males, M = 26.5 years). The cue letter to prepare the motor response was the letter “O”. When a letter “X” followed the cue letter, the subject was instructed to execute the motor response (Go condition). If a letter different from “X” followed the cue letter “O”, the subject was instructed to inhibit the prepared motor response and to refrain from executing it (No-Go condition).
In this experiment, the event-related EEG responses were analyzed according to Marroquín et al. (2004). Raw EEG signals were passed through a bank of band-pass sinusoidal quadrature filters centered at 1 Hz intervals (from 1 to 50 Hz); each filter had a bandwidth of approximately 1.76 Hz. A power analysis was performed by taking the log-power of each filtered signal and subtracting the pre-stimulus average. In this manner, the time-power-topography maps were obtained for each condition. These maps indicate whether the power increased or decreased during the condition in relation to the pre-stimulus period. Figure Figure22 shows the maps of increased power at 1 Hz 250 ms and 350 ms after the stimuli, when both conditions coincide in their activation and when the activation was exclusive for the No-Go condition. The results obtained in this study clearly demonstrated that during the inhibition of movement, delta activity increases in the frontal regions; this finding is in agreement with previous knowledge that the frontal regions are particularly important in this process (Vincent et al., 2008). According to Knyazev (2007), there is a reciprocal relationship between alpha and delta activity, and this relationship may reflect an inhibitory control over motivational and emotional drives that is implemented by the prefrontal cortex.
Figure 2
Surface images of the significant (p < 0.01) increases in power at 1 Hz during the Go/NoGo Task. In both tasks (Go and NoGo) the posterior regions increased power at 250 and 300 ms, however, only during the NoGo task the increase in power was ...
In the Go/No-Go paradigm, it is possible to identify different processes: activation of the visual pathway, letter identification and discrimination processes. Specific processes for the Go condition include the preparation for movement and motor response, whereas the No-Go condition includes the inhibition of the response. Attention is a process common to both conditions because the paradigm mainly explores sustained attention.
Increases in power were observed at 1 Hz in both conditions. In general, this slow frequency is not reported, but it has been shown to be related to the inhibition of non-relevant stimuli in the previous work of our group (Harmony et al., 1996) (e.g., signal matching and decision making (Basar et al., 2001)); these processes are common to both conditions. At this frequency, synchrony increases were observed during 100–300 ms in both conditions, but only in the No-Go condition from 350 to 550 ms, suggesting its participation in the inhibition of the motor response. Increases in power in the theta band were also common to both conditions. Letter identification includes activation of the working memory and access to semantic memory, which may be related to a power increase in the theta range (2–6 Hz) in all regions for both conditions.
Theta power increase has been reported in several situations: during encoding and memory retrieval (Burgess and Gruzelier, 1997; Klimesch, 1999), activation of working memory (Gevins et al., 1997; Krause et al., 2000; Deiber et al., 2007), and allocation of attention.
Supporting our results, Kamarajan et al. (2004) reported that alcoholics showed significant reductions in delta (1.0–3.0 Hz) and theta (3.5–7.0 Hz) power during No-Go trials compared to controls. This reduction was prominent in the frontal region. They concluded that the decreased delta and theta power associated with No-Go processing suggests a deficient inhibitory control and information-processing mechanism in alcoholics.
Semantic Processing
A total of 16 control children (8 male) and 18 learning disabled (LD) children (14 male) participated in the experiment. All children were right handed. Pairs of words that were semantically related or unrelated were presented to both LD children and control children with good scholastic achievement. During this presentation, the event-related EEG responses were recorded (Fernández et al., 2012). This task was selected because it requires several language processes and other associated processes, such as attention and working memory. This paradigm has been extensively studied using event-related potentials (Barber et al., 2002; Khateb et al., 2010) and has been considered as a way to study semantic violations (Kutas and Hillyard, 1980; Polich, 1985; Friederici, 2004); to detect these violations, children must comprehend the meaning of what they are reading.
Time-frequency (1–50 Hz) topographic maps were obtained for the increases and decreases of power after the event with respect to the pre-stimulus average values. Figure Figure33 shows the time-frequency topographic maps, where significant (p < 0.01) increases in power with respect to the pre-stimulus were observed from 2 to 4 Hz. It is interesting that for 2 Hz, this increase was observed mainly in anterior regions during the time interval from 100 to 350 ms after the presentation on the nonrelated word. At 3 and 4 Hz, power increases were more generalized; at later points, these increases were observed in all derivations. After the presentation of the word, the child should give a response by pressing different buttons of the mouse according to whether this word was semantically related or nonrelated to a word previously presented; thus, the child should concentrate to give a correct answer and block interferences. It was considered that delta activity at 2 Hz was performing this inhibitory process for the motor processes, whereas activity at 3 and 4 Hz was mainly inhibiting sensory processes.
Figure 3
Surface images of the significant (p < 0.01) increases in power at 2, 3, and 4 Hz during the presentation of the non-related words in a semantic task. Each head is the mean average each 50 ms, from 100 to 350 ms. At 2 Hz the main increases across ...
Important evidence regarding the increase in delta activity during the suppression of interference can be found in some reports involving meditation. For example, a group of Zen meditators exhibited increased delta activity primarily in the medial prefrontal cortex during rest compared to controls (Faber et al., 2008); this increased activity was interpreted as an inhibition of the medial prefrontal cortex, resulting in a reduction of emotional and cognitive engagement, which was described by the Zen meditators as detachment. Subsequently, in searching for evidence of a neuroplasticity effect of continued meditation practice, Tei et al. (2009) measured EEG during no-task eyes-closed resting in a group of Qigong meditators compared with a meditation-naive control group. Significant differences between the groups were only observed in the delta EEG frequency band (1.5–3.5). Regions of the prefrontal cortex and the anterior cingulate cortex exhibited inhibition in the meditators compared to the controls. This inhibition was also observed using functional MRI in the meditators (Hölzel et al., 2007).
Lehmann et al. (2012) studied the connectivity between the different cortical regions in meditators of five meditation traditions. The authors reported that when the meditators went into and out of meditation, significant differences in the connectivities of the meditators across traditions revealed clearly different topographies in the delta frequency. The global reduction in functional interdependence between brain regions in meditation suggests that the interaction between the self-process functions is minimized, leading to the subjective experience of non-involvement, detachment and letting go during meditation as well as an all-oneness and the dissolution of ego borders.
The aim of the present review was to describe fundamental aspects in relation to the functional significance of delta oscillations in cognitive processing. Evidence suggests that oscillations of the electric field of the brain modulate different networks. This fact may explain the role of delta in many cognitive processes. As we have commented, the wave length of the oscillatory category determines the temporal windows of processing and, indirectly, the size of the neuronal pool involved. Thus, it is possible that during cognitive tasks demanding attention, delta that originates in the frontal cortex may modulate the activity of neuronal networks that are distant from the frontal lobes.
An alternative explanation for the link between delta and cognition has been proposed by Knyazev (2012). He considered that this link is moderated by motivation because it is well known that cognitive performance improves when motivation is high. Our findings have been obtained from subjects that perform adequately in the task, and only correct responses have been considered for the analysis of their EEG. Therefore, we cannot discard the possibility that motivation plays a role during the performance of the task.
The fact that delta activity is characteristic of a state in which interneurons and the thalamocortical inputs are inactive strongly suggests that power increases of delta oscillations during mental tasks have the role of inhibiting all the interferences that may affect the performance of the task.
Another possible mechanism in relation to inhibition for delta oscillations has been proposed by Knyazev and Slobodskaya (2003). They speculated that delta oscillations are linked with the most ancient phylogenetic system of information transmission and that behavioral inhibition is associated with a stronger mechanism of descending inhibition, in which higher systems inhibit the lower. This mechanism was measured by negative correlations between delta, theta and alpha powers. Knyazev (2012) also evaluated the cross-frequency coupling between delta and beta oscillations; increases in the correlation between these two oscillations were present during anxiogenic situations in the orbitofrontal and anterior cingulate cortices.
Thus, delta and beta power were correlated, and this relation appeared to be state dependent, present only in an anxiogenic situation (Knyazev et al., 2006). These data may reflect an interaction between low- and high-frequency oscillations relevant for these oscillatory system situations.
Future research: Interactions between different oscillations are important during cognitive processes; however, these interactions have not been explored in many conditions. Our work, up to now, shows deficiencies in this aspect. Future work will focus on these interrelationships. As functional connectivity is a very important aspect in cognitive research, it is important to analyze connectivity in the different frequencies, specifically in the slow bands that have not been studied, during the performance of different mental tasks.
Conflict of interest statement
The author acknowledges Dr. Gennady Knyazev for his kind invitation to write a paper on EEG delta. The author also acknowledges her collaborators in the papers quoted in the Experimental Data section. In particular, she is indebted to Dr. Thalía Fernández for being her support in the ideation and realization of this line of research.
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Causes of ADHD
ADHD has a strong genetic basis. Children with ADHD are likely to have other family members with the condition. You should not feel guilty if you have passed on the ADHD trait to your child, just as you shouldn't feel guilty if you passed on the gene for curly hair. It's not really up to you to decide what genetic inheritance you give your children. Perhaps the ADHD trait will actually turn out to be a gift that your child can take advantage of, once the condition is under control.
The Sugar High
You have probably heard parents blaming candy bars and sweetened drinks for their children's rowdy behavior. Despite the popularity of this myth, there is absolutely no scientific evidence backing it. Scientists and pediatricians know that there is no such thing as a “sugar high,” and the observation by many parents that their children tend to run around like wild beasts after a hit of sugar is purely anecdotal.
Video Games
Many parents are quick to blame the popularity of video games for the rise in past decades of ADHD. Despite the rapidly growing popularity of video games, however, the number of children diagnosed with ADHD has only risen gradually. If gaming were to blame for ADHD, then over half of the children in this country would have been diagnosed with ADHD already.
In fact, children with ADHD often excel at video games. Even though this is a common observation in children with ADHD, the explanation for this apparent paradox is hard to come by. While these children find it difficult to finish other tasks, they can remain intensely focused on a game for many hours. The child's ability to focus for an extended period of time on a video game leads some parents to believe that their child could not have ADHD.
1. Home
2. Childhood Illnesses
3. Mental Health
4. Causes of ADHD
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VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – Although it happened kilometres away, the Connecticut massacre that left 26 people dead including 20 kids is hitting people in BC really hard.
Twitter and Facebook is rife with comments about people that have been deeply affected by yesterday’s shooting spree.
SFU Professor Peter Chow-White says the use of tools like social media can make tragedies like this feel a lot closer to home.
Unlike a decade ago, he says people now can get information and react to it a lot more quickly.
“With social media, not only do we get to see them, and see intimate details about them, but we can interact with them, and reach out to other people, and hear how other people are dealing with them,” says Chow-White.
He says the twitterverse gives people an outlet to vent and voice their concerns, but it doesn’t always have to be negative.
“Too much of a bad thing can makes one feel that there’s a mean world out there, so it can do a number of things in a day…and that’s it with social media, you can find that mean world, but you can find others to connect to make a better world, so there’s risks and there’s benefits,” he adds.
He says in this particular tragedy, people rushed to social media to try to make sense of what happened and find solutions to prevent future massacres.
“It gives people an opportunity to voice, whereas civic politics used to be limited in terms of where people can have their voice. We used to think of the town hall meeting but now that town hall can include an entire nation… I saw a lot of people on Facebook, there were a lot of people outraged and calling for controls for gun control laws and there are other people who are staunchly opposing it. But we get to hear all these voices. Sometimes when you hear them all at once, that can be a bit of an inundation. But hearing a lot of voices tends to be a healthy democracy,” explains Chow-White. | <urn:uuid:d3c5ff0a-3d6b-44c1-be6a-604127ac2242> | 2 | 2.484375 | 0.19182 | en | 0.944654 | http://www.news1130.com/2012/12/15/social-media-makes-tragedies-feel-closer-to-home-professor/ |
Refractory cement
June 23, 2012
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High Alumina Refractory Cement
I Introduction
High alumina refractory cement is a hydraulic cementing material with mixing the power of calcium aluminates and clinker with Al2o3 50% up and down. It has other names of ‘high alumina cement’ and ‘aluminous cement’, the main composition of high alumina cement clinker are CA and CA2 with a little C12A7,C2AS and micro MA and CaO,TiO2, Fe2O3. There are different methods making high alumina cement from bauxite and limestone, such as by rotary kiln, electric arc furnace melting , reverberatory melting . The one by rotary kiln is more popular inChina as its lower energy consumption.
II Characters of High Alumina Refractory Cement
The most prominent character is its strength can grow to be the highest level in fast speed almost within 24h. High alumina refractory cement can be divided into grades of 425, 525,625,725. The grade marks mean its 3 days cold crushing strength should be higher than that.
Another character is that the high alumina refractory cement can be hardening well in low temperature condition[5-10℃] , while its strength will drop down sharply when the maintenance temperature is higher than30 ℃, so the working temperature of high alumina cement must be lower than30℃
III Application
As high alumina cement has the characters of fast hardening and ultra-rapid strength development. After 1920s, high alumina cement are used more and more on the civil and industrial buildings constructions. Besides, as high alumina cement has good performance under high temperature condition, it is widely application in the high temperature industry. In refractory industry, it is proper to be used as a binder for dense, middle and light monolithic refractory, such as the castable refractory, refractory plastic, refractory motar, refractory gunning and so on. As per the different strength design for the refractory unshaped products, accordingly different grades high alumina refractory cement and aggregate will be used to make different grade monolithic refractory which can be used under1400℃.
As the monolithic refractory are more and more widely used in the furnace lining of foundry industry, cement, petrochemical and power industries these years, high alumina refractory cement application grows with a high speed.
* In construction concretes, rapid strength development is achieved , even at low temperatures.
* In construction concretes, high chemical resistance is possible.
* In refractory concretes, strength is maintained at high temperatures.
NRCL Related Product Grades:
CA-50-G6 | .CA-50-G7 | CA-50-G9 | CA-50-Fused | CA-40-Fused |.CA-70 | CA-75 | CA-80 | <urn:uuid:7abc9c21-faa2-40fb-833c-bf5b23f6c895> | 3 | 2.953125 | 0.040668 | en | 0.883299 | http://www.northrefractories.com/refractory-cement.html |
NEAL CONAN, host: This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan in Washington. Sometimes the media really nails it: the Pentagon Papers, Watergate. Sometimes it's more ka-ka than kudos: weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the Superdome during Hurricane Katrina.
The public's trust in the media has recovered a bit from record lows of 2007, but not much. And there's a pervasive sense that newspapers, TV, radio, magazines, the big websites, are either incompetent or in cahoots, at least the other side's media are.
In a new book, Brooke Gladstone reminds us that the good old days weren't much better or worse than today and that if we decry the gossip, the crime, the groupthink and the rants, we consumers are at least partly to blame.
Which particular news story helped shape your view of the media? Give us a call, 800-989-8255. Or you can join the conversation on our website. Go to Click on TALK OF THE NATION. Or zap us an email, the address is
Later in the program, Trombone Shorty drops by to talk jazz and take your calls. But first, our colleague Brooke Gladstone joins us. The book is "The Influencing Machine: Brooke Gladstone on the Media." Many of you will recognize those last three words as the title of the weekly program she co-hosts for WNYC, which is distributed by NPR. And she joins us now from the studios of the aforementioned member station in New York City, WNYC. Brooke, glad to have you with us today.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Hi, Neal. You know, you've just solicited people to call in about the stories that shape their view of the media. Invariably, people will call in on any story that they have had a part in because that's when they see the seamy underbelly of inaccuracy that follows so many news stories.
CONAN: And accuracy seems to be, you argue, one of the things that people care most about.
GLADSTONE: Well, this is one of the things that people say they care most about, but if you actually track the popularity of the media through good times and bad, what you'll find is that accuracy tends to take second place or third place to basically the gestalt of the story.
In other words, the public wasn't very happy when the media were reporting critically on the run-up to the war, and they were so unhappy that no one then said anything critical about the run-up to the war, at least in the mainstream press.
But they loved the media after 9/11 and during Hurricane Katrina because it expressed the anguish and the anger that the public felt. In other words, it had truthiness, and it seems like truthiness is more important than truthfulness. I'll throw out a hello to Stephen Colbert. It's his famous phrase that has entered the lexicon.
CONAN: So the media much admired for its war coverage in 1991, not so much in Iraq the second time.
GLADSTONE: Right, and why should it be admired for its 1991 coverage when so much of it had to, you know, emerge from hearing rooms covering essentially what looked like video-game shots of smart bombs that turned out in the aftermath not to be so smart after all?
CONAN: Was there one story when you were coming of age that made you decide to be a reporter?
GLADSTONE: I mean, I would love to say that it was, you know, Watergate or something like that, which would have been what I wanted to - you know, would have been a great little history for me. But actually, I was a theater major, and I was much more interesting(ph) in the telling of stories than necessarily what they were about.
And so I came into it from a craft point of view rather than a content point of view. I've been bludgeoned into focusing on content over the last 25 years or so.
CONAN: By some of your associates. I think I know some of them.
CONAN: It's...
GLADSTONE: I would love to say, with regard to truthiness, if you don't mind, Neal, that when I was editing ALL THINGS CONSIDERED, and you were the executive producer, I did put inaccuracies into those intros from time to time, and although the hosts were furious, you would say very generously that nobody conveyed the sense of a news story better than I did.
CONAN: The metaphor was more important than the facts, I think may have been the phrase. But everybody's going to make mistakes. I mean, mistakes are inherent in a business you're doing so quickly, and you're trying to cover very complicated stories and tell a narrative, tell people that story that you wanted to tell.
GLADSTONE: That's right. I mean, obviously mistakes are an occupational hazard. But one thing that - one of Internet's - one of the Internet's great visionaries, David Weinberger(ph), once observed that perhaps transparency is the new objectivity.
If you can tell people how to get to the essence of the information, if you can offer them the links, the documents, maybe some of the raw interviews from which you derived your story, then they don't have to just trust you, and they don't have to be suspicious of investing that kind of trust in you, nor do you, as a reporter, have to ignore your experience and the wisdom gleaned over decades covering a beat and abstain from offering a true judgment on what you've seen, because people can then have the information to agree or disagree.
CONAN: I wanted to - we're going to get to calls in just a minute, but I wanted to read you something you wrote, totally unfair, of course, to do that. Everything we hate about the media today was present at its creation - its corrupt or craven practitioners, its easy manipulation by the powerful, its capacity for propagating lies, its penchant for amplifying rage. Also present: everything we admire.
GLADSTONE: That's right. And of course that's true, because who was the first leaker? We hate leaks today. Who was the first big leaker? That was George Washington. Who was the first person who paid people to write nasty things about an opponent? Well, that was probably Thomas Jefferson.
This sort of nasty, you know, convergence of politics and press has been with us from the very beginning. On the other hand, there were also amazing works by Thomas Paine and amazing investigations of the new nation in a press that was generally scurrilous and blasphemous and libelous and everything that we hate.
We have to have a free press, even when it's terrible. And Jefferson understood that. Jefferson believed that you needed to have the disorder it created to keep the waters clear, as he said, even though at various points in his life, especially when he was president, he would claim you couldn't believe anything that was in a newspaper and in fact you were better informed if you didn't read them.
CONAN: Let's see if we can get some callers in on the conversation. Our guest is Brooke Gladstone, author of "The Influencing Machine" and of course co-host of ON THE MEDIA. What's the story that shaped your view of the media more than anything else? 800-989-8255. Email We'll start with Eddie(ph), and Eddie's on the line from New London.
EDDIE: Hey, how are you doing? I just wanted to say that the election in 2000, the coverage of that is really what shaped me. I mean, you had different agencies calling different election - or the election for different people. It was just - it's atrocious. And nowadays it seems like the only place that I really am interested in getting political news from is, like you said earlier, Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart.
CONAN: So just people who pretty much agree with you.
EDDIE: Well, I wouldn't say pretty much agree with me, but who can say that there's wrong on both sides, and everybody's biased, you know?
CONAN: All right, but the 2000 election, and Brooke Gladstone, of course we had people calling the Florida count for Al Gore at one point, then pulling that back and then calling it for the other side and then pulling that back.
GLADSTONE: That's right, and that was basically a problem of trying to jump the gun and of misinterpreting the numbers they got in. And also there was a problem with various counties being held back. That was a real learning experience, and they won't be making that mistake ever again.
There were even congressional hearings about it. So I don't think that the TV - I mean, we saw it in the last election. Even though everybody knew Obama had won by about 7:00, they waited until the polls closed in order to finally make that decision official on the air, and it was a very, very important moment, and even - and it was so funny to see Wolf Blitzer and everybody else dancing around the obvious.
We're about to make what we think may be an historic announcement. Nobody will ever jump the gun like that again. So it's interesting that that's the one that this particular caller really set upon.
I do think also it's interesting that he mentioned Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, because they have, over the years, become increasingly influential, increasingly a source of news and information for people, and also their audiences tend to be among the best informed. They tend to understand stories extremely well.
And part of the reason is that, first of all, they're becoming somewhat more responsible, even though they claim they're just comedians and they have no responsibility for being responsible. They understand the impact they're having on the culture.
But more than that, because they reveal themselves so routinely, they make themselves more trustworthy, which comes back to the point that I alluded to earlier about objectivity, transparency and trust.
CONAN: Eddie, thanks very much for the call.
EDDIE: Thank you.
CONAN: Let's see if we can go next to - this is Mike(ph), and Mike's with us from Monroe in Michigan.
MIKE: Good afternoon.
CONAN: Afternoon.
MIKE: This has to do with the nature of attack talk radio. And I can remember back when Clinton was president, Rush Limbaugh came out and supported NAFTA. And for a whole week all of his callers just called him up and took him to task because nobody that listens to that program wanted to support NAFTA.
By the end of the week, I am sure Rush Limbaugh said we're never going to defend that sort of thing again. And he really hasn't. He'll go on the attack no matter what the issue is of the day. But to defend anything, forget about it.
CONAN: So that's the one story that shaped your perception of the media?
MIKE: Yeah, I'm afraid so, that end of the media, that attack talk show end of the media.
CONAN: And Brooke Gladstone, well, one of the people you cite in your book is John Peter Zenger, and you mentioned the people that Thomas Jefferson paid to attack his rival, George Washington. But the kind of attack radio that the caller was talking about, that kind of thing has been with us from the start.
GLADSTONE: Basically yes. But we've had much more powerful technology to spread that stuff around. Actually, Jefferson was paying people to attack John Adams. Instead of George Washington.
CONAN: Oh, he attacked George Washington too, yes.
GLADSTONE: Well, George well, he did, but not during the campaign.
CONAN: When he was secretary of state, yes.
GLADSTONE: That's right. That's right. He started a newspaper with State Department funds, which he wasn't supposed to do. You are right. And so - so where were we?
CONAN: We were talking about the prevalence of this kind of - but technology, you say, has amplified these voices.
GLADSTONE: Technology has amplified these voices. Technology has amplified every possible voice, which creates this enormous cacophony.
CONAN: Brooke Gladstone, a radio professional, knows when she hears the music it's time to be quiet.
CONAN: She's our guest today. We're talking about her book "The Influencing Machine." What big news story shaped how you feel about the media? Give us a call, 800-989-8255. Email us, Stay with us. I'm Neal Conan. It's the TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.
CONAN: This is TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News. I'm Neal Conan. Accuracy and objectivity are considered pillars of good journalism, but it has not always been so. It turns out that getting it right without a slant was of little interest to publishers or to readers, to be fair, in the early days of newspapers.
And while staying out of the story eventually became a norm for American reporters, Brooke Gladstone says impartiality will always be an unreachable goal. You can read and see her trace the evolution of objectivity in an excerpt from "The Influencing Machine" on our website. Just go to Click on TALK OF THE NATION.
We have this email from Patty(ph): I was in bed for a year recuperating from an auto accident and was glued to the Watergate hearings. Richard Nixon still gets my blood boiling. I have great respect for the reporting that led to uncovering that scandal. When I entered college, I majored in journalism. I had a young journalism professor who required 21 different books on the killings at Kent State. I read them all and dropped journalism as my major.
That reading showed me there is little chance for objectivity in reporting, a lesson I share with my students as a school librarian in Houston, Texas. We want to hear what story shaped your perception of the media. Give us a call, 800-989-8255. Email And Brooke, I say you can see an excerpt of your book at our website because this is actually a comic book. It's very visual.
GLADSTONE: It is extremely visual. I did that because I thought it would be more like radio.
CONAN: Really?
CONAN: More like talking directly to the audience.
GLADSTONE: Exactly. I could talk to the audience. I could speak in balloons, and it also enforced an enormous amount of discipline. These are very, very, very, very dense comic book pages. You can say a lot - it turns out you can say a lot with pictures. They may even be worth 1,000 words in some cases.
CONAN: Let's go to Dewan(ph) - I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly - with us from Traverse City in Michigan.
DEWAN: Yes, Dewan, yes. I was a reporter in Central America during the wars down there, '82, '83, '84. And I'd been there about a month or so and went out on an operation with the El Salvadorian forces. And we came back in, and the (unintelligible), the general's staff, had the first press conference.
I'm sitting a couple rows back, and the bombs go off in the front, and next to a guy from the Boston Globe, and the guy from the Globe says, well, they're just trying to convince us they're winning this war. And I said, well, I've only been here about a month or so, and I'm not sure about the war, but I can tell you that the battle came down exactly the way the general's laying it out.
And he said, well, how do you know? And I kind of looked down at my mud-covered boots, and I said, well, I just got back from it. And he said, well, how do you get to go out and we don't? And I said, well, do you have any military experience? And I'd just left several years in the military. And he says of course not, biased right away. And I said, well, then how would you know what you were seeing once you got out there?
And he muttered something about the First Amendment, and it seemed as if the reporters down there were waiting for the guerrillas to bust through the gates of the presidential palace with their tanks, a la Vietnam. And frankly, what I could tell was every time the guerrillas stuck their heads up, the government would chop it off - a typical brutal war, of course.
But nonetheless, every journalist I met down there seemed to be predisposed to the El Salvadorian forces, the forces the U.S. was backing, losing the war. And of course in the long run they never did. And quite frankly, that really reinforced the fact that there was tremendous amount of bias in the field.
CONAN: Brooke?
GLADSTONE: Yeah, I think that's very interesting. I think that you'll find that there was a tremendous amount of disaffection between the press and the military during the first - at least 15 years after Vietnam. And I think that you have - you probably saw it right at its height, when there was so much suspicion about government that the press were not inclined to believe anything they saw.
That's no excuse. I think that that is probably unusual, though generally, if you look at the history of war reporting, you'll find that the press has generally stood very staunchly with what the American government and its allies tend to say when it comes to American wars. They do tend to part company more when it comes to wars in which America is not a big participant.
DEWAN: Well, the bias went beyond just what the Americans were doing, obviously. Any of these journalists could have used the opportunity to learn more about the military or even sort of embedded themselves in a manner that I did. But obviously the El Salvadorians realized that having been a former soldier myself, I would see what - you know, I would know what was going on with some experience, where these guys, they're all coming out of college and with great ideas in their head of being Woodward or whoever else and being there on the day the guerrillas triumph, of course.
And many of them, many of them, were extremely near left-wing. I mean, they were obvious about it. I didn't even like to stay at the hotel that the press had set up. They had a nasty pool. And I stayed where the military was, you know, where I could find out information.
And nobody seemed to do that. There were, if anything, distancing themselves from that entirely without any comprehension of what they were doing to the actual final story.
GLADSTONE: Well, war reporters tend to like to be in the field though. That's why they are war reporters. Again, if you look through the history of war reporting, these are people, regardless of their politics, who are not hesitant to get their boots dirty and to be where the action is.
You know, I can't comment, I certainly won't argue with the experience that you had there. I have no doubt that there were plenty of people like that there. But I don't know whether you can generalize to all war reporting from that particular experience, though clearly it shaped your perception.
DEWAN: Obviously not, obviously you can't generalize on that basis. And I think what we're seeing now is a little more in line with reality. But during that period of time, it was just unbelievably biased. You know, they were (unintelligible)...
CONAN: Dewan...
DEWAN: And as a result, we end up with a situation like in Guatemala. When the Carter administration cut Guatemala loose, they just became more brutal. And to, you know, get the situation in line. And El Salvador constantly reminded the U.S. of that: If you cut us loose, we're just going to have to fall back to the Guatemala model.
CONAN: Dewan, we're just going to give somebody else a chance, okay?
DEWAN: You bet. Thank you.
CONAN: Thanks very much for the call. Let's see if we can go next to - this is Bonnie(ph), Bonnie with us from St. Petersburg.
BONNIE: Hello.
CONAN: Hi, Bonnie.
BONNIE: My perception of the media reporting was changed during the Howard Dean scream, because I had had a background in broadcasting, and it was immediately apparent how manipulated that was. And the fact that it was played over and over and over on every medium. It didn't matter what their political - and it single-handedly, I believe, sunk that candidacy. So that was pretty powerful.
CONAN: Indeed it was. He did scream shortly after he lost a primary. And said he was going on to - and rattled off any number of states, and then the famous scream. But a moment like that can - well, Brooke, you talk about the ability to define a candidate, and that's one of the things the media does.
GLADSTONE: Yes, I mean, it's all part of creating a narrative. And I guess they wanted to create a narrative of Dean as slightly unhinged. I mean, that scream was rather decontextualized. It was a bit of a rebel yell in the middle of a rally. It was too hot for television, which of course we all know is supposedly a very cool medium.
And - but I have to say, I'd love to say it at this point, that most of the time, when I'm out in public, and people are complaining about the media, they're almost always complaining about cable news. And that's not the only place where you have to get your media these days.
I mean, it's wonderful fodder for Colbert and Stewart, for sure. It's just the very worst, the silliest stuff that you can see because it's on wall to wall to wall. And God knows, they certainly did use that scream a lot, just like every three minutes on Fox they showed the toppling of the statue of Saddam Hussein in Firdos Square, and even seven minutes on CNN.
But just because they constantly repeat it doesn't mean that that's the only place that we necessarily see it. I mean, I don't think - obviously, the scream isn't going to be as useful in a print medium. I don't remember, at least I don't remember on NPR it being aired over and over and over again. It became a talking point because, sadly, cable news tends to set the agenda, and it's all about those moments.
But there's a lot more out there and more and more all the time. So people really need to start looking elsewhere.
CONAN: Bonnie, thanks very much.
BONNIE: Thank you.
CONAN: Email from Nina(ph) in Little Rock. The story that shaped my opinion in the media is the original Sam Sheppard murder trial. My mother served on the jury and was outraged by the media coverage on her return home after the trial. She read all the articles my sister kept in a scrapbook at the time.
My mother conveyed that the judge conducted an orderly trial courtroom and that it was in no way a three-ring circus as stated by the media. That taught me to be very skeptical of what the media states, how it tries to sway me and what control it has over our culture, our opinions and our political movements.
GLADSTONE: The Sam Sheppard trial, is that "The Fugitive" trial?
CONAN: That's "The Fugitive" trial.
GLADSTONE: That was a long time ago.
CONAN: It was.
GLADSTONE: You know, it was, I don't even know how that was covered. I'm sure if it was covered by - do you know anything about this? I have no idea how it was covered at the time. I can't comment. It's fascinating that her disaffection goes back that many years, but why not? As we've said, there's been outrages practically since the media were born.
CONAN: And outrage, as you say, people are most concerned about stories they know something about because that's where they could spot the inaccuracies.
GLADSTONE: That's right. That's right. Whenever somebody - generally, someone says, I generally love this newspaper, but then they called me on a story and they just totally screwed it up. And as a matter of fact, the famous - infamous Jayson Blair, New York Times fabricator and plagiarist, apparently spoke to a number of people and then misreported or completely, you know, or just completely ignored them. And no one even called The New York Times to complain. So used to - so used people are to being misquoted in the media. I mean, I get nervous about getting misquoted in the media all the time too. Happens to me constantly if people interview me about something.
It's just the nature of the beast. We are so flawed and we do come with agendas. We - best that we marshal our resources to guard against that the best we can, and to be fair to offer both sides. But let's not think that those agendas aren't there. If we hide them from ourselves, it doesn't mean we're hiding them from the audience. We may not be conscious of them. If we are conscious of them, we can work to do better reporting.
CONAN: It's important to remember in that context, of course, Charles Barkley, the great basketball player, once claimed the he was misquoted in his autobiography.
CONAN: We're talking with Brooke Gladstone, the host of ON THE MEDIA, which comes to us from our member station in New York City, WNYC, and is distributed by NPR. Her new book is called "The Influencing Machine: Brooke Gladstone on the Media." And you're listening to TALK OF THE NATION, coming to you from NPR News. Let's get Randy on the line, Randy with us from Salt Lake City.
RANDY: Thank you, Neal. Thoroughly enjoying your program.
CONAN: Thank you.
RANDY: I was telling your screener that 10 or 11 years ago, my son who was a Salt Lake City police officer was shot in the line of duty. And so as a family, we followed the coverage of that incident very, very closely. Every newspaper we could find, every radio, every television program we could find, we listened to and read. And, Neal, this doesn't have anything to do with bias, but more to do with the inaccuracy of the reporting. But without exception, in every article or program that we listened to or read, there were inaccuracies, more than once, sometimes the location, sometimes the name of the police officers who were involved, sometimes the name of the criminal, the perpetrator who had shot my son.
And ever since then, in reading the local newspapers and listening to local and national television and radio, I have been acutely aware of the potential for inaccuracies. And I know that probably isn't the way to listen and read, but it has skewed me even though it was something very personal and it hit home very closely, but certainly not of a national scope.
CONAN: And I'm sorry for your son's experience. Is he OK?
RANDY: He's fine.
CONAN: Good.
RANDY: Well, four kids later and 11 years of marriage, he's doing great.
GLADSTONE: Can I jump in...
RANDY: And still on the police force.
CONAN: Go ahead, Brooke.
GLADSTONE: There's no reason why you think this isn't the way that you should be consuming the news, because now you can double check all those facts. If you want to get - make sure that the name of the officer, of the perpetrator is correct, you can check numerous sources, even original sources. I think newspapers, though frequently inaccurate, news - all news outlets, though frequently inaccurate, really do try to get it right. A lot of times, they borrow from each other, so one mistake can get perpetuated endlessly. That's lazy. That's a shortcut. It shouldn't happen.
But often, one reliable news source will get something wrong and it will just proceed on through other media, which pick it up and then work from it. So - but now, you can be skeptical. You should be skeptical. I think it's good advice for every news consumer because now you can check all that information - or most of it at least - for yourself.
CONAN: Randy, thanks...
RANDY: And I think you're absolutely correct. But I'm almost certain that a majority of the people, of us American citizens, don't take the time to do that and even though we should and it's our obligation to do so. And I think it's even more critical because we don't do that that newsprint and television and radio do maybe a little bit more research before they broadcast or print the story that can influence millions.
CONAN: Randy, thanks very much for the call.
RANDY: Thank you very much, Neal.
CONAN: And for the advice. Here's an email we have from Phil: I was fortunate enough to hear the great Walter Cronkite speak in the early '60s about the difficulty of covering a story. He wondered out loud if showing up at a race riot would cameras actually cause the riot, or was a riot his camera has only recorded. Then, how much time to give the story? One minute, three minutes, zero minutes. Where did it fit in today's most important event? I find my opinion of the news today colored by those decisions. Who decided the story was important. Why did they decide to begin the news with it or end with it? And those are all pretty interesting questions.
GLADSTONE: They are. And, Neal, I'm sure you'll remember, calling upon our common experience again, there was a period - and this is maybe airing some of NPR's internal discussion, but I remember editorial meetings where we talked about should we cover this Ku Klux Klan rally when we knew that there were likely to be more reporters there than actual Klan members, and that we were, you know, as an institution, as a - as media, we were creating the event that otherwise would have gone utterly unnoticed because it had no significance except as a media event? And those are the kinds of things you have to discuss. Is this news or is this designed just to manipulate us?
CONAN: And those are questions you can find explored in amusing and interesting depth in "The Influencing Machine: Brook Gladstone on the Media," illustrated by Josh Neufeld. And thanks very much, Brooke, for joining us today.
GLADSTONE: Thank you very much, Neal.
CONAN: Brooke Gladstone with us from member station WNYC in New York. She's co-host of ON THE MEDIA, distributed by NPR. Stay with us. When we come back, we're going to be talking with Trombone Shorty. What are the young musicians doing to jazz? Give us a call: 800-989-8255. Email: Stay with us. It's the TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.
| <urn:uuid:b21bc34c-db57-4a0b-9b66-9893906c75ca> | 2 | 1.632813 | 0.057814 | en | 0.979721 | http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=139393032 |
MOSCOW— FEW sensations can compare with the ecstasy of resistance. Anyone who has faced a wall of policemen at midnight or stood vigil at a barricade of toppled buses when rumors spread that the tanks are rolling has known the rare elation of righteous rage.
And all who have celebrated the fall of tyranny have known the thrill of victory, the incomparable satisfaction of pulling down the monuments of the vanquished order and the unifying grief of the march behind the casket of a fallen comrade draped in national colors.
These are the indelible and almost interchangeable memories in two years spent among people who rose against a Communist system that had tried to shackle not only their lives but their souls. Utterly diverse in their cultures and heritage, the Poles, Germans, Hungarians, Romanians and Bulgars, and the Russians, Balts and other nations of the Soviet Union seemed to follow a timeless script as they turned on their jailers.
But for all the romance of the revolution, there is its harsh aftermath, when the hangover of the heady days is felt, as East Europeans have already discovered.
For each people, those glorious days were crucibles of national myths and national heroes: Lech Walesa at confession outside the Lenin shipyard, Germans dancing atop the wall, euphoric Czechoslovaks carpeting Wenceslas Square under swirling snowflakes in their "velvet revolution," Boris N. Yeltsin astride a neutralized tank, the statue of Felix Dzherzhinsky dangling from a crane -- he perhaps the purest embodiment of the evil of Communism as the architect of the political police that was the signature of the system. Images of Upheaval
For those of us who have moved from place to place in these two years, some images merge: the mounds of candle wax and wreaths where blood was shed in Prague or in Timisoara, the national flags with Communist emblems gouged out in Budapest or East Berlin, the remarkably similar mugs of fallen Politburos, the interchangeable thugs of the Stasi, Zomo, Omon, Securitate, K.G.B., the chanting of forbidden hymns and the restoration of faiths and cultures that had been twisted or repressed.
Other images seem forever fixed to a time and place. Hospital No. 2 in Timisoara where John Tagliabue, a New York Times correspondent, lay among the wounded, the room in Solidarity headquarters marked "Centre des Beaux Arts" where artists prepared the marvelous posters of the Polish revolution, the drum of thousands of chisels against the the Berlin wall.
Yet if all these captive nations shared the euphoria and the symbols of rebellion, the aftermath has reasserted all the profound differences, feuds, traditions and accumulated problems of each country. Massive unemployment in eastern Germany, the ethnic division of Czechoslovakia, the economic travails of Poland, the chaos in Romania and the uncertainty in Bulgaria all testify to the legacy of individual histories and the huge dislocation of Communism.
It is all there again in these awesome days in Moscow, the euphoria and the knowledge of hardships to come, familiar and yet somehow far more powerful and complex. This, after all, was the source of the tyranny, the epicenter of the utopian ideology in whose name freedoms were crushed and economies were crippled on two continents.
It is also different in that the victory over the coup was not the start, but the culmination of a six-year revolution begun by Mikhail S. Gorbachev to reshape a system that had worked its way far deeper into the fabric and consciousness of the nation than in any of the East European states.
If the East Europeans were overthrowing regimes and ideologies imposed by an alien power only 40 years earlier, the Soviets -- with the exception of the Balts -- were fighting a system that had been introduced by their own ancestors through a popular revolution more potent than any now under way.
This is a nation in many ways undoing its own work. For all the rhetoric of captivity, the people at the barricades around Mr. Yeltsin's headquarters were fighting a faith in which three generations had been reared and on which they themselves had been nurtured. They were reviving the symbols their own forefathers had rejected, searching for roots their nation had tried to sever.
It was central to Mr. Yeltsin's role that he arrived as a pillar of the old order, a classic party boss with a Communist lineage. The commissars he now confronts are men very much like him, and there are few among his supporters who could claim no linkage to the old order.
It is this patricidal aspect, this struggle of a nation against its own past, that has ultimately made the Russian upheavals more poignant, more awe-inspiring and fateful than the East European rebellions. The struggle had seesawed for six years, until finally the line was inexorably drawn and the battle was set.
In the end it was remarkably brief, a three-day spurt by an old guard that quickly proved toothless, demoralized, disorganized and leaderless.
In its aftermath, the funeral for three victims yesterday became a funeral for a trampled dream. The sonorous Russian Orthodox choirs, the mournful Jewish violin and the strains of Albinioni and Beethoven at the parallel funerals seemed to sound a dirge for an order that had promised to shape a perfect world and ended up stealing the lives of three generations, killing millions outright and bequeathing the rest a future of poverty, chaos and pain.
Even more grave, though for the moment concealed by the outpouring of fervor, were the scars left by Communism on the nation. | <urn:uuid:7def8aff-e554-4c8d-8955-6d060f8959c9> | 2 | 1.835938 | 0.020455 | en | 0.967341 | http://www.nytimes.com/1991/08/25/weekinreview/witness-revolution-across-east-europe-moscow-trail-freedom-reaches-tyranny-s.html?n=Top%2FReference%2FTimes%20Topics%2FSubjects%2FC%2FCommunism |
Chris de Freitas and Keith Hunter: The great climate debate
Nature is the key
Given the widely reported increase in the warming effects of constantly rising greenhouse gas concentrations, the fact that global temperature has not risen over the past 13 years continues to puzzle climate scientists.
The credibility of global warming alarm rests on the fact that global warming has to begin again. If it doesn't happen fairly soon, then the global warming alarmists' bubble will surely burst.
So it is not surprising that there have been many attempts to explain the temperature standstill.
The most recent is a paper by Robert Kaufmann of Boston University and colleagues in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, which claimed the temperature stasis has been caused by China emitting sunlight-reflecting aerosols from its rapidly increasing number of coal-fired power stations.
One does not have to look far to discover that aerosol data, obtained by satellites, show that global aerosol content - mainly sulphate particles - shows no trend between 2000 and 2006, years covered in the Kaufmann study.
In 2007 Nasa reported that the global aerosol effect had reduced.
China has installed more modern desulphurisation units in its coal-fired plants than the rest of the world combined.
None of this appeared in the Kaufmann analysis.
Despite the temperature standstill, other scientists point to the existence of human fingerprints on human-caused dangerous climatic change as evidence of the role of humans.
The problem with this tack is that there are other mechanisms that can lead to the same fingerprints, therefore they are not exclusive evidence of human-caused change.
Moreover, none of the so-called fingerprints suggest that dangerous change is under way.
The confusion that exists might be explained like this.
Over the time since 1900 there is an empirical connection between carbon dioxide rise and average global temperature.
Calculations based on theory give a warming of about 1.6C for a doubling of carbon dioxide.
The warming from 1900 to 2010 is 0.8C, not far from that observed.
Few if any climate scientists would challenge the view that a further increase in concentration of carbon dioxide would cause further warming of the atmosphere that might be discerned.
However, empirical data from temperature measurements over time clearly show that carbon dioxide is not a main driver, as temperature does not rise monotonically with carbon dioxide.
For instance, there was almost 40 years of global cooling beginning in 1940 despite steadily rising carbon dioxide levels. Other factors also drive global climate change. It appears carbon dioxide is only a minor player.
The public are often told that recent floods, snow storms, droughts and other extreme weather phenomena are evidence of dangerous man-made global warming.
Sea levels are supposed to be rising at a rapid rate and will rise even faster in the future. So what is happening?
According to satellite observations, sea level is rising at around 2mm a year, which is entirely consistent with the rate of rise measured since the end of the Little Ice Age about 300 years ago.
There is no real world evidence of accelerated sea level rise. Nothing unusual is happening.
Most of the highly accurate sea level gauges installed around Australia and on Pacific atolls show that sea level rise is smaller than the global average.
Only computer models tell us that it will rise rapidly in the future.
Sea levels rose at about 3m a century about 15,000 years ago. Because coral atolls still exist, they obviously coped with this rapid rise. Recent floods, droughts, extreme cold, record snowfalls and the like are all consistent with what has happened over the past 150 years.
Although the cost of damage from hurricanes and tropical storms has increased, their number has decreased. Evidence from the more distant past indicates that current patterns of climatic extremes show no unusual trends.
Looking further ahead, there is evidence that the world might cool substantially as a result of a variety of solar effects. For example, history tells us that when there are few sunspots - as occurred in the Little Ice Age - the world cools.
Recent research led by Henrik Svensmark, a physicist at the Danish National Space Centre in Copenhagen, explains that, during sunspot-free periods, the stream of particles from the sun is much reduced.
As a direct result, more high energy cosmic rays reach lower altitudes and trigger the formation of more clouds. As clouds reflect sunlight, increased cloudiness causes cooling.
The same theory might also explain the recent period (1979-1988) of warming. The sun was active, the earth was shielded from cosmic rays, cloud cover reduced and the world warmed.
The main conclusion from the above is that the science is far from settled and the odds now favour the hypothesis that the main drivers of climate change are natural.
But the truth is nobody fully understands the climate.
That is why observed changes in world temperatures have made nonsense of computer model predictions.
Yet, even without computer models, we know there is no such thing as a constant climate.
A prudent government would make sure that we are prepared for a climate that is forever changing, be it warming or cooling.
The human component
Chris de Freitas does not accept that extreme weather events are linked to human-induced climate change.
This is in direct contradiction to the view expressed by Christchurch-born leading climate scientist Kevin Trenberth of the US National Centre for Atmospheric Research.
His summation of the facts is: "When natural variability is compounded by human influences on climate this is what we get. Records are not just broken, they are smashed."
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has concluded that in a warming world, there will be more high temperatures and heatwaves and fewer cold extremes.
There will also be more extremes in the water cycle, with droughts and floods becoming more common.
Rising air and sea temperatures mean there's more energy in the system, increasing the odds of extreme weather events.
Let's look at some facts: during the August 2003 European heatwave, temperatures in large areas of France were 7C above average, leading to 30,000 premature deaths and unprecedented decreases in crop yields.
Climate scientists have shown that such events are now twice as likely to happen compared with 50 years ago because of global warming.
Last year's Russian heatwave was the hottest summer on record with extensive wildfires and 50,000 deaths from smog and extreme heat.
Moscow average daily temperature at the peak was nearly 30C, and daily temperatures were around 7C above normal for more than a month.
We now understand that the heatwave was related to record warm temperatures in the Indian Ocean, which have a human component.
As average temperatures rise, the number of frost days decreases.
This has been particularly obvious in New Zealand.
Work published by Auckland climate scientists Jim Salinger and Georgina Griffiths shows that the number of frost days has decreased by between five and 15 days between 1950 and 2000, a reduction of around one-third.
Lisa Alexander at the University of New South Wales has examined the trend in heavy precipitation days worldwide.
There is a very clear increase in heavy precipitation days, even in locations where there is a decline in annual precipitation.
This is entirely consistent with our understanding that a warmer atmosphere holds more water vapour (moisture).
For every 1C of warming the air can hold an extra 6 to 8 per cent water vapour, meaning heavier rain when it rains.
The associated enhanced evaporation driving the increase in water vapour is consistent with drying soils and increasing risk of drought.
Thus climate scientists are concluding that the worldwide increase in heatwaves and flood-producing rainfalls, and the decreased cold nights and frost days, are all very likely a result of global warming.
Munich Re, one of the world's leading reinsurers, puts it like this: "The only plausible explanation for the rise in weather-related catastrophes is climate change. The view that weather extremes are more frequent and intense due to global warming coincides with the current state of scientific knowledge."
Finally, we may ponder the principle of academic freedom.
De Freitas is free to hold whatever opinions he chooses, and to voice them in public.
But when teaching a first-year university course, the onus on the lecturer is surely to present a comprehensive view of mainstream science, even if it goes against his or her personal views.
Academic freedom is a fundamental right, but it does carry responsibilities.
* Professor Keith Hunter is pro-vice-chancellor of sciences at the University of Otago and a former vice-president for physical sciences of the Royal Society of New Zealand.
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Who says manmade CO2 causes catastrophic global warming?
We enjoyed the letter to the Wall Street Journal last week from 16 scientists who said there's "no need to panic about global warming," and of course it drew a response from a warming faction of scientists saying essentially, "yes there is."
Adding some perspective to this they-said/they-said back and forth is yet another letter we saw today from Martin Hertzberg, a Stanford Ph. D., Stanford, class of 1959, who served as a research and forecasting meteorologist in the Navy, "long before the ersatz field now called 'Climate Science' was fabricated out of thin air for the main purpose of promoting the false theory that human CO2 emission was causing 'global warming/climate change/extreme weather phenomena'," as he put it.
The position of the warmists is: "...the science is clear: The world is heating up and humans are primarily responsible."
And now comes Dr. Hertzberg, who says: "Weather and Climate are controlled by natural laws on a scale that is enormous compared to the scale of human activity. Those natural laws engender forces and motions in the Earth's atmosphere, its oceans, and its surface that are beyond human control. Weather and climate existed long before humans appeared on Earth, and they will continue to exist in the same way long after we are gone, either individually or collectively as the human race. ... the human emission of CO2 is totally insignificant for the Earth's weather and climate and there is not one iota of reliable evidence that proves otherwise."
Isn't it interesting how grown-ups can differ?
What's more interesting is the momentum. Remember how Algore got everyone pumped up and the pendulum swung in the warmists' direction? Well, we're seeing it swing back. There was a time not so long ago that WSJ piece would not have seen the light of day. But day's breaking, and warming's cooling off.
"Today, not one, but two of Germany's most widely read news media published comprehensive skeptical climate science articles in their print and online editions, coinciding with the release of a major climate skeptical book, Die kalte Sonne (The Cold Sun)," reports NoTricksZone.com.
"One of the fathers of Germany's modern green movement, Professor Dr. Fritz Vahrenholt, a social democrat and green activist, decided to author a climate science skeptical book together with geologist/paleontologist Dr. Sebastian Lüning. Vahrenholt's skepticism started when he was asked to review an IPCC report on renewable energy. He found hundreds of errors. When he pointed them out, IPCC officials simply brushed them aside. Stunned, he asked himself, “Is this the way they approached the climate assessment reports?” Vahrenholt decided to do some digging."
How about a big cheer for digging!
While we're at it, it might be a good time for this item from Real-Science.com, which shows that "Factoring in the cooling effects of volcanic eruptions at El Chichón and Mt. Pinatubo in the 1980s and 1990s, January 2012 will come close to being the coldest month in the last 30 years. This despite a weakening La Nina and a solar maximum in progress.":
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AG Holder, Drones & Posse Comitatus
Let me start by reassuring everyone that I’m not a lawyer (and quite happy about it). Let me further reassure everyone that I have over 30 years of experience as a law enforcement professional. I happen to have spent three of those years on contract to the U.S. Army as a consultant trying to find a way to share training resources between the Army and domestic law enforcement entities. The effort was largely unsuccessful and that lack of success was mostly due to this thing called Posse Comitatus.
As worded in federal law 18 U.S.C. § 1385:
The Posse Comitatus Act was passed on June 18, 1878, after the end of the Reconstruction and was updated in 1981. Its intent was to limit the powers of Federal government in using federal military personnel to enforce the State laws. As I have learned, Posse Comitatus does not prohibit (as I always believed and was told by one of the senior training agents at the FBI) military personnel from exercising law enforcement powers within a State; it merely requires that any such authority must exist within the U.S. Constitution or by an Act of Congress.
In doing research for this blog entry I found that there have been changes and exemptions to that law passed since it was initiated in 1878. The original act, as shown, refers to the Army or Air Force (which itself is interesting since the Air Force didn’t exist as a stand-alone entity until the 1940s). In 1981 it was modified to “the Armed Forces of the United States” and specified that it did not apply to National Guard forces acting under state authority within its home state or in an adjacent state if invited by that state’s governor. To clarify one other entity, Posse Comitatus does not apply to the Coast Guard because the C.G. has both a maritime law enforcement mission and a federal regulatory agency mission.
For all that, it is generally believed that Posse Comitatus prohibits the federal government from using soldiers, marines, airmen or seamen, of active duty or reserve status, to enforce domestic laws. Additionally, to the best I can find in my research, no such event has occurred since WWII and even then the actions were directly war related and in support of federal law enforcement agencies to support man-power needs.
How then, one must wonder, can the Attorney General of the United States, Eric Holder, issue a statement that says it’s legal and lawful and within the powers of the President of the United States, to order a drone attack against a citizen of the United States? Such would not only violate Posse Comitatus (assuming it was a military drone) but also the Fifth Amendment due process protection delineated in the Constitution.
The President could obviously skirt around Posse Comitatus by using federal agents instead of military personnel or equipment. It would be a matter of paperwork, even if done after the fact, for the Army or Air Force to “loan” a drone to the Department of Homeland Security, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives, the Drug Enforcement Agency, etc. But even if the drone is “the property” of a domestic federal law enforcement agency AND driven by law enforcement personnel, how does any reasonable adult feel that the President of the United States has the lawful authority to execute (assassinate) an American citizen without affording that citizen all of the rights of due process as recognized and guaranteed in our Constitution?
As I wrote this blog I sat and tried to imagine a scenario wherein I would feel it okay for such an order to be given and followed.
If the President could have given a drone-strike order to take out Timothy McVeigh prior to the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, would it have been justified? In hindsight many of us would be tempted to say, “Yes,” simply because it would save 168 lives and prevent over 800 injuries. HINDSIGHT is a beautiful talent but unfortunately does not exist as FORESIGHT. If then-President Clinton had ordered a drone strike on McVeigh, the attack SHOULD have been deemed unlawful and unConstitutional and the orders should have been refused. Would they have been? How would anyone even know?
What if, pre nine-eleven, President Bush could have ordered a drone strike on a given house where a number of the terrorists were living as they waited for the date of the attack to arrive? In ordering a drone strike on that residence the President could have avoided at least one hijacking and saved any number of lives. Would such an order have been justified? In this case we’re not even talking about American citizens; there’s a legal argument as to whether or not Posse Comitatus or the Constitution even applies to them. I ask again, would it have been justified? Hindsight says yes.
I have come to the conclusion that, short of the invasion of the United States by a foreign military, there can be no good reason for the President to order a drone strike on a domestic target. Further, if the target holds ANY American citizen – even a convicted criminal – the Fifth Amendment protections granted by deity and delineated by our forefathers in the Constitution of the United States prohibits such an action.
No President should have the power to order an assassination without first observing every Constitutional protection an American citizen has. No government employee should have the authority to order an execution or assassination without first observing every Constitutional protection an American citizen has. No Attorney General should believe that it’s lawful and legal for a President to order the assassination of an American citizen, without due process, under ANY circumstances.
This is just my opinion. Yours may be different. I’d enjoy reading them. | <urn:uuid:f0207a43-bf82-4d8f-aabe-1841d2f02e46> | 2 | 1.859375 | 0.21899 | en | 0.957597 | http://www.officer.com/blog/10889337/ag-holder-drones-posse-comitatus |
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Mechanism of Selective Growth of Carbon Nanotubes on SiO2/Si Patterns
Summary: Mechanism of Selective Growth of
Carbon Nanotubes on SiO2/Si Patterns
Yung Joon Jung,* Bingqing Wei, Robert Vajtai, and Pulickel M. Ajayan
Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute,
Troy, New York 12180-3590
Yoshikazu Homma, Kuniyil Prabhakaran, and Toshio Ogino
NTT Basic Research Laboratories, Atsugi, Kanagawa, 243-0198, Japan
Received February 10, 2003; Revised Manuscript Received February 28, 2003
During the chemical vapor deposition of multiwalled carbon nanotubes using the vapor phase delivery of a metal-organic (ferrocene) catalyst
precursor, a strong selectivity for growth on patterned SiO2/Si substrates has been observed. A mechanism for this selective growth is
described here. Delivered metal particles (Fe) on Si and SiO2 regions were investigated using several high-resolution characterization techniques.
Active iron catalyst ( iron) particles were formed on the silicon oxide surface resulting in the formation of highly aligned nanotubes on this
substrate. However, in the Si regions, stable FeSi2 and Fe2SiO4 particles were formed due to chemical reactions between silicon surface and
Fe particles at high temperature leading to an inhibition of nanotube growth in the Si regions.
Carbon nanotubes have attracted considerable interest due
to their unique one-dimensional structure and superior
electrical and mechanical properties.1-4
Particularly, carbon
nanotubes have fascinating electrical properties such as high
Collections: Materials Science | <urn:uuid:88eadead-c953-4c46-83cc-a8835fae2b47> | 2 | 1.6875 | 0.060026 | en | 0.850877 | http://www.osti.gov/eprints/topicpages/documents/record/471/1775170.html |
Seeking Peace in the Fields of Time
Time seems to be a topic of conversation in many circles these days. Lack of time, the acceleration of time, and the myriad of ways we keep track of each hour of the day, all of these issues create interference to finding inner peace. How does one attain a state of spiritual centeredness while in the midst of schedules, clock-watching, and the daily demands of life? Perhaps the ancient Greeks offer us a possible starting point.
The Greeks had two ways of expressing time, kairos (pronounced ky-ros) and kronos. Clock time, the way we measure linear time in our “real” world is kronos. Kronos is the name of the Greek God who swallowed his children. This is the time of the father/masculine world. Father Time departs at the end of each year as the old bearded man. Kronos time is time we are aware of, the way anxious children are aware of the hands of the clock as they move minute by minute towards 3:30 p.m., the magic hour when the bell signals the end of the school day. Kronos time is left-brained, analytical, real time.
Kairos time is the dimension of time we are absorbed into. This is the time of the mother/feminine. Whenever you engage in activities, both passive and active that nourish your soul, you are in kairos time. Experiencing your passion for something or someone leads you out of ordinary (kronos) time into the dimension of expansive or non-time (kairos). This is where you find yourself when you are engaged in heart to heart conversation with a dear friend or lost in the pages of a good book. Time passes without awareness or concern.
Stepping beyond the limiting and anxiety producing boundaries of kronos time into the wide-open expansiveness and freedom of kairos time is the first step towards finding inner peace. The engagement with the kairos dimension is paramount to establishing practices that will ultimately allow you to make the internal shift, no matter the immediate circumstances, to the still place within.
The rational world engages your mind, which keeps you on track. This kind of linear approach is necessary to accomplish the multitude of tasks required every day. However, you also need periods when the mind is stilled from its clock-watching, detail tending, and schedule making. There is a need to slip the bounds of kronos into kairos. The way one crawls over a fence from the speeding traffic of a highway, to step into a meadow of wildflowers, and onto a path leading to a quiet sheltered place for rest.
To signal the mind that you desire to shift from kronos to kairos time, try creating visual reminders and rituals to stimulate the intended physical, mental, and spiritual response. The quest for inner peace requires places that offer sanctuary and haven from the whirlwind of everyday life. Creating a place at home that incorporates beauty and sacredness, a nurturing and replenishing respite, provides the setting for inviting inner peace.
Look around your environment with soft focus, as though you’re experiencing a waking dream. What do you see? Are there dust bunnies playing on the floors, old newspapers piled on the chair in the corner, or plants dying of thirst on the kitchen windowsill? Clearing clutter, washing the windows, sweeping the floors, guarantees an elimination of visual distraction. “Cleanliness is next to Godliness,” is not an empty platitude. Bringing order to your surroundings is a way to begin to pave the road to inner peace.
In her book, Feng Shui for the Soul, author Denise Linn says, “Because objects are invested with symbolism, clearing things out of your home has a direct effect on your psyche. You are shifting the energy of your environment, which will in turn have an effect on your life. In other words, sooner or later you will experience the consequences of clearing the debris out of your life.”
The initial step towards finding inner peace is the creation of peace in one’s outer world. When clutter has been cleared and order has been made from chaos, spaces are transformed into portals leading to kairos time…….leading to inner peace. When the kitchen table is cleared of old bills, newspapers, and empty coffee cups, there’s room for a small vase of fresh flowers, a basket of touchstones, and a place for journaling. What was simply a table moments ago becomes a sacred altar for creativity. Sweeping the corner of your bedroom and arranging pillows against the wall, creating an altar from a box covered with a favorite scarf, adding candles, incense, and flowers, offers your mind a place to rest and invites your spirit to refreshment in the field of kairos. Your bedroom becomes a temple for your soul.
Finding peace within is a journey. Creating order and harmony in your surroundings illumines the path. Having a sacred space, a special place in your environment for quieting the mind, for journaling, meditation, reading sacred texts, or just being still, is an important provision as you seek inner peace. Naturally, you can’t sit on a futon all day or never leave the confines of where you live. How then is it possible to find peace within during the endless distractions of work, carpools, phone calls, and e-mail?
Visual reminders given various assignments as prompts and cues to call you back to your center, to kairos time, to inner peace, are needed throughout the day to help maintain the calm interior you experience in your haven/sanctuary at home. Everyday objects and seemingly numerous interruptions can be transformed into planks, that one by one create a bridge from the world of kronos to kairos.
Near my computer in my workspace I have created an altar of images and touchstones representing various saints who inspire my writing and other creative endeavors. Each time my eyes fall on these sacred icons, I am reminded to STOP and b r e a t h e I’m invited to go within to the deep resources of my soul for renewed energy, creativity, and guidance for my work.
Photographs of family and friends are carefully arranged on my desk. As I shuffle papers and turn to my calendar the faces of these loved ones remind me to STOP and b r e a t h e, and to dive into my heart to embrace gratitude for the precious people in my life. Peace washes over me. I have slipped the confining bounds from kronos to the open potentiality of kairos for an instant. That singular moment expands to encompass another dimension just a breath away from the world of ringing phones and unopened e-mails. Each time I embrace one of these interludes, I return to the task at hand, renewed, energized, and centered.
Finding inner peace is a journey and the vehicle is time….kairos time. The invitation today is to STOP and b r e a t h e in order to recognize how it feels to your body, mind, and spirit when you shift from kronos to kairos time. Remember this is only a starting place. Reach beyond habitual limiting boundaries and contemplate the countless creative ways you can begin to embrace the spiritual peace within your own soul.
The Turning
The Demise of Mystery
The Call
A Fragment of Grace | <urn:uuid:a0ac1772-581f-4ede-8381-3e49cf4d1627> | 2 | 1.742188 | 0.035076 | en | 0.893798 | http://www.patheos.com/blogs/sacredilluminations/2012/07/seeking-peace-in-the-fields-of-time/ |
imageThe Short Story on Sleep Disorders and PCOS We know you’re in a hurry!
Is Your PCOS Keeping You Up at Night?
Not Getting A Good Night Sleep
Women with Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS) often confront a variety of sleep-related problems. You may be like some women who experience insomnia or others who experience snoring, a sign of obstructive sleep apnea (OSA).2 Women with PCOS (Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome) are at a much greater risk of sleep apnea than the general population, and you should be aware of how serious OSA can be. If your PCOS and sleep disorders are depriving you of a good night’s sleep, seek treatment today. Just know that lifestyle changes, such as better diet, exercise, and pharmaceutical or nutritional supplementation, can be the key to improving your sleep.
Of course dealing with a serious health issue can keep women up worrying, and Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (as known as PCOD – Polycystic Ovary Disorder) definitely causes the kinds of symptoms that women worry about. But there is a difference between a condition sparking stress and one that induces real sleep disturbances. Unfortunately for the 5-10 percent of women of childbearing age who suffer from Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS), this medical condition is one that can cause both stress and frustrating disturbances in their sleep patterns.
The link between Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome and sleeping conditions, such as insomnia and sleep apnea, is not entirely clear. However, weight gain and an underlying hormonal imbalance have both been implicated as likely factors in PCOS and sleep apnea.
Want to learn more about the Insulite PCOS System?
How Are PCOS and Sleep Disturbances Related?
Although Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS) is fairly common, it’s a condition that Cardiovascular System Diagrammedical researchers are still studying. Because of the relatively small amount of information available about this condition, the connection between Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS) and sleep disturbances is still not well known, as are the links between it and other related conditions.4
Doctors do know, however, that weight gain and hormonal imbalances are at least partially to blame for two of the most common sleep disorders that women with this condition face, in particular insomnia and sleep apnea.
Insomnia can take many different forms, from the inability to initially fall asleep to the inability to stay asleep. Sleep apnea, on the other hand, poses a much more serious threat because it causes women to stop breathing while they sleep. Oftentimes, this condition results in snoring and exhaustion, as well as headaches and irritability.3
In addition to being an inconvenience, sleep apnea can pose a serious halth threat to women who are struggling with Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS). Sleep apnea can cause women to feel as though they are choking or gasping for breath in their sleep, which, sometimes, they are.2
PCOS: What Is It?
Female Sex Organs
Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS) is a hormonal imbalance that occurs when a woman develops inordinately high levels of androgens. Dubbed “male” sex hormones because these hormones, testosterone in particular, are present in higher levels in men, these androgens can wreak havoc on the attempts of the female hormones, most notably estrogen, progesterone, luteinizing hormone (LH), and follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH), to maintain proper control over the female reproductive system. With the interference of the androgens, functions such as menstruation and ovulation are thrown off course. PCOS is also linked to a condition called Insulin Resistance, which is when your cells become resistant to insulin as a result of spikes in blood sugar based on a woman’s diet.
The result of this hormone imbalance is a long list of symptoms, including:1
1. Infertility: One of the most devastating symptoms of Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS), infertility is a condition that can dash dreams of becoming a mother and cause tension within a marriage. Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS) is one of the leading causes of infertility and is also one of the most common ways in which women find out they have this condition.
2. Sleep Disturbances: From sleep apnea to insomnia, women with Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS) are less likely to get a good night’s sleep than women who don’t have PCOS.
3. Hirsutism: The excessive growth of hair in embarrassing places, such as the face, chest, and back, hirsutism is one of the more visible and difficult symptoms to cope with this condition causes.
4. Hair Loss: Loss and thinning of hair are common in women with PCOS, and this symptom often occurs in the same way as male pattern baldness due to excess testosterone levels.
5. High Blood Pressure and High Cholesterol: These two symptoms go hand in hand and are very important to monitor, because women with Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS) are at an increased risk for stroke and heart-related complications.
6. Skin Conditions: Ranging from mild to severe, issues such as acne, skin tags, acanthosis nigricans (the development of thick, dark patches of skin), dry skin, and dandruff are all issues that women with Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS) have to deal with. In addition to being painful, these symptoms are often very visible and embarrassing.
7. Polycystic Ovaries: Alhough ovarian cysts are not a prerequisite for Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS), they are often a tell-tale sign the condition is present.
8. Weight Gain and Obesity: Excess weight gain is also a common symptom that women with this condition undergo, and the inability to drop that weight is a struggle these women face on a daily basis. Obesity is a symptom that not only indicates Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS), it exacerbates it, making the condition more difficult to live with and more serious to one’s health.
9. Infrequent, Sporadic, or Absent Menstrual Periods: Caused by the excess testosterone in their system, many women with PCOS do not have a properly functioning menstrual cycle.
10. Anovulation: A lack of ovulation is another key symptom of Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS) and is also one of the causes of infertility.
11. Further Health Complications: Women with Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS) not only have to live with unique combinations of the above symptoms, they are at a higher risk for many other serious conditions, including heart disease, Type 2 diabetes,5 endometrial cancer, and breast cancer. Additionally, Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS) is often influenced by Insulin Resistance, which forces women to grapple with the inability to utilize insulin that allows conversion of glucose (blood sugar) into energy.
Want to learn more about the Insulite PCOS System?
Treatment Options
Getting Better Sleep with PCOS
Although it can be difficult to get a good night’s sleep with the sleep disturbances caused by Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome,6 there are several ‘tricks’ you can try when attempting to get a better night’s rest.
1. Do not take naps. By sleeping throughout the day, your body’s sleep pattern will become skewed, and falling asleep at night will become even more difficult.
2. Stick to your routine. Creating a pattern of sleep is important, as is following this pattern on weekends. Going to bed and waking up at the same time every day will help your body settle into a normal sleeping habit.
3. Relax before heading to bed. It is difficult to turn off the million and one thoughts that run through your mind at the end of the day, so taking a breather before heading to bed will help soothe your mind and prepare your body for sleep.
4. Do not sleep unless you are tired. Although this may seem counterintuitive to creating a normal sleeping pattern, lying in bed without being able to sleep only make matters worse. Get up and be productive until sleep comes.
5. Train your body to recognize the bed. Instead of reading and watching television in bed, designate the bed as a sleep-only zone. This will help cue your body for sleep.
6. No Late Night EatingDo not eat or drink stimulants before going to bed. Coffee, tea, soda, chocolate, and other forms of caffeine and sugar should be avoided before bedtime to allow your body to relax naturally.
7. Cheat on your diet. Although you may be told not to eat after eight o’clock, going to bed hungry will ruin a sleep pattern. Eat a light snack, preferably a healthy dairy or protein treat, before going to bed if the hunger pangs have started to set in.
8. Keep your bedroom comfortable. To decrease distractions, keep your bedroom clean and at a comfortable temperature.
Natural Therapies
Nipping the Problem in the Bud…Naturally
Woman On Bike
Although the previous tips to avoiding sleep disturbances are wonderful, so is the potential to control Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome and naturally dispel the symptoms it creates. Although the process isn’t difficult, it does require a great deal of willpower on your part.
1. Exercise as much as possible. Although physical limitations can present challenges, every woman with Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome should be as active as possible without pushing the limits too far.
2. Eat a healthy diet. Include complex carbohydrates high in fiber and low on the glycemic index. Additionally, steer clear of sugary foods and those made up of simple carbohydrates.
3. Enlist the help of a support system. Keeping up with a healthy diet and exercise routine is not as easy as it appears on paper, but with the encouragement and support of other women who have gone through the same process it can become a positive experience. Additionally, emotional support is invaluable when PCOS becomes overwhelming.
4. Take targeted nutritional supplements. These special blends of vitamins, minerals, and botanicals can help fortify the body in the ways it needs to heal from Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome and the symptoms it causes.
5. Learn as much as you can. Learn about PCOS, its symptoms and its primary underlying cause of Insulin Resistance. Knowing as much as you can will empower you in discussing your condition with your doctor and in dealing with PCOS.
It is these five key elements that make up the Insulite PCOS System.
Sleep disturbances can present a very frustrating obstacle for women with Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome. By doing all you can to get better sleep, keeping to a healthy diet, and exercising as often as possible, you can improve your sleeping patterns and, in the process, your overall wellbeing. For more information on how to remedy Insulin Resistance, an influencing factor of PCOS, contact Insulite Labs for articles, news, and nutritional supplements to help you win the fight against Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome.
| <urn:uuid:f7a3bfc9-6cba-4548-9f3b-daa1c56f8d6c> | 2 | 2.46875 | 0.043151 | en | 0.941123 | http://www.pcos.com/sleep-disorders-and-pcos/ |
Google admits Chrome tracks web addresses
Chrome record keystrokes company admits in privacy policy
Google has admitted the auto-suggest feature of Chrome's Omnibox gives it potential access to users' keystrokes, providing the company with a wealth of information on the browsing habits of its users.
"When you type URLs or queries in the address bar, the letters you type are sent to Google so the Suggest feature can automatically recommend terms or URLs you may be looking for," the company notes in its privacy policy.
Unlike searching through Google, so long as the user has auto-suggest enabled, and Google set as their default search engine, the Omnibox will grant Google access to search enquiries without the user ever hitting the enter key.
Google says it intends to store about 2% of this information, alongside the IP address of the computer that typed it.
Given that current figures reveal Chrome has already grabbed 1% of the browser market, this could represent a huge amount of information.
Speaking on a blog posting entitled "preventing paranoia", the company attempts to head off any "conspiracy theories" claiming that there a number of simple ways to stop Chrome recording these details.
"For better or worse, my blog is popular with the Google conspiracy-theorist demographic," says Matt Cutts, head of Google's webspam team.
"I talked to the Chrome team to find out if there's anything to worry about. The short answer is no ... I thought it would be better to write down all the communication that happens so that people wouldn't invent conspiracy theories ... Luckily, you can double-check me because the browser is open-source."
Google backs down on EULA
Google has admitted it made a mistake in the original wording of the EULA that accompanied its chrome browser, and amended it.
The original wording essentially gave Google the ability to do whatever it wanted with your content when it was posted through Chrome.
However, the company has now drastically amended this to read: "You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services."
Read more | <urn:uuid:22ec2d7d-226e-4311-8874-89cc36d7784c> | 2 | 1.71875 | 0.060332 | en | 0.93039 | http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/internet/222834/google-admits-chrome-tracks-web-addresses |
"Free trade" is a sacred mantra in Washington. If anything is labeled as being "free trade", then everyone in the Washington establishment is required to bow down and support it. Otherwise, they are excommunicated from the list of respectable people and exiled to the land of protectionist Neanderthals.
As with all these multilateral agreements, the intention is to spread its reach through time. That means that anything the original parties to the TPP accept is likely to be imposed later on other countries in the region, and quite likely, on the rest of the world.
A few items that have been leaked give us some insight as to the direction of this pact. One major focus is will be stronger protection for intellectual property. In the case of recorded music and movies, we might see provisions similar to those that were in the Stop Online Privacy Act (Sopa). This would make internet intermediaries like Google, Facebook and, indeed, anyone with a website into a copyright cop.
The pharmaceutical industry is also likely to be a big gainer from this pact. It has decided that the stronger patent rules that it inserted in the 1995 WTO agreement don't go far enough. It wants stronger and longer patent protection and also increased use of "data exclusivity". This is a government-granted monopoly, often as long as 14 years, that prohibits generic competitors from entering a market based on another company's test results that show a drug to be safe and effective.
Note that stronger copyright and patent protection, along with data exclusivity, is the opposite of free trade. They involve increased government intervention in the market; they restrict competition and lead to higher prices for consumers.
In fact, the costs associated with copyright and patent protection dwarf the costs associated with the tariffs or quotas that usually concern free traders. While the latter rarely raise the price of a product by more than 20-30%, patent protection for prescription drugs can allow drugs to sell for hundreds, or even thousands, of dollars per prescription when they would sell for $5-10 as a generic in a free market. Patent protection increases what patients pay for drugs in the United States by close to $270bn a year (1.8% of GDP). In addition to making drugs unaffordable to people who need them, the economic costs implied by this market distortion are enormous.
There are many other provisions in this pact that are likely to be similarly controversial. The rules it creates would override domestic laws on the environment, workplace safety, and investment. Of course, it's not really possible to talk about the details because there are no publicly available drafts.
In principle, the TPP is exactly the sort of issue that should feature prominently in the fall elections. Voters should have a chance to decide if they want to vote for candidates who support raising the price of drugs for people in the United States and the rest of the world, or making us all into unpaid copyright cops. But there is no text and no discussion in the campaigns – and that is exactly how the corporations who stand to gain want it.
Our political leaders will say that they are worried about the TPP text getting in the hands of terrorists, but we know the truth: they are afraid of a public debate. So if the free market works, we will get to see the draft of the agreement.
Link to original article from The Guardian
Dean Baker
End Corporate Rule - ECR Articles | <urn:uuid:28c85c6d-f95d-493a-a141-2bd462760ac6> | 2 | 2.234375 | 0.054314 | en | 0.958112 | http://www.pdacommunity.org/component/content/article/90-ecr-articles/2080-the-pacific-qfree-tradeq-deal-thats-anything-but-free |
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PETA’s History: Compassion in Action
Before PETA existed, there were two important things that you could do if you wanted to help animals. You could volunteer at a local animal shelter, or you could donate money to a humane society. While many of these organizations did useful work to bring comfort to animals who are used by humans, they didn’t question why we kill animals for their flesh or their skins or why we use them for tests of new product ingredients or for our entertainment.
PETA’s founders sought to give caring people something more that they could do and to provide them ways to actively change society. They wanted to promote a healthy vegan diet and show how easy it is to shop cruelty-free. They wanted to protest, loudly and publicly, against cruelty to animals in all its forms, and they wanted to expose what really went on behind the very thick, soundproof walls of animal laboratories.
Aided by thorough investigative work, consumer protests, and international media coverage, PETA brings together members of the scientific, corporate, and legislative communities to achieve large-scale, long-term changes that improve animals’ quality of life and prevent their deaths.
PETA’s first case—the precedent-setting 1981 Silver Spring monkeys case—resulted in the first arrest and criminal conviction of an animal experimenter in the U.S. on charges of cruelty to animals, the first confiscation of abused laboratory animals, and the first U.S. Supreme Court victory for animals in laboratories. And we haven’t stopped fighting—and winning—in our efforts for animals since.
Historic Cases
Every year, with the help of generous supporters, PETA is able to secure victories for animals. And every victory is important and celebrated, from the smallest mouse spared a horrific death in a glue trap to the thousands of cows, pigs, chickens, and fish whose lives are saved every time someone goes vegetarian.
The following are just a few of PETA’s major accomplishments for animals:
• Undercover investigations of pig-breeding factory farms in North Carolina and Oklahoma revealed horrific conditions and daily abuse of pigs, including the fact that one pig was skinned alive, leading to the first-ever felony indictments of farm workers. See other victories for animals on factory farms.
• PETA’s undercover investigation of a Florida exotic-animal “training school,” which revealed that big cats were being beaten with ax handles, encouraged the U.S. Department of Agriculture to develop new regulations governing animal-training methods. See other victories for animals who are used for entertainment.
• PETA persuaded Mobil, Texaco, Pennzoil, Shell, and other oil companies to cover their exhaust stacks after showing how millions of birds and bats had become trapped in the shafts and been burned to death.
• A California furrier was charged with cruelty to animals after a PETA investigator filmed him electrocuting chinchillas by clipping wires to the animals’ genitals, which caused the animals to experience the pain of a heart attack while they were still conscious. In another undercover exposé, PETA caught a fur rancher on videotape causing minks to die in agony by injecting them with weedkiller. Both farms agreed to stop these cruel killing methods. See other victories for animals who are killed for their skins.
• After two years of negotiations with—and more than 400 demonstrations against—the company worldwide, McDonald’s became the first fast-food chain to agree to make basic welfare improvements for farmed animals. Burger King and Wendy’s followed suit within a year’s time, and within two years, Safeway, Kroger, and Albertsons had also agreed to adopt stricter guidelines in order to improve the lives of billions of animals who are slaughtered for food.
• Thanks to PETA’s lengthy campaign to push PETCO to take more responsibility for the animals in its stores, the company agreed to stop selling large birds and to make provisions for the millions of rats and mice in its care. See other victories for abused companion animals.
See more precedent-setting victories and PETA’s milestones for animals.
Success Stories
PETA has made groundbreaking advances for animals who are abused by corporations, governments, and individuals throughout the world, and these successes have led to dramatic improvements in the lives of millions of individual animals.
Whether by working with universities and government institutions to implement non-animal test methods, sparking a boom of “cruelty-free” product marketing and a nosedive for the U.S. fur industry, or promoting the mass availability of meat alternatives at grocery stores and gourmet restaurants, PETA has been the driving force behind many of the largest successes for animals in the last 25 years. Read more about PETA’s success stories.
Save 100 Animals a Year …
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Rid home of mildew culprits
Tips for protecting clothes, furniture, bathrooms and more
By Inman News Feed
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Tips for protecting clothes, furniture, bathrooms and more
Paul Bianchina
Inman News™
While obviously unsightly, the presence of mildew on interior or exterior surfaces is more than just a cosmetic problem. It's almost always an indicator of a deeper and potentially more destructive moisture condition.
Painting over it won't cure the condition, as the mildew will return sooner or later, and in the meantime the hidden moisture is working away at insulation, wood framing and other parts of your house.
Mildew, a form of mold, is most often seen as a black or sometimes white or greenish growth on siding, drywall, roofing and in other areas. In order to grow, mildew first of all needs a food source.
Because mildew likes organic materials, the typical home offers lots of choices, including drywall, wood, paper, wallpaper paste, cotton, linen, leather, wool and many other materials and surfaces.
In addition to the food, mildew will grow best in areas where it's moist and warm, and where there's a general lack of sunlight and air circulation.
Inside your house, one of the most common areas where mildew growth is seen is in the bathroom, where warm, moist air is at its most concentrated. Typically, the only thing needed to combat moisture here is the installation of a ventilation fan.
Make sure that it's ducted all the way to the outside of the house, not just into the attic! And, of course, the fan needs to get used, both during and immediately after using the bath or shower.
If you're having trouble getting people to follow this rule, then you can ensure that the fan gets used by having it wired to the bathroom's overhead light so the two come on together, or to a timer control. If the fan is used regularly, you'll remove the moisture and circulate the air, and you shouldn't have any trouble containing the moisture before mildew can start.
If a ventilation fan isn't enough, then you have more moisture being generated in the bathroom than just that from the shower.
Common hidden moisture sources include a leak in the tub or shower valves or supply pipes; loose and leaking drain lines; a bad wax ring seal below the toilet that's allowing seepage; or moisture buildup on the floor around the tub or shower from bad caulk joints or excessive splashing from tub users.
Detecting this moisture can be difficult, as the source is usually concealed and you typically won't even know you have a problem until it becomes bad enough to show visible signs -- a buckled floor, crumbly drywall, etc. Here's one place where the presence of mildew is a blessing in disguise, because it tells you there's moisture present before it causes real damage.
Once you begin to see the mildew, your best bet is to contact a contractor who specializes in water damage restoration; most have sophisticated moisture meters that can help you track down the problem.
Other interior mildew problem areas can arise in closets, and behind beds and other furniture -- especially those placed on exterior walls. This is typically the result of poor air circulation, combined with high humidity.
In the closet, try removing some of the clothes so that they're not as densely packed. Leave the door open or replace the door with one that's louvered to allow air to circulate. There are also moisture-absorbing chemicals such as silica gel that can help you get rid of excess moisture in specific trouble areas.
In bedrooms and other areas, move furniture away from walls so air can circulate. Keep clothes and other items from accumulating on the floor and in piles on furniture, and keep things as clean as possible to keep food sources and accumulated moisture to a minimum.
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Tuesday, March 3, 2015
Doctors are human, too
Your psychiatrist must be intelligent and motivated to have made it through four years of undergrad, four years of medical school, and four years of residency. However, she has a secret that she hasn't told anyone.
Doctors are human, too
(AP Photo/Ric Feld)
(AP Photo/Ric Feld)
by Erica Cohen
Your psychiatrist must be intelligent and motivated to have made it through four years of undergrad, four years of medical school, and four years of residency. However, she has a secret that she hasn’t told anyone. She has severe depression, just like you. But unlike you, she hasn’t sought treatment, and it haunts her every day.
Medical students and residents suffer from mental illness, particularly depression and burnout, at a higher rate than the general population. One potential explanation for this disparity is that medical training is rigorous; medical students and physicians often do not have the time to get the help and treatment they need, so their mental health deteriorates.
Additionally, physicians are significantly more likely to commit suicide than their counterparts in the general population; male physicians have a 70 percent higher suicide rate, and female physicians have as much as a 400 percent higher suicide rate.
According to a 2003 study, only 22 percent of medical students who screened positive for depression and only 42 percent of those with suicidal ideation sought treatment. Study participants cited lack of time (48 percent), lack of confidentiality (37 percent), stigma associated with using mental health services (30 percent), cost (28 percent), fear of documentation on their academic record (24 percent), and fear of an unwanted intervention (26 percent) as reasons for not seeking treatment.
Physicians are cultured to show no weakness, that vulnerability is a sign of medical incompetence. Although medical professionals encourage patients to seek help for their problems, admitting that the professionals themselves suffer from emotional or mental issues is often seen as a character flaw.
The culture among physicians is to place little emphasis on their own health. Many medical residency programs do not offer sick or personal days, and residents therefore come to work so sick they run to the restroom to vomit in between seeing patients. This cannot be healthy for the physicians or their patients. They work excruciatingly long hours with little sleep, which often results in burnout and depression.
A 2009 study found that physicians who sought help for mental illness “reported being ostracized by their colleagues, being seen as weak, incapable or lazy or no longer being seen as a ‘proper doctor.’” Only 40 percent reported receiving sympathy from colleagues, and only 11 percent reported that their colleagues had offered to help.
Traditionally, concerns about physician mental health issues have focused on risks to patient safety and resulted in punishment and stigmatization rather than compassion. Although patient safety is of paramount concern, not all physicians who are ill are impaired and a risk to patient safety.
In a 2007 survey of U.S. State Medical Board executive directors, 37 percent indicated that mental illness diagnosis alone, without any evidence of impairment, was sufficient for sanctioning a physician. Additionally, career obstacles are prevalent; studies show that “medical students who received psychological counseling were less likely to secure residency positions.” And "[p]racticing physicians with psychiatric disorders often encounter overt or covert discrimination in medical licensing, hospital privileges, health insurance, and/or malpractice insurance.”
How can we encourage a physician to get treatment if mere diagnosis could be professional suicide?
Medical schools and health care employers must be on high alert for issues related to medical professional mental health issues. They must work to provide the maximum possible resources to health care providers in need of mental health assistance. And it is essential to educate future doctors from the first day of medical school about the necessity of self-care and seeking help. We cannot expect our physicians to adequately care for us if they cannot take care of themselves.
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Scientists Spy Never-Before-Seen Quantum Quirk of Light
Researchers saw light move like a wave and act like a particle
Here Is the Smallest Living Thing Ever Seen
150 of these ultra-small bacteria could live inside a single E. coli cell
Did Dark Matter Do in The Dinosaurs?
One researcher from NYU says that our solar system's passing through the galactic plane brings death and destruction to Earth
The Eiffel Tower Just Got Its Own Wind Turbines
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Ethanol: Production Overview
Ethanol production is one of the earliest chemical technologies known to man. While Process Plus is involved in cellulosic ethanol production, corn is the primary source for ethanol production. Production of ethanol from grain is a simple process that involves several different processing areas. Over the years the technology has evolved to incorporate improved methods to maximize yield, lower costs, and provide for recovery of valuable by-products. It involves the following steps:
Grain Receiving / Handling
Grain is unloaded via rail car or bulk truck for storage as required maintaining continuous operations.
There are a variety of milling options including dry, wet or modified, with dry milling being the most commonly used method and therefore is the method described.
The grain feedstock passes through hammer mills, which grind it into a fine meal.
The meal is mixed with water to form a mash that passes through a high temperature (~200-300°F) cooker for a brief period of time, followed by a lower temperature (~140°F) holding period with an alpha-amylase enzyme, where the starch is liquefied. Heat is applied to release bundled starch molecules so that they can be broken down by the enzyme in the liquefaction process. The high temperatures also reduce bacteria levels in the mash.
After liquefaction, the mash is further cooled and the secondary enzyme (gluco-amylase) is added to convert the liquefied starch to fermentable sugars (dextrose).
Yeast is added to the mash to ferment the sugars to Ethanol and carbon dioxide (CO2). If continuous fermentation is used, the mash flows, or cascades, through several fermenters in series until the mash is fully fermented and then leaves the final tank. In a batch fermentation process, the mash is held in one fermenter for about 48 hours to complete the fermentation. Fermentation heat must be removed to maintain optimum temperature for yeast activity.
The fermented mash, now called “beer”, contains about 12-15% alcohol by volume, along with all the nonfermentable solids from the grain and the yeast cells. The mash is pumped to a continuous flow distillation tower where the alcohol is removed from the solids and the water. The alcohol leaves the top of the tower at about 95% strength (190 Proof), and the residue mash, called stillage, is transferred from the base of the tower to the co-product processing area.
The 95% alcohol from the top of the column must be dehydrated in order to be suitable for blended ethanol fuel. There are a few different ways to dehydrate ethanol; including molecular sieves, grits and azeotropic (entrainers). However, molecular sieves are the most popular method in North America.
Dehydration captures the last bit of water in the ethanol. The alcohol product at this stage is called anhydrous (without water) ethanol and is 99.5%+ ethanol.
To make it unfit for human consumption and suitable for fuel use, ethanol is denatured with a small amount (2%-5%) of some product such as gasoline.
Ethanol production is a no-waste process that adds value to the feedstock by converting it into more valuable products. Two main co-products — Carbon Dioxide (CO2) and distillers grains — are created during Ethanol production. CO2 is released during fermentation. Many Ethanol plants collect the CO2, clean it of any residual Ethanol, compress it, and sell it for use in carbonated beverages or to flash freeze meat (“Dry Ice”). By-product DDGS (Dried Distillers Grains with Solubles) is high in protein and other nutrients and is used extensively in animal feed. Production of DDGS utilizes centrifuges to separate the liquid and solid fractions. The liquid is evaporated to syrup that is added back to the solids in the final drying step. Some Ethanol plants may sell the syrup separate from the distiller’s grain.
Wet Milling Facilities
Wet milling of corn is used in the manufacture of high-fructose corn sweetener. Dextrose, which is produced as an intermediate product, may be diverted to ethanol production during the seasonal downturn in the sweetener market. This provides the flexibility to produce the more value-added product as the market changes.
Cellulosic Technologies
Cellulosic process technologies are currently being researched and developed by a variety of interests around the nation. Process Plus is working with industry leaders to help bring cellulosic ethanol to market. As the technologies become established and marketable, Process Plus will continue to provide support to ethanol producers. | <urn:uuid:ec1d4da2-6c20-4cca-9525-3c88155942dd> | 4 | 3.59375 | 0.158775 | en | 0.926515 | http://www.processplus.com/industries_served/rf_production_overview.html |
Protective custody
Protective custody is a type of imprisonment (or care) to protect a prisoner (or other person) from harm, either from outside sources or other prisoners.
Prison usage
In a prison context, protective custody is used mainly in the following cases:
• Those who are at high risk of being harmed or killed by other prisoners either for their crime or their group (ethnic or otherwise), such as pedophiles, child murderers / child abusers, gang members in a prison containing rival gang members, or prisoners who are gay or transgender.
Protective custody might simply involve putting the person in a secure prison (if the threat is from the outside), but usually protective custody involves some degree of solitary confinement. In the case of a person being threatened due to his association with a certain group, moving that person to another section of the prison may be sufficient.
Other usages
Protective custody does not necessarily imply a prisoner or a prison setting. In some usages, it might simply involve placing a person in a secure setting, with no implication of imprisonment, such as when a child is placed in temporary foster care. In some cases, non-criminals (or defendants in pending trials) have also been placed in protective custody in a prison setting, for example to protect them from being lynched.
In Nazi Germany, the German equivalent term, 'Schutzhaft', was used as a euphemism for the extra- or para-legal rounding-up of political opponents and especially Jews, sometimes officially defended as being necessary to protect them from the 'righteous' wrath of the German population. The victims were then sent to concentration camps, where most were later exterminated.
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Books for a Better Tomorrow
World literacy dropped from just under 40 percent to 15 percent between 1970 and 2010. As nonprofits around the world battle the growing epidemic, Better World Books is a social enterprise that is seeking to eradicate the problem of global illiteracy. Every book bought on funds a global literacy program like Books for Africa, Room to Read, Worldfund and Invisible Children. Funds go toward building schools and libraries, creating innovative online learning tools, funding scholarships in the developing world and a variety of other ways. John Uja is the vice president of marketing for Better World Books. Here, he discusses the growing problem of illiteracy and how Better World Books is aligning with nonprofit forces to combat it.
How does the issue of literacy affect other aspects of an individual’s life?
Imagine not being able to fill out a job application because you can’t read it. Or not being able to understand the directions on your prescription medication. How would you survive and earn a living? Literacy is deeply tied to quality of life and the opportunities an individual has. It is the foundation of other education—you can’t progress in other formal education without being able to read. As such, literacy is a key step on the pathway out of poverty for millions of people around the world.
One of the tenets of BWB is recycling books. How can you see the rise in e-books and e-readers changing the face of recycling in the book world?
Near term, e-books and e-readers will drive up the amount of paper book recycling as people discard their physical books in favor of e-readers. Longer term, it will be interesting to see how e-readers are handled in the recycling stream as they contain plastics and some toxic materials such as lead, mercury and cadmium.
What’s the difference between doing social good and social enterprise, as a company? How has BWB sought to bridge that gap as you’ve grown into a major company?
Well, doing social good is, broadly speaking, going out and making a positive difference in the world. Social enterprise is a particular way of organizing to achieve that goal. Implicit in your question is whether the “social” conflicts with the “enterprise,” and there’s no question it can be a balancing act. The business is more complex because every decision includes asking how it impacts the mission, and because you have to be very strong operationally when you are contributing a significant portion of your revenues to social good. We’ve bridged the gap successfully because of the way we are set up—scaling the business by definition produces more social good—there’s no conflict of interest, in fact, just the opposite—the mission enables us to scale the business, and growing the business produces more positive social and environmental impact.
How do you combat negativity from people who say that social enterprise is greedy?
Consumers are rightly skeptical of business’s impact claims—there is a lot of green-washing out there. That is why we chose to become a B-Corporation, a certification with a high bar for social and environmental impact that requires passing a rigorous questionnaire, changing corporate by-laws to say the company will balance the needs of all stakeholders, not just shareholders, and undergoing regular audits. The other thing I point out is that it is better to do well by doing good than to pursue pure profit as most corporations do. Capitalism is a powerful force for change in our world—if we can harness that force to address the needs of society and the planet, we can make a real difference.
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Because we commit to and follow through on our social and environmental bottom lines, people trust us to do the right thing with the books they share with us. Our mission has directly contributed to our ability to acquire the books we sell because people know the sale supports literacy and creates a re-use opportunity—which is even better than recycling, of course. It also helps us to acquire and keep customers who buy books from us. There is a large and growing group of socially conscious consumers out there who want to vote with their dollars by shopping retailers who align with their values. Our mission aligns us perfectly with those consumers.
What’s ahead in the upcoming year for BWB?
We’ll be rolling out our Better World Book Drop Box program nationally, which is a major initiative for us. We’ve been piloting the program successfully in Atlanta and Northern Indiana where we have hundreds of drop boxes in place providing people an easy outlet for their unwanted books. Where we don’t have a drop box, people can still donate books by getting a free mailing label at We’ve also been making some big improvements to, and there are more changes in store there, so we’re very excited to be evolving the site into a world-class shopping experience.
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Putting risk in perspective | DON BRUNELL
Where there is life, there is risk. That's not some insightful quotation, it's just a fact.
That fact used to be accepted as common sense, but in today's society, people have come to believe that any degree of risk is unacceptable. In fact, trial lawyers have won lawsuits, not because their clients were injured, but because they feared they might be.
It's called the "deterministic" method.
This method is easier for agencies to use because it's simple and it doesn't require a lot of data. The only problem is it's less accurate. It tends to overestimate risk. But that's not all. Regulators routinely take that overestimated risk level and compound it by adding an additional layer of buffer – "just to be safe." As a result, you end up with regulations that are far more restrictive and costly than necessary to provide protection.
Last November, the Washington Department of Ecology announced that it will likely use this method as it updates the state's Fish Consumption Level – one factor in a complex formula that determines our state's water quality standards.
That's a problem. Ecology's starting point on this issue was extreme to begin with. They wanted to use the same FCR that Oregon used, one which resulted in water quality standards that are virtually impossible to meet because the technology to comply doesn't exist, and may not for decades. In some cases, the allowable levels are so low they can't be measured with existing technology.
There is a better way.
It's called the probabilistic method, as in "probabilities." It's more comprehensive, more precise and more accurate.
Think of it this way: When you walk out of your house, there's a risk you could get struck by lightning. Lightning strikes occur every day somewhere on the globe. But how likely is it that it will happen to you? That's the question that is better answered by the probabilistic method.
Ecology has used the probabilistic method, and the EPA says it provides the best basis for decision-making. "Because the results of the refined risk assessment show the range of possible environmental impacts and which ones are most likely to occur, they provide a better basis for decision-making."
If that's true, why isn't Ecology using it now? Good question.
Let's hope they listen.
Read the Feb 27
Green Edition
Browse the archives.
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Sacred Texts Hinduism Index Previous Next
p. 47
SHREE SHOOKDEO, the sage, said,--Raja! when those two trees fell, hearing the sound, and being alarmed, the wife of Nund came to the spot where Krishnù had been tied to the wooden mortar; and all the cowherdesses and cowherds came also after her. When she did not find Krishnù there, being agitated in mind, Jusodha went about calling out, and repeating the name of Mohun--"Where has he gone, that was tied down? Has any one seen my boy Kunhya any where?" In the meantime, (or at this time,) a woman of Bruj, having come before Jusodha, said, "Two trees have fallen down, and there Krishnù has escaped."
Having heard this, they all advanced and saw that two trees had indeed fallen down, uprooted, and Krishnù was sitting between them, tied to the wooden mortar, and contracted in size. Going up to him, Nund's wife, loosing him from the wooden mortar, and weeping, clasped Krishnù to her bosom; and all the cowherdesses, supposing that he was alarmed, began to snap their fingers, and clap their hands to make Krishnù laugh. Upon this, Nund and Oopnund began to say to each other, "How have these trees, which have been growing up for ages, fallen down, uprooted; this strange occurrence cannot be understood, nor is the secret of it comprehensible."
p. 48
[paragraph continues] Having heard this, a young boy explained the circumstances of the trees falling, exactly as they had occured; but no one could understand them. One said, "How can these children understand such a secret as this?" Another said, "Perhaps it may be so, for who can comprehend the state of Huri?" Thus making remarks of various kinds, and taking Shree Krishnù with them, they all came with delight to Gokool: then Nund Jee gave many presents, and performed many charitable acts. After the lapse of some days, Krishnù's birth-day came round: Jusodha sent an invitation to all their relations; and having given an entertainment, tied the anniversary birth-day knot. When they all sat down to eat, Nund Rae said, "Brethren! how can we possibly remain in Gokool? Every day, many acts of injustice are committed; let us go somewhere, where we can have grass and water"--Oopnund said, "If you go and live at Brindabun, you will live there with delight." Having heard this speech, Nund Jee entertaining them all, and giving them seats after distributing pawn, sent for an astrologer, and enquired the proper division of time of (48) forty-eight minutes for the journey. He, considering, said, "To-morrow is a very good day for a journey in that direction; the spirits, attendant on good and bad luck, are on the left; the unlucky quarter is behind us, and the moon before us: you may start off early in the morning without any anxiety." Having heard this, all the cowherdesses and cowherds went to their homes, but early in the morning they all assembled together, having packed up all their goods and chattels on carts. Nund Jee also accompanied them, with all his relations; and proceeding on their journey, and crossing the river, they arrived in the evening. Having propitiated the goddess Toolsee, they occupied Brindabun; and all began to live there with ease and pleasure.
When Shree Krishnù was five years old, he said to his mother, "I will go out to graze the calves; tell Buldao not
p. 49
to leave me alone in the jungle." She replied, "Son! there are many servants of yours, whose business it is to take the calves out to graze; do not you go, who are the protection of my eye-lids, and dearer to me than my eyes." Krishnù said, "If I am allowed to go into the jungle to amuse myself, I will eat my food; if not, I will not." On hearing this, Jusodha having called the cowherds' children, and entrusted Krishnù and Bulram to them, said, "Do not go far to graze the calves, and bring them both home together before evening. Do not leave them by themselves in the jungle; remain with them; you are their guardians." Saying this, and giving them food, she made over Ram and Krishnù to them. They having gone to the banks of the Jumna, began to graze the calves and to play with the cowherds' children. At this time, Buchasoor, who had been sent by Kuns, came there under a disguised form: on seeing him, the frightened calves ran off in all directions. Upon this, Shree Krishnù remarked to Buldeo with a wink, "Brother! this is some demon that has come here." Afterwards, when in the act of feeding he approached near to accomplish his treacherous design (lit: to arrange his ambuscade,) Shree Krishnù having seized him by the hind leg, and twisted him round his head, dashed him down with such violence, that life left his body. Having heard of the death of Buchasoor, Kuns sent Bukasoor, who having come to Brindabun, and arranged his snare, went and sat on the bank of the Jumna, in the appearance of a hill--On beholding him, the cowherds began, through fear, to say to Krishnù, "Brother! this is some demon, who has come in the form of a crane; how shall we escape from him?" On the one hand, the cowherds were speaking thus to Krishnù; on the other, the demon was revolving in his mind, "That he would certainly destroy Krishnù on that day." In the meantime, when Shree Krishnù went near him, he raised him up with his bill, and shut his mouth. The cowherds' children being perplexed, looking round on all sides and crying, began to call out, and say, "Alas! alas!
p. 50
[paragraph continues] Huldhur too is not here, what shall we go and tell Jusodha?" Seeing that they were greatly distressed, Shree Krishnù became so hot, that the crane could not retain him in his mouth. When the crane vomited him out, Krishnù having seized his beak, and pressed it under his feet, tore it in pieces; and collecting the calves, he returned home with his companions, laughing and playing.
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Sacred Texts Hinduism Index Previous Next
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1. (The relations of the dead person) now carry (his sacred) fires and (his) sacrificial vessels in that direction.
p. 238
2. After them aged persons forming an odd number, men and women not going together, (carry) the dead body.
3. Some (say) that (the dead body should be carried) in a cart with a seat, drawn by cows.
4. (Some prescribe) a she-animal for covering (the dead body with its limbs):
5. A cow,
6. Or a she-goat of one colour.
7. Some (take) a black one.
8. They tie (a rope) to its left fore-foot and lead it behind (the dead body).
9. Then follow the relations (of the dead person), wearing their sacrificial cords below (round their body), with the hair-locks untied, the older fines first, the younger ones last.
10 10. When they have thus arrived at the place, the performer (of the rites) walks three times round the spot with his left side turned towards it, and with a Samî branch sprinkles water on it, with (the verse), 'Go away, withdraw, and depart from here' (Rig-veda X, 14, 9).
11. To the south-east, on an elevated corner (of that place), he places the Âhavanîya fire,
12 12-13. To the north-west the Gârhapatya fire,
13. To the south-west the Dakshina fire.
14 14. After that a person that knows (how to do it), piles up between the fires a pile of fuel.
p. 239
15. After sacrificial grass and a black antelope's skin with the hair outside has been spread out there, they place the dead body thereon, which they have carried so as to pass by the Gârhapatya fire on its north-side, turning its head towards the Âhavanîya.
16 16. To the north (of the body they place) the wife (of the deceased),
17. And a bow for a Kshatriya.
18 18. Her brother-in-law, being a representative of her husband, or a pupil (of her husband), or an aged servant, should cause her to rise (from that place) with (the verse), 'Arise, O wife, to the world of life' (Rig-veda X, 18, 8).
19 19. The performer (of the rites) should murmur (that verse), if a Sûdra (makes her rise from the pile).
20. With (the verse), 'Taking the bow out of the hand of the deceased' (Rig-veda X, 18, 9), (he takes away) the bow.
21. It has been stated (what is to be done) in case a Sûdra (should perform this act).
22 22. Having bent the bow, he should, before the piling up (of the things mentioned below, which are put on the dead body) is done, break it to pieces, and throw it (on the pile).
237:12 Nârâyana: By the word smasâna (cemetery) two different smasânas are designated here, because below (Sûtra 15) a distinction is added (to the word smasâna), in the words, 'This is a characteristic required for the smasâna where the body is to be burned.' Thus the place where the body is burned, and the place where the gathered bones are deposited, both are called smasâna.
237:1 2, 1. In the direction stated above, chap. 1, 6.
238:4 See chap. 3, 20-25.
238:10 Kartodakena (i.e. kartâ udakena) is evidently the right reading, not gartodakena.
238:12-13 12, 13. The words, 'on an elevated corner' (Sûtra 11) have to be supplied.
238:14 As to the pronoun enam, which refers, with an irregular p. 239 construction, to the dead person, comp Satapatha Brâhmana XII, 5, 2, 7.
239:16 The wife is made to lie down on the pile.
239:18 Possibly the words devarah and patisthânîyah refer to two different persons, so that we should have to translate, 'Her brother-in-law, (or some other) representative of her husband, &c.'
239:19 This refers to the case of the aged servant. The word for which we have put Sûdra here and in Sûtra 21, is vrishala.
239:22 See Sûtra 19.
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Survival of the wired
David Cronenberg on 'living animal pod module game-playing things' and other matters.
AT THE CLIMAX OF David Cronenberg's Videodrome, James Woods (at this point either a mutated being or a man driven mad by transgressive pirate TV signals) assassinates an industrialist while shouting the slogan, "Long live the new flesh!" It could be the rallying cry for the cinema of David Cronenberg, where the evolution of the human species is explored variously through the effects of technology, disease, addiction, and mutation on the human body. His new film, eXistenZ, takes that exploration to the next logical level—a world where real life and game life blur, as people interface biologically with the cyberworld of virtual reality games jacked directly into the nervous system. Seattle Weekly was able to discuss his philosophy with him briefly when he stopped in Seattle on a promotional tour.
SW: A lot of science fiction movies are about technology, and they're all very mechanical. Your idea of technology is married to the idea of the biological, biomechanical—really more of a fusion of flesh and technology.
DC: I wouldn't even call it biomechanical. I'm not really interested in predicting the bio future of technology; it's more a metaphorical thing. I mean, my understanding of technology is that it is first of all an extension of the human body, and I show that in this movie. When you have this sort of living animal pod module game-playing thing plugged into the body, you see it, there it is onscreen, there's technology as an extension of the human body. But technology is also a pure expression of human creative will. People tend to want to think that it sort of comes from someplace else, and then it does stuff to us, but you won't find me using spaceships and robots because, although dramatically that may be interesting, metaphorically, I think it's quite wrong. The only technology in the universe that we know of, and possibly the only technology that there is, is our own, and it comes from us, and it is an expression of us, and to the extent that technology can be dangerous or have a dark side really only makes sense because it is a reflection of us.
SW: There is that self-destructive and dark side, but there's also an evolutionary side.
DC: If it's accurately reflecting us, it would have both of those things, because I'm not really pessimistic about human nature, either. Sometimes it's difficult to deal with, and sometimes it's very exhilarating and exciting, and I have both of those things in the movie. But in terms of evolution, we really have taken control of our own evolution as a species, literally, and yet we're not really consciously doing anything with it. We are messing around with it at the genetic level, at the most basic level, but we're no longer in the context that Darwin's animals were in—survival of the fittest. That becomes a question of: What is the fittest? Is the guy who can make the most money the fittest? And then he gets the most girls and his genes are spread the widest? And does that mean his children have the best facility for making money? You see, it doesn't really quite work anymore, and we've really subverted it and taken it over in many ways. I think my imagery reflects all that as well—that idea that we would create an animal that could also be a game-playing organ for us is not so extraordinary.
SW: There's logical progression of the biological technologies of your films. The parasite in Shivers, for instance, doesn't look a whole lot different from the game pod in eXistenZ, at least conceptually.
DC: But it's provocative. On a metaphorical level, it's a provocative image and a provocative concept—provocative, I mean, in a sense of not being hostile but to provoke thought and to provoke connections to be made between it and other things.
SW: You've managed to make your films personal projects, adaptations and original screenplays alike. How do you keep doing what you want to do in this kind of industry?
DC: It's very difficult. Because although it seems like there's millions of movies around, they're getting harder and harder to make, partly because of their budgets, but partly because of the complexity of the business itself. I was offered Seven and I was offered Alien 4, and the temptation was to say, "I'll just jump at it and tomorrow I'll be shooting the movie," but then you realize it's not so simple because those movies don't happen unless you get the right casting and you get the right budget and then you have to deal with the studio's script notes, so there are battles to be fought even within that system. It's hard to make a movie, so why not make a movie that you're dying to make, that you're passionate to make?
SW: I know you've butted up against censorship issues for quite some time, and it becomes a pretty big part of at least part of eXistenZ.
DC: Some people try to see this as being a reaction in some way to Crash [which was almost unreleased because of battles with its American distributor, New Line, over the controversial subject matter], but I actually wrote this before Crash. I've had enough run-ins with censors and censorious-minded people that I didn't need the Crash experience to make the comments on it that I do in this movie. And it did have something to do with Salman Rushdie, too, and I think I was thinking more along the lines of his situation, which I guess you could consider to be the ultimate censorship: not merely suppressed but condemned to death for what you have written. It's the ultimate suppression, I guess. And it's not the only subject of the movie, but it is certainly a part of the movie, the idea that what you create becomes a living thing.
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Nine Lives
In Search of the Sacred in Modern India
By William Dalrymple
(Alfred A. Knopf; 276 pages; $26.95)
Within mainstream American discourse, the idea of India can occupy a narrow space.
Westerners often fixate on India's deeply spiritual character with subtle condescension: India is an awe-inspiring, mystical land - with a panoply of exotic faiths, impenetrable rituals and age-old spiritual principles.
Meanwhile, in recent years, we have seen an almost limitless number of books reflecting on economic growth in India - whose titles, like Mad Libs, always seem to include some combination of "Rise," "Race" "Post-American" and "Imagine" (while pitting "Elephants" against "Dragons").
In this context, William Dalrymple's "Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India" is not only a masterful text, but it is also an extraordinarily important book. Dalrymple explores nine tales of deeply spiritual individuals whose lives are intersected by the social upheavals occurring in modern India. Many of these stories, he writes, exist "in the places suspended between modernity and tradition." Like the suspension between "modernity" and "tradition," each vignette almost exists somewhere between reality and fantasy; these are imperfect fairy tales, whose wobbly foundations are weighed down by the heavy actualities of a rapidly changing India.
Dalrymple, a Scottish travel writer and historian, has previously written strongly narrator-driven books like "City of Djinns," his acclaimed travelogue of Delhi. What is unique about "Nine Lives" is that Dalrymple has sought to "keep the narrator firmly in the shadows, so bringing the lives of the people I have met to the fore and placing their stories firmly centre stage."
But often, these nine lives capture larger issues or trends, beyond the specificity of each individual's story. One tale is a devdasi in Karnataka - a woman "dedicated" to the goddess Yellamma - who is essentially a sex worker; she was forced into this life by her poverty-stricken family, and ultimately she did the same to her daughters, later watching them die of AIDS.
Dalrymple, in his introduction, highlights a main theme of this book: India's recent social transformations have had a profound effect on spirituality. He explains, "For while the West often likes to imagine the religions of the East as deep wells of ancient, unchanging wisdom, in reality much of India's religious identity is closely tied to specific social groups, caste practices and father-to-son lineages, all of which are changing very rapidly as Indian society transforms itself at speed."
These tensions can manifest themselves in fascinating, and unpredictable, ways. Near Kolkata, for example, Dalrymple meets an ash-smeared Tantric sadhu living at a cremation ground, who cures human skulls to protect against evil spirits. The sadhu laments the family he left in his lay life: "'They are not spiritual, and probably don't even believe in God. ... My niece is a professor, and her husband does electrocardiograms. My son is now an accountant with (the) Tata (company). ... But they reject the world I live in. I don't think I can ever explain it to him." While explaining, Dalrymple never passes judgment; instead, the reader is forced to personally reconcile this jarring generational shift.
There is Lal Peri, a female ascetic committed to the Sufism of Lal Shahbaz Qalander, in rural Sindh in Pakistan, defying sectarianism as her tradition draws from Hindu scriptures, yogic practices, as well as Islam. She was a refugee fleeing violence on more than one occasion, and Dalrymple writes, "The more I heard the details of her story, the more her life seemed to encapsulate the complex relationship of Hinduism with the different forms of South Asian Islam, swerving between hatred and terrible violence, on one hand, and love and extraordinary syncretism on the other."
Dalrymple notes that India's heterodox and pluralistic religious traditions are becoming subsumed by the mainstream. Small gods and local rituals or regional variations of faith are fading away to centralized national-level notions of Hinduism. Yet, he still finds that "older India endures," as, for example, holy men continue to agonize over classical questions.
"The water moves on, a little faster than before, yet still the great river flows," Dalrymple writes about religion in India. "It is as fluid and unpredictable in its moods as it has ever been, but it meanders within familiar banks." Indeed, India's pluralistic religious traditions will continue to swirl, subside and sometimes even surge. And Dalrymple's "Nine Lives" has made that water more clear. | <urn:uuid:507f06fc-47b5-40dd-af22-8b528fe1446e> | 2 | 2.1875 | 0.088962 | en | 0.956132 | http://www.sfgate.com/books/article/Nine-Lives-by-William-Dalrymple-3261418.php |
Male Reproductive System Disorders
What is the treatment for an epididymal cyst?
A Answers (1)
• AArthur Crowley, MD, Urology, answered
An epididymal cyst is a sperm-filled cyst in the collecting tubes located just behind the testicle. This is often (medically) referred to as a spermatocele. Most times there are no symptoms and a spermatocele is diagnosed by self-examination or by a physician on routine physical examination. Symptoms, if present, can include, pain, swelling, and heaviness in the scrotum or redness of the scrotum. Treatment (surgical removal) is usually indicated when there are complaints of increase swelling, pain or discomfort, or embarrassment secondary to enlarged size.
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Evena Eye-On smart medical glasses make skin transparent
Nov 20, 2013
Evena Eye-On smart medical glasses make skin transparent
Evena Medical is the maker of a medical device that allows nurses and doctors to view the veins beneath one's skin, with the original device it created having been deployed a while ago and involving the movement of a large contraption. Because of the device's size, it both made the act of giving and IV easier and more cumbersome, something the company's latest invention should fix. The Evena Eye-On smart glasses offer the same skin-penetrating view, but are entirely portable.
The original device had a swing-out armature with a display that showed the patient's veins, which you can see in the image below. The portable glasses provide much the same visual, but as a wearable device that is akin to Google Glass and other similar devices. The use of glasses makes use of the technology within clinics and hospitals easier, not to mention removing the hassle of transporting the unit around.
It is interesting watching the glasses in action, since they are able to visualize the movement of blood in real-time, which is demonstrated in the video below. The technology on board comes from Epson's Moverio smart glasses technology, and is accompanied by some other tech, among them being storage in the glasses that allows a patients unique vein patterns to be stored.
The glasses also have integrated WiFi connectivity, though Evena calls it "telemedicine" capabilities, which may or may not be quite the same. Regardless, the connectivity tech allows images to be shared. The device is slated to start shipping in Q1 of next year, so hopefully the days of vein-hunting are nearly behind us.
VIA: Digital Trends
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National Pancake Day: Why are pancakes for breakfast only?
Why Do We Eat Pancakes Only for Breakfast?
Answers to your questions about the news.
Feb. 5 2013 12:32 PM
Pancakes: It’s What’s Not for Dinner
Why do we eat pancakes only for breakfast?
Delicious pancakes with raspberries.
Pancakes used to be anytime food in the United States
Photo by Olena Mykhaylova/iStockphoto/Thinkstock
Tuesday, Feb. 5 is IHOP’s National Pancake Day. Time magazine celebrated the event with a list of Hollywood’s 10 best breakfast scenes. Why do most Americans eat pancakes only for breakfast?
Note that Tuesday is National Pancake Day, not International Pancake Day, even though it’s the brainchild of the International House of Pancakes. That’s not an oversight. On the day before Lent begins—when New Orleans erupts for Mardi Gras—many British Commonwealth countries celebrate Shrove Tuesday, also known as pancake day. The tradition helps households use up perishable and Lenten-unfriendly foods like milk and eggs. Hold that “happy pancake day” call to your British friends until next week.
Got a question about today’s news? Ask the Explainer.
Explainer thanks Ken Albala of the University of the Pacific, author of Pancake: A Global History.
Slate Plus
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. Space Industry and Business News .
How to decide who keeps the car
by Staff Writers
Calgary, Canada (SPX) Dec 01, 2011
The quantum coins in this study were tossed with one player being at the University of Calgary and the other player at the SAIT Polytechnic, roughly 5 km apart.
Alice and Bob have broken up and have moved as far away from each other as possible. But they still have something to sort out: who gets to keep the car. Flipping a coin while talking on the phone to decide who gets to keep it just won't work. There's no trust. Neither believes each other's result.
A paper published in Nature Communications by a team of researchers from Canada and Switzerland explores the concept of coin flipping in the context of quantum physics that uses light particles, so-called photons, to allow communication tasks in a manner that outperforms standard communication schemes.
To understand the researchers' approach, it helps to use an analogy that involves a safe. Bob flips a coin and sends the result of his coin flip, hidden in the safe, to Alice.
Upon receiving Bob's safe, Alice sends the result of her own flip to Bob. Once received, Bob sends the key to Alice who unlocks the safe. Now, Alice and Bob both know each other's coin flip and, according to some previously agreed-upon rule, who will drive away with the car.
In a world made out of electronic bits, used for communication instead of safes, the physical safe is replaced by encryption over email.
This procedure is believed to be hard to break. Unfortunately, no one knows if this is truly a good safe. This would allow Alice to cheat by unlocking Bob's "safe" without awaiting his key, reading the secret, and choosing the result of her own flip in a way that ensures that she will keep the car.
But it's a different story with quantum communications.
"What we have shown here is the first implementation of quantum coin flipping in which a cheater can not take advantage of the fact that photons may get lost during transmission between Alice and Bob.
All previous quantum communication schemes could be broken by a cheater," says co-author Dr. Wolfgang Tittel, professor in the Institute for Quantum Information Science and the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Calgary.
The other co-authors are from the University of Calgary, Universite de Montreal, Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal and Universite de Geneve, in Switzerland.
"The exchange of quantum bits instead of electronic bits prevents unrecognized cheating because we base our protocol on properties of nature, such as the impossibility to perfectly determine the quantum state of a single photon" say Dr. Felix Bussieres, who did parts of his PhD studies at the University of Calgary, where the experiment was performed, before moving to Switzerland to take up a postdoctoral fellowship.
"Unfortunately, even in the quantum world, coin flipping at a distance is not perfect either - it is still possible to cheat, at least to some extent. However, no party can fix the final outcome with certainty, and, if trying to cheat, risks being caught cheating."
Nevertheless, this demonstration has made the decision of who gets the car fairer.
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The impending revolution of low-power quantum computers
Lausanne, Switzerland (SPX) Nov 25, 2011
How to decide who keeps the car
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The interplay of dancing electrons
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APL Proposes First Global Orbital Observation Program
Government investment brings low cost radar satellites to market
Indra Leads Development And Provision Of The Ground Segment Of Satellite Paz
Lightning-made Waves in Earth's Atmosphere Leak Into Space
6,000 evacuated after China chemical plant blast
Bulgaria choking on hazardous air
Environmental troubles growing in Mid-East Gulf
Using air pollution thresholds to protect and restore ecosystem health
| <urn:uuid:234fb081-3905-4a40-9da6-86921d97b7d1> | 3 | 2.515625 | 0.060573 | en | 0.90451 | http://www.spacemart.com/reports/How_to_decide_who_keeps_the_car_999.html |
APUSH ID Quiz (Oct)
Random History Quiz
Can you name the historical people/events?
Quiz not verified by Sporcle
How to Play
Score 0/32 Timer 10:00
For any answers that include a date, type it like this: ANSWER-DATE. (Okay now type Go to start.)
The founder of Quebec. He joined the Hurons in a raid against the Iroquois to ensure French access to western fur trade.
Five people were killed in this brawl that started when guards fired into a crowd of colonists.
A New England merchant that smuggled goods.
General Gage, the commander of British troops in Boston, seized colonial military supplies in Concord. Militia of Lexington assembled to fight back.
Recognizing the need for coordinated self-defense, the British government called for representatives from several colonies to meet in Albany.
Established Roman Catholicism as official religion of Quebec, set up government, and extended boundary to Ohio River
Britain prohibited colonists from settling west of the Appalachian Mountains.
Wrote Common Sense, which argued for independent colonies
The prime minister of Britan; his military strategy was to focus on conquering Canada
Response to the Boston Tea Party. Closed ports, increased power of royal governor, expanded Quartering Act
Ordered that new duties be collected on colonial imports of tea, glass, and paper. Can search homes for smuggled goods. Suspended NY assembly.
Deist and epitome of Enlightenment. Wrote Poor Richard's Almanac
Advocated that a nation should export more than it imports
John Adams' radical cousin who organized committees that exchanged letters about suspicious British activities.
Response to the Tea Act. Bostonians disguised themselves, boarded British ships and dumped 342 chests of tea into the harbor.
The King of England
Placed duties on foreign sugar and certain luxuries.
Chief Pontiac led this attack on colonial settlements in the west out of anger at the growing movement of settlers.
Belief that a member of Parliament virtually represented every person in the colonies, so there was no need for specific representation.
After Parliament repealed the Stamp Act, it issued this act that asserted that it had the right to tax and make laws for the colonies 'in all cases whatsoever'.
King George III's chancellor of the treasury and prime minister. He proposed many acts such as the Currency Act (1764).
Turning point for Americans. Victory persuaded Francve to join the war against Britain
Tried to raise funds for British military forces by requiring colonies to put stamps on almost all printed papers.
Delegates wrote this to pledge loyalty to King George III and ask him to persuade Parliament to secure colonial rights and peace.
Initiated by Samuel Adams. It spread the idea that British officials were conspiring against colonial liberties.
Peace treaty. Britain gets Canada and Florida. France gives Spain Louisiana and claims west of Mississippi River in compensation.
A colonial militia of Massachusetts fortified this ... hill; British forces attacked colonies
Colonists were required to provide food and shelter for British soldiers.
Last majoy battle of Revolutionary War. With French help, Washington forced Cornwallis to surrender.
Infamous traitor; originally fought for Patriots but switched sides
Britain recognizes US as an independent nation. Mississippi River would be western boundary. Americans get fishing rights, but have to pay debts owed to British merchants.
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Mini Mastermind Blitz (read instructions)
Random Just For Fun or Logic Quiz
Can you name the correct 4 colour pattern for this mini game of Mastermind?
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B = Blue G = Green R = Red Y = Yellow When you see the Letter O, it means you have a correct colour in the correct position. The letter N means you have a correct colour, but it is in the wrong position. So, ONN would mean you have one colour in the right position and 2 other colours are correct, but they are in the wrong position.
Score 0/2 Timer 01:00
Type GO to StartColour PatternDone
Type GO
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Xenofex: Affecting Lighting
Xenofex from Alien Skin is a set of sophisticated filters to create various graphic effects on your images. Each filter has a number of presets or you can also adjust the controls under the Basic and Lighting tabs to get the look you want. One of the important aspects of the filters is lighting, and this can be adjusted with the various controls given under the Lighting tab of each filter. The lighting controls might differ slightly according to the features of the particular filter. Here are the various controls which are responsible for affecting lighting in the filter.
Direction of Light
The direction of light falling on a selected part of your image can be controlled and changed. To change the direction of light, go to the Lighting Control box and the process involves mainly clicking and dragging in the required area. Alternately, you can specify a numerical value indicating the degree at which you want the light to fall.
Brightness Controls
The intensity of brightness can be controlled for the areas which are highlights. You can also control the size of the area under highlights.
Contrast Controls
Certain filters have contrast controls in their Lighting tab. This will give you control over diminishing or boosting the lighting effect over the area, making it milder or harsher.
Darkening Controls
Depending on the filter, there might be areas like cracks and crevices which are generally dark. The amount of darkness of these areas can be increased or decreased. | <urn:uuid:0da01907-e97b-4623-abf8-e023735913b0> | 2 | 1.828125 | 0.023012 | en | 0.923607 | http://www.steves-digicams.com/knowledge-center/how-tos/photo-software/xenofex-affecting-lighting.html |
The Scourge Being Avoided and the Value Being Pursued
by James Bonnet
Two other important Golden Paradigm story structures, that are closely related to the problem and the threat, are The Scourge Being Avoidedand The Value Being Pursued.
The scourge being avoided is the essential ingredient of the problem being created by the threat. And, in the real world, we are anxiously trying to avoid these scourges – scourges like death, disease, poverty, injustice, tyranny, ignorance, slavery, inequality, etc. And, in response to these scourges we are forced to pursue their opposites – values like life, health, wealth, justice, democracy, wisdom, freedom, equality, and so on.
These values and scourges played a major role in our evolutionary path and continue to govern our lives. In fact, we are trying to avoid all of these scourges and pursue all of these values more or less simultaneously. And this makes real life appear, on the surface, to be extremely complex and difficult to analyze and understand. For clarity’s sake, a great story isolates these values and scourges so they can be easily comprehended and examined in great detail.
In The Hunger Games, the problem is the hunger games; the scourge being avoided by Katniss is death, and the value being pursued by her is life. In Faithful Place, the problem is the unsolved murder of a young girl; the scourge being rectified is the injustice caused by that murder, and the value being pursued by the detective, Francis Mackey, her fiancé, is justice. In Ordinary People, the problem is the suicidal tendencies being suffered by a young boy; the scourge that will hopefully be avoided is the death that could result from that tendency; the value being pursued by the psychiatrist and the boy’s father is the restoration of the mental health of that young boy. In The Exorcist, the problem is demonic possession; the Devil takes possession of a young girl and that is the scourge; the value being pursued by the girl’s mother and the two priests is her freedom from demonic possession. InA Christmas Carol, the scourge being suffered, and the root of the problem, is poverty; the value being pursued is a Christmas spirit that can transform Ebenezer Scrooge’s greed.
In these examples, and countless other great stories I could name, a single value and scourge have been isolated and are being examined in great detail which, like the subject, the problem, and the threat, add enormous clarity, meaning and power to the story and makes them an important unifying force.
And what are these two important patterns telling us about ourselves? This is where our evolutionary journey began, with the avoidance of scourges like death, disease, ignorance, and poverty (a scarcity of food and other necessities) and the pursuit of values like life, health, wisdom, and wealth. By wealth, in this case, I don’t mean piles of money, I mean the rich bounty of the necessities of life we once possessed as a birthright, as we strolled about the planet, but which now, like the citizen slaves in The Hunger Games, we have to compete in a life and death struggle against each other to obtain.
* * * * * * * *
In the next story course article, I will continue my exploration of the threat; the high concept great idea; the hook; and taking the threat to the quintessential, which can help make the threat infinitely more powerful.
Read the previous article
About James Bonnet | <urn:uuid:1f80d919-3035-43b9-82ef-886f16eaf7d7> | 3 | 3.015625 | 0.048394 | en | 0.933226 | http://www.storymaking.com/scourge-being-avoided |
Joanne Stolen
Special to the Daily
Back to: News
December 23, 2012
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Summit Outside: Snowshoe hares and their tracks
Friends that live up on Boreas Pass Road have a motion camera that videos many creatures that "go bump" in the night by their back deck. Recently its camera revealed a creature that goes "hop" in the night; a furry little visitor with big ears.
It was a snowshoe hare and they are generally pretty illusive and well camouflaged. Few people are lucky to see one as they are mostly out and about at night.
In Colorado, the hare prefers the mountains, or subalpine forest and alpine tundra near treeline. They are most abundant in willow thickets where shrubs are dense, and in windfall areas. This terrain is most typical of many areas in Summit County.
The snowshoe hare ranges from 16-20 inches in length, including a tail of about 1.5-2 inches. Hares are a bit larger than rabbits, and they typically have taller hind legs and longer ears.
I once saw a huge one at the top of a hill when we were checking out trails in the Frisco Peninsula in late fall. It was quite impressive. Unfortunately it disappeared quickly before I could point it out to my companions.
You would know they are around from their scat, which was illustrated in last weeks' article and their tracks.
The distinguishing characteristic is that their hind footprint is two-and-half times larger than the front with splayed-apart toes to allow them floatation on the snow, hence the name "snowshoe."
The large hind feet are between 4.6-5.7 inches in length. Their actual footprint is not clearly defined because their feet are very furry, especially the soles, and lacks foot pads.
They tend to hop with paired hind feet, which also make their track distinctive. The hopping stride may be from 3-6 feet.
They follow well-worn forest paths to feed on trees, shrubs, grasses and plants.
Other signs of their presence may be woody plants, which have had the tips of the branches chewed off near the ground or the lower bark stripped off.
Another reason snowshoe hares are hard to spot is that they are well camouflaged and prefer the thick cover of brushy undergrowth.
The snowshoe hare's soft furry coat is brown in the summer with a blackish mid dorsal line, with off-white flanks and belly.
In the winter, their coat turns white as snow, with the exception of black eyelids and ear tips. The complete change in color takes place over a period of 10 weeks. Changing amounts of daylight and shifts in temperature trigger a hormonal reaction in the animal that causes it to produce different biochromes (pigment in the living cells from which the hair grows).
The fur of animals is like human hair and fingernails - they are actually non-living tissue, therefore the hare has to produce a whole new coat of fur in order to change color.
In addition to background-matching coloration the contrasting coloration is called "disruptive coloration," a pattern which does not coincide to the contour of the body, and this also serves to conceal them.
They are also extremely fast and agile, and can reach speeds of 30 mph and can jump 12 feet in a single bound.
The snowshoe hare warns others by pounding the ground with its hind feet. When other hares hear this, they freeze and remain absolutely still.
The fact that these animals are nimble and fast is fortunate, because they are a popular meal for many predators such as lynx, fox, coyote and even some birds of prey.
In order to escape from predators, hares have been known to jump into the water and swim. Those large feet serve as "flippers." They never venture far from where they were born and know every possible hiding spot in their territory: like hollow logs, old burrows and bushes.
Snowshoe hare populations fluctuate cyclically about once a decade, possibly because of disease. These waning and waxing numbers greatly impact the animals that count on hares for food, particularly lynx.
In summer, snowshoe hares feed on plants such as grasses, ferns and leaves. In winter, they eats twigs, the bark from trees and buds from flowers and plants.
They have been known to steal meat from baited traps. Hares are carnivorous depending on the availability of dead animals, and have been known to eat dead rodents such as mice for a protein supplement to their herbivorous diet.
Like most hares (and rabbits), snowshoe hares are prolific breeders and have strange mating behaviors. The phrase "mad as a March hare" first appeared in print in Chaucer's Friar's Tale in the late 14th century and in John Heywood's collection of proverbs published in 1546. It was based on the antics that medieval Europeans observed in breeding wild hares in March. They would see the hares boxing at other hares, and jumping vertically.
Unreceptive females often use their forelegs to repel overenthusiastic males. Males (bucks) compete for the females (does). They kick, bite, hiss, chase and urinate on each other. The buck approaches the doe, touches her nose, and then jumps into the air. She dashes under him and runs away in a zigzag manner. When he's about to catch her, she jumps in the air, swings around, and then heads in the other direction. The buck spins around to resume the chase. Sometimes the male jumps over the doe, and the hare in the air usually urinates on the one underneath. Several chases and jumps later, and after each has been sprayed with urine, the female is ready to mate.
After mating, the process can start right over again! The male jumps backward, hissing. and sometimes turning around in midair. The female hisses back, and runs right by him, starting another chase.
Their nest is a shallow depression known as a "form" and is found under conifer branches or logs. Females have two or three litters each year, which include from one to eight young per litter.
Rabbits give birth to blind, helpless, hairless babies while newborn hares are covered with fur and are able to move and see. Young hares, called leverets, require little care from their mothers and can survive on their own in a month or less.
Because of its behavior, the hare has been a popular character in fables and legends. The hare in African folk tales is a trickster, and some of the stories about the hare were retold by African slaves in America and are the basis of the Brer Rabbit stories. (Brer is a contraction of "Brother Rabbit.")
The animal trickster represents an extreme form of behavior which people may be forced to emulate in extreme circumstances in order to survive. One of Aesop's fables tells the story of "The Tortoise and the Hare."
Probably one of the most well known depictions is the "March Hare" in Lewis Carrols' classic fables: "Alice in Wonderland," and "Through the Looking Glass." The illustration in "Alice in Wonderland" shows him with straw on his head, a common way to depict madness in Victorian time. "Beware the Jabberwock," warns the hare.
In contrast, among native tribes in eastern Canada the hare is generally regarded as the supreme deity. The Chinese, Japanese and Mexican cultures see a hare in the pattern of dark patches in the moon ("The Hare in the Moon"). The constellation Lepus represents a hare.
Joanne Stolen is retired from teaching microbiology at Rutgers University.
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Home Site Map 4 Steps Clouded mind Yoga meditation Lifestyle
Seven Skills to Cultivate
for Yoga Meditation
by Swami Jnaneshvara Bharati
You learn a technique so that
you can gain an underlying skill.
Contents of this web page:
Techniques versus skills
Seven skills to cultivate are how to
1. Relax the body
2. Sit in a comfortable, straight, steady posture
3. Make your breathing process serene
4. Witness objects traveling in the train of mind
5. Inspect the quality of thoughts
6. Promote the thoughts that are helpful
7. Not allow yourself to be disturbed in any situation
Letting the skills work together
Techniques versus skills:
There are many Yoga techniques that can be learned. In pursuing those techniques, one can be left with a bewildering sense of uncertainty about "why" all of the methods are being learned, aside from a general idea that the methods are for "Self-Realization" or "Enlightenment".
Difference between techniques and skills: To put it simply, there is a vast difference between a skill and the methods or techniques that were used to attain that skillThink of the way an infant does many actions in those early months and years. The child may be playing with this or that toy, or exploring the new environment of this new world. Yet, all of the play and exploring leads to development of a few underlying skills, such as the motor skills of being able to hold an object in the hand, or to move the legs so as to go from here to there.
What we want is the skill
not merely the techniques.
Learn the skill, not just techniques: Below are seven skills to cultivate for Meditation. It is the skill we want to learn, not merely techniques (though, again, the techniques are quite useful). For example, we want to gain the ability to directly relax the body, smoothen the breath, and quiet the mind in a moment, with no technique needed to do it.
Apply that skill in the moment: Having the methods, but without the skill mastery is not the goal. We want to have the direct ability to apply the skill in a moment. However, to gain mastery in the skill, we may need to learn the techniques and gradually advance to the point of directly applying our learned skill.
Many techniques, but only a few skills: By remembering that the goal is to attain those few skills, the underlying simplicity of Yoga is seen amidst the seeming complexity of all the techniques.
1. How to relax the body:
Relaxing: This may include relaxation exercises in the corpse posture, such as tense and release, complete relaxation, 61-points, or yoga nidra (yogic sleep). It may involve a range of Hatha Yoga postures learned over some time.
See also the methods:
Relaxation before Meditation
We want the skill of being able to
directly, immediately relax the body.
Repetition is the key: By repeating the relaxation exercises over and over, the nature of relaxation itself is gradually known, experientially. You may practice the exercises in a class, with a recorded voice, or on your own, systematically going through the various points of inner attention.
The root skill is how to relax: However, the root skill to be learned is how to relax the body, directly, immediately, at your own will and desire, whenever you want. Gradually, it becomes easier and easier to do this, with or without specific methods. Because of the practice of the methods, one develops a heightened level of awareness and an increasing ability to simply "relax the body" with no technique whatsoever.
Apply that skill whenever you choose: However, the skill to relax at choice, may have come from repeated practice of specific methods of relaxation.
2. How to sit in a comfortable, steady, straight posture:
Sitting posture: Several different meditation postures are offered in Yoga, including the Accomplished pose (Siddhasana), the Auspicious pose (Swastikasana), the Easy pose (Sukhasana), and the Friendship pose (Maitriasana). One may spend years developing and refining their meditation sitting posture. There may be many adjustments of cushions, spine, legs, feet, arms. The flexibility of the body, and elimination of soreness or pain is enhanced by Hatha Yoga postures.
See also Yoga Sutras 2.46-2.48 on sitting posture
The goal is the skill of sitting
comfortably, steady, and straight.
The root skill is how to sit: However, the goal of all of these postures, methods, and adjustments is the skill of sitting comfortably, steady, and straight.
Choosing what is right for you: While it is true that the sitting posture may develop over a long period of time, it is also easy to have a comfortable, steady, and straight posture almost immediately. To do so means working with a posture that is right for you, regardless of your stage of development. The easiest to start with is the Friendship pose (Maitriasana) which is sitting straight in a chair (though even this requires some training to do well).
Go directly to a comfortable posture: Gradually, a skill itself is developed, whereby the aspirant is able to just sit down and be comfortable and steady, and have the head, neck, and trunk aligned. While one may continue to do the preparatory practices, the skill is to go directly to a proper sitting posture.
3. How to make your breathing process serene:
Breath training: Breath training starts with awareness, and ends with awareness. In the beginning, one learns to observe the quality of breath, whether there are jerks, pauses, fast breathing, or shallow breathing.
See also the methods:
Breathing Practices and Pranayama
The skill is of making your breath
smooth, slow, and serene, with no pauses.
Then the breath is regulated so that the jerks and pauses are eliminated, the breath is slowed, and becomes deep. Many breathing practices may be learned, including diaphragmatic breathing, two-to-one breathing, alternate nostril breathing, and a variety of vigorous breathing practices.
See also Yoga Sutras 2.49-2.53 on breath and pranayama
The root skill is how to breathe: There are many breathing practices, and variations within those practices. They are designed to balance, energize, or calm the breath and underlying energy system. However, they are all directed towards having the skill to make the breath smooth, slow, and serene, in a particular way that allows your balanced energy to bring you deeper into meditation.
The skill of serene breath, in a moment: Eventually one develops the direct skill of making the breathing process serene, in a moment. After all of the techniques, the practice comes back to simple awareness that becomes so subtle that attention goes beyond the gross breath, to the subtle energy, and on to the mind. The ability to attend to breath in this way is a skill, not a method.
4. How to witness objects traveling in the train of mind:
Witness everything: Often students of meditation mistakenly trying to eliminate thought patterns from the mind, rather than learning to be a neutral witness of the objects of the mind field. This mistake usually comes from misunderstanding the process of quieting the mind.
See also the article:
The root skill is how to witness and let go: To quiet the mind does not mean suppression or repression of thoughts and emotions. Rather, it has to do with the skill of letting go, of allowing the thought patterns to flow without interruption, remaining focused not on the objects in the flow of the river of mind, but on the stream itself.
Letting go of the stream of thoughts
in the mind is a skill unto itself.
Develop one, single new habit: This is like a process of developing a new habit. The new habit is the habit of letting go of thought patterns when they arise. By developing one, single new skill that becomes a habit, that of simply letting the thought pass by when it arises, we become a witness to the whole stream of mental process. We can train ourselves in this new habit, though it takes effort.
It is normally the habit of the mind to attach itself to the thought patterns when they arise. The greater the coloring of the thought pattern, with attachment or aversion, the more quickly and tightly the mind clings to that thought pattern once it awakens. These in turn lead to our actions and speech.
That drive towards action and speech is the stirring of the aspect of mind called Manas, which is wanting to drive the cycle of actions and sensory input (karmendriyas and jnanendriyas) in the external world. In other words, that old habit of attaching to rising thought patterns normally stirs us to move from our meditation, or leaves us in a fight with the mind.
See also the articles on:
Manas and the four functions of mind
Indriyas (senses), karmendriyas and jnanendriyas
Two stages to this new habit of witnessing: This skill of habit change, letting go, and witnessing is cultivated in two stages:
• An individual thought: First, the skill of letting go of individual thoughts, one at a time. We can do this moment by moment as we sit for meditation, intentionally allowing a single thought to arise, and then consciously watching that thought drift away.
• Streams of thoughts: Second, after we become somewhat skilled in this practice of dealing with one single thought at a time, we gradually develop the skill of witnessing a stream of thoughts.
• Collective of streams: Then, we can allow the streams of thoughts to flow collectively, naturally, while remaining undisturbed, unaffected, and uninvolved. This is the skill of witnessing.
Witness, simply witness: There are a variety of concentration methods used to train and focus the mind on gross, subtle, or subtler objects, while at the same time, the root skill is to be able to simply witness the train of objects traveling in the mind without getting caught up in them. While we are learning specific methods, it is very useful to continually remember that the ability to witness objects in the train of mind is a root skill we are trying to cultivate.
See also the article:
5. How to inspect the quality of thoughts:
Inspecting helpful and not helpful: When one can witness the train of objects traveling in the mind, the next skill is the ability to call back individual thought patterns so that they may be observed and inspected with that trained skill of witnessing. There continues to be a steady body and smooth breath (the previous skills).
Deciding which thoughts are helpful
and which are not helpful
is a skill unto itself.
The root skill is how to discriminate thoughts: When we have the skill of witnessing the stream of thoughts, and also the skill of being able to call back individual thoughts, next comes the skill of deciding which are helpful and which are not helpful in our growth.
Inspecting a thought is a skill: By learning to witness, and then learning to inspect individual thoughts for their useful versus not useful qualities, we become free from the control of unconscious thought patterns, and move ever closer to the experience of the deep center of consciousness. The ability to inspect individual thoughts is a skill, not a method, and is crucial for advancing in meditation.
Attenuating samskaras and karma: This ability to bring back, and to inspect thought patterns is a key skill in attenuating the deep impressions of samskaras that normally, invisibly lead to the playing out of our karma (actions) in the external world. Often, we don't really see these thought patterns, but instead get unconsciously led to actions and speech that we later regret.
6. How to promote the thoughts that are helpful:
Promote that which is helpful: After discriminating between helpful and not helpful thought patterns (the skill explained above), the positive, useful, or helpful thoughts are intentionally reinforced through our willpower, or sankalpa shakti. The next skill is promoting the thoughts that are helpful, turning them into actions or into new habits of thinking.
Taking action on the helpful thoughts
is a skill to be learned and cultivated.
The root skill is how to promote the positive: This ability to promote the thoughts that are helpful requires developing the skill to direct willpower, or sankalpa shakti, so as to turn the positive thoughts into action. (When kundalini starts to stir, sankalpa shakti, or the power of determination comes first, before kundalini travels to the crown chakra.)
The positive power of ego: The skill of promoting helpful thoughts rides on the positive power of the ego (ahamkara), the training of the sensory-motor mind (manas), and the wisdom of choice (buddhi), while integrating these with the storehouse of the thought patterns (chitta). In other words, it means integrating the Four Functions of Mind.
See also the article on:
Coordinating the Four Functions of Mind
Do nothing with that which is not helpful: What do we do with the negative thoughts, or the thoughts that are not useful to our growth and well being? With the thoughts that are not helpful we do nothing, absolutely nothing. We simply do not engage them. We take an attitude of neither feeding into them, nor trying to push them away. By focusing only on the helpful thoughts, the other ones gradually lose their intensity of coloring, and become mere memories, without having and ability to control our thoughts, emotions, and actions.
Go gently: The letting go and witnessing skill works with this discriminating skill so as to gently move us in the direction of growth and depth in our spiritual practices.
7. How to not allow yourself to be disturbed in any situation:
Equanimity is a skill: Resting on the foundation of the other six skills is the skill to not be disturbed by any situation, whether in daily life or at meditation time.
• It means that even though you may correctly evaluate some situation or thought to be "bad," you can remain calm and do not, yourself become disturbed.
• If you correctly judge a situation or thought to be "good," you can similarly remain calm and not find yourself needlessly drawn into a feeling of excitement of a prideful nature.
Learning to remain undisturbed
is also a skill unto itself.
The root skill is how to maintain equanimity: This quality of not being disturbed does not mean being inert. Rather, this skill means having balance, equanimity, which comes over time. This equanimity does not mean being emotionless. The difference is between having an emotional response arise and seeing that response stay with you for some extended period of time, versus having an emotional response that rather quickly fades away as you make any needed adjustments or changes.
Equanimity comes in stages: Eventually one may develop the skill of not being disturbed in any situation such that there really is a continuous equanimity, but again, it comes gradually in stages. It is important to see how this skill grows over time, so as to not set ourselves up with expectations of immediately having complete balance and equanimity.
Remain calm, without acting: This is a skill unto itself. One may be able to train themselves to be an actor, and appear to be not disturbed, but with this skill, one can truly have calm, without merely acting as if calm.
A critical skill: This skill of not being disturbed is a critical skill in advanced meditation. It is called non-attachment, or vairagya.
See also Yoga Sutras 1.12-1.16 on practice and non-attachment
Letting the skills work together
Cultivate these skills: Cultivating the skills is the real key to advancing in meditation, not just the addition of more and more techniques, although knowing techniques is important.
Allow the seven skills to work together
like fingers on a hand.
Like fingers on a hand: These skills work together, like fingers on a hand, and bring one ever closer to meditation, samadhi, and Self-Realization.
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What does “control” actually mean?
Saturday, February 5th, 2011
By Arthur Lui
How do you define control? Let’s say it’s “the ability to make the ball do what you want it to do.” But that means different things to different people who play different styles at different levels. If you’re an aggressive looper, you probably want a relatively spinny rubber to generate lots of topspin so the ball arcs down and stays on the table, and maybe couple that with medium to medium-fast speed. But in the short game, control could be the ability to play the ball short and low so opponents can’t open up the attack. In this case, I find I have the most control with a medium speed racket with a non-tacky rubber which is less receptive to incoming spin. So you have to apply control to a variety of situations, not just one particular stroke.
After considering all of the situations, if I were to create a control metric, I would put the maximum control on equipment with a speed rating of 7 and a spin rating of 7. The higher the speed and spin above that, the more the ball goes flying too far, and reacts too much to the opponent’s tricky serves, etc. On the lower end, if I was using a defensive blade with a speed of 4 and an anti-spin rubber with zero spin, I’d have a hard time making the ball do exactly what I want there as well. I laugh when I see rubber packages that advertise a 10/10 on all of speed, spin and control. Anything that deserves a 10 on speed and spin would be hard to control for most players.
In the end, I don’t think a generic “control” rating makes sense. I think you can figure out what control means to you personally based on the other characteristics like speed and spin, which are more objective.
A side note
P.S. While we’re on the topic of control, I’d like to recommend that any player who has not reached a USATT rating level of 1900 stick to equipment around 8/10 or lower on speed (blades that are ALL or ALL+ rated). I see too many players that cannot handle their fast, OFF+ blades and as a result have half-developed small strokes because if they did full strokes the ball would go flying. Stick to an ALL+ racket and learn to develop power from your strokes, not from your equipment.
Do you think the control rating should be removed from equipment packaging?
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5 Responses to “What does “control” actually mean?”
1. Control means doing everything you want with the ball.
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2. random says:
okay really， my ctta rating is 100， and i use a stiga clipper cc as my blade （offensive）， a stiga neos synergy tech for my forehand and a stiga innova ultralight synergy tech for backhand（it is the lightest）。
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3. James R says:
To me control means being able to place the ball where I want it, when I want it and how I want it, in spite of my opponents shot/spin/placement/speed/power.
It means the blade/rubber combination is capable of either absorbing and/or redirecting your opponents incoming shot and overriding the ball characteristics they imparted on the ball with your own characteristics.
I hope this helps.
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4. Nem says:
“control” should be removed as a category for rating a table tennis racquet because control per se depends on how the player handles his paddle. He may be using the highest or the lowest “control” rated racquet but he himself doesnt know how to control his strikes, evrything is but futile, useless, nothing. Simpy put if the player knows the spin and speed of his racquet then he should take control of it by himself (by learning it). “control” is something that is within the control of the player not by the ping pong racket manufacturers.
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• Arthur Lui says:
Hi Nem, thanks for the comment. I definitely agree that control depends on the player. Imagine the same player now doing an experiment, where he switches between two rackets: (A) A fast carbon blade with Tenergy 05’s on both sides [low control] and (B) A medium speed blade with some medium speed/spin rubbers [high control]. Which do you think he will be able to control better?
I imagine that this same player, who has a lot of trouble controlling his strokes, will play better with racket (B) versus racket (A). The overall result definitely depends on the player himself, but that same player in the majority of the cases should have more “overall control” with a high control racket.
It’s definitely not as clearly dependent on the equipment the way speed/spin are, but I’m not sure I’d go as far as completely removing it as a characteristic since it still plays a significant part in the overall control.
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7 Impossibly Cute Shirley Temple Moments (VIDEOS)
Shirley Temple Black, the original child star, died at age 85. Remember her life through her most precocious, most beloved video clips. She was so darned cute.
Shirley Temple Black was the original child star, before “child star” was a bad word. As Shirley Temple, the precocious young actress was just 3 when she began her screen career, with her radiance and sunniness eventually exploding like a solar flare to make her Hollywood’s brightest and most beloved star.
Black died this week at age 85, after starring in over 60 films and later becoming a diplomat, meaning she had devoted her entire lifetime to one mission: making the world feel better. As anyone who’s sat with their grandmother to delight through a viewing of Curly Top or watched their daughter, granddaughter, or niece cheese their way through their own spunky rendition of “Good Ship Lollipop” knows, she accomplished that mission ten-fold with her bright, magnetic, always genuine on-screen glee.
At a time poisoned by Toddlers and Tiaras, stage moms, and child-star meltdowns, it’s never been more appropriate—or needed—to look back at why we loved Shirley Temple so much. As President Franklin D. Roosevelt said, “As long as our country has Shirley Temple, we will be all right.” And as our luck would have it, we will always have her.
“On the Good Ship Lollipop”
Video screenshot
Maybe the most iconic Shirley Temple performance, from the 1934 movie Bright Eyes. This is the epitome of precocious professionalism. Sure, her gee-golly choreography is unbearable cute, but watch her eyes. The expression and gumption she sells the number with her eyes is the real magic of Shirley Temple.
“Curly Top”
Video screenshot
After the merger of Fox and Twentieth Century, a Shirley Temple Development Unit was set up specifically to develop star vehicles for Temple with a singular mission: to help lift American spirits in the last days of the Great Depression. As Temple effortlessly tap dances on the top of white piano, it’s safe to say that the mission was accomplished.
“Early Bird”
Video screenshot
The first few seconds of this number for the 1936 film Early Bird, with Temple scrunching her face and stretching sleepy-eyed as she wakes up in the morning, is what the word “cute” was invented to describe. The trick with Temple, though, is that as she then gets out of bed and begins tap dancing around her bedroom while she dresses in the morning, the cute never becomes cloying. Just always, always charming.
“Animal Crackers in My Soup”
Video screenshot
Shirley and Bojangles
Video screenshot
Temple and famous American tap dancer Bill “Bojangles” Robinson danced together in a series of films in the 1930s, including 1935’s The Little Colonel. Watch Temple, then barely 7, keep perfect sync with world-renowned, lifetime-trained Robinson.
“Auld Lang Syne”
Video screenshot
Tears. Oh, the tears.
Presenting Walt Disney With a Special Oscar
Video screenshot
She calls Walt Disney the “daddy” of Snow White and Mickey Mouse, which is about the most adorable thing ever. | <urn:uuid:0936f3c1-0efa-453d-bf97-2d1a39554218> | 2 | 1.898438 | 0.04508 | en | 0.951919 | http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/02/11/7-impossibly-cute-shirley-temple-moments-videos.html |
Guardian readers: Iraq war was not justified
Ambassador John Bolton's commentary Tuesday stirred up a lively debate about Iraq's past, present and future
Guardian readers responded with vigor to Ambassador John Bolton's column yesterday, which defended the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Nearly everyone who took the time to comment disagreed with the war, its motives and many of Bolton's claims.
Given that Ambassador Bolton's views are contrarian to most on Comment is free, we specifically reached out to readers to respond. Below are some of the best retorts.
We shouldn't go around 'replacing bad guys'
Saddam was clearly a nasty barbaric man. There are plenty of those round the world, and not all in the Third World either. We don't, nor should we, go around replacing one man (that we formerly helped/kept in power) with 'our' latest 'good guy/better guy' than the last.
In the end it comes back to bite us on the arse one way or another. The world is not ours to control and make in our own, somewhat less-than-perfect image.
The death and displacement of Iraqis tells the real story
Five million displaced Iraqis disagree that Iraq is better off now than before the invasion. As many as a million and a half Iraqis would disagree if they weren't dead due to the invasion. Uncounted numbers of Iraqis tortured first by US authorities and now by Iraqi authorities with silent US oversight (see here) might disagree if they were asked and allowed an honest response.
Only the architects and those who profited economically or politically from the invasion could imagine that "Iraq" is better off now than before the invasion. If the US were an honest and decent nation, people like Mr Bolton would be in prison for their participation in this aggressive war.
Iraq and Afghanistan showed the limits of US power
Even if we are thinking only in terms of realpolitic and US war aims, John Bolton's claims are somewhat flawed The war was supposed to bring about regime change at little cost to the US. It succeeded – at least initially – but the 4000 dead US troops and $1 tn eventual price tag mean that the eventual cost wasn't that small. Of course Iraqis deaths don't count here – because we are analysing this using Mr Bolton's logic. The US deaths are also unimportant because black and hispanic GIs are not the important kind of Americans.
...Iraq and Afghanistan both prove the limits to US power. Other nations who are threatened by the US (and there are quite a few) know that if their people are prepared to hunker down and fight a guerilla war for 10 years, then the US will be defeated. Never militarily defeated - but defeated in terms of abandoning their war aims. Their country will be smashed in the process but they can "win". The Iraq war showed the limits to US power.
The 'war on terror' tarnished US reputation abroad
I notice you didn't mention the repercussions on the war on terror - supposedly the US primary foreign policy objective since9/11. Nothing (not even US support for Israel) has done more damage to Americas reputation than the Iraq war - amongst Arabs and the rest if the world. As a result there has been a surge in extremism. Not only that but it allowed Iran influence in Iraq which means you now have to support jihadis in Syria to find another way to break the Shia crescent so loathed by Israel and your gulf allies.
And yes it has made Iran stronger geopolitically - hence the constant threats of aggression by the US and Israel and the unprecedented sanctions regime that will turn Iran into another Iraq in a decade or so.
Bolton makes better attempt than most to revise history
Mr Bolton's argument is riddled with contradictions, though he does make a better attempt than many to wriggle his away around them. However the basic contradiction remains:- the UK and the US invaded Iraq while inspections were still in progress, claiming that it was an established fact that Iraq had WMD. To now claim that Iraq was a strategic threat even without WMD is in direct contradiction to the demand in mid-2002 that Iraq submit to inspections. I don't know why we were bombarded with talking points about Saddam and his WMD if the WMD were not the strategic issue. In any case, Iraq was not linked to Al-Qaida, did not have WMD and, without WMD, was unable to threaten its neighbours.
If the intelligence about WMD was an unfortunate mistake, then the invasion was an unfortunate mistake. If the invasion wasn't a mistake then politicians were lying about WMD. It's simple logic.
Freeing another country from a dictator doesn't justify war
Regardless of what myths exist now about the war, the fact remains that it was an invasion that resulted from bad intelligence and was fundamentally unnecessary. Freeing another country from dictatorship is not, by itself, justification for the massive loss of life on both sides, more so when one argues for it with incorrect intelligence that multiple people were known to have misgivings about. Obama was right back in 2003 when he called it "A stupid war," which it was and always will be.
Mr Bolton was 'not at all convincing'
1. No evidence is offered to contradict the myth. Instead, the argument seems to be 'Saddam was bad and we don't care because it was 'never about making life better for Iraqis''. Myth not dispelled.
2. A counter assertion is made, that making Iraq democratic is irrelevant and unimportant. Nothing is written in support of this assertion but at the very least, an aim of introducing democracy could be a good thing. Myth not dispelled.
3. The salient point about WMD is that none was ever found. Before starting a war, you should ensure that your intelligence is as accurate as possible, which it obviously was not in this case. President Bush may not have lied, but the myth (fact) is that he was wrong; there were no WMD.
...In summary, not at all convincing.
The US hasn't faired well since invasion
The reality is the US achieved many of its goals in the war
Was one of the goals destroying the American economy? Well done. Was nullifying all the good will we received after 9/11 a top priority? How about making the US despised? Good show...
I supported war, but lament the cost
While I support the Iraq war and the reasons behind it, I am aghast by the cost of the wars, including Afghanistan during the 00's, which has contributed significantly to America's debt woes. | <urn:uuid:d31c247b-0d85-47d7-aa8c-6b1ea1b78a08> | 2 | 1.734375 | 0.267147 | en | 0.973471 | http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/feb/27/iraq-war-not-justified |
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