text:
The Obama administration aimed squarely at the crisis clogging the nation's credit system Monday with a plan to take over up to $1 trillion in sour mortgage securities with the help of private investors.
For once, Wall Street cheered. The announcement, closely stage-managed throughout the day, filled in crucial blanks in the administration's financial rescue package and formed what President Barack Obama called "one more critical element in our recovery."
The coordinated effort by the Treasury Department, the Federal Reserve and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. relies on a mix of government and private money ? mostly from institutional investors such as hedge funds ? to help banks rid their balance sheets of real-estate related securities that are now extremely difficult to value.
The goal, said Obama, is to get banks lending again, so "families can get basic consumer loans, auto loans, student loans, (and so) that small businesses are able to finance themselves, and we can start getting this economy moving again."
It was a huge gambit and one that came like a tonic to Wall Street, which had panned an earlier outline of the program that lacked detail.
Stocks soared, the Dow Jones industrial average shooting up nearly 500 points, thanks to the bank-assets plan and a report showing an unexpected jump in home sales.
The introduction of the plan was closely choreographed so that the president – rather than Geithner – would be the first administration official to appear on camera at midday to discuss it. Geithner met earlier in the day, before markets opened, with a group of reporters at the Treasury Department to go over specifics. But cameras and broadcast-quality audio recorders were barred.
It was the reverse of what happened Feb. 10. Then, after Obama had helped raise expectations toward Geithner and the plan, the treasury secretary went before cameras and bombed. The Dow plunged about 300 points amid investor confusion about details.
The fleshed-out plan is designed to help fix a value on damaged mortgage loans and other toxic securities.
If the value of the securities goes up, the private investors and taxpayers would share in the gains. If the values go down, the government and private investors would incur losses.
"This will help banks clean up their balance sheets and make it easier for them to raise capital," Geithner said.
The plan will take $75 billion to $100 billion from the government's existing $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program. The government will pair this with private investments and loans from the FDIC and the Fed to generate $500 billion in purchasing power.
Geithner said purchases eventually could grow to $1 trillion ? roughly half of the estimated $2 trillion of toxic assets on bank books now.
On the hot seat, Geithner has a lot personally tied to the success of the new program. His performance in the Cabinet, including his slowness in learning about multimillion dollar executive bonuses paid by insurance giant AIG after taking bailout money, has been severely criticized by some in Congress.
Geithner testifies on Tuesday before the House Financial Services Committee.
Under a typical transaction, for every $100 in soured mortgages being purchased from banks, the private sector would put up $7 and that would be matched by $7 from the government. The remaining $86 would be covered by a government loan.
The plan was introduced ahead of a summit next week in London of 20 major and developing economies struggling with the global recession.
Obama is trying to get other wealthy countries to do more to stimulate their economies with government spending, as the United States has done. However, other countries, particularly ones in Europe, are resisting U.S. calls for more stimulus and would prefer to see more internationally coordinated bank regulation.
The administration was expected to outline its plan for financial regulation overhaul later this week.
Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Chairman Sheila Bair said she expects her agency will finance as much as $500 billion in purchases of residential and commercial real estate loans.
Bair said the program should help banks clean up their balance sheets and raise fresh capital, though she added that "there may be some banks beyond help." The agency has said before it expects more bank failures, she said.
A joint statement by the Federal Reserve and Treasury Department said the Fed should play a "central role" in preventing future financial crises. That implied a wish that Congress expand the Fed's authority in regulating all financial institutions, not just banks.
Geithner said taxpayers still could lose money on the deal to soak up bad assets but there was no fixing the system without risk.
Other options, such as having the government purchase the securities outright or letting them languish on bank balance sheets, would pose even greater vulnerabilities, he said, and it was important to find the right blend of risk versus reward.
"I am very confident this scheme dominates all the alternatives for trying to find that balance," he said.
The sentiment was echoed by congressional Democrats, who said risk seemed inevitable with any plan big enough to work.
But House Republican Whip Eric Cantor of Virginia called Obama's plan a "shell game" that hid the true cost.
He said he hoped the administration would consider instead an earlier Republican proposal to set up a government-sponsored insurance program for mortgage-related securities.
The administration plan "seems to offer little incentive for private investors to participate unless the subsidy is made so rich that it comes at the expense of the taxpayer," Cantor said in a statement.
The new program marks a return by the government to a strategy of acquiring toxic securities. Henry Paulson, who was treasury secretary in the final days of the Bush administration, abandoned plans to purchase these securities, largely because they were impossible to price.
The plan builds on earlier programs to pump money into banks, help some homeowners repay their mortgages and stimulate college, small business and other forms of lending.
"There's still great fragility in the financial systems, but we think that we are moving in the right direction," Obama said after meeting Geithner and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke.
Obama said the plan will allow taxpayers to "share in the upside as well as the downside."
Treasury officials had no firm forecast on when the government would begin making the asset purchases although market expectations were that the process could begin within weeks.
Copyright 2009 The Associated Press.


text:
Into the Woods
The bright sun sneaks a peak through the dark trees beautifying Oakridge, Oregon.
Location: Oakridge, Oregon
Material: Premium Canvas Wrap or Photographic Print
Premium Canvas Wrap: No need for a frame! Our beautifully hand-crafted Premium Canvas Wraps are made with heavier 1-1/2" wood bars similar to works you see in Art Galleries. Each Canvas Wrap is ready to decorate any wall right away.
Price range:
- 18x12 inches: $170
- 24x16 inches: $225
- 36x24 inches: $465
Photographic Print: Our highest quality photographic prints have a 100+ year longevity and are ready to be framed by your local framer.
Price range:
- 18x12 inches: $55
- 24x16 inches: $99
- 36x24 inches: $199
Photographer: James Zachary
*Watermark will not appear on final print
*Layout may vary depending on print size
*Please indicate if you would like your print signed by the photographer upon checkout

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Ukraine Announces Cease-Fire With Russia
The office of Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko says that he and Russian President Vladimir Putin are in agreement on a cease-fire in eastern Ukraine, but the statement was ambiguous and there was no immediate indication that the fighting would stop.
The brief statement Wednesday said "mutual understanding was reached regarding the steps that will contribute to the establishment of peace" but gave no details.
Poroshenko's office first said that there was "agreement on a permanent cease-fire," but later revised the statement to say "agreement on a cease-fire regime." The changes appeared in Ukrainian, Russian and English-language versions issued by the office.
That appeared to indicate an agreement on conditions necessary for a cease-fire, not that one would imminently be implemented.
©2014 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.


text:
Merry Christmas everyone! Just a note before I go further, I ate half of this loaf in one day 😀
This was hands down the most delicious bread I've ever baked! It doesn't need anything like jam or honey on top, and you can eat it as breakfast, with morning or afternoon coffee/tea, or just as a healthy snack.
It is also somewhat of an nontraditional food for Christmas time. I was thinking of making a cranberry loaf the other day,but I thought why not try something more exciting?
This delicious pomegranate and pistachio loaf has colours of Christmas in it and it's something everyone would love. I really encourage you to try it, I'm already thinking of baking it again 😛
The recipe is so easy you'll memorize it after making it once, and there's no proving time either, so it's super quick to make.
I wish all of you a happy and safe holiday season and a wonderful new year ahead. I can't wait to share more of the food I love with you next year. 🙂
Ingredients:(Recipe from pomwonderful.com ) 1 POM pomegranate 1/2 cup pistachio kernels 1.5 bananas (enough to make 1 cup mashed) 2 cups plain flour 3/4 cup sugar 2.5 teaspoons baking powder 1/2 teaspoon salt 1/3 cup extra light olive oil (or vegetables oil) 1/3 cup milk 1 egg, lightly beaten Directions: 1. Add all the dry ingredients except the pistachios to a bowl and mix well.
2. Seed the pomegranate and set 1 cup of the arils aside for this bread. You can use the rest for garnish in step 7.
3. Roughly chop the pistachios.
4. Mash the bananas in a bowl. Then, add the oil, milk and egg. Stir to combine. 5. Add the wet ingredients to the flour bowl, with the pistachios and pomegranate arils.
6. Stir briefly to combine the ingredients.
7. Pour the mixture into a pan lined with baking paper. Garnish with extra pomegranate arils if you like. Then, bake in the center of a preheated oven at 180C for 50 minutes.
8. The bread is done when the top is golden brown and a skewer inserted in the middle of the loaf comes out clean.
9. Enjoy!! ~~


text:
The new Daily Morning Show by FRED.fm!
FRED's Angela Prudenzi, Chiara Nicoletti and Federico Spoletti will tell us more about cinema related issues, news, premiere and festivals. The show will be broadcast from Monday to Friday at 10 a.m., and again at 12 a.m., on Entertainment and Italian channels.
Do not miss it!
Find it also on iTunes, Spotify, Spreaker, Castbox, Tune in, Deezer, Google Podcast, Mix Cloud, iHeart Radio, Podcast Addict, Podchaser.


text:
It has been proposed and well evidenced that human chromosome 2 is the result of a fusion event between two chromosomes in our evolutionary past. Briefly, here is the evidence:
All great apes except humans have 24 pairs of chromosomes. We only have 23. That means we need an explanation for such a difference that dates back only a relatively short period of time (5-7 million years). As it happens, human chromosome 2 shows strong evidence of being two fused chromosomes. The way we know this is that all chromosomes have telomeres and centromeres. Telomeres are repeating units of DNA that serve to protect the ends (and therefore middles) of chromosomes, sort of like a good pair of shoes and a strong helmet. Centromeres are DNA units located somewhere between the telomeres of chromosomes, generally relatively close to the center. Their function is to help assemble the two parts of a chromosome during cellular replication and reproduction. In human chromosome 2, we see that there are actually two telomeres fused together in the center. There are also telomeres on the end, but between each end and the center are centromeres. That means we have three telomeres (one of which is fused) and two centromeres.
I bring this up because I was recently reading yet another excellent post by The A-Unicornist and he was dealing with this stuff:
ID is really nothing but an argument from ignorance – it claims that certain things simply cannot be explained by science, so it must be 'best explained' by a designer instead. Take for example this post from The New Creationist. I often point creationists to the Ken Miller video where he explains the Chromosome-2 fusion in humans, because it's a perfect example of the theory of evolution making a falsifiable prediction that ended up being powerful evidence that evolution is true – something that ID has never done and in principle cannot do, which is why it will never be a science. Now, this "new creationist", who incidentally sounds just as credulous as the old ones, argues that such a fusion is impossible – that the chromosome should never have been able to fuse at all.
Being that I'm not a biologist, I have no idea how to directly refute what he's arguing. But it's conspicuously odd that rather than, I dunno, ask a biologist or two (like, golly I dunno, write a letter to Ken Miller?), he simply frames his argument as though the unanswered question itself creates a major problem for the theory of evolution.
Since I've used chromosome 2 as an argument for evolution, I am familiar with the creationist responses. As such, I want to address what the blogger known as The New Creationist is arguing:
If the fused chromosomes in an end-to-end fusion are ripped apart by the centromeres during cell division and cells must divide to produce an embryo then how does an embryo develop with two previously fused but now ripped apart chromosomes? We know that the loss of just one chromosome would be lethal and here we have the loss of both of the two
fused chromosomes. If fused chromosomes do not make it through cell division then how could a fused chromosomal configuration be a result of common descent since there would be no descendants by a biological pathway. Such would be miraculous. Indeed, I believe it is a miracle not only because it can not be explained by any natural pathway but also because it is contradicted by experimental data.
What he is trying to say (and what he later says a little more clearly) is that two centromeres would cause division and assembly to occur in two separate places. This would be an all around mess that would prevent not only mitosis, but meiosis as well. So what could the solution be? Well, he answers it himself:
Now, it has been proposed that the deactivation of one of the centromeres in the fused chromosome would prevent the rupture and subsequent loss of the newly formed fusion…
And that is the case. One of the centromeres has been deactivated. One possible reason for this could relate to the fact that the area near the deteriorated centromere (the pericentromeric sequences) has gone through a large number of duplication events, but this isn't known and requires certain confirming evidence around other deactivated centromeres. I don't know if any significant research has been done in this area since the 2006 paper about chromosome 2.
The New Creationist continues:
…but this poses another equally lethal problem during the pairing off of homologous chromosomes.
Let's say that if C2A fused with C2B forming C2 (which has 2 centromeres) in the paternal germ line, the male's sperm. Now, that sperm would have to fertilize an egg where both C2A and C2B not having been fused would have to pair off with the paternal C2 BUT if C2 has been prevented from being ripped apart because one of its centromeres has been deactivation then the corresponding maternal C2B (or C2A) will not combine with C2 in the mother's egg because that centromere would have been deactivated.
In other words, he is saying that if two ancestral primates had offspring with the fused chromosome, then that offspring would have 23 chromosomes whereas the rest of the population still had 24. Mating between the two could not occur as a result, thus the fused chromosome could never make it beyond a single generation.
The most obvious solution to this problem is that several members of a population experienced a fusion event. It could have been a completely chance event, or it could have been due to a particular mutation that had spread down the line. That is, my money is on a mutation existing in a population that caused the fusion between two specific chromosomes. Perhaps all the pericentromeric duplications (which pre-date the fusion event, incidentally) gave rise to a gene that was free to mutate neutrally in the population. After some time, it managed to survive the generations, and made a marked difference. (That's what has happened, minus the specific duplication events, with Richard Lenski's E. coli.) Or maybe a mutation popped up just out of completely random chance, as opposed to being connected to any particular type of event. It's hard to say just how any of this happened, but there are good hypotheses to be had on the question.
To conclude, the first argument presented here was defeated before it was even made. One of the two centromeres was deactivated long ago, as stated in the original paper. Indeed, that very paper even suggested a correlating factor in centromere deactivation that could be useful for future research. As for the second argument, I'm going to give Mike the last word:
[T]he fact that an explanation is either unknown or not immediately apparent would not refute the fact that the theory of evolution made this falsifiable prediction, nor would it suggest that there cannot be a rational explanation at all. Our new creationist seems to think that because he does not know how to explain it that a rational explanation is not merely unknown, but in principle impossible. Ergo, Goddidit. That ain't how science works, kids.


text:
In the perceived absence of actual reading, writing and curiosity, teachers are often sent to workshops with the hope that they will then return to school sites and 'run workshops'. At best, when the workshop host is actually someone who reads and writes and doesn't have a lot of formulas or 'best practices' and instead engages all in the actual practice of reading and writing--rich rewards can often accompany. When the participant continues to read and write and is suitably curious, the ideas learned and questioned via their own practice may make for interesting, if not provocative, work inside their own classroom.
There is an organicism in such practice.
In contrast, when the presenter is someone who has also learned 'workshop techniques' at a distance from actual practice and passes along a laundry list of dos and dont's (think chart after chart) that truly make little actual sense, the outcome is rather dubious. Even worse than this however is the 'turnkey' presenter sent to the latter workshop who then returns to tell everyone else how to "do" workshop. The workshops enacted after such learning are often vapid and usually rely on standardized practices for all.
Some 'workshop' practices I would question:
1.Why must teachers level all of the books in the classroom library?
Why are reading materials in classrooms being organized exclusively by 'levels'? I keep hearing more and more about this. Given the importance of prior knowledge and interest, it seems that leveling schema fail as readers age and the confluence of knowledge, interest, and motivation take on greater emphasis. Why would anyone organize a library based on leveling schema that is imposed? Does it even make remote sense that we could ever actually say that a reader is a level T? I have been in classrooms when a teacher will lean in and say in a stage-whisper, "He's a level N." Could we not imagine easily how such a declaration would be faulty?
Underneath the leveling library is the more important question about how one selects a book to read and what prompts the desire to read. The leveled system in some ways usurps the actual thinking that needs to be done when selecting a text and coming to name the desire to read.
2. Why must teachers refer to their students as readers and/or writers?
It seems a bit insipid to make teachers refer to their students as 'readers' and 'writers'--as if calling them by a name, somehow makes it "more" true. It bothers me that naming isn't a privileged exchange between teacher and learner. A former graduate student told me she was 'written up' by a supervisor for failing to address her 5-year-old students as writers. It's not the names that bother me, but rather that someone else determines address in a classroom apart from the teacher and the learners. It feels like colonization.
3. What's with all the sticky notes?
I read a lot. I write a fair amount too. I do both well with nary a sticky in sight. I have been in classrooms where teachers explain that their students (or should I say readers) must used 3 to 5 sticky notes per chapter when reading a novel. When I ask why, I usually get two responses:
a. The reading workshop presenter said so.A friend of mine tells the story of her son arriving home from fifth grade one day and declaring he was done with reading. When she inquired as to why he said he hated sticky notes and he wanted to just go back to reading a good story. "Why do they have to ruin it?" he asked his mom.
b. We were told we must do this by an administrator (who probably attended the reading workshop).
Underneath the sticky note practice, is the more important question about the needs of a reader and the reasons for reading. Not all texts require analysis. Not all texts require writing alongside. It seems important for students to figure out how to tell the difference and to determine some ways they actually wants to read. Forced sticky notes stops that thinking.
4. Why must all students record the title, author, etc. of every book they read?
There are times I like to keep lists of what I am reading or planning to read. There are times I like to look at other people's lists as well. For example I often enjoy reading the Five Book Interviews. Recently Carol Gilligan offered five books she would recommend about gender and human nature. The offerings fascinated me. But occasionally choosing to keep a list is quite different than being made to record every thing read for a school year. Why is knowing the total number of books important? Who benefits by having a child keep a list for a year of what s/he read? When my son was 7 he had to record the title and author in a notebook of texts he read. He loved to read and did so with great passion. That passion dimmed a bit when he realized how much writing his rather tired little hand would need to do. Quite quickly he seized on the idea of limiting his book selection to brief titles.
5. Why do students have to read a book that is classified as a different genre each month?
Let's just say it's hell that last month after students have been through nine genres (BTW I never actually got all the genre distinctions either) and the last one left is often something they never ever wanted to read. What exactly are students learning in such scenarios? This practice obfuscates the more important work of developing and changing reading preferences and making decisions about what to read and when. I also think it seems predictable that children will have great affinity for certain types of books and will desire to read these books in great number. Why do we want to disrupt that? Do we fear that a child hooked into Captain Underpants at 8 will find himself at 40 only reading Dav Pilkey's underpants adventures?
6. A phrase I hope never to hear again: "I have a self-to-text connection to make."
In the name of comprehension bad things have been done to reading and those who read. As a substitution for ambiguity, conjecture, humor, and not knowing (to name but a few)--the connection gambit (often marked with a post it, see image) is being played. Is there any other kind of connection one might have with a text? If not connected to the reader, then to whom? Is there a reason such things even need to be anounced? And what does it suggest when after such proclamation the connection is something like this: "I have a text to self connection. My dog drools." I did hear a child utter this after his teacher read a section from a Henry and Mudge story. He was congratulated for making a connection. A friend reminds me that rendering reading into such small bits of nothing, readies children for a career of testable 'reading' items. I also wonder about such coding and what is missed as the mind is occupied by searching for already determined categories which in fact might not be well understood.
7. Why are students made to keep a writer's notebook and/or reader's notebook?
While visiting a middle school class, a friend of mine tells the story that at the midpoint in the class all of the students put away their writing notebooks and took out their reading notebooks. She describes this shift from writing workshop to reading workshop as a strange changing of the guards. I wondered then as I do now why this would be done. How is it that a notebook, let alone separate notebooks, are needed? Why is it that everyone needed to attend to their writing and reading in the same manner? Imposing an order may constrain learning and in fact that may be interesting. Imposing an order that all must follow takes what might be thoughtful practices (choosing to keep a notebook) and reduces it to mindlessness.
8. Why is there a reliance on 'seed ideas' as the source of writing topics?
I was once told that students couldn't write if they didn't generate five seed ideas first (one for each day of the school week) and specifically do so inside their writing notebooks which had all been organized as per their teacher's directions including the unique cover each student had to create. The seed ideas were prompted: a time when you were happy, a time when you were hurt, a bad haircut, and so on.
|To See Takes Time (2009)
Invention is the work of teaching and learning. Remove invention and all that is left is a corpse.


text:
Beat Of His OWN DRUMS by Author Ann Lister is NOW LIVE!
Download for FREE with KindleUnlimited
Amazon uk http://amzn.to/2u5tV0h
Amazon Universal Link http://getBook.at/BeatOfHisOwnDrums
Story Blurb
For All The Right Reasons introduced Ben and Simon Gallo, the two brothers who together created what would become the legendary rock band Reckless. For every step towards glory which Ben took on their rise to fame, Simon's footsteps faltered along that same journey. Nothing he did seemed to measure up and it was one misstep after another, until Simon no longer knew the man he was looking at in the mirror. Substance abuse covered up his anger and far too many poor decisions to count concealed what he really wanted in his life: acceptance and self-love along with a meaningful and committed relationship with a soul mate.
Beat Of His Own Drums is Simon's story, and gives insight to who Simon really is as a man and why he did the things he did to try and find his happiness. Everyone deserves a second chance at life and even at love, and Simon is ready for his. He's walked the walk and talked the talk, now Simon wants the world to know why he's always had to go through life using the beat from his own drums to guide him.
This 30,000 word M/M novella has an HEA ending, and is a follow-up story to For All The Right Reasons, M/F, which I would recommend reading first. These stories have now become a series, and a full-length novel will follow Beat Of His Own Drums, which will release in early 2018, continuing Simon and Ben's story.
Add Beat Of his Own Drums to your TBR Shelf on Goodreads
Other Books in this series
For All The Right Reasons
Band of Brothers Series #1
Story Blurb
Parental Discretion is Advised. Sydney Willows, a professional photographer boasts a long list of world famous musicians as clients. She's blond, ambitious, and about to shoot the most lucrative job of her career when she meets Ben Gallo, lead singer and guitarist for his band, Reckless. Tall, handsome, and with enough rock swagger to melt any woman's heart, Ben plays to win. Will he be the one to show her that the path to 'happily-ever-after' is possible with a music man, or will a juvenile bet made between brothers prove stronger than a bond of love?
For All The Right Reasons is ribboned with deception, lust and love and will leave you aching for an encore.
Check out more Published Books by Erotic Romance Author Ann Lister
Ann Lister is a native New Englander currently living on the island of Martha's Vineyard with her husband. She has pulled details from her years living in the New England area and uses many local settings and landmarks in her novels.
After graduating art school, marrying, and raising two daughters, she established her own video production company. Her nearly two decades working in video production included work within the music industry and won her a coveted Telly Award. Her 'behind-the-scenes' exposure to the music world and her love of rock music is the inspiration for her erotic rock star romances.
The Rock Gods series gave her Bestselling Author status on Amazon. Beyond The Music, Book 7 in the series, hit #1 in the Gay Erotica genre during the Pre-Order and held that spot for several weeks. This last book in The Rock Gods series launches the spin-off series, Guarding The Gods, which releases in early Summer of 2016.
Connect with Ann here:
Thank you for touring with Jo&Isa♡Books


text:
Azerbaijan's corrupt ruling family, led by President Ilham Aliyev, has stayed in power by crushing dissent — curtailing freedom of assembly, association, and expression. A leaked US diplomatic cable compared the Aliyev's to the Corleones, the Mafia family at the centre of the Godfather film trilogy.
Heydar Aliyev came to power after staging a coup in 1993. His son, Ilham, took power just before his father died 2003. Azerbaijan's oil-rich economy has been monopolised by the interests of the Aliyev family — estimated to now be worth billions. The average Azerbaijani citizen earns just $463 a month.
Since the adoption of the country's current constitution in 1995, Azerbaijan has not held a single free and fair election. The European Court of Human Rights has twice ruled against the country's government, for violating citizens right to free elections. Protests questioning the legitimacy of parliamentary elections in 2005 were violently crushed by security forces. Citizens were emboldened by the Arab Spring, staging unauthorised protests in March 2011, and many have attempted to speak out against the Aliyev family — at a price — hundreds were arrested and dozens put in jail. Jabbar Savalan was sentenced to two and a half years in prison after calling for protests on Facebook.
Even though Azerbaijan's constitution guarantees rights to free speech and assembly, citizens and journalists critical of the Aliyev family risk violent reprisals and even death. Journalist Elmar Huseynov, an outspoken critic of the Aliyev family, was murdered in 2005. The Institute for Reporters' Freedom and Safety reported over 50 incidents of harassment or attacks on foreign and domestic journalists in 2011. Freedom House has classed the country as "Not Free", naming it one of the world's most hostile media environments.
Despite its human rights records, Azerbaijan is still a member of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) and the Council of Europe, and has signed a number of human rights treaties. While all too willing to cooperate with international groups economically, Azerbaijan continues to violate international human rights treaties and agreements.
Forced evictions and demolitions in the name of economic interests have been rampant since 2009. Recently, sixty families living in the rural village of Chovdar were forced to leave their homes after the Azerbaijani government put into motion plans to mine a reported 44 tons of gold and 164 tons of silver under the village. Evictions have intensified in the lead up to Eurovision.


text:
Adding it up: The upfront costs of buying a house
Buying a home is a big financial commitment. Before you jump into home-ownership, note the costs you will incur so that you can plan accordingly.
When you purchase a home, expect to pay some upfront costs (one-time payments). These cover two main areas: your down payment and the closing costs for the loan.
The down payment is usually a percentage of the selling price, and you should expect to pay 3 percent to 5 percent at a minimum. For instance, if you purchase a $200,000 home and your lender requires 5 percent for the down payment in order for you to qualify for your loan, you'll need $10,000 for the down payment.
If you can afford a larger down payment, you may decide to put down 10 percent or 20 percent. Why pay more? Because until you have roughly 20 per- cent in equity (you have paid 20 percent toward the principal, not including interest), you may have to pay private mortgage insurance or mortgage insurance premium (for FHA loans). This payment is included in your monthly payment amount. Therefore, when you calculate your monthly payment, it will be higher when you have to pay this insurance fee. You may also be eligible for a better interest rate if you make a larger down payment.
What if you don't have a down payment? Start a savings program, make a budget, and save up for the down payment. Or see whether your parents or other relatives may be able to help you with the down payment; if it is a gift to you, as opposed to a loan you are expected to pay back, the lender may require a gift letter. If the money is a loan, your lender must consider your payments on that loan when calculating your monthly expenses. As another option, consider some alternative type of financing.
In addition to the down payment, you pay costs associated with the loan, called closing costs. These vary depending on your lender, your offer to the seller and local customs.
To provide you with a loan, your lender requires certain assurances, such as:
- The house is worth what you are willing to pay (an appraisal).
- The house isn't infest- ed with termites (home inspection).
- If something happens to your home, you have insurance to cover the problem.
- You are a good can- didate for credit (credit check).
- The title to the home is free (no one has a lien or claim on the home).
The lender also charges certain fees for its loan, and the name of the fees and what they cover vary. For instance, you may be charged a document processing fee, recording fees and other fees.
You may also have to pay points on the loan. One point is equal to 1 percent of the loan, and lenders may require this. You may also choose to pay points in order to secure a lower interest rate.
In addition to these upfront fees, you may also have to prepay escrow fees.
All of the closing costs will be spelled out for you, and you will receive a good faith estimate of all these fees so that you know what to expect. Note, too, that you may not be responsible for paying all the fees. In many cases, the seller either traditionally pays the fee, or you may have as part of the offer asked the seller to pay certain fees, such as paying for points on the loan.
Finally, you may have to pay some of the fees upfront, such as for a home inspection, and other fees you can roll into your loan and pay for them over time. If you roll closing costs into your loan, your monthly payment will be higher, but not significantly higher. Your agent can explain the various fees and what you can expect to pay on your particular home offer and with your particular lender.


text:
St. Charles Parish Assessors determine the value of taxable property within a county or local area. These property valuations are used to levy property taxes. In addition, Assessors in St. Charles Parish, Louisiana maintain detailed county and local maps that show property boundaries and buildings. These St. Charles Parish property maps include property appraisal values, zoning information, public property, and unclaimed parcels. Assessors may also have historic property maps. St. Charles Parish Assessors provide online access to their property maps on their websites.
St Charles Parish Assessor's Office Hahnville LA 15045 River Road 70057 985-783-6281
St. Charles Parish Clerks preserve important public records at the county or local level. As part of their responsibilities, Clerks keep detailed local St. Charles Parish maps, including property maps. These maps may contain property values, property tax assessments, property boundaries, as well as public property and unclaimed parcels in St. Charles Parish, Louisiana. Some may also provide information about buildings and property ownership. These St. Charles Parish property maps are often available online through the Clerk's Office website.
St Bernard Parish Clerk Hahnville LA PO Box 424 70057 985-783-6632
St. Charles Parish Recorders of Deeds are responsible for keeping real estate ownership documents for a county or local government. The office ensures the accuracy of property, land, and property tax records, and as part of their responsibilities, Recorders of Deeds often keep detailed St. Charles Parish property maps. These St. Charles Parish property maps show property tax assessments, property appraisals, unclaimed parcels, public property, and zoning information. Recorders of Deeds in St. Charles Parish, Louisiana may make their property maps available to the public on their websites.
St Charles Parish Recorder of Deeds Hahnville LA PO Box 424 70057 985-783-6632
St. Charles Parish Treasurers and Tax Collectors are responsible for collecting taxes for a local government and distributing these funds, including property taxes. St. Charles Parish Treasurers and Tax Collectors often maintain property maps covering their jurisdictions that show property lines, property tax assessments, appraisal values, and any unclaimed parcels or public property in St. Charles Parish, Louisiana. Some St. Charles Parish maps may also provide ownership information and list building types and zones. These property maps may be available to the public on the Treasurer and Tax Collector's website.
St. Charles Parish Sheriff's Office Luling LA 260 Judge Edward Dufresne Parkway 70070 985-783-6237


text:
Jeff Goldblum and Harrison Ford Are Not Dead Yet
Rumors of the Goldblum/Ford deaths were greatly exaggerated, David Gregory throws a hissy over Joe Scarborough, Kate Gosselin sports a bikini in the driveway, Kim Kardashian lusts for Megan Fox and Chris Brown and Rihanna want to touch.
- Jeff Goldblum and Harrison Ford are not dead, despite the plethora of rumors that have been floating around on the internet that they were both casualties of The Week America Died. [Daily News]
- Joe Scarborough was scheduled to be a guest this Sunday on ABC's "This Week" with George Stephanopoulos, but had to cancel because David Gregory cried like a little schoolgirl because he wanted Scarborough on Meet the Press or something. [Page Six]
- Chris Brown has been ordered by the courts to stay at least 50 yards away from Rihanna, but Rihanna and Chris both want the order dropped, probably so they can bone. [Daily News]
- The newly single Kate Gosselin wore a bikini in her front yard with the paparazzi around to make Jon eat his freakin' heart out at what he's missing out on! [Daily News]
- Kim Kardashian says she has a huge girl crush on Megan Fox, the deformed-thumbed shunner of flower-bearing British children. If I was my boy Reggie Bush, I'd do everything possible to stage an "accidental" run-in between Kim and Megan very soon. [Sun]
- Celebrities around the world did what celebrities around the world do when one of their own dies—They Twittered about it endlessly. [Mirror]
- Ashlee Simpson is stepping out around New York wearing black leather from head to toe, trying to look all hot for her boy Pete. [Sun]
- Kanye West is joining the lineup at a music festival in Britain and fireworks are sure to fly because Oasis is playing their too and Kanye and Noel Gallagher, both epic pricks, hate each other. [Mirror]
- Leonardo DiCaprio's ex, Bar Refaeli, is the new face of Garnier Fructis products, which she claims to have been using personally for years. For some reason we doubt that. [Just Jared]
- Pic via Daily News


text:
Woman says Staff Sgt. Bales — accused of Afghan slaughter — thrust her hand to his crotch and fought with her boyfriend
OLYMPIA, Wash. — A second incident involving alcohol and violence surfaced Thursday in the background of the Army staff sergeant suspected of killing 17 Afghan villagers — a 2008 allegation that he thrust a woman's hand to his crotch and fought with her boyfriend.
A Pierce County Sheriff's Department incident report obtained by The Associated Press quoted a woman claiming Robert Bales told her she was beautiful, then "pulled her hand to his crotch" outside a Tacoma, Wash., bowling alley. The deputy described Bales as "extremely intoxicated."
The report says Bales began punching and kicking the woman's boyfriend. When the boyfriend raised one leg to stop the kicking, Bales grabbed the leg and pushed him to the pavement, according to the incident report.
Each person involved in the incident was drunk, to the point of mumbling and slurring their speech, according to the deputy's account.
John Henry Browne, an attorney representing Bales in the Afghan killings case, declined to discuss the assault accusations because he said it has no bearing on the Afghanistan matter.
Details of the incident follow a report this week that Bales had been arrested in 2002 for a drunken assault of a security guard at a Tacoma casino. That charge was dismissed after Bales completed 20 hours of anger management training.
U.S. military officials say Bales was drinking on a southern Afghanistan base before he crept away to two villages overnight March 11, shooting his victims and setting many of them on fire. Nine were children. Eleven belonged to one family.
Records show that Bales was not charged in the 2008 incident at the Paradise Bowl.
Pierce County prosecutor Mark Lindquist said his office considered the case for a possible charge of assault in the fourth degree but determined that it did not meet charging standards. He didn't know the specific reason behind that decision but said he suspected it was because there were no injuries, lots of alcohol and no evidence as to who started the scuffle.
Lindquist also noted that the incident report said the couple initially told authorities they didn't want to press charges, something he said prosecutors would take into consideration.
Reached Thursday, the woman involved, Myra Jo Irish, agreed with the officer's narrative in the incident report, but denied his characterization that she and her boyfriend were intoxicated.
"I was just basically in shock that some stranger would walk up and do that," Irish said.
Irish said Bales was with a group that pleaded with her not to file charges.
They told her Bales was drunk and if she "could be so kind" not to file an official report. "His friend said he was married and in the service, and it would destroy him" if she filed charges," Irish said.
Irish said she met with a sheriff's deputy and gave him a written statement at the bowling alley. The deputy who took the report did not return a phone call seeking comment.
In the 2002 casino incident, the police report says two security guards told Bales to leave, but he picked up a trash can lid and rushed the guards, punching one in the chest before they tackled him.
Also in 2008, Bales was involved in a hit-and-run accident in which records show he ran bleeding in military clothes into the woods. He told police he fell asleep at the wheel and paid a fine to get the charges dismissed, according to court records.
In 1998, Bales was cited for possessing alcohol at a Florida beach, though the citation was later dropped.
Bales' attorney has said his client was injured twice while deployed to Iraq.
On Feb. 1, he was assigned to a base in the Panjwai District, near Kandahar, to work with a village stability force that pairs special operations troops with villagers to help provide neighborhood security.
Browne has said Bales has a sketchy memory of the night of the shootings.
Bales has not been formally charged, and is being held at the military prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kan. A U.S. official said Thursday he will be charged with 17 counts of murder, assault and a string of other offenses in the massacre of Afghan villagers as they slept. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the charges had not been announced.
Categories: Afghanistan, Anti-War, Colonialism, Government, Imperialism, Imperialist War, International, U.S. News


text:
(which is safe for breastfeeding mamas) from NewMomBody.com.
Liz has had amazing success with Plexus Slim, so much that she decided to become an ambassador for the product! Please click the image above to read her full story & check out her site where she also has multivitamins, body cream, breast check kits, and so much more!
Don't forget to check her out on Facebook.
I am also giving away Mia Mariu's New Fragrance Magia for Women.
This deliciously flirtatious fragrance invigorates the senses, creates a mood and sets the scene for unforgettable fun, romance and pleasure. With a medley of juicy strawberry, mandarin, peach and pear that play sweetly atop dewy blooms of jasmine, plum, magnolia and flirty frangipani; makes the perfect playmate and ideal soul mate for smooth and sensual base notes of rich vanilla, musk, tonka bean and warm and enchanting golden amber.
Don't forget to check them out on Facebook or Twitter.
a Rafflecopter giveaway
I received one or more of the products mentioned above for free using Tomoson.com. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will be good for my readers.


text:
Title: Lola and the Boy Next Dor
Author: Stephanie Perkins
Genre: Young Adult, Romance, Contemporary Fiction
Pages: 384
Year: 2011
Publisher: Dutton Juvenile
Source: Personal Collection
Rating: 2/5
Lola lives in San Francisco, with her two dads, her crazy sense of style, and her rock star boyfriend who happens to be MUCH older than her 16 years. Then the twin neighbors – Calliope and Cricket – move back and Lola has to deal with the fallout of their friendship from years ago.
My Thoughts:
Oh readers. Lola and the Boy Next Door was such a disappointment for me. Remember, I LOVED Anna and the French Kiss. So my expectations were high. I know Stephanie Perkins can write a good book. But this one…eh.
Lola is almost TOO quirky. Like unrealistically so. Which made it hard for me to relate to her. Sure, I wanted her to end up with the right guy, but it was mostly in a "I'm curious to see how this book gets there so I guess I will keep reading" kind of way. I wouldn't have been too disappointed if Perkins threw me a twist ending where Lola doesn't get what she wants.
I automatically hated her actual boyfriend and couldn't see why she didn't leave him for the cute boy next door in the third chapter. Which made all of the obstacles in the book seem rather forced.
I almost put this book down. But I can't say there weren't parts that I found entertaining. I especially loved that Anna and Etienne have small roles. But if you were an Anna fan, I'm not sure that makes up for the rest of the book. I loved the San Francisco setting. I loved that Lola had two gay dads. And I actually really loved Cricket. I'm just not sure Lola deserves him.
My hope is that Stephanie Perkins' next book – which I will definitely still be reading – finds its way into my good reading graces a little better than this one did.
Others' (More Positive) Thoughts: GalleySmith; Presenting Lenore; KellyVision


text:
We use cookies on our website. By continuing to browse our site, you are agreeing to our use of cookies.
please visit our Cookies Page.
Skip to content
Privacy policy
Contact Us
Print this page
Follow us on social media:
Link to Facebook
Link to Twitter
Link to Instagram
Link to LinkedIn
Link to YouTube
Link to TikTok
About us
What we do
How we are doing
Our plans for the future
Our Digital 999 programme -ePCR
Our publications
Meet our leadership team
Trust Board
Working with suppliers
Commercial services
Our history
Calling us
Calling 999
How you can help us to help you at busy times for the NHS
Who will treat you
Learning disabilities and Autism zone
Mental health care
Emergency heart care
Emergency stroke care
Emergency trauma care
End of Life Care
Keeping safe and well in colder weather
Working for us
Current vacancies
Hear from our staff and volunteers
Career opportunities
Volunteering with us
Apprenticeship opportunities
Paramedic Science degrees
Equality and inclusion in the workplace
Talking with us
Thanking our staff and volunteers
Making a complaint
How to find us
Freedom of Information
Solicitors' enquiries
How we use your personal information
News Archive
Follow us on social media
BBC documentary: 'Ambulance'
TV and radio
Health professionals
Safeguarding children, young people and adults at risk
Caring for frequent callers
Healthcare professional information
Emergency Bed Service
Reporting incidents to us
Getting involved
Become a London Lifesaver
Involving our community
Public education, schools and community visits
Support the London Ambulance Charity
London Ambulance Service Public and Patients Council
GoodSAM app
Search for:
13 Nov 2018
Transparency report October 2018
Transparency report October 2018
Continue reading
18 Oct 2018
Annual Report 2017 – 2018
Annual Report 2017-2018
Continue reading


text:
I love my Grandma and I have such a deep food love because of her. Some may call it sacrifice, but I consider her life-long dedication to feeding others a home-cooked meal a true, honest labor of love. Stories of prized fresh cream skimmed from the top of milk; years of entertaining trustees at The Hill School; the freshest, purest applesauce in all the universe – no matter the menu, she insisted that hard work and integrity were the best ingredients.
Something about a Grandma's touch makes even the simplest of meals taste even better and, these days, her 90-year-old hands can only do so much. You can't visit Grandma without being offered a snack and, on this trip, she was so proud to make me and Gramps ham & mustard sandwiches. Built with the sincerest food love, I savored the best ham & mustard sandwich I've ever tasted. Thank you, Grandma. Thank you for everything you've ever done for me.


text:
From an op-ed at the New York Times:
Facebook also encourages you to share your comments with your friends. Though you're free to opt out, the knowledge that what you say may be seen by the people you know is a big deterrent to trollish behavior.
This kind of social pressure works because, at the end of the day, most trolls wouldn't have the gall to say to another person's face half the things they anonymously post on the Internet.
Instead of waiting around for human nature to change, let's start to rein in bad behavior by promoting accountability. Content providers, stop allowing anonymous comments. Moderate your comments and forums. Look into using comment services to improve the quality of engagement on your site. Ask your users to report trolls and call them out for polluting the conversation.
It's written by Julie Zhuo at Facebook. I'll be honest in saying that my initial reaction sounded something like this, "Fascinating. Facebook wishes to advocate for more online accountability. Privacy much?" She finishes the article with a line intoning that by lifting the veil of anonymity we can see that we are all human.
I don't think she could have missed the point any more than she did in this nice but misguided editorial piece. The problem is not anonymity, it's about civility. Mrs. Zhuo's post seeks to lump all anonymous comments and replies into one giant guilty pile. That's extreme in its scope and unreasonable in its criteria.
Anonymous authorship is the second amendment issue of free expression. Just as there are many gun owners who are responsible law abiding citizens, there are many well spoken and articulate people who write anonymously online. For every crime committed by a gun, there is a standard hue and outcry about how gun are awful, horrible things that no one should have. This ignores the staggering volume of non-incidents that occur with or around guns each and every day. One could draw the same parallel to trolls and other acts of anonymous uncivil posts that go on every day versus the majority of perfectly reasonable and rational anonymous comments and postings.
It is all in the perception of the issue. You will always see a news story about gun violence and online stories about people engaged in trolling behavior. You will never or seldom see a story about a responsible gun owner teaching respect for firearms or gun safety and stories about people who have perfectly normal anonymous discussions. The focus is skewed toward the salacious and tawdry side of the issue about how bad it can be, how bad people act, and the rare acts of awfulness that cross the lines of social norms. Where is the data to support this position before requesting that every content provider eliminate anonymity in the name of accountability?
In my reckoning, the anonymous posting is just a symptom of overall societal incivility and the polarization of speech at present. It is a matter of re-asserting and re-establishing a courtesy for the views and opinions of others. It is a matter of respecting the free expression of another person. It doesn't matter whether they are anonymous or not; what matters is the appreciation of differing viewpoints.
(I talked about anonymous authorship recently in my post "Anonymous Rex", a response to Emily Ford's post "X" at In The Library With The Lead Pipe.)


text:
A fascinating, well-researched, reasonably-argued article at a top video games site argues that it is time for the Major League Players' Association to forget if not forgive the last "replacement players" from the 1994-95 forced strike, and grant them participation in the union's merchandising plan, and allow them, finally, to be simulated in the top baseball video games.
The kotaku.com writer calmly explains what happened to the last five active (of 38 in total) strike-breakers, who eventually reached the majors:
Although replacement players receive pension benefits, are subject to the same rules of free agency and are given representation during salary arbitration, disciplinary hearings or other matters, they are barred from joining the union, cannot vote on its matters and, of course, can't collect any licensing money.
A few highlights: the Baltimore Orioles had simply suspended operations (Peter Angelos was having nothing to do with replacements). There was some question as to whether or not Cal Ripken's streak would end if a team called the Baltimore Orioles actually played a game without him because he was on strike. The two-time still-defending World Champion Toronto Blue Jays could not have legally played a game in Canada and were thus to shift to their spring training home in Dunedin, Florida (capacity 5,509). Per the lone surviving, harrowing source document of the time, Stats' Inc's Replacement Player Handbook 1995, the Jays' starting line-up was likely to be:
C: Brad Gay (Class A ball, 1994)
1B: Wes Clements (out of baseball since 1987)
2B: Emmett Robinson (out of baseball since 1986)
SS: Robert Montalvo (utilityman in AAA in 1994)
3B: Warren Sawkiw (in an independent league, 1994)
LF: Trevor Penn (out of baseball since 1990)
CF: Darryl Brinkley (independent leagues, 1994)
RF: Rick Hirtensteiner (AA, 1994)
DH: Brian Brooks (out of baseball since 1990)
SP: Pat Tilman, Brian Ahern, Mike Arner, Pat Blohm
Closer: Steve Sharts (out of baseball since 1990)


text:
Although Travis Bickle (Robert DeNiro) has some "bad ideas" in his head, those thoughts aren't half as frightening as the man who's thinking them — not because he's a monster, but because he isn't. There's nothing monstrous about him. With his rumpled shirt and friendly manner, he seems … average, just a regular working man who wants his life to have "a sense of someplace to go." But rejection, isolation and fear do strange, scary things a man, so it doesn't take long for Travis to construct another reality, one based on paranoia, a thirst for justice, a desire to be heard. And he means to make to make sorry every last person who didn't care enough to listen.
Doubtless this is where Martin Scorcese's eerie, savage and deeply unsettling "Taxi Driver" hits the hardest: in showing just how close Travis, a well-meaning loner who wants desperately to connect with anyone, is to his breaking point, and just how close we are to ours. Scorcese and DeNiro are unflinching in their portrayal of Bickle's slow but completely believable descent into a world of delusions and violence. Both director and actor are painstakingly deliberate in their work, with Scorcese's every shot providing silent insights into Bickle and DeNiro's every look and expression — his bizarre smiles are extraordinarily effective — suggesting this quiet man is coming apart at the seams. From the moment the opening credits roll, it's merely a question of what happens when the last thread gets pulled.
The opening credits, with Michael Chapman's cinematography and Bernard Herrmann's haunting score, do much to create the surreal atmosphere and tone of unease in "Taxi Driver." Glimpsed through the smeary, rain-soaked windshield of a cab, New York City seems like a fresco painting, with all the grayness and the sharp angles blurred together. That togetherness, however, is merely an illusion for Bickle, a Vietnam veteran who takes the night shift as a taxi driver because he can't sleep nights. "Might as well get paid," he reasons, and attempts to joke with the personnel officer, who shoots him down. Bickle tries again with Betsy (Cybill Shepherd), a blonde beauty working on a senator's (Leonard Harris) presidential campaign. She seems interested until he takes her to a pornographic movie on their second date and the relationship comes to a screeching halt. Betsy brushes off every one of his inept but sweetly sincere apologies, and something deep in Bickle's psyche snaps.
Cleaning up his route — which takes him to the grimiest corners of the city, the ones he wishes he could "flush down the fuckin' toilet" — becomes his new focus, and he hones in on Iris (Jody Foster), an prepubescent prostitute living under the thumb of Sport (Harvey Keitel), her slimy pimp. Bickle wants to liberate Iris from this life of drugs and smut; she doesn't want to be rescued ("it saves me from myself," she calmly explains), and her resistance sends him on a single-minded quest that ends in one of the bloodiest showdowns ever set to celluloid. Filmed in hazy slow motion with an almost tender attention to detail, the sequence is shocking in its brutality. Not once does Scorcese move the camera from the action; in doing this, he smashes down the barrier between audience and screen, forcing us into the gore, blood and gristle. It's a remarkably effective method that also makes "Taxi Driver" seem like the director's most personal film (indeed, he has said the movie was one he "had to make").
The same seems true of DeNiro, who throws himself into Travis Bickle to such an alarming degree we fear for the actor's safety. "Taxi Driver" is DeNiro's film, and he owns every inch of it with his startlingly powerful performance. He's convincing in Bickle's quieter moments, when he visibly feels the sting of Betsy's rejection and the degradation of the people he drives, and the later on, when his loneliness shapes into dangerous psychosis. But nowhere is he better than in the movie's closing moments, where satisfaction and happiness seem within reach. With his eyes, DeNiro deals the final blow, and we know Bickle has made a trip he can't come back from.
Grade: A
Filed under: Old Stuff | Tagged: Albert Brooks, Cybill Shepherd, Harvey Keitel, Jodie Foster, Martin Scorsese, Paul Schrader, Peter Boyle, Robert DeNiro, Taxi Driver | 11 Comments »


text:
A premium report that provides detailed quantitative assessments of earnings, fundamentals, relative valuation, risk, price momentum and more. For subscribers only.
What is this stock worth in intrinsic value? View this premium StockCalc report to see this stock's valuation and how it was calculated using fundamental analysis. For subscribers only.


text:
Conflicted feelings over nukes abound
WASHINGTON - Nuclear radiation, invisible and insidious, gives us the creeps.
Even before the Japanese nuclear crisis, Americans were bombarded with contradictory images and messages that frighten even when they try to reassure. It started with the awesome and deadly mushroom cloud rising from the atomic bomb, which led to fallout shelters and school duck-and-cover drills.
On screen, Bert, the ever-alert turtle of the government civil-defense cartoons, told us all we needed to do was shield our eyes when the bomb exploded and duck under our desks. Jane Fonda in "The China Syndrome" told us to be worried about nuclear power accidents, and just days later, Three Mile Island seemed to prove her right. Now bumbling nuclear plant worker Homer Simpson, Blinky, the radiation-mutated, three-eyed fish, and evil nuclear power plant owner Montgomery Burns make us giggle and wince.
The experts tell us to be logical and not to worry, that nuclear power is safer than most technologies we readily accept. Producing and burning coal, oil and gas kill far more people through accidents and pollution each year.
But our perception of nuclear issues isn't about logic. It's about dread, magnified by arrogance in the nuclear industry, experts in risk and nuclear energy say.
"Whereas science is about analysis, risk resides in most of us as a gut feeling," said University of Oregon psychology professor and risk expert Paul Slovic. "Radiation really creates very strong feelings of fear -- not really fear, I would say more anxiety and unease."
Some experts contend that when a disaster has potentially profound repercussions, we should pay attention to emotions as much as logic.
Nuclear energy hits all our hot buttons when we judge how risky something is: It's invisible. It's out of our control. It's manmade, high-tech and hard to understand. It's imposed on us, instead of something we choose. It's associated with major catastrophes, not small problems. And if something goes wrong, it can cause cancer -- an illness we fear far more than a bigger killer like heart disease.
Thirty years ago, before the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster, Slovic took four groups of people and asked them to rate 30 risks. Two groups -- the League of Women Voters and college students -- put nuclear power as the biggest risk, ahead of things that are deadlier, such as cars, handguns and cigarettes. Business club members ranked nuclear power as the eighth risk out of 30. Risk experts put it at 20.
The only fear that Slovic has seen as comparable in his studies to nuclear power is terrorism.
A Pew Research Center poll after the Japanese nuclear crisis found support for increased nuclear power melting down. Last October the American public was evenly split over an expansion of nuclear power; now it's 39 percent in favor and 52 percent opposed.
"Nuclear radiation carries a very powerful stigma. It has automatic negative associations: cancer, bombs, catastrophes," said David Ropeik who teaches risk communications at Harvard University. You can't separate personal feelings from the discussion of actual risks, said Ropeik, author of the book "How Risky Is it, Really?"
But Ropeik, who has consulted for the nuclear industry, said those fears aren't nearly as justified as other public health concerns. He worries that the public will turn to other choices, such as fossil fuels, which are linked to more death and climate change than the nuclear industry is. He cites one government study that says 24,000 Americans die each year from air pollution and another that says fossil fuel power plants are responsible for about one-seventh of that.
At the same time, health researchers have not tied any U.S. deaths to 1979's Three Mile Island accident. United Nations agencies put the death toll from Chernobyl at 4,000 to 9,000, with anti-nuclear groups contending the number is much higher.
Since 2000, more than 1,300 American workers have died in coal, oil and natural gas industry accidents, according to federal records. Radiological accidents have killed no one at U.S. nuclear plants during that time, and nuclear power has one of the lowest industrial accident rates in the country, said Nuclear Energy Institute spokesman Steve Kerekes.
Alan Kolaczkowski, a retired nuclear engineer, consulted with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on specific probabilities of accidents at nuclear plants. He estimates the risk of a disaster at a given plant at 1 in 100,000 -- about the same as your chance of being killed by lightning over your lifetime. For comparison, an American's odds of dying in a car crash are 1 in 88; being shot to death, 1 in 306; and dying from bee stings, 1 in 71,623, according to the National Safety Council. The council couldn't come up with the odds of dying from radiation because it lists zero people dying in the United States from radiation in 2007, the most recent year for which these cause-of-death figures are available.
Ropeik calls this mismatch between statistics and feelings "a classic example of how public policy gets made -- not about the numbers alone, but how we feel about them, and it ends up doing us more harm."
Kolaczkowski faulted his own industry.
"Those in the industry believe it is so complex it cannot be explained to the general public, so as a result, the industry has a trust-me attitude and that only goes so far," he said. "We're all afraid of the unknown, the ghosts under the bed."
David Lochbaum of the Union of Concerned Scientists, a group that presses for safer nuclear plants, is a former plant engineer. He likens the public's fears to unjustified worries about shark attacks: The risks and deaths are small, but the attention and fears are big.
"It may be an irrational fear, but I don't think it's one that can be educated away," Lochbaum said.
However, calling these fears irrational isn't justified, said Georgetown University law professor and former Environmental Protection Agency associate administrator Lisa Heinzerling. She said people's concerns have been unjustly trivialized.
People have been trained to think about and prepare for low-probability, catastrophic events like the earthquake and tsunami that caused the Japanese nuclear disaster, Heinzerling said. She pointed to homeowner's insurance. Most people won't have a fire that destroys their home, but "we worry about really big things even if they are improbable because we will be wiped out."
Americans also have long had an ambivalence toward new technology, going back to worries about the introduction of electric lights in homes 130 years ago, said University of Detroit Mercy history professor John Staudenmaier,
"Americans overreact with adulation and awe, then overreact with fear and anxiety," said Staudenmaier, editor emeritus of the academic journal Technology and Culture.
Trying to explain the fears, nuclear industry spokesman Kerekes said, "There's a perception gap that exists." But he adds: "Other industries haven't had to do deal with an animated cartoon series that lasted, what, 25 years?"
That would be "The Simpsons." Producer Al Jean said the show, which has been on the air since 1989, reflects America's real feelings.
"There is something that taps into people's view of big business, and in particular, nuclear power, which is giving profit-minded people complete control over life and death. It is a scary thought, and I think that is a topic for satire," Jean said.
Jean recognizes that nuclear plant workers aren't really like Homer Simpson and radiation doesn't "put a cute third eye on a fish." But he thinks his show is accurate with its portrayal of the greedy, conniving nuclear power plant owner Montgomery Burns: "Mr. Burns may be representative of some people in the nuclear industry -- not just nuclear, but all industries - who seem like they're more interested in getting the money rather than doing what's safe. I think that's what resonates in the public."
Yet, Jean takes pride in noting that the Springfield nuclear power plant has never blown up.
The lack of transparency in the nuclear industry - including Tokyo Electric Power Co. - has caused some of the problems, said Baruch Fischhoff, a professor of decision sciences at Carnegie Mellon University. It is a charge Kerekes disputes.
"The nuclear industry has behaved in a way that is untrustworthy, both in the sense of not telling people the truth and not having the competence to manage their own affairs," Fischhoff said. He added that industry is too quick to brush off people's fears: "Telling the public that they are idiots is certainly not a way of making friends."


text:
This video of Klaus Wittkuhn – captured in 2008 – is part of two series of Videos – from either the HPT Practitioner Series – or the HPT Legacy Series.
All 60+ videos from my series may be found here: https://eppic.biz/resources/videos-by-guy-w-wallace-plus-other-favorites/guys-video-locker-drawer-hpt-practitioner-and-legacy-series/
About HPT and the Intent of the 2 Series of Videos
HPT – Human Performance Technology – is the means to the ends of Human Performance Improvement – HPI.
- All performance is a Human endeavor.
- Performance is both the behaviors and the results – and is affected by many other variables that may need improvement, including the Process itself and the Environmental Assets.
- Technology is the application of Science.
HPT requires EBP – Evidence Based Practices – or else it's potentially Foo Foo or Snake Oil.
– Practitioner Series – short 2-10 minutes, following a script. Intended to show the diversity of HPT and HPT Practitioners.
– Legacy Series – longer 15-40 minutes, also scripted, with added stories of other NSPI/ ISPI'ers from the earlier days of the Society. Intended to capture the stories of the people from the Society's past.
All videos were shot, edited and produced by Guy W. Wallace – unless otherwise noted.
For more about HPT – and ISPI – please go – here.
# # #


text:
Note: I am not sure where I got this document, but it has been in my files for some time. I've taken the liberty to make a few changes from the original. This rule would make a good way to observe Lent.
This Rule of Life is based Wesley's General Rules, the membership vows of the United Methodist Church and St. Benedict's Rule. We believe this rule opens our eyes to God's grace, balances life and enables us to pursue holiness in all aspects of daily living. IB
· We will pray daily
· We will use a variety of forms of prayer such as the reflective reading of Scripture and other spiritual texts, confession, the prayer of Examen, intercession, journaling, and contemplation.
· We will fast from food once a week (either a full or partial fast)
· We will practice a contemplative stance in order to be present to God, the world, and ourselves
· We will be hospitable to our neighbors in our families, neighborhoods, and workplaces
· We will be hospitable to our faith community through participation in our worship, fellowship, and mission
· We will honor and care for the gift of the earth and its resources, practicing ecologically responsible living, striving for simplicity rather than excessive consumption
· We will practice generosity in sharing our material resources, including money, within and beyond this community
· We will serve God and neighbor out of gratitude for the love of God
· We will practice mutual accountability with a covenant group within the community, for how we serve God and neighbor
· We will practice regular Sabbath as a means of renewal so that we can lovingly serve God and neighbor
· We will practice racial and gender reconciliation
· We will resist evil and injustice
· We will pursue peace with justice
· We will share the redeeming, healing, creative love of God in word, deed, and presence as an invitation to others to experience the transforming love of God.
I commit to this rule of life and to the well-being of this community, out of gratitude to God who forgives, heals, and makes all things new. May my life be a blessing within and beyond God's church, for the transformation of the world.
Lord allow me to continue serving you in thought. I pray that this "rule' may be a pathfinder as I travel this pilgrimage of life. Convict me to go far beyond Lent and carry theses ideals throughout the year.


text:
You are not here by accident. There is no possible way 37.2 trillion cells randomly conspired to unite to make a meaningless being. No, you are a living soul that was shaped and formed by the living God. You were creating with meaning and purpose. You were designed perfectly to complete an assignment that only you can fulfill. You are part of God's plan to display his strength and beauty to all mankind. The question is, "What are you doing about it?"
Go be all that God created you to be.
To schedule a coaching session with John Eli click here.


text:
HD VL Print
VL graphic is perfect for bright rooms and their subdued character will suit your office.
Bright graphics also work well in smaller spaces. The perfect gift for the owner of this model.
Each graphic is printed at the customer's request on premium Japanese paper Luster RC 255g / m2.
VL graphic prints available in following sizes:
A3 size – 29,7 x 42 cm (11,69 x 16,5 in) printed on 255 g/m2 paper
A3+ size – 32,9 x 48,3 cm (13 x 19 in) printed on 255 g/m2 paper
A2 size – 42 x 59,4 cm (16,5 x 23,39 in) printed on 255 g/m2 paper
The color of the printed graphics may slightly differ from that in the photo.
No frame included.
In the case of orders from EU member states:
The VAT rate according to the country of delivery will be added to the final price.
For purchases outside the EU, the VAT rate is 0%.
There may be customs duties on the recipient's country side if shipped outside UE.
The graphics do not contain trademarks of any motorcycle brand.
Graphics are an artistic vision created by Billy Cune Art.
To find out more about copyright please visit this page.
Despatch & Shipping
Each ordered artwork is printed individually, carefully packed and marked with the flag of the country of the buyer.
To find out more about shipping process please visit this page.
We are sending most of our parcels using international couriers or national post office.


text:
They say Germany's two greatest contributions to Western Civilization were the Reformation and hops in beer. And both happened at about the same time.
As condensed history, so it goes. But hops also radically impacted pottery history. Everybody wanted beer once early 16th century brewers, village housewives mostly, began producing it. Kids even got their diluted "little beer" for breakfast. And the best beer containers, before mass produced glass, were stoneware bottles. Demand skyrocketed. Germans had been tinkering with stoneware since the 10th century. But 16th to 18th century salt-fired German stoneware became world renowned because of beer.
Unfortunately Germany's Rhineland district, where the best work was made, was a playground of war for centuries. Whole communities were continually uprooted by chronic warfare. Rhennish potters from Raeren, Freshcen and Siegburg ultimately ended up in the somewhat calmer Westerwald region.
Along the way they picked up improvements in clays, sprig decorations, and brilliant manganese and cobalt highlights. Their work spawned off-shoots, reproductions, fakes and revivals long after their dominance had passed.
German stoneware was so popular, English potters couldn't prevent caveats from diluting their July 22, 1672 Parliamentary Order in Council meant to insulate local markets. The final bill prohibited imports of "any kind or sort of Painted Earthen Wares whatsoever except those of China, and Stone bottles and Juggs."
Tons of German stoneware, literally, were shipped to England's North American colonies during the 18th century. Ironically beer bottles and beer mugs, "krugen" and "cannen," were not the top imports. Chamber pots were. But drinking vessels were close behind. And they were scattered almost as far.
Colonists weren't the only admirers of salt-fired German stoneware, however. Many Native American burial sites included Westerwald jugs. When pottery is done well, there are no boundaries to how far it will be collected.
Stoneware in America. Robert Hunter, ed.
Stoneware: White Salt-Glazed, Rhenish and Dry Body. Gérard Gusset. National Historic Parks and Sites Branch, Parks Canada, Environment Canada/Ministry of the Environment, Ottawa, Canada. 1980.


text:
I haven't written about The Citadel's hoops team in a while (then again, I haven't had a blog post about anything in some time; I need to start cranking stuff out again). Honestly, though, there hasn't been a good reason to write about Bulldog basketball, at least a good positive reason.
At least The Citadel won on Monday night, beating Samford 61-50 for the Bulldogs' first road victory of the season. A sign of things to come? To be honest, I doubt it.
The Citadel is 6-13 overall, 2-5 in the Southern Conference, with home games against Appalachian State on Thursday and Western Carolina on Saturday. Prior to the Samford win, the Bulldogs had lost five straight SoCon contests.
What is the difference between this year's edition of the basketball Bulldogs and, say, last year's squad? I won't compare them to the 2008-09 team that won 20 games, which included Demetrius Nelson and John Brown. However, I think it is fair to compare the 2009-10 and 2010-11 outfits.
Last season's team featured a rotation mainstay who is no longer in school, Harrison Dupont. Dupont had a nice debut campaign (alas, there would be no followup season, at least in Charleston), averaging 14 points per 40 minutes of play and finishing with an eFG of 48.2%, highest of all the regulars and highest on the team overall, with one exception.
That one exception was Mike Groselle, who saw limited action due to injury/illness, but showed signs of being a very effective player when he saw action. It really shouldn't be a surprise that Groselle has had a fine sophomore season. So far this year Groselle is averaging 19 points per 40 minutes of play with an eFG of 58.9%, leading the team (again). That is good for 11th among Southern Conference players.
He is also averaging almost six rebounds per contest (Dupont was good for four boards per game). Groselle's FG% of 58.9 is good for sixth in the SoCon.
Groselle's development has basically replaced the lost production of Dupont, if not surpassed it. They aren't really similar players, so it's not a true like vs. like comparison (particularly from a defensive perspective), but I think it does make it easier to look at the rest of the team numbers and see where the differences lie.
One difference is the reduced contributions from Cosmo Morabbi, who played in all 33 games last season and averaged over 18 minutes per game. Morabbi has been injured and has missed several games, but even when he was playing, his minutes had been cut in half.
Morabbi has struggled with his jumper this season. Actually, struggle doesn't really describe it; he hasn't made a three-pointer yet this year (0-8) after shooting 37.9% (25-66) from beyond the arc in 2009-10. In his previous two seasons for the Bulldogs, Morabbi was a dependable member of the rotation who wasn't afraid to take big shots; not having his typical production has been a problem.
Then there is post play. Last season Joe Wolfinger was the transfer hopeful who never quite fit into The Citadel's offense. However, Wolfinger's offensive production compares favorably to that of "Big Mike Squared", the duo of Williams and Dejworek.
Morakinyo Williams has missed time with injury (he has played fewer minutes than Morabbi), and Mike Dejworek hasn't been a major factor, either. The two have combined to score 47 points in 219 minutes of play, which per game is about half of the scoring output by Wolfinger last season. Neither has been a force on the boards.
A few other odds and ends:
— Last season, 36.5% of The Citadel's total points came via the three-point shot. So far this year, that number is 23.2%.
— The Citadel's eFG of 44.5% is in the bottom 50 nationally; last season, the Bulldogs had an eFG of 48.4% (middle of the pack nationally).
— The Bulldogs are not forcing turnovers this season. Opponents have a turnover rate of 16%. That puts The Citadel in the bottom 25 nationally. Last season's opponent turnover rate was 19%. That's a significant difference.
— Defensively, The Citadel ranks in the bottom 50 nationally in defensive FG% and defensive 2FG%. The Bulldogs have a defensive 3FG of 34.4%, which isn't that bad, but not nearly as good as last season's 32.4%, which was 80th-best in the country.
— In SoCon play, the Bulldogs currently rank last or next-to-last in defensive 2FG%, defensive turnover rate, and points allowed per possession. The sample size is a little small, admittedly.
— As noted by Jeff Hartsell, Zach Urbanus and Cameron Wells have been logging some serious minutes lately, thanks to a slender bench (Morabbi being unavailable really hurts there).
After a loss to Coastal Carolina earlier in the season, Chuck Driesell mentioned on his postgame radio show that he was worried about fatigue affecting the Bulldogs' play.
In the SoCon teleconference this week, however, Driesell sang a slightly different tune. He noted that the loss of Morabbi had impacted his ability to substitute players who had experience, and he also mentioned that a way to address concerns about too much game action for individual players would be to monitor (and presumably lessen) their work during practice.
However, Driesell stated during the teleconference that he saw "no signs of fatigue" and that Wells and Urbanus are "young guys [who] should be able to handle" increased minutes.
We'll see.
— Six weeks ago, I wrote that the Bulldogs seem to lack an offensive identity. Here is, to my mind at least, one example of that:
Last season, Zach Urbanus and Austin Dahn each averaged about one three-point attempt every five and a half minutes of playing time (5.7 for Urbanus, 5.6 for Dahn). This season, with an increased number of possessions per game (about five more), Dahn is averaging a three-point attempt every 5.1 minutes he is on the court. And Urbanus?
He's only averaging one three-point try every 7.5 minutes of play.
With the increase in tempo, Urbanus is averaging more total shots per contest this season than last year on a per-minute basis, as is Dahn. Dahn, however, is taking more three-pointers than Urbanus (25 more, even while playing almost 100 minutes fewer than Zach). Neither is shooting as well from beyond the arc as they did last season (Urbanus is at 36.7% after shooting 41.1% from three last year; Dahn is down from 34.7% to 28.6%).
That may be reflective of how other teams are playing them defensively, or it may be due to a lack of offensive cohesion, or perhaps it's a combination of both. Regardless, it seems to me that the leading three-point shooter in The Citadel's history needs to be leading the team in three-point attempts.
This has been a tough year so far for Chuck Driesell. He's learned that being the coach of The Citadel's basketball team is not easy. He knew that going in, obviously, but there is still a lot of on-the-job training at the military college. He has to know that a lot of fans are disappointed in the way the season has gone. There were high expectations for this team, and to date they haven't been met.
It probably doesn't help matters that his predecessor, Ed Conroy, is having a nice start to his tenure at Tulane, and recently was featured in a local article describing his salesmanship of the program. Conroy has benefited from a relatively soft early schedule, but it's also true that he's already won two conference games in C-USA, only one fewer than the Green Wave won all of last season.
Tangent: in that article, the writer describes how Conroy somehow talked 80 Marquette students (in New Orleans as part of a volunteer group) into attending a weeknight game between Tulane and UTEP. How many cadets will attend the Saturday game at McAlister Field House against Western Carolina?
There is still time, of course. Maybe the win over Samford will be the start of something special. The two upcoming home games are both winnable.
If Wells and Urbanus are going to play 38-40 minutes every night, it might be best for The Citadel to revert to its slow, slower, slowest style of play from the last two seasons. Lowering the amount of possessions might serve to reduce the chances of either getting in foul trouble, and also could keep them from running out of gas, either in individual games or over the course of the season.
It also would have the potential of settling down the offense. I don't think it would hurt Groselle and Urbanus, in particular, if the tempo were decreased. Wells (who had a "Cameron Wells game" against Samford, taking over the last 10 minutes of that contest) is capable of thriving in any offensive system.
Slowing the game down also increases the value of offensive rebounds and other possession-changing plays, which is to the advantage of players like Bryan Streeter and Daniel Eykyn.
I'm ready to see a long Bulldog winning streak. How about eleven straight? It's happened before…
Filed under: Basketball, The Citadel | Tagged: Appalachian State, Austin Dahn, Bryan Streeter, C-USA, Cameron Wells, Chuck Driesell, Coastal Carolina, Cosmo Morabbi, Daniel Eykyn, Demetrius Nelson, Ed Conroy, Harrison Dupont, Jeff Hartsell, Joe Wolfinger, John Brown, Marquette, McAlister Field House, Mike Dejworek, Mike Groselle, Morakinyo Williams, Samford, Southern Conference, The Citadel, Tulane, UTEP, Western Carolina, Zach Urbanus | Leave a comment »


text:
£13tn: hoard hidden from taxman by global elite
• Study estimates staggering size of offshore economy
• Private banks help wealthiest to move cash into havens
A global super-rich elite has exploited gaps in cross-border tax rules to hide an extraordinary £13 trillion ($21tn) of wealth offshore – as much as the American and Japanese GDPs put together – according to research commissioned by the campaign group Tax Justice Network. ….
Read more » guardian.co.uk
Via – Twitter


text:
Día de Muertos! Day of the Pete!
After coloring the Wenchkin van, our pal Wenchkin was so pleased she actually drew me! So now you can colorize Pete.
(The image above is of course from my avatar, which originally came from this photo.)
I feel quite honored… If you like coloring (and who doesn't!?) check out the rest of the Yucca Flats, N.M. site for more awesome coloring action.


text:
Tracy Beckerman: The case of the Bathroom Phantom
The resort I stayed in for a writing retreat was old.
It wasn't one of those spartan, spa-like places with hot stone massages and seaweed facials. It was more of an old west lodge, with fireplaces in every room, chairs you could sink into, and loads of warm, belly-filling comfort food. It was built sometime around 1920 and was host to a number of well-known writers and artists.
It was also, reportedly, haunted.
The haunted part was not really an issue for me. As a connoisseur of old hotels, I've shared quarters with alleged ghosts before and found they were mostly benign, if not sometimes noisy. As long as they didn't answer to a deity named Zuul and threaten the lodge with destruction by a giant Stay Puff Marshmallow man, I was cool with it.
I wasn't really thinking about any ghosts, though, when my bathroom suddenly started to emit a rather pungent, unpleasant kind of bathroom smell. I flushed the toilet a bunch of times and ran the sink and shower, but everything seemed to be working fine.
"Can you call Maintenance," I asked the lady at the front desk. "There doesn't seem to be a problem with the plumbing, but the bathroom smells really bad. Maybe there's a sewage issue?"
"There isn't anything around or below your bathroom to cause that," she said. "But I'll get somebody over there to take a look."
Eventually the maintenance man showed up and went under and around the building I was in, but nothing turned up. As the day progressed, the smell got worse and I had to close the bathroom door so it didn't seep into the bedroom. I wasn't sure I'd be able to spend the night in there, but there was no other room for me to move into … the lodge was full.
I went to sleep that night with my pillow over my head trying to hide from the awful poopy smell. I managed to fall asleep but was suddenly awoken in the middle of the night by the sound of my toilet flushing. Tentatively, I walked to the bathroom door, afraid that someone, somehow, had entered the bathroom, used the toilet and flushed it. I looked around my room to see what I could possibly use as a weapon in case the intruder was still in the bathroom. But there was only one thing that was heavy enough and pointy enough to inflict bodily damage.
I grabbed the deer head off the wall and using it like a shield, I threw open the bathroom door.
"Aaaahhh!" I yelled, brandishing the deer head at the mystery toilet user. But the bathroom was empty. The windows were locked. The only way into and out of the bathroom, besides my door, was the bathtub drain.
Deciding I must have been dreaming, I closed the door again, hung up the deer head, and went back to sleep. When I woke up in the morning, the smell was gone. Nothing lingered. There wasn't so much as a whiff of what had smelled so bad the day before.
"It's so weird," I said to the lady at the front desk. "The smell was horrible yesterday and today it's like it never even happened." I told her about the dream I'd had about someone flushing my toilet in the middle of the night and she smiled a knowing grin.
"Well, you know, some people say this lodge is haunted."
"So, you're saying some phantom pooper came into my room yesterday, left a phantom poop in my toilet, and then came back last night because he forgot to flush?" I said.
"Could be," she replied.
"Okay," I said. "But next time he comes to do that, could you ask him to bring some air freshener?"
You can follow Tracy on Twitter @TracyBeckerman and become a fan on Facebook at www.facebook.com/LostinSuburbiaFanPage.


text:
Lead the kind of ministry you've always dreamed of…
Many congregations are declining due to an inward focus, and see their pastor as someone who should only minister to their needs. But pastors must anticipate a better future. Direct Hit offers hope to leaders of congregations that have lost their outward focus. By preparing for and leading systemic change, pastors can bring new life into the culture of a congregation, guiding it to answer God's call to reach people with the good news.
Direct Hit offers practical explanations for how to:
Systemic change occurs as a result of hard work, but the gain far outweighs the pain. Once change has occurred, a whole new world of opportunity opens up—a world in which you are privileged to equip, lead, and oversee a congregation that has joined God's mission. Ready. Aim. Go for it!
"Church leaders need more than motivation and inspiration. In Direct Hit, Paul Borden explains how to change dysfunction to health and decline to growth."
Leith Anderson, Senior Pastor
Wooddale Church, Eden Prairie, MN
"Direct Hit gets to the heart of the matter. Pastors--it's about Christ and leadership. Congregation--it's about Christ's purpose and mission. There is plenty of interpretation and coaching here for both sides of the pastoral relationship, but above all there is urgency. It's time to stop dithering and get on with it."
Tom Bandy, President
Easum, Bandy, and Associates
Paul Borden is Executive Minister of Growing Healthy Churches (formerly American Baptist Churches of the West) and is in demand nationally as a church consultant. Direct Hit is the second Abingdon publication by Borden, whose first book, Hit the Bullseye, has sold 11,000 copies.


text:
We have been hard at work on a plan to get 'u' touring the US! Summer of 2015 could be the moment the opera finally makes it across the Atlantic.
Want to bring the Klingon Opera to a city near you in the US?
Friend us on Facebook Klingon TheOpera and check out our group U! the Klingon Opera Summer 2015 U.S. Tour! to find out how you can become involved with the tour! You can also follow us on Twitter!


text:
3MTM Scotch-WeldTM Hot Melt Adhesives are advanced adhesives to help you improve productivity, lower cost, and minimize waste. Adhesives are 100% solids thermoplastic resins that become fluid when heated and quickly wet the bonding surface.
Our multi-purpose adhesive features a 40 - 50 second open bond, to allow for positioning and fit adjustment on wood, polyethylene, polypropylene, corrugated boxes, and lightweight substrates on furniture, upholstery and novelties. Its nearly instant bonding property reduces production time for POP assembly, joining, attaching, securing, repairing, potting, panel bonding, wire tacking, bundling, sealing, encapsulating, rigidizing, foam bonding, and packaging.We manufacture 3M Hot Melt Adhesive 3792 with 100% solids, thermoplastic resin for use with either the 3M™ Scotch-Weld™ Hot Melt Applicator LT, LT Quadrack or EC, depending on version. It is a low-volatile-organic compound (VOC) and produces minimal odor when heated, helping to support a comfortable work environment. This thermoplastic adhesive has excellent thermal shock, heat resistance, electrical insulating properties, and is non-corrosive. About Hot Melt Adhesives . Hot melt adhesives/hot-glue sticks have a relatively hot melting point that ranges between approximately 250 – 380°F (121 – 196°C), depending on the formulation, and are applied with hot-melt applicators, commonly referred to as hot-glue guns. Hot-melt glues provide a nearly instant bond between many plastics, paper and wood, but when the bond is reheated, some varieties will soften, allowing the bonded surfaces to be separated. The quick-stick nature of hot-melt adhesives speeds up operations in packaging and production. Low melt adhesives/ hot-glue sticks have a relatively low melting point that ranges between approximately 170 – 250°F (76 – 121°C), depending on the formulation, and are applied with low-temperature applicators, commonly referred to as hot-glue guns. Low-melt adhesives are beneficial in that they can be used to bond heat sensitive materials such as foam and a range of plastics. They provide a nearly instant bond but when the bond is reheated, some varieties will soften, allowing the bonded surfaces to be separated. The aggressive hot tack nature of low-melt adhesives speeds up production and assembly operations that involve light gage metals, some plastics, and other non-fibrous materials in addition to building display boards, floral displays, and hobby projects. These adhesives are also used in manufacturing, assembly and packaging processes, window, door, construction, transportation, electronics, and other industries, as well as in woodworking, assembling building store displays, convention sample boards, trophies, novelties, upholstery, furniture, audio components, and cabinets.