text:
Computer-related developments across the social sciences are converging on an entirely new type of infrastructure that integrates across methodologies, disciplines, and nations. This article examines the potential outlined by a number of conference reports, special grant competitions, and recent research awards supported by the National Science Foundation. Together, these sources describe an Internet-based network of collaboratories combining survey, experimental, and geographic methodologies to serve research and education in all of the social sciences.
Keywords: data archives, geographic information systems, web-based surveys, web-based laboratories, collaboratories, computational social science
The evolution of the social sciences has reached a crucial point that might be called a phase change in which old, atomistic, and impressionistic ways of doing research are superseded by a far more systematic and unified methodology. To bring social science to the level of rigor already achieved by some of the physical sciences, a new type of facility will be needed. This will be a transdisciplinary, Internet-based collaboratory that will provide social and behavioral scientists with the databases, software and hardware tools, and other resources to conduct worldwide research that integrates experimental, survey, geographic, and economic methodologies on a much larger scale than was possible previously. This facility will enable advanced research and professional education in economics, sociology, psychology, political science, social geography, and related fields.
In many branches of social science, a new emphasis on the rigor of formal laboratory experimentation has driven researchers to develop procedures and software to conduct online interaction experiments using computer terminals attached to local area networks (LANs). The opportunity to open these laboratories to the Internet will reduce the cost per research participant and increase greatly the number of institutions, researchers, students, and research participants who can take part. The scale of social science experimentation can increase by an order of magnitude or more, examining a much wider range of phenomena and ensuring great confidence in results through multiple replication of crucial studies.
Technology for administering questionnaires to very large numbers of respondents over the Internet will revolutionize survey research. Data from past questionnaire surveys can be the springboard for new surveys with vastly larger numbers of respondents at lower cost than by traditional methods. Integrated research studies can combine modules using both questionnaire and experimental methods. Results can be linked via geographic analysis to other sources of data including census information, economic statistics, and data from other experiments and surveys. Longitudinal studies will construct time-series comparisons across data sets to chart social and economic trends. Each new study will be designed so that the data automatically and instantly become part of the archives, and scientific publications will be linked to the data sets on which they are based so that the network becomes a universal knowledge system.
The expertise, hardware, databases, and user communities that will make this facility possible are located at many different universities, archives, and government agencies. The Internet, however, can bind them together into a unity. Various sites in the collaboratory will have special responsibilities for collecting, archiving, analyzing, cataloging, retrieving, and integrating social, behavioral, and economic data. All must be linked through shared protocols on data transfer and cost recovery so that the resources at any one location are available to students and researchers at all other locations. New tools for analysis and visualization of data will be required, as will a range of new data collection methods. Like a great telescope, this facility will provide the physical infrastructure and organizational framework for research by scientists from many universities. Its distributed archive will provide data and statistical analysis tools to researchers, students, and policymakers everywhere.
To determine the scientific needs and opportunities in this general area, the National Science Foundation (NSF) Directorate for Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences (SBE) has supported many varied workshops, bringing together social scientists and experts on information technologies to advise the NSF as it plans its investments. Already back in June 1995, SBE held a workshop at the San Diego Supercomputer Center called "Connecting and Collaborating" (see Appendix), which focused on the implications of the Internet for international scientific collaboration. The workshop report observed, "As computer-mediated communication makes physical separation less and less of a barrier to international collaboration, a 'globalization' of formerly parochial disciplines occurs." This means not only that sociologists from different nations can collaborate but also that the boundaries separating sociology from other disciplines such as political science, economics, and anthropology have begun to dissolve. The workshop participants recognized that the new technology not only permits but practically demands the integration of the social sciences across both nations and disciplines. The greatest minds always have recognized that there should exist a single unified social science, united in the diversity of theories and methodologies it employs. In the 21st century, this dream can be brought to reality (Romans, 1967).
Large social science databases are unusual in that they generally are capable of serving many researchers beyond those who originally collected the data. This is to say that "secondary analysis" of existing data sets is a major method of gaining scientific knowledge in economics, sociology, political science, anthropology, and other social and behavioral sciences. Therefore, SBE has long placed a high priority on preserving such data and making them widely available to scientists. The NSF archiving policy for quantitative social and economic data stated, "For appropriate data sets, researchers should be prepared to place their data in fully cleaned and documented form in a data archive or library within [1] year after the expiration of an award."[1]
The largest number of NSF-supported social science data sets have been archived at the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR), located within the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan. As its web site explains, the ICPSR is a
membership-based, not-for-profit organization serving member colleges and universities in the United States and abroad. [The] ICPSR provides access to the world's largest archive of computerized social science data, training facilities for the study of quantitative social analysis techniques, and resources for social scientists using advanced computer technologies.[2]
During recent years, the ICPSR has provided data over the Internet by file transfer protocol (FTP) free to member institutions and for a moderate fee to others. Much effort has gone into producing electronic versions of the codebooks that describe all the variables in the most important data sets, but the process of obtaining data remains cumbersome and time-consuming. It is not possible, for example, to browse online across multiple data sets looking for particular data, nor is it possible to combine information from several data sets without first obtaining copies of all of them and writing elaborate software routines from scratch.
The ICPSR is by no means the only social science archive, and several others have received NSF support. For example, the Roper Center was established at the University of Connecticut with the help of a grant from the NSF and has been the repository for the long-running NSF-supported General Social Survey (GSS), which is the foundation for the International Social Survey Program.[3] Over the years, SEE has supported the creation of public use samples from many of the decennial U.S. censuses, and the Social History Research Laboratory at the University of Minnesota has created a system for integrating them and distributing the data freely to anyone over the Internet.[4] The Henry A. Murray Research Center of Radcliffe College received NSF support to create a collection of racially and ethnically diverse behavioral science data sets.[5] The NSF contributed to the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, which was chiefly supported by the Demographic and Behavioral Sciences branch of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. A public use extract of the data is available from the Sociometrics Corporation, which serves as a commercial archive for several data sets.[6]
Recently, several researchers have simply placed their data on the Internet from their universities' own servers. For example, the data from the NSF-supported Russia Longitudinal Monitoring Survey are available directly from the University of North Carolina.[7] The net result is that data are available from so many different sites, in so many different formats, and under so many different financial arrangements that it requires great tenacity to locate and obtain data for secondary analysis. Specialists might have both the knowledge and motivation to get the chief data sets in their own narrow area, but the current situation inhibits interdisciplinary research and severely discourages use of the data by students, policymakers, journalists, and the general public.
Many users of social scientific data and the archive managers themselves have long recognized the high desirability of developing a web-based system for providing social science data swiftly and flexibly to a wide range of users. On June 18, 1996, the prototype General Social Survey Data and Information Retrieval System was launched on the World Wide Web by the ICPSR, the National Opinion Research Center of the University of Chicago, and the Computer-Assisted Survey Methods Program at the University of California, Berkeley, supported by SBE in collaboration with the NSF's Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering and its Directorate for Education and Human Resources.[8] Anywhere in the world, students and researchers can, without cost, access and analyze data from more than 35,000 questionnaire respondents at this site. Well-organized codebooks list the 3,000 questions that have been included in the GSS since its inception in 1972, and a hyperlink goes from each item to tables of data and to abstracts of any of the 3,000 GSS-related publications that used the item. Statistical analysis adequate for most purposes can be done online, and researchers who need to use their own software for more advanced analyses can download the data. This site receives very heavy use and demonstrates both the scientific and educational values of such a service. However, the GSS is only one of many data sets that need to be provided, and the Web-based system still is very primitive in many respects.
The next step in the development of a comprehensive system for providing social survey data is to build a prototype with multiple data sets, multiple sites, and sophisticated search technology. The NSF-led, multi-agency Digital Library Initiative has taken the first step through a $1.8 million grant to Sidney Verba and colleagues at Harvard University to create an operational social science digital data library. This "Virtual Data Center" (VDS) will develop and demonstrate robust scalable methods for linking multiple distributed collections of social science data including creation of system protocols and modular software that will be made freely available. The VDS also will be an applications testing ground, evaluating and improving the capability of digital library technology to serve a variety of users simultaneously. These users include "fact seekers" who need particular pieces of information that might be strewn across several unfamiliar data sets, teachers and students involved in social science education at all levels, and advanced researchers.
The VDS is an outgrowth of the system that Harvard already has created for its own campus, and the distributed survey archive of the future might be located on hundreds of campuses around the world rather than concentrated at the ICPSR or another central archive. An institution like the ICPSR still might be necessary to coordinate efforts, catalog data sets, and lead efforts in survey research education and methodological development. If researchers use modem software and properly document their data sets while they are creating them, then placing the data on the web will be a trivial task. Long-term preservation of data might require mirror site arrangements among groups of universities and a few physically secure repositories. But these are organizational rather than technical problems, and the VDS project will begin to solve them. The chief technological challenges related to survey archives concern data reliability, confidentiality, and retrieval.
The fiscal year 1999 SBE special competition announcement, Enhancing Infrastructure for the Social and Behavioral Sciences, included among its four funding thrusts "Web-based data archiving systems that enable worldwide access to linked databases and that incorporate innovative capabilities for metadata, file searching, and data confidentiality protection" (NSF, 1999a). If an efficient, comprehensive, web-based archive for social and behavioral science data existed, then new research could be solidly based on earlier studies and fresh data could be linked to the existing databases for comparison and calibration.
Equally important will be the development of technology, commonly accepted standards, and social organizations for archiving diverse types of data that go beyond traditional textual and numerical forms. Some progress already has been achieved in the area of linguistics, for example, through the Child Language Data Exchange System at Carnegie Mellon University, which has been developing a cooperative database of children's speech, methods for computer analysis of transcripts, and systems for linking transcripts to digitized audio and video.[9] Very recently, samples of recorded human speech have become available over the web from the Linguistic Data Consortium and the Phonological Atlas of North America, the latter of which keys the samples to clickable maps of the speakers' locations in the United States, vividly demonstrating the geographic variations in how Americans talk.[10] Carnegie Mellon's Informedia, one of the original six projects of the Digital Library Initiative, pioneered integration of speech, images, and text in digital video libraries.[11] A major new digital library for the spoken word will be announced shortly.
The widespread adoption of the Internet and the web makes it possible to administer questionnaire surveys electronically, potentially achieving much greater cost-effectiveness and permitting the integration of data from many sources. At the same time, there are significant technical challenges that must be met, especially in the areas of logistics and sampling. Recognizing the need for innovation in this and related areas, the NSF Methodology, Measurement, and Statistics Program, in collaboration with a consortium of federal statistical agencies represented by the Interagency Council of Statistical Policy and the Federal Committee on Statistical Methodology, has held a special competition on survey research methods. Included among the topic areas in the competition announcement is "secure and easy-to-use methods of collecting survey data via the Web" (NSF, 1999b).
Today's leading social scientific surveys are very expensive interview studies of national samples. For example, the GSS administers a 90-minute face-to-face interview to 1,500 American adults at a cost of about $500 per interview. However, the respondents are not a true random sample because cost considerations with respect to the interviewer's travel require that respondents be recruited in a limited number of geographic clusters, and there is no list of residents from which a random sample could be drawn. The small number of geographic areas surveyed limits scientists' ability to link GSS data to other geographically based data such as the U.S. census. Because of the high cost and the many research communities that seek time in the GSS, it is impossible to include more than a handful of questions on any particular topic. This prevents the GSS from employing much of the best methodology of measurement scale construction, which requires inclusion of a large number of items. Surveys like the GSS will be needed in future decades to chart the changing social, economic, and political conditions of the American public. But many types of social science will advance more rapidly through surveys administered over the web.
Web-based surveys can reach very large numbers of respondents at low cost. They will be geographically dispersed so that their data can be linked to the census, to local economic information, and to data from other web-based surveys. It might not be possible to hold the interviewees' interest for the full 90-minute questionnaire of the GSS, but shorter duration surveys administered to very large numbers of respondents can in aggregate include far more items, thereby permitting much finer measurement of scientifically interesting variables. The high cost of major national surveys generally has restricted the topics studied to those that especially require highly representative samples such as family structure and economic status in the Panel Study of Income Dynamics[12] and voting behavior in the American National Election Study,[13] data from both of which are now freely available over the web. A vast array of other scientific research areas, therefore, have languished for many years without the large-scale survey data that would permit knowledge to progress.
Although conventional surveys such as the GSS do not achieve true random samples, they are more representative than the populations who currently would respond to a web-based survey. Methodologies must be developed to calibrate the respondent pools of web-based surveys to simulate as closely as possible a true random sample, for example, by inclusion of demographic and other variables that can be used in statistical weighting of responses. In addition, the objectivity of experimental methods can be employed, giving randomly selected subsets of respondents somewhat different stimulus items and measuring their alternative reactions. Indeed, computer techniques make it possible to give each of thousands of respondents a uniquely different survey compounded of a subset of a large collection of items and then to analyze items across respondents to identify commonalties and patterns that would not be visible in a traditional survey project.
One drawback of existing national samples is that only small fractions of the population often have the personal characteristics, life experiences, and/or levels of education that would make them appropriate respondents for many types of surveys. For example, research supported by SBE's Science Resources Studies division indicates that only about 14% of Americans are attentive to issues concerning science and technology (National Science Board, 1998, p. 7). A general-purpose web-based survey system could recruit large numbers of respondents, give them a few preliminary questions to categorize them, and then allocate them in real time to the specific studies for which they are the most appropriate respondents. The issue of generalizability of results can be addressed not by investing in prohibitively expensive random samples but rather by replicating results across a variety of subsets of respondents who are likely to have different patterns of response to the key items. When significant differences in results are found across subpopulations, further research can be done to discover the factors responsible for the variations and to explain them theoretically.
Some researchers are conducting surveys both on the web and by other means, thereby making it possible to compare results across methodologies. For example, Trudy Ann Cameron at the University of California, Los Angeles, is doing a web-based survey of beliefs about future climate change in collaboration with faculty collaborators at several universities who will recruit student respondents as well as a conventional mailed survey of the general population.[14] A team headed by David Weimer at the University of Rochester is evaluating the potential of Web-based surveys in comparison with those done by telephone in a study of people's willingness to pay to reduce emissions of greenhouse gasses.[15]
Probably the most extensive web-based survey demonstration project yet completed is James Witte's Survey 2000, administered on the web in November 1998 by the National Geographic Society. More than 50,000 adults and 16,000 children completed one or another version of this complex survey, which focused on geographic migration, regional culture, social environment. Internet use, interests, and attitudes. Most respondents were residents of the United States or Canada, and the geographic database includes their detailed postal codes, but at least 100 respondents came from 1 of 33 other nations.
The computers administering Survey 2000 followed extremely complex instructions that used respondents' answers to early questions to determine which later questions to ask, for example, obtaining a mobility history throughout the person's life and collecting data about preferences for foods and musical styles that belonged to the respondent's region of birth or current region of residence. In addition, one or another of four major topical modules was included at random. The ability of surveys to employ audiovisual stimuli is demonstrated by the fact that many respondents had the opportunity to respond to questions about clips of music that were transmitted. The survey was specifically designed to be linked to other geographically based data, and the National Geographic Society plans to place the data on the web in a system that would make it valuable for students and researchers everywhere.
Computer administration of questionnaires permits the researcher to collect information of many types that cannot be obtained through paper surveys or telephone interviews. For example, questions can incorporate graphics, photographs, sounds, and moving images, and the computer can measure nonverbal behavior of the respondent such as the time it takes to react to various stimuli. This last point is the fundamental principle of the Implicit Association Test, developed by Anthony Greenwald and Mahzarin Banaji.[16] Twin web sites demonstrating this methodology, at the University of Washington and Yale University, have received more than 200,000 "visits." The researchers note that people often are unaware of important components of their own cognitive processes, so these phenomena cannot be studied effectively through conventional self-report questionnaire items. Web-based demonstration tests using the new implicit association technology have explored its value for research on social stereotypes of age, race, and gender; on attitudes toward oneself; and on preferences for academic subjects such as mathematics.
A form of research that is methodologically related to surveys is content analysis of material that already is flowing freely over the Internet or that can be obtained for a fee through various online data services. Political scientist Joshua Goldstein has employed machine coding of news stories carried by the Reuters news service to study the actions of national leaders in regional conflicts such as that in Bosnia.[17] Philip Schrodt and Deborah Gerner are doing similar research using machine coding of Reuters reports of political events in the Middle East.[18] Sociologist J. Craig Jenkins has used automatic event coding to analyze text from Reuters.[19]
All of the new Internet-based research methodologies require calibration studies to determine their biases and to find methods to compensate for them. In wide-ranging research on political demonstrations in the United States, Germany, and Belarus, John McCarthy, Clark McPhail, and Pamela Oliver examined the factors that determined the extent and type of media coverage devoted to such events.[20] Once appropriate validation and calibration procedures have been developed, information from news services and other sources concerning events can be attached to the geographic location where they took place for combination with data from opinion surveys, economic indicators, and even broadly based experiments on people's actual behavior.
The importance of rigorous experimental methods has long been recognized in several of the social sciences, but very recently two developments have given this type of research a fresh urgency. First, the development of new technologies has rendered large-scale experimental research far more cost-effective and feasible for a much wider range of scientific questions than in the past. Second, throughout the social sciences, there is a widespread recognition that it is necessary to go beyond the speculative or exploratory work of the past to achieve a high degree of reliability in research findings, which in turn requires improved rigor and greater attention to replication of results by multiple teams and methodologies.
Many of the most challenging social scientific questions involve interactions among larger numbers of people than can be accommodated in conventional laboratories including markets, election systems, and social networks. In addition, the educational value of social science laboratories is limited by the fact that few universities have them. Both the replication and extension of experimental results are hampered by the small number of research teams. Now, it is possible to build Internet-based distributed laboratories, which require new software and organizational frameworks. By these means, experiments now can be scaled up to include hundreds or even thousands of participants. Future "Netlabs" will cross national and cultural boundaries, bringing new population samples into the laboratory. The time duration of many experiments can be greatly expanded to cover evolutionary processes never before studied. Perhaps most important, laboratory experimentation now can become part of the routine education of undergraduates in the social sciences. This Net-based research will have the added benefit of allowing scientists to compare how people interact electronically to how they behave in conventional laboratory settings, thus examining the distinctive qualities of electronic communication through highly rigorous research.
Researchers in several disciplines have pioneered the construction of modest experimental laboratories to study social interaction that are based on LANs of computers. For example, teams of sociologists at the University of South Carolina (led by David Willer) and the University of Iowa (led by Barry Markovsky) have collaborated on several projects developing and testing mathematically based theories of how the structure of social networks confers power on the people occupying certain locations in those networks. Each university has a very modest laboratory for running experiments on social interaction among small numbers of human participants, but the current technology does not permit them to link the two laboratories in real time or to open up the experimental systems to include large numbers of research participants arranged in realistically complex social networks. Over a decade, SBE invested $1,052,033 in a dozen peer-reviewed awards[21] to conduct this scientifically excellent pioneering research in this pair of laboratories. Then in 1999, an award of $ 1,199,215 was made under the Digital Library Initiative to support development of a prototype Internet-based laboratory for social interaction research.[22]
Another extremely important area for research is the functioning of various types of economic markets. SBE awards to economist Charles R. Plott, of the California Institute of Technology, totaling $1,204,974 have supported development of a laboratory capable of exploring the properties of experimental markets that are larger and operate over a longer time scale than those studied previously.[23] This work is establishing the knowledge base required to scale such experimental research up to much larger and more complex systems that are far more realistic models of securities and commodities markets in the real world.
Several other researchers also are exploring this promising approach. David Lucking Reiley has been comparing the dynamics of Internet-based auctions employing different formats and contrasting them to results from laboratory studies of face-to-face auctions.[241] Robert Mauro is developing an Internet-Based Decision Research System to carry out experiments at multiple remote locations.[25] Daniel McFadden is experimenting with the effect of anchoring and focal points in the response choices offered in Internet-based surveys, and with Paul Ruud he also has been pioneering the online distribution of social science software.[26]
To determine the scientific needs and opportunities in this rapidly developing field, SBE sponsored a workshop in October 1997 titled "NetLab" (see Appendix). A total of 20 social and behavioral scientists who are experts in this area combined their knowledge and produced a comprehensive report.[27] They agreed that the new computing and communications technologies permit experiments to be scaled up to include as many as 1,000 or more human participants. For example, courses at several colleges could link the laboratory sessions of their social psychology courses so that hundreds of students were engaged in the same experiment on all their campuses simultaneously. Other experiments could be run with hundreds of ordinary citizens over the web, interacting simultaneously in a realistic economic market or a simulated political election campaign. Corporations frequently invite researchers to conduct studies in management science or the sociology of organizations, often involving many hundreds of employees, and they often might find it more efficient to set aside a particular block of time when the selected employees participate simultaneously over the LAN using their office computers.
The NetLab workshop gave equal importance to the capability of web-based laboratories to reach across national boundaries, drawing people from a variety of cultures and populations into the research. A severe limitation of much conventional social science laboratory research is that the human participants often are highly homogeneous in their characteristics - proverbially middle-class college sophomores - so that the generalizability of the results to other groups is in severe doubt. In addition, because so few laboratories and teams currently exist, important research results seldom are verified in fresh studies, and Netlabs would greatly facilitate replication. Workshop participants also envisioned experiments of much longer duration, examining dynamic processes of change, as the Internet made it much more convenient to hold multiple experimental sessions with the same research participants. The Netlab has great educational potential. Advanced undergraduate and graduate students would have the crucial educational experience of setting up the local portion of the collaboratory, recruiting research participants, and analyzing the prompt results that can be available immediately after conclusion of the data collection sessions.
The NetLab workshop report also recognized that several major challenges must be met to bring these visions to reality. New software must be written that will run reliably on various platforms at multiple locations. Workshop participants enthusiastically advocated development of a universal modular software system that would facilitate running experiments with a wide range of designs, vastly reducing the effort required to prepare for a new experiment. There was a consensus that "large-scale centers and 'collaboratories' are necessary to help push the development of these new tools and approaches." As the physical hubs of the distributed Netlab, these centers would require special hardware and also would take on training and technical support functions. The report concluded that "social science Netlabs will have a massive impact on knowledge development and instruction."
One of the goals of SBE's special infrastructure competition is to "create Web-based collaboratories to enable real-time controlled experimentation, to share the use of expensive experimental equipment, and/or to share widely the process and results of research in progress" (NSF, 1999a). Whether the fiscal year 1999 or 2000 competitions support Netlab development will depend on the outcome of the regular NSF peer review process, but by listing experimentation collaboratories as a priority, SBE has recognized the importance of these facilities across numerous fields.
During recent years, there has been tremendous progress in computerized display and analysis of geographic data. Largely in the private sector, geographic information systems (GIS) have become a major industry, and rigorous methods of geographic information analysis (GIA) have developed rapidly in academia. These two parallel lines of development need to be combined, and GIS needs to transcend its emphasis on physical geography by including a greater number and variety of social variables and techniques of analysis. Perhaps the most fruitful realm for accomplishing this is in the linkage of geographically based data from multiple sources, permitting analysis at both the level of the geographic unit (community, city, state, nation) and the level of the individual human being.
It is worth distinguishing two very general social science conceptualizations of the linkage between geographically based data and data about individual human beings. First, geographic data can describe the environment in which the individual lives. For example, the GSS has long measured White people's attitudes toward African Americans, but respondents live in very different racial environments, some coming into constant contact with minorities and some living in parts of the country where there simply are very few minorities with whom to come into contact. Logically, the racial mix in the community should significantly influence racial attitudes, so it was an important step when researchers such as Marylee C. Taylor began adding to the GSS data set information from the census about the percentage of the local population who were African Americans.[28] Similarly, census data about the occupational structure of the local economy can illuminate the career options open to GSS respondents.
The second way in which geographic data can be combined with individual data is to treat the geographic data as an indirect but useful source of information about the individuals. For example, many studies have found that crime rates (notably larceny) are higher in communities with high rates of residential moving. It would be wrong simply to conclude that all thieves are transients, but it is reasonable to infer that they tend to have some characteristics related to transience such as weak social bonds.
A classical challenge in this type of research is called the ecological fallacy, which is the mistake of assuming that individuals have the typical characteristics for their areas. Theorists and methodologists have developed ways of meeting this challenge. First, we can recognize that all scientific findings are somewhat tentative, and we always must be looking for alternative explanations and fresh ways of testing the ideas empirically. Another approach is to recognize that the ecological fallacy usually is just a special case of the problem of spuriousness, the distorting effect of an unmeasured variable on the correlation between two other variables (Bainbridge, 1992, pp. 385-386, 452-453). The solution, then, is to make sure that we measure as many of the relevant variables as possible, which in this context we can do by combining several geographically based data sets. A host of multivariate statistical techniques already is available to help analyze geographically based data accurately, and new methods undoubtedly will be created if we invest seriously in developing this area of research.
In June 1996, representatives of the 29 research institutions that had formed the University Consortium for Geographic Information Science met to set research priorities in their field. Among these priorities were the societal implications of GIS, and the published report of this conference notes the great significance of the new technology for social science disciplines as varied as demography, econometrics, and political science. While listing unanticipated impacts of GIS on society, the report stated, "GIS can be used to link together digital street maps and telephone directories so that the telephone number of a house can be found by pointing to the image of the house on a computer screen. Marketing campaigns can be targeted to the imputed socioeconomic status of each household" (University Consortium for Geographic Information Science, 1996, p. 117). Whatever social benefit or risk these technical possibilities will raise when used in commercial applications, GIS offers entirely new possibilities to the social sciences, especially when used to combine detailed data from different sources.
The European Science Foundation sponsored a series of 12 workshops on different aspects of GIS, culminating in a conference held near Strasbourg, France, in September 1997. "Geographic Information Research at the Millennium" (see Appendix) stressed that interoperability across different systems and types of data was a very important new area for research. The published report noted, "In the social sciences in general, and in quantitative geography and regional economics in particular, a wide range of spatial models has been developed in the past decades for the purposes of describing, analyzing, forecasting, and policy appraisal of economic developments within a set of localities or regions." However, these methods have not been incorporated into GIS software, and across the social sciences many powerful statistical techniques exist but are not available in a practical form to users of GIS. Also crucial is the development of new techniques of statistical analysis and data modeling that will take advantage of the new computing power.
SBE has sponsored workshops on the application of geographic analysis in two substantive social science areas: (a) democratization and market transition and (b) human capital. These areas earlier had been identified by other workshops as very high priorities for the social sciences. The first of these topics concerns the huge changes taking place in state socialist societies such as the former Soviet Union and China as well as in other countries undergoing dramatic upheavals. As the original democratization workshop report noted, "The political, social, and economic transformations currently under way in the world provide a veritable social scientific laboratory for research on the dynamics and probable consequences of these global transformations" (NSF, 1993-1994).
The NSF-sponsored workshop, "Geographic Approaches to Democratization" (see Appendix), identified many needs for large, international databases in three general domains: (a) territoriality, (b) spatial structures and flows, and (c) human-environment relations. Examples of territoriality include changing national boundaries and political systems. One of the most striking spatial flows during recent years has been international migration. Among the crucial needs for vastly increased information and advanced systems for analyzing it is the complex pattern of natural resource scarcity and abundance across regions, nations, and communities. Many crucial research topics cross all three domains and require greatly improved information systems, for example, the interplay among political transformation, migration, and natural resources in relation to the rate of economic development.
Human capital sometimes is described as the skills and knowledge that human beings learn that make them valuable in the workplace, but the term also includes the value-enhancing aspects of individuals' social network and of the surrounding moral order. The original human capital workshop identified research needs in six areas that are of great substantive importance to the nation: (a) employing a productive workforce, (b) educating for the future, (c) fostering successful families, (d) building strong neighborhoods, (e) reducing disadvantage in a diverse society, and (f) overcoming poverty and deprivation (NSF, 1994).
The report of the 1995 workshop on "Geographic Information Analysis and Human Capital Research" (see Appendix) noted, "There is virtually no limit to the volume and variety of data that can be linked using space as the reference grid." At the same time, this workshop's participants agreed with those of the conference held by the European Science Foundation that the "coupling of GIS with more powerful statistical routines characteristic of GIA is yet in its infancy" (p. 7). Although noting methodological challenges such as the ecological fallacy, the report confidently asserted, "Geographic space can be utilized in social science research as a proxy for association or relatedness among social phenomena" (p. 8). To illustrate the range of human capital issues that can be studied geographically, the workshop examined scientific research that had been performed on three specific topics: (a) the relationship between human capital and the distribution of violent crime; (b) the role that neighborhoods and social networks play in creating and sustaining human capital; and (c) the interrelations of migration, demographic change, and human capital.
A scientific workshop examining geographic information science and geospatial activities at the NSF, "Geographic Information Science: Critical Issues in an Emerging Cross-Disciplinary Research Domain" (see Appendix), reported,
Scenarios for geographic information use in the year 2010 suggest great potential to extend the capabilities of scientific researchers, decision makers, and the public. This potential, however, will only be realized if there are substantial advances in [GIS], enhancing knowledge of geographic concepts and their computational implementations.... Information technology, communications infrastructure, microelectronics, and related technologies could enable unprecedented opportunities for discovery and new ways to do research.
The NSF has supported much cutting-edge research and development on GIS and related educational curriculum development. Notably, the NSF Geography and Regional Science Program has supported the National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis (NCGIA), which is a model of a multisite consortium, linking researchers and facilities at the University of California, Santa Barbara; the State University of New York at Buffalo; and the University of Maine at Orono.[29] Working parallel to the NCGIA, the Alexandria Digital Library has pioneered work with spatially indexed information including collections of maps and digital images.[30] Most of this work, however, has focused on physical geography, and much work will be required to extend the techniques to social geography.
Among the chief challenges that must be met by any highly public system to distribute social science data is the strict necessity of protecting the rights of the human beings whom the data concern. According to the NSF (1995) Grant Policy Manual, "The grantee is responsible for the protection of the rights and welfare of human subjects involved in activities supported by NSF" (sec. 711.1). This responsibility does not end when the grantee transfers data from an NSF award to an archive. The chief safeguard traditionally has been review of proposed research projects by university-based human subjects committees, operating in accordance with federal regulations. These regulations specifically exempt from full human subjects review research involving the use of educational tests (cognitive, diagnostic, aptitude, achievement), survey procedures, interview procedures, or observation of public behavior, unless (i) information obtained is recorded in such a manner that human subjects can be identified, directly or through identifiers linked to the subjects; and (ii) any disclosure of the human subjects' responses outside the research could reasonably place the subjects at risk of criminal or civil liability or be damaging to the subjects' financial standing, employability, or reputation.[31]
Mindful of these principles, the principal investigators on major NSF-supported surveys (e.g., GSS, Panel Study of Income Dynamics, National Elections Study) have been very cautious about giving researchers access to variables in their data sets that might be used to identify individual respondents. The most sensitive variable is the precise geographic location of the respondent's residence, but this also is crucial information for linking individual data to data about the surrounding community. Traditionally, there have been two solutions to this problem: (a) strict procedures for providing selected researchers with limited access to "geocodes" or other sensitive data under controlled conditions and with clear legally enforced restrictions and (b) statistically aggregating the data or handling them in some other manner that prevents researchers from deducing the identities of individuals.
In partnership with the Bureau of the Census, the NSF has explored methods for expanding social science access to sensitive census data under controlled conditions by establishing the Boston Research Data Center.[32] An example of the type of scientifically meritorious research of great policy significance conducted at this center is a project examining the interrelationship of air quality regulations, factory productivity, and corporate decisions about where to locate factories carried out by J. Vernon Henderson.[33] Based on the success of the Boston Research Data Center, the NSF has supported the creation of similar centers in California (University of California, Los Angeles, and University of California, Berkeley) and another site in a different geographic region to be announced soon.[34] In addition, Carnegie Mellon University has set up a center used extensively by the NSF-supported National Consortium on Violence Research.[35]
An alternate approach is to forbid researchers from accessing the raw data directly but to provide them with the aggregate statistical results they actually need to do their science. For example, the NSF-supported Luxembourg Income Study (LIS) is an archive possessing the original data from studies of individual and family income in many nations.[36] A researcher might ask, for example, for a table of the correlations between level of education and income in all the nations. Personnel at the LIS would do the necessary computer runs and send only the summary results to the researcher. If the LIS personnel are alert and follow well-designed protocols, then this will prevent anyone from identifying particular individuals described in any of the data sets.
However, a determined and unscrupulous person hypothetically could submit a series of apparently innocent analysis requests, from which individual data could be reconstructed, using various statistical inference methods. This has been called the problem of "deductive disclosure" or "inferential security" (Keller-McNulty & Unger, 1993). To achieve the maximum potential of integrated Internet-based social science databases, research must be carried out on how to prevent inferential attacks on database integrity, and technology has to be developed to permit maximum use of the data by students and the general public while preserving confidentiality of individual identity. Integrating separate databases multiplies both the scientific value and risk that a determined attacker can compromise security by combining information from many variables.
Giving responsible social scientists greater access to sensitive government data can provide policymakers with much better information on which to base their decisions. For example, Lingxin Hao at Johns Hopkins University has obtained access to confidential data at the census bureau's site in the Washington, D.C., area to study the factors that determine the extent to which immigrants to the United States make use of public assistance when they run into economic difficulty."[37] To do this research, she must link data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation with the respondents' residential addresses to allow the addition of much information from the 1990 census about the social context in each individual's immediate geographic area.
Any security breach in the use of such sensitive data not only might harm the individuals described in the data but also could discredit the archive involved and possibly even the whole system of providing information confidentially to researchers. Therefore, early versions of integrated Internet-based social science databases, in which the unit of analysis is the individual respondent, might withhold some key variables except to approved researchers working at high-security sites. Some initial research might emphasize variables that respondents do not mind making public, for example, general attitudes and preferences. At the same time, sensitive information can be reported carefully in aggregated form in geographically based data sets, for example, in terms of rates per million population in states or metropolitan areas. Over time, further development of secure sites and of inferential security technology will expand the legitimate possibilities for data availability while fulfilling the duty of preserving individual confidentiality.
Research and development projects already supported by SBE and the Digital Library Initiative have established a foundation of practical experience and scientific expertise on which to build the integrated social science of the future. Although the NSF has long funded online data archives, it has only begun to provide support for web-based questionnaire surveys despite the great potential in this area. Although support has been provided for web-based experimentation, the range of scientific fields that could advance through development in this area is so great, and laboratory research designs are so varied, that additional projects are needed to run parallel to the few that already are funded. A major methodological gap is the fact that GIS have lagged behind in their application to social geography and in the development of software to carry out social science analysis. Centers have been established to develop procedures for sharing sensitive data with small numbers of researchers under secure conditions, but research has not been carried out on statistical and computational methods that would permit the most sensitive variables to be included in public use data systems. Practically nothing has been done as yet to integrate across the methodologies.
The International Network for Integrated Social Science is both technically feasible and scientifically necessary. Through it, social science can take its rightful place beside the natural sciences as a rigorous, objective discipline that is just as scientific as biology, physics, and chemistry. In the information society of the 21st century, the data contained in this international network of archives will be of great value to education, commerce, government policy, and the general enlightenment of the citizenry.
1. NSF, Social Behavioral and Economic Research Archiving Policy, http://www.nsf.gov/sbe/sber/common/archive.htm.
2. http://www.icpsr.umich.edu.
3. NSF Awards 8618467, 9122133, 9122462, 9318653, 9511023, and 9617727. Information about these and awards cited in subsequent notes can be accessed at the NSF web site, http://www.nsf.gov, in addition to any other web addresses provided.
4. NSF Awards 9118299, 9210903, and 9422805.
5. NSF Award 9512010.
6. NSF Award 9527246, http://www.cpc.unc.edu/addhealth/.
7. NSF Award 9223326.
8. NSF Awards 9422556, 9422785, and 9800623.
9. NSF Award 9808974.
10. NSF Awards 9528587, 9528984, 9111637, 9222458, and 9811487.
11. NSF Award 9411299.
12. NSF Awards 9022891 and 9515005, http://www.isr.umich.edu/src/psid/.
13. NSF Awards 8808361,9317631, and 9707741, http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/nes/anesintro.html.
14. NSF Award 9818875.
15. NSF Award 9818875.
16. NSF Awards 9120987, 9205890, 9422241, 9422242, 9709924, and 9710172.
17. NSF Award 9617157.
18. NSF Award 9410023.
19. NSF Award 9710958.
20. NSF Awards 9122691, 9122732, 9320488, 9320704, 9511748, 9523439, 9601404, and 9632641.
21. NSF Awards 9871019, 9811323, 9515434, 9515364, 9423231, 9422974, 9223799, 9223688, 9109528, 9022935, 9010888, and 8808289.
22. NSF Award 9817518.
23. NSF Awards 9730176 and 9512394.
24. NSF Award 9811273.
25. NSF Award 9730581.
26. NSF Awards 9409005 and 9601149.
27. NetLab workshop report, http://www.uiowa.edu/~grpproc/netlab.htm.
28. NSF Award 9515187.
29. NSF Awards 8810917, 9321119, 9600465, 9602348, 9850595, and 9851550.
30. NSF Awards 9411330 and 9601954.
31. Federal Policy for the Protection of Human Subjects, 45 CFR, sec. 690.101 (1993).
32. NSF Awards 9311572 and 9610331.
33. NSF Award 9422440.
34. NSF Awards 9812173 and 9812174.
35. NSF Award 9513040.
36. NSF Awards 8801640, 9123675,9196010,9321507,9511521, and 9729762.
37. NSF Award 9819209.
Bainbridge, W. S. (1992). Social research methods and statistics: A computer-assisted introduction. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.
Homans, G. C. (1967). The nature of social science. New York: Harcourt, Brace, & World.
Keller-McNulty, S., & Unger, E. A. (1993). Database systems: Inferential security. Journal of Official Statistics, 9, 475-499.
National Science Board. (1998). Science and engineering indicators 1998. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office.
National Science Foundation. (1993-1994). Democratization: A strategic plan for global research on the transformation and consolidation of democracies. Arlington, VA: Author. [Online]. Available: http://www.nsf.gov/sbe/sber/sociol/works4.htm
National Science Foundation. (1994). Investing in human resources: A strategic plan for the human capital initiative. Arlington, VA: Author. [Online]. Available: http://www.nsf.gov/sbe/sber/sociol/works1.htm
National Science Foundation. (1995). Grant policy manual. Arlington, VA: Author.
National Science Foundation. (1999a). Enhancing infrastructure/or the social and behavioral sciences (NSF Publication 99-32). Arlington, VA: Author. [Online]. Available: http://www.nsf.gov/cgi-bin/getpub?nsf9932
National Science Foundation. (1999b). Research on survey methodology (NSF Publication 99-35). Arlington, VA: Author. [Online], Available: http://www.nsf.gov/cgi-bin/getpub?nsf9935
University Consortium for Geographic Information Science. (1996). Research priorities for geographic information science. Cartography and Geographic Information Systems, 23, 117.
*William Sims Bainbridge is the science adviser to the Directorate for Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences of the National Science Foundation. He holds a doctorate in sociology from Harvard University and specializes in the sociology of religion, technology, computer software, and innovative research methodologies. He maybe contacted by e-mail at email@example.com. His personal web site, the Question Factory (http://www erols.com/bainbri/qf.htm), is a system for creating new questionnaire research modules and software.
The views expressed in this article do not necessarily represent the views of the National Science Foundation or the United States.


text:
AB Apartments
Bulharská 2, Karlovy Vary, Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic, Distance from city centre: 2.6km
Great Value!
Apartments with two rooms, kitchen and bathroom, each one for 1-5 people, in the very centre of Karlovy Vary. Apartments have an excellent location. Bus station from Prague - 150 m. Pedestrian zone, shops, restaurants, banks, spa, public garden in neighborhood. Restaurant and bar in the ground floor.
Availability & RatesTo view availability and prices please select dates and click 'Update Dates'
Apartment Facilities & Policies
- Cooker
- Dishwasher
- Fridge/Freezer
- Iron and Ironing Board
- Utensils

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Sideline Pass: Behind-the-scenes photos from #GBvsSFPosted by on January 12, 2013 – 7:08 pm
Check out these behind-the-scenes photos from Saturday evening's NFC Divisional playoff game between the Green Bay Packers and the San Francisco 49ers at Candlestick Park.
Tags: #GBvsSF, san francisco 49ers, sideline pass
Posted in Packers.com Blog | 8 Comments »
8 Responses
to "Sideline Pass: Behind-the-scenes photos from #GBvsSF"
By Christy on Jan 12, 2013 | Reply
Woot Woot!! Lets Go Pack!!!!
By Polish Prophet on Jan 13, 2013 | Reply
See ya next year guys. :*(
By Alexa on Jan 13, 2013 | Reply
There's still the Pro Bowl….
By Irv Smith on Jan 13, 2013 | Reply
I'm very saden that the Packers lost.I wanted to see them in the super bowl so Donald Driver,Charles Woodson and other vets could earn another super bowl ring,for all the years of hard work that they put into the game and for the organition,and going through all the injuries.
By mike b on Jan 13, 2013 | Reply
thank you gentlemen for your longer lists of accomplishments than your loses. I have watched the packers all my life, win lose or draw, my life is enriched by the call of going above the call of duty every week. Im blessed to be apart of a professional sports team so close to home. The men playing for the packers have always given so much, and all I say is THANK YOU ALL
By Mark on Jan 13, 2013 | Reply
If Jennings leaves for more money elsewhere, I hope he takes into consideration the quarterback that will be throwing him the ball. I guess Larry Fitzgerald could tell you how life changes when you transition from Warner to Skelton?
Does anybody know if the Packers are even going to make him an offer?
By Dave on Jan 13, 2013 | Reply
I was at the SF to support our boys, we did all that we can. 2013 lets go to work!
By jeff savage on Jan 14, 2013 | Reply
Been a fan all my life, nothing but a die hard fan, what ever you do DO NOT HANG YOUR HEAD, YOUR THE BEST
Sorry, comments for this entry are closed at this time.


text:
Looking for a special card to blow away your Valentine? Find out how to take simple & cheap birthday candles and use them to make a beautiful Valentine's Day card. You just need a blank card or cardstock, glue, birthday candles and a marker. It's creative and it has a play on words which I love.
C'mon, it's cute right? I like it. :)
{Related Posts}
DIY Chicken Wire Picture Frame
Valentine's Day: Mini Bubblegum Machine
240 FREE Chevron Patterns, Papers, Backgrounds & Templates


text:
Blazing Fast Alphabetical Rap Is Guaranteed to Amaze You
Even if rap is not your thing, this song will blow you away.
Mac Lethal has come out with this impressive tongue-twisting rap that he performs alphabetically from A to Z. It was so tough to pull off that he needed 67 takes to nail it.
As amazing as it is, be warned some of the lyrics are NSFW, but also be warned you've probably not heard anything like it.
Next: Walter White's Facebook Look Back Video Will Make Your Day


text:
Frontpage: Tuesday, April 10th
- Syria: We Are Removing Troops: The Syrian government said on Tuesday that it has begun to remove troops as the United Nations' deadline for a ceasefire draws closer—but activists said 12 people had been killed by government forces early Tuesday.
- Tulsa Suspects Confess: Police say the two men arrested in connection with the shooting spree in Tulsa, Okla., have confessed. Alvin Watts, 32, confessed to shooting two people, and Jake England, 19, confessed to shooting three. Three of the victims died and two were seriously injured. All were black, and authorities are still investigating whether the crime was racially motivated.
- Radical Cleric Can Be Extradited to U.S.: The radical cleric Abu Hamza may soon be on his way to the United States, along with four other men, now that the European court of human rights has ruled their rights won't be violated by extradition. In 2006 Hamza was sentenced to seven years in prison for inciting hatred at his north London mosque, and he's also accused of attempting to set up a terrorist training camp in Oregon in 1999.
- At Least 15 Killed in Afghan Blasts: At least 15 people were killed by early-morning suicide bombings in Afghanistan, officials say. Eight civilians and three policemen were killed by a blast at a local government office in Herat, while another four policemen were killed by three suicide bombers at a police compound in southern Helmand province.
- MD Teacher Trio Claims Winning Ticket: Three teachers from Maryland came forward to claim their share of the record-shattering Mega Millions jackpot, the state announced Tuesday. The teachers pooled $20 each to buy 60 tickets at various Maryland locations, and will each have $35 million wired to their bank accounts within the next 10 days.
Photo: In 1941, the great American photographer Edward Weston accepted a commission to illustrate Leaves of Grass, by the great American poet Walt Whitman. A show opening April 21 at Boston's Museum of Fine Arts presents images from the project, all shot on a cross-country trip. See more.
(Edward Weston, Courtesy of Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)


text:
Coach Andrew Vasher
Andrew Vasher is entering his ninth season at Hartnell College. In his first eight seasons the Hartnell Panthers have reached high standards of excellence on and off the court. Coach Vasher is known as a program builder and culture changer. In his second season at Hartnell they had the largest turn around in school history, a Coast Conference Championship, a Regional Runner-up and a top ranking of 6th in the state that year. Since this turn around in the second year the Panthers have been ranked in the state polls every year, in the top ten in scoring and play one of the toughest schedules in the nation.
Coach Vasher has brought a wealth of experience to Hartnell, having coached as an assistant coach at the NCAA D-1 and D-2 levels, a Junior College Head Coach at Columbia College and a Head High school coach in Arizona. Over his 20 years as a Head Coach he has 409 wins, averaging 20 wins a year. He has coached and recruited 14 Junior College All-Americans, 27 All-State, 67 All-Conference, * Freshmen of the Year, 6 Players of the year and 6 Newcomers of the Year and has 14 of his former student/athletes playing professionally. He also has 14 of his former student/athletes that have gone on to earn graduate degrees.
Coach Vasher believes that a total championship program requires more than just championship level success on the court, but also in the classroom and in the community. Since Coach Vasher arrived in 2005-06 at Hartnell the Men's Basketball program has had over 250 of the Men's Basketball student/athletes make the President's or Dean's list for academics. The Men's Basketball program has also had two Valedictorians and very well could have been four, two other students left for four year schools after their freshmen year, they were both being recruited by Yale and Cornell respectively. During this same time period Hartnell Men's Basketball student/athletes have a 100% transfer rate to four year schools and a team GPA of 3.55. Unmatched by any other program in California, We have received Eight consecutive years of team gpa above 3.5; 3.25 qualifies a team for the California Scholastic team award for academic excellence.
The Panthers have also excelled in the community engagement arena; over the last eight years the Men's Basketball program has put in over 5,500 man hours of service in the Salinas community.
Coach Vasher and his family live in Salinas. His wife Julie is a Clinical Nurse Specialist at SVMH. Julie is also finishing her DNP from Vanderbilt University in the summer of 2014. They have six children and six grandchildren. Their daughter Allison is married and lives in Utah, The son Nathan is married and lives is Fail Church VA and works for Booz Allen Corporation. (former assistant coach at Hartnell for one season), Joe is a student at Brigham Young University, and Kyle just returned from his LDS mission in Tampa Fl. and will play at Hartnell this year Matt 14 and Grace 11 still live at home.


text:
Does breast-feeding really save money?
Outside the controversy is a more practical question: What does it actually cost to practice attachment parenting?
This post comes from Kimberly Palmer at partner site U.S. News & World Report.
The cover of a recent issue of Time magazine, featuring a woman breast-feeding her tall 3-year-old son, launched a range of strong reactions across the blogosphere. Some supporters of attachment parenting lauded the cover as "normalizing" breast-feeding past the age of 1, while others felt the defiant stance of mother and son seemed designed to spark outrage and even evoked pornography.
Amid the controversy, the actual article, which explores the rise of attachment parenting, was barely discussed. But attachment parenting, which often includes co-sleeping, long-term breast-feeding and near-constant togetherness of mother and child, also comes with a price.
As Hanna Rosin of Slate has pointed out, round-the-clock breast-feeding is hardly compatible with most women's jobs, and the constant sleep deprivation can interfere with getting work done during the day.
Rosin wrote in Slate, "There is the very basic objection that it is virtually impossible to do what the advocates say is best for your baby and have a job, which the vast majority of American mothers have these days." (Post continues below.)
There's also evidence that extended breast-feeding can have a negative impact on earnings. As Ruth Mantell wrote in The Wall Street Journal, breast-feeding can hurt a woman's ability to earn money for her family, largely because of the time it takes. She cited research that shows women who breast-feed for six months or longer face a steeper income decline than those who breast-feed less than six months. And as the researcher points out, money plays a vital role in children's well-being.
Breast-feeding itself is not always as free and easy as it might seem, either. In fact, it can be costly: Many new mothers need the services of lactation consultants, who can cost $100 an hour, and working mothers who spend time away from their babies need pumps, which can cost $400. Nursing tops and tanks, nursing pillows, nipple cream and other accessories add to the cost.
While avoiding formula certainly saves a lot -- more than $1,500 in the first year, by some estimates -- and breast-fed babies are less likely to come down with certain illnesses, which reduces health-care costs, breast-feeding today is certainly not "free," at least not for most people.
For parents committed to the attachment parenting model and breast-feeding, there are free resources that can help. La Leche League and the website KellyMom.com offer assistance and support to nursing moms. The IRS also recently changed flex spending rules so that breast pumps and related nursing supplies are eligible for tax breaks.
But it's not easy to overcome the challenge of finding the time to both work and practice attachment parenting. For parents with jobs that require them to be away for nine to 10 hours a day, it might not even be possible.
What do you think about the price of attachment parenting -- is it worth it?
More on U.S. News & World Report and MSN Money:
- Calculator: Is your budget in balance?
Some of us believe that you should do what is right for your baby, not what is "cheapest". After all, it is your child! I work with many women who will tell you straight out that making money/advancing in their career is what is important to them, not hanging out with their children. They also will tell you that going to work - at almost any job - is easier than taking care of a child (or two) all day.
While I do not advocate co-sleeping, nursing until four years old, or spending every second of every day with your child, raising your own child (if possible - instead of letting a day care worker raise them) and nursing are both very worthy endeavors.
This is unbelievable to me, comparing the health and raising of children with potential income loss. If you are unwilling to make sacrifices to give your children YOU, then...
Attachment parent isn't anything new and it doesn't mean that the children are waited on hand and foot, it means you are together! In fact in most cases I think you would find they have a better understanding of what Mom and Dad do in order to take care of them because they are there with you.
I can only say that choosing to formula feed to get back to making that $ and back to "your" life, seems to contradict becoming a parent in the first place.
I breast fed my daughter for her first 3 years and worked all but the first 3 months after she was born. It is a lot less expensive. We had a co-sleeper attached to our bed the first year. It was so much easier than washing bottles and buying formula. Took a breast pump to work everyday and gave the milk to the sitter when I picked her up for use the next day. We rarely had to substitute any formula.
The worst thing was the crap I got was from people thinking I was breast feeding too long. Why do people think that is their business?
By-the-way, my daughter is 14. Has straight A's and is ready for the IB (honors) program at HS. She plays club water polo with the boys now and is planning to play in HS. Guess that breast milk is good for their brains. So take that all you up tight people who are upset by breastfeeding.
i breastfed and worked it can be done. i bought 1 can of formula a month for the daycare, because the 3 bottles i sent a day from pumping didn't seem to be enough. my son chose to stop nursing at 10monthes and used only a regular cup at home but the daycare requires children under a yr to use bottles and formula. so after a yr i was still tying to wean him from a bottle. I spent 70 on the breatpump it worked for the whole 10monthes.
i co slept with my son so feeding him at night was a piece of cake never had to get out of bed. my pay rate didn't change because i was breastfeeding so i'm not sure how i would have earned less. i spent no money for the first 3 monthes and only purchased 2 cans of formula for the next 3 after that i purchased a few boxes of cereal and baby food.
Breastfeeding has some positive effects on infants--but the effects are minor. On the other hand, having an adult spend every waking moment waiting on a child hand and foot has extemely negative ramifications.
Women have always worked--it is a fallacy to think that for many generations, young mothers spent all their time raising children. They did not--the infants were often fed by whichever female member of the family was handy or were strapped to a board or placed in a sling to make them easy to tote around with one's hands free. Young women who were strong would work in the fields and doing heavy work around the house--the little old auntie or grandma watched the children who were too young to work. Once they were old enough to do chores, they spent the majority of their days doing chores.
It is only in the last 100 years that this ridiculous idea of "attachment parenting" has emerged--and the children who emerge from it are often the most ridiculously spoiled brats imaginable. Presently, 50% of college graduates have no jobs--don't tell me that this has no relation to (even if it is not the sole result of) attachment parenting.
Even when children spend part of their weekday in daycare--their parents are still raising them. It is silly to suggest otherwise. While family members might make the best caregivers--as they might well be better educated or at least more mature than the typical daycare worker--there is no need for the biological parents to be bound to the child. If older family members with reduced incomes and younger family members with a need for daytime help were to get together, many issues could be resolved.
Copyright © 2014 Microsoft. All rights reserved.
Fundamental company data and historical chart data provided by Morningstar Inc. Real-time index quotes and delayed quotes supplied by Morningstar Inc. Quotes delayed by up to 15 minutes, except where indicated otherwise. Fund summary, fund performance and dividend data provided by Morningstar Inc. Analyst recommendations provided by Zacks Investment Research. StockScouter data provided by Verus Analytics. IPO data provided by Hoover's Inc. Index membership data provided by Morningstar Inc.
Occupy Wall Street bought and forgave the student loan debt of more than 2,700 Everest College students.
- Best rates on savings
Find the highest rates on savings accounts, CDs and money market accounts.
- Are you saving enough for retirement?
- Find a great credit card
- Car insurance premiums by model
- Video: Easy DIY smoked meats at home
A charcuterie master shares his process for cold-smoking meat at home.
- Jetpacks about to go mainstream
- Weird things covered by home insurance
- Bing: 70 percent of adults report 'digital eye strain'


text:
I created this today because my mums new hair salon is opening and she wanted a price list that wasn't made in Word! xoxox
I created this today because my mums new hair salon is opening and she wanted a price list that wasn't made in Word! xoxox
Mireille Fauchon originally went to university to study Graphic Design and whilst studying towards her BA discovered the joy and impact of illustration. Mireille Fauchon came into the Arts University College at Bournemouth today to do a talk for us about her career and then we had a tutorial so she could see our work and give us some feed back. When talking about her work she mentioned her love of finding extraordinary things (maybe even described as mystical) that happen in everyday life. She loves researching local history and things that happen and people's reaction to them. Her first project was where she discovered her love of illustration, it was based around Highgate Cemetery and how local people thought vampire existed there, her collected was called 'The Highgate Vampire' and can be seen on her website http://www.mireillefauchon.com/. My favorite work of Mireille Fauchon is her most recent which is a remake of the book 'The Prisoner of Zenda' by Anthony Hope. She based her idea on recreating and illustrating a country that doesn't exist by photographing objects and piecing together scenery to create a new land.
I'm going to write about hierarchy and how this applies to my new brief. Firstly I want to explain my brief! I have to create and print a magazine that consists of 2 double page spreads and a single spread in total five pages. It has to contain information and an interview from typeradio about a chosen typographer out of a list of six. I chose Kris Sowersby!
When creating my magazine I had to consider hierarchy of the text and, this is even more important as my magazine is type based with no images. Hierarchy when applied to layout and text means the order of importance of what the text is saying. This is denoted through the point size and style. If something if extremely important such as the heading of the text, the text will be size 32pt and probably in a bold clear font, this is the heaviest weight in the document. This is called the A heading. The B heading usually is slightly smaller in point size than the A heading, it is also slightly less heavy and is usually not set as bold but as regular.
The C heading is the lowest it can be the same point size as the body of text but in an italic version. The body copy is the last in the hierarchy it is the main text block that follows the headings. It usually is separated form the C heading with a space to emphasize the hierarchy.
(I have taken notes for this piece from the Layout Book)


text:
PHOENIX (AP) - A Glendale woman has been released from jail after allegedly going on a naked, bloody tirade when her boyfriend refused to have sex.
Authorities say 24-year-old Ashley Marie Prenovost was arrested Monday on suspicion of child and adult abuse, aggressive assault on a minor, endangerment, assault with intent to injure, criminal damage and disorderly conduct.
Glendale Police officers called to the home near 55th Avenue and Desert Cove say they found Prenovost naked and intoxicated with both her hands bloodied from punching walls and a glass picture.
When her boyfriend refused to have sex, Prenovost allegedly picked up the couple's 4-month-old daughter and ran around the house yelling and screaming. The infant hit her head on a dresser.
According to the police report, the suspect attempted to flee the residence through the garage and began yelling and screaming when detained.
After her initial court appearance on Tuesday, Prenovost was released on her own recognizance. She doesn't have a lawyer yet.
Copyright 2014 The Associated Press modified.
35 Skyline DriveLake Mary, FL 32746
Phone: (407) 644-3535News Tips: (866) 55-FOX35


text:
Governor Mark Parkinson appointed Tim Emert to the Kansas Board of Regents in 2010. Emert is a partner in the Emert, Chubb and Gettler law firm in Independence.
Emert is a past president and board member of the William Inge Festival Foundation, a board member of the St. Andrew's School Foundation, and is serving as the chairman of the Independence Downtown Art and Cultural Advisory Board.
He earned his Associate Degree from Independence Community College. He went on to earn a B.S. in Journalism and a Juris Doctor from the University of Kansas. Emert and his wife, Barbara, have three adult daughters and one grandchild. In his free time, he enjoys traveling and gardening.


text:
Bands: What Social Networks Should You Focus On?
Artists — particularly those that are independent or unsigned and do not have support of major labels or management in handling their social media presence — are often unsure of where to even start. The Q&A portions of music conferences nowadays invariably involve questions about where artists should place their social focus, how widespread their presence should be and what is most likely going to help them get their music heard. In the data provided in Next Big Sound's recently published State of the Industry report for 2012, there are several insights that artists looking to answer these question can walk away with.


text:
Why do I sometimes feel guilty when playing WoW?
It's not because I play too much, or have other duties that I neglect, it's far more understated than that.
It's because of some of the things I do inside the game … I know this may sound like I'm coming out as a severely brutal griefer or corpse camper right now, but don't worry, I'm not here to scream "IT'S JUST A GAME" at you. In fact, I'm trying to convince myself of exactly that.
I, and circa a hundred other players, were fighting Oondasta yesterday. I was not in a raid and took care of my own healing the best I could, it's still a wipe fest really, healing or not. But he finally went down and I got my loot – "A Shiny Pile of Refuse". Unexpectedly, it contained a white kitten carrier and since I already had a white kitten, I thought I'd just sell it on the auction house.
UNTIL Noelani pointed out the tragedy of finding a small kitten in a huge pile of dinosaur poo AND then choosing to just sell it. If that is not cruel, then I don't know what is!
… You know, I actually do.
It's even more cruel to force this little pooey "white" kitten into pet battles, where I can choose to force it to fight for me. It may even die because of my evil blood sport hobby of pet collecting and battling.
I think Noelani knew this too because he offered to take the kitten and take good care of it, even though he already has one. After I'm done writing this post, I'll log in and the fate of the kitten will be sealed. I hope no one bought the pooey kitten (maybe for their own sake too).
In relevance, consider the case of the guy below, Huggalon the Heart Watcher.
We ran into him when leveling a couple of alts and we couldn't decide whether to kill him or not. He isn't a clear cut case as so many other bosses and elites otherwise are. What to do?
Kill him because:
- He's there to be killed, right? (or is he there to force us to have horrible ethical dilemmas ABOUT killing him?)
- He's got a mean look on his face, he's probably evil
- Look at all the skeletal remains under his huge boots
- He looks like he might appreciate being put out of his misery
- He drops a B.B.F. Necklace
Don't kill him because:
- He's sitting there looking like a lost abandoned child (which is pretty accurate since he is the missing fifth watcher from the Vault of Archavon and Captain Planet reference)
- His name is Huggalon the Heart Watcher
- He has a huge bow in his hair
- He is not hostile, but neutral
- There is no real gain from killing him, only the necklace, which you then STEAL from him, and that is creepy. Who steals B.F.F. necklaces?
The comments on Wowhead suggest I'm not the only one with this dilemma. People say that all Huggalon ever wanted was a nice big hug and some feel really bad after they killed him. Why are we feeling bad? It's just a game, there's no denying that, the only consequence is that he respawns 20 minutes later for someone else to mull over this dilemma.
So, do you think I killed him?
And, would you be able to kill him yourself, and not feel just a little bit guilty about it?


text:
Related Content: Edward Snowden
July 26, 2013
Weekly Show
Obama pledged to focus on the economy and helping working-class Americans, the Justice Department's strategy to challenge discriminatory voting laws, the latest on Edward Snowden, and Anthony Weiner's choice to stay in the New York City mayoral race. Joining NBC News' Pete Williams: John Harwood, CNBC and New York Times; Carrie Johnson, NPR; Martha Raddatz, ABC News; Molly Ball, The Atlantic.
June 14, 2013
Weekly Show
The U.S. plans military support for Syrian rebels after determining President Assad's troops have used chemical weapons, the national security and political fallout of Edward Snowden's NSA leaks, Congress moves towards immigration reform and the latest SCOTUS decision. Joining Gwen: Mark Mazzetti, New York Times; Karen Tumulty, Washington Post, Alan Gomez, USA Today and Joan Biskupic, Reuters.


text:
Priced from:
AutoCustomCarpets Automotive Replacement Carpets are crafted from heavy duty materials designed to protect your vehicle flooring from extensive use. These long-wearing carpets will surely complement your vehicle's interior having over 23,000 styles for late and current models.
Known worldwide as a top automotive replacement carpet manufacturer, AutoCustomCarpets continues to provide excellent products to its customers. ACC pioneered the making of molded carpets for vehicles in 1958 and has since carried the widest selection of custom automotive carpet lines in the industry today.


text:
1961 Cadillac Fleetwood - Rare 62 Series. Convertible Original Exterior Paint - Pompei Red Original Interior - Sandalwood Beige - Leather Excellent Engine and Transmission - Smooth... More
1967 Cadillac Fleetwood Limo. Bought new in St. Paul Minissota, 47,000 original miles. Runs and drives nice. Very solid body and chrome, No rust showing but will... More
1940 Cadillac Fleetwood Series 60 four door sedan,an extensive, expensive restoration, of a rust free Northwestern car.This outstanding example of '40's GM luxury needs... More
- 350 CI engine- Couronne edition- Rear wheel drive- Rosewood polypaint exterior- Service history and mileage recordsTo be sold at the Chicago 2014 auction,... More
1986 Cadillac Fleetwood, This SPACIOUS Caddy floats like a boat! Beautiful inside and out. Many new parts. Only 34,500 miles! Must see... test sail.... More
1993 Cadillac Fleetwood - Excellent Condition. The vehicle has 33, 807 original miles and has been garage kept. This Fleetwood is a Medium Sapphire... More
16,000 miles! Please call for details.... More
1970 Cadillac Fleetwood 75 Series factory Limousine - This is a one of a kind - there were only 875 made. The limo features zone... More
The name Fleetwood is synonymous with the most opulent and luxurious early Cadillacs. While entry level Cadillacs still started in the upper $1600 range,... More
Call or email [contact seller] 1976 Cadillac Fleetwood Wagon 10,000 ORIGINAL miles Same owners for last 25 years A very... More
1948 Cadillac Fleetwood 4 door model 6069X, All original runs great. Recently rebuilt transmission and power hydraulic windows. Some chrome is excellent but some needs to... More
1942 Cadillac Fleetwood Series 60 Four Door Sedan, Original Condition and it's a good Driver.... More
Beautiful condition - no rust, good interior (could use a new headliner). All original accessories. Garage kept. Almost no winter miles. Cruise control and... More
V8 Automatic Full Power A/C Florida History Phoenician Ivory Paint Odometer reads 63,610 miles... More
1968 Fleetwood Cadillac Limousine. 472 Cu. In. 25,126 miles with new interior and padded vinyl top. Also has a brand new head liner and... More


text:
LANSING (WKZO) -- Governor Rick Snyder signed an executive order today combining two agencies into a new Department of Insurance and Financial Services. The office will take on the duties currently handled by the Office of Financial and Insurance Regulation and the Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs.
Snyder says the move will reduce government red tape to help Michigan's economy grow. He noted that insurance and financial services businesses are vital to the economy. Michigan is the home to over 300 state banks and 149 insurance companies. The order goes into effect in 60 days.


text:
Fool your eyes -- and learn what makes movies move -- using this super-simple animation technique.
Fold a sheet of paper in half, then unfold it and use a marker to draw a simple figure on the lower half.
Refold the paper and trace your drawing, but make a couple of changes: bend an arm or leg, draw a different mouth, or move an object.
Make a cut on each side of the top drawing to create a center tab, then roll the tab around the marker to curl it.
To animate your drawing: Repeatedly and rapidly slide the marker up and down the page so that the tab curls and uncurls, revealing first one drawing and then the other.
What's going on: It takes your brain more time to interpret each drawing than it does for you to flip between them. As a result, the quick and repetitive switches cause your brain to blend the pictures into a single moving image the same phenomenon that makes movies possible.


text:
Wasilla, AK
Class standing/years in college:
A bit about me:
I enjoy being active, having fun and meeting new people. I also read, bake, bike,and hang out with my friends. There's so much to do in life, and I'm excited to try it all!
Why did you choose to attend UAF?
I chose UAF because I knew I'd encounter unique opportunities and a vibrant campus life. Fairbanks is large enough for energy and enthusiasm, but small enough for individualism. Plus, I wouldn't pass up the experience of living at America's Farthest North University.
What do you like best about UAF?
I love the energy of the community! Students, faculty and staff are all so wonderful and helpful. There are so many opportunities to be active!
What do you like to do in your spare time? What extracurricular activities are you a part of?
I try to be as active as possible! You can find me playing frisbee by the Student Recreation Center, having fun with the German Club in the Foreign Language Lab, or studying at one of many locations. I'm also President of the Honors Students Advisory Council, and sometimes I like to just wander around campus.
What is one piece of advice you would give to a prospective student interested in UAF?
Learn about how students get involved! If you're passionate about being outside and enjoying nature, UAF is ideal. If you'd like to start participating in scientific research, UAF can give you that opportunity.
What "field work" have you done at UAF that will help you find work in your major?
I've been involved in original research and participated in UAF Research Day. In addition, I've developed leadership experience through the organizations I'm a part of.
What do you hope to do after you graduate?
After I graduate with my math major, I plan to attend graduate school for economics. As an economist, I'll use the skills I've learned at UAF to conduct research.
If you could live anywhere else in the world, where would it be?
Germany! I love the language, history and culture, and I've always wanted to try living there.


text:
Available Colors/Styles
Detail Pics
More bang for your buck than a back-alley fireworks stand.
The Ride Revolt Snowboard Binding proves you don't need to blow a full month's rent to get a versatile, smooth-riding freestyle binding. Ride's new urethane-infused SlimeBack dampens vibrations while still providing the response and flex you need to throw down in any terrain.
- SlimeBack DE highback utilizes vibration-absorbing urethane to smooth out the ride
- Foundation Chassis for a versatile all-mountain flex
- Wedgie 2.5 canted footbeds reduce joint strain and improve ollie leverage
- ThinGrip toe strap works either over the top or the front of your boot
- Freestyle Core ankle strap for less weight and comfy cushioning
- Forged aluminum response disc compatible with traditional 4-hole and 3-hole mounting patterns
Share your thoughts
What do you think of the
Ride Revolt Snowboard Binding
? Share a...
Member since
- Familiarity: I've used it several times
I can't find anything I don't like about these.


text:
Recent Work
When BT wanted to promote their ground breaking HR consultancy we were recommended by another client as the creative design agency to help. For this below the line campaign we produced both digital and printed brochures and an e-flyer design.
Design With Your Brand at Heart
Joe Gibbs once said...
"People who enjoy what they do, invariably do it well"
We are brand focused creatives who enjoy what we do. We have a passion for graphic design and do it well. But we also appreciate that our work needs to achieve results. Working closely with our clients we strive to understand their needs to effectively communicate their brand and marketing message. Experienced in both online and offline media we provide inspirational ideas and targeted design for websites, branding, advertising and print that works.
Detox Design News
» Birmingham Gym website
» Cleanroom Supplies Branding
» BT brochures arrive
Keep in Touch
Add your email to our mailing list for useful information emails and spam free updates [privacy policy]


text:
Our Recommendations
Cougar in Cage
View more images »
Our groundbreaking investigation into the private possession of exotic animals has demonstrated clearly the need for urgent action to be taken to end this dangerous trade.
Faced with the evidence uncovered by this investigation, and the rising tide of attacks and injuries nationwide, we are calling for four key steps to be taken as a matter of priority:
- States must act now to pass laws that ensure that the private ownership of exotic animals is prohibited.
- The breeding, selling, and display of exotic animals at roadside zoos and menageries must end.
- The public must be educated about the public safety threats and animal welfare concerns associated with roadside zoos and exotic animals in private hands, and be shown that wild animals do not belong in private hands.
- Where exotic animals cannot be transferred to a genuine sanctuary, existing owners must, at a minimum, increase the standard of care being provided to ensure the safety and well-being of the animals and the public.
Tackling the scale and extent of the problem will require action from legislators, existing exotic animal owners, and the general public. We have formulated a set of recommendations that need to be acted upon if the urgent animal welfare and public safety concerns that result from the private ownership of exotic animals in the United States are to be addressed.
Recommendations for Legislators
The private ownership of exotic animals represents a real danger to families, neighbors, communities, and the public at large, as well as to the animal themselves.
In many states, people are allowed to keep exotic animals in their homes and backyards, as well as collect them to display at roadside zoos and menageries without any restrictions or with only minimal oversight. The exotic animal industry is well aware of the dangers these animals pose to the public, yet continues to lobby for private exotic animal ownership.
Given the serious problems involved with the private ownership of exotic animals, it is critical that states address this issue and work towards passing strong legislation. Laws must be passed to prohibit the ownership of exotic animals as "pets" and at roadside zoos and menageries.
Currently, state laws addressing the keeping of exotic animals are inconsistent with each other — varying from type of restriction to the type of species being regulated. Strong and comprehensive laws must be introduced and passed in all the states that currently do not prohibit private ownership of exotic animals. Further, the laws that are currently in existence must at the very least prohibit ownership of the most dangerous exotic animals, such as wild felines, wolves, bears, nonhuman primates, and dangerous reptiles.
Another critical issue that needs to be addressed is that in cities and states that do have bans, partial bans, or permitting and licensing requirements, individuals often sidestep the law by obtaining a USDA license. These individuals claim to be animal exhibitors or breeders, thereby circumventing state exotic "pet" laws. State and local laws on the possession of exotic "pets" usually exempt people who hold a USDA license from the provisions of the law. This is a huge loophole that is being exploited to the detriment of the public and the animals. USDA-licensed facilities must not be exempted from coverage of legislation.
Born Free USA is a leader in the campaign to end the private ownership of exotic animals and is committed to continuing its efforts until exotic animals are protected nationwide. We have worked with state and local legislatures across the country and have played a major role in efforts to prohibit the private possession of exotic animals. We have model legislation that we tailor to each state and expertise and experience that have been utilized by states nationwide.
We look forward to assisting legislators in addressing this issue at a state and local level.
Recommendations for Individuals
Individual members of the public play a key role in working to end the tragedy of private ownership of exotic animals in communities nationwide. From personal choices and public education to involvement in passing strong laws, individuals can make a difference. People concerned about the private ownership of exotic animals can take the following steps:
- Do not buy exotic animals as "pets." Educate family and friends about the animal welfare problems and safety concerns related to the private ownership of exotic animals.
- Speak out if an exotic animal is observed running loose, injuring people, damaging property, living in deplorable conditions, or being abused. If an animal is in these circumstances, or is being kept in violation of city, county, and/or state law, report it to the appropriate animal control agency and the police or sheriff's department.
- Do not visit or patronize roadside zoos and menageries or disingenuous "sanctuaries" that breed or display animals for profit.
- If state, city, or county law does not already prohibit private possession of exotic animals, contact state and local lawmakers and urge them to introduce such legislation.
- Get involved. Support legislation at all levels to ban the private ownership of exotic animals.
- Write a letter to the editor of the local newspaper describing why exotic animals belong in the wild and not in homes and backyards.
Recommendations for Existing Exotic Animal Owners
When state legislation has been passed to prohibit exotic animals in private hands, the animals currently in possession have generally remained with the individual owner for the animal's lifetime. Where exotic animals cannot be transferred to a genuine sanctuary, therefore, it is critical that existing owners must, as a minimum, increase the standard of care being provided to ensure the safety and well-being of the animals and the public.
The life conditions for the exotic animals currently in private hands must be drastically improved. We call upon existing exotic animal owners to ensure that the following minimum steps are implemented:
- An end to the de-clawing and/or de-fanging of exotic animals.
- An end to the breeding and sale of exotic animals and an end to their public display for profit.
- The provision of appropriate enclosure space that allows the animal to engage in normal behaviors that are common for the species in the wild.
- The provision of shelter from all types of elements and rich and varied species-appropriate enrichment.
- The placing of social animals with animals of their own species and an end to solitary confinement.
- The provision of barriers between the animals and individuals/general public, ensuring that direct contact is precluded.
- The provision of enclosures/pens with locks that can not be picked or opened by animals or the public, and a well-constructed perimeter fence around the enclosures.
- Ensuring that children are not allowed near exotic animals.
- An end to all direct contact with exotic animals, including display and photo opportunities.
All video/images: © API / R&D
Next: How You Can Take Action »
Full Investigation »


text:
- 6:00 p.m. Antique Tractor Pull
- 6:30 p.m. Holstein Show
- 7:00 & 8:30 p.m. The Silver Eagle Band
- Rides Start @ 6:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m.
Crew makes 1,126-pound bowl of Hawaii rice dish
HONOLULU (AP) — A group is claiming a world record for a popular Hawaii dish, after putting together a massive bowl of rice, hamburger, eggs and gravy. Full Story
Famed violinist plays do-over at DC train station
WASHINGTON (AP) — Acclaimed violinist Joshua Bell will try playing in a train station again, though this time he hopes it's more conducive to making music. Full Story
(AP Photo/Chris Pizzello, file)
Amanda Bynes arrested on suspicion of DUI
Say it ain't so: The actress who seemed on the mend after rehab is busted in San Fernando Valley after stopping car in middle of an intersection.