text:
I added W3 Total Cache to my site yesterday and have a problem I don't know how to fix. When I test the site on Google PageSpeed, this is one of the messages I get:
The following external CSS files were included after an external JavaScript file in http://*****.net/. To ensure CSS files are downloaded in parallel, always include external CSS before external JavaScript.
I had to add 2 lines of code to the header to link to external style sheets: one for a widget that shows the client's reviews, and one to Google Fonts.
When I view the page source, the W3 Javascript appears immediately after the <head> code. These additional CSS codes are being called after the W3 javascript, which is why I'm getting this error.
Is there anything I can do to change the way the W3 javascript is called? Or will I just have to live with this?
I will appreciate any help you can give me!


text:
Continuous Dopaminergic Stimulation: Parkinson's Disease
Award Information
Small Business Information
Auritec Pharmaceuticals, Inc., 2275 E Foothill Blvd, Pasadena, CA, 91107
Principal Investigator:
(626) 376-4070
(626) 376-4070
Business Contact:
(626) 376-4070
(626) 376-4070
Research Institution:
AbstractDESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The broad long term goal of this project is to develop sustained release subcutaneous drug delivery systems in order to achieve continuous dopaminergic stimulation in the treatment of Parkinson's Disease (PD). Pulsatile dopaminergic pharmacokinetics contribute to the variable beneficial effects as well as to adverse effects of treatment of PD and may also contribute to progression of motor side effects such as dyskinesias. Continuous dopaminergic stimulation has therefore been considered an important therapeutic goal. We have developed a proprietary subcutaneous sustained release platform technology based on suspensions of polymer-coated pure drug particles. High drug loading and sustained release kinetics have been achieved with several other drugs and this technology should be readily adaptable to drugs used in the treatment of PD. Specific aims of this Phase I proposal are to: 1. Formulate sustained release suspensions for the dopaminergic agonist apomorphine. 2. Test the in vitro release-by-time characteristics of these formulations into buffer. 3. Test the in vivo pharmacokinetics and the duration of the formulations in rats. The team of investigators is expert in drug development, polymer chemistry, neuropharmacology, pharmacokinetics and clinical neurology. We have experience in collaboration with large pharmaceutical companies leading to the approval of novel drug delivery systems. This project could lead rapidly to the development of an injectable dosage form that approaches the ideal of continuous dopaminergic stimulation. Completion of these aims will constitute a readily identifiable milestone that will continue in Phase 2, in which we will clarify the potency, duration of action, and safety of the formulation in animal models of PD.
* information listed above is at the time of submission.
An Official Website of the United States Government

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Now that Obi-Wan is Dead!
Since LucasArts has decided to kill Obi-Wan (for the PC anyway). Maybe someone can restart work on the Darth Maul TC. It looks like JK and MOTS will remain the top FPS for Star Wars fans for quite a while longer.
whoah hold up
forget darth maul, cos San is comin
and its bringin a lot of maddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddd stuff with it.
so be ready when we drop it .
Feel tha FUNK BLAST!
AKA : Cocobandito
|All times are GMT -4. The time now is 11:17 PM.
Powered by vBulletin®
Copyright ©2000 - 2016, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.
LFNetwork, LLC ©2002-2015 - All rights reserved.


text:
NFL Nation
Print without images
Monday, August 1, 2011
NFC East Sunday: How was your day?
By Dan Graziano
Gonna make this quick since morning's coming soon, but all week I have made it a point, at the end of these busy free-agent days, to check in and ask one simple question: So, how was your day ...
Dallas Cowboys
Especially compared to what the fans I'm hearing from on Twitter would like them to be doing. Look, everybody: They're going to get two safeties. They're not going to open the season with nine players on defense. But there are cap concerns, and they can't just start throwing money around the way the Eagles are. Facts are facts, and they're going to have to make sure the deal they give to their first-choice safety doesn't prevent them from getting the second one they'll also need.
That first choice
may well be
Abram Elam
, but as Sunday turned to Monday in the East, he was still unsigned.
Michael Huff
, a guy a lot of people wanted and thought would fit in Dallas, decided to stay in Oakland, but that could be good news, as it could signal that the safety market is settling down after the big early deals guys like
Quintin Mikell
Eric Weddle
got. But there are still guys available, and the Cowboys will get two. I promise. Can't tell you when, though, no matter how many times you ask. How about those Rangers, though? Really beefed up that bullpen.
New York Giants
Yes, I believe they really wanted
Plaxico Burress
back. No, I don't really believe he wanted to go back to them. So when he signed with the Jets on Sunday morning, I don't think it was a surprise, though I'm sure the Giants were disappointed. Their sudden interest in Burress last week, given their more pressing concerns, indicated that they're more worried about
Steve Smith
's knee than they expected to be. Makes you wonder if they're going to be beating the bushes for receivers now. The
Osi Umenyiora
situation remains a thorn in their side, as he showed up but didn't practice and is apparently complaining of a hip problem. And the
Ahmad Bradshaw
situation looks to be coming to a head, as The Star-Ledger reports they're
bringing in
Jason Snelling
for a visit, either to pressure Bradshaw into signing or to sign Snelling and tell Bradshaw best of luck in his future endeavors. I'm thinking a resolution on this could come soon. Maybe even during my upcoming nap.
Philadelphia Eagles
"Bit of a come-down, actually."
It kind of had to be after the previous two days, but nothing of major consequence happened with the Eagles on Sunday. They signed veteran guard
Evan Mathis
give them some coverage
as they continue to negotiate with first-round draft pick
Danny Watkins
. They didn't get Burress either, but I have my doubts about how badly they wanted him in the first place. And there were some reports swirling Sunday night that holdout receiver
DeSean Jackson
make his way into camp this week
, though I've personally been given no indication of that. It's possible the Eagles could tell him he has to come to camp before they'll start negotiating, which could get him there for a few days at least before he sees and/or decides how the negotiations are going. Remember, Jackson's holdout is justified. His contract needs to be improved, and both sides agree. They just need to sit down and ... you know ... do it. On the whole, though, Sunday was a yawner by recent Eagles standards, which have been pretty high.
Washington Redskins
I think I've used this one for the Redskins before, and it works. Washington continues to make
smart, big-picture, non-flashy moves
that look nothing like the free-agent plans under which they used to operate during the Dan Snyder era. They needed a right tackle, and they brought back
Jammal Brown
, the one they had last year. They needed a veteran running back, and they managed to get one, in
Tim Hightower
, who's only 25 and hasn't been ridden very hard. They're plugging away, putting things together and building for the future. It could make for a frustrating 2011 for their fans, especially in a division with three now-oriented teams. But it's the right way to go, given the number of holes they had on their roster. The payoff could be very nice down the road.
My day was long, and I'm a little road-weary, so I will bid you good night and catch you again in the morning from the practice fields in Ashburn, Va., just down the road from the hotel in which I'm writing this. On the road again to watch some football practice. Lockout feels like a million years ago.
How was your day?


text:
Just In Case
Just In Case
Wendy Lamb Books, Hardcover, 9780385746786, 256pp.
Publication Date: August 8, 2006
Justin Case is convinced fate has in for him.
And he's right.
After finding his younger brother teetering on the edge of his balcony, fifteen-year-old David Case realizes the fragility of life and senses impending doom. Without looking back, he changes his name to Justin and assumes a new identity, new clothing and new friends, and dares to fall in love with the seductive Agnes Day. With his imaginary dog Boy in tow, Justin struggles to fit into his new role and above all, to survive in a world where tragedy is around every corner. He's got to be prepared, just in case.
Meg Rosoff was born in Boston and worked in publishing and advertising before writing How I Live Now. She moved in 1989 from New York City to London, where she currently lives with her husband and daughter. The author lives in England.
Meg Rosoff was born in Boston and lives in London. She is the author of How I Live Now and Just In Case
Meet Meg Rosoff, Michael L. Printz Award winner for How I Live Now, as she promotes her new novel, Just In Case.
Monday, September 18, 2006
6:30 p.m.
Barnes & Noble
267 7th Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11215
Call (718) 832-9066 for more information.
Tuesday, September 19, 2006
7:00 p.m.
Northport Public Library
151 Laurel Avenue, Northport, NY 11768
Call (631) 261-6930 for more information.
Thursday, September 21, 2006
7:00 p.m.
Barnes & Noble
2245 Richmond Avenue, Staten Island, NY 10314
Call (718) 982-6983 for more information.


text:
The Webcast Link for Our 2014 Fall Conference Is Now Live!
The Hannah Arendt Center's seventh annual fall conference "The Unmaking of Americans: Are There Still American Values Worth Fighting For?" is upon us. The conference will run from 10:00 am to 6:00 pm on both Thursday and Friday, October 9-10 in Olin Hall at Bard College!
The Unmaking of Americans: Are There Still American Ideals Worth Fighting For?
(Featured Image - The American Flag, Source: The Sleuth Journal)
Parts of this post have appeared before; it is rewritten and presented in preparation for this week's Hannah Arendt Center Conference "The Unmaking of Americans: Are There Still American Ideals Worth Fighting For?"
On Thursday and Friday of this week, "The Unmaking of Americans: Are There Still American Ideals Worth Fighting For?" will gather leading public intellectuals, lawyers, students, professors, writers, politicians, business people, philosophers, and citizens to think together about what American ideas, if any, can inspire Americans to sacrifice and struggle for the common good.
The Two American Constitutional Freedoms
It is hard to disagree with the claim that government is too big and too bureaucratic. Citizenship is in decline. The legitimacy of representative democratic government is experiencing a crisis around the world. These are common refrains, heard often on the left and the right. Both the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street are evidence of the general dissatisfaction with big, unresponsive, administrative government. California is thinking of splitting itself into six states. Even the New York Times Magazine, in its cover story today, suggests that the time for the Libertarian movement may have finally arrived.
Amor Mundi 2/16/14
Hannah Arendt considered calling her magnum opus Amor Mundi: Love of the World. Instead, she settled upon The Human Condition. What is most difficult, Arendt writes, is to love the world as it is, with all the evil and suffering in it. And yet she came to do just that. Loving the world means neither uncritical acceptance nor contemptuous rejection. Above all it means the unwavering facing up to and comprehension of that which is.
Every Sunday, The Hannah Arendt Center Amor Mundi Weekly Newsletter will offer our favorite essays and blog posts from around the web. These essays will help you comprehend the world. And learn to love it.
According to Rich Lowry and Ramesh Ponnuru, "The survival of American exceptionalism as we have known it is at the heart of the debate over Obama's program. It is why that debate is so charged." Mitt Romney repeated this same line during his failed bid to unseat the President, arguing that President Obama "doesn't have the same feelings about American exceptionalism that we do." American exceptionalism—long a sociological concept used to describe qualities that distinguished American cultural and political institutions—has become a political truncheon. Now comes Peter Beinart writing in the National Journal that the conservatives are half correct. It is true that American exceptionalism is threatened and in decline. But the cause is not President Obama. Beinart argues that the real cause of the decline of exceptionalist feeling in the United States is conservatism itself. Here is Beinart on one way the current younger generation is an exception to the tradition of American exceptionalism: "For centuries, observers have seen America as an exception to the European assumption that modernity brings secularism. "There is no country in the world where the Christian religion retains a greater influence over the souls of men than in America," de Tocqueville wrote. In his 1996 book, American Exceptionalism: A Double-Edged Sword, Seymour Martin Lipset quoted Karl Marx as calling America "preeminently the country of religiosity," and then argued that Marx was still correct. America, wrote Lipset, remained "the most religious country in Christendom." But in important ways, the exceptional American religiosity that Gingrich wants to defend is an artifact of the past. The share of Americans who refuse any religious affiliation has risen from one in 20 in 1972 to one in five today. Among Americans under 30, it's one in three. According to the Pew Research Center, millennials—Americans born after 1980—are more than 30 percentage points less likely than seniors to say that "religious faith and values are very important to America's success." And young Americans don't merely attend church far less frequently than their elders. They also attend far less than young people did in the past. "Americans," Pew notes, "do not generally become more [religiously] affiliated as they move through the life cycle"—which means it's unlikely that America's decline in religious affiliation will reverse itself simply as millennials age. In 1970, according to the World Religion Database, Europeans were over 16 percentage points more likely than Americans to eschew any religious identification. By 2010, the gap was less than half of 1 percentage point. According to Pew, while Americans are today more likely to affirm a religious affiliation than people in Germany or France, they are actually less likely to do so than Italians and Danes." Read more on Beinart and American exceptionalism in the Weekend Read.
In this interview, Kevin Kelly, one of the founders of Wired magazine, explains his concept of the "technium," or the whole system of technology that has developed over time and which, he argues, has its own biases and tendencies "inherently outside of what humans like us want." One thing technology wants is to watch us and to track us. Kelly writes: "How can we have a world in which we are all watching each other, and everybody feels happy? I don't see any counter force to the forces of surveillance and self-tracking, so I'm trying to listen to what the technology wants, and the technology is suggesting that it wants to be watched. What the Internet does is track, just like what the Internet does is to copy, and you can't stop copying. You have to go with the copies flowing, and I think the same thing about this technology. It's suggesting that it wants to monitor, it wants to track, and that you really can't stop the tracking. So maybe what we have to do is work with this tracking—try to bring symmetry or have areas where there's no tracking in a temporary basis. I don't know, but this is the question I'm asking myself: how are we going to live in a world of ubiquitous tracking?" Asking such questions is where humans fit into the technium world. "In a certain sense," he says, "what becomes really valuable in a world running under Google's reign are great questions, and that's something that for a long time humans will be better at than machines. Machines are for answers; humans are for questions."
Literature Against Consumer Culture
Taking issue with a commentator's claim that The Paris Review's use of the word "crepuscular" (adj., resembling twilight) was elitist, Eleanor Catton suggests that the anti-critical attitude of contemporary readers arises out of consumer culture: "The reader who is outraged by being "forced" to look up an unfamiliar word — characterising the writer as a tyrant, a torturer — is a consumer outraged by inconvenience and false advertising. Advertising relies on the fiction that the personal happiness of the consumer is valued above all other things; we are reassured in every way imaginable that we, the customers, are always right." Literature, she says, resists this attitude, and, in fact cannot be elitist at all: "A book cannot be selective of its readership; nor can it insist upon the conditions under which it is read or received. The degree to which a book is successful depends only on the degree to which it is loved. All a starred review amounts to is an expression of brand loyalty, an assertion of personal preference for one brand of literature above another. It is as hopelessly beside the point as giving four stars to your mother, three stars to your childhood, or two stars to your cat."
Vladislav Inozemtsev reviews Laurence Cockcroft's book Global Corruption. "The book's central argument is that corruption has political roots, which Cockcroft identifies as the "merging of elites." Surveying the mechanisms of top-level decision-making from Russia to Brazil, to Peru and India, as well as in many other countries, he discerns a pattern: Politicians today often act as entrepreneurs, surround themselves with sycophants and deputies, and so navigate the entire political process as they would any commercial business. The hallmarks of a corrupt society are the widespread leveraging of wealth to secure public office; the leveraging of such authority to secure various kinds of privileges; and the interplay of both to make even bigger money. Simply put, corruption is a transformation of public service into a specific kind of entrepreneurship."
George Packer takes a look at Amazon's role in the book business noting that its founder, Jeff Bezos, knew from the start that book sales were only the lure; Amazon's real business was Big Data, a big deal in an industry that speaks to people's hearts and minds as well as their wallets. Still, "Amazon remains intimately tangled up in books. Few notice if Amazon prices an electronics store out of business (except its staff); but, in the influential, self-conscious world of people who care about reading, Amazon's unparalleled power generates endless discussion, along with paranoia, resentment, confusion, and yearning. For its part, Amazon continues to expend considerable effort both to dominate this small, fragile market and to win the hearts and minds of readers. To many book professionals, Amazon is a ruthless predator. The company claims to want a more literate world—and it came along when the book world was in distress, offering a vital new source of sales. But then it started asking a lot of personal questions, and it created dependency and harshly exploited its leverage; eventually, the book world realized that Amazon had its house keys and its bank-account number, and wondered if that had been the intention all along."
Ta-Nehisi Coates, in the wake of NFL prospect Michael Sam's announcement that he is gay, considers how the concept of readiness is backwards: "The question which we so often have been offered—is the NFL ready for a gay player?—is backwards. Powerful interests are rarely "ready" for change, so much as they are assaulted by it. We refer to barriers being "broken" for a reason. The reason is not because great powers generally like to unbar the gates and hold a picnic in the honor of the previously excluded. The NFL has no moral right to be "ready" for a gay player, which is to say it has no right to discriminate against gay men at its leisure which anyone is bound to respect."
This week, the magazine Jacobin released Class Action, a handbook for activist teachers, set against school reform and financed using the Kickstarter crowdfunding platform. One of the many essays contained within is Dean Baker's "Unremedial Education," which contains one of the handbook's major theses, an important reminder for those who are interested in education as a route to both the life of the mind and the success of the person: "Education is tremendously valuable for reasons unrelated to work and income. Literacy, basic numeracy skills, and critical thinking are an essential part of a fulfilling life. Insofar as we have children going through school without developing these skills, it is an enormous failing of society. Any just society would place a top priority on ensuring that all children learn such basic skills before leaving school. However, it clearly is not the case that plausible increases in education quality and attainment will have a substantial impact on inequality."
From the Hannah Arendt Center Blog
This week on the blog, Roger Berkowitz asks "Why Think?". And in the Weekend Read, Berkowitz reflects on the loss of American exceptionalism.
Amor Mundi 11/3/13
Hannah Arendt considered calling her magnum opus Amor Mundi: Love of the World. Instead, she settled upon The Human Condition. What is most difficult, Arendt writes, is to love the world as it is, with all the evil and suffering in it. And yet she came to do just that. Loving the world means neither uncritical acceptance nor contemptuous rejection. Above all it means the unwavering facing up to and comprehension of that which is.
Every Sunday, The Hannah Arendt Center Amor Mundi Weekly Newsletter will offer our favorite essays and blog posts from around the web. These essays will help you comprehend the world. And learn to love it.
Decline, writes Josef Joffe in a recent essay in The American Interest, "is as American as apple pie." The tales of decline that populate American cultural myths have many morals, but one common shared theme: Renewal. Here is Joffe: "Decline Time in America" is never just a disinterested tally of trends and numbers. It is not about truth, but about consequences—as in any morality tale. Declinism tells a story to shape belief and change behavior; it is a narrative that is impervious to empirical validation, whose purpose is to bring comforting coherence to the flow of events. The universal technique of mythic morality tales is dramatization and hyperbole. Since good news is no news, bad news is best in the marketplace of ideas. The winning vendor is not Pollyanna but Henny Penny, also known as Chicken Little, who always sees the sky falling. But why does alarmism work so well, be it on the pulpit or on the hustings—whatever the inconvenient facts?" You can read more about Joffe's tale of decline in Roger Berkowitz's weekend read.
James Somers considers recent advances in machine learning and whether or not they answer the big question: whether or not we can make machines that think like humans. In a essay that's part rofile of Douglas Hofstadter, author of Godel, Escher, Bach, and part history of artificial intelligence, Hofstadter argues that the AI community has abandoned the big questions for smaller ones,
more easily answered, more obviously profitable.
Using the left's ambivalence on marriage equality as a starting point, Sam Brody considers two groups of the American left, joiners and quitters. Joiners, to Brody's thinking, seek to have queer individuals granted the same rights long prized by American liberals, in this case the right to marry and have the associated economic benefits of that status, as heterosexual couples. Quitters, on the other hand, see the whole endeavor as a canard, an attempt to normalize an outsider group by buying into a deeply corrupt system. Brody, for his part, sees both groups as missing the point and suggest that the struggle he's described needs to be redirected inward. The solution, he says, is a "a vision of love and commitment that is open and flexible, but not subordinated to the consumerist logic of individual whims. A left committed to such a vision might discover resources to combat the social disintegration of post-industrial life, without the false panaceas of nationalism, trade solidarity, or state-sponsored religious initiatives... the utopian imagination must be directed inward, from which point it can radiate out to the neighbor, the spouse, the neighborhood, the city, the country and the world."
Garret Keizer thinks about the meaning of momento mori in a world threatened by increasingly violent natural disasters: "I wonder if the tradition of memento mori exists more vividly in the remnants of the gay community than in any remaining monastic tradition. From those who have lived daily in the shadow of AIDS, we may be able to learn something about that complex ethos of care-giving, self-denial, and mortal merriment without which environmentalism has about the same chances of survival as the polar bears do."
Have you seen the "The Banality of the Banality of Evil," the altered landscape by the elusive street artist who calls himself Banksy? It has caused quite a furor, and seemingly over nothing. "We're really not sure what to make of Banksy's latest installment in "Better Out Than In." His website describes it as "The banality of the banality of evil, Oil on oil on canvas, 2013" and "a thrift store painting vandalized then re-donated to the thrift store." What we see is a beautiful pastoral landscape, except there's an SS officer on a bench in the foreground. What exactly is he getting at with "the banality of the banality of evil"? Doing loop-de-loops around Hannah Arendt's theoretical reckoning of the Nazis' rise to power isn't really how we want to spend our afternoon, but we're guessing it has something to do with Banksy not really caring much about what he's actually saying."
What is Politics? A Conference on Hannah Arendt at Villa Aurora
Los Angeles, CA
Learn more here.
Canard of Decline
The secret of American exceptionalism may very well be the uniquely American susceptibility to narratives of decline. From the American defeat in Vietnam and the Soviet launch of Sputnik to the quagmire in Afghanistan and the current financial crisis, naysayers proclaim the end of the American century. And yet the prophecies of decline are nearly always, in a uniquely American spirit, followed by calls for rejuvenation. Americans are neither pessimists nor optimists. Instead, they are darkened by despair and fired by hope.
Decline, writes Josef Joffe in a recent essay in The American Interest, "is as American as apple pie. " The tales of decline that populate American cultural myths have many morals, but one common shared theme: Renewal.
"Decline Time in America" is never just a disinterested tally of trends and numbers. It is not about truth, but about consequences—as in any morality tale. Declinism tells a story to shape belief and change behavior; it is a narrative that is impervious to empirical validation, whose purpose is to bring comforting coherence to the flow of events. The universal technique of mythic morality tales is dramatization and hyperbole. Since good news is no news, bad news is best in the marketplace of ideas. The winning vendor is not Pollyanna but Henny Penny, also known as Chicken Little, who always sees the sky falling. But why does alarmism work so well, be it on the pulpit or on the hustings—whatever the inconvenient facts?
Joffe, the editor of the German weekly Die Zeit, writes from the lofty perch of an all-knowing cultural critic. Declinism is, when looked at from above, little more than a marketing pitch:
Since biblical times, prophets have never gone to town on rosy oratory, and politicos only rarely. Fire and brimstone are usually the best USP, "unique selling proposition" in marketing-speak.
The origins of modern declinism, pace Joffe, are found in "the serial massacre that was World War I," the rapacious carnage that revealed "the evil face of technology triumphant." WWI deflated the enlightenment optimism in reason and science, showing instead the destructive impact of those very same progressive ideals.
The knowledge that raised the Eiffel Tower also birthed the machine gun, allowing one man to mow down a hundred without having to slow down for reloading. Nineteenth-century chemistry revolutionized industry, churning out those blessings from petroleum to plastics and pharmacology that made the modern world. But the same labs also invented poison gas. The hand that delivered good also enabled evil. Worse, freedom's march was not only stopped but reversed. Democracy was flattened by the utopia-seeking totalitarians of the 20th century. Their utopia was the universe of the gulag and the death camp. Their road to salvation led to a war that claimed 55 million lives and then to a Cold War that imperiled hundreds of millions more.
America, the land of progress in Joffe's telling, now exists in a productive tension with the anti-scientific tale of the "death of progress."
"Technology and plenty, the critics of the Enlightenment argued, would not liberate the common man, but enslave him in the prison of "false consciousness" built by the ruling elites. The new despair of the former torchbearers of progress may well be the reason that declinism flourishes on both Left and Right. This new ideological kinship alone does not by itself explain any of the five waves of American declinism, but it has certainly broadened its appeal over time.
Joffe stands above both extremes of the declinism pendulum. Instead of embracing or rejecting the tale of decline, he names decline and its redemptive flipside the driving force of American exceptionalism. Myths of decline are necessary in order to fuel the exceptional calls for sacrifice, work, and innovation that have for centuries turned the tide of American elections and American culture.
[D]awn always follows doom—as when Kennedy called out in his Inaugural Address: "Let the word go forth that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans." Gone was the Soviet bear who had grown to monstrous size in the 1950s. And so again twenty years later. At the end of Ronald Reagan's first term, his fabled campaign commercial exulted: "It's morning again in America. And under the leadership of President Reagan, our country is prouder and stronger and better." In the fourth year of Barack Obama's first term, America was "back", and again on top. Collapse was yesterday; today is resurrection. This miraculous turnaround might explain why declinism usually blossoms at the end of an administration—and wilts quickly after the next victory.
Over and over the handwriting that showed that decline was on the wall was, in truth, "a call to arms that galvanized the nation."
Behind this long history of nightmares of degeneration and dreams of rebirth is Joffe's ultimate question: Are the current worries about the death of the American century simply the latest in the American cycle of gloom and glee? Or is it possible that the American dream is, finally, used up? In other words, is it true that, since "at "some point, everything comes to an end," this may be the end for America? Might it be that, as many in Europe now argue, "The United States is a confused and fearful country in 2010." Is it true that the US is a "hate-filled country" in unavoidable decline?
Joffe is skeptical. Here is his one part of his answer:
Will they be proven right in the case of America? Not likely. For heuristic purposes, look at some numbers. At the pinnacle of British power (1870), the country's GDP was separated from that of its rivals by mere percentages. The United States dwarfs the Rest, even China, by multiples—be it in terms of GDP, nuclear weapons, defense spending, projection forces, R&D outlays or patent applications. Seventeen of the world's top universities are American; this is where tomorrow's intellectual capital is being produced. America's share of global GDP has held steady for forty years, while Europe's, Japan's and Russia's have shrunk. And China's miraculous growth is slipping, echoing the fates of the earlier Asian dragons (Japan, South Korea, Taiwan) that provided the economic model: high savings, low consumption, "exports first." China is facing a disastrous demography; the United States, rejuvenated by steady immigration, will be the youngest country of the industrial world (after India).
In short, if America is to decline it will be because America refuses to stay true to its tradition of innovation and reinvention.
As convincing as Joffe is, the present danger that America's current malaise will persist comes less from economics or from politics than from the extinguishing of the nation's moral fire. And in this regard, essays such as Joffe's are symptoms of the problem America faces. Joffe writes from above and specifically from the position of the social scientist. He looks down on America and American history and identifies trends. He cites figures. And he argues that in spite of the worry, all is generally ok. Inequality? Not to worry, it has been worse. Democratic sclerosis? Fret not; think back to the 1880s. Soul-destroying partisanship? Have you read the newspapers of the late 18th century? In short, our problems are nothing new under the sun. Keep it in perspective. There is painfully little urgency in such essays. Indeed, they trade above all in a defense of the status quo.
There is reason to worry though, and much to worry about. Joffe may himself have seen one such worry if he had lingered longer on an essay he cites briefly, but does not discuss. In 1954, Hannah Arendt published "Europe and America: Dream and Nightmare" in Commentary Magazine. In that essay—originally given as part of a series of talks at Princeton University on the relationship between Europe and America—she asked: "WHAT IMAGE DOES Europe have of America?"
Her answer is that Europe has never seen America as an exotic land like the South Sea Islands. Instead, there are two conflicting images of America that matter for Europeans. Politically, America names the very European dream of political liberty. In this sense, America is less the new world than the embodiment of the old world, the land in which European dreams of equality and liberty are made manifest. The political nearness of Europe and America explains their kinship.
European anti-Americanism, however, is lodged in a second myth about American, the economic image of America as the land of plenty. This European image of America's stupendous wealth may or may not be borne out in reality, but it is a fantasy that drives European opinion:
America, it is true, has been the "land of plenty" almost since the beginning of its history, and the relative well-being of all her inhabitants deeply impressed even early travelers. … It is also true that the feeling was always present that the difference between the two continents was greater than national differences in Europe itself even if the actual figures did not bear this out. Still, at some moment—presumably after America emerged from her long isolation and became once more a central preoccupation of Europe after the First World War—this difference between Europe and America changed its meaning and became qualitative instead of quantitative. It was no longer a question of better, but of altogether different conditions, of a nature which makes understanding well nigh impossible. Like an invisible but very real Chinese wall, the wealth of the United States separates it from all other countries of the globe, just as it separates the individual American tourist from the inhabitants of the countries he visits.
Arendt's interest in this "Chinese wall" that separates Europe from America is that it lies behind the anti-Americanism of European liberals, even as it inspires the poor. "As a result," of this myth, Arendt writes, "sympathy for America today can be found, generally speaking, among those people whom Europeans call "reactionary," whereas an anti-American posture is one of the best ways to prove oneself a liberal." The same can largely be said today.
The danger in such European anti-Americanism is not only that it will fire a European nationalism, but also that it will cast European nationalism as an ideological opposition to American wealth. "Anti-Americanism, its negative emptiness notwithstanding, threatens to become the content of a European movement." In other words, European nationalism threatens to assume on a negative ideological tone.
That Europe will understand itself primarily in opposition to America as a land of wealth impacts America too, insofar as European opposition hardens Americans in their own mythic sense of themselves as a land of unfettered economic freedom and unlimited wealth. European anti-Americanism thus fosters the kind of free market ideology so rampant in America today.
What is more, when Europe and America emphasize their ideological opposition on an economic level, they deemphasize their political kinship as lands of freedom.
Myths of American decline serve a purpose on both sides of the Atlantic.
In Europe, they help justify Europe's social democratic welfare states, as well as their highly bureaucratized regulatory state. In America, they underlie attacks on regulation and calls to limit and shrink government. These are all important issues that should be thought and debated with an eye to reality. The danger is that the European emancipation and American exceptionalism threatens to elevate ideology over reality, hardening positions that need rather to be open for innovation.
Joffe's essay on the Canard of Decline is a welcome spur to rethinking the gloom and the glee of our present moment. It is your weekend read.


text:
April 26, 2004
Eagles have lot on minds against KWC
The University of Southern Indiana softball team will have a lot on its mind when it hosts Kentucky Wesleyan College in its regular-season finale Tuesday at the USI Softball Field. The doubleheader will start at noon.
USI (21-22, 9-7 GLVC) is in fifth place in the GLVC standings, trailing the University of Wisconsin-Parkside by percentage points. If the Screaming Eagles can sweep Kentucky Wesleyan College (4-34, 1-17 GLVC) on Tuesday, the Eagles would leap UWP in the standings and have the last at-bat against the Rangers in the first round of the GLVC Tournament, which starts Friday, April 30, at 9 a.m. at the EastSide Centre in East Peoria, Illinois.
Tuesday's doubleheader also will mark the final games the Eagles will play on the USI Softball Field. Following the season, the field will be torn and converted into a parking lot. The Eagles will begin play on their new field, which will be located at the USI Intramural Fields off Broadway, in 2005.
The Eagles, who 9-3 at home this season and are 66-18 since 2000 at the USI Softball Field, who are coming off a split with #21 Southern Illinois University Edwardsville on Sunday.
Sophomore pitcher Missy Grover (Mishawaka, Indiana) picked up her 10th victory of the season in the first game against SIUE after spreading five hits and a run throughout seven innings in a 2-1 USI victory.
Senior first baseman Monica Tepe (Granger, Indiana) drove in both runs in USI's victory with a single in the second inning.
Freshman catcher/designated player Lisa Anderson (Chesterton, Indiana) went 3-for-4 with a home run and a pair of runs scored during the two games.
For the season, Anderson leads the Screaming Eagles with a .374 batting average and four home runs. She is second, behind senior third baseman/pitcher Shannon Emmons (Boonville, Indiana), in runs batted in (20).
Emmons is second on the team with a .352 batting average and three home runs. She has driven in 21 runs and has a team-high 13 doubles.
Defensively, Grover leads the Eagles with 10 wins, while Emmons has nine victories to go along with a team-best 68 strikeouts and 1.78 ERA.
Dan McDonnell,
USI Sports Information


text:
Contact syed on Twoo
male - 29 years, Pakistan
16 visitors
Your visit won't be logged.
Your visit will be logged.
About meMore about me
- Name
- syed jamal
- Date of birth
- 13/01/1987
- Location
- (Islamabad)
- Native language
- English
Guestbook 4
I'm Mabel,by name single
and never been married
I like honesty, trust,love,
caring,truth and respect,
contact me at this love to meet
( email@example.com)
so that we can know ourselves better
Hope to talk soon.
posted by mabelbenson309
13 January 2013
Sign guestbook
16 visitors since 23 April 2010.
Pictures 1
jamalwazir hasn't added any public pictures yet, but does have 1 picture for friends. Add jamalwazir as a friend to be able to view this picture.


text:
ODT Online
ODT /directory
A man, believed to be in his 70s, has drowned at Ocean Beach
in Northland this afternoon.
Police, St John paramedics, a helicopter and firefighters
from Whangarei Heads responded to a call for help at 3.19pm.
Northland St John boss Tony Devanney said his paramedics
attempted resuscitation but could not save the man.
Police were speaking to the man's family and making
arrangements to move the body and to inform the coroner.
- Northern Advocate
A name, residential address, and (preferably residential) telephone number is required from readers who comment on ODT Online. These details will not be visible to site visitors.
Login or Register
to add your business to the ODT/directory. Quick link to
Submit your news & photos - Login or
Opinion? Have your say - Login or Register
Submit your
event or notice
Add a photo
Bookmark ODT
Make ODT my
Otago Daily Times print and digital edition, The
Star - Dunedin, The News - Central Otago, The
Ensign - Gore, Southland Express -
Invercargill, Southern Rural Life - Otago and
Southland, The Courier - Timaru, Courier Country - Canterbury and
West Coast, Queenstown Times - Queenstown, Mountain Scene -
Queenstown, The Oamaru Mail - Oamaru, The
Greymouth Star - Greymouth, Hokitika Guardian - Hokitika,
West Coast Messenger - West Coast, The Ashburton Courier -
Ashburton, The News - North Canterbury, Extra! schools
publication, Property
Times South Canterbury


text:
Department of Economics
1144 Vari Hall
Tel.: 416-736-5083
Fax: 416-736-5987
Chair:M. Anam
Undergraduate Program Director:N. Buckley
University Professors:
G. Fallis, B. Spotton Visano
M. Anam, E. Appelbaum, S. Bucovetsky, S. H. Chiang, A.J. Cohen, J. Jasiak, K.C. Lo, A. Mansoorian, P. Rilstone, J. B. Smith, J. Smithin
Associate Professors:
A. Adamopoulos, A. Akyol, J. Beare, N. Buckley, M. Brzozowski, B. Esteve-Volart, I. Ferrara, G. Georgopoulos, R. Grinspun, W. M. Ho, N. Jazairi, A. Kimakova, Y. Kong, N. Lagerlof, F. Lazar, B. Lebrun, X. Li, A. Lileeva, A. Semenov, A. Stoyanov, R. Sufana, H. Tam
Assistant Professors:
B. D. Abner, F. Leibovici, S. Maitra, A. Podhorsky, L. Salisbury, B. Sand, X. Song, A. Wilczynski
Professors Emeriti:
L. Anderson, K. Carpenter, M. D. G. Copeland, H. Drost, G. E. Eaton, J. Landa, R. Latham, S. Lanfranco, M. S. Marzouk, A. N. McLeod, P. G. Reinhardt
Program Description
The Business Economics program in the Faculty of Liberal Arts and Professional Studies integrates aspects of economics and business studies, focusing on the use of economic analysis and statistical methods to deal effectively with management problems in practical business fields. In applying economic theory to business management, students become familiar with the analytical and decision-making techniques used in the business world and with the public and private institutional environments within which businesses operate. They gain insight into critical business topics such as strategic competition, the internal organization of firms, and international issues facing businesses in the changing global marketplace. Graduates from the Business Economics program can pursue careers in business, government and the professions. The Business Economics program leads to a BA degree.
Degrees Offered
Business Economics (BA) Degree Requirements
- BA: 90 Credits
Course Listing
Course Listings Timetables Summer 2016
Course Listings Timetables Fall/Winter 2015-2016
Additional Course Links