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Sonny Perdue on Energy & OilRepublican GA Governor | |
"HB 473 provides Georgia companies with additional incentives for investing in energy efficiency and renewable energy," said Governor Perdue. "These clean energy grants will also help the private sector meet the state's goal of reducing energy consumption by 15 percent."
Governor Perdue has committed all state agencies to reduce energy consumption per square foot in state facilities 15 percent below FY2007 levels by 2020. The Governor also challenged Georgia's citizens, businesses and local governments to match the state's effort.
We feel compelled to guard against a regulatory approach that would increase the cost of electricity and gasoline prices, manufactured products, and ultimately harm the competitiveness of the US economy. As governors, we strongly urge Congress to stop harmful EPA regulation of greenhouse gas emissions that could damage those vital interests. We ask that Congress continue its work to pass comprehensive legislation that balances the role of conservation and climate security with the production of abundant and affordable American energy. The EPA has initiated efforts to impose greenhouse gas regulations that could be harmful to our economies at an especially critical time. As Governors, we are gravely concerned about such regulation.
EPA is not equipped to consider the very real potential for economic harm when regulating emissions. Without that consideration, regulation will place heavy administrative burdens on state environmental quality agencies, will be costly to consumers, and could be devastating to the economy and jobs.
We believe that EPA should offer input regarding complex energy and environmental policy initiatives, like reducing greenhouse gas emissions, but feel that these policies are best developed by elected representatives at the state and national level, not by a single federal agency. There is no question that broad bipartisan support exists to reduce greenhouse gas emissions while taking into consideration the difficult fiscal situation that our states and the nation face.
A resolution that it is the goal of the United States that, not later than January 1, 2025, the agricultural, forestry, and working land of the US should provide from renewable resources not less than 25% of the total energy consumed and continue to produce safe, abundant, and affordable food, feed, and fiber. [Governors also signed letters of endorsement at www.25x25.org]
Rep. SALAZAR: "Our resolution establishes a national goal of producing 25% of America's energy from renewable sources--like solar, wind and biofuels--by 2025. The "25x'25" vision is widely endorsed, bold, and fully attainable. If implemented, it would dramatically improve our energy security, our economy, and our ability to protect the environment.
"I am pleased that more than 20 of my colleagues in the Senate, from both sides of the aisle, are cosponsoring this resolution. In addition, the "25x'25" vision has been endorsed by 22 current and former governors and several State legislatures across the country. The Big Three automobile manufacturers--Ford, Chrysler, and General Motors--are all behind "25x'25" So are many agricultural organizations, environmental groups, scientists, and businesses, ranging from the Natural Resources Defense Council to John Deere.
"These Americans understand that we cannot continue to import 60% of our oil from foreign countries, many of which are hostile to the US, if we aim to be strong and secure in the world. They know that we will have to build a clean energy economy if we are to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. It is time for Congress to take a more active role in our clean energy future. Establishing a national goal--"25x'25" is the first step."


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[meteorite-list] Mars Rover Opportunity Update: Oct 31 - Nov 6, 2012
From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu, 8 Nov 2012 14:59:23 -0800 (PST) Message-ID: <201211082259.qA8MxNlE028333_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov> http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/status.html#opportunity OPPORTUNITY UPDATE: More Driving And Imaging At 'Matijevic Hill' - sols 3118-3124, Oct. 31, 2012-Nov. 6, 2012: Opportunity is continuing the local area survey around the location called Matijevic Hill (named in honor of Jake Matijevic) at the inboard edge of Cape York on the rim of Endeavour Crater. The rover performed three survey drives on Sols 3119, 3121 and 3124 (Nov. 1, 3 and 6, 2012), driving 125 feet (38 meters) south-southeast, 82 feet (25 meters) south-southeast, and 98 feet (30 meters) south, respectively. Each drive was preceded by the collection of targeted imagery and then followed by taking a 360-degree Navigation camera (Navcam) panorama. Two direct-to-earth (DTE) X-band sessions where supported on Sols 3120 and 3122 (Nov. 2 and 4, 2012), and an atmospheric argon measurement with the Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer (APXS) was performed on Sol 3122 (Nov. 4, 2012). The project also implemented a new daily nadir check sequence. This new sequence significantly reduces the number of power cycles on the rover's inertial measurement unit (IMU). For the next week the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter will be providing exclusive Ultra High Frequency relay support during the Mars Odyssey side-swap campaign. As of Sol 3124 (Nov. 6, 2012), the solar array energy production was 586 watt-hours with an atmospheric opacity (Tau) of 0.605 and a solar array dust factor of 0.604. Total odometry is 21.96 miles (35,345.23 meters). Received on Thu 08 Nov 2012 05:59:23 PM PST |
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This division covers the physical sciences. It includes biological physics (other than human biophysics), medical physics and synchrotron and accelerator technologies.
0202 Atomic, Molecular, Nuclear, Particle and Plasma Physics 0203 Classical Physics 0204 Condensed Matter Physics 0205 Optical Physics 0206 Quantum Physics 0299 Other Physical Sciences Exclusions:


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Remember I signed up for that half-marathon in Indianapolis? Well, that was Saturday. Stacie came with me, which I was excited about. My mom, 3 of her friends, my sister, and 4 of her friends went. We drove there on Friday. Stacie, my sister Jeanie, and I shared a room.
We went out to a pasta dinner (to carb-load for the race!). Then we went to Haggen Dazs for some ice cream. We went to bed early. I didn't sleep much because I was nervous about the race. I truly didn't think I'd finish it. I wasn't prepared for it at all.
Saturday--The race started at 7:30 AM, so we had to get up early. We got dressed and went down to our "corral". We were in the Z corral to start (The starting line was the A corral for fast people, and there were 50,000 people in this race. We were at the end because we estimated our time to be 4 hours, which is the max. You had to maintain an 18-minute mile or else you had to get on a bus to the finish line.)
The race started and it took us about 35 minutes to get to the starting line. We had a chip on our shoes that started our time when we got to the starting line and stopped our time when we got to the finish line. As soon as we got to the start, everyone in our group started going really fast (about 12.5 minute mile!) Keep in mind the plan was to walk this half marathon.
Anyways, we ended up splitting up after a mile or so, and Stacie and I walked together. We jogged a little because it took pressure off of our hips and feet. It was actually a lot of fun for the first 6 miles or so. There were lots of bands set up along the way, and tons of people cheering everyone on. Once we got to the Indy 500 race track, which we had to walk around, we were sooo bored and tired of walking. The race track was the worst part of the whole walk. It was really boring and long. Once we finished that part though, we only had 4 miles left.
The last mile was the hardest. My feet were hurting BADLY. My legs hurt. My back hurt. My whole body was so sore. When we saw the finish line, we jogged the last tenth of a mile to the end. My sister watched us finish (she was ahead of us) and she was so proud and excited that I actually did it--she cried when she saw me reach the finish line. Then we watched as my mom and her friends crossed, which made me get tears in my eyes.
The whole atmosphere was awesome--everyone cheers you on and makes you feel good.
I was in SO MUCH PAIN afterward. I took a Motrin 800. Didn't really help. We sat around all day long to just relax. That night we went out to dinner. I was limping badly, could barely move. Took more Motrin and a sleeping pill so I could sleep.
Sunday (today)--Got up, had breakfast, and drove home. I'm super duper duper sore today. My legs ache like you wouldn't believe, and I think I may have a stress fracture in my left foot. I can barely walk because I have a really sharp, shooting pain in the bone of my foot. I'd like to go get in x-ray'ed if it's not better tomorrow.
Our friends Tom and Jessica came over with their kids for dinner. Jessica's a massage therapist and she stretched me out. It helped a lot with my legs, but did nothing for my foot.
I feel like I was hit by a truck. But I'm already thinking I may want to do this again next year... more prepared, of course!


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The Winner
As a hundred thousand fans watched, Richard Petty ended his 45-race losing streak and picked up stockcar racings biggest purse$73,500. It all happened at the Daytona 500.
Pettys win, however, was a complete surprise. Going into the last lap, he was running 30 seconds behind the two leaders. All at once the car in second place tried to pass the number one man on the final stretch. This caused the first car to drift inside and force the challenger onto the infield grass, and slightly out of control. What happened next was incredible. The offended driver pulled his car back onto the track, caught up with the leader, and forced him into the outside wall. Both vehicles came to a screeching halt. The two drivers jumped out and quickly got into an old-fashioned slugging match. In the meantime, third-place Petty cruised by for the win.


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Story highlights
NEW: "Nobody should be surprised if there are some legal challenges," McCann says
Gov. Snyder says the legislation would make Michigan more competitive
The AFL-CIO says workers in right-to-work states get less pay and fewer benefits
The vote takes place to a chorus of "Shame on you!"
Chants of "Shame on you" rained down from a packed Michigan state Senate gallery Thursday as the state's lame-duck GOP legislature advanced legislation giving workers the right to opt out of union membership.
Labor unions and Democrats in the state legislature, some of whom walked out on the vote, lambasted the rush move as a stealthy subversion of the public will in labor-heavy Michigan.
"Republicans who got defeated up and down the ballot are using this lame-duck legislature to try and jam through legislation that flies in the face of what the voters wanted," said Bob McCann, the spokesman for the state's Senate Democratic Caucus. "It's a disgusting process and a disgusting result."
Michigan's house passed two bills and the state Senate approved one that would make Michigan a "right to work" state in which public and private workers could opt out of union membership and dues. The bills must be now voted on by the opposite chamber before going to Gov. Rick Synder, who supports the change.
Twenty-three U.S. states have similar legislation, according to the National Right To Work Legal Defense Foundation.
Republican supporters, including Gov. Rick Snyder, said the proposal would improve the state's economic competitiveness.
"Under freedom to work, Michiganders will have the freedom to choose whether or not to join a union," Snyder said. "They won't be forced to pay union dues if they don't want to, and they won't lose their jobs because of it. And if they want to pay dues voluntarily, they have the freedom to do that, too."
Synder announced the surprise plan to reporters Thursday morning. Within hours, thousands of labor supporters descended on the capitol building in Lansing to protest, but were met by police who used pepper spray to keep some of them out of secure areas.
Authorities arrested eight people and locked down the building, preventing thousands of protesters from getting in and drawing the ire of Democratic Sen. John Gleason.
"They're just ramming it through with no public involvement," he said. "They locked the state Capitol down. Every way they could, they shut the people out of the process."
Police said they were not trying to limit protest rights but were fearful of a repeat of events last year in Wisconsin, where demonstrators occupied the statehouse to protest Republican Gov. Scott Walker's efforts to strip union rights from most state jobs.
"People have a right to protest but it will be done in an orderly manner," state police Inspector Jean Adamczyk told CNN affiliate WDIV.
The building was locked down because its capacity had been exceeded, he said. Enough people had gotten in to fill the gallery.
Gleason complained that Republicans used a legislative maneuver – placing the provisions in an appropriations bill – to prevent voters from having the opportunity to overturn the decision.
"If you dedicate funds to legislation, it can't be overturned by the public," he said.
Lawmakers also skipped committee hearings that normally precede the final passage of legislation, McCann said.
"That's a complete subversion of how the legislative process is supposed to work," he said. "They've just completely thrown that out the window."
McCann said it's likely Democrats would challenge the validity of the legislation in court if it wins final approval.
State law requires the House to wait five days before considering the bill.
Michigan, with its ties to the auto industry, has long been a stronghold for the labor movement; 671,000 residents of the state are union members. But the state has suffered economically in recent years and Synder said employers need the flexibility to compete with businesses in neighboring Indiana and other states with right-to-work laws.
The proposal would not affect collective bargaining rights, except to eliminate the ability of unions to have companies fire workers who refuse to pay union dues, said F. Vincent Vernuccio, director of labor policy for the free-market Michigan think thank, the Mackinac Center.
Synder, in a blog entry on his website, said he thinks Republicans weren't trying to destroy unions.
"We owe much to the labor movement – the end of child labor, the 40-hour work week, safe working conditions in factories, and a guaranteed minimum wage," he said. "The labor movement is an important part of Michigan's fabric, and nothing about this proposal eliminates it."
But Michigan State AFL-CIO President Karla Swift said the bill doesn't help workers at all.
"In the wake of this legislation, the only 'freedom' gained for Michigan workers will be the freedom to make less, the freedom to be disrespected at work, the freedom to struggle to pay their bills and the freedom to be left out of the American dream," she said.
CNN's John Fricke, Dave Alsup and Michael Pearson contributed to this report


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Google Is the Best Place to Work — What Else Made the List?
Working at Google is often considered the Holy Grail of employment, and no wonder — for the second time in three years, the company has been named the happiest place to work.
For its Bliss Leap Awards, job site CareerBliss asked American employees to rate 10 key "happiness factors" like work/life balance, work environment, pay, growth opportunities and company culture.
After falling out of the top spot last year, Google came roaring back, something Matt Miller, co-founder and chief technical officer of CareerBliss, attributes to the tech giant's commitment to providing support and growth opportunities.
"Like any organization, company culture is always changing and adapting with new management, policies, and company growth," he said. "Google tells an interesting story of how [a] dynamic workplace can change in just one year."
Heidi Golledge, co-founder and CEO of CareerBliss, said, "A common thread amongst all our Bliss Leap Award winners is the desire to improve and continue to foster a positive and happier work environment." Indeed — all of the Top 10 companies saw at least a 12 percent bump in employee happiness since 2011.
The happiest companies to work:
1. Google
2. SuperMedia
3. Unisys
4. GE Capital Bank
5. Rockwell Collins
6. Ernst & Young
7. Dyn Corp
8. Applied Materials
9. Coco-Cola Co.
10. AECOM Technology


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Magdalene laundry survivors have urged Irish Mass goers to boycott churches and any collections this week, reports the Irish Independent. The move comes after the religious orders responsible for years of abuse refused to pay compensation to a new scheme that over 260 women applied for.
Magdalene survivor Miranda Gambold was outraged with the outcome; " Why can't they do the right thing?" she questioned, "Why do they want to make us suffer like this?". She urged the public to help the survivors in their quest for justice ;"It is not a big ask to call on people living in Ireland to support us, and what we have suggested is a simple but powerful way of sending a clear message to the religious orders to do the right thing."
Julie McClure, who was detained at Stanhope Street, Dublin, said she worked day and night for the institution; "What happened to us was a gross violation of our personal and fundamental human rights.Nobody seems to care that all we are asking is to be supported. Why can't the Government do that?"
Taoiseach Enda Kenny accepted in the Dail that these orders could not be compelled to pay, and that moral persuasion would have to be applied. There have been calls for the four institutions to be stripped of their charitable status . Justice Minister Alan Shatter also urged that the orders contribute to the fund which is expected to cost the state between $45.3million and $76.2million ( €34.5 million and €58 million.)
However, spokesman for the survivor's group, Steven O'Riordan called on the Government to also lift the Statue of Limitations ban on women if they sign up to the scheme."After the shocking and pathetic response from the Government, the women are now seeking the assistance of all decent citizens of this country to stand behind them," he said."We want people to make it clear to the church that people are not happy with how the women are being treated by the four religious orders who ran Magdalene laundries.We need the help and the support from the public because it is clear that the Irish Government is totally out of their depth."
The Irish Times listed background information on all four orders,and stated they had combined gross assets worth €1.5 billion when the last comprehensive assessment of their financial resources was made in 2009. The orders involved are; Sisters of Mercy, Sisters of Charity, Good Shepherd Sisters, and Sisters of Our Lady of Charity of Refuge.
1) Sisters of Mercy
The country's largest order, with 2,000 members was founded by Sr. Catherine McAuley in 1834, and has played a central role in educational provision. In 2009 it had total property assets of over $131 billion (€1 billion). Some $866million (€660 million) related to schools in use, $78million (€60 million)to a hospital in use; the value of congregation residences was $262million (€200 million ) and a further $91million (€70 million)related to other services.
The order ran two of the Magdalene laundries, in Galway and Dún Laoghaire.
2) Sisters of Charity
Founded in Dublin by Mary Aikenhead in 1815, the Sisters of Charity are associated with education and healthcare, and founded St Vincent's Hospital. With about 250 members in its Irish province, it had some $349million (€266 million)in assets in 2009, virtually all of which was restricted or committed to provision of services or welfare of its elderly members.
A $6.5million (€5 million) offer was made to the statutory fund in 2009 but only $2.6million (€2 million)was paid. The order said it could not afford to hand over the remaining $3.9million (€3 million ) because of the downturn in the property market. It ran two Magdalene laundries, one in Donnybrook in Dublin and the other in Peacock Lane in Cork.
3) Good Shepherd Sisters
Founded in France in 1835 by St Mary Euphrasia, this order ran four laundries: in Waterford, Wexford, Limerick and Cork. With a little over 100 members it is a small order which now concentrates on sheltered accommodation and social housing. With colleagues from Our Lady of Charity Sisters, it runs Ruhama, the outreach and advocacy services for women in prostitution.Its asset base was $39million (€30 million)in 2009, all but $3.9million €3 million of which was restricted or committed to services or welfare.
4) Sisters of Our Lady of Charity of Refuge
It ran two laundries in Dublin: Drumcondra and Gloucester Street. The order focuses on residential care and social work for women. It had 31 members in Ireland in 2009, with an average age of 78.
Its total asset base in 2009 was $78million (€60million).Some $34million (€26 million) of this was committed to running its nursing home and residential hostels into the future. It did offer land near the Phoenix Park to the OPW in lieu of cash five years ago, but that offer was declined by Cabinet.


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Notre équipe parle français
+34 977 77 90 90© Legal information for 2022. PortAventura. All rights reserved.
This document contains copyrighted material for which use PORTAVENTURA ENTERTAINMENT, S.A.U. holds the copyright or have obtained the necessary authorization, in both cases with the specific limitations that are outlined separately. Unauthorized use, or beyond the stated limitations, of this material will be prosecuted under the substantive applicable Spanish legislation, making such person fully responsible for carrying it out both in relation to PORTAVENTURA ENTERTAINMENT, S.A.U., as against that third side who saw their rights violated.
Each photo in this document is encrypted. The final letter of each code identifies the shoot to which it belongs. Each photo session has defined valid rights corresponding to model and photographer. Coding Example: PA10101m - use restrictions in this picture we find detailed in the "m", corresponding to the session of the photographer Pep Escoda and modeling agency De Mil Models s.l.If the photo shows models you should pay attention to the limitations detailed in the section of models and photographers. Otherwise, only to the limitations of the photographer.


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The most complex task for manufacturers of plate-fin heat exchangers is the process of brazing. Millions of brazing joints are required to ensure that the huge number of plates and fins function smoothly in the finished assembly. Only then will the corrugated heat exchanger elements be able to do their job and enable numerous industrial processes by transferring thermal energy from one medium to another. Plate-fin heat exchangers (PFHE) from Linde Engineering cover a temperature range from -269°C to +93°C and can resist a pressure of around 130 bar.
The fins for plate-fin heat exchangers are manufactured from special aluminium alloys.
Millions of brazed joints are required to produce plate-fin heat exchangers. Linde Engineering relies on proven vacuum brazing technology here.
The technology used by Linde to manufacture PFHEs is vacuum brazing – a tried-and-tested approach that does not require a flux. The advantage of this is that no cleaning steps are needed at the end and the parts are free of residues. The company has one of the largest brazing capacities in the world, giving it the flexibility to accept any order – even those with a tight delivery deadline. Linde Engineering started producing plate-fin heat exchangers in 1981 at its Schalchen and Pullach plants in Germany as well as in the Chinese city of Dalian. Since then, it has delivered 12,000 units to its customers worldwide. Linde experts have been continuously fine-tuning the design of these important process components over the years to maximise their performance.
Quality control
A manufacturing success story: Linde Engineering has manufactured over 12,000 plate-fin heat exchangers since 1981.
Tailored heat exchangers
8.2 metres long, 1.5 metres wide and over three metres high. These are the maximum dimensions of the plate-fin heat exchangers manufactured by Linde. Special aluminium alloys are used to make the PFHEs as lightweight and compact as possible. They provide optimum heat transfer performance, with the best surface to volume ratio of 2,000 m2 to m3. The choice of materials and design for each plate-fin heat exchanger depends on the customer's performance requirements. From stand-alone units to ready-to-run coldboxes with one or more plate-fin heat exchangers – Linde's engineering experts are able to offer tailored and optimised solutions for the most varied and challenging of demands.
Coldboxes contain one or more plate-fin heat exchangers in a steel casing. These can be easily integrated into the customer's pipeline system.


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Board 1×3
3/4" × 2-1/2"
$8.80 - $34.40
Solid wood mouldings and boards are random length products and exact lengths may be subject to availability. Please contact us at email@example.com or call 781-843-6666 with any questions.
Our Boards are available in many widths, lengths and species. S4S is the abbreviation for lumber that has been surfaced on four sides. When a board is surfaced, it has been milled through a joiner, planer or moulder, making rough lumber smooth and square. Our boards are ready to be used for your projects.


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When you're used to the world of Windows or OS X, Linux can seem a little unforgiving.
Not only does command-line access hand over the complete keys to the manor to any unwitting user with access to the administrator's account, there's rarely a safety net should things go wrong.
Despite advances in most Linux desktops (where the ubiquitous Trashcan safely buffers deleted files), you get no such protection from most system specific configuration, installation and maintenance tools.
And while it's rare for anything to go wrong without your direct input, some accidents do happen, especially if you enjoy tinkering with the latest distro release each month.
But this being Linux, there's plenty you can do to dig yourself out of a hole, which is why it's always a good idea to have a repair-worthy distribution close to hand when performing configuration and installation tasks.
One of the best developments in recent years has been the Live CD. These offer a fully functional Linux installation that runs from an optical drive. If you've got enough memory, you can even install new packages to the RAM disk just as you would when completing a standard installation.
This makes a recent release of a Live CD-based installer like Ubuntu Jaunty the perfect system recovery tool. Not only does it include every package you might require, but because it runs from the optical drive rather than the hard drive, your data isn't touched and there's no chance files will be overwritten without direct input. It's the obvious place to start when you get stuck.
1. Booting Linux
Probably the most common problem is when the Linux boot menu disappears or gets corrupted. The most likely reason for this is that a shared Windows installation has re-stamped its authority over your disk's master boot record, overwriting the Grub boot loader with its own system launching code.
In these cases, you need to boot into a different Linux environment, either off a Live CD or from any other Linux booting media you can get hold of. The distribution you choose will also need to have Grub installed.
With Ubuntu, open the Terminal from the Accessories menu and type sudo grub. This will launch the boot loader with administrator privileges. From the 'grub' command prompt, type find/boot/grub/stage1. This Grub function searches every compatible drive attached to your system for the '/boot/grub/stage1' file, which is used to launch the operating system.
GETTING GRUBBY: The command line can seem daunting, but it's really not
When the file is detected, it'll output the drive and partition number of your lost installation using the format (hd1,0). Your output will look different, but it's the drive number followed by the partition number of the Linux partition that you're looking for.
Grub should only be installed on a single partition on a single drive, so you shouldn't find more than one version of the file. To restore the Grub bootloader to your drive, type root (hd1,0), swapping the drive and partition number with the output you found with the previous 'find' command. Then type setup (hd1), swapping 'hd1' for your drive number.
You should now find that your Linux partition and booting ability has been restored. The only potential problem is that this process could overwrite a Windows bootloader, and if Windows was installed after the original Grub installation, it won't launch from the boot menu.
2. Booting Windows
Fortunately, adding Windows to your Grub menu is easy enough, and it's straight forward to add any other OSes you want to boot from your system if you've got an example entry to work from. The key to the boot menu is a file called '/boot/grub/menu.lst', and if you open this in a text editor, you should see that the formatting is relatively easy to understand.
For instance, here's a typical entry for booting a Windows installation off the first partition of the drive:
title Microsoft Windows
root (hd0,1)
chainloader +1
You can make this Windows boot entry the default selection by adding a line that has 'savedefault' as the only word.
PLAIN TEXT: The formatting of 'menu.lst' is fairly straight forward and easy to understand
Adding Linux entries isn't quite so easy, as you need to get the path to both the 'initrd.img' (RAM disk) and 'vmlinuz' (kernel) files correct, according to how they sit on the Linux filesystem. The best way is to copy and paste an existing entry and change the paths accordingly.
Older versions of Grub won't support newer filesystem types. ext4, for instance, is a major upgrade to the standard Linux filesystem and it needs a specially modified version of Grub to boot into it. This could cause a problem if you installed a new Linux distro using ext4 alongside an older one with its older version of Grub.
The only option in this case is to upgrade Grub, either manually or through a distribution that ships with the modified Grub, such as Ubuntu Jaunty.
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World Shakuhachi Discussion / Go to Live Shakuhachi Chat
You are not logged in.
Performer(s): Kohachiro Miyata
Length of flute(s): 2.4
Recording Title: Japan – Shakuhachi – The Japanese Flute
Publishing Information: 1977, Elektra Nonesuch 9 72076-2
Performer(s): Yoshinobu Taniguchi
Length of flute(s): 3.0
Recording Title: Bosatsu
Publishing Information: 2001, Tai Hei Shakuhachi CSS-2
Performer(s): Michael Chikuzen Gould
Length of flute(s): 3.0 (approx.) / F#
Recording Title: Shakuhachi: The Bamboo Flutes of Japan
Publishing Information: [Recorded in 1997], Self-published: www.chikuzenstudios.com
Note: Alternative title, "San Ya"


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Xbox 360
PSP | PS Vita
PlayStation 3
Nintendo DS
Nintendo Wii | Wii U
D/L Content
Avatar: The Last Airbender is the latest Nickelodeon game from the Nick Games development team of THQ. If you're thinking Avatar is going to be another silly adventure into the weird anomaly know as Nickelodeon, rewind those thoughts. Avatar: The Last Airbender brings a serious quality out of the Nickelodeon series that gives us a quality game of depth, intrigue, and adventure. Read on young, Airbenders.
From that introduction, you might think I know a thing or two about the Avatar series on Nickelodeon. The truth is I have no clue who, or what Avatar is? And I just chuckle when I hear the phrase Air bending. Ignorance aside, I'm really excited to see what Avatar: The Last Airbender is all about ever since it first caught my eye this fall at the Sony press event. My first glance at Avatar left me stunned, I was immediately hooked by the different look and feel of the game, and instantly added Avatar to my review list. Now that Avatar: The Last Airbender has been released; I can explore the world of Avatar and see if the game lives up to my first impression.
After a little experience in Avatar I now understand what the game is about and why kids would love the show. Based deep into Hindu Philosophy, Avatar is not only phase used to describing the lead character, but it's also a referenced to a person who can control elements. Not only was I surprised by the principles of the subject matter, I was also surprised to learn this is an American animated TV show.
The game follows lead character Aang a reincarnation of an Avatar who is destined to master all four elements. Aang is known as Avatar by the townsfolk, and he is also referred as the Last Airbender. Besides Aang, you will also follow the path of three other characters. Katara, a girl who has the power to bend water, Sokka a young warrior who is also Katara's brother, and Haru representing the Earth with ability to control the very foundation of the world. Each player is equal in importance and can be switched upon once unlocked. Like Aang, each character has the ability to advance in levels and become more powerful as allies.
Avatar: The Last Airbender plays out like an action, RPG game similar to Bualders Gate. During you adventures you have the ability to gain skills and focus powers, along with experience points, and gold and items. As much as action is a focus in Avatar, so is the role-playing element. The characters are fully customizable and upgradeable from their outfits and magic elements, to powers and fighting moves. You will also do a large amount of conversing with people, and searching out clues, and different assignments.
For action the game is based on a uniquely created Kung Fun style along with the mystical powers to bend elements. The controls are simple and are limited to make the player grasp the game easily. There is a block and attack controls and similar to Marvel Ultimate Alliance, or the X-Men games you hold the right trigger down and press a corresponding button to active your powers. I never once had a problem with controlling the game and I feel that younger players will be able to adapt and understand how Avatar: The Last Airbender works.
The journey in Avatar will have to fighting off threats and solving all sorts of problems across the land. You will progress through seven villages that span the Avatar world with lots of new and inviting characters. The enemies won't provide much of a challenge, but none the less they are interesting. The main foe in the game is the Fire Nation and an army of machines. You will a few puzzles and objectives to keep you busy as you march on in your quest. I think gamers will find Avatar to be just the right mix of adventure and action.
Experienced gamers might not find Avatar: The Last Airbender entertaining as the casual gamer. This is because deep under the core the experience isn't overly deep in either RPG or action aspects. I'm sure more expereinced gamers would find the combat system a little underwhelming and the storyline too linear and contrived. This is all understandable considering the games target audience is young teens, or younger. If you're of an older age, I would have to recommend something with a little more substance like Marvel Ultimate Alliance.
THE Wii TAKE (added 01.10.07) The Wii Take on Avatar is obviously the control scheme which moves Avatar in a slightly new direction making the gamers arm more involved. The Wii controls are straight forward, although in certain instances you will be required to do more than just push a button. You will use your Wiimote as a paintbrush and as your weapon, like a poor mans Zelda, you will swipe left and right and up and down to use your attacks and occasionaly trace designs with the Wiimote. This adds a little extra fun to the game, but after experiencing Avatar on the controller I would gladly take it back. Against the Wii? Well, one problem is that you can not lock onto enemies which makes combat a little more difficult and overall the controls seem sluggish. It feels like the adaptation to new control scheme wasn't fully worked out before Avatar shipped, I guess they wanted the Wii version to make the gates along with its release on the other platforms. This comes up to my next problem with the Wii version and that is price. Avatar for the Wii is ten dollars more than the other console versions and twenty more than the PC version. If I had to pick a winner out of the consoles it would be anything but the Wii. Better luck next time, and Wii owners hold off on Avatar until he returns with a proper Wii-bending experience.
The production value in Avatar: The Last Airbender is higher than expected after seeing some other Nick products. I really enjoyed the visual style of the game even if the textures are stripped down to the basics. I felt the cartoon inspired line-art does wonders for the overall feeling of Avatar.
One area that could use a little upgrade would be the placement of full overdubs for the text and the removal of the horribly executed one liners. The cast is represented from the talent that's on TV, so their lines where fine. It's when you dealt with the NPCs that the one liners, and badly under and over dramatic lines came into play. Despite that criticism, Avatar: The Last Airbender is visually nut real and pleasant to view.
Avatar: The Last Airbender is a fun action; role-playing game based on the Nickelodeon animated series. Never becoming too complex, Avatar blends the right amount of kung-fu air-bending action along with story telling and adventuring. If you're a fan of the animated show, I'm sure Avatar: The Last Airbender will be an experience that lives up to the popularity of the show.
Game: 6.5, Graphics/Sound: 7.5, Innovation: 6.5, Mojo: 7 Final: 7 / 10


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What is a project?
The Project Management Institute (PM) defines a project as a "temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service or result."
The PMI states that a project is "temporary," because it must have a defined beginning and ending date and also have a defined scope and resources. It also states that a project is "unique" in the sense that it is not a routine operation, but is instead a set of processes, activities and tasks specifically designed to accomplish the project goal.
A project can be anything from creating a webpage for your business to developing a new marketing campaign or launching a new product or service. You will always initiate a project for a specific purpose, and at the request of somebody, who may be internal (a person or unit/department of your company) or external (a final customer or client).
What is a project manager?
A project manager is the person responsible for the successful management of the project, from inception to closing. The project manager takes a leading role in the project and is the final person in charge of making decisions that will affect the project. As a project manager, you will face a wide range of issues regarding the management of the project, such as dealing with the project team and stakeholders or dealing with unexpected obstacles and project's risks.
What is project management?
The PMI defines project management as "the application of knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to project activities to meet the project requirements." The project requirements are the conditions, activities and deliverables that need to be completed for a project at a specific quality, cost and time.
Your final goal, when managing a project, is to successfully complete a defined scope (the work that needs to be done at the required quality) within an agreed budget and timeline. Scope, cost and time form a concept called the "triple constraint" or the "iron triangle". The fundamental of the triple constraint is that if the scope, duration (time), or cost (resources) of a project changes, at least one – if not both – of the other items will change as well. For example, if the scope of work of your project increases, you will have to increase the resources and probably the duration of the project. If your project's resources decrease, then you will have to decrease the scope of work and/or increase the time to complete the project. This is important because changes in a project in terms of scope, cost or time are nearly inevitable, so you will have to make a decision about the direction to take when a change in any of the three items happens.
What are the phases of project management?
Project Management can be divided in 5 phases:
- Project Initiating: involves the high-level conceptualization of the project and assessment of its feasibility.
- Project Planning: involves detailed planning for each of the aspects of the project.
- Project Executing:involves all the processes related to implementation of the tasks and development and submission of the deliverables to achieve the objectives established in the project plan.
- Project Monitoring and Controlling: ensures that tasks are completed in the estimated time and estimated cost and each delivery meets the quality defined in the scope of the project.
- Project Closing: includes final completion and closure of the project.
Where I can learn more about project management?
There are two major project management certification bodies that provide world-wide recognized Project Management Certificates for Project Managers: the PMI with the PMBOK (Project Management Body of Knowledge), and PRINCE2 (Projects in a Controlled Environment) initially developed by the UK Government. PMBOK is a book that details what a project manager needs to know to manage a project, and it provides techniques to manage projects, based in best practices. PRINCE2 is a project management methodology and software that uses a specific method to manage projects. PMBOK and PRINCE2 are not two excluding approaches, but complementary ones. You may want to combine the best of them, and/or use other methodologies that are specific of your sector or industry.
Activity: task or set of tasks that creates an assigned delivery of the project. Any project activity should have a beginning and ending date. Budget: approved estimated cost of the project, usually represented as a list of expected expenses for each of the items that carry a cost. A simple project budget template can be downloaded here. Concept Note: brief description of the idea of the project and the objectives to be pursued, including the potential risks, estimated budget and estimated timeline. Deliverable: product (e.g. report, document, etc.) or service that is produced as a results of an activity or the project itself and that needs to be handled on a specific agreed date. A project can have various intermediate and final deliverables. Gantt Chart: project management tool used to track the different tasks involved in a project across a determined period of time, in form of a bar chart. A simple Gantt chart template can be downloaded here. PERT Chart (Program Evaluation Review Technique) (also called logic diagram): project management tool used to illustrate how different tasks are organized and sequenced in a project. Process: It is a sequence of repetitive tasks or activities needed to fulfil a specific objective. Project Goal Statement: written statement of what you want to accomplish with the project and why. Project Plan: document that describes the main details of the project: scope, objectives, budget, major deliverables, and timeline. Quality Assurance: is a process that focuses on defect prevention in the processes used to produce a product. Quality Control: is a process that focuses on defect identification and correction in the finished product. Scope Creep: refers to significant changes in the project scope overtime (as project planning and execution evolves). Resources: any input needed to complete a project, such as people and money. Risk: any potential internal or external event that may have a negative impact on the project, if it occurs. Scheduling: the process of assigning resources to tasks and tasks to timelines. It involves sequencing activities, assigning resources to activities, estimating the effort needed and the required time of each activity to be completed. Scope: it is the work that needs to be done (requirements and deliverables) in a project to achieve the project's goal. It implies the execution of different processes, activities and tasks. Stakeholder: any person or organization, internal or external, that has an interest in the project, or who may affect or be affected by the project. Statement of Work: a document that describes all the work that it is expected to be produced by the project (products, services, deliverables and results). Task: a subset of an activity. Work Breakdown Structure (WBS): a project management tool that breaks down the project into smaller parts or work components following a hierarchical decomposition of the work that need to be done to achieve the project's final goal. This process follows until activities cannot be broken further, or until it doesn't make sense to broken them further. |
The Project Management Institute is a leading not-for-profit professional membership association for the project management profession.


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There are no evolutionary transitions fossilized anywhere, although billions of fossils are there still preserved in the rocks.What first made me suspicious about this was the past tense of the sentence ("had appeared") which Morris quoted. Second, I knew that the implication Morris was gleaning from the quote simply wasn't true, and given my understanding that Robert Carroll is a competent paleontologist, I suspected something might be wrong. So I went to look up the context. The text selected by Morris for quotation is indicated in italics.
"One of the outstanding problems in large-scale evolution has been the origin of major taxa, such as the tetrapods, birds, and whales, that had appeared too suddenly, without any obvious answers, over a comparatively short period of time."
Professor Carroll, an eminent Canadian paleontologist, is well aware of such highly publicized fossils as Archaeopteryx (the alleged half-reptile, half-bird) and the so-called walking whale, but he still has to acknowledge that birds and whales arose suddenly without obvious ancestors(Morris 1999: b).
Is macroevolution conceptually different than microevolution? The main driving forces are the same as at the species level: population growth, genetic variation, and behavioral plasticity. At both time scales, external factors of the biological and physical environment control the rate, scope, and direction of change.So not only does the very next sentence in the paragraph contradict Morris's implication but a few sentences later Carroll specifically refers to the existence of intermediate forms and explicitly states that the evolution of higher taxa did not occur at a different rate than that of groups at lower taxonomic levels. Even if one were to disagree with Carroll about the facts of the matter it is clear from the context that Carroll is saying the very opposite of what Morris implied he was saying.
One of the outstanding problems in large-scale evolution has been the origin of major taxa, such as the tetrapods, birds, and whales, that had appeared to rise suddenly, without any obvious answers, over a comparatively short period of time. Increased knowledge of the fossil record has greatly increased our understanding of these and other transitions, and show that they do not necessarily require processes that differ from those known to occur at much lower taxonomic levels. To Simpson and others of his generation, higher categories were recognized by a combination of factors: morphological and adaptive distinction, a significant number of included taxa, and appreciable longevity. From examples considered in this text, it can be seen that adaptive change, morphological change, and radiation can be decoupled in that each may occur at a different time. We now see that the overall rate of evolution is not greatly faster during the origin of a group than it is within the ancestral or the descendant lineages, and with the discovery of intermediate forms, we see that they are not necessarily any more poorly represented in the fossil record than single lineages might be at other stages of evolution (Carroll 19997: 391).
But what about being more specific? For example Morris refers specifically to Archaeopteryx and the evolution of birds. What does Carroll say about avian origins in the very book that Morris is quoting from above?
Despite the enormous gap in anatomy, physiology, and way of life between modern birds and the other long-recognized vertebrate classes, the fossil record provided singularly informative evidence of the origin of birds long before we understood the ancestry of tetrapods, amniotes, or mammals. Historically, the question of the origin of birds has concentrated on a single genus, Archaeopteryx from the Upper Jurassic, which appears as an almost ideal intermediate between "reptiles" (specifically dinosaurs) and birds....until recently little was known of either the ancestry of Archaeopteryx or of animals intermediate between this genus and essentially modern birds of the later Mesozoic. Within the past twenty years, a host of new discoveries have begun to fill both these gaps, outlining the accumulative evolution of avian characters over a period that spans approximately 40 million years, from the obligatory terrestrial dinosaurs to an essentially modern avian anatomy(Carroll 1997: 306-7)And what about whales, which Morris also takes great pains to emphasize as a problem Carroll must admit to?
The transition between mesonychids and primitive but obligatorily aquatic whales is represented by a sequence of intermediate animals from the upper portion of the lower Eocene and the lower half of the middle Eocene of Pakistan, continuing into the later middle and upper Eocene of Egypt and southeastern United States (Fig. 12.20). This sequence extends over a period of 10-12 million years, beginning with riverine sediments, including primarily fossils of terrestrial mammals, through shallow coastal marine, to deep neritic deposits at the edge of the continental shelf. Several genera are recognized, showing the progressive reduction in the size of the appendicular skeleton, freeing the tail for aquatic locomotion, and a succession of modifications in the structure of the middle ear (Carroll 1997: 330).Morris concludes his article saying, "most everything they [evolutionists] say...seems potentially something that can be used against them" (Morris 1999:c). Well, I suppose if one is willing to rip a scientist's words completely out of context and twist them to imply the exact opposite of their original intent, then Morris might be correct.
There is a further irony in that Morris includes a footnote to the above statement, which refers his readers to his recent book That Their Words May Be Used Against Them (1997). There, he says, one may find further quotes of the same nature almost (3000 of them) as those found in this article (Morris 1997: c). Considering the way in which the quoted sections misrepresent the intent of the works Morris cites, we would have to ask of what use such a tome would be to the serious seeker of knowledge.


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Estimated read time: 5-6 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - NaVorro Bowman got burned on an onside kick that could have cost the 49ers a win, and the thought of that stung.
For a few plays is all.
Everything changed in a hurry when San Francisco's standout linebacker ended up with a loose ball in his hands and ran 89 yards to seal a 34-24 victory against the Atlanta Falcons on Monday night and another 49ers playoff berth in the final regular-season game at iconic Candlestick Park.
"I was the guy who missed the ball on the onside kick," Bowman said. "My coach (Jim Leavitt) just said let it go, move on to the next play. It kind of stayed on my back, but I was able to overcome it and make a play."
Tramaine Brock broke up a pass intended for Harry Douglas and Bowman grabbed the ball and started running.
"Just kind of pick-and-roll like," coach Jim Harbaugh said. "That's the best thing I've ever seen happen in a football game. It might have been close to `The Catch.'"
Bowman certainly added a memorable moment to the long list of them at The Stick, where Dwight Clark's winning catch from Joe Montana in the 1981 NFC championship game that sent San Francisco to its first Super Bowl title _ "The Catch" _ was honored as the No. 1 play ever as they were counted down during each 2013 home game.
"Somebody just mentioned to me they're going to have to redo the top-10 plays at Candlestick," Bowman said, laughing.
Here are five things we learned from the 49ers' fifth straight victory:
SURGING SAN FRANCISCO: Anquan Boldin knows all about the supposed challenges facing a team that reached the last Super Bowl. He won a ring last February for the Baltimore Ravens against his current 49ers.
He believes San Francisco (11-4) is poised for another special run and playing its best football at the perfect time.
What seemed unthinkable only a few weeks back, the Niners still have a chance at a third straight NFC West title and first-round playoff bye.
They will be division champions if they win at Arizona next Sunday and the Seattle Seahawks lose at home to St. Louis.
"There's a lot of history of teams that make it to the Super Bowl don't always do so well the next season," Boldin said. "So for us to be consistent and get in the playoffs, getting in the playoffs gives us a chance."
CLOSE BUT NO CIGAR: Maybe that narrow loss to San Francisco in the NFC title game last season was a sign of things to come in 2013 for Atlanta (4-11). The Falcons won eight games a year ago by less than seven points to reach the conference championship game that they lost 28-24 to the 49ers. Atlanta has lost six games this season by fewer than seven points and that doesn't include this game, where they were 10 yards away from taking the lead before the deflected interception delivered another crushing defeat.
"Same old story for us," tight end Tony Gonzalez said. "The whole year we've been fighting and fighting, clawing and scratching to put ourselves in good position to go out there and get it done. We just didn't come up with the play."
ONSIDE KICK: After failing to stop the 49ers on their first four second-half drives, Falcons coach Mike Smith didn't hesitate to call for an onside kick after cutting the deficit to 27-24 with 2:09 to play even with all three timeouts remaining. It helped that a personal foul moved the kickoff to the 50. But Smith said he was calling for the onside kick anyway and the move paid off when Jason Snelling made a one-handed recovery at the 30.
"The way that we had played defense there in the second half, it had no bearing on it," Smith said. "We had a tough time stopping them."
KAEPERNICK'S MOMENT: Colin Kaepernick has left his mark on Candlestick Park in one short year as an NFL starter, maybe not close to the legacies of Hall of Fame quarterbacks Joe Montana and Steve Young before him, but a mark nonetheless.
Trailing 10-3 coming out of halftime, Kaepernick delivered the kind of clutch second half that made all of the former greats in attendance confident about the franchise going forward.
San Francisco put up 169 yards of offense in the third quarter alone after managing 113 the entire first half. Kaepernick ran for a 4-yard touchdown and threw a 10-yard score to Boldin.
While his line wasn't overly impressive _ 13 for 21 for 197 yards with three sacks _ he kept his team on a nice roll with one game left before the playoffs.
"He kept the chains moving, whether it be with his legs or his arms," Boldin said.
IMPROVED PASSING GAME: Tight end Vernon Davis got poked in the right eye and was limited to no catches for the first time all season, while also having his streak of consecutive games with a touchdown catch snapped at five.
Still, Boldin and Michael Crabtree did their part to carry the load in an improving passing game.
Boldin had six catches for 72 yards and Crabtree five for 102 in his fourth game back following a lengthy recovery from Achilles surgery.
"Our guys didn't want to lose," Davis said. "They wanted the game. So as a team we came together collectively and just kept pounding away."
AP Sports Writer Josh Dubow contributed to this report.
AP NFL website: http://www.pro32.ap.org
(Copyright 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)


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Excellent and cogent analysis and action items concerning Florida and the Exit Polls from Ian Welsch over at BOP. Please give it a look and see if you can help.
I would add one further question/action item to Ian's list. It would be useful to learn what type of counting machine was in use in Broward County when it began subtracting votes from the tally, due to a bug in the software, and what other counties in Florida and/or the rest of the country used the same machine and software. 70,000 votes were "found" in that incident, and a local initiative overturned with the discovery of them.
The code used in these machines is not written separately for each individual machine that I know of. If the error occurred once in Broward (and was reportedly noticed), where else did it also occur and not get noticed?
Ditto for the UniElect machine in North Carolina that entirely lost at least 7,000 votes in a single county because it's memory chip only held 3005 votes instead of the 10,000 that manufacturer UniLect had promised. Where else was the same type of computer in use? I know Ohio used UniLect machines, and they reported unfixable problems with them on Election Day, but I haven't been able to tell if they were the same type as those in North Carolina.
(It must be up to us to figure this crap out, because the MSM is enjoying their well-deserved nap.)


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I am required to use Endnote to manage citations. When I find an article, I am expected to create an Endnote record for it, and we have some internal guidelines as to which fields we consider mandatory (basically the ones needed for proper scientific citations).
Tools like Google scholar allow for a semi-automated workflow, where I can download a record which supposedly has the full bibliographical information on the text. But in fact, the information is often low quality, and I have to clean it up per hand. Inconsistent use of initials, authors sometimes given as First name Last name
, sometimes as Last name, First name
and similar problems abound. Then there is the problem of missing fields.
Is there something - an add-on or a Web service - which can perform some automatic cleanup? For example, it could search for the ISBN given the title, or vice versa, the way Calibre does. It could fill in a publisher based on the journal's name, sparing me hunting publisher names all over the Internet. I understand that such a system isn't perfect, but even if it fetched the possible matches and showed me asking for confirmation, this would be a huge improvement over the manual process.
If this isn't possible, is there another tool which supports it and has a reasonable Endnote compatibility allowing for seamless import and export? I am specifically interested in bibtex and other TeX compatible tools, because I plan to transition to TeX for publications in the near future.


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Gods and Fighting Men, by Lady Gregory, [1904], at sacred-texts.com
ONE time Caoilte was hunting on Beinn Gulbain, and he went onto Ess Ruadh. And when he came near the hill of the Sidhe that is there, he saw a young man waiting for him, having a crimson fringed cloak about him, and on his breast a silver brooch, and a white shield, ornamented with linked beasts of red gold, and his hair rolled in a ball at the back, and covered with a golden cup. And he had heavy green weapons, and he was holding two hounds in a silver chain.
And when Caoilte came up to him he gave him three loving kisses, and sat down beside him on the grass. "Who are you, young champion," said Caoilte. "I am Derg, son of Eoghan of the people of Usnach," he said, "and foster-brother of your own." Caoilte knew him then, and he said: "And what is your life with your mother's people, the Tuatha de Danaan in Sidhe Aedha?" "There is nothing wanting to us there of food or of clothing," said the young man. "But for all that," he said, "I would sooner live the life of the worst treated of the serving-boys of the Fianna than the life I am living in the hill of the Sidhe." "Lonely as you are at your hunting to-day," said Caoilte, "it is often I saw you coming to the Valley of the Three Waters in the south, where the Siuir and the Beoir and the Berba come together, with a great company about you; fifteen hundred young men, fifteen hundred serving-boys, and fifteen hundred women." "That was so," said Derg; "and although myself and my gentle hound are living in the hill of the Sidhe, my mind is always on the Fianna. And I remember well the time," he said, "when you yourself won the race against Finn's lasting black horse. And come now into the hill," he said, "for the darkness of the night is coming on."
So he brought Caoilte into the hill with him,and they were set down in their right places.
It was at that time, now, there was great war between Lir of Sidhe Fionnachaidh and Ilbrec of Ess Ruadh. There used a bird with an iron beak and a tail of fire to come every evening to a golden window of Ilbrec's house, and there he would shake himself till he would not leave sword on pillow, or shield on peg, or spear in rack, but they would come down on the heads of the people of the house; and whatever they would throw at the bird, it is on the heads of some of themselves it would fall. And the night Caoilte came in, the hall was made ready for a feast, and the bird came in again, and did the same destruction as before, and nothing they threw at him would touch him at all. "Is it long the bird has been doing this?" said Caoilte. "Through the length of a year now," said Derg, "since we went to war with Sidhe Fionnachaidh."
Then Caoilte put his hand within the rim of his shield, and he took out of it a copper rod he had, and he made a cast of it at the bird, that brought it down on the floor of the hall. "Did any one ever make a better cast than that?" said llbrec. "By my word," said Caoilte, "there is no one of us in the Fianna has any right to boast against another." Then Ilbrec took down a sharp spear, having thirty rivets of gold in it, from its place, and he said: "That is the Spear of Fiacha, son of Congha, and it is with that Finn made an end of Aillen, son of Midhna, that used to burn Teamhair. And keep it beside you now, Caoilte," he said, "till we see will Lir come to avenge his bird on us."
Then they took up their horns and their cups, and they were at drinking and pleasure, and Ilbrec said: "Well, Caoilte," he said, "if Lir comes to avenge his bird on us, who will you put in command of the battle?" "I will give the command to Derg there beyond," said he. "Will you take it in hand, Dexg?" said the people of the hill. "I will take it," said Derg, "with its loss and its gain."
So that is how they spent the night, and it was not long in the morning till they heard blowing of horns, and rattling of chariots, and clashing of shields, and the uproar of a great army that came all about the bill. They sent some of their people out then to see were there many in it, and they saw three brave armies of the one size. "It would be a great vexation to me," said Aedh Nimbrec, the Speckled, then, "we to get our death and Lir's people to take the hill." "Did you never hear, Aedh," said Caoilte, "that the wild boar escapes sometimes from both hounds and from wolves, and the stag in the same way goes from the hounds with a sudden start; and what man is it you are most in dread of in the battle?" he said.
"The man that is the best fighter of all the Men of Dea," said they all, "and that is Lir of Sidhe Fionnachaidh." "The thing I have done in every battle I will not give up to-day," said Caoilte, "to meet the best man that is in it hand to hand." "The two that are next to him in fighting," they said then, "are Donn and Dubh." "I will put down those two," said Derg.
Then the host of the Sidhe went out to the battle, and the armies attacked one another with wide green spears and with Lirtle casting spears, and with great stones; and the fight went on from the rising of the day till midday. And then Caoilte and Lir met with one another, and they made a very fierce fight, and at the last Lir of Sidhe Fionnachaidh fell by the hand of Caoilte.
Then the two good champions Dubh and Donn, sons of Eirrge, determined to go on with the battle, and it is how they fought, Dubh in the front of the whole army, and Donn behind all, guarding the rear. But Derg saw that, and he put his finger into the thong of his spear and made a cast at the one that was nearest him, and it broke his back and went on into the body of the other, so that the one cast made an end of the two. And that ended the battle, and all that was left of the great army of Lir went wearing away to the north. And there was great rejoicing in the hill at Ess Ruadh, and Ilbrec took the spoils of the beaten army for his people, and to Caoilte he gave the enchanted spear of Fiacha, together with nine rich cloaks and nine long swords with hilts and guards of gold, and nine hounds for hunting. And they said farewell to one another, and Caoilte left his blessing to the people of the hill, and he brought their thanks with him. And as hard as the battle had been, it was harder again for Derg to part from his comrade, and the day he was parted from Finn and from all the Fianna was no sadder to him than this day.
It was a long time after that Caoilte went again to the hill of Ilbrec at Ess Ruadh, and this is the way it happened.
It was in a battle at Beinn Edair in the east that Mane, son of the King of Lochlann, made a cast at him in the middle of the battle with a deadly spear. And he heard the whistling of the spear, and it rushing to him; and he lifted his shield to protect his head and his body, but that did not save him, for it struck into his thigh, and left its poison in it, so that he had go in search of healing. And it is where he went, to the hill of the Sidhe at Ess Ruadh, to ask help of Bebind, daughter of Elcmar of Brugh na Boinne, that had the drink of healing of the Tuatha de Danaan, and all that was left of the ale of Goibniu that she used to be giving out to them.
And Caoilte called to Cascorach the Musician, son of Caincenn, and bade him bring his harp and come along with him. And they stopped for a night in the hill of the Sidhe of Druim Nemed in Luigne of Connacht, and from that they went forward by Ess Dara, the Fall of the Oaks, and Druim Dearg na Feinne, the Red Ridge of the Fianna, and Ath Daim Glas, the Ford of the Grey Stag, and to Beinn Gulbain, and northward into the plain of Ceitne, where the Men of Dea used to pay their tribute to the Fomor; and up to the Footstep of Ess Ruadh, and the High Place of the Boys, where the boys of the Tuatha de Danaan used to be playing their hurling. And Aedh of Ess Ruadh and Ilbrec of Ess Ruadh were at the door of the hill, and they gave Caoilte a true welcome. "I am glad of that welcome," said Caoilte. And then Bebind, daughter of Elcmar of Brugh na Boinne, came out, and three times fifty comely women about her, and she sat down on the green grass and gave three loving kisses to the three, to Caoilte and to Cascorach and to Fermaise, that had come with them out of the hill of the Sidhe in Luigne of Connacht. And all the people of the hill welcomed them, and they said: "It is little your friendship would be worth if you would not come to help us and we in need of help." "It was not for bravery I was bade come," said Cascorach; "but when the right time comes I will make music for you if you have a mind to hear it." "It is not for deeds of bravery we are come," said Fermaise, "but we will give you our help if you are in need of it." Then Caoilte told them the cause of his journey. "We will heal you well," said they. And then they all went into the hill and stayed there three days and three nights at drinking and pleasure.
And indeed it was good help Caoilte and Cascorach gave them after that. For there was a woman-warrior used to come every year with the ships of the men of Lochlann to make an attack on the Tuatha de Danaan. And she had been reared by a woman that knew all enchantments, and there was no precious thing in all the hills of the Sidhe but she had knowledge of it, and would bring it away. And just at this time there came a messenger to the door of the hill with news that the harbour was full of ships, and that a great army had landed, and the woman-warrior along with it.
And it was Cascorach the Musician went out against her, having a shield he got the loan of from Donn, son of Midhir; and she used high words when she saw so young a man coming to fight with her, and he alone. But he made an end of her for all her high talk, and left her lying on the strand with the sea foam washing up to her.
And as to Caoilte, he went out in a chariot belonging to Midhir of the Yellow Hair, son of Dagda, and a spear was given him that was called Ben-badb, the War-Woman, and he made a cast of the spear that struck the King of Lochlann, that he fell in the middle of his army, and the life went from him. And Fermaise went looking for the king's brother, Eolus, that was the comeliest of all the men of the world; and he knew him by the band of gold around his head; and his green armour, and his red shield, and he killed him with a cast of a five-pronged spear. And when the men of Lochlann saw their three leaders were gone, they went into their ships and back to their own country. And there was great joy through the whole country, both among the men of Ireland and the Tuatha de Danaan, the men of Lochlann to have been driven away by the deeds of Caoilte and Fermaise and Cascorach.
And that was not all they did, for it was at that time there came three flocks of beautiful red birds from Slieve Fuad in the north, and began eating the green grass before the hill of the Sidhe. 'What birds are those?" said Caoilte. "Three flocks they are that come and destroy the green every year, eating it down to the bare flag-stones, till they leave us no place for our races," said Ilbrec. Then Caoilte and his comrades took up three stones and threw them at the flocks and drove them away. 'Power and blessings to you," said the people of the Sidhe then, "that is a good work you have done. And there is another thing you can do for us," they said, "for there are three ravens come to us every year out of the north, and the time the young lads of the hill are playing their hurling, each one of the ravens carried off a boy of them. And it is to-morrow the hurling will be," they said.
So when the full light of day was come on the morrow, the whole of the Tuatha de Danaan went out to look at the hurling; and to every six of them was given a chess-board, and a board for some other game to every five, and to every ten a Little harp, and a harp to every hundred men, and pipes that were sharp and powerful to every nine.
Then they saw the three ravens from the north coming over the sea, and they pitched on the great tree of power that was on the green, and they gave three gloomy screeches, that if such a thing could be, would have brought the dead out of the earth or the hair off the head of the listeners; and as it was, they took the courage out of the whole gathering.
Then Cascorach, son of Caincenn, took a man of the chessmen and made a cast at one of the ravens that struck his beak and his throat, and made an end of him; and Fermaise killed the second of them, and Caoilte the third of them in the same way.
"Let my cure be done now," said Caoilte, "for I have paid my fee for it, and it is time." "You have paid it indeed," said Ilbrec. "And where is Bebind, daughter of Elcmar?" he said. "I am here," said she.
"Bring Caoilte, son of Ronan, with you into some hidden place," he said, "and do his cure, and let him be well served, for he has driven every danger from the Men of Dea and from the Sons of the Gael. And let Cascorach make music for him, and let Fermaise, son of Eogabil, be watching him and guarding him and attending him"
So Elcmar's daughter went to the House of Arms, and her two sons with her, and a bed of healing was made ready for Caoilte, and a bowl of pale gold was brought to her, and it full of water. And she took a crystal vessel and put herbs into it, and she bruised them and put them in the water, and gave the bowl to Caoilte, and he drank a great drink out of it, that made him cast up the poison of the spear that was in him. Five drinks of it he took, and after that she gave him new milk to drink; but with the dint of the reaching he was left without strength through the length of three days and three nights.
"Caoilte, my life," she said then, "in my opinion you have got relief." "I have got it indeed," he said, "but that the weakness of my head is troubling me." "The washing of Flann, daughter of Flidias, will be done for you now," she said, "and the head that washing is done for will never be troubled with pain, or baldness, or weakness of sight." So that cure was done to him for a while; and the people of the hill divided themselves into three parts; the one part of their best men and great nobles, and another of their young men, and another of their women and poets, to be visiting him and making mirth with him as long as he would be on his bed of healing. And everything that was best from their hunting, it was to him they would bring it.
And one day, when Elcmar's daughter and her two sons and Cascorach and Fermaise were with Caoilte, there was heard a sound of music coming towards them from the waters of Ess Ruadh, and any one would leave the music of the whole world for that music. And they put their harps on the corners of the pillars and went out, and there was wonder on Caoilte that they left him. And he took notice that his strength and the strength of his hands was not come to him yet, and he said: "It is many a rough battle and many a hard fight I went into, and now there is not enough strength in me so much as to go out along with the rest," and he cried tears down.
And the others came back to him then, and he asked news of them. "What was that sound of music we heard?" he said. "It was Uaine out of the hill of the Sidhe, at the Wave of Cliodna in the south," said they; "and with her the birds of the Land of Promise; and she is musician to the whole of that country. And every year she goes to visit one of the hills of the Sidhe, and it is our turn this time." Then the woman from the Land of Promise came into the house, and the birds came in along with her, and they pitched on the pillars and the beams, and thirty of them came in where Caoilte was, and began singing together. And Cascorach took his harp, and whatever he would play, the birds would sing to it. "It is much music I have heard," said Caoilte, "but music so good as that I never heard before."
And after that Caoilte asked to have the healing of his thigh done, and the daughter of Elcmar gave herself to that, and all that was bad was sucked from the wound by her serving people till it was healed. And Caoilte stopped on where he was for three nights after that.
And then the people of the hill rose up and went into the stream to swim. And Caoilte said: "What ails me now not to go swim, since my health has come back to me?" And with that he went into the water. And afterwards they went back into the bill, and there was a great feast made that night.
And Caoilte bade them farewell after that, and Cascorach, but Fermaise stopped with them for a while. And the people of the bill gave good gifts to Caoilte; a fringed crimson cloak of wool from the seven sheep of the Land of Promise; and a fish-hook that was called Aicil mac Mogha, and that could not be set in any river or inver but it would take fish; and along with that they gave him a drink of remembrance, and after that drink there would be no place he ever saw, or no battle or fight he ever was in, but it would stay in his memory. "That is a good help from kinsmen and from friends," said Caoilte.
Then Caoilte and Cascorach went out from the hill, and the people of it made a great lamentation after them.


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Pegasus Airlines World Cup
On the first day of competition on the beautiful blue waters of Alacati, the wind built throughout the morning to a suitable level whilst the competitors rigged and registered, ensuring two high-octane races could be completed before the end of play.
With sixty-four men and twenty-one women, the spectators gathered on the shores were soon playing witness to the amazing sight of the world's best racers battling metres from the beach. Following the first race for the men a new elimination was scheduled, with the top twenty sailors automatically seeded through. The format had plenty of ups and downs, with potentially more racing for those in the early rounds, but some extremely busy mark roundings, causing chaos with some seasoned pros.
Buzianis Bites Back
Former world champion, Micah Buzianis (JP, NeilPryde) fought back today with amazing speed off the line, and faultless consistency. Two firsts for the American puts him firmly at the top in Turkey, and launches his name straight back into the limelight. If he continues like this, the slalom in Sylt will be an exciting end to a great season.
Average Albeau
Whilst the rest of the fleet lacked any consistency, the current world champion, Antoine Albeau (JP, NeilPryde) is happily hanging out in second place with a third and a fourth to his name. Although not quite a match for his usual impressive score lines, it's a solid start to the event for the tour leader, and most importantly he hasn't put himself out by already claiming his first discard.
A Mixed Bag
Almost every other top ranked sailor had a complete mixture of highs and lows. Alberto Menegatti (Starboard, Simmer) had an amazing start to the week with a sensational performance in the first race that saw him ahead of many a world champion in second place. However in race two he couldn't quite match his earlier form, and fell victim to the new format going out in the second round.
Many times world champion, Bjorn Dunkerbeck (Starboard, Severne, Mystic) arrived three days early, but his equipment has still failed to show up. On borrowed gear, he threw down the gauntlet with a great first race finishing just ahead of his archrival Albeau to claim third. But, his luck changed in race two when he had to rush out to the start, and on borrowed gear again didn't quite perform to his usual high standard. Dunkerbeck remains hopeful that his equipment will arrive in time for racing tomorrow, so fingers crossed for the living legend.
Other top sailors who experienced a complete mixed bag included Australian featherweight, Steve Allen (Starboard, Severne) who was another sailor who met his end early to the new format. He was however in great company, with the likes of Cyril Moussilmani (Starboard, North), and Ben Van Der Steen (JP, Mystic) doing exactly the same.
After a successful stint in Fuerteventura, all eyes were fixed on Finian Maynard, and a convincing win in the first loser's final kept them focussed firmly his way. However, he too fell victim to the new format, getting mobbed by a huge bunch of sailors around one of the gybes.
Results After Two Races
1st Micah Buzianis (JP, NeilPryde)
2nd Antoine Albeau (JP, NeilPryde)
3rd Julien Quentel (RRD, NeilPryde)
4th Sylvain Moussilmani (Starboard, Simmer)
5th Pierre Mortefon (Fanatic, North)
6th Enes Yilmazer (JP, NeilPryde)
7th Gonzalo Costa Hoevel (Exocet, MuiSails)
8th Cyril Moussilmani (Starboard, North)
9th Bjorn Dunkerbeck (Starboard, Severne, Mystic)
10th Jimmy Diaz (Starboard, North)
Arrighetti Arrives
The 2009 women's world champion, Valerie Arrighetti (Tabou, Loft, Mystic) sailed solidly today with a first and a third to take an early event lead, and pile the pressure on the current tour leader, Karin Jaggi (Patrik, Severne). However, it' early days yet and with Jaggi claiming a first and a seventh, the writing is far from being on the wall.
Two other French riders also upped their game today with some consistent results that see a current France 1,2, 3. Sarah Hebert (Naish, Naish) battled hard in race one to score second just behind Jaggi, and ahead of Arrighetti. And, in race two she sailed to a similar standard to post a solid third. Fanny Aubet (JP, NeilPryde) pipped her at the post in the final race to claim second, but a fourth in race one means Hebert is in front by the smallest of margins.
Results After Two Races
1st Valerie Arrighetti (Tabou, Loft, Mystic)
2nd Sarah Hebert (Naish, Naish)
3rd Fanny Aubet (JP, NeilPryde)
4th Karin Jaggi (Patrik, Severne)
5th Alice Arutkin (Starboard, North)
An Eye On The Horizon
The forecast is looking good for the week with plenty of Meltemi winds forecast to turn up the heat! Be sure to tune in tomorrow to find out how the story unfolds.
Keep in the groove
For more information on all the entrants, and to keep up to date with every piece of the action, click on www.pwaworldtour.com
Here you can use our:
• Live ticker service for heat-by-heat bulletins
• Check live elimination ladders
• View results
• Read daily news summaries
• Browse awesome action photo galleries
There's also a dedicated event website which can be found at www.surfnsound.org
Or for more information, please contact the PWA office via email@example.com


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I wrote this code and compiled it in eclipse I have a text file hello.txt in the same src folder as the .class it does compile properly but wont append the Dirk Benson to the file I have no idea what is wrong.
import java.io.*; public class ioappend { /** * @param args */ public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException //TODO make try/catch for in-thread error catching { String filename; BufferedReader input = new BufferedReader ( new InputStreamReader(System.in));//TODO testing only System.out.println("Enter a file name: ");//TODO testing only filename = input.readLine();//TODO testing only FileWriter inject = new FileWriter( filename, true); inject.write("Dirk Benson"); inject.close(); } }


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4102.0 - Australian Social Trends, 2000
ARCHIVED ISSUE Released at 11:30 AM (CANBERRA TIME) 04/07/2000
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Population Characteristics: Socio-economic disadvantage across urban, rural and remote areas
Information on social inequality and levels of disadvantage according to where people live, be it in urban, rural or remote parts of Australia, can allow for better targeting of assistance. Increasing concern about the hardships being faced by people in rural and regional Australia (exemplified by the $1.8 billion package for these areas in the Federal Government's 2000 budget) highlights the demand for such information.2 ACCESSIBLE AND REMOTE AREAS Measuring socio-economic disadvantage is not a straightforward exercise because disadvantage is a relative concept which involves value judgements and because there are many, often interrelated, dimensions to disadvantage. Social inequality and disadvantage is typically associated with low income and with those groups that have high levels of dependency on the social security system, such as the unemployed and one-parent families. Levels of educational attainment and the ability to speak English well also affect life opportunities to the extent that some people may experience substantial disadvantage in getting jobs, in making use of available services, or in protecting their rights. In terms of places where people live, other aspects of disadvantage relate to the number and viability of local industries (which provide employment opportunities) and the access people have to various goods and services. The latter is clearly more of an issue for people living in more remote communities than for those living in, or close to, major urban centres. One measure (known as the Index of Relative Socio-economic Disadvantage) which incorporates a wide range of information from the 1996 census, can be used to identify areas with relatively high proportions of people which have characteristics associated with low socio-economic status (see box below). The index is useful as it allows small areas, namely, census collection districts (CDs) - typically clusters of 200-250 dwellings - to be ranked according to their index score from highest to lowest. Having identified the most disadvantaged CDs (taken as the 20% with the lowest index scores) this review then identifies their location by using two classifications of area which together usefully summarise the pattern of human settlement in Australia. The first classification divides the population according to an urban/rural dichotomy (largely based on sizes of urban centres), while the second takes into account levels of remoteness. The latter (see box above) distinguishes between areas that could be expected to have ready access to goods and services (such as those that may be available to people on farms or in small towns living close to major cities) from those living in remote and geographically isolated communities.
Distribution of people living in the most disadvantaged CDs In 1996, of the 3.3 million people living in the most disadvantaged CDs, 1.9 million lived in major urban areas (urban areas with more than 100,000 people) and a further 650,000 lived in other areas defined as being highly accessible, generally regions surrounding the major cities (see map). The remaining 830,000 lived in areas with lower levels of accessibility with 140,000 living in the remote/very remote parts of the country. When compared to the distribution of Australia's total population between urban, rural and remote areas, the distribution of people living in the most disadvantaged CDs showed some differences. People living in the most disadvantaged CDs were under-represented in major urban areas and over-represented in smaller towns and localities. They were also over-represented in remote areas. In 1996, 56% of all people living in the most disadvantaged CDs were in major urban areas compared to 63% of the total population. In contrast, 39% of all people living in the most disadvantaged CDs were in other urban areas and rural localities (combined) compared to 26% of the total population. The over-representation of people living in the most disadvantaged CDs in smaller towns is evident among towns located in highly accessible areas as well as those in more geographically isolated areas. For the areas in between towns and localities (described as rural balance areas), their share of all people living in the most disadvantaged CDs was on the low side: 5% compared to 12% of the total population living in rural balance areas. This under-representation was especially evident among those in highly accessible rural balance areas (1% compared to 6%). In contrast, among the comparatively small numbers of people in the most remote parts of the country the pattern was reversed. That is, these areas' share of people living in the most disadvantaged CDs was higher than their share of the total population (1.4% compared to 0.8%).
Insights into differences in the nature of disadvantage in different places are obtained by looking at particular socio-economic characteristics of people living in those areas. The table on this and the following page presents a range of socio-economic status indicators that highlight some of the differences between people living in the most disadvantaged CDs and Australia's total population. The table also shows differences among those living in the most disadvantaged CDs according to where they live. Although not necessarily calculated in the same way, most of the socio-economic status indicators shown in the table contributed to the construction of the Index of Relative Socio-economic Disadvantage. Some of the observed patterns are therefore predictable. It can be seen, for example, that the average income (here measured at the per capita level because household sizes vary) among those associated with the most disadvantaged CDs was substantially below that of the total population ($223 and $310 per week respectively). However, income levels differed considerably among people associated with the most disadvantaged CDs depending on where they lived. Those in remote/very remote rural localities and in remote/very remote rural balance areas had the lowest incomes (average household per capita incomes of $171 and $156 per week, respectively) which compared to $229 per week among those in major urban areas. Other indicators show that this difference is largely associated with the high representation of Indigenous people in remote areas. Yet other indicators reveal the depth of disadvantage experienced in some communities. For example, school participation rates among children aged 16, which in 1996 stood at 80% among all children in Australia, varied from 72% for those living in the most disadvantaged major urban CDs, down to around 30% for those living in the most disadvantaged CDs located in small geographically remote communities (again, those remote rural localities and rural balance areas where the proportions of Indigenous people were high). In the major urban areas where a high proportion of people associated with the most disadvantaged CDs live, other dimensions to disadvantage can be seen. Major urban areas contain a relatively high proportion of migrants from countries other than main English-speaking countries (19% of the total population of major urban areas in 1996). Largely associated with this group, a relatively high proportion of people who do not speak English well or at all (4%) live in major urban areas. Previous studies have shown that these groups, particularly recent migrants, have lower employment and income levels than other citizens (see Australian Social Trends 1998, Migrants in the labour force). Consistent with this, the most disadvantaged CDs in major urban areas had a higher proportion of migrants from countries other than main English-speaking countries (26%) than their share of the total population in major urban areas (19%); and a higher proportion of people with English language difficulties (9% compared to 4%). In contrast, these groups were not highly represented in the most disadvantaged CDs outside the major urban areas, probably because relatively few people from countries other than main English-speaking countries lived there. Other dimensions of disadvantage can be seen from the given tables which, taken together, help to show that the needs for support will differ for people living in different areas. More detailed studies showing particular places experiencing disadvantage, of which a number have recently become available, can further help target the provision of services to those in greatest need.4,5,6,7
Endnotes 1 Commonwealth Department of Health and Aged Care 1999, Accessibility/Remoteness Index of Australia (ARIA), Occasional papers series no. 6, Commonwealth Department of Health and Aged Care, Canberra. 2 Regional Australia: Making a Difference, Statement by the Honourable John Anderson MP, Deputy Prime Minister of Australia, Minister for Transport and Regional Services and Senator the Honourable Ian MacDonald, Minister for Regional Services, Territories and Local Government, 9 May 2000, Ausinfo, Canberra. 3 Australian Bureau of Statistics 1998, Information Paper, 1996 Census of Population and Housing: Socio-economic Indexes for Areas, cat. no. 2039.0, ABS, Canberra. 4 Australian Bureau of Statistics 1998, Australia in Profile: A Regional Analysis, cat. no. 2032.0 ABS, Canberra. 5 Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute 1999, Community Opportunity and Vulnerability in Australian Cities and Towns: Characteristics, Patterns and Implications, University of Queensland Press, Brisbane. 6 Haberkorn, G., Hugo, G., Fisher, M. and Aylwar, R. 1999, Country Matters: Social Atlas of Rural and Regional Australia, Bureau of Rural Sciences, Canberra. 7 Bray, J. and Mudd, W. 1998, The Contribution of DSS Payments to Regional Income, Technical series no. 2, Department of Social Security, Canberra.


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BERLIN — A local business owner had his request for a tax abetment denied by the Berlin Mayor and Council last week after they decided it would set a precedent they don't want to follow. The council did, however, offer to attempt to come up with more creative solutions to the applicant's problem.
John Derrickson, owner of Derrickson Enterprises, came before the council hoping to have taxes he agreed on earlier, when his economic outlook wasn't as bleak, loosened.
"Things have changed," he said.
A few months ago, Derrickson asked Berlin to annex in nearly eight acres of land he owned into the town. At the time, his plan was to have businesses, including a laundromat, utilize the land. However, with the economy still lagging, especially in the real estate sector, Derrickson revealed that he's having trouble attracting, and keeping, businesses.
"People are scared," he said. "They don't want to spend the money."
According to Derrickson, his monthly income from collecting rent on businesses using land he owns is down by a third, or about $20,000, from only a few years ago.
"I'm paying my bills but I'm struggling," he admitted to the council.
To help lighten the burden until things improve and business picks up, Derrickson asked to have $5,000 worth of taxes on the annexed land abated over two years, $2,500 each year. But the number was one he pulled off of the top of his head, Derrickson said.
"I don't know what you guys can offer," he said. "I'm here hat in hand."
While everyone on the council expressed sympathy for Derrickson's situation, all of them agreed that it was far from unique.
"It's a hard time right now for everybody," said Councilman Elroy Brittingham.
Both Council members Troy Purnell and Paula Lynch pointed out that Derrickson was fully aware of the dicey economy when he asked for his land to be annexed into the town.
"You're a risk taker," said Lynch, "and you took the risk and I don't think it's up to us to bail you out in this situation."
Purnell wasn't as critical, but maintained that Derrickson shouldn't be surprised by the difficulty of attracting new business.
"You definitely knew what you were getting yourself into," Purnell said. "I think you've got to honor your commitment [to the town]."
Purnell also reminded Derrickson that he could have negotiated a lower tax arrangement while in discussion with Berlin to annex his land. By this point, it's a case of too little, too late, according to Purnell.
However, Purnell explained that it was because granting an abatement due to slow business would set a dangerous precedent for the town that Derrickson's request couldn't be approved.
"If it wasn't precedent setting, I'd be all for it," said Purnell.
Councilman Dean Burrell agreed.
"I'd really be afraid to start this for Berlin," he said.
He also noted that if Berlin granted Derrickson's request it would be obligated to abate taxes for every business that asked and possibly even homeowners.
Town Administer Tony Carson suggested an alternative. Instead of abating Derrickson's taxes, the town could help find businesses that might be interested in locating onto Derrickson's land.
Though it wasn't the solution he was hoping for, Derrickson said that he would be happy for any help the town can offer.


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At easter time, it's good to know that besides chocolate, horseradish comes into season and if you're taking the opportunity to indulge, you should note that horseradish loses its pungency with heat so it's best used in cold/cool dishes if you wish to experience those sinus clearing properties.
I've decided to keep my recipe simple and highlight the flavour by creating a tangy horseradish mayonnaise.
1 egg yolk
sea salt
125mls neutral oil (not olive oil)
finely grated fresh horseradish, to taste
1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar, to taste
Place the egg yolk and a pinch of crushed sea salt flakes into a bowl - whisk until combined.
Add a drop of oil at a time, whisking constantly until the mixture starts to thicken - you can then drizzle it at a steady pace as you whisk.
Once all the oil has been absorbed keep whisking until it looks glossy. The amount of horseradish you'll need will depend on how hot you like your food and how hot the horseradish is. It's best to add a little at a time, tasting as you go until it is just how you like it - I used about 2 tablespoons. Finish off with a little vinegar for balance.
Store in the fridge in a sealed container until ready to use. Before using, stir through a little more grated horseradish as the potency will mellow in the fridge.
This is a great alternative to aioli - toss it through just warm new potatoes for a fantastic salad or team it with smoked salmon.
I've had terrific recipes popping into my mailbox all week and if you'd like to join in, you've still got plenty of time.
Send your posts to whb AT cookalmostanything DOT com
with WHB#326 in the subject line and the following details:
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