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__label__wiki | 0.672627 | 0.672627 | Top 400 contractors are feeling no pain, ENR report says
The nation's construction contractors are generally doing quite well, thank you.
The Engineering News Record's list of Top 400 U.S. contractors based on revenue was released last month, and it provided a favorable diagnosis for the nation's construction economy a decade after the Great Recession.
"The still-healthy market is evident in the results of this year's ENR Top 400 Contractors survey," the ENR said. "As a group, those firms generated a new record of $405 billion in contracting revenue in 2018, a significant increase of 8.3 percent from the 2017 total of $373.98 billion." The ENR added: "The construction market has been growing steadily for nearly 10 years, with no signs of stopping."
Among the nation's top 100 contractors, the ENR's list has, for the entirely of this century, annually included two Michigan-based contractors: Southfield-based Barton Malow and Detroit-based Walbridge. It's more of the same this year, as Barton Malow (No. 40, down 12 spots from 2018) and Walbridge (No. 59, -11 spots compared to 2018) were Michigan's top contractors. But for the first time, they had company in the top 100: Lansing-based The Christman Co. jumped from No. 110 in 2018 to No. 93 this year.
Other Michigan-based contractors that made the list include Aristeo Construction Co., Livonia, (No. 194, +5 vs. 2018); Rockford Construction Co., Grand Rapids (No. 243, +7); Commercial Contracting Corp., Auburn Hills, (No. 260, +21); Pioneer Construction, Grand Rapids (No. 268, +5); Granger Construction Co., Lansing (No. 305, -103); Wieland, Lansing, (No. 319, -43); Clark Construction Co., Lansing, No. 320, not on the 2018 list); Roncelli Inc., Sterling Heights (No. 340, -50) and Wolverine Building Group, Grand Rapids (No. 400, not on the 2018 list).
Notable contractors that didn't make this year's list (or last year's), but that have in the past, include Sachse Construction, Detroit (No 393 in 2017) and George W. Auch, Pontiac (No. 394 in 2017).
The list's 2019 top five U.S. contractors by revenue include, in order, Bechtel, Reston, Va.; Fluor Corp., Irving, Texas; Turner Corp., New York, N.Y.; Aecom, Los Angeles, and The Whiting-Turner Contracting Co., Baltimore.
"Industry veterans know the market can't sustain this pace forever, but they are focused on the opportunities in front of them," the ENR said.
Gilbane Building Co. Executive Vice President told the publication: "We all remember 2009-11 and don't want to see that again. So we as an industry are constantly wary, watching for signs of a downturn. But we don't see any yet." | cc/2019-30/en_head_0000.json.gz/line406 | 14,800,649,516,414,343,000 | {
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__label__wiki | 0.603877 | 0.603877 | U.S. Supreme Court sides with employers workplace arbitration case
By Celine McNicholas
WASHINGTON - The U.S. Supreme Court on May 21 handed down a 5-4 decision in Epic Systems Corp. v Lewis that deals a significant blow to the fundamental right of workers in this country to join together to address workplace disputes.
For over 80 years, the National Labor Relations Act has guaranteed workers' right to stand together for "mutual aid and protection" when seeking to improve their wages and working conditions. However, the Supreme Court decision clears the way for employers to require workers to waive that right as a condition of employment.
The use of mandatory arbitration and collective and class action waivers - under which workers are forced to handle workplace disputes as individuals through arbitration, rather than being able to resolve these matters together in court - makes it more difficult for workers to enforce their rights.
These agreements bar access to the courts for all types of employment-related claims, including those based on the Fair Labor Standards Act, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, and the Family Medical Leave Act. This means that a worker who is not paid fairly, discriminated against, or sexually harassed, is forced into a process that overwhelmingly favors the employer - and forced to manage this process alone, even though these issues are rarely confined to one single worker.
Today's decision undermines the National Labor Relations Act and further erodes workers' rights and freedoms. Workers depend on collective and class actions to combat race and sex discrimination and enforce wage and hour standards. It is essential to both our democracy and a fair economy that workers have the right to engage in collective action. Congress must act to restore this fundamental right and ban mandatory arbitration agreements and class and collective action waivers.
The New York Times said writing for the majority, "Justice Neil M. Gorsuch said the court's conclusion was dictated by a federal law favoring arbitration and the court's precedents. If workers were allowed to band together to press their claims, he wrote, 'the virtues Congress originally saw in arbitration, its speed and simplicity and inexpensiveness, would be shorn away and arbitration would wind up looking like the litigation it was meant to displace.'"
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg dissented strongly, saying the case will lead to "huge under-enforcement of federal and state statutes designed to advance the well being of vulnerable workers."
Said AFL-CIO President Rich Trumka: "Today, five justices on the Supreme Court decided that it is acceptable for working people to have our legal rights taken away by corporations in order to keep our jobs. This decision forcing workers to sign away the right to file class-action suits against such illegal employment practices as wage theft, sexual harassment and discrimination is outrageous - and it is wrong.
"In this case, the newest justice has joined the dangerous trend of this court to side with corporations over working people. We call upon Congress to immediately enact legislation making clear that no worker can be forced to give up their right to effectively challenge illegal conduct in the workplace in order to keep their job." | cc/2019-30/en_head_0000.json.gz/line407 | 3,564,042,338,528,619,500 | {
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__label__wiki | 0.54322 | 0.54322 | Meet Gibbi
Gibbi on Lampedusa island, about one month after rescue at sea. Lampedusa, Italy; November 2016. ©Pamela Kerpius
Meet Gibbi.
27 years old and from Gambia.
To reach Lampedusa he crossed six countries: The Gambia, Senegal, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, and the most dangerous of all, Libya.
His journey took six months, five of which were in Libya. From Agadez, Niger he crossed the Sahara desert in a pickup truck with 28 people. Each, as standard, had 5 liters of water. He made it through four checkpoints across the desert with the help of his driver, who negotiated lower rates to pass.
When he arrived in Sabha, he says, even the little kids have guns. They're called "small boys," as I've heard them described throughout almost all of my interviews. (They are also throughout the city of Tripoli, making prey of migrants who congregate on known corners looking for day work.)
He mostly stayed inside the compound because it was too dangerous to leave. There were about 300 people living in his particular house. Some slept outdoors because there wasn't enough room. He spend one week in the compound and never felt safe.
Gibbi stopped in Bani Waled, then it was on to Tripoli, where he spent three months and two weeks in a prison somewhere within the city limits. He arrived with over 90 people to a space holding somewhere around 700-800, by his estimate.
There was scant food or water. He shared a plate of macaroni with 10 other people each day for food. He was allowed one teacup of water daily. Men, women, and children and babies were all kept together in the same space.
He was given the option to pay 1000 dinars for his release, but he escaped instead. It took him days to plan it. During his allowed visit to the toilet one morning, he left alone on foot. He looked for other black people along the way for aid.
Gibbi's family thought he was dead during this time because he was never able to call home. He was married in 2009 and has a wife, a five year old son, and a baby girl about a year old.
He spent a month at the seaside camp before his boat was ready. He crossed the Mediterranean Sea in a wooden boat with 140 people around 9:00pm. There were 40-50 women on board. They were out to sea for eight hours.
At 5:00am he was rescued by a German vessel, and was then transferred to the Guardia Costiera who brought him to Lampedusa.
He has worked as a mechanic and is eager to maintain his skills. In time, he would like to earn money and send for his family in The Gambia.
He was always wearing that same ball cap and had his hands muffled in his pocket to keep warm when I'd see him everyday on Via Roma. He is kind and friendly and his eyes light up when he speaks.
Gibbi is an amazing human being.
Leggete in italiano | cc/2019-30/en_head_0000.json.gz/line408 | 482,089,556,889,373,950 | {
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__label__cc | 0.640496 | 0.359504 | Meet Dr. Brett Zubeck
Meet Dr. Megan Barnes
Meet Dawn Branson
State of the Art Facility and Equipment
Created in Newsletter Library, Wellness
The natural world functions very well on its own. Left to their own devices, members of the tens of millions of species on our planet thrive and prosper without relying on outside agencies.
In order to grow abundantly, plants consume carbon dioxide, water, and nutrients from the soil. Likewise, herbivorous animals consume plants whereas carnivorous animals consume other animals. Insects eat a wide variety of foods, including plants, fruit, other insects, detritus (dead leaves, stems, and twigs), and even blood. Many types of bacteria and fungi recycle decomposing matter. Whales, the top predator in the oceans, may consume more than a ton of plankton per day in addition to fish, squid, and other crustaceans.
Every member of every species excepting humans (Homo sapiens sapiens) obtains everything it needs from the environment. Modern humanity is the only species for which the abundance provided by the global ecosystem is insufficient.
For instance, mountain lions, raccoons, and coyotes don't need sleeping pills. But humans spend more than $1.5 billion per year on the sleep aid Ambien. Dolphins, antelope, and bluebirds don't have problems with blood glucose levels. In stark contrast, the annual cost of diabetes medications in the United States was $12.5 billion in 2007. In the wild, oak trees, tuna, and elephants don't need nutritional supplementation. Humans, however, spend more than $23 billion annually in the United States alone. What is wrong with this picture?
As a species, humans have the unprecedented ability to manipulate and drastically alter the world in which we live. Also aside from epidemic infectious disease, there exists no natural check on human population growth. As populations expand, resources become scarce. Populations flocking to urban enclaves not only leave behind the countryside but also local sources of fresh fruits, vegetables, meat and poultry. Canning, packaging, and transportation of food over long distances become necessary to supply the energy needs of cities. But only calories and not much else are obtained by these methods. Energy is provided but food quality is substantially reduced.
Chronic disease becomes widespread. Diabetes, cardiovascular disorders including high blood pressure, heart attacks, and stroke, and obesity are all the direct result of a severely compromised food supply.1,2,3
Our disconnect from the natural world poses many additional challenges. Our bodies were designed to meet the demanding physical requirements of a hostile environment. But for the most part we don't do physical work anymore. If we don't find satisfactory substitutes for strenuous physical activity our musculoskeletal, metabolic, and endocrine systems easily deteriorate. The consequences include osteoporosis, chronic aches and pains, gastrointestinal problems, and anxiety and depression.
It takes a lot of effort to maintain good health when we're so far removed from the natural world. We need to make sure our diets are healthy and we need to get sufficient and regular strenuous exercise. The short- and long-term benefits include happiness, self-esteem, and ongoing well-being.
1Kesse-Guyot E, et al: Adherence to nutritional recommendations and subsequent cognitive performance: findings from the prospective Supplementation with Antioxidant Vitamins and Minerals 2. Am J Clin Nutr Nov 24 2010 (Epub ahead of print)
2Wolfe AR, et al: Dietary protein and protein-rich food in relation to severely depressed mood: A 10 year follow-up of a national cohort. Prog Neuropsychopharmacol Biol Psychiatry Nov 22 2010 (Epub ahead of print)
3Pekmezi DW, Demark-Wahnefried W: Updated evidence in support of diet and exercise interventions in cancer survivors. Acta Oncol Nov 24 2010 (Epub ahead of print)
Prudenville Office
By Appt.
Life Chiropractic and Wellness Center | cc/2019-30/en_head_0000.json.gz/line410 | 2,372,216,621,860,919,000 | {
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__label__wiki | 0.797155 | 0.797155 | Home/News Print This Page
County declines MTO transportation grant
Published Feb. 1, 2018
Haliburton County council will stick with its plan of commissioning an implementation plan for a transportation service in the community, forgoing a grant opportunity from the Ministry of Transportation.
At a December meeting, council decided it will hire a consultant to complete a transportation project implementation plan and has allotted $50,000 in the 2018 draft budget for that purpose.
During a Jan. 24 meeting, councillors were visited by Tina Jackson and Sue Shikaze of the Haliburton County community transportation task force, who asked councillors to take advantage of a new community transportation grant program offered by the MTO.
A business case prepared by the task force that councillors had received at their December meeting outlined a number of transportation options, one being a booked, shared ride service that would transport residents who called to book rides. It was estimated the cost for such a service would be at least $192,000 a year.
"I know there is some concern about how this model will meet the needs of all residents, and I'm here to assure you that it can't and it won't," Jackson said, adding that ideally a suite of transportation services is required to fulfill the needs of residents.
"Our request is that you reconsider your decision and prepare and submit an application to the ministry of transportation," Shikaze said.
She emphasized the grant program is designed for communities that are not served or are under-served by transit, and can be used to develop new systems, with an emphasis on improving mobility for the entire community, including those with transportation barriers, seniors, people with disabilities, youth and individuals with low incomes.
The program offers funding of up to $500,000 over five years, however, a caveat is that it is a five-year commitment.
County planner Charlsey White told councillors that if council decided after a few years a system was unsustainable and decided to pull out of the arrangement, it was possible that some or all funds received from the province would have to be paid back.
With municipal elections taking place this October, a five-year commitment would also mean that council was committing not just the next county council, but also the council after that, to the project.
"I need to see an implementation plan," said Dysart et al Deputy Mayor Andrea Roberts. "I'm just worried about committing future councils."
"We have to acknowledge this whole project is fraught with various risks," said Algonquin Highlands Mayor Carol Moffatt. Moffatt said she did see the grant program as an opportunity, but noted the county would be taking a risk with the five-year commitment.
"I see it as hedging our bets," Moffatt said.
Dysart et al Mayor Murray Fearrey, who emphasized he was not against the project, noted the county would be responsible for administration of the service, something likely not possible with its current staff level. With vehicles, gas and drivers, he said he believed a booked, shared ride service would end up costing more than the $192,000 that had been estimated in the task force's business case.
The grant application deadline is also fast approaching, at the end of February.
Chief administrative officer Mike Rutter said it was staff's opinion the more financially prudent option for council would be to use gas tax funding to help finance whatever transportation system is eventually created. That way, Rutter said, there would not be a specific time commitment, and council could abandon a financially unsustainable program at any time.
Moffatt and Minden Hills Mayor Brent Devolin acknowledged the decision would likely draw criticism from some members of the public.
"I think we're sincerely committed to this, and we're going to do something," Devolin said. The county will not submit a grant application and will continue with the creation of its implementation plan. | cc/2019-30/en_head_0000.json.gz/line411 | 17,871,034,370,244,580,000 | {
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__label__wiki | 0.649654 | 0.649654 | 2013 Children's Choice Book Awards (CCBAs) Winners
OVER 1,000,000 VOTES CAST BY KIDS & TEENS -- JEFF KINNEY WINS AUTHOR OF THE YEAR AND ROBIN PREISS GLASSER NAMED ILLUSTRATOR OF THE YEAR
New York, NY - May 13, 2013 - The Children's Book Council and Every Child a Reader announced the winners of the sixth annual Children's Choice Book Awards (CCBAs) at a charity gala benefitting Every Child a Reader in New York City this evening. The announcement is an annual highlight of Children's Book Week (May 13-19, 2013)as the CCBAs is the only national book awards program where the winning titles are selected by kids and teens. Young readers across the country voted in record numbers for their favorite books, author, and illustrator at bookstores, school libraries, and a tbookweekonline.com, casting more than 1,000,000 votes. Full video footage of the awards ceremony is available for book lovers of all ages at .
The 2013 Children's Choice Book Awards winners are:
KINDERGARTEN TO SECOND GRADE BOOK OF THE YEAR
Nighttime Ninja by Barbara DaCosta, illustrated by Ed Young (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers)
THIRD GRADE TO FOURTH GRADE BOOK OF THE YEAR
Bad Kitty for President by Nick Bruel (Roaring Brook/Macmillan)
FIFTH GRADE TO SIXTH GRADE BOOK OF THE YEAR
Dork Diaries 4: Tales from a Not-So-Graceful Ice Princess by Rachel Renée Russell (Aladdin/Simon & Schuster)
TEEN BOOK OF THE YEAR
The Fault in Our Stars by John Green (Dutton/Penguin)
AUTHOR OF THE YEAR
Jeff Kinney for Diary of a Wimpy Kid 7: The Third Wheel (Amulet Books/Abrams)
ILLUSTRATOR OF THE YEAR
Robin Preiss Glasser for Fancy Nancy and the Mermaid Ballet (HarperCollins Children's Books)
About the Children's Choice Book Awards Program (CCBAs)
Launched in 2008 by the Children's Book Council and Every Child a Reader, The Children's Choice Book Awards program was created to provide young readers with an opportunity to voice their opinions about the books being written for them and to help develop a reading list that will motivate children to read more and cultivate a love of reading. More at .
About Children's Book Week (CBW)
Established in 1919, CBW is the longest-running national literacy initiative in the country. Each year, official and local commemorative events are held nationwide at schools, libraries, bookstores, homes -- wherever young readers and books connect.In 2013, official events will be held in 50 cities nationwide. Learn more at .
List or update your festivals or literary event>>
List your author details>>
Featured Literary Journal -
Pilcrow & Dagger are inviting submissions!
Advertise on site>> | cc/2019-30/en_head_0000.json.gz/line415 | 3,057,033,853,570,371,000 | {
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__label__cc | 0.714559 | 0.285441 | About Kits House
Kitsilano Neighbourhood House ('Kits House'), member of the Association of Neighbourhood Houses BC, is a registered non-profit, charity organization dedicated to meeting the needs of those most vulnerable as well as providing an opportunity for everybody in our community to get together and be engaged. We offer many different programs like volunteer-led English Conversation Circles, weekly hot lunches for seniors, childcare and much more. We are the only Neighbourhood House on the Westside and serves many different communities like Kitsilano, Dunbar, Arbutus Ridge and Point Grey.
Kits House has a rich history on Vancouver's Westside since 1894 when it was originally opened as Alexandra Orphanage and Non-Sectarian Home Society. This original site was located at 7th and Pine. The orphanage was eventually renamed "Alexandra House" in 1938. In 1972, the House moved to its current location, was renamed Kitsilano Neighbourhood House and still serves the six communities of the Westside.
Check out "A Place on the Corner" for some more Kits House History.
Our Statement of Diversity
Vancouver's Westside is a healthy, vibrant and connected community where everyone thrives.
Kitsilano Neighbourhood House creates community for all by connecting people, ideas, and opportunities.
Our community welcomes people of any age, race, or religion.
We see value in every person, regardless of physical ability, mental ability, or economic standing.
We welcome the experience and knowledge of people from other places. Many languages and cultures are heard in the community at Kitsilano Neighbourhood House.
People of any gender and sexuality are welcome in our community.
Our staff, board, membership and volunteer community reflect the diversity of our neighbours.
Any person who transmits or receives our services can expect to be treated with respect.
Our dedication to diversity means that all people are part of our community; therefore, we act to promote the inclusion of everyone in our House.
democratic participation
What is a Neighbourhood House?
Neighbourhood Houses are non-profit organizations, which function as resource centres with the flexibility to meet changing community needs and challenges. They work towards improving the quality of both community and family life and differ from other social organizations as they are concerned with the community as a whole while working towards improving the quality of both community and family life.
Programs and services are designed to reach all age groups in a diverse population that is inclusive and reflective of the many different life experiences of the neighbours. Neighbourhood Houses build strong, independent communities, encouraging people to thrive. They are familiar and easily accessible; and effective in reaching people and helping them with their community aspirations, needs, challenges and problems.
Scent Reduction Policy
Kits House is not a scent-free environment; however, we do ask that everyone avoid the use of strong perfumes and heavily scented products while at Kits House. We ask for everyone's cooperation in our efforts to accommodate staff, volunteer, resident, participant and visitor health concerns, and minimize unnecessary discomfort.
We collect personal information in order to maintain contact with you, to invite you to KNH, and ANH General Meetings and to provide you with information on future programs, services and events.
Complaint Resolution Process
Kitsilano Neighbourhood House is committed to working with children, youth, seniors, families and communities to provide supports and programs that meet community needs. In keeping with this all participants in all programs have the right to raise their concerns about any program decision or actions taken by Kits House.
• You will be treated with respect, listened to and acknowledged.
• Your concern will be kept in confidence and there will be no repercussions for bringing forward a concern in good faith.
• All staff will have a working knowledge of the complaint resolution process and a willingness to listen to your concern and find a resolution that works for all involved.
What we will do
• We will provide an opportunity for you to explain the complaint.
• We will respond to the initial complaint as soon as possible after it is received and not longer than one week from receiving the complaint.
• We will document your concern and the final resolution or decision.
• We will follow up until the issue is resolved.
• We will make sure the process is accessible and transparent.
How to bring your complaint to our attention
1. Work together with the Kits House staff involved to resolve the disagreement
2. If the disagreement is not resolved work together with the Program Manager
3. It is hoped that through these conversations, your concern will be addressed to your satisfaction. If a resolution has not been found you can contact the Executive Director by phone 604 736-3588 or email or in writing attn: Executive Director c/o Kits House.
4. If the Executive Director is not able to resolve the disagreement to the satisfaction of all parties, your concern can be referred to the current Chair of the Kits House Board (contact email on KNH website) and/or the CEO of the Association of Neighbourhood Houses of BC 604-875-9111 ext 107. | cc/2019-30/en_head_0000.json.gz/line425 | 11,788,135,866,873,403,000 | {
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__label__cc | 0.707699 | 0.292301 | Dovetail is an American band from Dallas, Texas, fronted by singer/songwriter Philip Creamer. Joined by brother and co-writer Daniel Creamer, the band is a family of creative free-spirits in pursuit of the high and lofty. Giving much credence to their musical predecessors, the band lives in a magic place of sonic discovery.
Clearly drawing much of their musical inspiration from 60s and 70s era rock and roll, Dovetail taps into the simple yet dynamic arrangements and huge-sounding vocal productions of bands like The Beach Boys, The Byrds and The Beatles. Still, the band is able to create a fresh and modern sound, with frontman Phillip's voice channeling the likes of Tom Chaplin of Keane, or at times, Matthew Bellamy of Muse. Fans of classic rock or of more modern bands like My Morning Jacket, Radio Head, Arcade Fire, Portugal The Man and Dr. Dog will likely connect with Dovetail's music..
As a testament to the band's tremendous songwriting capabilities, Dovetail holds the prestige of winning the 2012 John Lennon Song Writing Contest in the category of Rock Song Of The Year with their song "Julie" which appears on their debut album, Mount Karma.
For more information, visit their website at:
Be sure to stay up-to-date by following Dovetail on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. | cc/2019-30/en_head_0000.json.gz/line429 | 5,409,703,164,769,838,000 | {
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__label__cc | 0.536934 | 0.463066 | Israel's puppet war unmasks apartheid regime
By Fatima Masri - July 03, 2013
Section: [Main News] [Culture] [Life under Occupation]
Tags: [culture] [Jerusalem] [Palestinian Authority] [popular resistance] [social media] [Apartheid]
Send by email: Print:
Image from Puppets4All Facebook page protesting Israeli ban of Palestinian Puppet Festival
The El-Hakawati theatre was colorfully adorned for its annual International Puppet Festival when a closure order by the Israeli authorities dashed the expectations of the Palestinian children living in East Jerusalem. Now signs announcing the closure of the theatre from June 22 to 30 have replaced the festive decorations.
This "puppet war" was launched by the Israeli Minister of Internal Security, Yitzhak Aharonovitch, transforming a festival for children into a security issue. Officially, the order has been issued on the grounds that Israeli law prohibits the Palestinian Authority from funding or holding any gatherings in Israel without government authorization. The theatre's director, Mohamed Halayiqa, was summoned by Shin Bet and questioned about the funds' provenience. Halayiqa denied the involvement of the Palestinian Authority and so far no evidence of PA involvement has been offered by the Israeli police to justify the closing order.
This "puppet war" was launched by the Israeli Minister of Internal Security, Yitzhak Aharonovitch, transforming a festival for children into a security issue
The festival, which would have been in its nineteenth season, hosts a large number of international performers and theatre groups. Mohamed Halayiqa said the theatre closure was "disgraceful," and claims that the Palestinian Cultural Foundation, which is supported by donations from Palestinian businesses and European Donors, provided funding for the project.
The cancellation of the puppet festival raises questions about Israel's democratic principles. The Security Minister says he is not opposed to Palestinian cultural and artistic events as long as they are conducted according to Israeli law. However, if PA funding of cultural activities for Palestinians is prohibited and the Israeli government does not provide any alternative, the result is a system that regulates access to culture on the basis of ethnicity.
According to a study conducted by the Association of Civil Rights in Israel, 78% of Palestinians in Jerusalem - and 84% of the children - are living below the poverty line. Israel neglects the Palestinian population's basic needs, including access to education and professional training. Such practices make it hard to believe that any effort would be made by the government to promote cultural events even if they are in line with Israeli regulations.
As harmless as a puppet festival may be, Israeli authorities view Palestinian art as part of a national struggle that must be contained. Israeli authorities did not see the festival performances prior to their cancellation, suggesting that the theatre closure was not ordered on the basis of unacceptable content. It seems that any opportunity to enrich Palestinians is viewed as a potential threat to an Israeli system based on the exclusion and segregation of one group.
As harmless as a puppet festival may be, Israeli authorities view Palestinian art as part of a national struggle that must be contained
Among those protesting the cancellation of the festival are the puppeteers from the Israeli television series "Sesame Street." Ariel Doron, who gives voice to the Israeli puppet Elmo, and Yousef Sweid, who gives voice to the Arab puppet Mahboub, have launched a campaign through the Puppets4All Facebook page, in which Israeli television and stage actors, as well as protestors from all around the world, are posting pictures with puppets and slogans such as "Culture is not a security issue".
The Facebook page provides the link to a petition that states, "Every child has the right to enjoy puppet shows". A short video, entitled "The puppet war", was created by Doron to accompany the petition. In the video Israel is represented as an inflatable blue and white hammer chasing scared puppets that cry out for help.
Ariel Doron believes that every child has a right to culture. In an interview with Haaretz, he expressed his disbelief in regards to the measure adopted by his own government: "It sounds incredible to me that they're keeping Palestinian children from seeing puppet shows. It seems ridiculous and cruel and sad and completely unnecessary, and hypocritical too. When an Israeli artist attends a festival abroad and is boycotted because he gets Israeli funding, Israel speaks against it, and now it [Israel] is saying the same thing."
Israel targeting access to health and health workers in Palestine
Palestine's health care system is crumbling due to restrictions placed on Palestinians
Israel requires students to pass "propaganda" course before overseas trips
Israeli-Arab human rights group Adalah has labelled the course as "racist ideology",
Israel's Defence Ministry erases historical Nakba documents
An investigative report by Haaretz has uncovered the Israeli Defence Ministry
The El-Hakawati theatre was colorfully adorned to host its annual International
Rushdi Tamimi becomes second victim of Israeli army in Nabi Saleh
On Tuesday November 21st, the body of 31 year old Rushdi Tamimi was
Israel Avoids Hard-Right Shift: No Benefit for Palestinians
With many commentators predicting big wins for the settler movement in
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__label__wiki | 0.632556 | 0.632556 | How can students health care to be improved?
March 4, 2017 iwona Education 0
In the run-up to the 2017 presidential and legislative elections, emeVia's network of student mutual publishes a White Paper designed to challenge parties and their candidates on the issues of student health. 17 proposals centered around three main axes: access to care, prevention and education to the health system.
The local student mutually manages the student social security scheme of around 1 million students and offer a complementary mutual insurance scheme to nearly 250,000 of them.
Improving health, fighting against cessation of care
To elaborate the 17 proposals for access to care and improvement of prevention policies, the emeVia network has based its latest health survey in 2015 on 14,000 of its members. The proposals are intended to challenge the candidates, but also to be confronted with health professionals. Goal? To improve the health and well-being of students, in particular by facilitating access to care, while 16% of them declared in 2015 that they had refrained from visiting a doctor for financial reasons.
Which lines of thought should be taken from the White Paper?
Three priorities were identified: improving access to care and rights for young people, strengthening prevention and educating young people about their health system. More specifically, the Mutual Network proposes, for example, to link the 500,000 apprenticeship and salaried students to the student social security scheme, in order, according to its president, to "stop the double penalty" of those who, when registering in the superior, of the contribution for student social security but who also contribute through their professional activity.
Read also: How to acquire new skills without breaking the bank
According to emeVia, it would also be necessary to generalize the university health network Rhesus which exists in some faces like that of tours. This network is the result of an agreement between liberal health professionals, universities and mutual societies. It ensures the third-party payment so that the students have nothing to pay for the day of the consultation, more personalized follow-up and a permanence of care after 8 pm and the weekend. In the same vein would be set up a free gynecological consultation every 2 years for young women aged 16 to 25 years.
Lastly, stressing that only 75% of students benefit from a complementary health care compared to 93%. the population, emeVia recommends extending the check or "pass" health, already proposed by some local authorities. It would be set at $150 for fellows and employees.
Regarding prevention, emeVia advocates for a youth education by their peers, and this from the high school and proposes the creation of a foundation co-managed by the State, the private sector and the actors of the prevention. We estimated that by setting a tax of one cent on each bottle of wine, we would release 10 million dollars of a budget for this foundation.
To challenge the candidates for the presidential election
EmeVia has put in place the presidential for which lists all the proposals of candidates for the presidential as well as their positioning on the measures of the White Paper. It will make it possible to compare programs according to thematic criteria.
Internet users will be able to vote for a measure, share it on Facebook or Twitter, as well as directly interview candidates via social networks. One limitation, however, is that they will not be able to suggest other measures that they feel could improve their situation.
EmeVia ensures that it has sent its White Paper to all candidates, and hopes that answers will be added to the comparator. It remains to be seen if the policies, very discreet until now on the living conditions of students, will play the game.
How to Kick College Distractions to the Curb
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__label__wiki | 0.644745 | 0.644745 | Immunophenotypic characterisation of morphologically diagnosed cases of Acute Myeloid Leukaemia (AML)
Immunophenotyping and Aberrant phenotype in AML
Maria Basharat
Saleem Ahmed Khan
Nasir ud din
Dawood Ahmed
Keywords: Immunophenotyping, Acute myeloid leukemia (AML), Aberrant phenotype in AML, Flowcytometry
Objective: To determine immunophenotypic pattern in newly diagnosed cases of acute myeloid leukaemia by flow cytometry and its correlation with morphological findings.
Methods: This study was conducted at Haematology (Pathology) department, Army Medical College, in collaboration with Immunology Department Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, Rawalpindi from 16 November 2016 to 16 November 2017. One hundred and six patients of both genders and all age groups diagnosed as acute myeloid leukaemia were included in the study. Demographic data was noted. Complete blood counts, bone marrow examination and cytochemical stains were carried out and evaluated microscopically for blast percentage and morphology. Immunophenotyping was performed by flow cytometry using standard panel on peripheral blood or bone marrow samples. The surface and cytoplasmic antigens of interest were analysed and correlated with morphological findings.
Results: The most commonly expressed antigens were CD13, CD33, CD45 and HLA-DR. Almost all blasts expressed CD45 with no remarkable difference among the subtypes of AML. The mean positivity for CD13 among all AML subtypes was 57% and for CD33 was 67%. Aberrant expression of CD7 and CD19 were expressed in 26.4% and 1.1% of all cases respectively. There was concordance rate of 90% between morphology and FCM in our study.
Conclusion: Flow cytometric analysis of acute leukaemia done by a combination of patterns and intensity of antigen expression improves diagnostic yield in AML. CD13, CD33 and CD45 are the most frequently expressed antigens in AML. Our findings suggest a 90% concordance between morphology and flow cytometry. It is pertinent to conclude that flow cytometry results interpreted with morphology are complementary.
Basharat M, Khan SA, Nasir ud Din, Ahmed D. Immunophenotypic characterisation of morphologically diagnosed cases of Acute Myeloid Leukaemia (AML). Pak J Med Sci. 2019;35(2):470-476. doi: | cc/2019-30/en_head_0000.json.gz/line442 | 7,718,776,062,185,838,000 | {
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__label__wiki | 0.831727 | 0.831727 | [INTERVIEW] Prof Mehmet UGUR: "We may be enjoying relative freedom in Europe but this freedom is tainted by continued violations in Turkey"
Fernando Lozano
Elections in March, Hydrocarbons in Cyprus and Erdoğan's Nationalist Footsteps
Dr Anthony Derisiotis is a lecturer of Turkey and the Middle East, at the Department of Turkish and Modern Asian studies, of the National and Capodistrian University of Athens. He has graduated from the Department of Turkish Studies of the University of Cyprus and got his MA and PhD from the University of Birmingham, UK. He teaches Turkish political history and foreign policy. His publications and research interests include Turkish domestic and foreign politics, with a special focus in the Middle East and the United States, as well as the Kurdish issue. He has previously held a research associate position at the Hellenic House of Parliament.
A major characteristic of Recep Tayyıp Erdoğan, one that he has mastered during his political career, is the ability to adapt to conditions, especially when he can't adjust conditions to his views. The latter may sound absurd, but in the past 16 years, the Turkish leader has done so a few times, with the most significant cases being the way he handled the Kurdish issue, from the pro-Kurdish reforms and the solution process to the sacrifice of the Kurdish vote in favour of the nationalists, or the turn against his former political ally and AKP supporter, cleric Fethullah Gülen.
Erdoğan simply changed his attitude and turned against them, when he deemed it necessary to serve his own political interests. In the process he accused Gülen of terrorism, treason and being an enemy of the state, while he practically demonised the Kurds for demanding the rights he has promised them in the early years of his government. In both cases, he used this as an excuse to proceed to a wide-range purge from the armed forces, political institutions, media, universities, etc.
Whenever he can't manipulate a situation, he will compromise and adapt to it, as he has done with his relation to Putin that actually flourished after the Sukhoi Su-24 shoot down in 2015 and the Russian economic sanctions to Turkey; or with Assad's advance in former strongholds of the opposition in Syria, which Turkey has been sturdily supporting against the Syrian leader.
Another similar challenge for the Turkish president is his alliance to the nationalist MHP, one that has ensured him crucial political victories in the 2017 referendum and in the 2018 presidential and parliamentary elections, the latter through the People's Alliance.
The upcoming local elections in March 2019 is the next challenge in Turkey's troubled internal political scenery and the discussion on a joint campaign under the People's Alliance is already on the way.
President Erdoğan has been targeting the nationalist sentiment after the June 2015 elections, especially since the nationalist vote has been a fundamental element of his electoral dominance. He has incorporated nationalism in his approach to Turkey's foreign policy and has adopted an anti-Kurdish and anti-American rhetoric regarding the Syrian autonomous area of Rojava in the east of the Euphrates that is controlled by the PYD.
Relations with Washington have been stressed due to a number of reasons, including Ankara's affiliation to Moscow, the Andrew Brunson case and Iran, as well as, Ankara's request for Fethullah Gülen's extradition and the US-YPG alliance. In the process, Erdoğan has conceded to a significant rise of MHP's influence within AKP's ideological core but seems to remain in control of a significant segment of the nationalist vote with political manoeuvres like the recent developments in the Exclusive Economic Zone of Cyprus, where Ankara has been raising objections on the right of the government of Nicosia to issue drilling permissions to foreign companies, on the basis that the rights of the Turkish-Cypriots have not been secured.
On the same basis, Ankara has also deployed its own research vessels in the Cypriot EEZ causing further stir in its relations with Nicosia and Athens. All of these are related to Turkey's national interests as they have been outlined by the AKP government, after Cyprus established its EEZ with agreements with Egypt (2003), Lebanon (2007) and Israel (2010), regarding Cyprus' hydrocarbon potential riches.
Recent developments include Nicosia's 2017 partnership with ExxonMobil-Qatar Petroleum consortium, the 16 November 2018 ExxonMobil launch of drilling operations with the escort of US Navy ships and the heated response by the Turkish government which vowed to begin drilling operations of its own in the Cypriot EEZ.
Earlier in the year, just before the June snap elections, the MHP leader, Devlet Bahçeli, was quoted saying "Cyprus is Turkish and will remain so", while the party's campaign issued a map that depicted Cyprus as Turkish territory.
Bahçeli's statement was reiterated by İyi Parti leader, Meral Akşener, in her 21 November address to the parliament, where she also warned of a repeat invasion of Cyprus, while calling the international companies' exploration for hydrocarbons commissioned by the Nicosia government as imperialist activity against Turkey.
Her statements came after the Turkish government hardened its stance, warning that the drillings off Cyprus would affect regional stability. Adding to the tension, Yeni Şafak newspaper published reports in October 2018 that Greece has been "stealing Libya's EEZ", as stated by defence minister Hulusi Akar in a recent visit to Libya.
Overall, there is significant tension brewing in the east of the Mediterranean Sea related to Cyprus' hydrocarbons that serves as nationalist fuel for the MHP and the AKP that both parties are incorporating in their rhetoric, in the wake of the 2019 local elections.
Earlier disagreements over a Bill of Amnesty submitted by the MHP, the reinstatement of the national oath in schools and Bahçeli's October statement that the party will not form an alliance in the local elections and will nominate its own candidate for Istanbul, were side-lined after the nationalist leader issued a new statement on 24 November, according to which, the MHP will not nominate metropolitan mayoral candidates in Istanbul, Ankara and İzmir and will support the AKP's candidates.
A few days earlier, President Erdoğan has called upon the benefits of an alliance, referring to "expectations from the grassroots of both parties". His statement came just one day before a meeting between the two party leaders to discuss the March elections.
Erdoğan is surfacing on the top of the People's Alliance, presenting himself as the guarantor of Turkey's national interests in an acceptable way to the nationalist voters. He is manipulating the delicate conditions in the east of the Mediterranean to his behalf and is gaining the advantage in the nationalist field, ahead of the MHP leader and Akşener.
Turkey's Idlib adventure; will it end in tears?
Soviel Scheinheiligkeit ist eigentlich unglaublich!
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__label__cc | 0.720816 | 0.279184 | Where has the Pledge gone? What impact has it had so far?
Stories will be added here as they come in - please send yours!
Each small step will take us closer to changing the way the system currently operates, and by collecting as many stories here as possible here, we can exponentially increase the momentum towards that change.
The Young Christian Workers (YCW) are very involved in the asylum seeker and refugee issue. Some of the actions they are currently undertaking include:
Hosting Asylum Seeker & Refugee awareness nights every fortnight at their Melbourne office. These nights include a dinner and discussion about the actions we can take as a community to support those seeking asylum and they invite guest speakers to talk about their experiences as an asylum seeker.
They have an online blog which touches on the topic of asylum seekers and they encourage opinions and awareness for change.
They are also entering a team in this years 'Run 4 Refugees' in Melbourne on October 12!
They've also been very supportive of the Pledge, uploading pictures of members signing the Pledge on twitter, facebook, and instagram and spreading the word! You can see their photos in the montage on the Pledgers page as well.
"The pledge has inspired us to get this awareness out there and to continue supporting those wonderful causes who make it their mission to support our refugees and to stop the injustices against them. All the very best, and keep up the wonderful work!"
Grade 2/3 students at Mount Barker South Primary School have explored the Pledge, and what it means to be an asylum seeker or a refugee.
From their teacher:
My year 2/3 class were fascinated with the lesson. It's not often that they are completely silent but they all sat wide eyed with interest. Prior to the lesson, not a single student of 29 had any idea what the term 'refugee' meant but several recognised 'boat people'....
They are eager to learn more and have already enthusiastically shared their learning with the rest of our school at our last assembly.
For the presentation you see in the photo, they were asked to think about an activity they enjoy doing then imagine how happy it makes them feel to have the freedom to do it in our country. From that they drew their activity, as visualised in their mind's eye, and invited a refugee to enjoy the activity with them.
Not related to the Pledge, but this article talks about refuges who have gone on to become some of our greatest entrepreneurs. Ahn Do is one of those mentioned; have a look at his book, The Happiest Refugee, describing what it was like to be an asylum seeker travelling to Australia by boat. He's also released a beautiful children's book, The Little Refugee, on the same theme.
Linda and her husband Wes from the Combined Refugee Action Group are already active in assisting asylum seekers and refugees, but still loved the idea of signing the Pledge.
The Pledge really affirmed everything I have already committed to: lobbying politicians, writing letters and articles to the local papers, encouraging others to do the same, being involved in an action group, using my blog and Facebook for public education, supporting services financially, and befriending individual asylum seeker to make their lives in limbo just a little bit more bearable. We have to take whatever action we can. Every little bit helps.
"Individually, we are one drop. Together, we are an ocean." Ryunosuke Satoro
Kent is distributing the Pledge amongst the South Australian Police (SAPOL), and to his fellow 10/27 Army Reserve Infantry Battalion Unit and 7th Royal Australian Regiment colleagues.
As a member of the Police operating in a multicultural area I have exposure to and deal with refugees within our community on a daily basis. As a soldier I served as a rifleman on the front line of operations in Afghanistan. I deployed to Afghanistan multiple times where the long conflict against the Taliban forced many from their homes. I am well aware that this is just one of many conflict areas in the world that refugees are coming from.
I am committed to helping those who seek asylum and educating both the refugees and the public.
I think the pledge is a fantastic idea. It's proactive attitudes like yours we need to inject into all areas of our community.
Well done and thank you.
Sue* is a member of a group who visit asylum seekers in detention to offer them friendship, support and hope.
I made copies of the pledge and took it to a group of people who visit asylum seekers in a nearby detention centre. Some of us gather each week to review how things are going for the people we visit; we to talk about what kind of assistance may be needed, whether there are new people we individually may have met, or knowledge we may have gained about people being sent to other detention centres, including Manus and Nauru. At the end of our meeting last week we read through the Pledge at the end as a reflection and as our prayer of remembrance for the asylum seekers who are part of our lives.
Last night when I visited the detention centre, I decided to show the pledge to two families and explained what it was about. I, and two others who were there with me, then signed it and gave it to these people who were frightened and depressed that they have been told they are going to be moved to a more remote detention centre. Their faces were so filled with deep gratitude when we read the words "You are welcome here".
Thank you so much for making the pledge available to us and for putting words around our thoughts and feelings.
* Sue is a real person, but this is not her real name. Her identity was kept anonymous so that her ability to visit asylum seekers in detention is not jeopardised. She is not, however, the only person who has shared the Pledge with people in detention and I thank them all for taking on the Pledge in such a personal way.
Rachel is part of the Darwin Asylum Seeker Support and Advocacy Network (DASSAN). Check out their Facebook page.
We've put the Pledge on our Facebook page and take printed copies to the weekly Nightcliff market stall for people to read, take and sign. DASSAN also visit asylum seekers in local detention centres, bringing them friendship and contact with the outside world.
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__label__wiki | 0.706001 | 0.706001 | Quintiles partners to improve patient care
Quintiles has signed a collaborative agreement to help drive innovation, improve patient care and increase efficiency in early stage clinical research
Quintiles has signed a collaborative agreement with Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust and King's College London to help drive innovation, improve patient care and increase efficiency in early stage clinical research.
As part of the agreement, the biopharmaceutical services company, has commissioned a research facility with 30 beds, for both patients and healthy volunteers involved in research within Guy's Hospital in London. The facility, to be named Quintiles Drug Research Unit, will be completed in early 2010 and will increase Quintiles' capacity to conduct proof-of-concept programmes that help biopharmaceutical companies develop better medicines faster.
Eddie Caffrey, senior vice president, Global Phase I, Quintiles, said: "The biopharmaceutical industry must bring new drugs to market faster and with greater predictability to address declining research and development productivity. The smartest move is to invest in intelligent, early-stage development because, when done well, it has significant impact on speed and cost of the overall development process."
Ron Kerr, chief executive of Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust said: "We want to deliver the best possible care to our patients, and we know that aligning clinical service excellence with translational research has been shown to be one of the most effective ways to do this. We're excited by the potential of this collaboration as it will lead to a smoother and faster clinical trials process, ensuring our patients and local people are among the first to benefit from any new discoveries."
Professor Robert Lechler, vice-principal (health), King's College London and Director of King's Health Partners, said: "King's College London's important partnership with Quintiles and Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust, one of our Academic Health Sciences Centre (AHSC) partners, is exactly the sort of collaboration we expect to see at the heart of King's Health Partners."
Lechler added: "Through this collaboration and the significant investments we have already made to develop first class clinical research facilities, we will create a powerful 'experimental medicine' hub across four floors of the Guy's Hospital Tower, allowing us to harness the expertise of our world class scientists and clinicians to drive new discoveries in medicine and clinical treatment."
Account Manager, MedicalCommunications/ Healthcare PR
Account Director - Healthcare Advertising Communications Agency
Senior Medical Writer
mXm Medical Communications
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__label__wiki | 0.513391 | 0.513391 | THE CASE AGAINST LIBERAL COMPASSION
The following is reprinted in its entirety by permission from Imprimis, a publication of Hillsdale College.
The following is adapted from a speech delivered at Hillsdale College by William Voegeli on October 9, 2014, sponsored by the College's Van Andel Graduate School of Statesmanship.
Four years ago I wrote a book about modern American liberalism: Never Enough: America's Limitless Welfare State. It addressed the fact that America's welfare state has been growing steadily for almost a century, and is now much bigger than it was at the start of the New Deal in 1932, or at the beginning of the Great Society in 1964. In 2013 the federal government spent $2.279 trillion - $7,200 per American, two-thirds of all federal outlays, and 14 percent of the Gross Domestic Product - on the five big program areas that make up our welfare state:
1. Social Security; 2. All other income support programs, such as disability insurance or unemployment compensation; 3. Medicare; 4. All other health programs, such as Medicaid; and 5. All programs for education, job training, and social services.
That amount has increased steadily, under Democrats and Republicans, during booms and recessions. Adjusted for inflation and population growth, federal welfare state spending was 58 percent larger in 1993 when Bill Clinton became president than it had been 16 years before when Jimmy Carter took the oath of office. By 2009, when Barack Obama was inaugurated, it was 59 percent larger than it had been in 1993. Overall, the outlays were more than two-and-a-half times as large in 2013 as they had been in 1977. The latest Census Bureau data, from 2011, regarding state and local programs for "social services and income maintenance," show additional spending of $728 billion beyond the federal amount. Thus the total works out to some $3 trillion for all government welfare state expenditures in the U.S., or just under $10,000 per American. That figure does not include the cost, considerable but harder to reckon, of the policies meant to enhance welfare without the government first borrowing or taxing money and then spending it. I refer to laws and regulations that require some citizens to help others directly, such as minimum wages, maximum hours, and mandatory benefits for employees, or rent control for tenants.
All along, while the welfare state was growing constantly, liberals were insisting constantly it wasn't big enough or growing fast enough. So I wondered, five years ago, whether there is a Platonic ideal when it comes to the size of the welfare state - whether there is a point at which the welfare state has all the money, programs, personnel, and political support it needs, thereby rendering any further additions pointless. The answer, I concluded, is that there is no answer - the welfare state is a permanent work-in-progress, and its liberal advocates believe that however many resources it has, it always needs a great deal more.
The argument of Never Enough was correct as far as it went, but it was incomplete. It offered an answer to two of the journalist's standard questions: What is the liberal disposition regarding the growth of the welfare state? And How does that outlook affect politics and policy? But it did not answer another question: Why do liberals feel that no matter how much we're doing through government programs to alleviate and prevent poverty, whatever we are doing is shamefully inadequate?
Mostly, my book didn't answer that question because it never really asked or grappled with it. It showed how the Progressives of a century ago, followed by New Deal and Great Society liberals, worked to transform a republic where the government had limited duties and powers into a nation where there were no grievances the government could or should refrain from addressing, and where no means of responding to those grievances lie outside the scope of the government's legitimate authority. This implied, at least, an answer to the question of why liberals always want the government to do more - an answer congruent with decades of conservative warnings about how each new iteration of the liberal project is one more paving stone on the road to serfdom.
Readers could have concluded that liberals are never satisfied because they get up every morning thinking, "What can I do today to make government a little bigger, and the patch of ground where people live their lives completely unaffected by government power and benevolence a little smaller?" And maybe some liberals do that. Perhaps many do. The narrator of "The Shadow," a radio drama that ran in the 1930s, would intone at the beginning of every episode, "Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?"
Well, the Shadow may have known, but I don't. The problem with this kind of explanation for liberal statism is that very, very few liberals have been compliant or foolish enough to vindicate it with self-incriminating testimony. Maybe they're too shrewd to admit that ever-bigger government is what they seek above all else. Or maybe they don't realize that's what they're up to.
Such arguments trouble me, however. The great political philosophy professor Leo Strauss insisted that it is a grave mistake to presume to understand important political philosophers better than they understood themselves, unless one had already put in the hard work necessary to understand them as they understood themselves. Perhaps this good advice can be democratized, I thought, and applied as well to Elizabeth Warren and Rachel Maddow as to Aristotle and John Locke. If we make that effort - an effort to understand committed liberals as they understand themselves - then we have to understand them as people who, by their own account, get up every morning asking, "What can I do today so that there's a little less suffering in the world?" To wrestle with that question, the question of liberal compassion, is the purpose of my latest book, The Pity Party.
Indifference to Waste and Failure
All conservatives are painfully aware that liberal activists and publicists have successfully weaponized compassion. "I am a liberal," public radio host Garrison Keillor wrote in 2004, "and liberalism is the politics of kindness." Last year President Obama said, "Kindness covers all of my political beliefs. When I think about what I'm fighting for, what gets me up every single day, that captures it just about as much as anything. Kindness; empathy - that sense that I have a stake in your success; that I'm going to make sure, just because [my daughters] are doing well, that's not enough - I want your kids to do well also." Empathetic kindness is "what binds us together, and . . . how we've always moved forward, based on the idea that we have a stake in each other's success."
Well, if liberalism is the politics of kindness, it follows that its adversary, conservatism, is the politics of cruelty, greed, and callousness. Liberals have never been reluctant to connect those dots. In 1936 Franklin Roosevelt said, "Divine justice weighs the sins of the cold-blooded and the sins of the warm-hearted in different scales. Better the occasional faults of a government that lives in a spirit of charity than the consistent omissions of a government frozen in the ice of its own indifference." In 1984 the Democratic Speaker of the House of Representatives, "Tip" O'Neill, called President Reagan an "evil" man "who has no care and no concern for the working class of America and the future generations . . . . He's cold. He's mean. He's got ice water for blood." A 2013 Paul Krugman column accused conservatives of taking "positive glee in inflicting further suffering on the already miserable." They were, he wrote, "infected by an almost pathological meanspiritedness . . . . If you're an American, and you're down on your luck, these people don't want to help; they want to give you an extra kick."
Small-d democratic politics is Darwinian: Arguments and rhetoric that work - that impress voters and intimidate opponents - are used again and again. Those that prove ineffective are discarded. If conservatives had ever come up with a devastating, or even effective rebuttal to the accusation that they are heartless and mean-spirited: a) anyone could recite it by now; and, b) more importantly, liberals would have long ago stopped using rhetoric about liberal kindness versus conservative cruelty, for fear that the political risks of such language far outweighed any potential benefits. The fact that liberals are, if anything, increasingly disposed to frame the basic political choice before the nation in these terms suggests that conservatives have not presented an adequate response.
A first step in that direction is to note a political anomaly pointed out by Mitch Daniels, the former Republican governor of Indiana. Daniels contended that disciplining government according to "measured provable performance and effective spending" ought to be a "completely philosophically neutral objective." Skinflint conservatives want government to be thrifty for obvious reasons, but Daniels maintained that liberals' motivations should be even stronger. "I argue to my most liberal friends: 'You ought to be the most offended of anybody if a dollar that could help a poor person is being squandered in some way.' And," the governor added slyly, "some of them actually agree."
The clear implication - that many liberals are not especially troubled if government dollars that could help poor people are squandered - strikes me as true, interesting, and important. Given that liberals are people who: 1) have built a welfare state that is now the biggest thing government does in America; and 2) want to regard themselves and be regarded by others as compassionate empathizers determined to alleviate suffering, it should follow that nothing would preoccupy them more than making sure the welfare state machine is functioning at maximum efficiency. When it isn't, after all, the sacred mission of alleviating preventable suffering is inevitably degraded.
In fact, however, liberals do not seem all that concerned about whether the machine they've built, and want to keep expanding, is running well. For inflation-adjusted, per capita federal welfare state spending to increase by 254 percent from 1977 to 2013, without a correspondingly dramatic reduction in poverty, and for liberals to react to this phenomenon by taking the position that our welfare state's only real defect is that it is insufficiently generous, rather than insufficiently effective, suggests a basic problem. To take a recent, vivid example, the Obama Administration had three-and-a-half years from the signing of the Affordable Care Act to the launch of the healthcare.gov website. It's hard to reconcile the latter debacle with the image of liberals lying awake at night tormented by the thought the government should be doing more to reduce suffering.
A sympathetic columnist, E.J. Dionne, wrote of the website's crash-and-burn debut, "There's a lesson here that liberals apparently need to learn over and over: Good intentions without proper administration can undermine even the most noble of goals." That such an elementary lesson is one liberals need to learn over and over suggests a fundamental defect in liberalism, however - something worse than careless or inept implementation of liberal policies.
That defect, I came to think, can be explained as follows: The problem with liberalism may be that no one knows how to get the government to do the benevolent things liberals want it to do. Or it may be, at least in some cases, that it just isn't possible for the government to bring about what liberals want it to accomplish. As the leading writers in The Public Interest began demonstrating almost 50 years ago, the intended, beneficial consequences of social policies are routinely overwhelmed by the unintended, harmful consequences they trigger. It may also be, as conservatives have long argued, that achieving liberal goals, no matter how humane they sound, requires kinds and degrees of government coercion fundamentally incompatible with a government created to secure citizens' inalienable rights, and deriving its just powers from the consent of the governed.
I don't reject any of those possibilities, or deny the evidence and logic adduced in support of each. But my assessment of how the liberal project has been justified in words, and rendered in deeds, leads me to a different explanation for why, under the auspices of liberal government, things have a way of turning out so badly. I conclude that the machinery created by the politics of kindness doesn't work very well - in the sense of being economical, adaptable, and above all effective - because the liberals who build, operate, defend, and seek to expand this machine don't really care whether it works very well and are, on balance, happier when it fails than when it succeeds.
The Satisfaction of Pious Preening
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the Latinate word "compassion" means, literally, "suffering together with another" - it's the "feeling or emotion, when a person is moved by the suffering or distress of another, and by the desire to relieve it." Note that suffering together does not mean suffering identically. The compassionate person does not become hungry when he meets or thinks about a hungry person, or sick in the presence of the sick. Rather, compassion means we are affected by others' suffering, a distress that motivates us to alleviate it. As Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote in Emile, "When the strength of an expansive soul makes me identify myself with my fellow, and I feel that I am, so to speak, in him, it is in order not to suffer that I do not want him to suffer. I am interested in him for love of myself."
We can see the problem. The whole point of compassion is for empathizers to feel better when awareness of another's suffering provokes unease. But this ultimate purpose does not guarantee that empathizees will fare better. Barbara Oakley, co-editor of the volume Pathological Altruism, defines its subject as "altruism in which attempts to promote the welfare of others instead result in unanticipated harm." Surprises and accidents happen, of course. The pathology of pathological altruism is not the failure to salve every wound. It is, rather, the indifference - blithe, heedless, smug, or solipsistic - to the fact and consequences of those failures, just as long as the empathizer is accruing compassion points that he and others will admire. As philosophy professor David Schmidtz has said, "If you're trying to prove your heart is in the right place, it isn't."
Indeed, if you're trying to prove your heart is in the right place, the failure of government programs to alleviate suffering is not only an acceptable outcome but in many ways the preferred one. Sometimes empathizers, such as those in the "helping professions," acquire a vested interest in the study, management, and perpetuation - as opposed to the solution and resulting disappearance - of sufferers' problems. This is why so many government programs initiated to conquer a problem end up, instead, colonizing it by building sprawling settlements where the helpers and the helped are endlessly, increasingly co-dependent.
Even where there are no material benefits to addressing, without ever reducing, other people's suffering, there are vital psychic benefits for those who regard their own compassion as the central virtue that makes them good, decent, and admirable people - people whose sensitivity readily distinguishes them from mean-spirited conservatives. "Pity is about how deeply I can feel," wrote the late political theorist Jean Bethke Elshtain. "And in order to feel this way, to experience the rush of my own pious reaction, I need victims the way an addict needs drugs."
It follows, then, that the answer to the question of how liberals who profess to be anguished about other people's suffering can be so weirdly complacent regarding wasteful, misdirected, and above all ineffective government programs created to relieve that suffering - is that liberals care about helping much less than they care about caring. Because compassion gives me a self-regarding reason to care about your suffering, it's more important for me to do something than to accomplish something. Once I've voted for, given a speech about, written an editorial endorsing, or held forth at a dinner party on the salutary generosity of some program to "address" your problem, my work is done, and I can feel the rush of my own pious reaction. There's no need to stick around for the complex, frustrating, mundane work of making sure the program that made me feel better, just by being established and praised, has actually alleviated your suffering.
This assessment also provides an answer to the question of why liberals always want a bigger welfare state. It's because the politics of kindness is about validating oneself rather than helping others, which means the proper response to suffering is always, "We need to do more," and never, "We need to do what we're already doing better and smarter." That is, liberals react to an objective reality in a distinctively perverse way. The reality is, first, that there are many instances of poverty, insecurity, and suffering in our country and, second, that public expenditures to alleviate poverty, insecurity, and suffering amount to $3 trillion, or some $10,000 per American, much of it spent on the many millions of Americans who are nowhere near being impoverished, insecure, or suffering.
If the point of liberalism were to alleviate suffering, as opposed to preening about one's abhorrence of suffering and proud support for government programs designed to reduce it, liberals would get up every morning determined to reduce the proportion of that $3 trillion outlay that ought to be helping the poor but is instead being squandered in some way, including by being showered on people who aren't poor. But since the real point of liberalism is to alleviate the suffering of those distressed by others' suffering, the hard work of making our $3 trillion welfare state machine work optimally is much less attractive - less gratifying - than demanding that we expand it, and condemning those who are skeptical about that expansion for their greed and cruelty.
Those of us accused of being greedy and cruel, for standing athwart the advance of liberalism and expansion of the welfare state, do have things to say, then, in response to the empathy crusaders. Compassion really is important. Clifford Orwin, a political scientist who has examined the subject painstakingly, believes our strong, spontaneous proclivity to be distressed by others' suffering confirms the ancient Greek philosophers' belief that nature intended for human beings to be friends. But compassion is neither all-important nor supremely important in morals and, especially, politics. It is nice, all things being equal, to have government officials who feel our pain rather than ones who, like imperious monarchs, cannot comprehend or do not deign to notice it.
WILLIAM VOEGELI is a senior editor of the Claremont Review of Books and a visiting scholar at Claremont McKenna College's Henry Salvatori Center. After receiving a Ph.D. in political science from Loyola University in Chicago, he served as a program officer for the John M. Olin Foundation. He has written for numerous publications, including the Christian Science Monitor, City Journal, Commentary, First Things, the Los Angeles Times, National Review, and the New Criterion. He is the author of two books, Never Enough: America's Limitless Welfare State and The Pity Party: A Mean-Spirited Diatribe Against Liberal Compassion.
Labels: Liberal Mindset, progressive/socialists, White House Policy
Violent Buddhism, Bob Ross's Missing Paintings, and Shakespeare's Lost London Home | cc/2019-30/en_head_0000.json.gz/line447 | 15,770,280,757,140,832,000 | {
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__label__wiki | 0.574958 | 0.574958 | Marie Brennan September 16th 2007
Respecting history
I recently came across Guy Gavriel Kay's essay "Home and Away," which addresses the complex relationship between fantasy and history, both in the sense of historical fantasy, and fantasy which models itself on (without directly representing) history.
It provoked two major trains of thought for me. The first had to do with this notion:
It was Henry James who argued that historical fiction was, in fact, impossible. That it was condemned to be 'cheap' because getting to 'the real thing' with regard to the world views of people in the past simply could not be done. One could only write from within one's own world view, leaving access to the vision or the soul of the past hopelessly barred.
If you think it's bad in historical fiction, try anthropology. We've gone through several decades of angst over this very matter: how can we, as outsiders to a culture, try to represent its nature and point of view? Isn't that arrogant? Or maybe just impossible? If we can't achieve that goal, should we pack up and go home?
I'll come back to those points in a bit; first, let's turn to my other train of thought, which has to do with respect. I came across the Kay essay by way of Matt Cheney's column "Pol Pot's Fantasized Daughter," published recently on Strange Horizons. Cheney makes some cogent points about the thorny difficulties of fictionalizing and fantasizing a real-world scenario like the aftermath of Pol Pot's regime. I've thought about this in other contexts, too; I'm curious to see more of the world Naomi Novik presents in her Temeraire series, because I wonder how she's chosen to handle the problems of nineteenth-century colonialism. We don't necessarily want our historical fantasy to uncritically replicate the problems of real-world history, be they political, religious, economic, gender-based, what have you - but it's also a little cheap to decide that magic makes the problems go away. Where's the proper balance?
If it sounds like I've thought through this in detail, it's because I have; I just finished writing Midnight Never Come, which I fondly refer to as my Elizabethan faerie spy novel. All of the faeries in it are made up, of course, but virtually every mortal character except for the human protagonist is real. And the premise of the novel, in a nutshell, is that the faerie queen has been interfering with mortal politics.
Here's the thing. I find Elizabeth I to be a fascinating individual, and while she was far from perfect as a queen - she was vain, short-tempered, indecisive, and jealous - I have a lot of respect for her. But Midnight Never Come is a secret history, not an alternate history; I'm not making any visible changes to what really happened in sixteenth-century England, but rather saying that some of those things happened for secret reasons. Faerie reasons. And this runs the risk of diminishing the actions and achievements of real people. (A problem White Wolf occasionally ran into with the metaplot of their "World of Darkness" RPGs; sometimes it seemed like ordinary people were nothing more than the blind, clueless puppets of vampires, werewolves, mages, etc, etc.)
They were real people. As far as I'm concerned, just because they're several hundred years dead doesn't mean they don't deserve respectful treatment.
It's tempting to dodge the complexities of the situation by saying it's fiction, it's fantasy, it isn't real. Unfortunately, that's too facile of a response, and at its worst it can be a cousin of the "it's just a joke" non-defense of sexist or racist behavior. If you misrepresent history - real people, real cultures, real events - not all readers will know the period well enough to recognize what's been made up or changed, and what hasn't. Benign example: you'll never ever convince me Loki is really a bad guy, because my first encounter with Norse mythology was Diana Wynne Jones' Eight Days of Luke. The story you tell will go into the reader's mind along with everything else they read, and once there, it has a tendency to color their thoughts, even if it's fiction.
So where am I going with all of this? Back to anthropology. First of all, anthropologists depend on the admittedly amorphous notion of respect. Everything they write may not be - will not be - uncritically positive, but it should be respectful toward the real people about whom they are writing. And second, just because I as an anthropologist can't achieve "access to the vision or the soul of the past" doesn't mean I shouldn't try. I can only ever think like me, but I can make my thinking more flexible, more open to other ways of viewing the world.
And that's how I feel about historical fiction, too. Respect means researching the period, both its physical reality and its worldview, and attempting as best I can to work from that perspective. Respect means trying to fit what I'm doing in with the "real" Elizabeth, the "real" Walsingham - that is, our historical understandings of them - rather than replacing them with modern authorial sockpuppets that happen to bear the same name. And it's worth trying to do, because fantasy offers an unparalleled opportunity to bring ourselves and our readers into a different cultural point of view.
But it's hard work. Have any of you tackled historical fantasy yourselves, and if so, how did you approach it? What authors would you say have done a good job of it?
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1. S.C. Butler on Sep 16th, 2007 at 11:01 am
Never written any historical fantasy, though I'm a firm believer that modern fantasy is the direct successor of 19th c. historical romances. Hoever, regarding the respect issue, I think you can take it both ways. Revisionism can be as much fun as respect. Flashman is the classic case in point - Harry Flashman is a modern, cynical man (I won't go so far as to call him an anti-hero) plopped down in the middle of Victorian England's golden age to expose the hypocrisy of everything they said and did. Fraser's research is dead on, but then he uses that research often enough to turn pre-conceived notions on their heads.
2. Jess Nevins on Sep 16th, 2007 at 11:44 am
Oh, I dunno. I think the target of Flashman is as much the modern reader, with their facile and often uninformed judgment of the Victorians, as the Victorians themselves.
But that ties in to the respect thing. Fraser, via Flashman, is telling us (sometimes very directly, as with his comments about the burning of the Forbidden City) that unless we put the Victorians' actions into the proper cultural and historical context, we don't know enough to judge. Which strikes me as what Marie (hi, Marie!) is talking about.
I'd also recommend Patrick O'Brian's Maturin & Aubrey series, which I think is Literature and on a par with Austen and the other great novelists.
My one-and-a-half complete novels are both historical fantasies, and I tackled both by doing as much research as possible until I felt that I knew the eras fairly well. Then began writing. Contexts change, possibilities change, but people don't. Of course, venality and compassion will manifest themselves quite different in the South China Sea in 1806 than in Istanbul in 1425-and that's where the research comes in.
3. Karen Wester Newton on Sep 16th, 2007 at 11:57 am
What bothers me most in fantasy settings is otherwise medieval worlds in which women are warriors, just like men-not the occasional Xena but half the armies-with no explanation of why this fundamental difference occurred. I will buy almost any reason-religion, plague that kills or weakens men, you name it-but I want this accounted for.
I think it's interesting that science fiction writers have similar problems. Look at Bujold's Vorkosigan series. The Barrayarans conquer and colonize another world. How enlightened is that? Bujold knows this and sets it up so the other world allowed Barrayar to be attacked, so it's self defense. And the Vor may be the universe's best saber rattlers, but she gives them their own strong moral codes.
Real people in fiction is another question. I think the fiction writer does have an obligation to do research. On the other hand, he or she can say simply that it's his or her take on that person. Even biographies of the same subject take a slant on what their subject was like. Short of a Vulcan mind meld with a dead person, what else can a writer do?
4. Marie Brennan on Sep 16th, 2007 at 11:59 am
Oh, certainly. I don't mean to suggest one cannot skewer historical periods. But there's a difference between mocking what they really did (because you've done your research) and mocking inaccurate stereotypes.
Kind of like my long-standing belief that the best parodies are the ones done by people who love the subject they're making fun of.
5. Marie Brennan on Sep 16th, 2007 at 12:09 pm
Yeah, I've written about that very gender problem before. (I put it in the context of infant mortality rates, actually: if half of your kids don't live to be ten, then most women can't afford to not have children, which means going to war is unlikely.) Part of my justification in Doppelganger was that magical healing made their lives generally healthier. I never found a good way to insert the other part of the explanation, but the people in that culture believe not only in reincarnation, but in the notion that one might be reincarnated as either sex, making the differences between the two less meaningful.
Back to history, though - of course you can't avoid having your own take on a person's life and personality, whether you're writing fiction or biography. But in a biography, one is held to certain standards of evidence for one's depiction; I feel the same should be true for fiction. So, you can give me a Doctor John Dee who's a con man, or one who's being conned, or one who's genuinely delusional, but if you give me a Doctor John Dee who's a neo-pagan earth-mother-worshipping Renaissance hippie (which apparently someone has done), then unless you're writing a weird alternate history where that makes sense, I'm going to call BS.
6. Alma Alexander on Sep 16th, 2007 at 1:49 pm
"Secrets of Jin Shei" was historical fantasy - basically rooted in imperial China but with a lot of 'different' stuff in there that made it possible for my story to take place. That didn't stop people from taking it as gospel and asking me which PARTICULAR period of Chinese history I was writing about. But that one was written as pure historical fantasy - lots of research went into it, but the story was pure me.
Its successor, "Embers of Heaven", deals with a Cultural Revolution China setting. And this felt very different to me - not least because there are people out there who have either lived through this period of history themselves or have immediate relatives who did - and not only did I have to treat the period with respect, I had to care about making it perfectly plain where I followed the "historical" line and where I diverged from it for story reasons. It was damned hard, sometimes.
I'm planning at least one other historical fantasy. Pray for me...
7. Marie Brennan on Sep 16th, 2007 at 3:00 pm
Yes, the need for respect becomes much more obvious when the history is recent, and people are still around who remember it.
8. S.C. Butler on Sep 16th, 2007 at 5:52 pm
Jess-
Interesting take on Flashman - I'll have to look for what you suggest the next time I read one. I've always felt Fraser, via Flashman, took every opportunity he had to stick a thumb in the Empire's eye.
As you say, the Aubrey/Maturin books are excellent. But what do you think O'Brien was doing at the end when he ran out of time for Napoleonic derring-do? Secret history or alternate?
Hi, Jess! (I wish I knew the logic by which WordPress orders these comments. Does it pull the timestamp from the computer used to post? Because I didn't get notification of your comment until about #7 or #8, yet there you are up at #2, where you most definitely were not before.)
I haven't read Flashman, so I can't judge it personally. But based on what you've said, it sounds like Fraser knew whereof he spoke, and that's really what I'm getting at. Whatever you're planning on doing with your history, know it first, and think carefully about the choices you make.
10. Jess Nevins on Sep 17th, 2007 at 9:46 am
The most recent one I read was Flashman and the Tiger, so I referred to that. Look at how Flashy adresses the reader about Elgin's decision. His comments boil down to "you really can't judge us because you weren't here."
As for O'Brian-I think he'd have found lots for Aubrey & Maturin to do elsewhere. The Brits were militarily busy throughout the 19th century, after all-lots of the "Little Wars" that A&M could have taken part in.
Flashman isn't for everyone-his personality grates on some readers-but I think the books are very solid historically, and well-footnoted to boot.
And, hey, any author who has a scene in which Sherlock Holmes' snap deductions are shown to be logical but wrong has a lot going for him. *g*
11. Diatryma on Sep 17th, 2007 at 10:55 am
At some point in the Aubrey-Maturin books, there's a note saying, more or less, "I've run out of war for the moment, because ships take so long to get there." It mentioned an 1812a, 1812b, et cetera, just because you can't have your characters becalmed in the Pacific while the plot's going on elsewhere.
However, I am sure that Maturin could have rigged up a nice FTL drive for the ship if necessary.
12. S.C. Butler on Sep 19th, 2007 at 1:11 pm
Flashman and the Tiger is one of the best in the series. I should it put of on the top of my list to reread. And you're right about recommending Flashy to other readers. I stopped years ago after too many people told me they couldn't stand his sexism, racism, and bullying, whether he was honest about it or not.
Why I will never write a Mayan apocalypse novel at SF Novelists Pingback on Oct 16th, 2007 at 5:02 am
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Five Minutes Five Issues: TSA Kills, Chris Kyle, Granite Nation, Marijuana Billions, McAdams/Raimondo 2020
Caught on Film: US Special Forces Fighting on Ground in Syria
Today Agence France-Presse published shock photos of US Special Forces troops engaged in combat inside Syria with the US-backed, mostly-Kurdish "Syrian Democratic Forces" as they moved toward the ISIS "capital" of Raqqa. The Pentagon has insisted that US troops in Syria -- numbering upwards of 300 -- play only an "advise and assist" role to the US-backed group, made up mostly of Kurdish YPG forces, but the AFP photos demonstrate clearly that the US forces are engaged in the fight.
The Washington Post reports that the US Special Forces were, "clustered around what appears to be an advanced Mk.47 40mm automatic grenade launcher. The system, built by General Dynamics, is primarily used by Special Operations units and has not been widely sold outside the United States."
Ron Paul Praises Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders...With Reservations
Ron Paul Institute Chairman Ron Paul told host Larry King on the Friday episode of Ora TV's Politicking that in November he would vote for neither Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump nor Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders. Nevertheless, Paul did have something favorable to say about each candidate.
Commenting in the interview first regarding Sanders, Paul said that Sanders "stands on principle" and that, "even though we disagreed on a lot of issues," Paul and Sanders "would work together" sometimes when they were both in the United States Congress. Paul provides, in the interview, an example of where Paul and Sanders had common ground that led them to work together...
DNI to Make Recommendation by Today on 28 Pages Declassification
Director of National Intelligence James Clapper met this week with the Rep. Walter Jones who is the sponsor of a resolution (H.Res. 14) seeking the publication of the redacted 28 pages of Congress' Joint Inquiry Into Intelligence Activities Before and After the Terrorist Attacks of September 2001. Jones relates in a press release concerning the meeting that Clapper said that Clapper intends to make his recommendation to the White House by the end of this week regarding declassifying the 28 pages. | cc/2019-30/en_head_0000.json.gz/line459 | 13,873,093,751,287,860,000 | {
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__label__wiki | 0.715643 | 0.715643 | The 10 Driest Places on Earth
While water shortages in the U.S. make headlines, nearly 3 billion people globally suffer from droughts
by Ronald Agrella | Friday, October 2, 2015
Photo: Sunny Forest/Shutterstock
The worst droughts worldwide
While Californians are living through one of the worst droughts on record, they're not alone. More than 2.7 billion people - about a third of the world's population - experience water scarcity at least one month a year, according to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF). WWF estimates that in 10 years about two-thirds of the world population may be facing serious water shortages, which can cause disrupt food production and promote life-threatening illnesses. UNICEF tracks the countries and populations most affected by droughts. Here are the 10 regions struggling the most, according to UNICEF.
Reduce, recycle and reuse plastic to keep the world wild
13 Spook-tacular Steps for Keeping Kids Safe on Halloween
8 Tips to Get Your Bike - and You - Ready for Spring
Clearing Up After the Holidays | cc/2019-30/en_head_0000.json.gz/line461 | 584,931,506,531,088,900 | {
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__label__cc | 0.747799 | 0.252201 | Can we still trust car stackers?
Having read a recent article in The Age that described the failure of a car stacker system, I was a little concerned. This wasn't a rogue system bought online. This was a Wohr system from one of the most reputable German car stacker manufacturers.
Stackers are a good thing for the development world, at least in this world where we still need car parking. Countless tight development sites have been 'unlocked' through the advent of car stackers and many sites wouldn't be viable without them. Stories about accidents like this one can erode the trust in stackers that has been built up over years with the public, developers, as well as with the decision makers at Council and VCAT.
Firstly, what happened here?
The article reported that non-genuine structural side rails had been installed in the system which were not up to the required steel grade strength and standard specified by Wohr and the Australian Standards (AS5124). It subsequently failed under load causing the accident to occur. How on earth did that happen?
Wohr Parking Systems Australia have advised that when the previous Australian distributor of the Wohr stacker systems, Car Parking Solutions went into liquidation, the Shmith's car stacker system that had been ordered was sold by the liquidator at auction to the highest bidder - the Shmith's builder. Unfortunately, the container load of equipment that was purchased at the auction did not contain the side rails that are critical to the strength of the stacker platforms.
Enquiries were reportedly then made directly to Wohr to purchase the missing rails but it was going to take too long for the rails to be shipped from Germany. It was also too costly for them to be freighted by air. Under pressure to finish the job, the builder decided to source the rails locally instead. Unfortunately, the rails that were sourced were reportedly not up to the required standard nor the drawings supplied. The inevitable disaster struck and the system failed under load. Thankfully, no one was hurt.
Whilst it is unlikely that this sequence of events would ever happen again, how can we have more certainty that car stacker systems are constructed and installed to the required standards set out in the applicable Australian Standards?
What about at the Planning Permit stage?
Some Councils are already requiring Car Stacker Management Plans to be prepared and endorsed as part of planning permits which ensure that systems are serviced and maintained for instance. These could easily be extended to require all systems to be designed and installed by approved installers in accordance with the Australian Standard.
What about the Building Permit stage?
Perhaps there is an opportunity for further checks or demonstrations of compliance to be required after installation and before a Certificate of Occupancy is granted?
The benefits of car stackers are far too great to let this isolated accident take them out of consideration. DEMAND compliance with the Australian Standard (AS5124). DEMAND that they be installed by approved installers of the manufacturer. Do this and we can be sure that accidents like this do not happen again and we can continue to enjoy their benefits.
Brett Young -
Image Source: The Age - August 13, 2017
To stay up to date with the latest news, with genuine insight and reflection, follow us at LinkedIn | cc/2019-30/en_head_0000.json.gz/line465 | 13,173,223,478,194,702,000 | {
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__label__cc | 0.633495 | 0.366505 | Program Goals & Objectives
The residency in Low Vision Rehabilitation is an intensive 52 or 54 week educational program at The Eye Institute.
The William Feinbloom Vision Rehabilitation Center provides low vision rehabilitation services to individuals with visual impairments at the Center and through its community outreach program. Through an interdisciplinary team, the Center provides comprehensive low vision evaluation and management services. These services may include the prescription of specialized optical devices and adaptive technology systems, as well as rehabilitative services to facilitate more efficient use of residual vision in vocational, educational, and home environments. The Center, with its hospital-based satellite clinics, also provides Low Vision evaluation services to individuals with multiple impairments as a result of head trauma, stroke, or developmental disabilities. The Center also provides low vision services to visually-impaired students through programs established with neighboring school districts. Counseling and support services are also available for patients and their families through the Center's social service department. Additional services include: evaluation of multiply-impaired individuals; pediatric low vision service; adaptive technology service; and neurovisual rehabilitation service.
The mission of the Low Vision Rehabilitation Residency at The Eye Institute of the Pennsylvania College of Optometry at Salus University is to recruit a qualified graduating or graduate optometrist; to train the entry level graduate optometrist to provide patient care, including advanced low vision rehabilitative care, to patients with a broad range of ophthalmic disorders and ocular diseases; to train the resident to evaluate and manage patients with visual impairment, multiple impairments, and developmental disabilities; to provide an orientation and didactic program throughout the year; to promote development of skills as an educator and self-learner; and to provide a suitable environment in which the resident can flourish.
The nature of the patient population at The Eye Institute provides the foundation for the resident to hone his/her entry level skills to an advanced level and to cultivate new skills and knowledge as well. The resident is able to achieve the objectives of the program through an appropriate level of supervision and support of a highly-trained clinical faculty of optometrists and general and subspecialty ophthalmologists leading to clinical independence.
The Low Vision Rehabilitation resident is typically assigned 40-44 hours per week, and an average of every other Saturday. A total of three to four days are spent in the Low Vision Service, and the remaining time is in other patient care services, as well as in various educational activities. Residents are also required to attend lectures and conferences which are scheduled outside of normal patient care responsibilities.
During the assigned low vision sessions, the resident is primarily in the William Feinbloom Vision Rehabilitation Center. The resident also participates in the care of patients in the Special Populations Assessment and Rehabilitation Center in The Eye Institute, as well as to the Vision Rehabilitation Clinic at Bryn Mawr Rehabilitation Hospital, to examine and supervise students in the examination of patients with vision impairment, ocular and systemic disease processes, brain damage secondary to head trauma, stroke, neurological disease, developmental disabilities, and multiple impairments. The resident also conducts examinations and screenings at low vision satellite program including Overbrook School for the Blind, Overbrook Educational Center, St. Lucy's School for the Blind and the Delaware County Intermediate Unit Low.
Emergency Eye Care - Under appropriate supervision, residents manage their own patients in the Emergency Service, where they see walk-in patients with ocular urgencies/emergencies. Patients may be referred to our ophthalmology subspecialists. In addition, each resident is on-call weekends and evenings four to five weeks per program year.
The resident is assigned to Vitreo-retinal Disease, Neuro-Ophthalmic Disease, and Specialty Glaucoma Services in The Eye Institute on a rotating basis.
The resident may also have the opportunity to participate in other services in The Eye Institute and other area eye care venues.
The resident attends and participates in an educational program throughout the year, which includes conference and lectures, and is typically assigned to teach in a laboratory. They also participate in Grand Rounds presentations to fourth year students, fellow residents, and faculty members. A conference/lecture schedule is distributed to the residents on a quarterly basis. Our low vision resident will typically be assigned to teach in a laboratory at some point throughout the program year.
Residents are occasionally asked to conduct vision screenings off-campus and to participate in other College activities. An additional stipend may be paid for these services.
Sample Low Vision Rehabilitation Resident Schedule (PDF) | cc/2019-30/en_head_0000.json.gz/line466 | 17,829,480,425,729,735,000 | {
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__label__wiki | 0.616983 | 0.616983 | Tag Archives: John Lennon
The Ultimate Christmas Playlist
Today is the day after Thanksgiving here in the United States of America. You're officially allowed to start listening to holiday music now. To get you started, I compiled a playlist of what I consider to be 100 of the best Christmas songs. Okay, 98 songs, a stand-up routine and a skit. It's a mix of standards, versions of standards with which you may not be familiar, and obscure but delightful tunes.
Tagged as "Weird Al" Yankovic, Aretha Franklin, Augie Rios, Band Aid, Billy Squier, Bing Crosby, blink-182, Bob Dylan, Bob Rivers, Bob Seger, Bobb B. Soxx and The Blue Jeans, Bobby "Boris" Pickett & The Crypt-Kickers, Bobby Helms, Boney M, Brenda Lee, Britney Spears, Bruce Springsteen, Carla Thomas, Cheyenne Jackson, Chuck Berry, Clarence Carter, Clyde McPhatter, Cowboy Timmy, CyHi the Prince, Darlene Love, David Bowie, Devo, Dolly Parton, Donny Hathaway, Dusty Springfield, Eagles, Elton John, Elvis Presley, Erasure, Eurythmics, Fishbone, Fountains of Wayne, Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons, Jackson 5, James Brown, Jane Krakowski, John Denver, John Lennon, José Feliciano, Judy Garland, Kanye West, Kirsty MacColl, Kurtis Blow, Lady Gaga, Los Del Rio, Lou Rawls, Luther Vandross, Madonna, Marvin Gaye, Mary J. Blige, Mel Blanc, Mike Nichols and Elaine May, Miss Piggy, Monty Python, My Chemical Romance, Nat King Cole, No Doubt, Oasis, Otis Redding, Patton Oswalt, Pearl Jam, Pet Shop Boys, Pretenders, Prince, Ramones, Red Peters, Ricky Martin, Roy Orbison, Rufus Wainwright, Run-D.M.C., Sarah Silverman, Shonen Knife, Simon & Garfunkel, Smokey Robinson, Space Cowboy, Spike Jones and His City Slickers, Spongebob Squarepants, Stevie Wonder, Teyana Taylor, The Beach Boys, The Chipmunks, The Crystals, The Drifters, The Emotions, The Impressions, The Kinks, The Magnetic Fields, The Miracles, The Penguins, The Pogues, The Roches, The Ronettes, The Staple Singers, The Supremes, The Temptations, The Waitresses, The Weather Girls, Thurl Ravenscroft, Tom Petty, Wham!, Whitney Houston, Wild Man Fischer, Willie Nelson, Yoko Ono
In 1979, Giorgio Moroder, famous mostly for his production work on Donna Summer records, composed the score for the film American Gigolo. He asked Stevie Nicks to sing the movie's theme song, for which Moroder wrote the music, but she had to decline for contractual reasons. He next turned to Deborah Harry of Blondie.
Harry write the lyrics to the song that became "Call Me," the second #1 single for her band. Of her experience with Moroder, she told Billboard "He's very nice to work with, very easy, (but) I don't think he has a lot of patience with people who fool around or don't take what they do seriously. I think he's very serious about what he does and he's intense and he's a perfectionist and he's very talented, so I think that people who are less talented or less concentrated bore him quickly...you really have to pay attention."
Said Moroder of working with Blondie, "There were always fights. I was supposed to do an album with them after that. We went to the studio, and the guitarist was fighting with the keyboard player. I called their manager and quit."
Moroder did end up working with Deborah Harry again years later on another soundtrack song, producing "Rush Rush" from Scarface, and in 2004 remixed Blondie's single "Good Boys."
Tunes du Jour's Throwback Thursday playlist this week spotlights the best of 1980, kicking off with Blondie's "Call Me."
Tagged as AC/DC, Barbra Streisand, Blondie, Bob Marley & The Wailers, David Bowie, Deborah Harry, Devo, Diana Ross, Donna Summer, Giorgio Moroder, John Lennon, Joy Division, KC & the Sunshine Band, Kurtis Blow, Lipps Inc., Michael Jackson, Olivia Newton-John, Paul McCartney, Pink Floyd, Queen, Smokey Robinson, Stevie Nicks, Stevie Wonder, Teri DeSario, The Spinners, Throwback Thursday
The Story Of Eric Clapton And Layla
In the latter half of the 1960s, Eric Clapton and George Harrison developed a close friendship. Clapton also developed a crush on Harrison's wife, Pattie Boyd. The two started having an affair, but Pattie didn't want to leave her husband.
Clapton wrote a song about his feelings for Pattie. He called the song "Layla," after a title character in the book The Story of Layla and Majnun. The book told of a man, Majnun, who was madly in love with a woman, Layla, but was forbidden to marry her. His longing for her drove him mad.
Clapton's band Derek and the Dominos released "Layla" in 1971. Pattie and Eric started living together in 1974. They wed in 1979. George Harrison, along with Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, played at the wedding. Clapton left Pattie for another woman in 1985.
Today Eric Clapton turns 71. Here are twenty tracks that feature the musician.
Tagged as Aretha Franklin, Blind Faith, Cream, Derek & The Dominos, Eric Clapton, George Harrison, John Lennon, Kate Bush, Mary J. Blige, Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, The Beatles, The Yardbirds
It's Max Martin's Birthday And I Need To Dance!
As a songwriter, Max Martin has a credit on 21 number one singles on Billboard's Hot 100 chart. Only Paul McCartney and John Lennon have more. He has had 60 top tens as a writer. On top of that, he has had a hand in producing a slew of hits. Some of them are good.
Today, Max Martin turns 45 years old. Friday is dance day at Tunes du Jour. Our playlist consists of twenty songs Max Martin had a hand in writing and/or producing. Some of them are good.
Tagged as Ace of Base, Ariana Grande, Backstreet Boys, Britney Spears, Carly Rae Jepsen, Celine Dion, Cyndi Lauper, Demi Lovato, Ellie Goulding, Iggy Azalea, It's Friday and I Need To Dance!, Jessie J, John Lennon, Justin Bieber, Katy Perry, Ke$ha, Kelly Clarkson, Nicki Minaj, NSYNC, P!nk, Paul McCartney, Robyn, Taio Cruz, The Weeknd, Usher
Blondie's hit single "Heart of Glass" was written by band members Debbie Harry and Chris Stein and had the working title of "The Disco Song." Drummer Clem Burke said his part was inspired by the Bee Gees' "Stayin' Alive."
Said Harry "When we did 'Heart of Glass' it wasn't too cool in our social set to play disco. But we did it because we wanted to be uncool," with the band's keyboardist Jimmy Destri adding "We used to do 'Heart of Glass' to upset people."
The song was included on Blondie's Parallel Lines LP "as a novelty item to put more diversity into the album," per Stein. The novelty song became the group's first charted single and first #1, in 1979. Its success prompted John Lennon to send Ringo Starr a postcard advising to write songs like "Heart of Glass."
Today's Throwback Thursday playlist spotlights twenty of the best tracks from 1979, kicking off with Blondie's upsetting disco novelty.
Tagged as Anita Ward, Bee Gees, Blondie, Chris Norman, Commodores, Deborah Harry, Donna Summer, Elvis Costello, Gloria Gaynor, John Lennon, Michael Jackson, Olivia Newton-John, Peaches & Herb, Pointer Sisters, Ringo Starr, Squeeze, Suzi Quatro, The Buggles, The Clash, The Doobie Brothers, The Knack, The Police, Throwback Thursday, Village People, XTC
On March 28, 1958, 19-year-old Eddie Cochran recorded a song he co-wrote with his manager, Jerry Capeheart, called "Summertime Blues." It was intended to be the b-side of a single whose a-side, "Love Again," was written by 17-year-old Sharon Steely, who soon became Cochran's girlfriend. Liberty Records released the 45 with "Summertime Blues" as the a-side. Five months after he recorded it, Cochran had his first U.S. top ten single. In the fall of 1958, the record became a hit in England.
Besides singing and co-writing the song, Cochran produced it. His talents didn't stop there. He could play piano, drums, bass and guitar, the latter of which he played on records by two dozen other acts.
Cochran's popularity overseas led to a hugely successful tour of England in the spring of 1960, culminating on April 16 with a performance at the Hippodrome Theater in Bristol. On his way to the airport after the show, Cochran got into a cab with Steely, who was now his fiancée, his tour manager, Patrick Thompkins, and fellow performer Gene Vincent. The taxi driver was speeding on a dark and winding street. The car blew a tire and the driver lost control of the vehicle, crashing it into a lamppost. Cochran put himself over his fiancée to protect her and ended up being thrown from the car. Suffering a severe head injury, he was brought to the hospital. The following afternoon he was pronounced dead. He was just 21 years old.
Eddie Cochran's time with us was far too short, but his legacy lives on. "Summertime Blues" is an undeniable rock and roll classic, covered by many artists of different genres, including The Who, Alan Jackson, Blue Cheer, The Beach Boys, Joan Jett and the Blackhearts, and Olivia Newton-John. Cochran's "C'mon Everybody" was later recorded by Sex Pistols, and his "Twenty Flight Rock" was played by a teenage Paul McCartney at his audition for a teenage John Lennon to let McCartney join Lennon's band, The Quarreymen.
Today is Throwback Thursday, and Tunes du Jour revisits some of the hits of 1958, kicking off with Eddie Cochran's "Summertime Blues."
Tagged as Alan Jackson, Blue Cheer, Bobby Day, Bobby Freeman, Buddy Holly, Champs, Chuck Berry, Connie Francis, Duane Eddy, Eddie Cochran, Elvis Presley, Gene Vincent, Jerry Lee Lewis, Joan Jett & The Blackhearts, John Lennon, Little Anthony & The Imperials, Olivia Newton-John, Paul McCartney, Peggy Lee, Royal Teens, Sex Pistols, The Beach Boys, The Big Bopper, The Chipmunks, The Chordettes, The Coasters, The Everly Brothers, The Monotones, The Rays, The Who, Throwback Thursday
It's Ini Kamoze's Birthday And I Need To Dance!
I'm reading NLP: The Essential Guide to Neuro-Linguistic Programming, subtitled Creating the Person You Want to Be, by Tom Hoobyar and Tom Dotz with Susan Sanders. The book teaches one how to think, as opposed to what to think.
Of the many exercises in the book is one the authors call "Creating a Well-Formed Outcome." You list things you want and answer six questions related to each want. Within those six questions is an exploration of "meta-outcomes." To explore the meta-outcomes, one must keep asking what will happen if I achieve this goal.
For example, one of my goals is to have a leaner physique. Using this exercise, I say "When I am leaner, I'm more confident. When I am more confident, more guys will be attracted to me. If more guys are attracted to me, I'll date more often. If I date more often, I'll end up with a boyfriend. If I have a boyfriend, I'll have someone with whom to watch movies, dance, and share other activities I enjoy. If I do more activities I enjoy, I'll be "in the flow" more often. If I am in the flow more often, my happiness will increase.
Another goal I have is to work with more clients. If I work with more clients, I'll make more money. If I have more money, I can partake more often in the activities I enjoy. If I partake more often in the activities I enjoy, I'll be in the flow more often. If I am in the flow more often, my happiness will increase.
Now you try it. What is a goal you have? Keep asking yourself what will happen if you achieve each part. If you don't end with me being happier, you're doing it wrong. Start over!
Something that makes me happy is dancing. Friday is dance day at Tunes du Jour. Today happens to be the birthday of John Lennon. As he never hit the Billboard dance charts, we'll kick off this week's party with someone else whose birthday is today, Ini Kamoze. More accurately, today is the 58th birthday of Cecil Campbell, who later changed his name to Ini Kamoze. Here are twenty songs you can hotstep to.
Tagged as Cerrone, Change, Dr. Buzzard's Original Savannah Band, Eddy Grant, Evelyn "Champagne" King, First Choice, Ini Kamoze, Instant Funk, It's Friday and I Need To Dance!, John Lennon, Loleatta Holloway, Madness, Major Lazer, Malcolm McLaren, Musical Youth, Musique, Nina Sky, People's Choice, Peter Brown, Ricky Blaze, S.O.S. Band, Taana Gardner, Teena Marie, Third World | cc/2019-30/en_head_0000.json.gz/line467 | 6,309,244,020,071,661,000 | {
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__label__wiki | 0.991944 | 0.991944 | Bizarre News
Girlfriend: 'Miami Zombie' may have had voodoo spell that made him chew off a man's face
By Nadege Green, Miami Herald
Published May 31 2012
Updated May 31 2012
On the Saturday morning before he would make headlines for chewing off a man's face - before he would come to be known tragically as the "Miami Zombie" - Rudy Eugene held his Bible and kissed his girlfriend goodbye.
Eugene's on-again, off-again girlfriend said he woke her up at 5:30 a.m. to say he was going to meet with a "homeboy." She said she found it strange he was rummaging the closet so early in morning. He didn't name the friend or say where he was going.
He planted a kiss on her lips and said, "I love you."
Shortly after, he left the central Broward apartment he shared with her.
"I told him be safe and I love you too. When he walked out the door I closed it, locked it and went back to sleep," said the girlfriend, who spoke to the Miami Herald on Wednesday but asked that her name not be disclosed. She said that she thought it unusual that he was leaving the house so early, but didn't press him on it.
An hour after he left, Eugene called her cellphone. "He called me and told me his car broke down. He said, 'I'll be home, but I'm going to be a little late.' Then he said, 'I'm going to call you right back.' " That was the last time Eugene's girlfriend heard from him.
Around noon Saturday, she said she felt uneasy. She got into her car to search for Eugene, thinking he might still be stranded somewhere. She drove through North Miami and Miami Gardens, familiar neighborhoods Eugene frequented to visit with friends and family.
"I was worried. I couldn't do anything. I just kept calling the phone," she said. "I left messages saying, 'Rudy, call me, I'm really worried.' "
She said Eugene never told her where he was going that morning, and she was surprised to hear reports that he'd been in South Beach in the hours before he attacked a homeless man, Ronald Poppo.
As a matter of fact, she said, the previous day he told her he didn't want to go to South Beach because of the heavy police presence for Urban Beach Week. Eugene, who had been arrested in the past for possession of marijuana, told her he didn't want to get arrested.
By Saturday evening she still had not heard from the man she calls "my baby, my heart." She turned on the TV to watch the late-night news and heard an unreal story: A nude man near the Miami Herald building pounced on a homeless man, chewing off his face. The man with pieces of flesh hanging from his teeth was shot dead by police.
"I thought to myself, 'Oh my God, that's crazy,' she said. "I didn't know that it was Rudy."
All day Sunday she placed phone calls to friends asking if they'd seen Eugene and again she searched North Dade streets for her boyfriend.
At 11 a.m. Monday she got the call from a member of Eugene's family.
The caller shouted terrible news into the phone: "Rudy's dead, Rudy's dead."
"I immediately started to scream,'' she said. "I don't know when I hung up the phone, I was hysterical."
But it was not until the afternoon, when she left her home to grieve with the rest of Eugene's family in North Miami Beach, that she heard even worse news: The man everyone was calling the Miami Zombie was her boyfriend.
Her reaction: Utter disbelief. "That's not Rudy, that's not Rudy," she remembered saying aloud in shock.
"I'll never be the same," she said.
The man being depicted by the media as a "face eater" or a "monster" is not the man she knew, she said. He smoked marijuana often, though had recently said he wanted to quit, but he didn't use stronger recreational drugs and even refused to take over-the-counter medication for simple ailments like headaches, she said. He was sweet and well-mannered, she said.
Eugene's girlfriend has her own theory on what happened that day. She believes Eugene was drugged unknowingly. The only other explanation, she said, was supernatural - that someone put a voodoo curse on him. The girlfriend, who unlike Eugene is not Haitian, said she has never believed in voodoo, until now.
"I don't know how else to explain this," she said.
She and Eugene met in 2007. While in traffic on a Miami street, Eugene pulled up next to her car and motioned for her to roll down her window.
She did. "I thought he was cute. I shouted out my number to him and he called me right then. We clicked immediately."
Their five-year relationship hit rocky points over the years, and they would separate for months at a time, then reunite again. She said their problems were mostly "communication issues."
She said Eugene worked at a car wash and wanted to own his own business someday.
During their time together, she said, Eugene would sit on the bed or on the couch in the evenings with her to read from his Bible. He carried it with him just about everywhere he went, she said, and often cited verses to friends and family.
"If someone was lost or didn't know God, he would tell them about him,'' she said. "He was a believer of God."
She cries often, she said. Eugene's clothes and shoes are still in her closet.
"Something happened out of the ordinary that day. I don't want him to be labeled the 'Miami Zombie,' " she said. "He was a person. I don't want him to go down like that."
He was never violent around her, she said.
But according to police records, Eugene became violent at least once in his past and was arrested on battery charges. In 2004, he threatened his mother and smashed furniture during a domestic dispute, according to records from the North Miami Beach Police Department.
The police report says Eugene "took a fighting stand, balled his hands into a fist" and threatened one of the officers who responded.
Police had to use a Taser to subdue him. "Thank God you're here, he would have killed me," Eugene's mother, Ruth Charles, told officers, the police report says. She told the officers that before they arrived, her son had told her, "I'll put a gun to your head and kill you."
On Wednesday, Charles said that despite the incident, she and her son had a warm relationship.
"I'm his first love ... he's a nice kid ... he was not a delinquent," she told Miami Herald news partner CBS-4 at her Miami Gardens home.
Charles told the station she was speaking up for the first time to defend her dead son.
"Everybody says that he was a zombie, but I know he's not a zombie; he's my son," she said.
She said the man who ate another human being's face was just not the son she knew.
"I don't know what they injected in him to turn him into the person who did what he did," she said, making the motion of someone putting a syringe into the crook of her arm.
A friend of Eugene's since they were teenagers told the Herald on Wednesday that Eugene had been troubled in recent years.
Joe Aurelus said Eugene told him he wanted to stop smoking pot, and that friends were texting Eugene Bible verses.
"I was just with him two weeks ago,"' he said. They were at a friend's house watching a movie and Eugene had a Bible in his hand.
"He was going through a lot with his family," Aurelus said, and jumping from job to job.
"Rudy was battling the devil."
Miami Herald staff writers Elinor J. Brecher and Scott Hiaasen contributed to this report.
Ginormica is about 6-years-old is an excellent swimmer.
Florida mother arrested after filming daughter licking tongue depressor
Asked why she recorded the video, the woman said, "I was just being silly with my kids."
Rattlesnake, uranium, whiskey found during traffic stop
Police said they don't know why the uranium was in the vehicle or how it was obtained.
9 deer at famed park in Japan die after eating plastic bags
The Nara Deer Preservation Foundation says nine of the 14 deer that have died since March had plastic in their stomachs.
Video: Fearless dog chases bear from neighbor's yard
Riley's owner, Alan Tlusty, says his dog always chases the bear whenever he sees him in the yard.
Watch: Could T-Rex race become the new Midsummer Classic?
More than two-dozen people in inflatable Tyrannosaurus Rex costumes stumbled their way along a Washington race track. And it was fantastic. | cc/2019-30/en_head_0000.json.gz/line469 | 18,058,902,154,402,850,000 | {
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__label__cc | 0.582776 | 0.417224 | "Hardened policemen were nearly moved to tears as they conducted a preliminary examination of the ravaged body and carried it away in a little bundle." It was a four month old baby-girl violated and murdered. The place of occurrence was Madhya Pradesh in 2018.
The little girl is one among the hundreds of thousands in the apparently never-ending series who are lost in the hands of the beasts among humans. Only a few fight back, but they are too few and the rest are buried underneath cruelty- indifference-even hatred of also humans who are variously placed in the corridors and rungs of power. These latter may be the police-military, the strong-arm criminals, socially powerful rich, even MLAs, ministers or their accomplices, or anybody in administration- even judiciary. And many times more are the hapless girls, mothers, even centenarian mother who are never reported suffer from life-long torment, if not murdered.
There may be thousand and one ways that make life hell for women of any age. It starts from the generally talked about rapes and gang-rapes that is sexual violence, acid attack, forced sex slavery, forced labour, dowry murders, domestic servitude, forced begging, forced drug peddling, forced prostitution, child pornography, female foeticide, female infanticide, humiliation and torture for girl child birth, torture for nil child birth, deaths from unsafe abortions, pressure for male child birth, least education for girls, honour killings, child bride, child marriage, greater exploitation of women workers. What more horror our daughters and mothers are to face? Is it a civilized society we live in?
A few palpable statistics are given below. The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) states that in 2015, as many as 7,634 women died in the country due to dowry harassment. Either they were burnt alive or forced to commit suicide over dowry demand. For crimes against women overall, pending cases increased from 1,081,756 to 1,204,786. The horror of Kathua and Unnao rapes have once against brought into focus the safety of women in India, and especially that of children. Looking back at the latest data available, in 2016, India recorded 106 rapes a day and four out of every ten victims were minors. According to the NCRB, between 2014 and 2015 alone, the number of honour killings in India leapt by 798 per cent. States such as Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Telangana and Andhra Pradesh are leading in such extra-judicial killings. In a recent report it has been observed that in 2017 about 6, 00,000 infanticide have been perpetrated. The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare has acknowledged that illegal abortions still outnumber legal abortions. According to the Population Research Institute, at least 12,771,043 sex-selective abortions had taken place in India between 2000 and 2014. Human trafficking is on the rise and it is more "horrific" than ever, a United Nations agency found. In a new report on human trafficking, the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) found that the global trend has increased steadily since 2010 around the world. Women and girls are especially vulnerable, making up 70 per cent of detected victims worldwide. India, among a few countries can claim distinction in holding high rank in human trafficking in recent times. These are but a few statistics, the tip of a massive iceberg.
The point is why is it so? Why has there been such a spurt of atrocities against women particularly during the recent past. The data presented above speak of the trends between the years 2014 and 2016 or later. One cannot miss that during this period the country has been under the rule of the BJP led by the prime minister Narendra Modi. And one of the most favourite slogans of this government has been Beti Padhao, Beti Bachao (educate girls, save girls). And this is the condition how the girls are being saved. Not only that, in cases like Kathua and Unnao, among the accused, there were leaders- activists- associates of the BJP, even a BJP MLA. Coolly and calmly, they were not only not apprehended, even the party brought out procession in support of the accused to create pressure upon the administration that it does not take steps against them. BJP candidate Shobha Chauhan from Sojat seat in Pali district of Rajasthan openly promised voters that police will not interfere in child marriages if she wins. She was highly applauded by the assembled BJP workers. Is it then not a case of sheer hypocrisy?
But why is it that the BJP does not feel the least compunction at this exposure of the reality? Here it may not be irrelevant to bring back a piece of history. In the days of the renaissance, the democratic revolution, the bourgeoisie led for bringing the change in society issued the call for individual liberty and freedom, which also implied equality of man and woman. So call for women's liberation from abject patriarchal domination of the feudal society was an important issue at that time. But the capitalist society that was established in the process remained still a society based on exploitation and discrimination, not only in economic fields, but also in social-cultural fields and every-where. So patriarchal domination or misogynist attitude towards women persisted in the society along with exploitation of both toiling men and women in the hands of the capitalists, the owners, the rich. To add fuel to fire, in our country the democratic revolution was left in a half-baked, truncated manner. With independence, a sovereign capitalist country was established politically. But in the cultural-social -ethical fields the task of democratization remained unfulfilled. The past legacies not only remained, they gradually raised their heads, as the Indian capitalism as an inalienable part of the most decadent world capitalism assumed a moribund reactionary shape with each passing day. The governments which take up the charge of governance of the country, merely act as the political manager set to keep this exploitative, discriminatory decadent capitalist rule running. The BJP, as the trusted representative of the Indian monopolists, have proven in all aspects of social-political-economic activities, that they are efficient subservient agents of the ruling capitalist class. Hence all their pro-people slogans and gestures are mere jumlas (rhetoric), as their president has himself admitted with respect to their electoral pledges. And this is the reason why on one side, they call out Beti Padhao, Beti Bachao, on the other side they do not hesitate to stage demonstration to hammer out that the accused in the gang-rape of a poor child, is really innocent. It is for the people to note and judge this hypocritical face of the BJP, which once claimed to be a value-based party and the task is to organize themselves to develop strong movements against it.
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"Secularism in no way means that government will lend its support equally to all religious faith. But to the credit of the Congress and the pseudo-communists and socialists a peculiar conception of secularism has developed in our country which implies equal encouragement for all religious faith. Under such circumstances, what else can we expect except whipping up of religious fanaticism ?" ~SHIBDAS GHOSHSource: A Scientific Approach to Our Educational-Cultural Problems, p.6 | cc/2019-30/en_head_0000.json.gz/line475 | 2,427,257,728,141,086,700 | {
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__label__wiki | 0.619289 | 0.619289 | Tags: celebrity smiles braces orthodontic treatment
Mayim Bialik has spent a good part of her life in front of TV cameras: first as the child star of the hit comedy series Blossom, and more recently as Sheldon Cooper's love interest - a nerdy neuroscientist - on The Big Bang Theory. (In between, she actually earned a PhD in neuroscience from UCLA...but that's another story.) As a child, Bialik had a serious overbite - but with all her time on camera, braces were just not an option.
"I never had braces," she recently told Dear Doctor - Dentistry & Oral Health magazine. "I was on TV at the time, and there weren't a lot of creative solutions for kids who were on TV." Instead, her orthodontist managed to straighten her teeth using retainers and headgear worn only at night.
Today, there are several virtually invisible options available to fix orthodontic issues - and you don't have to be a child star to take advantage of them. In fact, both children and adults can benefit from these unobtrusive appliances.
Tooth colored braces are just like traditional metal braces, with one big difference: The brackets attached to teeth are made from a ceramic material that blends in with the natural color of teeth. All that's visible is the thin archwire that runs horizontally across the teeth - and from a distance it's hard to notice. Celebs like Tom Cruise and Faith Hill opted for this type of appliance.
Clear aligners are custom-made plastic trays that fit over the teeth. Each one, worn for about two weeks, moves the teeth just a bit; after several months, you'll see a big change for the better in your smile. Best of all, clear aligners are virtually impossible to notice while you're wearing them - which you'll need to do for 22 hours each day. But you can remove them to eat, or for special occasions. Zac Efron and Katherine Heigl, among others, chose to wear clear aligners.
Lingual braces really are invisible. That's because they go behind your teeth (on the tongue side), where they can't be seen; otherwise they are similar to traditional metal braces. Lingual braces are placed on teeth differently, and wearing them often takes some getting used to at first. But those trade-offs are worth it for plenty of people. Which celebs wore lingual braces? Rumor has it that the list includes some top models, a well-known pop singer, and at least one British royal.
So what's the best way to straighten your teeth and keep the orthodontic appliances unnoticeable? Just ask us! We'd be happy to help you choose the option that's just right for you. You'll get an individualized evaluation, a solution that fits your lifestyle - and a great-looking smile!
For more information about hard-to-see (or truly invisible) orthodontics, please contact our office or schedule a consultation. You can read more in the Dear Doctor magazine articles "Orthodontics for the Older Adult" and "Clear Aligners for Teenagers." | cc/2019-30/en_head_0000.json.gz/line476 | 5,877,835,851,326,681,000 | {
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__label__wiki | 0.720196 | 0.720196 | Jock Given
Jock Given teaches, researches and writes about media and communications law, policy, business and history. He previously worked as Director of the Communications Law Centre, Policy Advisor at the Australian Film Commission and Director, Legislation and Industry Economics in the federal Department of Transport and Communications.
He writes regularly for Swinburne University's Inside Story and has published academic work in journals like Australian Journalism Review, Telecommunications Policy, the Journal of Information Policy, Business History, Media History and Studies in Australasian Cinema. His radio documentaries 'Crawfords: Television for the People' and 'Empire State: Ernest Fisk and the World Wide Wireless' were first broadcast by ABC Radio National's Hindsight program in 2014 and 2012. Current and recent research projects include studies of audiovisual distribution (supported by the ABC and Screen Australia), radiofrequency spectrum management and post-war international telecommunications. | cc/2019-30/en_head_0000.json.gz/line478 | 4,473,613,593,064,643,600 | {
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__label__cc | 0.52023 | 0.47977 | Kiwa: Pacific Connections
"You too can be a Māori"
"You too can be a Māori"
by Robert Jahnke
Medium: photo engraved acrylic
Size: 12 × 8 × 2 inches (framed)
Reference Code: KX30708
"You too can be a Maori" is a triptych that makes a statement about the globalization of cultural icons. The juxtaposition of British Pop Star, Robbie Williams, Maori Leader, Piri Sciascia (with an Italian surname), and Afro-American Pugilist, Mike Tyson, speaks volumes about the globalization of moko (Maori tattoo) as an icon of trans-global culture. Famous / infamous personalities, as globally accessible icons, are just a mouse-click away on the worldwide web.
In the spirit of Gayatri Spivak's process of 'strategic appropriation', the imprint of moko and 'tribal tattoo' is temporarily re-accessioned through cultural posturing that is real and imagined, physical and metaphysical. Simultaneously, a subtext of intellectual and cultural rights, peppered with appropriation, interrogates global access rights to cultural icons as pattern and image mined from the other side of the world.
Robert Jahnke
Te Whanau a Rakairoa o Ngāti Porou
Robert earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts in Industrial Design in 1976 and his first-class Master of Fine Arts in Graphic Design in 1978, both from Auckland University. In 1980, he graduated with a Master of Fine Arts in Experimental Animation from the California Institute of the Arts. He is currently professor and head of the School of Māori Studies/coordinator of Māori Visual Arts at Massey University in Palmerston North and a doctoral candidate there. | cc/2019-30/en_head_0000.json.gz/line480 | 7,591,916,086,494,513,000 | {
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__label__cc | 0.526433 | 0.473567 | History of Washington
Origins of Washington state
Picture of Washington
Humans have lived in Washington for as long as 11,500 years. The first inhabitants of present-day Washington were descendants of the peoples who crossed the land bridge linking the northeastern part of Asia and North America at the Bering Sea. Archaeologists discovered a rich site in the southeastern part of the state near Palouse Falls, dating to about 10,000 years ago. This dig was filled with human bones, weapons, tools, elk remains, and bone needles.
The Native American population of Washington state belongs to two distinctive regional groups: those who live on the Pacific Coast west of the Cascade Range, and those who live on the Columbia Plateau, east of the range. Different environments and the mountain barrier resulted in two different cultures and lifestyles.
Some of the principal coastal groups include the Quileute, Quinault, Makah, Lummi, Chinook, and Snohomish. Since the area had a relatively mild climate and abundant food sources, the coastal peoples tended to live in permanent cedar houses. These structures, called longhouses, were sometimes about 30 m (100 ft) long and 12 m (40 ft) wide and often housed a number of families. Groups of longhouses were frequently built near the ocean or along a river.
From these locations, Native Americans collected fruits, nuts, and roots, gathered shellfish, and fished for salmon, halibut, and trout. Salmon was a significant part of the coastal people's diet, and many tribal people honored the fish by holding an annual ceremony for the first salmon catch of the season.
Native Americans developed many ways to catch the fish, including building fishing platforms, stretching nets across streams, and lancing harpoons at the fish. The Quinault and the Quileute, who lived on the coast, hunted fish in dugout cedar canoes. The Makah ventured out to sea to harpoon whales.
The coastal peoples had a rigid class system. Social status was often displayed at a potlatch, a ceremony held in honor of a special event such as a marriage or the birth of a child. Native American chiefs invited people from all around the region to come celebrate. Guests would come for several days to eat and dance. On the final day of the potlatch, chiefs would give gifts to their guest, offering proof of their great wealth.
Some of the principal Native American groups on the east side of the Cascade Mountains include the Okanogan, Spokane, Wenatchee, Yakama, Cayuse, Nez Perce, and Palouse. Although the Native American peoples of the Columbia Plateau had a diet similar to that of their coastal counterparts, they had to work much harder to procure their food. They lived in a harsh climate and had a semi-nomadic lifestyle. Often Native American peoples spent the summer months at fishing sites or in the mountains collecting roots and berries. They carried light, portable structures made of long poles and woven twigs and fibers to their summer camps and spent the cold season on the canyon floors. They built large, well-insulated pithouses that provided protection from the cold and the wind. These pithouses were 1.8 to 2 m (6 to 7 ft) underground, with skins and dirt forming a conical roof supported by poles.
Like the coastal peoples, the Columbia Plateau Native Americans consumed salmon and other fish that swam up the Columbia River. They also hunted deer, elk, bear, and small game. When the Plateau peoples, and in particular the Nez Perce, started to use and breed horses, they were able to travel farther to hunt. Trade among the Native American peoples of present-day Washington was common. Inland and coastal peoples met annually at a place on the Columbia River to the east of the Cascades (the present-day city of The Dalles, Oregon), where they exchanged goods, danced, and had feasts. Native Americans developed a common dialect, which was used when trading with people who spoke different languages. This trade language was loosely based on the Chinook language and had vocabulary from many other regional Native American languages. See also Native Americans of North America. "Washington" © Emmanuel BUCHOT, Encarta, Wikipedia.
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__label__cc | 0.623356 | 0.376644 | Places of interest in Alaska
Photographic book - USA - 3/03/19
Caribou in Alaska
Alaska is a state where the visitor can watch a mass migration of caribou across the arctic plains, see the tundra blossom overnight into a riot of color, and observe polar bears and walruses in their native habitat. It is the land of the midnight sun and the noontide moon. Few states offer such contrasts as the frozen ice fields and steaming volcanoes, the vast Interior and its towering peaks, the fjords of the Panhandle and the seemingly endless flatlands of the river deltas.
Alaska's national parks are home to the United States' tallest mountains and biggest glaciers and some of its most exotic wildlife. Alaska contains a number of the country's largest national parks, including Wrangell-Saint Elias, Gates of the Arctic, Denali, Lake Clark, Katmai, and Glacier Bay.
Of the 20 highest mountains in the United States, 17 are in Alaska. Mount McKinley, North America's largest mountain at 6,194 m (20,320 ft), is a defining highlight in Denali National Park and Preserve. The second tallest mountain, Mount Saint Elias (5,489 m/18,008 ft), is located in Wrangell-Saint Elias National Park and Preserve, a park characterized by remote mountains, valleys, and wild rivers, all rich with wildlife.
Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve is just one of the areas in which visitors can find examples of active geological phenomena. Since it was first seen by British explorer George Vancouver in the 1790s, the wall of ice that shadows Glacier Bay has retreated about 100 km (about 60 mi). Harding Icefield and forested coastal fjords are the highlights of Kenai Fjords National Park.
Spectacular scenery stretches across the Lake Clark National Park and Preserve from the Cook Inlet to the Chigmit Mountains, which include two active volcanoes, Mount Redoubt and Mount Iliamna. More evidence of Alaska's natural history can be found at Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes, where steam rises from a few active volcanic vents at Katmai National Park and Preserve. In the Aniakchak National Monument and Preserve, the Aniakchak River cascades through a gash 500 m (1,600 ft) long at the rim of a volcano crater.
Alaska's national parks
Alaska's national parks also preserve the state's rich cultural history. The Bering Land Bridge National Preserve is a remnant of the land bridge that once connected Asia with North America, the route the earliest residents took to the continent. Cape Krusenstern National Monument contains archaeological sites that illustrate Eskimo communities dating back some 4,000 years. Sitka National Historical Park commemorates the Battle of Sitka, the only armed conflict between Alaska Natives and Europeans. Relics of the 1898 gold rush are preserved at the Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park and the Yukon-Charley Rivers National Preserve.
Several parks embody the state's nickname The Last Frontier because of their remote locations. They are generally accessible only by chartered planes and recommended only to those adventurers who are confident in their outdoor survival skills. Lying entirely north of the Arctic Circle, Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve, the northernmost extension of the Rocky Mountains, is the second largest national park in the United States. The Great Kobuk Sand Dunes are located in the Kobuk Valley National Park. A rich array of Arctic wildlife can be found in this park and the neighboring Noatak National Preserve, including caribou, grizzly and black bear, wolf, and fox. "USA" © Emmanuel BUCHOT, Encarta, Wikipedia
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__label__wiki | 0.914624 | 0.914624 | Royal Lyceum Announces David Greig's Inaugural Season
May 3, 2016 by News Team Leave a Comment
The Royal Lyceum Theatre Edinburgh is delighted to announce David Greig's first season as Artistic Director of Scotland's largest producing theatre.
David Greig is an internationally acclaimed and award-winning playwright whose recent credits include The Lorax (Old Vic), The Events (Traverse, Scotland and Young Vic), Sam Mendes' West End hit, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Dunsinane (Royal Shakespeare Company and National Theatre of Scotland), and The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart (National Theatre of Scotland).
David Greig, New Artistic Director of the Royal Lyceum Theatre Edinburgh says,
"The Lyceum's 50th Anniversary has been an extraordinary year for the company and the success of Mark Thomson's final year has allowed me to put together this expansive and ambitious programme for my first season as Artistic Director.
We will be presenting more work with 11 main stage productions, 4 of which are world premieres, and many of the artists involved will be making work with The Lyceum for the very first time.
I'm keen to make new meaningful partnerships, such as our new exciting relationship with the Edinburgh Science Festival and build on existing relationships, such as our involvement with the Edinburgh International Festival, to ensure that we stay at the heart of this fantastic city and truly be a Civic Theatre for the people of Edinburgh and our visitors.
I want to put our citizens centre stage at The Lyceum to share this beautiful space and the amazing experience of making theatre - we need to cast at least 200 members of the public in this year's season so please come and join us!
I'm also keen that the citizens of Edinburgh have more opportunities to explore and appreciate the splendour of this Victorian building - we will be presenting regular Variety Nights featuring an ever-changing line-up of musicians, poets and theatre-makers.
I'd like us to collaborate more across the UK and the world to share our unique experiences and individual stories. This year Lyceum co-productions will visit Glasgow, Belfast and Newcastle, and our theatre will welcome Malthouse Theatre Melbourne and Black Swan State Theatre Company's production Picnic at Hanging Rock.
Last year, after a decade of standstill funding The Lyceum received news of public funding cuts of nearly £700,000 from Creative Scotland and the City of Edinburgh Council. Not enough to close our doors but enough to significantly narrow our horizons. Thankfully the legacy of the company's celebrated 50th anniversary and the fantastic appetite of our audiences and supporters have given me a year to be experimental - a one season window of opportunity.
I intend to use it to make the case for a producing theatre in Edinburgh's capital which is worthy of the city. A Theatre which engages and excites our citizens year round and is capable of taking Edinburgh to the world and bringing a world of theatre to Edinburgh - a Civic Theatre for the capital city of Scotland - The Lyceum. I'm looking forward to working with many talented artists, our fantastic staff, generous sponsors new and old and our partners and funders in Scotland and across the UK, to make this ambition a lasting success for Edinburgh."
In brief, the shows are as follows:
Wind Resistance - 4 August - 21 August 2016
David Greig's first production as Artistic Director (as Dramaturg) and the World Premiere of Scottish Singer/Songwriter Karine Polwart's debut into theatre. This new theatre gig will be performed in a bespoke performance space the Lyceum's Rehearsal Studio with direction by David's long-term collaborator, Wils Wilson.
The Cheviot, the Stag and the Black, Black Oil - 14 - 24 September 2016
Joe Douglas' widely acclaimed Dundee Rep production will mark his debut at The Lyceum and be the first time this iconic political play has been performed on The Lyceum stage since the original production in 1973.
The Suppliant Women - 1 October - 15 October 2016
David Greig's first play for The Lyceum main stage unites the creative team behind the 2013 international runaway hit The Events - David Greig, Ramin Gray and John Browne will create a new version of this Ancient Greek story about the flight of refugees and human rights that deeply resonates with our world today. One of the oldest surviving plays in existence -this story will be re-imagined with 50 citizens of Edinburgh playing the pivotal role - the "suppliant" women.
Jumpy - 27 October - 12 November 2016
BAFTA multi-award winning actor, Daniela Nardini returns to The Lyceum stage to play the lead role in this deliciously irreverent hit West End comedy of mid-life crisis, teenage rebellion and a mother-daughter relationship in meltdown. Olivier-award winning director Cora Bissett will bring a distinctively Scottish twist to this contemporary tale.
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - 26 November - 31 December 2016
The ever Inventive Edinburgh born theatre-maker Anthony Neilson will return to his home town to make a magical Victorian version of this classic family story by Lewis Carroll for Christmas.
Picnic at Hanging Rock - 13 January - 28 January 2017
The Lyceum will welcome its first international mainstage production outside of the Edinburgh Festivals in its 50 year history - hosting the UK premiere ofMalthouse Theatre Melbourne and Black Swan State Theatre Company'sacclaimed production of this haunting, iconic Australian bush tale. Directed by Australian artist Matthew Lutton.
The Winter's Tale - 9 February - 4 March 2017
Shakespeare's timeless tale of love, betrayal and magic will be directed by acclaimed artist Max Webster, who recently directed David's enchanting adaptation of The Lorax. Max will bring a distinctive Scottish flair with a cast of actor-musicians.
Hay Fever - 10 March - 1 April 2017
A new co-production with the Citizens Theatre Glasgow, the Citizens' award-winning Artistic Director Dominic Hill will direct Noël Coward's riotous farce charting the unconventional antics of a self-dubbed 'bohemian' family of four. Revelation, romance, and outright outlandish behaviour set the tone of this 1920's dark comedy.
A Number - April 2017
As part of an exciting new partnership with the Edinburgh International Science Festival, renowned Scottish director and playwright Zinnie Harriswill direct Caryl Churchill's acclaimed sci-fi story about cloning and its consequences. This eerie production will be performed in an intimate 'in the round' space created on The Lyceum's main stage.
Charlie Sonata - 29 April - 13 May 2017
An urban, funny, booze-soaked fairytale about redemption brings together the artistic talents of Scottish playwright Douglas Maxwell and internationally acclaimed director Matthew Lenton for this World Premiere.
Glory on Earth - 20 May - 10 June 2017
David Greig makes his directorial debut at The Lyceum with a new play by Scottish playwright Linda Maclean. Glory on Earth re-imagines the historic meetings between Mary Queen of Scots and John Knox charting the fatal relationship between a charming young queen and an uncompromising old zealot as they battle for the hearts and souls of 16th Century Scotland.
The Hour We Knew Nothing of Each Other - June 2017
The citizens of Edinburgh take centre stage again in the season finale, a large scale production directed by Wils Wilson. Written by Austrian playwrightPeter Handke, in a translation by Meredith Oakes the production will feature a 100 strong, all-Edinburgh cast and a soundtrack of entirely new music.
Additional strands include a series of Sunday Variety Nights to showcase musicians, poets and theatre-makers.
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__label__wiki | 0.596601 | 0.596601 | Look Back in Hunger by Jo Brand
From TheBookbag
Buy Look Back in Hunger by Jo Brand at Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com
Reviewer: John Van der Kiste
Summary: The memoirs of Jo Brand, a former psychiatric nurse who yearned for a showbusiness career and became one of the age's most popular stand-up comedians.
Buy? Maybe Borrow? Yes
Pages: 320 Date: October 2009
Publisher: Headline Review
Born in Hastings in May 1957, after leaving Brunel University with a degree in social sciences, Jo Brand unsuccessfully applied for a research job with Channel 4 on a series about racism, then worked for a time as a psychiatric nurse at the South London Bethlem and Maudsley Hospital. But the lure of showbiz proved too strong, and stardom in stand-up comedy soon beckoned.
Much of this memoir is about her early life, from a south-east London childhood, schooldays and rebellious adolescence to student and nursing days. There are plenty of amusing anecdotes about the usual brushes with parental authority, often related to staying out too late or going to the wrong places, and being chatted up by less than desirable young (and not so young) men. She emerges as a cheerfully shambolic character, quite philosophical about being asked to leave her job in the civil service, not unrelated to having had too many cheap beers at lunchtime one day and falling asleep and dribbling at her desk afterwards, matter-of-fact about her less than stellar exam results - let's just say the marks D and E were good friends of mine.
A self-confessed unashamed natural scruffbag, she tells us that her room was always a complete tip with overflowing ashtrays, records and CDs scattered everywhere, and old cups with mould in them. (If you're reading this over a hastily-grabbed breakfast or coffee break, I'm sorry). On the subject of dressing, she makes the very valid point that high heels may look elegant, but are useless for running in - and there is many an occasion when a woman may need to be swift on her feet. Her insights into life on the wards, naturally the most serious part of the book, make interesting and sometimes poignant reading.
It's probably fair to say that the majority of people picking up this book will be keen to know what makes her tick as a comic, and how 'the Sea Monster' started out as a stand-up comedian. That is crammed into the last two chapters, beginning with an appearance at a rather sleazy Soho nightclub in the summer of 1986. I get the feeling this is only 'Part One - to be continued', as the last page had finished a little abruptly almost before I knew it.
It's amusing enough, cheerfully self-deprecating and told in the deadpan style that anyone would expect after having seen her on the box. How, she asks in the first chapter after describing a typical appearance onstage at Loughborough University, did she ever get there when she could have been working in a library or pushing a pram around the park?
Although it makes a good light read, it didn't strike me as the funniest comedy memoir I've read. Fans of hers will certainly love it, but I felt there was something a little flat about the whole tone of these pages that I couldn't quite put my finger on. Dawn French's recent title had that kind of effervescent bubbly quality throughout that made it difficult to put down. That same quality, it struck me, somehow tended to be lacking here.
Our thanks to Headline Review for sending a copy to Bookbag.
If you enjoyed this, may we recommend the above-mentioned Dear Fatty by Dawn French, or Dawn French: The Unauthorised Biography by Alison Bowyer.
You can read more book reviews or buy Look Back in Hunger by Jo Brand at Amazon.co.uk
You can read more book reviews or buy Look Back in Hunger by Jo Brand at Amazon.com.
Like to comment on this review?
Just send us an email and we'll put the best up on the site.
Retrieved from ""
Jo Brand
Reviewed by John Van der Kiste
3.5 Star Reviews
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About TheBookbag | cc/2019-30/en_head_0000.json.gz/line491 | 1,971,990,906,737,251,600 | {
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__label__wiki | 0.995793 | 0.995793 | Kendrick Lamar's "HUMBLE." Is The No. 1 Song In The Country
The Compton rapper's "DNA." single also reached the No. 4 position.
By Ben Dandridge-Lemco
Kendrick Lamar performs at the Coachella Valley Music And Arts Festival, April 16, 2017. Kevin Winter / Getty Images
Kendrick Lamar's "HUMBLE." single has risen to No. 1 on the Hot 100, Billboard reports. The song marks the Compton rapper's second time at the top spot and first as a solo artist.
"HUMBLE." has spent three weeks at the top of the Streaming Songs chart and tallied 67.4 million streams in the week ending April 20, becoming the second-most streamed song on a single week behind Baauer's "Harlem Shake." Kendrick also earned an additional top 10 hit, as "DNA." makes its debut on the chart at No. 4. His DAMN. album debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200, earning the biggest sales week for any album in 2017 with 603,000 equivalent album units.
Read Next: Listen to Revenge of the Dreamers III feat. Vince Staples, Kendrick Lamar, more
Elsewhere on the chart, Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee's "Despacito" remix, featuring Justin Bieber, comes in at No. 9. The song is the first Spanish language track to reach the Hot 100's top 10 in over 20 years ("Macarena" spent 14 weeks at No. 1 in 1996).
Hip-Hop, Kendrick Lamar | cc/2019-30/en_head_0000.json.gz/line494 | 13,107,253,204,760,486,000 | {
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__label__wiki | 0.687292 | 0.687292 | Veteran Stories
The First World War
The Second World War
Veteran Stories:
Peter Godwin Chance
Peter Chance, 1951.
Peter Chance
Peter Chance on the bridge, HMS Liddesdale, Spring 1942.
Peter Chance's Medals (L-R): 1939-45 Star; Atlantic Star; Pacific Star; Defence Medal; Canadian Volunteer Service Medal; War Medal (1939-45); and Medals from Korea War.
Wedding Reception of Peter Chance and his Wife, in Skeena, British Columbia, September 1944.
Listen to this story
"There was a great call when the Japanese landed only 20 miles north of us for us to get back to the ship."
Handley Page Halifax
426 (Thunderbird) Squadron, RCAF...
427 (Lion) Squadron, RCAF
Canadians in South East Asia
In Malaya and Burma
The Canadian Encyclopedia
The Canadian Encyclopedia is your authoritative reference of all things Canadian.
Then after four months of sort of a crash course at Dartmouth, the Naval College, we were all assigned to various ships. And so my pal, Benny Benoit, a Canadian from my class, and I, were sent to a ship called HMS Mauritius, a colony class cruiser lying at anchor in Scapa Flow. So off we went. As soon as I got there, we were assigned to run ships' boats. Well, both of us had had plenty of experience driving boats of all sizes, and so this was great and we enjoyed that work, albeit it was foul weather and it was cold because it was January. And our ship forayed forth with, sallied forth I should say, with the remainder of the home fleet on two occasions to attempt to find the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau [German battle cruisers], that were reported in a breakout from their home ports. We didn't manage to meet them and it was just as well because we sure as hell weren't ready.
However, it wasn't very long before we were then sent to do convoy duty with liners. And they took us from Scotland to Gibraltar, Gibraltar to the Cape and from the Cape up to Aden and then we turned about and picked up returning ships with prisoners and wounded, to return them to the UK.
Well, this went on for a while and then we were detached from that duty and for several months thereafter, we worked out of Colombo to the islands of Mauritius, the Seychelles, Diego Garcia, Diego Suarez and to the Nicobar Islands and eventually to Singapore. We were there at the dry dock getting our fire main refitted because for some reason, this brand new ship had a fire main that was more like a sieve than a fire main. In any case, whilst we were there, we midshipmen again were sent off on exploration: come, let's learn a bit more about Malaya duties. We not only flew in the local aircraft and billeted with the local regiment, the [2nd Battalion] Argyll and Sutherlanders, and the Loyal [North] Lancashire Regiment, but we also stooged around the sky in a thing called Vickers Vincent, which were biplanes from the First World War and they were better than that. They were still operational throughout the thirties but they were pretty poor aircraft against the Japanese. And, indeed, all of them were destroyed when the Japanese landed.
We, Benny Benoit and I, were sent to a place called Kelantan Province and the town of Kota Bharu, which means new town in Malay, where we were entertained by the local people there and, indeed, the rubber plantations, of which there were many, were all managed by Scots for Dunlop Rubber. Yeah, and, in fact, on one evening, we had a rehearsal for St. Andrew's Ball. Don't forget, it's hotter than the hobs of hell and steam heat, and the bungalows where other people lived, these overseers, were very nice, raised off the ground to allow air beneath them, to help cooling and also be anti-snake protection.
In any case, as we arrived, everybody was in whites and there was a piper of course, why not, and we were all handed a mickey of Dimple Haig [whiskey] as we crossed the threshold. Well, that was great fun and we all drank and danced wildly. And, believe me, we were drenched because of the vigour of the endeavour. And everybody's clothes were clinging to them like as though they were naked, especially the ladies, who bobbed up and down, and it was all very startling for young boys like me and my friend, Benny.
Any case, there was a great call when the Japanese landed only 20 miles north of us for us to get back to the ship. But, anyway, we got back and sure enough, it wasn't very long thereafter that not only had the Japanese landed, but they were bombing Singapore. And so we midshipmen were detailed off in groups of 10 with a midshipman leading, to board police launches and to go out into the Singapore harbour to attack Japanese junks that were lying at anchor. We didn't realize it at the time, it had been thought that they were, of course, armed and ready to do business. But when, in point of fact, we lobbed some hand grenades into the quarters down below, why we eradicated some Japanese fishermen and found their cargos were Japanese-held ensigns to be given to the, by the conquered nations to the victorious Japanese coming in. And so we were detailed off to get back to our ship, put her back in the water and get her refueled, re-vittled, re-ammunitioned, everything, in 72 hours.
We did it and we slipped out during the night and got around from the south end of Singapore island and raced up the Malacca Strait, blacked out, because our electrics weren't connected; we couldn't have fired the guns even if we wanted to. So, eventually, we got back to Trincomalee on the northeast coast of Ceylon and then eventually back to Colombo Christmas and New Years, and then to Durbin and back to the Cape, and home by February of 1942.
Aboriginal Arts & Stories
Citizenship Chanllenge
Encounters with Canada
Passages Canada
Historica Canada
Browse Speaker Bios
Anniversaries & Events
© 2019 The Memory Project, All Rights Reserved. | cc/2019-30/en_head_0000.json.gz/line497 | 9,118,431,673,450,769,000 | {
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__label__wiki | 0.878662 | 0.878662 | China protests over US warship sighting as trade talks start
In this Thursday, Jan. 3, 2019, photo, a woman and children play near an art installation at a shopping mall in Beijing. A U.S. delegation led by deputy U.S. trade representative, Jeffrey D. Gerrish arrived in the Chinese capital ahead of trade talks with China. China sounded a positive note ahead of trade talks this week with Washington, but the two sides face potentially lengthy wrangling over technology and the future of their economic relationship. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)
By JOE McDONALD, AP Business Writer
BEIJING (AP) - Chinese and American officials began talks Monday aimed at ending a bruising tariffs battle between the world's two biggest economies, as Beijing complained over the sighting of a U.S. warship in what it said were Chinese waters.
It was unclear if the ruckus over the warship might disrupt the working level talks being held at the Chinese Commerce Ministry. The two sides have provided scant information about the discussions.
Both sides have expressed optimism over the potential for progress in settling their tariff fight over Beijing's technology ambitions. Yet neither has indicated its stance has changed since a Dec. 1 agreement by Presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping to postpone further increases.
Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said Monday during a routine briefing that Chinese military aircraft and naval vessels were dispatched to identify the U.S. vessel and warn it to leave the area near disputed islands in the South China Sea.
"We have made stern complaints with the U.S.," Lu said. He said the warship, which he said was the destroyer the USS McCampbell, had violated Chinese and international law, infringed on Chinese sovereignty and undermined peace and stability.
"As for whether this move has any impact to the ongoing China-U.S. trade consultations... to properly resolve existing issues of all kinds between China and the U.S. is good for the two countries and the world," Lu said
But he added, "The two sides both have responsibility to create necessary and good atmosphere to this end."
There was no immediate comment from the U.S. side about the Chinese complaint.
The American side in the trade talks is being led by a deputy U.S. trade representative, Jeffrey D. Gerrish, according to the U.S. government. The delegation includes agriculture, energy, commerce, treasury and State Department officials.
The talks went ahead despite tensions over the arrest of a Chinese tech executive in Canada on U.S. charges related to possible violations of trade sanctions against Iran.
Trump imposed tariff increases of up to 25 percent on $250 billion of Chinese imports over complaints Beijing steals or pressures companies to hand over technology. Beijing responded by imposing penalties on $110 billion of American goods, slowing customs clearance for U.S. companies and suspending issuing licenses in finance and other businesses.
Economists say the 90-day postponement of tariff increases that had been meant to take effect Jan. 1 may be too short to settle the disputes bedeviling U.S.-Chinese relations.
But cooling economic growth in both countries is raising pressure to reach a settlement.
Chinese growth fell to a post-global crisis low of 6.5 percent in the quarter ending in September. Auto sales tumbled 16 percent in November over a year earlier. Weak real estate sales are forcing developers to cut prices.
The U.S. economy grew at an annual rate of 3.4 percent in the third quarter, and unemployment is at a five-decade low. But surveys show consumer confidence is weakening because of concern that growth will slow this year.
Washington, Europe and other trading partners complain Beijing's tactics violate its market-opening obligations.
The standoff also reflects American anxiety about China's rise as a potential competitor in telecommunications and other technology. Trump wants Beijing to roll back initiatives intended to create homegrown Chinese leaders in robotics and artificial intelligence.
China's leaders see such strategies as a path to greater prosperity and global influence and have tried to defuse complaints by emphasizing the country's potential as a huge consumer market.
They've also promised to allow more foreign access to its auto, finance and other industries.
Beijing has tried in vain to recruit France, Germany, South Korea and other governments as allies against Trump, but they have echoed U.S. complaints about Chinese industrial policy and market barriers.
The European Union filed its own challenge in the World Trade Organization in June against Chinese rules that the 28-nation trade bloc said hamper the ability of foreign companies to protect and profit from their own technology.
For their part, Chinese officials are unhappy with U.S. curbs on exports of "dual use" technology with possible military applications. They complain China's companies are treated unfairly in national security reviews of proposed corporate acquisitions, though almost all deals are approved unchanged.
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__label__wiki | 0.560724 | 0.560724 | Wanted man ditches three pounds of pot, $10K in Sullivan County
Rain Smith • Aug 23, 2018 at 1:15 PM
The blotter is derived from recent incident reports and central dispatch records of local police agencies.
Kingsport Police Department
- A resident of Stratford Road answered a knock on his door at 3 a.m., according to his account, to find an unknown man with a bandanna covering his face. The stranger forced entry into the home and took the resident's wallet and cell phone. A second intruder cut the man's neck and left arm. A detective was called to the scene for further investigation.
- A Ford pickup crashed into a legally parked car on Willow Street, and a witness followed the driver. A block away, the suspect exited his vehicle and ran, but a check of registration identified a suspect. Warrants were to be obtained.
- Police were alerted to a man with a gun seated next to vending machines at an urgent care facility. Police responded and spoke to the suspect, finding he was unarmed. The purported weapon was actually a flip-flop in his pocket.
- A woman drove into the bay of an oil change business on Fort Henry Drive, nearly striking a vehicle that was on a lift. She then exited her vehicle, "mumbled something" and walked to a nearby restaurant. That's where police found her sitting on a grease disposal, incoherent and unable to keep her balance. Ultimately, she was arrested for DUI, with a blood draw conducted to determine what intoxicants were in her system.
- A man wanted in Kingsport was arrested in Virginia. Six months prior, he had recklessly sped through the parking lot of Buffalo Wild Wings on a motorcycle - while not wearing a helmet - and crashed into a car. He sustained serious injuries and was hospitalized, while lab results later revealed he had alcohol and drugs in his system. This month, a Sullivan County grand jury returned indictments in the case for reckless endangerment and other charges. He is now scheduled for extradition back to Tennessee.
Sullivan County Sheriff's Office
- When police attempted to serve a warrant at a residence on Barnett Drive, the wanted man jumped on a motorcycle to flee and struck a deputy. The suspect then ditched the bike and ran from the scene, with a subsequent K-9 search by Kingsport police unable to locate him. Officers did find a discarded backpack the suspect had been toting. Its contents: 2.73 pounds of marijuana (vacuum packaged in "large quantities"), $9,647 in cash, a handgun and 22 rounds. Additional warrants were obtained on numerous charges, while the deputy hit by the motorcycle sustained cuts to his legs. | cc/2019-30/en_head_0000.json.gz/line503 | 9,916,518,128,197,670,000 | {
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End of preview. Expand
in Dataset Viewer.
RedPajama -- CommonCrawl-2020-05 (refined by Data-Juicer)
A refined version of CommonCrawl-2020-05 dataset in RedPajama by Data-Juicer. Removing some "bad" samples from the original dataset to make it higher-quality.
This dataset is usually used to pretrain a Large Language Model.
Notice: Here is a small subset for previewing. The whole dataset is available here (About 297GB).
Dataset Information
- Number of samples: 42,612,596 (Keep ~46.90% from the original dataset)
Refining Recipe
# global parameters
project_name: 'Data-Juicer-recipes-cc-2020-05'
dataset_path: '/path/to/your/dataset' # path to your dataset directory or file
export_path: '/path/to/your/dataset.jsonl'
np: 50 # number of subprocess to process your dataset
open_tracer: true
# process schedule
# a list of several process operators with their arguments
process:
- document_simhash_deduplicator:
tokenization: space
window_size: 6
lowercase: true
ignore_pattern: '\p{P}'
num_blocks: 6
hamming_distance: 4
- clean_email_mapper:
- clean_links_mapper:
- fix_unicode_mapper:
- punctuation_normalization_mapper:
- whitespace_normalization_mapper:
- alphanumeric_filter:
tokenization: false
min_ratio: 0.7469 # 3sigma
max_ratio: 0.8609 # 3sigma
- average_line_length_filter: # for code
max_len: 1500 # < 3sigma -- 332621
- character_repetition_filter:
rep_len: 10
max_ratio: 0.3 # > 3sigma -- 170501
- flagged_words_filter:
lang: en
tokenization: true
max_ratio: 0.002 # 3sigma -- 167167
- language_id_score_filter: # remove language filter
min_score: 0.774 # 3sigma -- 1943513
- maximum_line_length_filter: # for code
max_len: 5000 # < 3sigma -- 845490
- perplexity_filter:
lang: en
max_ppl: 5000 # < 3sigma -- 909218
- special_characters_filter:
min_ratio: 0.15 # > 3sigma
max_ratio: 0.35 # > 3sigma -- 1134347
- text_length_filter:
max_len: 68161 # 3sigma -- 1145902
- words_num_filter:
lang: en
tokenization: true
min_num: 20 # remove 7913 samples
max_num: 13644 # 3sigma -- 1148810
- word_repetition_filter:
lang: en
tokenization: true
rep_len: 10
max_ratio: 0.328 # 3sigma -- 2125070
- Downloads last month
- 52
Size of downloaded dataset files:
590 kB
Size of the auto-converted Parquet files:
366 kB
Number of rows:
100