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Witch Hunter RobinSynopsisPeople fear what they don't understand. For centuries, odd occurances, tragic accidents, and unexplained deaths have often been attributed to individuals with unusual powers. Some societies call them ESPers, psychics, wu-jen ... witches. The truth is that witches actually do exist. Some people have what it takes to be a witch and don't even know about the power within them. A semi-secret international organization, STN, has been tracking, cataloguing and, in the event of rogues who would use their powers to hurt others, hunting witches. Armed with vials of a strange liquid called "Orudo" that negate a witch's power, the agents of the STN-Japan team investigate crimes and other strange happenings linked to these individuals. Their newest member, arriving to replace an agent killed in the line of duty, is Sena Robin. She's a witch herself, but uses her powers of pyrokinesis (fire manipulation) to help the STN track down others like her, but with less noble intentions. However, when Robin becomes the hunted, rather than the hunter, will she be able to rely on her new friends or will she just end up being another STN statistic? What is the STN doing with all the witches that they capture? How is "Orudo" connected to the STN-J's latest cases? ReviewFellow reviewer, Christi, said: "Witch Hunter Robin is almost like something Chris Carter would do if he directed an anime series." This is actually not far from the truth. The atmosphere, characters, and setting of this series would fit almost perfectly into any season of The X-Files or Millennium, with a supernatural, spooky undercurrent that fans of the occult or unexplained will definately enjoy. The ambience this shows gives off could almost be described as "neo-goth". The STN-J's headquarters is an old-fashioned multi-level office building complete with iron-gated elevator lift, carved gargoyles, and a porter to answer the front door. The character designs are distinctly lacking the large eyes, crazy outfits or wild hairstyles (Robin's unusual pigtails excepted) seen in other shows. Everyone dresses in subdued colors (mainly black), but somehow witch hunters wearing any other color would seem out of place in a show like this that strives to be as "realistic" as possible. The characters are a mixed bunch ranging from the "I'm too cool to have more than three lines a show" Amon, to the slacker girl intern, Doujima, to the team hacker, Michael. All of the main cast have distinct and fully rendered personalities, some more interesting that others, but all very well done. The interaction between the characters is fun, as you can clearly see the little social cliques, friendships, and animosities that exist within the STN. Sometimes the characterization falls into common cliches (Amon's ice-man attitude and the office chief's penchant for yelling at everyone), but the story moves along fast enough that these small lapses in the otherwise solid performances given can be forgiven. The animation is well done, with good frame rate during the action scenes and some nicely integrated effects when the various witches use their powers. The artwork is also better than average with highly detailed backdrops and wonderfully original character designs. The dark color palette used in most of the episodes might turn off viewers who prefer more colorful settings, but lends itself to the mood of the show very well. The music is likewise subdued, but the opening theme is very well done, and overall the soundtrack carries the atmosphere of the show perfectly. The plot moves along at a brisk pace and takes a sharp turn towards the middle of the series, but more action oriented fans may find the show a bit dull. The level of action present is about what you would expect from a detective show, or maybe one of the faster paced episodes of The X-Files. Fans who enjoy mysteries and the supernatural will love this series, those who enjoy comedy, action or romance will probably be indifferent. Still, this show has enough to offer that even those not hooked in by its premise might still find something to enjoy. I'm definitely bewitched. If you love supernatural mysteries / thrillers, add a star. If you would rather watch Tenchi, remove one star. — Jason Bustard Recommended Audience: There is a lot of violence, but none of it is extremely graphic. Witches get shot with Orudo bullets, a few people get fried or beaten up. No real fan service, but the dark mood of the show is probably better suited to teens and up, rather than the little ones. There is some Christian (Catholic) iconography that religious folks may not take kindly to. Version(s) Viewed: digital source Review Status: Full (26/26) Witch Hunter Robin © 2002 Sunrise |
© 1996-2015 THEM Anime Reviews. All rights reserved. |


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This piece is paired with another view of usury from a distributist perspective, also running today.
Orthodox. Faithful. Free.
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What makes "social teaching" different from the faith-and-morals magisterium of the Catholic Church? Most of the latter was settled early in Church history, with developments coming over time as subtle elaborations and careful applications of eternal truths.
Social teaching (including economics) is different. It has gone through many upheavals and changes throughout Church history, even complete reversals, many of which parallel historical developments.
One of the most pronounced cases in point concerns the lending at interest. It was condemned from the earliest years of the faith, but this condemnation ended in the 16th century, liberalized in law by the 18th century, and is today not even an issue. It is hardly talked about at all apart from perfunctory warnings against usury (and what the difference between interest and usury is precisely has never been spelled out).
As even the 1912 Catholic Encyclopedia said: the Church "permits the general practice of lending at interest, that is to say, she authorizes the impost, without one's having to enquire if, on lending his money, he has suffered a loss or deprived himself of a gain, provided he demand a moderate interest for the money he lends."
This view amounts to a complete reversal of a view that prevailed from the Patristic age until the high middle ages. During all these years, the Church stood squarely against the institution of interest – as opposed as Islam is or even more so. This only began to change with the development of sophisticated monetary institutions in the high middle ages. These allowed theologians to consider the topic more carefully and come to realize that interest is no different from any price on the market – something to be freely negotiated by the parties involved and reflecting the changing conditions of supply and demand.
One of the earliest statements against interest comes from the Council of Nicea, which sought to crack down on avaricious practices among the clergy, among which was lending money at a profit. The Council condemned this and other attempts at "dishonourable gain."
It was surely a wise teaching, necessary to stop corruption, but there was a slight problem. The Council broadened its mandate beyond the priesthood and implied that the practice was universally wrong. It added scriptural proof from the Psalmist that interest itself was immoral. "He that hath not put out his money to usury [interest], nor taken bribes against the innocent: He that doth these things shall not be moved for ever." The implication was that the rule pertaining to clergy really reflected a general social principle.
And thus began a long tragic history of the Catholic Church's 1000-year war against interest and the money-lending profession. And it is a strange war indeed, one undertaken with little to no substantive basis from scripture (the above hardly suffices). Attacking lenders as heretics contradicts normal commercial dealings. It even contradicts Jesus's own parable of the talents, which presumes and praises the existence of money lenders and condemns the failure to give them idle money as profligacy itself.
The war against interest was a war against basic economic logic. Present goods are more valuable than future goods, so it makes sense that the person who wants something earlier rather than later, but doesn't have the money now, is likely to pay a premium. Further, lending is always risky so it makes sense that there should be a reward attached to undertaking that risk. Finally, money that is lent out is not otherwise employed by the owner and therefore there is an opportunity cost that will be paid and compensation for this sought. For all these reasons and many more, interest is a normal part of peaceful commercial society.
To understand this, it is helpful to consider the case of barter in a desperately poor society. Let's say you have two chickens but only need one. A fellow comes along and wants the other one but has no money. He offers a potato – a pretty shabby deal overall for straight one-for-one trade. But, even so, you want him to have the chicken and you aren't currently in need, so you propose a deal. He can have it if he gives you some eggs from the chicken for a period of one month. After that, he can have the chicken.
You are happy. He is happy. Everyone wins. But why the egg premium? He wanted the chicken now and you didn't need it now. So he pays to feed his more urgent need, and you are glad to relinquish control of your chicken provided there is a stream of income coming out of it. This is the way interest works in a barter economy. True, there is no money involved but the principle is the same as that which is considered a normal part of commercial life today.
And truly, the Church never objected to this sort of deal. After all, on what possible grounds could one object? It is mutually beneficial in every way. No one is ripped off. All is transparent. One could even say that society is far better off this way. The alternative is that one person be without food and the other person holds an idle resource. Better to achieve a great degree of social harmony with this kind of deal than to settle with the inferior alternative.
The introduction of money to the story changes nothing of moral substance. This is because money is nothing but a proxy for goods. It is the most valuable good in society, something acquired not to consume but to hold and trade for other goods. Money also serves an important book keeping function: you can't often add and subtract bartered items (and cow, an apple, and an iPad can't aggregated) but you can manipulate figures in monetary terms.
But for some reason that is unknown, people's brains go haywire when the subject of money comes up. They presume that something evil must be going on because the exchanges get complicated and well developed. How is it that people can get rich not by making things but merely by arbitraging between the present and the future? Isn't there something morally suspect about this practice?
Before the high Middle Ages, it was uncommon for most people to have any money at all. Most peasants worked for food, and traded the wares that they may for good directly. Economies were local and financial institutions were available only to the very rich and powerful. Handling money was not a common experience for most people. It might have appeared that the buying and selling of money itself was the sole province of the sinful.
From a Catholic angle, there is an additional issue that concerns a difficult topic: Jews. They tended to be the money lenders. This posed a problem in a time of intense religious and sectarian concern. In fact, you often find this issue appearing in Church legislation in the middle ages: all kinds of prohibitions and leniencies name the Jews in particular.
Later in the Middle Ages, starting in the 15th century, economies began to change dramatically. Feudalism was giving rise to capitalism, money and finance were becoming a growing part of everyday life, and the buying and lending of money was less the exception than the rule in a commercial life that was reaching an ever wider swath of the population.
Catholics themselves became big players in the emerging world of high finance, particularly with the banking family of Jacob Fugger, which had taken over the role of economic dominance from the Medici family that traded mainly in politics. The Fuggers specialized in lending and collecting, and doing it at the behest of Papal states – which strikes me as non-problematic in every way, but which also seemed to confront a problem from the point of view of social teaching.
It was the neo-Thomists who started the process unraveling traditional teaching and cleared the path for the full legitimization of interest. The first great strides were made by Conrad Summenhart (1465-1511), the chair of theology at Tubingen. He began to make exceptions to the strict doctrine. He wrote that money itself is fruitful, a good that can be bought and sold like any other.
When a money holder lends, he is giving up something that would be otherwise profitable, so he should be compensated for his loss, same as any merchant. Moreover, Summerhart said, it is helpful to think of the money paid in exchange for lending services as a different good from the money itself – that is, possibly, as a gift given to the lender as a sign of appreciation. Summenhart didn't go all the way to license interest but he said that if neither then borrower nor the lender thought of it as such, it was permitted. Thus was interest reduced to state of mind rather than an objective fact. This represented great progress in Church teaching.
The next and final step in the liberalization of interest was taken by Thomas De Vio, Cardinal Cajetan (1468-1534). He was the leading Catholic theologian of his day, a favorite of the Pope, and a defender of Catholicism against Martin Luther. His writings represented the most sophisticated of his time as regards economics. He completely endorsed Summenhart's teaching and took it a step further to say that any loan contract was legitimate if both the borrower and the lender agreed to it in anticipation of some economic benefit. He carefully took apart St. Thomas's own writings on the topic and demonstrated that it was perfectly just for the lender who is giving up use of his property to charge a service fee in exchange.
Since those times, there has been no real debate in the Church on this question. Yes, usury continues to be warned against, though no one makes the attempt any more to distinguish between interest and usury. They were once considered synonymous; today they are distinguished as a reflection of a continuing bias against lenders who would seem to display more avarice than charity in their work. But in practice, there is no clear difference. What's more, even seemingly usurious loan rates serve a social function: the higher the rate of interest, the more saving is encouraged and borrowing discouraged.
John Noonan's book on the scholastic doctrine on usury chronicles all these changes with incredible precision, and provided the source text that other scholars of economic doctrine such as Murray Rothbard have used in their own writings. They demonstrate a wonderful capacity of the Church to learn and grow with the times as regard its social teaching. It should not be a surprise to observe subtle changes even from one papacy to the next, e.g., it has struck many people that John Paul II was friendlier toward market institutions that Benedict XVI.
I don't find this even slightly puzzling. Economics is a science, one very late to develop in the history of ideas. It is not doctrine and it is not morals, subjects on which the Church pronounces infallibly. Economics is not the primary domain of Church competence in any case, and sometimes the line that separate economic theory from faith and morals can become blurry indeed. If nothing else, this history should instill a bit of humility on the part of Church teachers, and a cautionary point as regards economics and other sciences.

subset: commoncrawl


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- copper work
▪ arttools, implements, weapons, and artwork made of copper. Copper's discovery precedes recorded history, and it was the first metal that was used in fashioning tools and weapons. Its use dates at least from 4000 BC in Chaldea, and perhaps earlier. Although bronze, and later iron, became the preferred material for weapons and tools, copper found wide uses in such wares as cooking vessels, household utensils, mirrors, and ornaments. Although unsuited for casting, copper is malleable and readily worked by hammering, chasing, engraving, and cold-rolling. Copper work was often further ornamented by gilding, enamelling, or applying precious stones. From the 8th century, gilded copper was frequently used for liturgical vessels, the characteristic reddish colour of the copper imparting a deeper gold colour to the gilt. The use of gilded copper in Europe reached its peak in the 15th and 16th centuries—primarily in jewelry and ornamental objects. More utilitarian uses of copper work in common housewares grew out of the lower cost of copper than of brass and other metals. The excellent qualities of copper utensils continue to be appreciated in modern times, especially in such items as copper pots and pans.In the 18th century, Sheffield plate was developed, in which thin sheets of silver are fused to copper plate and then formed into the desired object. Sheffield plate enjoyed immediate popularity not only because of the lower cost of silver-plated copper but also because Sheffield plate was designed and fashioned in most of the popular designs of solid silver.
* * *
Universalium. 2010.


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OpenerDirector instances have the following methods:
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Return values and exceptions raised are the same as those of urlopen().
OpenerDirector objects open URLs in three stages:
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In fact, the above algorithm is first tried for methods named default_open. If all such methods return None, the algorithm is repeated for methods named like protocol_open(). If all such methods return None, the algorithm is repeated for methods named unknown_open().
Note that the implementation of these methods may involve calls of the parent OpenerDirector instance's .open() and .error() methods.
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It is approaching that lovely time of year when your family descends on your house for a free Thanksgiving dinner, your mother-in-law inevitably critiques your cooking, and you're left with all of the dirty dishes. Well, for one lucky reader, we're going to make sure you love those dishes.
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A service of the U.S. National Library of Medicine
National Institutes of Health
National Institutes of Health
Melanoma May Return Years Later in Some
But study also found those patients were less likely to die than those with early recurrence
Friday, June 28, 2013
The findings show that people who have had melanoma require lifelong follow-up, the study authors said.
The investigators looked at over 4,700 melanoma patients and found that recurrence occurred in 408 patients who had been disease-free for 10 or more years. The recurrence rates were nearly 7 percent after 15 years and 11 percent after 25 years, according to the study in the July issue of the Journal of the American College of Surgeons.
But the researchers also found that patients whose melanoma recurred 10 or more years later were less likely to die than those whose melanoma recurred within three years of treatment. Those with late recurrence were about 40 percent less likely to die of melanoma than those with early recurrence, and those with late recurrence also had a better overall survival rate.
Patients whose melanoma did not come back until at least 10 years after treatment were younger on average than those with early recurrence (age 41 versus 51).
Also, patients with a later recurrence tended to have had an original melanoma with less dangerous characteristics, the researchers noted. They also found that men accounted for 66 percent of patients with early recurrence, compared with 57 percent of those with late recurrence.
"For patients with melanoma, survival beyond 10 years without a recurrence has been considered nearly synonymous with a cure," lead investigator Dr. Mark Faries, a professor of surgery at the John Wayne Cancer Institute at Saint John's Health Center in Santa Monica, Calif., said in a journal news release. "However, most studies do not follow-up patients longer than 10 years. Our study found that late melanoma recurrence is not rare and that it occurs more frequently in certain patient groups," he noted.
"It appears the risk of melanoma recurrence is never completely gone," Faries said. "One change that should result from our study is that people need to be followed-up for life with a physician after a diagnosis of melanoma," he pointed out.
"Fortunately, the vast majority of melanoma patients who remain disease-free longer than 10 years will not have a recurrence," Faries added. "However, patients should be aware that persistent or unexplained symptoms anywhere in the body might indicate a recurrence of their melanoma, and they should return to their physician to make sure the symptoms are not related."
Nearly 76,700 new cases of melanoma will be diagnosed in the United States this year, according to the American Cancer Society.
Health News Copyright (c) 2013 HealthDay. All rights reserved.
- More Health News on:
- Melanoma


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Yes. Zoning Permit
Yes, a fence can be placed directly on the property line if desired.
Please contact the Westmoreland Tax Assessment office for questions regarding taxing. They can be reached at (724) 830-3425.
No it is not.
For on-lot (septic) systems, contact our Sewage Enforcement Officer during business hours.
For public sewage, please call the Municipal Authority of Westmoreland County (MAWC) at 724-755-5800.
You have six (6) months to start your project.
All permits and applications can be found by using the search feature on this site.
Residential Inspections are performed by Hempfield Township building inspectors.
Commercial Inspections are performed by Code Enforcement Associates (CEA).
PA Attorney General's Consumer Hotline, 1-800-441-2555
Zoning permits – up to 15 business days
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Please see our fee schedule.
Hempfield Township accepts cash, checks, and credit cards. Credit cards will incur a 2.95% or $2.50 minimum processing fee. We do not accept Discover or American Express cards.
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These are quick guidelines, for clarification please refer to our regulations or contact us.
You can find your Zoning District here.
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Permits are required for buildings, sheds, fences, pools, additions, etc. If you are unsure please call our department for information before you build or install.
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Find Our Latest Video Reviews on YouTube!
If you want to stay on top of all of our video reviews of the latest tech, be sure to check out and subscribe to the Gear Live YouTube channel, hosted by Andru Edwards! It's free!
Friday April 22, 2011 11:38 am
Researchers say police already use iPhone tracking data
A pair of mobile forensic researchers who independently identified a location tracking system on the iPhone 4 several months before it was publicized earlier this week say that law enforcement agencies are currently using data from a hidden iOS file called "consolidated.db" in criminal investigations.
Evidence from the location tracking database stored on iPhones "has been used in actual criminal investigations and yes, it's led to convictions," said Alex Levinson, a Rochester Institute of Technology researcher and technical lead for iOS forensics consultant Katana Forensics.
But Levinson and Christopher Vance, a Marshall University digital forensics specialist, also contend that Apple probably included the technology in its iOS operating system to deliver location-based services like iAds rather than to create dossiers on the whereabouts of iPhone users.
A great deal of buzz has surrounded a Wednesday O'Reilly Radar blog post by researchers Pete Warden and Alasdair Allan that highlighted a hidden file on iOS devices like the iPhone and iPad which includes latitude-longitude coordinates and a timestamp to track where such devices have been geographically and when.
But Warden and Allan apparently weren't the first to discover the file.
Vance told us Thursday that he came across the location tracking database shortly after running some forensics software on the iPhone 4 he purchased in the summer of 2010.
"I just happened to get an early release of a forensic product in beta and all of a sudden it pulled out this database," Vance said. He wrote about his discovery in a September 2010 blog post that erroneously stated that GPS data was being stored in the consolidated.db file.
Instead, the database collects location data on iOS devices by tracking connections to cell towers. Vance corrected his earlier post in a February update on his blog.
While he has gone back and forth over Apple's purpose in storing the location tracking data, Vance now says it's likely done to deliver the location-based services that Apple defended in a letter sent to Congress last year.
And the reason Apple uses cell tower connections rather than more precise location tracking data that could be delivered by a built-in GPS?
"If I had to guess, it's probably a matter of OS efficiency," Vance said. "The database is probably there to decrease the amount of time needed to generate GPS information for the location services or iAds built into the apps on iOS. Using assisted GPS is much faster and less of a strain on your battery life."
Vance, who is also a forensics consultant to the West Virginia State Police, said he has checked the consolidated.db file at the request of law enforcement officers but that so far no iPhone's location tracking database he has examined has produced a "smoking gun" that broke open an investigation.
"But it's been helpful," he added. "And that's not to say that we haven't found a 'smoking gun' in our forensics on iPhones or other phones, just not anything directly connected to the [location tracking] database."
The fact that the consolidated.db files have created such an uproar is a bit confusing to Vance and Levinson, who also discovered the database shortly after the iPhone's release in 2010.
Vance said all manner of data found on mobile devices like smartphones are already used as evidence in criminal investigations—much; of it more useful to law enforcement than the consolidated.db files on iPhones.
"These people are carrying around basically computers in their pockets. Analyzing an iPhone is pretty much the same as analyzing an [Apple Mac] OS X computer. You can use browser history, cache data, what you can determine from Google Maps, keyboard logs, call history, etc.," he said.
Levinson said law enforcement agencies that Katana Forensics has worked with have conducted all of their searches on iPhones in a legal manner, either getting warrants or permission from a device's owner to perform a search.
And singling out Apple would be a mistake, Levinson said.
"Third-party applications also use location tracking," he said. "Other OSes do it. From a security standpoint, the OS is not necessarily the biggest vulnerability. The third-party apps are. That's also true from a forensics standpoint. And if you're going to hold Apple accountable, you have to hold the third-party app developers accountable. And you have to hold Android and the other OSes accountable."
But do Google's Android and other mobile OSes like Symbian, WebOS, Windows Phone and the Blackberry OS include something similar to the location tracking and data storage done on iOS devices? Levinson wouldn't say, but mentioned that he is currently researching a number of non-iOS mobile devices and would be presenting his findings soon.
Levinson also said that in the past several months, Katana has collaborated with local, state, national and even international law enforcement agencies on consolidated.db forensics. He wouldn't name any such agencies or identify specific investigations where the iPhone's location tracking file had come into play, but said the number is large, though "not in the hundreds."
Law enforcement agencies including the FBI, Interpol and the New York Police Department had not responded to PCMag.com inquiries about their use of consolidated.db data in investigations as of Thursday afternoon.
Levinson and Vance are also somewhat miffed that Warden and Allan have received credit for "discovering" the iPhone's location tracking technology. Vance seemed more bemused than offended—ca;lling; the rush to lionize the two researchers "a bit of a letdown."
Levinson said he feels "a little bit professionally disrespected." He said he'd pointed out the existence of the file at forensics conferences and that it was even included in a book written by Katana Forensics managing director Sean Morrissey that was published last December.
"I don't want to accuse [Warden and Allan] of being malicious. But if I was going into a new field that was a bit uncharted, I'd feel obligated to learn more about what was going on," he said, contending that the researchers or O'Reilly Radar could have learned of his work in the area fairly easily before publishing a claim to their "discovery."
Will Apple remove location tracking in future versions of iOS? Levinson said there's "no technical reason why they'd have to do so," but said public relations concerns over what could become a cause célèbre for privacy advocates were a different matter.
Apple has not commented publicly on the existence of the location tracking database in its iOS devices.
This article, written by Damon Poeter, originally appeared on PCMag.com and is republished on Gear Live with the permission of Ziff Davis, Inc.
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When to the garden of untroubled thought
I came of late, and saw the open door,
And wished again to enter, and explore
The sweet, wild ways with stainless bloom inwrought,
And bowers of innocence with beauty fraught,
It seemed some purer voice must speak before
I dared to tread that garden loved of yore,
That Eden lost unknown and found unsought.
Then just within the gate I saw a child, --
A stranger-child, yet to my heart most dear;
He held his hands to me, and softly smiled
With eyes that knew no shade of sin or fear:
"Come in," he said, "and play awhile with me;"
"I am the little child you used to be."
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Using Australian Rotary Dial Phones in the USA Will these Telecom PMG Phones work in the USA?We have shipped 30+ of these PMG Telecom rotary dial telephones to the USA. If you have a standard telephone line they will work. If you currently have a working USA Rotary dial phone - they will work (they are very similar to the Bell rotary dial phones) You must be able to get decadic dial tone on your phone line (the vast majority are). They will not work on digital lines (for example on a digital PBX). They may work on a VOIP line on router, but its not a sure thing. You need an adaptor to connect to exisiting USA phone line (you will need an adaptor here) , otherwise you will have to rewire the cord. Shipping We ship these to the USA via Economy Air, which costs around A$ 35 (about US$ 23 depending on the exchange rate) . The phones have not in the past raised any issues with US customs. shipping time is usually 2-3 weeks to the US |
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Researched BCG vaccine for tuberculosis, and infant leukemia
Frappier was Professor of bacteriology and chief of laboratories (Hôpital St.-Luc) at the Université de Montréal. He founded the first French language institute of hygiene in the world, l'Institut de microbiologie et d'hygiène de Montréal, renamed l'Institut Armand-Frappier in 1975.
Frappier studied tuberculosis and BCG (bacille Calmette-Guérin) vaccine. He was one of the first North Americans to confirm the safety and efficacy of BCG as a vaccine for tuberculosis and to develop ways to study and use it. He showed it also had preventative effects in cases of infant leukemia. In addition, he studied the mechanisms of infection and of resistance to certain infections.
Sources: The Canadian Encyclopedia 2000 ed.; Prix de Québec; Canadian Lung Association; Image: Armand Frappier Museum website.
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Smoke Cartel
Welcome to the fam, friend.
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Two students at San Francisco State University have been diagnosed with chickenpox, prompting officials to send a health warning to students.
The letter states that the second student, who was diagnosed Friday, lived on campus and visited buildings including creative arts, ethnic studies, psychology, the library, student services, the student center and the Towers and Dining Center.
The first student to be diagnosed does not live in the residence halls, and visited campus on two days during the infectious stage, on Monday Aug. 27 and Wednesday Aug. 29th, according to a letter from Alastair K. Smith, directors of student health services.
The first student visited buildings including creative arts, humanities, science, business, Burk Hall and the bookstore. The student also traveled to and from campus by public transportation on BART and the Muni 28 bus.
Chickenpox is spread airborne particles, respiratory droplets and skin-to-skin contact.
Exposure to chickenpox in those who are not immune can results in infection in two to three weeks. Symptoms include fever, tiredness, headaches and a rash that turns into itchy, fluid-filled blisters that scab after several days.
Those who have had chicken pox or received two doses of the vaccine should be immune, Smith said. Those who are not immune are at risk of complications from chicken pox if they are pregnant or immune compromised.
If you are not immune and think you have been exposed, contact your health care provider immediately. There may be preventative measures that can be taken within 3-5 days of exposure.
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The Panel OF DOOM makes its Jacon debut Friday night, April 28th at 11:00 PM in the Main Events room! Be prepared to move your dead bones and experience firsthand an infinite carnival of wizards, ninjas, Chuck Norris, Heino, and other exciting celestial phenomena!
Generally I do Anime That Sucks Saturday nights at Jacon and the Panel OF DOOM at Anime Festival Orlando in July, but I just had to jump at the offer to run something in Main Events, even if most people will be off raving or room partying by then. Given that I often whine on the Internet about how the Florida conventions need to be more unique, I'd be a hypocrite if I did the Panel OF DOOM at both Jacon and AFO. With that in mind, I'll run Anime That Sucks at AFO instead, thus swapping the two. That shouldn't really affect the schedulers either way since both require similar rooms and tech setups.
But wait, what would go on during the time I was originally slotted to do Anime That Sucks at Jacon? A special live edition of Anime World Order would be cool, but since I think there are other, better podcasts planning to do "live at the con" episodes maybe I could try and finally implement the "Your Favorite Anime Sucks" panel now that those guys at Ohayocon have proven that the idea is actually feasible (crowd tosses out the name of an anime, hosts--it couldn't just be me--tell you why that anime SUCKS)? Ideas, people!


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Yum. Coffee in any of its flavors or varieties is a liquid love in my every day life.
And I have seen this lovely potholder pattern that have seen pop up all over the web. Seeing it the first time I would have never believed that it is crocheted as individual blocks and then crocheted in a line with simple border of single crochet. (This is where my daughter wrapped it around her hips and determined it would make the cutest of belts.....hmmm.)


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This is "An Island in the Sea", painted by the New Yorker George Bellows in 1911. Bellows is getting a full retrospective at the National Gallery in Washington, and it leaves him looking pretty uneven, with his famous boxing tableaux still seeming his best work. It seems to me that Bellows was most successful when he worked basically as a caricaturist, under the influence of Daumier. His boxing pictures function that way, even though they're scaled as history paintings. This lovwly little image of an island was painted at about the same time as his boxers, and also has a note of caricature. It's almost a child's cliche of insularity: Just a blob of land marooned in the ocean, and a storybook house on the beach.
For a full visual survey of past Daily Pics visit blakegopnik.com/archive.


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Ohio Supercomputer Center (OSC) has announced that 12 high school finalists will embark on its Summer Institute (SI) 2003: A Prime Year for Supercomputing.
The OSC SI Program has been offered to Ohio's brightest high school freshmen and sophomores for 15 years. SI gives students the opportunity to work with OSC's most advanced supercomputers.
During SI 2003, students will work in teams with scientists, learning to apply scientific methods to problem-based projects using OSC resources. The program will give students an opportunity to exercise problem solving, use interpersonal communication skills, and be creative while learning about high performance computing and networking.
"This year, we've decided to try something new," said Dave Ennis, SI Director and OSC Senior Supercomputer Research Specialist. "We're going to put a high school teacher in with the groups of students. They'll go through the program together."
Ennis said he thinks both the students and teachers will learn a lot from one another. "Teachers may learn some programming tips from the students, and the students will be exposed to mathematics and higher level topics from the teachers."
The admission process for SI is very selective. In their applications, students must complete a computing programming assignment, written essay, and mathematical problems. Students must also provide teacher recommendations.
Congratulations to the students selected to take part in SI 2003! They are:
- Andi Fair Hilliard Darby HS
- Abhijeet Gummadavelli Sycamore HS
- Kim Jackson Centennial HS
- Robert Jen St. Charles
- Dallin Jensen Perrysburg HS
- David Kupiec Kenston HS
- Daniel Litt Orange HS
- Jennifer Piepenburg Shaker Heights HS
- Evgeniy Tkachenko Dublin Scioto HS
- Arthur Wang Sycamore HS
- Marc Weil Charles F. Brush HS
- Jean Wheasler Dublin Coffman HS


text: 262 Friends Are Fun Happily 1. It is fun to have a friend who will play with you. It is fun to have a friend who can stay with you. It is fun to make a friend for your whole life through. But to have a friend, you must be a friend, too. 2. If you want to play a game, you should play it fair. If you have a piece of cake, you must learn to share. Then if you should need a friend, you would have one there. If you want a friend, you must show that you care. Words and music: Glenn Gordon, b. 1956. © 1981 IRI


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An interesting historical tidbit from "Today's Birthdays" at 6-4-2:
Fred Merkle BRO b. 1888, played 1916-1917, d. 1956-03-02. Infamous with the Giants as the author of "Merkle's Boner", a baserunning gaffe that occurred as the last play in a September 23, 1908 game against the rival Cubs. With Merkle on first, what should have been a game-winning hit instead turned into controversy as Merkle headed to the dugout, as was the custom at the time, instead of touching second base on his way to crossing home plate. As the Giants home crowd flooded the field, Cubs second baseman Johnny Evers stepped on second base while in possession of the ball (or, anyway, a ball, since Giants pitcher Joe McGinnity had appeared to hurl the game ball deep into the crowd), claiming a forceout and the negation of the winning run. With fans already making the field impassable, the game's result was nullified. At the end of the season, the Cubs and Giants were tied, and so both teams had to replay the now-missing game; the Giants lost it and the pennant.
Also, check out a pre-Ebbets Field perspective over at The Trolley Dodger.


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After settlement, Minn. to destroy 1.1M newborn blood samples
By the end of the day Tuesday, the Minnesota Department of Health plans to have destroyed about 1.1 million archived dried blood spot cards and newborn screening test results from its archives.
The action follows a settlement this week with 21 families who sued the agency for storing the genetic material without parental consent.
But although the settlement ends a long-running court fight over the department's collection and storage practices, the battle over the state's archiving plan going forward appears to be far from over.
The screening program collects blood spots on a card from all infants within 24 to 48 hours of their birth. The health department tests the blood spots for 55 genetic or congenital disorders for the approximately 200 babies born in Minnesota each day.
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Health researchers had used the stored material to ensure the quality and accuracy of the program by comparing old blood tests to new ones. They also were able to look for emerging trends among newborns in certain ethnic groups or regions.
But after the families sued, the Minnesota Supreme Court in 2011 ruled that the department's archive policy violated the state's Genetic Information Act. The settlement, which compelled the department to destroy the stored samples, does not levy damages, but requires the Health Department to pay nearly $1 million in plaintiffs' legal fees.
"My hope is that they will learn a lesson from this and begin to respect the genetic privacy of individuals, parents and children," said Twila Brase, president of the Citizen's Council for Health Freedom. The health privacy advocacy group helped organize some of the parents who sued the health department.
Brase said the parents were primarily worried about the many possible ways that the government might misuse DNA belonging to their children.
"They could look at the two blood spots together, the genetic profile of two individuals and say, 'You know what, the chance is that you're going to have a very expensive child and we can't afford it,'" she said. "There are all these sorts of things that could happen if someone knew what your DNA said."
While the suit was playing out in court, the Legislature put new storage restrictions in place. The Health Department may now only store newborn genetic material for 71 days, unless a blood spot reveals an abnormal test result. Those positive tests may be stored for up to two years.
Jim Koppel, the department's deputy commissioner, said the destruction of the genetic material is unfortunate because it will stifle research into finding new tests that may help identify new congenital conditions.
"Certainly the potential for research is compromised if we aren't able to have a significant number of [blood] spots available," Koppel said. "But we have to do it the right way. We have to follow the law."
Among those who will miss the archived material is University of Minnesota professor Mark Schleiss, who has used it to determine if children who have unexplained hearing loss were exposed to a common virus before birth. He said his findings have confirmed the prenatal exposure in some children.
"My heart goes out in particular to parents and families in Minnesota because now they are being deprived of the freedom and flexibility as taxpayers, as citizens and parents of having an option to help explain issues should they arise in their children," he said.
Schleiss said he will continue his research by working with screening data collected by other states. But other researchers may not be able to find a suitable replacement for the data.
The Legislature has asked the health department to submit ideas on what Minnesota could do with data from its newborn screening program, if the Legislature lifts the current restrictions on long-term DNA storage.
Koppel said the Department of Health still has a huge interest in preserving access for researchers. He said the department will propose three possible options to lawmakers next month.
"We are going to come to the legislature this year with a report giving them options on what we should be doing in the future on the storage and use issue and we will abide by whatever they decide," he said.


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"10 Ways to Avoid Mucking Up the World Any Worse Than It Already Is"
American columist, author, humorist, and political satirist who addresses a wide range of social and political matters in a good natured and humorous manner, Mr Baker won the Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 1979 and again in 1983 for his autobiography.
Connecticut College, New London, Connecticut USA
In a sensible world I would now congratulate the Class of 1995 and sit down without further comment. I am sure the Class of 1995 wishes I would do so. Unfortunately for the Class of 1995 we do not live in a sensible world.
We live in a world far more slavish in its obedience to ancient custom than we like to admit. And ancient commencement-day custom demands that somebody stand up here and harangue the poor graduates until they beg for mercy. The ancient rule has been: make them suffer. I still remember the agony of my own graduation at The John Hopkins University.
They had imported some heat from the Sahara Desert especially for the occasion, and the commencement orator spoke for two and a half days. That was in 1947.
Luckily, the forces of mercy have made big gains since then. The authorities of Connecticut College have suggested that for me to speak longer than 20 minutes would be regarded as cruel and inhuman punishment and that if I go as long as 30 minutes several strong men will mount this platform and forcibly remove me. But if I can finish in 15 minutes – 15 minutes! – they will let me stay for lunch. They know their man, ladies and gentleman. When I smell a free lunch, I go for it.
So if I can do this right, you'll see the back of me before we get to minute 16. This will not be easy. Condensing a graduation speech into 15 minutes is like trying to squeeze a Wagnerian opera into a telephone booth. To do it I had to strip away all the frills. This means you don't even get any warm-up jokes. So those of you who came just for the jokes might as well leave now.
All right, let's plunge right ahead into the dull part. That's the part where the commencement speaker tells the graduates to go forth into the world, then gives advice on what to do when they get out there. This is a ridiculous waste of time. The graduates never take the advice, as I have learned from long experience. The best advice I can give anybody about going out into the world is this: Don't do it. I have been out there. It is a mess.
I have been giving graduates this advice ever since 1967 when I spoke to a batch of them over at Bennington. That was 28 years ago. Some of your parent were probably graduating there that day and went on to ignore my advice.
Thanks to the genius of my generation, I told them, it was a pretty good world out there – they went forth into it, they would mess it up. So I urged them not to go.
I might as well have been shouting down a rain barrel. They didn't listen. They went forth anyhow. And look what happened. Within a year Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy were murdered. Then Nixon took us all to The Watergate. Draft riots. Defeat in Vietnam. John Lennon killed. Ronald Reagan and his trillion-dollar deficit.
Over the years I spoke to many graduating classes, always pleading with them: Whatever you do, do not go forth.
Nobody listened. They kept right on going forth anyhow. And look what we have today: Newt Gingrich and Bill Clinton.
So I will not waste my breath today pleading with you not to go forth. Instead I limit myself to a simple plea: When you get out there in the world try not to make it any worse than it already is. I thought it might help to give you a list of the hundred most important things you can do to avoid making the world any worse. Since I'm shooting for 15 minutes, however, there is no time to give you all 100. You will have to make do with 10. Short as the public attention span is these days, nobody could remember 100 anyhow. Even 10 may be asking too much.
You remember the old joke about how television news would have reported the story of the Ten Commandments: "God today issued 10 commandments, three of which are…"
He is my list: 10 things to help you avoid making the world worse than it already is.
One: Bend down once in a while and smell a flower.
Two: Don't go around in clothes that talk. There is already too much talk in the world. We've got so many talking people there's hardly anybody left to listen. With radio and television and telephones we've got talking furniture. With bumper stickers we've got talking cars. Talking clothes just add to the uproar. If you simply cannot resist being an incompetent klutz, don't boast about it by wearing a tee shirt that says 'underachiever and proud of it.' Being dumb is not the worst thing in the world, but letting your clothes shout it out loud depresses the neighbors and embarrasses your parents.
Point three follows from point two, and it's this: Listen once in a while. It's amazing what you can hear. On a hot summer day in the country you can hear the corn growing, the crack of a tin roof buckling under the power of the sun. In a real old-fashioned parlor silence so deep you can hear the dust settling on the velveteen settee, you might hear the footsteps of something sinister gaining on you, or a heart-stoppingly beautiful phrase from Mozart you haven't heard since childhood, or the voice of somebody – now gone – whom you loved. Or sometime when you're talking up a storm so brilliant, so charming that you can hardly believe how wonderful you are, pause just a moment and listen to yourself. It's good for the soul to hear yourself as others hear you, and next time maybe, just maybe, you will not talk so much, so loudly, so brilliantly, so charmingly, so utterly shamefully foolishly.
Point four: Sleep in the nude. In an age when people don't even get dressed to go to the theater anymore, it's silly getting dressed up to go to bed. What's more, now that you can no longer smoke, drink gin or eat bacon and eggs without somebody trying to make you feel ashamed of yourself, sleeping in the nude is one deliciously sinful pleasure you can commit without being caught by the Puritan police squads that patrol the nation.
Point five: Turn off the TV once or twice a month and pick up a book. It will ease your blood pressure. It might even wake up your mind, but if it puts you to sleep you're still a winner. Better to sleep than have to watch that endless parade of body bags the local news channel marches through your parlor.
Six: Don't take your gun to town. Don't even leave it home unless you lock all your bullets in a safe deposit box in a faraway bank. The surest way to get shot is not to drop by the nearest convenience store for a bottle of milk at midnight, but to keep a loaded pistol in you own house. What about your constitutional right to bear arms, you say. I would simply point out that you don't have to exercise a constitutional right just because you have it. You have the constitutional right to run for president of the United States, abut most people have too much sense to insist on exercising it.
Seven: Learn to fear the automobile. It is not the trillion-dollar deficit that will finally destroy America. It is the automobile. Congressional studies of future highway needs are terrifying. A typical projection shows that when your generation is middle-aged, Interstate 95 between Miami and Fort Lauderdale will have to be 22 lanes wide to avert total paralysis of south Florida. Imagine an entire country covered with asphalt. My grandfather's generation shot horses. Yours had better learn to shoot automobiles.
Eight: Have some children. Children add texture to your life. They will save you from turning into old fogies before you're middle-aged. They will teach you humility. When old age overtakes you, as it inevitably will I'm sorry to say, having a few children will provide you with people who will feel guilty when they're accused of being ungrateful for all you've done for them. It's almost impossible nowadays to find anybody who will feel guilty about anything, including mass murder. When you reach the golden years, your best bet is children, the ingrates.
Nine: Get married. I know you don't want to hear this, but getting married will give you a lot more satisfaction in the long run than your BMW. It provides a standard set of parent for your children and gives you that second income you will need when it's time to send those children to Connecticut College. What's more, without marriage you will have practically no material at all to work with when you decide to write a book or hire a psychiatrist.
When you get married, whatever you do, do not ask a lawyer to draw up a marriage contract spelling out how your lives will be divvied up when you get divorced. It's hard enough making a marriage work without having a blueprint for its destruction drawn up before you go to the altar. Speaking of lawyers brings me to point nine and a half, which is: Avoid lawyers unless you have nothing to do with the rest of your life but kill time.
And finally, point 10: Smile. You're one of the luckiest people in the world. You're living in America. Enjoy it. I feel obliged to give you this banal advice because, although I've lived through the Great Depression, World War II, terrible wars in Korea and Vietnam, and half a century of cold war, I have never seen a time when there were so many Americans so angry or so mean-spirited or so sour about the country as there are today.
Anger has become the national habit. You see it on the sullen faces of fashion models scowling out of magazines. it pours out of the radio. Washington television hams snarl and shout at each other on television. Ordinary people abuse politicians and their wives with shockingly coarse insults. Rudeness has become an acceptable way of announcing you are sick and tired of it all and are not going to take it anymore. Vile speech is justified on the same ground and is inescapable.
America is angry at Washington, angry at the press, angry at immigrants, angry at television, angry at traffic, angry at people who are well off and angry at people who are poor, angry at blacks and angry at whites. The old are angry at the young, the young angry at the old. Suburbs are angry at the cities, cities are angry at the suburbs. Rustic America is angry at both whenever urban and suburban invaders threaten the rustic sense of having escaped from God's angry land. A complete catalog of the varieties of bile poisoning the American soul would fill a library. The question is: why? Why has anger become the common response to the inevitable ups and down of nation life? The question is baffling not just because the American habit even in the worst of times has traditionally been mindless optimism, but also because there is so little for Americans to be angry about nowadays. We are the planet's undisputed super power. For the first time in 60 years we enjoy something very much like real peace. We are by all odds the wealthiest nation on earth, though admittedly our vast treasure is not evenly shared.
Forgive me the geezer's sin of talking about "the bad old days," but the country is still full of people who remember when 35 dollars a week was considered a living wage for a whole family. People whine about being overtaxed, yet in the 1950s the top income-tax rate was 91 percent, universal military service was the law of the land, and racial segregation was legally enforced in large parts of the country.
So what explains the fury and dyspepsia? I suspect it's the famous American ignorance of history. People who know nothing of even the most recent past are easily gulled by slick operators who prosper by exploiting the ignorant. Among these rascals are our politicians. Politicians flourish by sowing discontent. They triumph by churning discontent into anger. Press, television and radio also have a big financial stake in keeping the county boiling mad.
Good news, as you know, does not sell papers or keep millions glued to radios and TV screens.
So when you get out there in the world, ladies and gentlemen, you're going to find yourself surrounded by shouting, red-in-the-face, stomping-mad politicians, radio yakmeisters and, yes sad to say, newspaper columnists, telling you 'you never had it so bad' and otherwise trying to spoil your day.
When they come at you with that , ladies and gentlemen, give them a wink and a smile and a good view of your departing back. And as you stroll away, bend down to smell a flower.
Now it seems I have run past the 15-minute limit and will have to buy my own lunch. That's life Class of 1995. No free lunch.
My sermon is done.


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WASHINGTON (AP) -- U.S. students are falling behind their international rivals. Young people aren't adept at new technology. America's economy will suffer if schools don't step up their game.
"A Nation at Risk," the report issued 30 years ago by President Ronald Reagan's Education Department, was meant as a wake-up call for the country. It spelled out where the United States was coming up short in education and what steps could be taken to avert a crisis.
But its warnings still reverberate today, with 1 in 4 Americans failing to earn a high school degree on time and the U.S. lagging other countries in the percentage of young people who complete college.
"A Nation at Risk" spooked the public, urged an overhaul of how and what children are taught and sparked the school reform movement in the country. Current reform advocates such Michelle Rhee, the former District of Columbia schools chancellor, and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush can trace their work back to the report.
"We opened the genie from the bottle and said, 'You aren't doing so well,'" said Xavier University of Louisiana President Norman C. Francis, a member of the commission that produced the dire warning. "For us, we felt good about the fact that we wrote something that needed to be said. We had the research. And we hoped we would have a greater measure of return."
At times, President Barack Obama has seemed to take his cues from the report.
"What is at stake is nothing less than the American dream," he said in 2009, calling for education overhaul to keep pace with other counties.
"Despite resources that are unmatched anywhere in the world, we have let our grades slip, our schools crumble, our teacher quality fall short and other nations outpace us," he said.
Russ Whitehurst, director of the Brown Center on Education Policy at the nonpartisan Brookings Institution and a former senior Education Department official, calls the report prescient. "The themes that it stressed — the increasing role of technology, globalization — is now the everyday stuff of education. But it wasn't at the time."
"I can't think of anything that painted with quite as broad a stroke as 'A Nation at Risk,'" he added.
Its impact, however, was not as broad.
The commissioners urged extending the school year from 180 days to up to 220 days. The report also suggested an 11-month contract for teachers so they could spend their summers preparing for the next year. Neither recommendation has been put into widespread use.
The commissioners also said teacher salaries should be increased to be "professionally competitive." Again, there hasn't been near the movement commissioners sought. In today's dollars, the average teacher earned $46,700 in 1983 and $54,900 in 2010, according to the Education Department.
But some of the commission's other recommendations were put into practice, including a more rigorous curriculum. For instance, students graduating in 1982 had an average of 2.2 science credits on their transcripts. In 2009, that average number rose to 3.5 credits.
And the class of 1982 left high school with 2.6 math credits, compared with the 2009 graduates' 3.9 credits, according to Education Department data.
"The results are mixed," said William Bennett, who served as Reagan's second-term education secretary. "We have progress being paid to the right things: content, accountability. ... It was right about how we needed to beef up courses and how we needed to be stronger."
But when Bennett compares U.S. results with those of other nations, there's no reason to celebrate.
"If you look at those numbers, you get the story for 30 years," he said. "If there's a bottom line, it's that we're spending twice as much money on education as we did in '83 and the results haven't changed all that much."
American fourth-graders are 11th in the world in math in the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study, the measure of nations against each other. U.S. eighth-graders ranked ninth in math, according to those 2011 results.
The Program for International Student Assessment measurement found the United States ranked 31st in math literacy among 15-year-old students and below the international average. The same 2009 tests found the United States ranked 23rd in science among the same students, but posting an average score.
It's impossible to compare the rankings before 1995, when these international math and science tests were first given. The first international math literacy and science tests were given in 2001.
Yet domestic tests show there have not been major changes in students' scores.
Between 1980 and 2008, 13-year-old students posted only a 2-point gain in reading scores and 17-year-old students saw just a 1-point gain during that time. The tests were scored on a scale of 0 to 500, meaning the change was statistically insignificant.
Similarly, 13-year-olds saw a 12-point gain in math scores between 1982 and 2008. Seventeen-year-old students saw an 8-point gain during the same time on math scores. Again, the tests followed a scale of 0 to 500.
"We haven't yet gotten near the payoff that we want and need in terms of achievement in 30 years," said Chester Finn, a former senior Education Department official who now heads the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a conservative think tank.
"The fact that 30 years later, despite all of the reforming, the gains are so modest, they ought to serve to energize and even panic today's policymakers," he said.
Of course, stagnant scores don't automatically mean stagnant learning; higher standards could yield lower scores.
Domestic measurements comparing U.S. students to one another are relatively new and tests aren't given every year. Also, tracing changes isn't as simple as looking at the United States' standing compared with other countries today.
What is clear is that "A Nation at Risk" cast the United States as on the precipice of collapse, not unlike the warnings that followed the Soviet Union's 1957 launch of the Sputnik satellite, which caught Americans by surprise.
While other education studies urged action, none was as intentionally alarming as this one.
"If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war," the commissioners wrote. "As it stands, we have allowed this to happen to ourselves. ... We have, in effect, been committing an act of unthinking, unilateral educational disarmament."
In a brisk 36 pages, the authors warned that schools were not preparing students for their future and cautioned that the country would suffer. In some ways, the same warnings have appeared in most reports on education in the last decades.
The report continued, "The educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a nation and a people."
Last year, another commission borrowed that indictment of mediocrity in similar language.
"The sad fact is that the rising tide of mediocrity is not something that belongs in history books," concluded a Council on Foreign Relations panel led by former New York City schools chief Joel Klein and former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
When the Reagan-era commission began its work, no one expected the report to be so critical. In fact, Reagan campaigned for president on a pledge to dismantle the same Education Department that convened these leaders.
Instead, the commissioners brought together experts and original research to make the case for an expanded role for education. They wrote a document that Reagan eventually would wrap himself in, travel the country to promote and use as a rhetorical prop during the final decade of the Cold War.
"This was much more a political document. ... A lot of this was just bombastic, plug-and-play rhetoric," said Frederick Hess, director of education policy at the conservative American Enterprise Institute.
Where it excelled at language, it came up short on specifics, he said.
The data the commissioners used to reach their conclusions and recommendations 30 years ago pale in comparison to what researchers today have. The report sparked volumes of tests and rankings now common to measure students.
"Gosh, I think they got the message right, but the facts weren't strong enough to back them up," said Whitehurst, the Brookings scholar who was the first chief of the Education Department's current research arm. "A report trying to draw the same conclusions today would have more research."
Even so, the report has its place in history.
"It's been the most influential report on education in my lifetime. It was so blunt," said Michael Rebell, a professor of law and education at Columbia University's Teachers College. "It gave us the whole standards movement."
Francis, a member of the original commission, said the report should have scared Americans into much more sweeping action.
"We were saying in 1983, 'This is a global society emerging and you need to worry about this now,'" he said.
Yet, despite the urgency, the report yielded no significant legislation and many of the problems it identified have not been solved.
"I still think we made a contribution," Francis said. "But maybe it could have been much more. But you never look back."


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GH's Rick, Monica & Alan in 1980 |
Robinson's character, Rick Webber, will air April 1 in scenes with Rick's former love Monica (Leslie Charleson).
"I could never have predicted I'd be rejoining the group but I guess anything is possible on a soap, even when you've been dead 10 years!" says Robinson, whose GH character was killed off in 2002. "I looked pretty scruffy when I showed up at GH," he says. "I had long hair and a flavor saver on my chin because of the movie, so they tried to clean me up. They wanted me to look as much like Rick as possible, so they bring out this old photo they found in the files. It was me 35 years ago before I was cast on GH! I said, 'You want me to look like that?'"
GH head writer Ron Carlivati also felt the need for damage control. "I grew up loving Rick and Monica — to me, as a young fan, they were what GH was all about — and I really wanted to find a way to bring Rick back despite his death," Carlivati says. "I also couldn't imagine Rick would do some of the horrible things he did in his last appearance. That wasn't the Rick Webber I remembered!"
Robinson first joined GH in 1978, replacing Michael Gregory as Rick. His pairing with Denise Alexander's Lesley was so popular, the actors were reunited on ANOTHER WORLD in the late 1980s.
As expected, Stuart Damon will also be appearing during GH's 50th anniversary celebration. Look for Alan to pop up on March 29.
- 50 Greatest Soap Couples: #30 Rick & Lesley


text:
In 2010, a man named Troy Geske died at the Colorado Mental Health Institute of Pueblo after being wrestled by staff members onto a bed, where he was restrained with straps and left by himself, face down. He asphyxiated.
Geske's death resulted in the state's paying a $775,000 settlement to his family and a ban on the use of prone restraint in state hospitals. The tragedy also accelerated a concerted effort in Colorado to limit the use of seclusion and restraint for people receiving mental-health treatment.
Seclusion, or confining a person alone in a room, and restraint, or physically preventing a person's movement, have long been common tools for controlling people in a mental-health crisis – particularly when violence is a risk.
But state health officials regard the procedures as a "treatment failure," in which risks include "serious injury or death, re-traumatization of people who have a history of trauma, and loss of dignity and other psychological harm."
Hospitals, clinics and mental health centers – including both state-funded and private-sector institutions – reported 12 percent fewer instances of seclusion and restraint in fiscal year 2013 than two years earlier.
Still, the state's latest report on the use of these and other mental-health procedures, released May 23, shows that minorities are more likely to be put into these punishing conditions than whites. The data show:
- African-Americans make up 11 percent of the 1,498 Coloradans secluded or restrained in hospitals and other mental-health settings last year, according to the annual report by the state's Department of Human Services.
- By comparison, only around 4 percent of the total population in the state is black, according to the latest available census data from 2012, while about 8 percent of the instances of mandated mental-health treatment – including 72-hour holds, certifications, seclusion, restraint and involuntary medication – in fiscal 2013 involved black patients.
- Whites show up more or less proportionally in mandated mental-health treatment. They make up around 70 percent of the state's population, and were involved in 69 percent of the instances of mental-health treatment last year.
- However, white patients made up only 53 percent of those put into seclusion and restraint.
- Hispanics are underrepresented in mandated mental-health treatment, raising questions about Latinos' access to care. Hispanics make up 21 percent of the state's population, but were involved in only 13 percent of the instances of mandated treatment.
- Like blacks, Hispanics are more likely to be subject to the most punitive conditions while in care. About 30 percent of the people put into seclusion and restraint last year were Hispanic.
A series of investigations into the state's behavioral health care system by Rocky Mountain PBS I-News, "Untreated: How Ignoring Mental Illness Costs Us All," has found that for many people with mental illnesses, help is hard to find.
While demand for psychiatric services has increased significantly in recent years, the supply of inpatient services has dropped, straining the remaining hospitals and clinics that do provide these services.
Health officials at the Colorado Department of Human Services say they haven't examined the apparent racial disparity in the use of punitive measures like seclusion and restraint.
Patrick Fox, an official with the department, says he has no insight into why African Americans may be disproportionately subject to the harsh procedures, and the issue hadn't previously been brought to his attention.
But he said that given documented differences in the treatment of minorities in the criminal justice system – where blacks are disproportionately arrested and given longer sentences – discrepancies in mental-health treatment are "not surprising."
Recent records of incidents of violence and alleged abuse at the state mental health institutes at Fort Logan and Pueblo show that seclusion and restraint are still used as tools to control patients who are perceived as a risk to others. At times, residents complain that the measures cause injuries.
In December, for instance, a teen patient at Fort Logan was put into four-point restraints after trying to kick and grab staff while experiencing delusions of needing surgery, according to the hospital's report.
He later complained of feeling numbness in his hands from the restraints – allegations that the hospital said it wasn't able to substantiate. The Colorado health department investigated and agreed with the institute.
In a separate instance in May 2013, a female patient in her 30s said she knocked for 15 minutes at the window of the room where she was held in seclusion, needing to use the bathroom. Nobody came, and she urinated on the floor.
"I'm used to being in seclusion," she told investigators later. "But that's not right that I had to pee on the floor."
One nurse resigned and another was disciplined as a result of the hospital's investigation.
Mark Silverstein, legal director at the Colorado chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, says the practice—and potential for racial bias—deserves a close look.
"Seclusion and restraint are some of the most serious deprivations of liberty that there are in an institutional setting, so there's certainly a risk of abuse, and there's a history of abuse," says Silverstein.
A lack of funding for research into racial disparities in the behavioral-health care arena in Colorado hampers efforts to address the problems, says Julie Reiskin, executive director of the Colorado Cross-Disability Coalition, which advocates on behalf of people with disabilities.
Reiskin says her organization often hears concerns from people of color that they or their family members are ignored, refused treatment or funneled into jails and prisons when they seek help for mental illness.
Marlene Murillo, an executive assistant at the coalition, is one of them. Murillo, who is Hispanic, says efforts to find help for her 31-year-old son – who is schizophrenic, has substance abuse problems, and refuses treatment – have more often resulted in his being jailed than hospitalized.
Others, says Reiskin, say they're treated more punitively than whites when they are able to access the health care system.
"For anybody with a mental illness, even though there's understanding that these are illnesses, they're treated like they're bad," says Reiskin. "That's really exacerbated around people of color."
Without enough state-directed research into the issue, says Reiskin, complaints are treated as "anecdotal."
Simone Charles, an African-American Navy veteran who recently trained to become a peer support specialist to people with mental illnesses, says a perception that the mental-health care system is unfair to blacks already deters people from seeking the help they need.
Charles, who is 48 and lives in Denver, recalls being physically restrained by four male staff members as a teenager, when she was a student in a Kentucky school for girls who had been sexually abused. She says she was kept in a quiet room for days at a time. But only in retrospect did she wonder whether she was disciplined more than other girls in the class because of her color.
"I've never been restrained as an adult," says Charles, who has post-traumatic stress disorder, "I learned that you can't afford to be crazy and violent and black in America, because they're going to lock you up."
This report appears in partnership with Rocky Mountain PBS I-News. Contract Kristin Jones a firstname.lastname@example.com.


text:
Is President Obama evil or "just" wrong? A Rasputin or a Chamberlain?
Here's a letter I recently received:
"Tuesday morning I happened upon your show. You were so good and I had never heard you before. But alas, you began to extol Obama's recognition that there are certain things he knows he should have done differently. It was a nice hour or so while it lasted.
"Obama deserves no credit for anything. The man is a liar, a manipulator, a narcissist, a psychopath, a control freak, a Marxist, has no depth of knowledge about anything, etc., etc. But there you were, giving him the benefit of the doubt. 'Aw, shucks, he's not so bad after all.' He spewed this garbage right before the election and yet you believed him?! Obama has to have a change of heart, not a change of mind."
Point of clarification: I said and wrote that he would be the most radical, left-wing president in the history of this country -- and that the guilt-ridden post-racialists who put him there would rue the day. Unfortunately, Obama has lived down to my expectations.
But calling the President a Hitler without the mustache is an unserious position and one that does nothing to dissuade Obama supporters, many of whom now suffer nearly terminal buyer's remorse. It's as obtuse as saying "Bush Lied, People Died," or that George W. Bush ran for president so he could fabricate the intel to unjustifiably take the country to war to avenge his father and enrich his military contractor friends. And Obama doesn't act alone. Every Democratic senator voted for the "stimulus" and for ObamaCare. Obama's leftism is mainstream to his party. If Obama is evil, what does this make those who support his agenda?
It's more than enough to say that Obama is an inexperienced, naive, wrongheaded ideologue who, even now, doesn't recognize the harm he is doing to the country.
But with crucial elections looming, Obama has already retreated on his promise to repeal "don't ask, don't tell" and now says it's Congress' responsibility to change the law. Meanwhile, his Justice Department defends DADT in court.
He hasn't even raised the issue of another bank bailout or a government-forced cessation of foreclosures -- despite the banks' recent admissions of negligence in processing home foreclosures. The Obama of two years ago would have used this as a pretext to intrude, if not take over the banks. What happened to his outgoing chief of staff's admonition to "never allow a crisis to go to waste"?
Obama no longer uses the word "stimulus."
He has exempted a number of businesses and organizations from some ObamaCare regulations.
He no longer talks about cap and trade or union card check.
When was the last time we heard about shutting down Gitmo?
When was the last time we heard about a New York trial for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed?
Outreach failed. Islamofascists are still determined to kill us. The Arab and Muslim world has an even lower opinion of America than during the Bush administration. Obama's foolish attack on Israel for building "settlements" in east Jerusalem has made the Palestinians even more intransigent about the "peace process."
To paraphrase Joe Biden, no more "big f---ing deals." It's now small ball. But left-wing small ball is still left-wing.
But come November, things will change.
The next two -- or, after he is dragged reluctantly to the center, even six -- years of the Obama presidency will be spent trying to keep ObamaCare from unraveling, as opposed to the march toward a Canadian-style single-payer socialized health care system that he truly wants.
The President is an arrogant man with a racial chip on his shoulder. He is a wealth redistributionist who thinks of America as an imperialist power that needs to apologize to the world for its past sins.
But Obama is not evil. He's simply wrong, which in many ways makes him harder to deal with -- and even more dangerous. Obama has already made America a weaker nation -- both domestically and as a foreign power. That he's not out to intentionally destroy America makes him a larger menace. Good intentions make it difficult to persuade people to fight against his policies, and to focus not on intentions but rather on consequences and results.
Here's what C.S. Lewis said about people like Obama:
"Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victim may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated, but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."
Over the next two years, Obama's inevitable retreat toward the middle will be a tactical one, not reflective of a change of heart. It doesn't matter. He will either check himself or be checked.
America, however, will bear the scars for decades.


text:
A BROMSGROVE cancer survivor is preparing to push himself to the limit on his latest fundraiser, an epic cycling challenge.
And at the end of the 500 mile challenge, Jonjo Rooney will be meeting his bone marrow donor.
Jonjo was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia in December 2006 and although he underwent many months of chemotherapy and radiotherapy treatment, he required a stem cell transplant to save his life.
In July 2007, a stem cell donor match was found in Hamelin, Germany, following a worldwide search by the Anthony Nolan charity. The transplant then went ahead at Birmingham's Queen Elizabeth Hospital.
He responded well and the 30-year-old has now been in remission for seven years, during which time he has become an active fundraiser.
Jonjo is cycling from the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, in Birmingham to Hamelin, in Germany, for his latest challenge - which he has named Hero of Hamelin.
He is raising money for blood cancer charities Leukaemia and Lymphoma Research, Anthony Nolan and Bpositive - the charity Jonjo set up to help bring together those affected by acute leukaemia.
The challenge begins on Saturday, September 6, and on the route he is being joined by five other cyclists.
One of them is Leukaemia and Lymphoma Research and BPositive Trustee John Reeve, who lost his son Tim to acute lymphoblastic leukaemia in 2005.
Jonjo said: "This idea has been in my mind for a few years now, so to see it turned into a reality is both nerve-racking and exciting.
"This ride represents my small way of saying thank you to the person who saved my life; my donor, my hero from Hamelin.
"No amount of miles cycled could ever match what he has done for me - but I know I had to do something.
"By cycling to Germany I very much want to raise money and awareness for the two charities that are a huge reason I'm still alive today.
"Both charities I hold very close to my heart and both offer lifesaving treatment for all those affected by blood cancer.
"My cycle ride is a relatively small task compared to what those with blood cancer go through. "
John Reeve, trustee at Leukaemia and Lymphoma Research and BPositive, said: "Through previous fundraising challenges we fulfilled the dreams of my son.
"Now I am delighted to be able to play a part in supporting Jonjo in his dream to complete this cycling challenge, meet his donor and raise money to stop people dying from blood cancer."
Mary Campbell, from the Anthony Nolan charity, added: "The fundraising that Jonjo is doing makes such a big difference to people with blood cancer. The more fundraising we do, the more potential donors we can recruit onto the bone marrow register, and the more lives we can save."
At the end of September Jonjo is also taking part in the 100 mile Birmingham Bikeathon, the largest cycle ride ever to be hosted by the city.
For more information on Jonjo's charity, visit Bpositive.org.uk.
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text:
Thank you so much for all your kind words about my biggest DIY disaster of all time.
I love sharing my DIY adventures, the good and the bad, with you guys. If my epic fails can help at least one person to not make the same mistakes that I've made, then my misadventure wasn't a waste after all. I am so grateful for all your support and comments. In just one week the post already has more than 90 comments and over 2k+ pins on pinterest. Crazy town. I'm glad my stupidity has gone viral. All press is good press though, right? Even if it's a post about me looking like an idiot. Haha.
Well, along the same black-door lines, I painted another door black. Except this time it ends with good news, not epically horrendous news.
I've been threatening to paint my front door black for 2 years now. You guys have been supportive and encouraging along the way. Every time I flash I picture of my front door I get at least one person kindly suggesting painting the door black.
Well, I finally did it. I finally painted the darn door black.
I painted the door the same day I painted all 10 doors in my house. I didn't do anything different. I used the same paint. I didn't prime first. But I got lucky. The door is not peeling. I think it's because it's wood and was stained instead of a oil-based painted MDF door like all the interior doors.
I am seriously so digging this black door. I should have stopped being lazy and just got 'er done two years ago. What an improvement, and it only took me like 20 minutes to paint it. I can't believe how much better the glass detailing looks in the middle of the door. I have hated this ornate door since we moved in, but now that it's black the whole shebang looks so fresh and classy. The door has really grown on me.
On a side note, here's where I talk about the sticks and glass vase. And here's a step-by-step tutorial for creating the skeleton key shadow box art.
I made the skeleton key art over two years ago and I still totally love it.
Oh, when I said the post ended on a good note? I totally almost forgot to mention this. There is a little bit of bad news with the door. We had a driveway BBQ over here last month with a bunch of friends (and loads of kids) and at some point during the evening someone {ahem, a kid, ahem} broke one of the glass panels in the door.
Here's a better close-up of the broken glass.
When I hear the phrase "broken glass" I start singing that Victorious song in my head. Every.Single.Time. Dang you, Robbie! (Side note: Victorious is the best kids show to ever grace television.)
I'm thinking someone ran a scooter into the door, or threw a bocce ball into the door. Or it may have been the boomerang. Who the heck knows. My kids' lips are sealed. No one will fess up to the broken door caper.
It's all cool though. I try not to let stuff like that upset me. What's done is done. The party was fun and was worth getting the door broken, if that was the cost of hosting a party with our favorite friends. Doors can be fixed.
So, back to the point; my front door finally got a coat of black paint. I only painted the inside of the door though. I will paint the outside of the door too but I want to buy paint that is better suited for outdoors.
Do you prefer the wood-color stained door or the black door? Have you painted your front door?
*The black I used is called Francesca by Martha Stewart. I got it in the Glidden primer-and-paint-in-one in a semi-gloss finish.


text: Have you read this? SAN DIEGO and PARK RIDGE, N.J., Jan. 23, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Shareholder rights attorneys at Robbins Arroyo LLP are investigating the acquisition of SeaCube Container Leasing Ltd. (NYSE: BOX) by Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan. SeaCube engages in the acquisition, leasing, and subsequent sale of refrigerated and dry containers and generator sets. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20130103/MM36754LOGO) On January 18, 2013, SeaCube announced that it had entered into an agreement to be acquired by Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan. Pursuant to the agreement, SeaCube's shareholders will receive $23 in cash for each share of common stock. The transaction has been approved by the board of directors of SeaCube. Additionally, it is expected that SeaCube will operate as a standalone business operation with the current management team remaining in place. The Board of Directors' Actions May Prevent SeaCube Shareholders from Receiving the Maximum Value for Their Stock Robbins Arroyo LLP's investigation focuses on whether the board of directors at SeaCube is undertaking a fair process to obtain maximum value and adequately compensate its shareholders or seeking to benefit themselves. The $23 per share offer price is below the $24 target price set by an analyst at Deutsche Bank on November 7, 2012. Further, on November 5, 2012, SeaCube reported financial results for the third quarter 2012, reflecting increases in revenue, net income, and gross profit over the same quarter for the prior year. Specifically, the company reported a 30% increase in net income over the same period the previous year. In addition, total revenue for the third quarter increased to $49.5 million compared to $45.2 million for the third quarter 2011. Moreover, SeaCube's quarterly results have beat analyst earnings per share estimates in six of the previous eight quarters. Given, these facts, the firm is examining the board of directors' decision to sell SeaCube now rather than allow shareholders to continue to participate in the company's continued success and future growth prospects. SeaCube shareholders have the option to file a class action lawsuit against the company to secure the best possible price for shareholders and the disclosure of material information so shareholders can vote on the transaction in an informed manner. SeaCube shareholders interested in information about their rights and potential remedies can contact Darnell R. Donahue at (800) 350-6003, firstname.lastname@example.com, or via the shareholder information form on the firm's website. Robbins Arroyo LLP is a nationally recognized leader in securities litigation and shareholder rights law. The firm represents individual and institutional investors in shareholder derivative and securities class action lawsuits, and has helped its clients realize more than $1 billion of value for themselves and the companies in which they have invested. For more information, please go to http://www.robbinsarroyo.com. Press release link: http://www.robbinsarroyo.com/shareholders-rights-blog/seacube/ Attorney Advertising. Past results do not guarantee a similar outcome.