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The Hidden Shame in the Global Industrial Economy
The Hidden Shame of the Global Industrial Economy
Where do the raw materials to build our paneled offices, airplanes, and cell phones come from? Maybe you really don't want to know. A lot of them come from plunder, of a kind we'd like to think came to an end long ago.
In the 16th century, Hernando Cortez sailed to Mexico seeking gold for the Spanish empire. He found a lot of it, and seized it without compunction, killing any Aztecs who stood in his way. Today, that kind of plunder may seem antiquated-abhorred by the community of nations. Of course, we still suffer the depredations of various transnational criminal cartels and mafias. But those are the exceptions, the outlaws. Today, no self-respecting nation or corporation would engage in the kind of brutal decimation of a whole culture, simply to seize its treasure, that Cortez did. Or would it?
In fact, the plundering of precious metals and other assets is far more prevalent today than in centuries past, and on a larger scale. Now it's not just Spain and a few other military powers seeking global dominance, but scores of nations seeking cell phones and teak furniture, that are seizing materials from native cultures-some of these materials in quantities that the conquistadors could never have imagined. Now it's not just silver and gold, but coltan (for those cell phones), copper, titanium, bauxite, uranium, cobalt, oil, mahogany, and teak. And now, in place of the extinguished Aztecs and other now decimated cultures, it's hundreds of still surviving cultures that are being overrun, in perhaps a hundred countries. And most significantly, while the looting is still done by invaders from across the oceans, it is often sanctioned and facilitated by the victimized peoples' own national governments.
But while the plunder is greater now, it is in some respects less openly pursued and less visible than it would have been for Cortez, had the technology to observe it been available in his day. The conquistadors would likely have reveled in seeing their exploits shown on TV. Today such publicity is avoided, for compelling reasons:
First, plunder usually entails invasion, and in the centuries since Cortez the world's nations have moved toward nearly unanimous condemnation of unprovoked invasion-as reflected in their widely shared shock at the U.S. invasion of Iraq. There has been parallel progress in recognizing the wrongness of enslaving other people or simply killing them for their property. There's an evolving appreciation of human diversity, and of the idea of a global (as opposed to European, or nationalist) community. Yet the incentives for seizing the wealth of others are as economically irresistible today as they ever have been, and the means of doing so are now far more widely available. So the seizing continues, but not necessarily by military assault. That's not to say there aren't still places where the job is done with outright killing, as the following pages will detail. In Indonesia, Sierra Leone, and Nigeria, there have been cases in which people who opposed extractive operations on their land were given Cortez-style removals from the discussion. But where the scrutiny of the global media is present, the means are more indirect, and appear to be accidental. People living near uranium mines that have left piles of radioactive waste on their land die of cancer in unusual numbers, and their children have unusual numbers of birth defects. Indians whose land has been taken over by oil-drilling operations are slowly poisoned by petrochemical contamination of their water and soil. Those living downstream from large gold mines find their drinking water laced with cyanide. Food sources are destroyed, as are sacred places-and people die of spiritual, as well as physical, deprivation. Those kinds of dying don't make the evening news.
Second, the plunder is less visible now because it rarely need be witnessed by the people who end up with the wealth-the major purchasers of gasoline or gold chains or tickets to fly on aluminum-bodied planes. In gold rush days, the lucky miner who found a nice nugget could buy a fancy watch. In the modern economy, the man with the Rolex has likely never been anywhere near a gold mine. The big extractive industries are far from the urban centers where most of the affluent live. In poorer countries from which much of the world's mineral and forest wealth is taken, the extractive operations are often in remote jungles or subsistence farming regions-homelands to people who are largely left out of the global dialogue and trade.
Finally, there is the unspoken disincentive of the world's media giants to expose the exploitative nature of the industries that provide the raw materials of the economy that pays their way. Nearly all media, whether print or electronic, are funded by advertising for consumer goods that too often originate with raw materials largely taken from indigenous land or from ostensibly protected parkland. It would perhaps be unfair to say the media are part of a conspiracy of silence, because in all likelihood most media executives rarely stop to think about what fuels the economy that allows them to profit. But it's fair to suggest that there's a reluctance to undermine the foundations of the economy on which their whole business rests.
Not all extractive industries operate in the shadows. Many are honest businesses, run by people who are attentive to the human and environmental impacts of their operations. But those businesses are far too few. By some estimates, for example, some 80 percent of the logging done in Indonesia-one of the largest producers of wood in the world-is illegal. Some of the largest mines in the world, dumping thousands of tons of deadly poisons into their surroundings each day, are operating without the consent of the people whose land they have taken over.
Big Footprints
Mining and logging operations-the "extractive industries"-aren't just small pin-pricks in the Earth's skin, though they may appear that way on maps. Apologists may think of them as small holes discreetly drilled in large territories, for which small compensations to the impoverished inhabitants of those territories may be sufficient. But in fact, extraction has far-reaching impacts and costs. Because nature is not static but involves continuous movement of wind, water, and wildlife, contaminants released by mines can cause Pandora-like destruction.
One of the most alarming forms of contamination is that of heap-leach gold mining, a modern technique that involves pouring rivers of cyanide on huge piles of low-grade ore to extract the gold. Cyanide is extremely poisonous: a teaspoonful containing a 2-percent cyanide solution can kill an adult. In February 2000, a dam holding heap-leach waste at a gold mine in Romania-the Baia Mare gold mine owned by an Australian company, Esmeralda Exploration-broke and dumped 22 million gallons of cyanide into the Tisza River. The poison flowed more than 500 kilometers downstream into Hungary and Serbia, wreaking what some called the worst environmental disaster since the Chornobyl nuclear explosion in 1986. Unfortunately, this event could not be written off as the last gasp of an outmoded technology. Heap-leach gold mining is on the increase. In Peru, the Yanacocha gold mine-second largest in the world-sits atop the South American continental divide, from which any similar breech would run all the way to both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. And in Tanzania, the Geita mine has just been sited on the Nyamelembo River, which drains into Lake Victoria. One of the largest and most valuable fresh-water lakes on the planet, Victoria is essential to the economies of Kenya and Uganda as well as Tanzania. A Kenyan environmental professor, Wangari Maathai (now the country's environment minister), described the Geita mine as "the most insensitive economic undertaking I have ever come across," explaining that "it is not just a matter of poisoning people. Very soon, the European Union will ban all fish exports from East Africa just because some toxic elements have found their way into the fish, and it will be a great economic loss to the local people whose life depends entirely on fishing."
The kinds of spills produced by modern mines shouldn't be compared to the relatively petty crime that occurs when someone dumps dry cleaning fluid into the sewer drain, or drops his old batteries into the garbage. Mine waste sends huge plumes of poison into the world's rainforests, groundwater, and food. In Zortman, Montana, in 1982, the Zortman-Landusky gold mine spilled 52,000 gallons of cyanide into the local groundwater, and it was discovered only when a local mine worker smelled cyanide in his faucet at home. Cyanide was the agent used to kill Jews in Hitler's gas chambers. Today, in West Papua, Indonesia, a gold mine owned by the U.S. company Freeport McMoRan dumps 120,000 tons of cyanide-laced waste into local rivers every day. In Papua New Guinea, the Ok Tedi copper mine, which was built on the local people's land without their consent, dumps 200,000 tons of waste per day into the Fly River and has brought the once biologically rich region to ruin.
There are other means, besides rivers, by which damage from extraction can be spread. Wind, in particular, can be as dangerous a factor with big mines as with broken nuclear plants. Uranium mines produce huge piles of crushed ore waste, or tailings. According to the Center for World Indigenous Studies, the most common health risk associated with uranium mining is breathing radon-222 gas, which will continue to seep from the tailings for thousands of years to come. In Australia, the tailings dam of an abandoned uranium mine was burst by monsoon rains, and subsequent dispersal of the waste by river and wind has polluted an area of 100 square kilometers of land-driving out the Aboriginal people who lived there. In the U.S. Southwest, radioactive waste from an abandoned uranium mine owned by El Paso Natural Gas Company has blown toward an area used by Navajo Indians for shepherding.
In some cases, the extraction is not at a single point at all, but takes place over a wide area. Logging operations have decimated some of the world's most biologically valuable forests. Many of these operations are either illegal or are sanctioned by corrupt national governments over the desperate objections of indigenous inhabitants. In Bolivia, in the late 1990s, the government granted logging concessions covering 500,000 hectares of Guarayo Territory and 140,000 hectares of Chiquitano de Monte Verde Territory. In Cambodia, illegal logging has led to severe deforestation, flooding, and destruction of rice crops-and to the displacement of people who depended on those forests for subsistence. In Liberia, in the year 2000, some $100 million worth of timber was cut down and sold, mainly to European consumers, to enrich the dictator Charles Taylor and to buy arms for his henchmen. In Indonesia, the looting of forests has reached new levels, with about 2 million hectares disappearing every year.
Buying Silence
Cortez did not have to worry about bad PR. Companies like Shell Oil or Freeport McMoRan may do their extraction in remote places, and with the tacit acceptance of the global media, but they can no longer escape the attention of activists and groups like Amazon Watch, Rainforest Action Network, and the Mineral Policy Center. Shell was burned badly when it was accused of collusion with the Nigerian government in the murder of the Ogoni activist Ken Saro-Wiwa, who had dared to protest Shell's ruination of his people's homeland. So, the major extractive industries have learned to become more discreet about how they take what they want. One of the most common strategies is to offer employment in the mines to indigenous people who are not well informed about the hazards, and to develop a dependency that the workers and their families are unable to break even when their health begins to break-a contemporary form of indentured servitude. An Aborigine writer, Vincent Forrester, describes how this dependency was established at the Ranger uranium mine in his people's region of Australia. Mining royalties are paid to the government, not to the local people. (Most mining companies don't pay royalties to anyone at all.) The government then supplies the community with essential services, but does not inform the people about the effects of the mining on their land and health. "This dependency, I believe, is a form of ransom," writes Forrester. "White Australia says to the under-serviced, fledgling outstation movement, 'You can have money for Toyotas, for bores, to help you set up, but if mining stops the money stops too.'"
A more hardball way of buying acquiescence is simply to find individual members of the local community who are willing to publicly support a proposed mining project in exchange for a small payment, which in an impoverished area can be a large inducement. The offers open rifts in the local community, causing enough disarray to allow the project to gain a foothold. In the late 1990s, for example, the Navajo Times reported that the HRI corporation, which wanted to open a uranium mine near the Navajo community of Crownpoint, New Mexico, had arranged to give lease payments to some of the Indian landowners living in the community. According to a report by Chris Shuey of the Southwest Research and Information Center in Albuquerque, the total amount of the payoff came to $367,000. The population of Crownpoint at that time was 2,700, which meant HRI was paying $136 per citizen to begin a process that would use the community's underground water-bearing strata as a medium for "in situ leach" processing of uranium-turning the water into a "pregnant solution" from which the uranium would be extracted within one-half mile of several churches, schools, businesses, and most of the homes in the community.
In Madagascar, the Anglo-Austrialian mining giant Rio Tinto has tried to buy off the natives for even less. Rio Tinto wants to mine 40 kilometers of coastal dunes, bulldozing an indigenous homeland that is also a habitat for numerous rare and endangered plant species. The company's strategy has been to invite the villagers to dinners at which they can eat and drink while watching PR films that extol the proposed operation but make no mention of likely damage.
In hundreds of mining or logging operations around the planet, the main economic incentive for capitulation is the lure of jobs. Where people are poor, that lure of short-term cash can easily blind young workers to the long-term impacts of the project on their culture and health-and on the long-term sustainability of their local economy. In the Arctic, Inuit communities are now divided about whether to welcome more intensive oil drilling. Those who see a threat to their traditional way of life have put up strong resistance, but it's rarely enough to fend off the incursions, especially when their own national governments have been bought off. In a globalized economy, the buying-off of governments has become widespread. A few years ago in India, for example, the indigenous Bhagata, Khond, Konda Reddi, and Samantha communities found themselves targeted by foreign companies interested in the bauxite (aluminum ore) deposits on their lands. Indian constitutional law protects indigenous peoples from unwanted exploitation of this kind, but that did not stop the state of Andhra Pradesh from secretly inviting the companies-and giving them leases-to begin mining. The opposing parties have been litigating ever since.
Is There Really No Alternative?
When economists talk about "extractive industries" they're usually referring to mining, oil or gas drilling, or logging-essentially, the use of heavy machinery to cut raw materials from the planet. The concept could easily be broadened to include pumping water from aquifers, hauling fish from the oceans, shooting monkeys for bushmeat, or collecting honey from wild bees. We focus here on mining, oil drilling, and logging because they have been so heavily concentrated in places that are both the homelands of the world's marginalized peoples and the habitats of the most threatened ecosystems. These industries are therefore the most direct-and least regulated-assaults of industrial society on the Earth's cultural and biological stability.
To some extent, the lack of restraint in these industries may reflect an implicit belief, in the governments of industrial nations, that the genie long ago exited the bottle, and that trying to undo any damage it has done now is as unrealistic as trying to undo the damage done by the seizing of Indian territories by Europeans two or three centuries ago. But the idea that redressing past injustices is now "unrealistic," too, makes a questionable assumption-that the descendants of the conquered Indians have long since been assimilated into the modern industrial economy and share the same benefits as the descendants of their conquerors. Yet, the reality of places like the Navajo reservations in the U.S. Southwest belies that assumption. Native American communities are far more impoverished, with far higher rates of disease, unemployment, and suicide, than the rest of the country. And it's on Native American lands that the most blatantly exploitative extractive operations are concentrated. A similar observation can be made of the oil-rich Ogoni lands of Nigeria, or the Guarayo territory of Bolivia, among scores of others.
The political inertia that has allowed colonial-era racial distinctions to be perpetuated in the twenty-first century economy has also allowed outmoded assumptions about industrial productivity to be perpetuated. The prevailing belief is that if we want to continue having the rich lifestyle to which we are now accustomed, we have no choice but to keep on drilling and digging in the places where we already are-and, indeed, to commence new drilling in any place where more resources can be found. If the Inuit are hunting caribou in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), but the war on terror and the fueling of American Hummers and Expeditions demands oil and there's oil under ANWR, sooner or later the Inuit will have to step aside-will have to forget their antiquated ways, learn to speak English, head south, and find jobs at Exxon gas stations or Wal-Mart.
Such assumptions have been amply discredited, though you might never know it from following the mainstream news media and its conservative-dominated commentary. The discrediting takes several forms, each of which involves the exploding of a persistent myth about the materials economy:
"Economic growth requires increasing materials and energy consumption."
In other words, population momentum (the unavoidable population growth of the coming years even with maximum stabilization policies), plus rising standards of living across the planet, will necessarily drive up demand for raw materials. Historically, economic growth has meant soaring material consumption. But the idea that this link must continue assumes that the efficiency of materials use must remain constant, which it need not. If cities were redesigned to be more compact, for example, the quantities of materials required to provide housing and transport per capita could be greatly reduced while actually improving the quality of urban life. As asphalt and gasoline use declined, so would the psychic and physical ravages of traffic congestion, auto accidents, air pollution, and suburban isolation. At the same time, growing efficiency in energy use, both from technological advances and from changes in consumer behavior (how about trading in your Expedition for a Prius, or your leaf blower for a rake?) could vastly reduce the per capita demand for oil or aluminum without compromising the pursuit of happiness. For the 2 billion people who are poorest, hopes for a better life do not have to require further impoverishment for those of their indigenous counterparts whose land is being mined or deforested.
"Meeting the need for increased supply of materials requires taking more out of the ground."
When the benefits of more efficient design and use have been exhausted, we may indeed need to increase the supply, at least until population has stabilized. But to assume that the increase must come from the ground falsely assumes that the new materials must be virgin. In the long-term ecology of the planet, nearly all materials are eventually recycled, and now we need to do that in the short term as well. The mines of the future will be, increasingly, the cities rather than the rainforests. Already, in some areas, aluminum recycling has reduced the need for bauxite mining by half.
"Mining or timbering in indigenous areas is cheap."
This argument is similar to the one employed by Wal-Mart, which says it's economical to get poor people, who have few alternatives, to clean toilets and wash floors for cheap wages. That thinking is just one expression of the more general myth that industry can profit by not paying the externalities, or social and environmental costs, of production. But while economic practice remains entrenched in reactionary doctrine, moral consciousness has come a long way since the days when few people had any qualms about slavery. Exploiting cheap labor is a form of quasi-slavery, and the hundreds of organizations dedicated to raising public sensitivity to that have long since brought us past the point where social costs can be ignored. The true costs of extractive industries will inexorably become more internalized-for example, in requiring oil companies to bear the medical costs of diseases brought by their polluting of indigenous water supplies. As that happens, the prices of oil and other raw materials will rise, and there will be more incentives to develop sustainable substitutions-of renewable energy for oil, of recycled metals and wood for virgin, and of more efficient use for more supply.
That's not to say the mining of minerals and fuels, and the harvesting of trees, will not continue to some degree into the indefinite future. But in a healthy economy, those activities will be done with far greater care, on a smaller scale, and only in places where permission is granted out of choice rather than compulsion-and, even then, only in places where there will be no lasting injury to any human or natural community. Ultimately, it will cost no less to site a mine in an Indian reservation or rainforest than it would to site it in, say, a suburb of Paris or Dallas.
Ed Ayres is the editor of World Watch.


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A family doctor who filmed himself sexually abusing female patients with his James Bond-style wristwatch will appeal against his 12-year jail sentence today.
Dr Davinder Jeet Bains, 47, used a secret camera hidden inside his watch to assault more than two dozen women at a medical practice in Wiltshire, where he was a trusted GP.
Police described Bains as a "sexual predator" and said he had filmed up to 300 women while the sentencing judge branded him a "disgrace to the medical profession".
Bains was also struck off the medical register in August last year when the independent Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service panel found his fitness to practise was impaired because of his convictions.
Some of his victims at the Tinkers Lane Surgery in Royal Wootton Bassett, near Swindon, spoke of their shock at discovering what the "pervy doctor" had done to them.
One woman, in her 30s, said she felt "violated and humiliated" at seeing the footage and said she had "lost faith in the NHS".
Malaysian-born Bains filmed the attacks on his Tieex 4GB Waterproof HD Spy Watch DVR, which has been likened to something out of a 007 film.
It had a built-in camera on the face - with simple on and off buttons to record - and can be bought on the internet for less than £60.
Bains, of Nyland Road, Swindon, committed offences against 27 women - aged from 14 to 51 - between July 2009 and June 2012.
He admitted a total of 39 charges at Swindon Crown Court: 13 of assault by penetration, 13 of voyeurism, 11 of sexual assault and two of sexual activity with a child.
He also asked for a further 65 offences to be taken into account and his not guilty pleas to four other charges will lie on file.
The police investigation began in June 2012 when a 17-year-old girl told officers she thought Bains had filmed her as she showered and said she had been sexually assaulted by him.
When detectives arrested Bains at his surgery they discovered his wristwatch, and later recovered 361 high-quality video clips from his laptop.
The court was told that two of victims complained to the managers at Tinkers Lane surgery about his behaviour but no action was taken.
Judge Douglas Field told Bains he had breached the trust people put in their doctor and had committed the offences for his own "sexual gratification".
Bains was also placed on the Sex Offenders Register indefinitely and given a Sexual Offences Prevention Order.
NHS England published a report in November last year into the safeguarding of children and vulnerable adults at Bains's former practice which found a senior colleague had "ongoing concerns" about his behaviour but was unsure what to do about it.
Four areas where the practice could make improvements were identified in the report.
These were complaints, chaperoning patients for intimate examinations, reporting and investigating serious incidents of concerns, and supporting and protecting staff who wished to raise issues.
The surgery confirmed that all identified actions had been undertaken and had provided evidence to demonstrate it, an NHS England spokeswoman said.
Bains's appeal will be heard before the Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales, Mr Justice Sweeney and Mr Justice Nicol at Canterbury Crown Court at 2pm.
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Creative Commons' Branding Confusion
from the NC-stands-for-Not-Copyleft dept
About a year and a half ago I released my film Sita Sings the Blues under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license. That license allows truly free distribution, including commercial use, as long as the free license remains in place. But my experience is that most people see the words "Creative Commons" and simply assume the license is Non-Commercial -- because the majority of Creative Commons licenses they've seen elsewhere have been Non-Commercial.
This is a real problem. Some artists have re-released Sita remixes under Creative Commons Non-Commercial licenses. Many bloggers and journalists assume the non-commercial restrictions, even when the license is correctly named:
The film was made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike License, allowing third parties to share the creative content for non-commercial purposes freely as long as the author of the content is attributed as the creator of the work. --Frontline, India's National Magazine
Initially I tried to explain what "ShareAlike" means, and asked "Sita" remixers to please switch to ShareAlike, per the terms of the ShareAlike license under which I released it. I felt like an ass; I don't want to be a licensing cop. After a while, mis-identifications of the project's license became so widespread I gave up trying to correct them. "Creative Commons" means "Non-Commercial" to most people. Fighting it is a sisyphean task.
So I'm stuck with a branding problem. As long as I use any Creative Commons license, most people will think it prohibits commercial use. Hardly anyone seems to register, let alone understand, CC-SA. Worse, those who do notice the ShareAlike marker combine it with Non-Commercial restrictions on their re-releases, which compounds the confusion (CC-NC-SA is the worst license I can imagine).
ShareAlike is an imperfect solution to copyright restrictions, as it imposes one restriction of its own: a restriction against imposing any further restrictions. It's an attempt to use copyright against itself. As long as we live in a world wherein everything is copyrighted by default, I will use ShareAlike or some other Copyleft equivalent to attempt to maintain a "copyright-free zone" around my works. In a better world, there would be no automatic copyright and thus no need for me to use any license at all. Should that Utopia come about, I will remove all licenses from all my work. Meanwhile I attempt to limit other peoples' freedom to limit other peoples' freedom.
It would be nice if the Creative Commons organization did something to address this branding confusion. We suggested re-branding ShareAlike licenses as CC-PRO, but given that Creative Commons' largest constituency is users of Non-Commercial licenses, it seems unlikely (but not impossible!) that they would distinguish their true Copyleft license with a "pro" brand.
If only Creative Commons offered this!
It would also be nice if everyone, including and especially representatives of Creative Commons, referred to their licenses by their names, instead of just "Creative Commons." "Thank you for using a Creative Commons license," they tell me. You're welcome; I would thank you for calling it a ShareAlike license. Almost every journalist refers to all 7 licenses as simply "Creative Commons licenses." And so in the popular imagination, my ShareAlike license is no different from a Non-Commercial, No-Derivatives license.
This branding crisis came to a head recently when the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation banned all Creative Commons licensed music in its shows:
The issue with our use of Creative Commons music is that a lot of our content is readily available on a multitude of platforms, some of which are deemed to be 'commercial' in nature (e.g. streaming with pre-roll ads, or pay for download on iTunes) and currently the vast majority of the music available under a Creative Commons license prohibits commercial use.
In order to ensure that we continue to be in line with current Canadian copyright laws, and given the lack of a wide range of music that has a Creative Commons license allowing for commercial use, we made a decision to use music from our production library in our podcasts as this music has the proper usage rights attached. linkThe Creative Commons organization wants to get the CBC to separate out its different licenses. They could help by calling their licenses by their different names. If the Creative Commons organization itself calls them all "Creative Commons Licenses," how can they expect others to distinguish the licenses from each other?
Perhaps Creative Commons should only offer the Non-Commercial/No Derivatives licenses everyone associates with the name. Then they could create a new name/brand for their Free licenses. FreeCommons? CultureSource? CopyLove?
Meanwhile, I'm wondering how to clearly communicate my work is COPYLEFT. In addition to the CC-SA license, if there's room I write "COPYLEFT, ALL WRONGS REVERSED". Unfortunately, the term "Copyleft" is growing increasingly meaningless as well. For example, Brett Gaylor's mostly excellent film RIP: A Remix Manifesto gets a lot of things right, but it misunderstands and misuses the term "copyleft". Copyleft actually means this:
the right to distribute copies and modified versions of a work and requiring that the same rights be preserved in modified versions of the work. In other words, copyleft is a general method for making a program (or other work) free, and requiring all modified and extended versions of the program to be free as well. -Wikipedia
But in RIP it means this:
See that dollar sign with the slash in it? That means Non-Commercial restrictions, which are most definitely NOT Copyleft.
Anyone introduced to the word "Copyleft" in that film will have no idea what Copyleft actually means in terms of licenses.
I need a license that people understand. I'm tempted by the WTFPL but I would have to fork it to add a copyleft provision. The Do Whatever You Want And Don't Restrict Others From Doing Whatever They Want Public License? WTFDROPL?
Are there any other useable Copyleft licenses out there that aren't associated with non-commercial restrictions? I'm open to suggestions.
Filed Under: branding, confusion, creative commons, nina paley, non-commercial


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Citing an urgent need to tackle the acute dearth of specialised doctors owing to inadequate PG seats, a campaign called 'Save doctors who save your lives' will be launched by medical practitioners across the state soon, as part of a nation wide campaign. The campaign says that an increase in the number of specialised doctors is the need of the hour as an MBBS doctor cannot treat non-communicable diseases (NCD) including those contributing to Maternal Mortality Rate (MMR).
"Treating NCDs is a gargantuan task and is going to be the major challenge in the days to come. To name a few, the top ten causes of death in India include cardiac diseases, diarrhoeal disease, chronic respiratory diseases and stroke. Nine out of those ten require specialist doctors. Unfortunately, we do not have enough specialised doctors due to inadequate number of PG seats in medical institutions", said Dr Prem Kumar Nair, medical director, Amrita Institute of Medical Sciences, who heads the campaign in Kerala.
He pointed out that it is ironic that there exist a huge disparity in the seats allotted for PG and UG in a country which has the largest number of medical institutions.
"The mandatory rural posting also affects them as they end up spending 13 years only for studying. If this trend persists the risk will increase as there will be a dearth of specialists when a senior specialist doctors or surgeons retire", he said. Dr Prem Kumar said that the government can solve the issue by adding more number of PG seats in the hospitals.
"For instance, the number of students under each professor or associate professor has to be increased. If they are currently handling one, it has to be increased to five", he said. Approximately 15 to 20 per cent of pregnancies end up requiring Caesarian section and if not managed well, the repercussion will be a high MMR. Caesarian sections need a radiologist to perform ultrasound scan to predict complications during childbirth, an anaesthesiologist to anaesthetize the pregnant woman, a gynaecologist to conduct the operation and a paediatrician to resuscitate the baby. A doctor with MBBS degree can attend to a normal delivery but a doctor with post graduation degree can reduce Infant Mortality Rate and MMR.
Dr Prem also said that owing to the dearth of specialists in rural areas, the infant mortality rate and MMR are high.
Besides, by increasing the number of post graduation seats, 'brain drain' will also come down drastically. "Many are opting for foreign countries as they could not secure PG seats. Increasing PG seats will be the right solution in this regard", he added.


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San Diego: Seriously Seasoned Bacon Burgers at Magnolia Tap & Kitchen
Burger reviews in the San Diego area.
Magnolia Tap & Kitchen
624 E St., San Diego CA 92101 (map); 619-255-0925 ; magnoliasd.com
Cooking method: Grilled
Short Order: Delicious beef and bacon burgers spiked with a plethora of spices
Want Fries With That? Oh yeah, the crispy-on-the-outside, fluffy-on-the-inside potato planks are well worth the extra $2
Price: Magnolia Bacon Burger, $12; Beer Brined Frites, $2
If the idea of anything besides salt and pepper touching your 100 percent beef patty is offensive to your burger sensibilities, I'll let you know right now: the bacon burger at Magnolia Tap & Kitchen isn't the one for you. BUT, if you're a bit more open-minded to not only bacon, but nearly the entire rack of spices being mixed into your beef patty...well, you're going to like it here.
Magnolia is one of a few spots that have opened recently (or are slated to by end of summer) with a bit of a Southern influence. It's not in-your-face, but look closely at the menu and you'll see several dishes with an obvious Southern accent, including the habanero cornbread with smoked peach butter ($5). Order one to share while you wait for your burger. The spicy, crumbly bread is great with a liberal smear of the sweet, subtly smoky butter, though the grey, mealy bits of peach aren't too pretty to look at.
Assembled with only shredded lettuce, a tomato slice, and a bit of aioli, Magnolia's bacon burger ($12) may seem simplistic, but from a flavor standpoint, it's a powerhouse. The patty is crafted from fatty 80/20 chuck, with extra fat coming from the addition of bacon (the blend is roughly 80 percent beef, 20 percent bacon). Seasoning plays a big role. The beef/bacon mix is doused with a generous shake of a housemade seasoning mix, which includes paprika, garlic powder, onion powder, thyme, ginger, chili powder, and a pinch of sugar. The overall profile is hot, smoky, and addictive. In a town of countless burgers, it definitely stands out.
Even though the grind was a little finer than I would have preferred, and the addition of bacon required it to be cooked to medium or above, the execution was spot-on. Nearly every inch of the patty was covered in a crisp, brown crust while the interior practically pulsed with fatty, flavorful juices. If Magnolia starts grinding their beef on-site (something that's reportedly in the works once they're out of their soft-opening phase), the patty has potential to be even better. Rounding out the burger was a sturdy, toasted bun that held up well to the burger juices and provided the right mix of crunch and cushion.
Spend the extra $2 and try the beer-brined frites. Hand-cut russets are steeped in a bath of salt and Stone Smoked Porter for 48 hours before being fried. The golden brown, slightly oily exterior of the spuds easily yields to an explosion of potato fluff. You'll want to make good use of the housemade ketchup and garlic aioli that, thanks to a squeeze of lemon, is more refreshing than most.
There are a lot of good burgers downtown but only a few great ones. I'd put the bacon burger at Magnolia firmly within the latter camp.
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Having had the privilege of being able to help many survivors (more than a hundred) of childhood abuse, I've heard the many memories that were presented by the adults who have been able to, eventually, recover from the devastating effects of this type of horror.
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LuckyGunner.com has a live inventory system that removes any out-of-stock items from our website the moment the last unit is ordered.
If you see it, we have it in stock and ready to ship.
If you place an order before 3 PM EST, your product will ship that same day. If you place an order after 3 PM EST or over the weekend, your product will ship the next business day.
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The State of Missouri prohibits possession and sale of "exploding bullets." Other than that, there are no known unusual ammo laws in the state of Missouri. Of course, all federal laws apply.
Lucky Gunner is able to ship ammo to Missouri customers 21-years-old and older with no known restrictions.
Shipping to your door from Lucky Gunner is fast to Missouri. Expect your ammo to get to your door between 2-3 days from when you place your order!
Here's a run-down on all the CCW laws in Missouri, broken down by municipality.
Need to transfer a firearm in Missouri? Here's a list of all of the FFL dealers in Missouri, sorted by location.
Here's a current list of the representatives from Missouri to the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate. These people vote on federal judges who directly impact your 2A rights!
Use this handy tool to locate shooting ranges in Missouri. Sort by distance from a particular zip code or by a list of amenities.
These are the Missouri-specific firearms groups which protect your rights:
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Welcome to DRF! We are a fun community and we'd love to have more new members, so Guests, please do not hesitate to join whether you plan to be active or not. We roleplay as dragons, hunting and fighting our way through.
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Immigration faces critical weeks
When it comes to immigration, the House looks like a mess.
Speaker John Boehner wanted to pass something by August, but that's not happening. A bipartisan "gang" has missed every self-imposed deadline to unveil its bill. Rep. Paul Ryan is talking to everyone with an "R" next to their name — and a handful of Democrats, too — but his endgame is unclear. And House Majority Leader Eric Cantor says he wants to help undocumented children gain legal status — but hasn't said much beyond that.
Story Continued Below
Boehner — at least publicly — says he's not going to referee the immigration battle. Appearing on CBS's "Face the Nation" on Sunday, the speaker repeatedly said it's his job to "facilitate" a conversation and process.
( PHOTOS: 20 quotes on immigration reform)
"This is about bringing these bills out here in a common-sense way," Boehner said. "And I'm not going to predict what's going to be on the floor and what isn't going to be on the floor." Or when.
August is certain to become a storm of dueling town halls, rallies and lobbying efforts on both sides, so how lawmakers handle the next two weeks will be critical. Three factions are emerging that could help decide what — if anything — the House does on immigration.
1. Paul Ryan — an army of one
There's endless fascination about the Wisconsin Republican's work on immigration.
It's mostly furtive.
( PHOTOS: 10 wild immigration quotes)
He is often seen in deep conversation — he calls them informal talks — with immigration players like Reps. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.), Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.) and Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.). Last week, he bounced between Diaz-Balart and Boehner. And he's in close contact with committee chairmen like Homeland Security's Mike McCaul (R-Texas) and Judiciary's Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.), who will be two key conduits for immigration reform through the House.
"I'm just trying to find the sweet spot," Ryan told POLITICO on Friday. "I see an emerging consensus."
There are signs that Ryan is making progress, although he declined to go into specifics. His discussions are both on finding a policy and a process solution, such as what bills they move and how they move them.
His is an important conservative stamp of approval — there's no one who is as respected on Capitol Hill as the GOP's 2012 vice presidential candidate.
( Also on POLITICO: Immigration could hinge on August recess)
"He's exceedingly courageous," Diaz-Balart said of Ryan. "So yes, if we could get his support for a specific proposal, that would be huge."
But it's Ryan's vagueness that has some on the right concerned. Some Republicans are privately skeptical about Ryan's involvement. They say he is really aiming for a large-scale immigration bill — and toying with a piecemeal approach publicly only to appease leadership.
The secretive House group of seven lawmakers — four Democrats and three Republicans — is working to line up additional co-sponsors for its comprehensive immigration reform once its members put the finishing touches on the estimated 500-page bill. The legislation isn't expected to be released until at least September.
For them, securing Ryan as one of those co-sponsors would be a significant coup.
"We'd love to have Paul Ryan," said Rep. John Carter (R-Texas), one of the seven negotiators. "I think we will."
2. GOP leadership
House Republican leaders are working through their own process.
There have been planning sessions: The Texas delegation — including Carter and Rep. Sam Johnson — has participated. In a hopeful sign, Boehner emerged from a weeks-long, self-imposed silence on immigration reform, saying the American people "expect that no one who broke our laws will get special treatment."
It was a glimpse at Boehner's view on the pathway to citizenship — the most treacherous part of immigration reform in the House. And he said last week that he wants immigration legislation to clear his chamber before Congress tackles the debt ceiling debate sometime this fall.
( Also on POLITICO: Boehner hints at immigration hopes)
Boehner has generally been careful not to make his own positions part of the debate. On Sunday, he repeatedly declined to say whether he personally favors a pathway to citizenship for the 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States.
"It's not about me. It's not about what I want," Boehner said, adding later: "If I come out and say, 'I'm for this and I'm for that,' all I'm doing is making my job harder."


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Cheers & Jeers: My Boys to Men?
Sep 13, 2010 11:35 AM EDT
Jeers to TBS for burying one of TV's most enjoyable sitcoms, My Boys. Want more Cheers & Jeers? Subscribe to TV Guide Magazine now! The "Very Funny" cable network burned off the whopping nine-episode season of its sly charmer about Chicago sports… Read more


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In China, Veil Begins to Lift on High Consumer Prices
Resistance to Prices Grows Amid New Ways to Comparison Shop
BEIJING—In China, consumers pay nearly $1 more for a latte at Starbucks than their U.S. counterparts. A Cadillac Escalade Hybrid Base 6.0 costs $229,000 in China, compared to just over $73,000 in the U.S.
Welcome to China's modern retail world, where the price of many goods is far higher than in many other countries, a disparity that is all the more stark considering the income differences. A basic iPad 2 is priced at $488 in China, where average per capita income is around $7,500. The same tablet is $399 in the U.S., where...


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In my town for years there have been huge billboard advertisements for a church that say, "God isn't mad at you, NO MATTER WHAT!".
- "He who believes in the Son has eternal life; but he who does not obey the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him." John 3:35-36
- "[ Unbelief and Its Consequences ] For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness"
Romans 1:17-19
- "But because of your stubbornness and unrepentant heart you are storing up wrath for yourself in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God"
Romans 2:4-6
- "For You, O Lord, are good, and ready to forgive [our trespasses, sending them away, letting them go completely and forever]; and You are abundant in mercy and loving-kindness to all those who call upon You." Psalm 86:5
My gift for you today is a kaleidoscope paper. Even if I don't use it as a paper, I sometimes use portions of it as patterns and textures. Even an overlay. Hope you can use it - it's so pretty!If you like it well enough to download, please leave me a comment at the bottom of this post as I have disabled 4shared comments. Please support this blog by shopping my PayPal store. God bless you!
Download here for 24 hours, then available in my store. If you can't find it, e-mail me. Check out my TERMS OF USE here.
The password is jesuschristislord.
Digifree CraftCrave


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Mission possible: managing CEO succession
Even Julius Caesar had one. A succession plan, that is. So what's yours?
Follow the leader
How secure is the future of your organisation? The chances are, not as secure as you might think...
Why a robust succession plan is essential
There is probably no corporate event which causes more concern – to shareholders, clients and emp...


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Exploring the urban environment through fun human-powered adventures, riding bicycles, and gawking at bicycles in and around Portland, Oregon, Cascadia
I'm no longer allowing new comments on this blog. You can comment on the exact same post on the new blog. Go find it over at http://urbanadventureleague.wordpress.com/
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.


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KAUFMAN COUNTY, Texas - Authorities investigating the district attorney murder plot in Kaufman County are questioning a former Justice of the Peace as a person of interest, sources told Dallas NBC affiliate KXAS.
Eric Williams, 46, has been charged with making a terroristic threat.
Williams was arrested Saturday after investigators searched his Kaufman home. The search was part of the investigation into the murders of District Attorney Mike McLelland and his wife Cynthia.
A sign posted on the front door of Williams' homes said to call his lawyer for a comment on the case.
According to jail records, Kaufman County sheriff deputies arrested Williams early Saturday morning.
Williams has been sentenced to a two-year probation for stealing from the county. A case prosecuted by McLelland and Assistant District Attorney Marke Hasse, who was fatally shot while leaving work in Kaufman.
Authorities haven't named Williams as a suspect in the deaths.
In an exclusive interview with Local 2 days after McLelland's murder, Williams said he would cooperate with law enforcement.
"They did a gun residue test. I gave them my cell phone so they could get all the info they wanted," said Williams. "They gave them back on Sunday and I have not heard from them since Sunday."
Federal and local authorities searched Williams' home early Friday. What they were looking for is unclear.
Barbara Underwood lives nearby. She said she's concerned by the recent events.
"When Mark Hasse was killed, it was a block and a half from the police station," said Underwood. "The Kaufman city needs to put up more security."
Williams is being held in jail on a $3 million bond.
Copyright 2013 by Click2Houston.com. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.


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Lindsay Lohan Again Invites the Cops to Keep Her Company
Stop us if you've heard this one before: Lindsay Lohan was out partying this weekend and blah blah blah police.
Seems Lohan was at a nightclub in NYC when she made the acquaintance of one Christian LaBella, an employee of an Illinois congressman and celeb hanger-on whose Facebook page is loaded with photos of himself with societal pillars like the Kardashians and VP candidate Paul Ryan.
When LiLo and her pals went back to her hotel room to continue the festivities, LaBella tagged along — and that's when the trouble started.
At some point, Lohan noticed LaBella had taken 50 photos and videos of her with his phone and was sending the evidence to pals. When she confronted him, he allegedly assaulted her, throwing her on the bed scratching her hands.
She then reportedly locked herself in the bathroom and/or ran out of the room but returned — because that's smart — and LaBella continued his attack on the perennial damsel in distress by choking her and pinning her to the floor.
Friends came to Lohan's rescue, and she pulled the fire alarm to keep the dude from using the hotel elevators. Cops later arrested him, booking him on two misdemeanor counts of assault and two charges of harassment.
Her rep told TMZ, "Lindsay was assaulted early this morning in a New York hotel. While she did sustain some injuries, she was not hospitalized. The assailant was arrested and is currently in police custody. Lindsay has spoken with police and is fully cooperating with the investigation."
Those charges have since been dropped, much to LiLo's artificially-inflated trout pout chagrin. Didn't her mother ever teach her not to invite strange men back to her room?
Oh wait — we just remembered who her mother is. Never mind.


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Spotify, Slacker, or Pandora: Which Streaming Music Service Is Right For You?
There are numerous venues by which entertainment seekers can listen to free music online that won't incur the wrath of the RIAA. Spotify, Slacker, Pandora and a sea of other streaming music services serve up a mix of quality audio that lets you tune into your favorite bands. With the sheer number of options available, selecting a streaming music service can prove quite a difficult task.
We've taken it upon ourselves to help guide you toward the streaming music site that bests suits you. On the surface these streaming music sites simply deliver audio through the internet, but if you dig a little deeper you'll discover that the various services each have their own unique traits that appeal to the different segments of the listening population.
If you're curious about which streaming music service bests fits your needs, check out our guide which will point you in the right direction. We highlight which streaming music services are best for music downloaders, station tweakers, passive listeners, social networkers, and our core audience—nerds.
From Spotify to Jango, we've got you covered. All of these stations play music, but depending on the selected station, you can fire up comedy if you're in the mood for stand up, and news channels if you want to stay on top of global happenings. Those with more eclectic tastes can even dive into anime and video game soundtracks . Feel free to chime in with streaming music station suggestions of your own in the comment section below.
1 Best for Downloaders
2 Best for Tweakers
3 Best for The Laid Back
4 Best for Social Networkers
5 Best for Nerds
6 Best for Aspiring Musicians


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Donate now to support Renee Heffron
Friday, March 23, 2012
Runners Lisa Conti and Renee Heffron with patient partner Olivia
Q: What is your name and where are you from?
My name is Renee Heffron and I live in Lynnfield, MA.
Q: Why did you choose to run the marathon for MassGeneral Hospital for Children?
I am turning 40 in April and thought there was no better way to celebrate a milestone birthday than to run the Boston Marathon in support of childhood cancer. I love to run, I ran Boston twice unofficially. I'm excited to be able to run in support of the worthiest cause and be an official runner. I love children (we have three boys) and this will be wonderful for my boys to see me do something like this for Olivia, my patient partner, and to show support for children battling cancer and the medical professionals helping them in that battle. We donate every year to childhood cancer but now I'm privileged to be a part of a team that runs the race and raises money. Not only will I benefit from doing this, but my family will also be affected in such a special way.
Q: What kind of experience do you have as a runner?
I have been a runner since 1986. I ran cross country and track for Stoneham High School and Westfield State College, where I also coached after graduating. I then continued to run for exercise and occasionally ran road races, anywhere from 5K races to half marathons and the Boston Marathon in 1995 and 1997.
Q: What has been your most memorable moment preparing for the marathon?
My most memorable moment in preparation for the Boston Marathon has been simply running outside in any kind of weather… I just seem to go. We have had the most amazing running weather so far, but I did encounter a terrible rainstorm during a 13-mile run one lovely Friday morning. I was amazed that it didn't bother me at all and I just kept going. My thoughts remained on Olivia, thinking about what she has gone through since 2010. Olivia is 100% my inspiration to run the distance and train as I have been.
Q: What have you learned about your patient partner and what makes her special?
I met Olivia in early February. She is the sweetest little girl I have ever seen. Olivia's smile melted my heart; she is so adorable. Olivia does not come across as a 3-year-old at all. She is a big fan of the Nickelodeon television show iCarly and the band Big Time Rush. Olivia adores her younger sister Chloe and her mom tells me she loves playing with her.
Q: What are you most looking forward to about marathon day?
On the Marathon Monday, I am most looking forward to seeing Olivia and her family at Mile 20, along with my family and all the Mass General families. I cannot wait to get a big hug from Olivia that will continue me on to the finish line. I actually get tears thinking about it.
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text: NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- IntercontinentalExchange ICE, +1.16% said Thursday it agreed to buy NYSE Euronext nyx in a stock and cash transaction valued at $8.2 billion, or $33.12 a share. The combined company will be diversified across various markets including agricultural and energy commodities, credit derivatives, equities and equity derivatives, foreign exchange and interest rates. The deal was unanimously approved by the boards of both companies. The price of $33.12 represents a 37.7% premium over NYSE Euronext's closing share price on Wednesday. Reports of the merger surfaced earlier in the day.


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Nov. 28 ( Bloomberg) -- Apple Inc.'s Eddy Cue, who took charge of map software last month, is racing to turn around the troubled service, firing a senior manager and urging partners to improve data amid an escalating rivalry with Google Inc.
Cue, the senior vice president overseeing Apple's online services, pushed out maps supervisor Richard Williamson in a management shakeup soon after taking over the program, said people familiar with the situation, who asked not to be named because the information isn't public. Cue is seeking advice from outside map-technology experts and prodding maps provider TomTom NV to fix landmark and navigation data it shares with Apple.
Apple is under pressure to remedy mapping software widely faulted for unreliable landmark searches, routes that get users lost and a lack of public-transit directions. Building confidence in the tools is crucial as Google prepares its own downloadable mapping application for the iPhone and iPad, threatening to lure users and ad dollars away from Apple.
"Maps are a mission-critical application, and consumers have to trust that what they are seeing is correct," said Sarah Rotman Epps, an analyst at Forrester Research. "Apple will have to work really hard to re-earn that trust."
While flaws in Apple's map program haven't dented sales of the iPhone 5, which was introduced in September, the shortcomings were an unusual public misfire that forced Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook to apologize to customers. The bungled introduction of the new mapping features also contributed to the ouster of mobile-software chief Scott Forstall, whose departure was announced in October.
Cook's Apology
Trudy Muller, a spokeswoman for Apple, declined to comment on Cue's moves. She referred to the statement Cook issued in September that said the mapping software will improve as more customers use it and more data can be gathered.
"We are extremely sorry for the frustration this has caused our customers and we are doing everything we can to make maps better," Cook said in the statement.
In removing Williamson, Cue wants to install a new leadership team for the group, one person said. A replacement for Williamson wasn't immediately known. Attempts to reach Williamson weren't successful.
A team at Apple has been working to fix the mapping mistakes, focusing first on some of the most glaring flaws, one person said. The satellite imagery over the U.K. has been improved and labels for popular U.S. landmarks such as the Washington Monument have been corrected.
Removing Google
The new version of Apple's iOS mobile software removed Google's maps app, which had been built into iOS since the iPhone's introduction in 2007, in favor of its own. Apple's program added new features such as turn-by-turn navigation and fly-over views of landscapes. IOS software runs iPhones and iPads, which compete with smartphones and tablets that run Google's Android operating system.
Apple, which also eliminated the preinstalled app for Google's YouTube video service, built the replacement map program because it wanted to scale back its relationship with Google, two people familiar with Apple's development of maps said in September.
The mapping missteps highlight Apple's lack of experience building and maintaining Internet services that need constant upkeep. While Apple excels at designing hardware products like the iPhone and iPad, Google has built its businesses around services such as search, e-mail and mapping -- then selling advertising around that, said Noah Elkin, an analyst at researcher EMarketer Inc.
"It's difficult to replicate the same level of experience that Google has achieved over a long period of time essentially overnight," Elkin said.
'Rare Stumble'
A critical mistake for Apple was saying before the mapping product was released that it would be one of the best services on the market, Elkin said.
"That was the expectation when it launched," he said. "It didn't live up to that, and it was a rare stumble for Apple."
Williamson, who had worked at Apple for more than a decade, was part of the group that built the software for the original iPhone and is named on several of the smartphone's patents. In addition to Apple, he worked at NeXT Computer, the company founded by Steve Jobs before he returned to lead Apple in 1997.
As part of the management overhaul last month, Cue -- who oversees Apple's iTunes, App Store and iCloud services -- was also put in charge of maps and the Siri voice-recognition tool, bringing all of the company's online services under one group.
Cue's Management
Cue's role overseeing those sorts of services may help turn around the mapping program, said Forrester's Epps.
"That experience could be a good thing for Apple," she said.
This isn't the first time Cue has taken on a troubled product. Jobs had him supervise the MobileMe Internet-storage service after a series of miscues, including a glitch that prevented customers from accessing their e-mail. That service was recently closed and replaced with iCloud.
Cue, who started his career at Apple in the company's internal information-technology department, became a close confidant of Jobs. As head of iTunes, he spearheaded many of the negotiations with music, television and movie companies. He's also leading the company's effort to add more video content for a potential new television product, people familiar with the internal deliberations said earlier this year.
For related news and information: Apple management team: AAPL USMGMTApple and Google: AAPL USGOOG USTCNIApple business breakdown: AAPL USPGEOTop technology news: TTOPTop stories: TOP
--With assistance from Peter Burrows and Brian Womack in San Francisco and Susan Decker in Washington. Editors: Jillian Ward, Reed Stevenson
To contact the reporter on this story: Adam Satariano in San Francisco at firstname.lastname@example.com
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Tom Giles at email@example.com


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Karlanda, 3 Seater sofa cover Loose FitProduct info
Simply Velvet Silver Grey
An affordable, everyday velvet fabric made of a very short, fine pile, with a slight shine depending on light. Available in a selection of classic colours in Regular Fit for all of our furniture and cushion covers, curtains, bedskirts and bedspreads. Lighter in weight than our Malmen Velvet or Vintage Velvet. Made in Europe of 100% polyester. Not stain protected.
Fabric Characteristics
100% Polyester
- Martindale result: 30,000
- Fabric width: 140 cm
Care instructions
Machine wash 40℃, do not tumble dry, line dry, dry in the shade, no ironing, no bleach
Washing temperature 40 No tumble Line dry Dray In Shade No ironing No bleach
- Price Low - High
- Price High - Low


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Home >> Course Descriptions >> College of Education
Theories of Second Language Learning
Three semester hours.
This course focuses on the behavioristic and cognitive theories of second language learning and acquisition. Characteristics of adult and child language learning as well as English as a Second Language (ESL) strategies are evaluated. Prerequisites: Admitted to and in good standing in the College of Education.
Home - General Information - Student Services -
Academic Undergraduate Regulations -
Undergraduate Degrees - Academic Graduate Regulations -
Graduate Degrees - Course Descriptions - Faculty -
Appendix A - Appendix B - Appendix C - Appendix D


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When I first came to Washington nearly 20 years ago, I didn't set out to become known as a budget hawk—and I didn't plan to earn nicknames like "Dr. No"—simply by adopting a skeptical approach toward spending taxpayer money. I was merely taking seriously the basic responsibility of a member of Congress: the unglamorous duty of oversight.
Over the years, my staff—which I believe is the best and the most prolific on Capitol Hill—has helped me uncover and root out thousands of examples of waste and mismanagement. Some of what we've found has been downright outrageous. Certainly, some of the most memorable examples, gathered here, are good for a laugh. But as my own time in the Senate draws to a close, I hope they also serve as trenchant reminders of what my colleagues ought to be fighting to stop.
Story Continued Below
1. The Bridge to Nowhere
A notorious 2005 earmark authorized $452 million to build two bridges in Alaska—including one that became known as the so-called Bridge to Nowhere, which would have connected the city of Ketchikan to Gravina Island, home to only a few dozen people.
Our Solution: Shift $452 million to instead repair a bridge spanning Lake Pontchartrain in Louisiana that had been damaged by Hurricane Katrina.
Why it mattered: Even though we lost the vote 82 to 15, the debate was a galvanizing moment for what would become the Tea Party. In fact, nearly a decade later the Bridge to Nowhere is still cited in campaign ads. By singling out a specific project that had been sponsored by a fellow Republican, we openly challenged the party to restore its faith in limited government.
2. The Woodstock Museum
In 2007, Congress authorized a $1 million earmark to build a museum dedicated to the 1969 Woodstock concert.
Our Solution: An amendment to provide additional funding for children's health care.
Why it mattered: This was a rare vote we won. After a motion to table the amendment failed, the amendment passed by a live unanimous consent. We hoped the museum project would mark the dawning of the age of accountability—it was featured in a raucous and psychedelic ad used by John McCain's presidential campaign in 2008. With this vote, and many others, I also wanted to communicate our willingness to accept incremental changes and, if necessary, end earmarks one project at a time.
3. Duplication Nation
Every year the federal government wastes at least $200 billion in duplicative federal programs, agencies, offices and initiatives.
Our Solution: With a bill in 2009 that passed 94-0, we were able to direct the Government Accountability Office to annually compile a list of all this overlapping spending.
Why it mattered: So far, the GAO's three reports have produced a mother lode of potential savings. When the first list was released in 2009, senators lined up to applaud GAO's work and promise action. Representatives Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.) have taken up this fight, as has Senator Tim Scott (R-S.C.). But they need more support. Rank and file members, particularly conservatives, should be badgering leadership with action items based on GAO's ready-made list.
4. The Adult Baby
We were curious to learn, in 2011, of a subculture of adults who dress, eat and otherwise behave as babies. We were further shocked to discover that some, including a man named Stanley Thornton—who was featured in a television program—had funded his infantile lifestyle by relying on disability payments from the Social Security Administration.
Our Solution: We asked the Social Security inspector general to investigate, noting that Mr. Thornton had, on television, appeared perfectly able to perform tasks including designing and building custom baby furniture. "It is possible," I pointed out, "that he has been improperly collecting disability benefits for a period of time."
Why it mattered: The case was easy to poke fun at, but it led to a pair of sobering investigations into our disability system, one of which was featured on 60 Minutes. The disability program has become a de facto welfare program that is crowding out people who are truly unable to work—pushing the program closer to bankruptcy, which could happen as soon as 2016.
5. Unemployment Payouts to Millionaires
It's not just adult babies gaming the system. In 2011, we discovered that federal unemployment benefits are being sent to the wealthy—who bilk the system out of at least $30 million each year.
Our Solution: In April 2011, the Senate approved, in a vote of 100-0, an amendment to end unemployment payments to millionaires, but the underlying provision did not become law.
Why it Mattered: I was never interested in demonizing success, just highlighting the incompetence of government programs that provide unemployment payments to people who do not need them.
6. Shrimp on a Treadmill
In 2007, the National Science Foundation committed more than $500,000 to study the mobility of shrimp by conducting experiments that involved placing the crustaceans on treadmills.
Our Solution: We featured the example in our 2011 report "The National Science Foundation: Under the Microscope" that was written to encourage the NSF to target resources in a smarter, more effective manner.
Why it matted: The video of a shrimp running on a treadmill became an iconic illustration of curious grant funding. As a physician, I'm among the most pro-science members of Congress, which is why I fought to make sure scarce tax-dollars promote science rather than, say, shrimp fitness videos.
Not surprisingly, grant recipients tend to not enjoy the attention that comes with being mentioned in such reports. But the oversight work is designed to send a clear message to grant applicants: If you don't want your federal funding scrutinized, don't ask for taxpayer money.


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Welcome to our Practitioner Directory. The energy healers listed have completed the full Four Winds Light Body School program and are actively practicing shamanic energy medicine. Our graduates have been trained to work one on one with clients personally, as well as remotely over the phone. Take a few minutes to browse our directory; and search by name, geographic area or service type/keyword.
Andrea PortenierSilver Bamboo Light Energy Healing
The Four Winds Directory
Professional Certifications, Licenses and Services
Four Winds trained in Luminous Healing and Energy Medicine
DISCLAIMER: This Directory is solely designed to provide a listing of graduates of the Light Body School who have received a certificate of completion. These practitioners have
opted to pay a fee to market their services to the general public, and directly inputted their own personal information. This Directory is designed for informational purposes only.
Nothing contained herein is to be construed as a vehicle to provide medical advice, diagnosis, opinion, or treatment, nor as a substitute for medical or professional care. The Four Winds is not liable or responsible for any advice, course of treatment or any other information or services you obtain through this site or the practitioners listed, and does not recommend or endorse any individual practitioner or business. Reliance on the information contained on this website is solely at your own risk.


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Sarah Bachelard is an Anglican priest and theologian. She lives in Canberra in Australia where she has taught in the areas of theology, ethics and spirituality at Charles Sturt University and is an honorary research fellow at the Australian Catholic University. She is currently working as a parish priest and retreat leader. She is a member of the WCCM and was a keynote speaker at the John Main Seminar in Montreal in 2007.
Download the Theologican Reflections Flyer PDF
- Lecture 1: Experiencing God
What do we experience when we 'experience' God? How do we know that it is God we are experiencing? This lecture engages these questions by exploring the concepts of 'God' and 'experience' at some depth. It argues that the non-idolatrous experience of God is a process which strips us of untruth and false consolation. This is an encounter mediated by the practice of contemplative prayer and often precipitated by a time of crisis.
- Lecture 2: Collapsing Stories
In crises of many different kinds we face distinct forms of suffering. We suffer the losses and pain of whatever has befallen us in forms such as grief, fear, illness, shame or injustice. And we suffer the collapse of meaning, the loss of the story we knew and were able to tell of our lives. This lecture asks how it is possible, through the practice of meditation, to integrate the distinctive suffering of crisis in such a way that it leads us into a deeper wholeness and truth.
- Lecture 3: Living Contemplatively in a Time of Crisis
The paradox of both the contemplative life and a time of crisis is that by taking us deeply into ourselves, meeting and learning to accept whatever is painful, unresolved or illusory within us, we are empowered to move back into the world with a radically deepened relationship to it. This lecture explores how our deepening inner pilgrimage frees us to be more wholly and vitally in the world, focusing particularly on our relationship to death, to the suffering world and to the possibilities of our lives.


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Helen Oliveri, President & Broker
The Helen Oliveri Team - Keller Williams Realty Partners
The Helen Oliveri Team had it's best year ever in 2012
Breaking 50+ Million in Volume AND with 377 HOMES Sold.
The Helen Oliveri Team was also recognized
by Chicago Agent Magazine for ranking in the
Top 20 for all Chicagoland Realtors.
January, 22, 2012 - The Helen Oliveri Team had a record breaking year with, $50,443,748 million in volume and 377 total homes sold. 2012 was a monumental year for the team in that they received many awards and special recognitions acknowledging their continued growth, success and achievements.
In July 2012, The Helen Oliveri Team was acknowledged by Wall Street Journal and Real Trends as one of, "The Thousand Top Real Estate Professionals", a prestigious national awards ranking sponsored annually by the two respected publications. This was the 2nd year in a row The Helen Oliveri Team was recognized. According to The Thousand Top Real Estate Professionals, The Helen Oliveri Team was in the TOP 250 and had transaction sides totaling 231, ranking them #164 in the nation, up from the previous year of #229.
The list of the top Thousand Teams in Sides can be found at: http://www.realtrends.com/products/top-1000-sales-professionals/team-sides12
Also in July of 2012, Helen Oliveri was featured in a full page spread of Chicago Agent Magazine's Who's Who in 2012. This article is about who is making headway in the Chicagoland real estate industry.
Furthermore, Helen closed the year out very strong and ended up ranking in the Top 10 of all Keller Williams Realty International agents (comprised of over 80,000 agents) for homes sold, #42 in sales nationally for all Keller Williams Realty International and #1 in the Keller Williams Mid-American Region comprised of over 5 states.
Helen was also awarded Chicago Agent Magazine Top 20 Chicagoland Agent status for volume and homes sold, between January 1, 2012 and November, 31 2012, and also in the Top 20 Lake County Agents.
Finally, The Helen Oliveri Team crossed a significant milestone in that they officially sold over 1,100 homes since their inception in July 2003. Furthermore, they crossed another milestone in that they increased their volume and homes sold by 64% from 2011.
"We are absolutely thrilled to have had such an amazing year in 2012 and be recognized for our growth and achievements," said Oliveri, who serves clients primarily in Northern Lake and Cook Counties within communities such as Hawthorn Woods, Long Grove, Kildeer, Lake Zurich, Mundelein, Glenview, Morton Grove, Northbrook, Northfield, Wilmette and the entire Chicagoland North Shore and Northwest areas. "Even with the market's challenges, it's incredibly gratifying to work with our clients to achieve their real estate goals. Helping people find their dream home as well as helping them sell their properties for top dollar with short market time and with a smooth transaction, is the reason we are in business. We continually strive to exceed our clients expectations with their goals at the forefront and their complete satisfaction in mind."
The Helen Oliveri Team had an amazing 2012 and are working hard to have an even better 2013. So far, the year has started strong and it looks like it may end up being another record breaker! Keep your eyes on this team as they soar to the very top.
The Helen Oliveri Team
Keller Williams Realty Partners
"Your Best Move"


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Patients with mild gallstone pancreatitis can undergo surgery sooner, shortening hospital stays
Patients with mild gallstone pancreatitis usually stay in the hospital for several days, waiting for the symptoms to subside, before undergoing surgery to remedy the condition. A new study from researchers at Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute (LA BioMed) indicates patients may no longer have to wait so long for surgery and could leave the hospital sooner.
The study, slated for publication in the Annals of Surgery in April, found surgeons could safely operate on patients with mild gallstone pancreatitis within 48 hours of admission, rather than waiting for the painful inflammation in the pancreas to subside before performing the surgery.
"In the study, patients with mild pancreatitis, who underwent surgery within two days of admission, left the hospital sooner and had similar favorable outcomes as those patients who waited several days before surgery," said Christian de Virgilio, MD, a LA BioMed principal investigator and the corresponding author for the study. "The common practice of delaying surgery on patients with mild gallstone pancreatitis should be abandoned because it results in longer and more costly hospital stays."
Mild gallstone pancreatitis is caused by a gallstone or gallstones in the common bile duct triggering a backup in the pancreas of the digestive enzymes and hormones it produces to help the body digest food and convert glucose to energy.
The standard treatment is laparoscopic surgery to remove the gall bladder, which produces the gallstones. In the study reported in the Annals of Surgery, surgeons removed the gall bladders of 25 patients with mild gallstone pancreatitis within 48 hours of admission and operated on 24 other patients after lab tests and physical examinations found their enzyme levels had normalized. (One patient was excluded from the study after developing other unrelated medical complications.)
The researchers found operating on the patients within 48 hours of admission decreased the overall length of hospital stays from four to three days when compared with the patients who waited for the symptoms to subside before undergoing surgery.
"Operating within 48 hours of admission is ideally suited to patients with mild gallstone pancreatitis who don't demonstrate evidence of cholangitis, a bacterial infection, and don't require aggressive fluid resuscitation," said Dr. de Virgilio.


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Subscribe To JoJo's Bizarre Adventure HD Arrives This August For PSN, XBLA Updates
I've already subscribed
Capcom's classic DreamCast title, JoJo's Bizarre Adventure is getting a high-definition makeover and coming to current generation consoles for the Xbox Live Arcade and the PlayStation Network beginning late August.
JoJo's Bizarre Adventure originally released to a lot of mixed reviews over its oddly diverse character selection and strange fighting mechanics, JoJo's wasn't the typical run-of-the-mill fighting game and it's one of the very things that helped carve out its own little niche as a bizarre and duly loved fighting game with a weird cast of characters.
As stated in the press release...
the story centers around the powerful Joestar family, including well known hero Jotaro Kujo. Players will be able to unleash powerful super combos and perform special attacks with their characters by executing their supernatural powers, known as Stands. Each character's Stand appears in-game just as they did in the manga, offering another strategic layer of fighting and unique gameplay. For example, players can use Jotaro's Stand, 'Star Platinum' to perform 'Blazing Fist' and attack enemies together with Jotaro, causing massive damage to the opponent.
Some of the new functions for the re-release of the Dreamcast version include a new video mode so players can record and share fights with friends and rivals, and the all new multiplayer lobby mode makes it easy to find games, pair up against players from around the world or find competition in order to test or hone your fighting skills. The addition of Battle Points also makes it convenient to level-up and have your name plastered all over the leaderboards, so everyone can know just how bizarrely good you are.
You can look for JoJo's Bizarre Adventure HD to land on digital e-tailer shelves beginning August 21st for the PlayStation Network at the $19.99 price point and for 1600 MS Points beginning August 22nd. For more info feel free to visit the Official Capcom Website.


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The nation is reeling from news that 35 teachers, principals, and other education leaders in Atlanta have been charged with being part of a cheating ring – altering and fabricating test sheets and inflating test scores. The alleged architect of the ring is celebrated former superintendent of schools, Beverly Hall, who won Superintendent-of-the-Year in 2009, and an invitation to the White House, and has earned more than half a million dollars in reward bonuses over the years. She now faces the possibility of 45 years in prison.
As I read the details of this case, I was reminded of another cheating ring, led by a much-celebrated, larger-than-life winner who fell far from grace as of late: You guessed it, Lance Armstrong.
What do these Atlanta teachers and world-class cyclists have in common?
They both seem to have fallen prey to a culture of what we might call "ethical slip" – little by little, one by one, each adjusted his or her own internal compass to point the way of the growing crowd. (In the case of the Atlanta teachers, it seems their compasses may have been adjusted under threat, in many cases, rather than more subtle kinds of pressure.) What might have felt uncomfortable at first likely became increasingly normalized by the frequency and volume of its occurrence. What might have once been unthinkable likely became mind-numbing routine. And before long, a whole internal culture was created where the unethical act – doping, cheating – becomes a foundational internal logic.
Mr. Armstrong, no longer trusting his own soul, groped for answers in books. He told Oprah in his infamous interview that he "looked up the definition of cheat," and it means "to gain an advantage on a rival or foe." Armstrong explained: "I didn't view it that way. I viewed it as a level playing field."
Both Dr. Hall and Armstrong deserve their due. Just as they were cast as leaders in front of the cameras, they were, if the case holds up in court, leaders behind the cameras, too – cultivating "ethical slips" from others by example and, sometimes, even coercion. Both are powerful reminders that when we make gods out of people, we can expect to be disappointed.
But before we grow too comfortable on our thrones of judgment, we must consider our own capacity for adjusting our internal compasses when it's convenient and/or culturally normalized. People fudge on their taxes, tell their doctors they don't really smoke, gossip even when they feel slightly gross about it, maybe even adhere to some questionable protocol at work that they used to think was unethical. After awhile people can get used to these ethical gray areas; instead of a sharp jolt to their moral barometers, these transgressions invoke just a dull twinge.
Many city-dwellers walk past homeless people on the street without a second glance. They may contribute time and money to help those struggling with poverty, mental illness, and addiction, but most are desensitized to their presence there on the sidewalk. They are able to depersonalize the situation in a way that they never likely would have been capable of doing as children, still deeply sensitive to the suffering of the world. But children learn. All the other adults are walking by. If they don't do anything for this person, why should I?
Little slips, as any addict will tell you, can grow into a whole shift in identity. Armstrong himself said: "[b]ehind that story is momentum…it just gets going and I lost myself in all that."
So what stands between each of us and the momentum that might get us truly lost? What could have stood between the cyclists and the dope or the Atlanta educators and the cheating?
Some of the simplest gifts in the world, actually: self-reflection and friendship. Just as fire needs oxygen, the ethical life needs reflection. And that reflection often requires time – moments of mentally unplugging and turning inward. Our compulsively overscheduled, hyperconnected lives are actually the perfect conditions for unethical behavior to compound itself, unnoticed underneath the frantic 21st-century buzz.
When we are forced to pause, disconnect, and reflect on who we are and what we hold dear, the places in our lives that are ethically incongruent suddenly pop out. We are alone with our thoughts, less able to justify behavior that others might find acceptable but that we, in our most honest moments, know doesn't match who we want to be in the world. These kinds of moments can be formalized, through retreat experiences like those that the Center for Courage and Renewal and other institutions offer, or informal – a morning meditation, a moment of prayer, a lunch break devoted to journaling, a quiet walk.
The ethical life also requires brave and graceful feedback from people who trust and love us. As I watched Armstrong, and now Hall, flash over and over again on nightly newscasts, I couldn't help but wonder where their real friends were. Was there no one who loved them enough to tell them that what they were doing was out of alignment with their best selves? Were they so insulated by their fame and honor and the pressure to succeed that they became protected from any kind of critique, as well?
We must risk our friendships for the sake of integrity. We must have the courage to call one another out – with unconditional love, with empathy – when we witness the kind of ethical slips that can hurt whole communities. We must take it personally – not because we are any better than those who have fallen prey to a culture of cheating – but because we can all lose our true north at some point. And that's something we need to keep.
Courtney E. Martin is the author of "Do It Anyway: The New Generation of Activists" and cofounder of the Solutions Journalism Network. You can read more about her work at www.courtneyemartin.com.


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With warmer weather springing up in most states around the country, it's a good time to stroll to your local library and introduce your children to new stories and/or picture books. My patients' waiting room often echoes with children repeating their parents' recitals of "One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish…" This brings back memories of reading aloud with my own two children, now ages 15 and 12, so I thought I'd share with you BabyLeggers some of our favorite children's books.
Parents also frequently ask for recommendations of clinical books that offer developmental, practical and medical information. Such basic reference guides are well worth keeping on hand and I bet you will find yourself consulting them again and again as your children grow. So today, I present to you the first installment of "Dr. Pearl's Bookshelf."
Happy reading!
Children's Books:
Charlotte's Web, Goodnight Moon, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, The Cat in the Hat, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, The Secret Garden, Madeline, Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, The Tale of Peter Rabbit, Are You My Mother, Little Bear and A Wrinkle in Time
Clinical Books for Parents:
Most of the clinical books are available on the American Academy of Pediatrics' website — www.aap.org — in their bookstore.
Building Resilience in Children and Teens, Patient Education for Children, Teens and Parents, Managing Infectious Diseases in Child Care and Schools, Caring for Our Children, Nutrition: What Every Parent Needs to Know, Home Strength Training for Young Athletes and Nelson Textbook of Pediatrics.
Please go to the BabyLegs Facebook post about books for parents and children and tell everyone what books you and your children love!
All information contained in this blog and on our web site(s) should be independently verified by you by a medical professional of your own choosing and you should always conduct your own research and due diligence before making any decision related to the subject matter of this blog or our web site.
Dr. Pearl Cenon
A pediatrician in private practice in New Jersey for over 15 years, Dr. Cenon (we like to call her Dr. Pearl) also has two children of her own. Dr. Pearl's husband, Kevin McDonough is also a pediatrician and they work together. She writes basic posts about topics that interest many parents, from skin care and nutrition to seasonal issues, such as allergies and colds. Her kind, approachable tone in each blog post will have you looking forward to the next one.


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The Nov. 6 ballot facing local voters isn�t terribly long, but it is not lacking for high-impact races.
The Nov. 6 ballot facing local voters isn�t terribly long, but it is not lacking for high-impact races.
From the federal level and the race for president, to two unusual incumbent-less races for the state House, to the local level and interesting campaigns for county commissioners and school board in Lenoir County, there is much at stake.
Somewhere in the middle, you find North Carolina�s race for governor. On paper, the choice seems to be between Democrat Walter Dalton, lieutenant governor under outgoing Gov. Beverly Perdue, and Republican opponent Pat McCrory, the former Charlotte mayor who lost to Perdue in 2008.
But it�s more complicated than that. What voters will essentially be asked to do in a couple of weeks is give someone the go-ahead to change how individuals and businesses are taxed in the Tar Heel State.
McCrory has gone on the record as being in favor of a complete overhaul of the state�s income tax system. Right now, state residents pay 7.75 percent of their income into state coffers.
McCrory says he would like to adjust that downward to make it more competitive with other Southeastern states, which have personal tax rates that range from 5 percent to just under 7 percent.
Tax reform appears to be the key to the central theme of McCrory�s gubernatorial bid � job creation and economic recovery. He believes � and believes correctly, we think � that an outdated and out-of-touch tax system leaves North Carolina at disadvantage in the competition for jobs.
Dalton told the Associated Press that he would not favor a tax overhaul and, instead, believes that cutting taxes is foolish with revenues having declined over the past few years. His campaign has touted education as a primary concern and a key to creating jobs and righting North Carolina�s listing economic ship.
The candidate points out that revenues are projected to be higher this year, which he thinks will help the state restore some of the cuts made to education in recent budgetary considerations.
Dalton supported a push by the outgoing Perdue to raise the state sales tax, but he says he is no longer interested in supporting a sales-tax increase.
His Republican opponent has long been against such an increase. But both men admit that something has to change where taxation on business is concerned. When it comes to taxes, North Carolina has been labeled less than friendly to business and industry. Although both candidates say they will address that issue, they differ on the details.
How much Tar Heels pay in taxes directly affects the quality of life they lead. Just as this election is about putting a president in office and anointing local leaders, choosing a new governor can end up affecting not only how North Carolina navigates the next four years, but also how much Tar Heels pay to keep their government on course.
Voters should study the candidates � including Libertarian Barbara Howe � to see where they stand and then make an informed choice.
Almost everywhere you look, there�s a lot riding on this election.


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It isn't quite street riding season in the NE but come spring, TomTom's Rider GPS for motorcyclists will help navigate you to your intended destination.
Originally launched in 2007, this refresh lets you pick one of three routes: fastest, scenic, or your own via Tyre. You can even swap personalized routes with others over Bluetooth. As expected the 4.3-inch screen is glove-friendly and is all weather ready. The included dock/charger can be linked to your bike's ignition, so you won't accidentally forget to leave it on.
Look for the $299 Rider this spring. [TomTom]