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Eddie Albert, a versatile actor best known to '60s-era TV viewers as the befuddled lawyer-turned-farmer on the comedy "Green Acres," died of pneumonia May 26 at his home in the Pacific Palisades area of Los Angeles. He was 99 and suffered from Alzheimer's disease.
Fans who knew Mr. Albert as Oliver Douglas, a New York lawyer who settles in a farm town with his glamorous wife, played by Eva Gabor, may not have known that the white-haired fellow with the congenial face and distinctive tenor voice was a distinguished actor with a long career in radio, on Broadway, in the movies and on TV.
He appeared in more than 100 movies, beginning with the film adaptation of the Broadway play "Brother Rat" (1938) with Ronald Reagan, a comedy about life at Virginia Military Institute. He was nominated for Academy Awards as best supporting actor in "Roman Holiday" (1953), in which he played Gregory Peck's pal with a camera, and "The Heartbreak Kid" (1972).
In "Oklahoma!" (1955), he was the shifty Persian peddler, Ali Hakim, who romances Ado Annie, and in the original version of "The Longest Yard" (1974), he was the coldhearted prison warden.
In addition to his six-year run on "Green Acres," he co-starred with Robert Wagner in "Switch" from 1975 to 1978 and was a semi-regular on "Falcon Crest" in 1988.
He was born Eddie Albert Heimberger on April 22, 1906, in Rock Island, Ill., and grew up in Minneapolis. According to his son, Mr. Albert's mother was not married when he was born and changed his birth certificate to read 1908. He attended the University of Minnesota but left before graduating to work as a "song-dance-and-patter man" with a trio called the Threesome on a Minneapolis radio station. Radio announcers kept calling him Eddie Hamburger, so he changed his name to Eddie Albert.
After the Threesome broke up, he became part of a singing duo on NBC radio in New York City with a young woman named Grace Bradt; they were known as Grace and Eddie, "The Honeymooners." He made his Broadway debut in a play that lasted only a week but then found success in the play "Brother Rat" in 1936.
His Broadway notices led to a contract with Warner Brothers, where he appeared in such films as "Four Wives," "An Angel From Texas" and "A Dispatch From Reuters."
While living in Hollywood in the late 1930s, he began taking long sailing trips on a boat he had fitted out himself. On one of his voyages, he heard rumors of secret submarine fueling stations and of Japanese "fishermen" making hydrographic surveys along the Pacific coast. He reported what he had heard to Army intelligence and then went to Mexico, where he turned up information about Nazi spying in the country.
He joined the Escalante Brothers' Circus and toured Mexico as a clown and as a member of a trapeze act, sometimes as the "flier," sometimes as the "catcher."
He joined the Navy in 1942 and saw action in the South Pacific. He was awarded the Bronze Star for his rescue of wounded Marines at Tarawa who had been abandoned under heavy fire.
In 1944, he was recalled for assignment in the training films branch. After the war, he founded Eddie Albert Productions, which made educational films. One of them, a 20-minute sex education film for 11-year-olds, made in collaboration with the University of Oregon, drew the ire of Catholic leaders, who contended that such material might better be shown at home than in the classroom.
His best-known film immediately after the war was "Smash-Up: The Story of a Woman" with Susan Hayward in 1947. Throughout the 1950s, Mr. Albert continued his busy life as an actor on Broadway, in films and on TV.
In 1953, he played Winston Smith in a Studio One production of George Orwell's "1984." "Eddie Albert, as Winston Smith," a New Yorker reviewer wrote, "surprised me by the depth of his performance. I had no idea that Mr. Albert, who turns up all over the television channels . . . in amiable surroundings, could be so moving."
Mr. Albert was an ardent environmentalist and in the 1970s founded City Children's Farms, a nonprofit group that encouraged gardens in the nation's inner cities. He also wrote and narrated numerous TV specials on ecology and the environment and was one of the first public figures to call for banning the pesticide DDT.
In a 1996 interview with GRANDtimes.com, he once recalled chiding "Green Acres" co-star Gabor for wearing an extravagant feather outfit that would prompt TV viewers to want one like it, thus resulting in the death of many birds. Gabor told him not to worry, that feathers didn't come from birds.
"Well, where do feathers come from?" he asked her, and in her extravagant Hungarian accent she replied, "Pillows, dahling, pillows!"
Mr. Albert continued to appear in films throughout the 1980s. Among his final appearances were roles in "Brenda Starr" and "The Big Picture" in 1989. In 1990, he appeared in "Return to Green Acres," a TV movie reunion. His last appearance before retiring was in 1995 in the TV movie "The Barefoot Executive."
His wife of 40 years, Maria Marguerita Guadelupe Boldao y Castilla (better known by her stage name, Margo), died in 1985.
Survivors include a daughter, Maria Albert Zucht, and his son, Eddie Albert Jr.; and two granddaughters.


text: Flow patterns of the original material are often easy to see. Many jaspers are know as picture jasper because they contain what appear to be small images of sand dunes, mountains, plains, and even sky. Since the original materials were likely cross bedded sediments, they often contain the structure they mimic.

subset: commoncrawl


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McLaughlin signs to play soccer at Lipscomb
Feb. 7, 2007
Lipscomb University soccer coach Charles Morrow has announced the signing of Garrett McLaughlin from Belton, Texas.
McLaughlin, 6-foot-1, 190 pounds, was an All-District team selection in 2005 and 2006 and All-Region in 2006 as a defender at Belton High School. He is the captain of his 2007 team this spring.
He is a three-year letter winner in soccer. He also lettered in football in 2005 and 2006.
In 2006 he was named Defensive Most Valuable Player in his district. Belton was the District and Area champion in 2006.
His parents are Lori and Travis Belton. He plans to major in education at Lipscomb.


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'Psychologically Significant'
The level of "2.5% is psychologically significant, and 2.52% is technically significant," Lyngen said. "If we are holding that level, it's constructive for the market and we should consolidate in this new yield range of 2.3% to 2.5%. If we break the range, we could rise as high as 2.75%."
The so-called term premium on Treasury 10-year notes rose to 0.23%, the highest since July 2011, according to a Columbia Management Investment Advisers LLC model. It turned positive this week for the first time since October 2011. The premium reached an all-time low of minus 0.64% last July.
Bernanke, speaking this week after a two-day meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee, said reducing bond purchases would depend on the economy achieving the central bank's objectives. Policy makers are forecasting growth of as much as 2.6% this year and 3.5% in 2014.
The Fed has been buying $45 billion of U.S. government debt and $40 billion of mortgage securities each month to put downward pressure on borrowing costs in its third round of asset purchases. It purchased $1.5 billion today of Treasuries due from February 2036 to May 2042.
Purchase Forecast
The Fed will cut its monthly bond purchases to $65 billion at its Sept. 17-18 policy meeting, according to 44% of 54 economists surveyed by Bloomberg after Bernanke's June 19 press conference. In a June 4-5 survey, only 27% forecast tapering would start in September.
The central bank left unchanged its statement that it plans to hold its target interest rate at almost zero, where it's been since 2008, as long as unemployment remains above 6.5% and the outlook for inflation doesn't exceed 2.5%. Bernanke said a rate increase is still "far in the future."
Fed-funds futures showed a 54% probability policy makers will raise the benchmark interest rate by December 2014, versus 14% at the start of May.
The gap between yields on 10-year notes and Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities of comparable maturity narrowed to 1.95 percentage points, the least since January 2012. The difference, known as the 10-year break-even rate, represents the bond market's expectations for the rate of growth in consumer prices during the life of the debt.
Volatility Climbs
Volatility in Treasuries as measured by the Bank of America Merrill Lynch MOVE index climbed to 96.02 yesterday, the most recent available data. It was the highest level since December 2011. The daily average this year is 60.8.
"People are re-evaluating what is going on here," said Charles Comiskey, head of Treasury trading at Bank of Nova Scotia in New York, one of 21 primary dealers that trade with the Fed. "They're going to start increasing short-term interest rates in the second half of 2014."
Trading volume has been rising, with the amount changing hands through ICAP Plc, the largest inter-dealer broker of U.S. government debt, averaging $403 billion a day since the start of May. That's up from an average of $281 billion in the first four months of the year. Volume climbed to $569 billion yesterday, the highest since May 31.
German 10-year bund yields climbed to 1.74%, the highest level since April 2012. The dollar rose against 11 of its 16 most-traded counterparts.
The Treasury will auction $35 billion in two-year notes on June 25, an equal amount of five-year debt the following day and $29 billion in seven-year securities on June 27.
Copyright 2014 Bloomberg. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.


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Flavored Tobacco Products Appeal to YouthOct 23, 2013
More than 40% of middle and high school students who smoke use either flavored cigarettes or flavored little cigars, according to a report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) published October 22, 2013 in the Journal of Adolescent Health. The authors say these findings indicate the need for efforts to reduce the use of flavored tobacco products among young people.
Flavored cigarettes other than menthol are against the law because they appeal to children – but flavored cigars aren't. Cigarette-sized cigars are available in flavors like grape, chocolate, and strawberry, and look like cigarettes.
"Flavored or not, cigars cause cancer, heart disease, lung disease, and many other health problems. Flavored little cigars appeal to youth and the use of these tobacco products may lead to disfigurement, disability, and premature death," said CDC Director Tom Frieden, MD, MPH. "We need to take comprehensive steps to reduce all tobacco use for all of our youth."
This study uses data from the 2011 National Youth Tobacco Survey and is the first to measure how many American youth are using flavored tobacco products. It found that among current cigar or cigarette smokers in grades 6 – 12, 42.4% reported using flavored little cigars or flavored cigarettes. Among cigar smokers, those who used flavored little cigars were more likely than other cigar smokers to have no intention of quitting.
"Little cigars contain the same toxic and cancer-causing ingredients found in cigarettes and are not a safe alternative to cigarettes," said Tim McAfee, MD, MPH, director of the CDC's Office on Smoking and Health. "Many flavored little cigars appear virtually indistinguishable from cigarettes with similar sizes, shapes, filters, and packaging."
The study's authors write that advertising for flavored tobacco products has been targeted toward youth. They say flavors can mask the natural harshness and taste of tobacco, making flavored tobacco products easier for young people to use and increasing their appeal. In addition, they say little cigars are cheaper than cigarettes because they're taxed at a lower rate at the state level. Sales of little cigars have skyrocketed in recent years, increasing 240% from 1997 to 2007, with flavored varieties making up almost 80% of the market share.
The authors conclude that more efforts are needed to decrease tobacco use among children and teens. Their suggestions include a federal ban on flavored cigars, local ordinances to prevent the sale of all flavored tobacco products, media anti-tobacco campaigns, restrictions on advertisements and promotions, price increases, school-based policies, community programs, and tighter restrictions on the sale of tobacco products to young people.
Youth and smoking
According to the 2012 US Surgeon General's report, 1 out of 4 high school seniors is a regular cigarette smoker. Children and teens who smoke put themselves at risk for nicotine addiction and the many diseases associated with smoking. Regular teen smokers report health problems including coughing spells, shortness of breath, wheezing, headaches, and cold and flu symptoms.
Almost all tobacco use begins during youth and young adulthood. Studies show that the younger people are when they begin to use tobacco, the more likely they are to use it as an adult. According to the Surgeon General's office, if young people can remain free of tobacco until age 18, most will never start smoking. And people who start regularly using tobacco when they're younger are more likely to have trouble quitting than people who start later in life.
The Surgeon General's report says quit-smoking programs are effective when they combine mass media campaigns, price increases, and smoke-free policies in schools and communities. But parents can do a lot, too:
- Set an example by not using tobacco yourself.
- If you use tobacco, you can still make a difference. Your best move, of course, is to try to quit. Meanwhile, don't use tobacco around your children, don't offer it to them, and don't leave it where they can easily get it.
- Talk to your children about the dangers of tobacco.
- Tell your children you expect them to never use tobacco – or if they're already using it – to quit.
- Be aware of what your children are doing and who their friends are.
- Network with other parents who can help you encourage children and teens to refuse tobacco.
- Encourage your children's schools to enforce tobacco-free policies.
- Enforce movie age restrictions and discourage teens from playing video games that feature smoking.
Give us your feedback
Thank you for your feedback.
Flavored-Little-Cigar and Flavored-Cigarette Use Among U.S. Middle and High School Students. Published October 22, 2013 in the Journal of Adolescent Health. First author Brian A. King, PhD, MPH, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, Ga.
American Cancer Society news stories are copyrighted material and are not intended to be used as press releases. For reprint requests, please see our Content Usage Policy.


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Like many Blackberry users, I have been frustrated ever since the upgrade to BB7 (I know, the newest ones are BB10...). Being a corporate user, I like the inside the firewall capability the BB brings to my work. While there are solutions for us at IBM for calendar and email on iOS and Android, I still like Blackberry for my work.
The thing about the Blackberry I really dislike, though, is that it is almost impossible to use an external battery, car cord or other charging source for it. A recent software upgrade looks for specific signals (or lack therof) on the Data lines to decide if the charging source can send the higher current required for charging.
I normally write about Systems Engineering things here today - and this one is a prime example of one. Somebody in the Blackberry universe thought it was a good idea in the software to look for certain signals on the USB data lines when the phone is plugged in. Those would either signal the driver on the PC side to swich to the high current charge rate, or tell the phone that it couldn't. However, there are many external power sources that can properly provide the correct high current but fail to provide the correct signals to the software. Hum - a systems requirements problem!
Never to fear, we finally fix a software problem with a hardware hack!
I have probably bought and returned dozens of backup batteries, card cords and wall chargers searching in vain for something that would work! And yes, each of them claimed be 'high current' devices that would charge tablets and smartphones.
Frustrated, I searched all over for a solution to this problem - hoping for a software fix - since the phone is looking for a signal from a driver on a PC. I found some that involve unlocking an engineering display and changing some internal OS settings. I tried to access that on my Torch, but was not able to. While that might have been a good solution, it didn't work for me.
Searching more, I found an article by Ronen Halvey that inspired me to look for a hardware solution to the problem. He suggested you can buy a cable that is "charge only" and fools the device into thinking it is plugged into a wall charger. A quick Google search turned up some, but mostly they were "charge/sync" cables. I have a bucket load of those...
Looking further, I found an article by Ami Fischman describing how to hack a USB cable to do it -- by using tape and foil to short the 2 center pins on the computer side plug (D+ and D- are the center two). He suggests using a small piece of aluminum foil and cellophane tape so the short appears to the "phone side" and the computer side sees nothing because it is insulated by the tape.
That sounded a bit scary to me because if the tape wears through the PC side will short and prevent the PC from booting. A commenter on his page suggested just hacking the cable instead, so I thought "why not?"
First, a word of warning:
I am providing steps on modifying a USB cable AT YOUR OWN RISK. It involves using sharp objects your mother warned you about, and could potentially damage your phone, computer, charger or any other device or body part you may use during this process. I am NOT responsible for any damage you do - this is ENTIRELY AT YOUR OWN RISK.
I said it twice, but 3 times is a charm. DO THIS MODIFICATION AT YOUR OWN RISK - YOU MAY DAMAGE YOUR PHONE, CHARGER, COMPUTER, OR BODY PARTS.
To get started, I grabbed one of the dozens of Micro USB cables I have around here -- that fit the Blackberry on one side and the PC on the other. I had the idea to expose the wires, cut the D+ and D-, short them on the phone side and see what happens. Get your cable, a sharp knife, some electical tape and let's get started!
1. Carefully remove the outer plastic layer of the cable. Shave it slowly until you expose the outer mesh "shielding" and the aluminum foil overwrap. I removed about 1" of the plastic so I would have room to work. You can either then carefully remove the mesh and the foil completely (that's what I did). You don't have to remove all the plastic, if you're careful and steady-handed you can just expose enough of the wires to do the next step!
2. Here I have completely removed the outer shielding, exposing the 4 wires of the USB cable. Red is +5v, black is -5v, Green and White are the D+ and D- lines.
3. Cut the Green and White wires off, leaving room to work on them. Note that I cut them at the "PC side", since that side needs to remain un-shorted or "open" so as to not confuse a PC if it gets plugged into one. I intend to only use this cable with external charging sources, but still better to be safe than sorry.
Be careful to NOT cut the Red and Black wires! You may end up ruining a cable or 2 before you finally succeed.
4. Carefully strip the Green and White wires - it was tricky because they are very fine, and my wire strippers wouldn't remove the insulation. I had to "shave" it off with a sharp knife. Twist the wires together so that from the "phone" side they are shorted together. Note the "PC side" is cut off and not shorted. Be careful to not damage the Red or Black wires!
5. Now, wrap the entire "hack" in electrical tape to provide support and keep everything together. This will also help you easily identify the modified cable if it gets thrown into your bag with a bunch of other ones!
Try it out using a car charger or wall charger that you know didn't work before. If the Blackberry shows the little 'lightning bolt' then you have succeeded!
It worked for me, no guarantees it will work for you!
Good luck!


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Interview: Left Wing Blogging and Irish Left Review
national | arts and media | feature Tuesday March 25, 2008 14:22 by Chekov
Over the last few years, blogs and blogging have started to permeate the mainstream in Ireland. Features on bloggers and blogging have started to appear with increasing frequency in weekend newspapers. However, in comparison to the US, where blogs have become an integral part of political organising, blogs are very much still seen as marginal by the Irish political establishment.
Where to find left-leaning Irish Blogging? A Selection: Irish Left Review | Cedar Lounge Revolution | Notes on the Front | Dublin Opinion | Irish Election | Splintered Sunrise | Fringe Thoughts | IE Politics | Organized Rage | Tuppenceworth.ie
Q: When did you first start blogging and why?
Just over two years ago. It was mainly to stop fuming quietly while reading stuff online and to order my thoughts and give them some focus. I also started up a group blog and although it was only mainly me at the beginning, the aim was to have a place where me and some of my mates could sharpen our ideas, and do so in a more elegant and sartorial style than we were capable of down the pub. One friend I hoped to rope in is living in France and a blog seemed like the perfect way to get us all doing something together again.
Q: Are there many Irish blogs that have left-wing outlooks?
There are a few at this stage, but the majority of blogs don't focus on politics specifically, so sometimes its hard to tell which way individual bloggers lean politically. However, I'd say there's about 10 or so Irish Blogs with a left-wing outlook. Perhaps, though, these are just the Irish blogs with a left-wing outlook that I read. There are now hundreds of Irish blogs, so surely there is more than 10 lefty ones out there.
Q: Why did you set up Irish Left Review?
Q: Do you think blogs and other internet projects such as irish left review will ever be able to really challenge the ideological hegemony of the right, with their giant corporate media infrastructure?
Well, that's a big question. There is no doubt that a small group of people working part-time on this won't be able to give large media organizations a run for their money - in the short term - there is no comparison in terms of resources. However, it is interesting how these organizations are reacting to the web. Basically they are doing as little as possible to engage with it at a time when online audiences for news and current affairs, for example, is growing. Our objective was never to compete directly with giant corporate media and to try and supplant their message with our own. However, there will be a directed attempt to develop an alternative and coherent debate so that people who are engaged in Left politics in Ireland will have the resources (the facts, arguments, ideas, strategies) to counteract the ideological hegemony. At the moment, because of the dominance of a right-wing ideology in Ireland there is an acceptance that if you're going to debate political matters within the media that you have to do so within the parameters set down by the dominant ideology.
We are going to try and show that you don't have to accept the terms of the debate as set down by the corporate ideologues. Because the public forum so far has been provided by large media organizations it has been easy for them to set the agenda. However, with the Web, you can develop other public platforms, which we hope, through the structure of a magazine, we can utilized to create another debate and that in time this will be significant and authoritative enough to challenge the cozy consensus we see regurgitated in our media everyday.
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Rebecca, the sexy host of a late night, kinky phone-in radio programme invites her listeners to call 555-KIIS and turn her on with a sexual fantasy, a hot story or an actual real-life experience. These are the stories of those telephone calls!
Add this episode to your queue to receive more information about
Sleepless Nights and we will let you know when it becomes available.


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Monday, August 24, 2009
Eat'n Park Burgers Recognized as "Best in the Nation"!
Are you ready, Eat'n Park fans? We have some really exciting news to share with you! On July 18 and 19, Eat'n Park participated for the second year in the National Hamburger Festival in Akron, OH. Not only did we have a great time serving our famous Superburgers to all of the hungry festival attendees, but we were ecstatic to learn the results of the 4th Annual Best Burger Competition.
And the winner is….drum roll, please……our Black Angus Mushroom and Onion Burger! This fantastic burger, made with chargrilled, seasoned Black Angus beef and topped with grilled onions, mushrooms and Swiss cheese, took first place in the Best Traditional Burger category.
And, for the second year in a row, our Black Angus American Grill Burger placed in the Best Creative Burger competition. The American Grill Burger is served on grilled Texas toast and topped with grilled onions, green peppers, mushrooms and American cheese. Then, we finish it off with just a hint of yellow mustard….delicious!
If you haven't tried these burgers, be sure to order one the next time you visit an Eat'n Park so you can find out for yourself why the judges love them so much. We'll even sweeten the deal: order the Black Angus Mushroom and Onion Burger between August 24 and 30, and we'll give you a free Smiley Cookie! Just print the coupon below to redeem this offer.
And don't forget to make plans for next year to come and visit us at the National Hamburger Festival. If you would like to learn more about the festival, visit the website at http://www.hamburgerfestival.com/. To see our complete list of burgers, along with our entire menu, just click here.
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About the blog
Throughout this blog, we hope to share a bit of our culture with you through stories, recipes, and other information that we think you'll enjoy. More importantly, we hope you'll share with us – we want to answer those questions you've always had about Eat'n Park (how did we come up with that name, anyway?) and we want to hear your ideas, feedback, and hopefully, a few compliments too!
So, please feel free to comment on postings that pique your curiosity. We'll do our best to respond to questions within 72 hours. Please keep in mind that we are a family restaurant; comments containing offensive language will not be posted.
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The Public Education Foundation of Evansville Invites You to Thank a Teacher!
-Amy Walker
Beginning April 15 through May 9, the Public Education Foundation of Evansville, Inc., will offer its spring Thank a-Teacher program. New this year is an effort to encourage persons to Salute-A-Staffer, as well. Staff members doing work as diverse at driving buses, assisting with special education, social work, serving food or running the media centers make a crucial difference in many students; school year, too.
For a small donation to the PEF, parents, guardians, grandparents and more can order a card for the honoree. The school principal will also be notified, and each honored teacher and staff member will be recognized at a Board of School Trustees meeting in June 2014.
Proceeds from the program fund local Excellence in Education grants, provided by PEF to teachers and schools each fall. On average, annually PEF awards $10,000 in Excellence in Education grants to 15-18 teachers and schools affecting more than 2,100 students each year.
"Excellence in Education grants are fast-tracked and simple to complete. They are designed to encourage innovation and experimentation in the classroom," said PEF Executive Director Amy Walker. "PEF reviews, vets and supervises the grants, but it is still a very easy application process. And the grants are largely made possible by the Thank-A-Teacher Program." And don't forget Salute-A-Staffer in 2014.
Persons wishing to participate can access the Thank-A-Teacher and Salute-A-Staffer form at www.pefevansville.org or can send an e-mail request to email@example.com. Donation amounts are confidential. The thank you card will be sent to designated recipients within one week of receipt of donation.


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This is a lesson about the magnetic field of a bar magnet. The lesson begins with an introductory discussion with learners about magnetism to draw out any misconceptions that may be in their minds. Then, learners freely experiment with bar magnets... (View More) and various materials, such as paper clips, rulers, copper or aluminum wire, and pencils, to discover that magnets attract metals containing iron, nickel, and/or cobalt but not most other materials. Next, learners experiment with using a magnetic compass to discover how it is affected by the magnet and then draw the magnetic field lines of the magnet by putting dots at the location of the compass arrow. This is the first lesson in the first session of the Exploring Magnetism teacher guide. (View Less)
This is a lesson to demonstrate magnetic field lines in 2- and 3-dimensions. In the first activity, learners sprinkle iron filings over a magnet underneath a paper and record their observations. The second activity involves building a 3-D magnetic... (View More) field visualizer using a clear plastic bottle, a cow magnet and iron filings. This is the second lesson in the first session of the "Exploring Magnetism" teacher guide. (View Less)
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This is an activity about magnets and magnetism. Learners first make predictions about magnets, such as a list of the types of materials a magnet will pick up, how a magnet can be made, and how a compass can be made. Next, learners test their... (View More) predictions using simple experiments, and, finally, reflect on their predictions. This is the second activity in the Mapping Magnetic Influence educators guide. (View Less)


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2004 - 2005 Distinguished Speakers
PDF (Acrobat (PDF) 837kB Oct7 04) of 2004-2005 Distinguished Speakers Program Flyer
Ed Geary
University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, Science Education Program Manager
Ed is passionate about revolutionizing Earth and space science education in grades K-16 and co-editor of "Blueprint for Change" report. He is currently supporting Digital Library and GLOBE program activities at UCAR. Ed is past President of NAGT, a former professor of Geology and Education and past Director of Education and Outreach at the GSA. He has given numerous talks and workshops related to geoscience education reform, professional development, classroom use of technology, scientist-teacher-student partnerships, and development of digital library collections.
Karen Havholm
Department of Geology, University of Wisconsin - Eau Claire
Karen has taught both at the college and pre-college level, having taught high school science and elementary school in Iran. She currently teaches an Earth Science course for elementary education majors, and has considerable experience working with pre-college teachers in professional development activities using a variety of workshop models. She continues her research in eolian sedimentology, always involving undergraduate collaborators in her projects.
Michelle Hall
Science Education Solutions, Inc. Los Alamos, New Mexico
Michelle is an assistant professor of Geosciences with a research emphasis on geoscience education. She is active in teacher preparation and professional development and has developed curriculum for the high school and introductory college level student that uses GIS to investigate Earth processes. She is also one of the leaders of the education and outreach effort associated with the EarthScope project.
Sharon Locke
USM Research Institutes, University of Southern Maine
Sharon has co-directed three national programs that support increased participation of students with disabilities in science, including the NSF-funded Eastern Regional Alliance for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (EAST). She led development of the Earth System Science Ideabook, a resource for applying universal design principles to earth science teaching and learning, and has lectured internationally on the accessibility of the geosciences.
Paul Morin
Department of Geology and Geophysics, University of Minnesota
Paul has been instrumental in bringing Scientific Visualization to the Earth Science classroom with his work at the Department of Geology and Geophysics and the National Center for Earth-surface Dynamics. His work has led to the development of the Geowall, an inexpensive lowend virtual reality system now used at over 70 undergraduate institutions around the world. Morin is also contributing to the Science Museum of Minnesota's Big Back Yard, a 1.2 acre, outdoor biogeomorphology exhibit. He has contributed to over 10 earth science textbooks, numerous PBS science programs and the Encyclopedia Britannica.
Carol O'Donnell
The George Washington University, Graduate School of Education and Human Development
Department of Teacher Preparation and Special Education
Carol is the Senior Research Associate and Project Director of The George Washington University's (GWU) Scaling up Curriculum for Achievement, Learning, and Equity Project (SCALE-uP). Prior to her work at GWU, Carol served as the Earth and Space Science Curriculum Developer for the National Science Resources Center (NSRC), an organization jointly operated by the Smithsonian Institution and National Academies. A former teacher, she developed and authored six curriculum units for the Science and Technology for Children (STC) and Science and Technology Concepts for Middle Schools (STC/MS) curriculum projects. Her book, Catastrophic Events, received the Mark Trail NOAA/NWS Award in 2003. Carol has given numerous talks and workshops nationally related to science education reform, and serves as one of the leaders for the STC/MS Contextualized Professional Development Earth and Space Graduate Courses for teachers.
Eric Riggs
Department of Geological Sciences, Center for Research in Mathematics and Science Education (CRMSE) San Diego State University
Eric is an assistant professor of geoscience education and geology and leads the Geoscience Education Research Group at San Diego State University. The Riggs GeoEd Group studies many related aspects of field-based teaching and learning in the geosciences, focusing on issues of geoscience knowledge construction, spatial cognition related to geoscience expertise, and cross-cultural education. Riggs is the co-founder of the Indigenous Earth Sciences Project, a research and outreach effort which works to make geoscience education accessible and useful to Native Americans in Southern California and across North America.
Jill Singer
Professor of Earth Sciences and Director, Undergraduate Research Office SUNY, College at Buffalo
Jill is a professor of Earth Sciences at Buffalo State College (State University of New York system (SUNY)). From 2001-2003, she took a two-year leave of absence as a Program Director in the Division of Undergraduate Education at NSF. She served as President of the Council of Undergraduate Research from 2003-2004 and for the past three years has been a coorganizer for CUR's multi-day workshop on "Institutionalizing Undergraduate Research". At Buffalo State College, Jill teaches sedimentology, oceanography, and a variety of environmental courses. She is the Director of the college's Office of Undergraduate Research and for the past six years has coordinated the annual college-wide student research and creativity celebration and the undergraduate research summer fellowship program. In 2000 and 2001, she directed the Buffalo State's NCUR/Lancy program. This interdisciplinary research program involved 24 undergraduates and four faculty mentors during two summers of research focusing on environmental changes in Buffalo during the past century.
Marilyn Suiter
Geoscience Educator, Arlington, VA
Marilyn is a geologist and educator with more than twenty years of experience. She is currently a program director in the Education and Human Resources Directorate (EHR) at the National Science Foundation (NSF). Her responsibilities are in (geo) science education and diversity issues as they are implemented in K-12, undergraduate, and graduate education. Marilyn's highly varied career has included positions as Director of Human Resources and Career Development at the American Geological Institute, Exploration Geologist for Cities Service Oil & Gas, geologist for the U.S. Geological Survey, pre-college science teacher in grades 5-12 in the Philadelphia Public Schools, and adjunct faculty member in geoscience at American University. In addition to her wideranging interests and experience in geoscience education issues and demography of the geoscience community, she retains a special interest in activities for underrepresented populations. These include assessment of the status of participation of women, ethnic minorities and persons with disabilities in Geoscience Education and other STEM professions, and programs/activities to increase and enhance their participation, such as scholarships, internships, and seminars. (Suiter cannot represent the NSF in these visits, and declines honoraria.)
Mike Taber
University of Northern Colorado, Department of Earth Sciences
Mike is an assistant professor of Earth Science at the University of Northern Colorado. Mike has extensive experience in science education, having served as a classroom teacher for six years and involved in numerous curriculum projects. Mike is an advocate of using data in teaching inquiry. Mike has presented numerous science education papers at AGU and GSA. In addition, Mike is the Director for the Colorado Alliance for Science, an organization dedicated to the shaping of science education through informed policy. Mike is a co-PI for the Digital Library for Earth System Education.


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This post is part of a blog series which focuses on translating compatibility views in SQL Server to their respective dynamic management objects. You can find a list of all of the deprecated views in the introduction post.
The compatibility view syscomments returns rows for each view, rule, default, trigger, CHECK constraint, DEFAULT constraint, and stored procedure in the database. The rows contain the schema for the objects with each row containing up to 4000 characters of the schema. If the schema definition exceeds the size limit, then additional rows are used for the object.
The replacement catalog views for syscomments are sys.all_sql_modules and sys.sql_modules. The catalog views contains generally the same information with one key difference. Instead of limiting the object definition to 4,000 characters per row, the view uses an nvarchar(max) data type, allowing the entire definition to be returned. Similar to other catalog views, the "all_" prefix on the one catalog view indicates that the results are returned for all objects in the database versus returning just those for user objects in the other catalog view.
Less Than Useful Columns
There are a few columns in syscomments that are no longer useful with the changes to the catalog view. For starters, since the entire schema is always in one row, the colid column is no longer needed to string the rows together. Next the number column, which is used for procedure grouping, is no longer used or needed. Also, the columns texttype and ctext are no longer included. The ctext is just a varbinary representation of the schema definition and easy to reproduce.
Along with the other useless columns columns, the status column in syscolumns appears to be fairly useless as well. Investigating the available flags, the only available bit value appears to be 0X1; which coincides with the use of the ENCRYPTION option.
Query Via syscomments
A typical query against syscomments will include concatenation of the rows for objects with definitions that require multiple rows. A query with this concatenation is included in Listing 1. One of the issues with this activity, is that the ctext binary value is no longer accurate for the entire object, but I'm not sure that the column is useful anyways.
Listing 1 – Query for syscomments SELECT id ,number ,colid ,status ,ctext ,texttype ,language ,encrypted ,compressed ,text ,(SELECT text + SPACE(1) FROM syscomments c2 WHERE c1.id = c2.id ORDER BY colid FOR XML PATH('')) FROM syscomments c1 WHERE colid = 1
Additional Information
The introduction of the catalog views allows for some additional information to be retrieved about schema objects which were previously difficult to ascertain. These are available in the following columns:
- uses_ansi_nulls: Identifies if the object was created with ANSI_NULLS set
- uses_quoted_identifier: Identifies if the object was created with QUOTED_IDENTIFIER set
- is_schema_bound: Identifies if the object was created with schema binding
- uses_database_collation: Identifies whether the object uses the database collation
- is_recompiled: Identifies if the object was created with recompile
- null_on_null_input: Identifies if the object uses null input and output parameters
- execute_as_principal_id: Identifies if the object uses EXECUTE AS and how that it is implemented.
Query via Catalog Views
To retrieve similar information to that in syscomments from the new catalog views, use the query provided in Listing 2. The OBJECTPROPERTY function is used to determine whether the object definition is encrypted, since this column is not included in the new catalog views. As mentioned previously, there are two versions of the catalog view, one for all objects and another for user-defined objects. To return only those for user-defined objects, use sys.sql_modules in the query instead of sys.all_sql_modules.
Listing 2 – Query for schema definition SELECT sm.object_id AS id ,IIF(o.type = 'P',1,0) AS number ,CONVERT(varbinary(max),sm.definition) AS ctext ,OBJECTPROPERTY(sm.object_id,'IsEncrypted') AS encrypted ,0 AS compressed ,sm.definition AS text ,sm.uses_ansi_nulls ,sm.uses_quoted_identifier ,sm.is_schema_bound ,sm.uses_database_collation ,sm.is_recompiled ,sm.null_on_null_input ,sm.execute_as_principal_id FROM sys.all_sql_modules sm INNER JOIN sys.all_objects o ON sm.object_id = o.object_id
In this post, we discussed the use of syscomments and how it has been replaced with catalog views sys.all_sql_modules and sys.sql_modules. The use of the catalog views provides an easier interface for retrieving schema since concatenation of the rows is not required.
Do you see any reason to continue using syscomments ? Is there anything missing from this post that people continuing to use the compatibility view should know?
Related posts:
- Lost in Translation – Deprecated System Tables – sysconstraints
- Lost in Translation – Deprecated System Tables – sysconfigures
- Lost in Translation – Deprecated System Tables – syscurconfigs
Original article: Lost in Translation – Deprecated System Tables – syscomments
©2012 Strate SQL. All Rights Reserved.


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Tubulin is a protein that comprises the basic structural subunits of microtubules, the cytoskeletal filaments associated with the positioning of membrane-bound organelles and intracellular transport. Each tubulin subunit is, in fact, a heterodimer composed of alpha-tubulin and beta-tubulin components linked to one another by noncovalent bonds. The two globular proteins, which only occur in this network, each exhibits a binding site for a single guanosine triphosphate (GTP) molecule. The GTP molecule bound to the alpha-tubulin monomer may be regarded as a fundamental component of the tubulin heterodimer complex because it is physically unable to be exchanged or hydrolyzed, instead remaining constantly confined at the dimer interface. The nucleotide in the beta-tubulin monomer, however, is exchangeable and may be hydrolyzed to produce guanosine diphosphate (GDP), an event that significantly impacts the dynamics of the microtubular network.
In order to visualize the relationship between the Golgi complex and the intracellular microtubular network, the culture of horse dermal fibroblast (NBL-6) cells presented in the digital image above was immunofluorescently labeled with anti-tubulin (pan) mouse monoclonal primary antibodies followed by goat anti-mouse Fab fragments conjugated to Alexa Fluor 488. Golgi bodies were simultaneously targeted with rabbit anti-giantin primary antibodies, followed by goat anti-rabbit secondaries conjugated to Alexa Fluor 568. Nuclei were counterstained with Hoechst 33342. Images were recorded in grayscale with a QImaging Retiga Fast-EXi camera system coupled to an Olympus BX-51 microscope equipped with bandpass emission fluorescence filter optical blocks provided by Omega Optical. During the processing stage, individual image channels were pseudocolored with RGB values corresponding to each of the fluorophore emission spectral profiles.
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My experience at UNF was precisely what any young writer would wish for – workshops, collaborations, journals, events. I still have my story critiques written by Ari and my peers – they are invaluable and so good, and still give me guidance as a writer. Ernest Hemingway said this often paraphrased remark that "writing, at its best, is a lonely life," or, as said by Jessamyn West, "writing is a solitary occupation." I dare say they were wrong. True, while I am putting pen to paper, I am alone, but a writing community helps a writer to not only fine tune their craft, but also to develop in unexpected and new ways.My writing talent was (and continues to be) nurtured by UNF because of my mentors and peers there; to this day I am still in touch with this community. T hat is how I came to be the Editor-in-Chief of Fiction Fix in October of 2008. T he journal holds a special significance for me since it is the first place I have ever been published. It is so satisfying to work with UNF students and alumni to produce such a diverse and rich journal twice a year. The writers featured in Fiction Fix are both new writers, established writers, and all in between. They come from across the U.S. and world; it is humbling to be on this side of the process, seeing how many writers are out there, and how many great stories, and it is exciting to communicate with writers from around the globe and read what they are producing.My most recent publications include "When the Sun is Glorious" in Prick of the Spindle 4.3 (the story also received an "Honorable Mention" from Glimmer Train), "Death in Wisconsin" in the online publication deadpaper, and an essay forthcoming in Anamesa. I have also been published in Outsider Ink, Eat, River House at UNF, The Osprey Journal of Ideas and Inquiry, the UNF writing contest journal, and, of course, Fiction Fix. I currently live in New York, am working as an Executive Assistant at NYU's Courant Institute (a Math and Computer Science Institute teeming with good stories), and am applying to M.F.A.programs in New York City.
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While Iran's secret nuclear program has raised serious questions about that country's intentions, a military attack on Iranian nuclear facilities would not, in view of the U.S. bishops and other Catholic leaders, be justified under Catholic teaching. "The problem with preventive war is that it lowers the barrier to war too low," said Stephen Colecchi, director of the bishops' Office of International Justice and Peace. "Using military action for a vague and gathering threat is very different than using military force in the face of an immediate threat," he said.
That path "blurs that fundamental distinction between legitimate defense and aggression," said Gerard Powers, director of policy studies at Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame. "It would make a turbulent and unstable Middle East even more so.
"It would be inconsistent with moral certainty that is required before you use military force, because it is often speculative about what might happen in the future. In the end it is an endorsement of a notion that might makes right," Powers said.
Various reports have surfaced indicating that Israel is nearing a decision on a military strike in an effort to knock out some of Iran's key research and military facilities. President Obama reportedly has worked to deter any such strike, arguing that economic sanctions will force Iran to scale back its nuclear program, become more transparent about its intentions and allow wider access to International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors.
Kenneth Himes, O.F.M., associate professor of theological ethics at Boston College, agreed with the U.S. bishops that any attack on Iran under current circumstances constitutes a lowering of the threshold for war. "Given the state of the devastation of war, we should be raising the bar for going to war," he said. Father Himes also worries that Iran might respond through its regional proxies—Hamas in the Gaza Strip and Hezbollah in Lebanon—in mounting attacks on civilian targets.
Father Himes said he would welcome direct negotiations between U.S. and Iranian delegations. Doing so would give Iran a level of respect it seeks in the international community, he said.
Despite the secrecy surrounding Iran's nuclear program, Marie Dennis, co-president of Pax Christi International, said she is concerned that any attack will hasten the expansion of an arms race in the region. She called for the United States to lead the effort to make the Middle East a nuclear weapons-free zone.
Pax Christi feels very strongly, she said, that the threat to the state of Israel will be exacerbated by preventive war on Iran. "The best way to provide for security for Israel—which it has a right to expect, like Iran—is by eliminating the possession of nuclear weapons," she said, "so that we ratchet down this kind of threat and that we work for greater regional and global understanding."
The Catholic Church in the United States and in other states that possess nuclear weapons states can "take the lead and be really serious about the consequences of continuing reliance on nuclear weapons," Dennis said. "We've never moved as a church to a place where we as a pastoral imperative challenged the engagement of Catholic people in nuclear weapons production and the strategies of using nuclear weapons."


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Friday, August 05, 2011
Summer crostini with feta cheese and strawberries
Here's a truly summery crostini from one of my favourite food magazines, Swedish Lantliv Mat & Vin. I'm really sorry I got the magazine issue and came across the recipe just last week, as the Estonian strawberry season has come to an end. I can just imagine how lovely it would have tasted with just-picked sun-kissed strawberries as opposed to those much less pleasant imported ones. Still, these were wonderful and come highly recommended.
Crostini with feta cheese and strawberries
(Krõbesaiad maasika ja fetaga)
sourdough bread (ciabatta, baguette)
extra virgin olive oil
feta cheese
fresh basil leaves
freshly ground black pepper
Slice the bread thinly, halve the slices, if necessary. Brush or drizzle with a little bit of oil and toast in a pre-heated 220C/450F oven until golden and crisp.
Slice the cheese, divide the cheese slices on hot bread.
Garnish with sliced strawberries and basil leave, grind some black pepper on top.
4 comments:
- Jeanette said...
What a simple but elegant appetizer, so pretty - I wouldn't have thought to pair feta cheese with strawberries.
- 4:18 am, August 06, 2011
- elenareviews said...
I love strawberries. I never thought of an appetizer although...
- 11:58 pm, August 06, 2011
- Emily of The Best of this Life said...
Mmmm...that looks good & pretty too!
Love the idea of feta cheese and strawberries...
I love goat's cheese and watermelon -
that's such a great combo!
xo Emily
- 4:33 am, August 07, 2011
- Pille said...
Jeanette - isn't it pretty? I hadn't paired strawberries with feta before either, but it really worked..
Elena - now you know :)
Emily - I've paired watermelon and feta, will try goat cheese next time! Thank you for the tip!
- 11:55 pm, August 26, 2011
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2017 Audi A6 sedan is an Executive with the look of a sleek and modern design. New Audi A6 comes with a more interesting design changes to make many people impressed. The latest Audi A6 will enliven the market competition in the automotive segment of the Executive sedan cars. A6 is a prestigious generation of car launched by Audi Motors. We will discuss about the specifications and changes in 2017 as the Audi A6 sedan.
2017 Audi A6 Concept Design
2017 Audi A6 is a sedan that has a look of luxury and Executive. The all New Audi A6 to be your best option for a life of pride and prestige. The latest Audi A6 take no significant changes. Exterior design 2017 Audi A6 for basic body parts will still retain the original signature. Audi A6 comes with gives the impression of opulence and sporty revised taste become stronger. New Audi A6 has a new concept of aerodynamic body lines that will improve for the better. Audi A6 in the front will have a new grille and headlights. Audi A6 front grille will be redesigned to be more sporty and luxurious with lights that were revised to be more incisive in the form of a mosaic. Wheelbase comes greater 2,912 mm. 2017 Audi A6 will be sustained by the shifter and suspension braking system more responsive. Luxury reinforced once again to 2017 Audi A6 interior design. Audi A6 cabin has four passenger seat protected by exclusive premium leather upholstery that will increase the value of convenience
2017 Audi A6 Engine
2017 Audi A6 is a futuristic sedan car which is equipped by the advanced technology and systems. The latest Audi A6 2.0 Liter engine uses a turbocharged four-cylinder engine with a automatic transmission 7-speed that will generate power more than 220 horsepower.
2017 Audi A6 Release Date and Price
2017 Audi A6 Executive sedan car offers a modern and advanced features will create comfortable inside the cabin. Information on the release date of 2017 Audi A6 is expected to be announced at the end of this year. While pricing information 2017 Audi A6 starts from $ 43.824-$ 73,237.


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What's new in January 2017
January 19, 2017
The start of the year sees over 450 new titles added across all 23 partner presses, including over 100 books from Oxford University Press, bringing the total number of titles on University Press Scholarship Online (UPSO) to over 23,700.
These new academic works have been added to 29 different subject areas and cover a diverse range of topics, from the evolution of memory systems to the origins of knowledge, and from religious experiences with nature to the ageing baby boomer generation.
Discover a selection of titles by clicking on the book covers below:
UPSO brings together the best scholarly publishing from around the world and is available to libraries and institutions, so ask your librarian if you have access. If you don't, then recommend this essential resource to your librarian.


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Our man Josh Dougherty has his finger firmly on the pulse of the Seattle Sounders in the 2012 season of MLS soccer. This time out, Josh gives us his match preview of the Sounders FC vs. Portland Timbers FC matchup. Last year's match at JELD-WEN was a frenetic affair. The Sounders escaped with a 3-2 victory thanks to a brace by Fredy Montero and a late penalty goal from Osvaldo Alonso.
MLS Matchup Report: Seattle Sounders FC vs. Portland Timbers
June 24, 2012 By Josh Dougherty
Filed Under: Seattle Sounders Blog Tagged With: Alvaro Fernandez, Aurelien Collin, Cascadia Cup, david estrada, Eddie Johnson, Eric Brunner, Hayner Mosquera, John Spencer, MLS, MLS Matchups, MLS Previews, Osvaldo Alonso, Portland Timbers, Seattle Sounders, Seattle Sounders FC, Seattle Sounders FC vs. Portland Timbers, Seattle vs. Portland, Seattle vs. Portland Preview, Sigi Schmid, Sounders Blog, Sounders FC vs. Timbers FC, sounders mls blog, Sounders Video, Sounders vs. Timbers Preview, Timbers Blog


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The Force of Liberation
Christine Morgan
Good afternoon everyone. As we continue with our theme, "Death as Transition", it's worth taking a little time to consider how the secular west has increasingly insulated itself from the natural cyclic process of death. Ever in search of new sensations, our uncontrolled rampage down the path of materialism has resulted in too strong an identification with our coat of skin; we've become enmeshed in its senses and consequently out of touch with our inner nature. The senses are meant to inform, not to possess, and only by disentangling ourselves from them and internalising our line of enquiry, can we hope to gain any real understanding of the nature of death. We have to awaken the inner, esoteric senses and follow their lead in order to touch the eternal core of our being that stands unmoved and serene throughout the long cycles of life, death and rebirth. Then we can know first-hand the beautiful secret that the death process veils, which is entrance into greater life.
The western mind-set seems to be that one life's all you get so lets hang onto it as long as possible by any means. We have the ultimate symbol of this in cryogenic preservation and the ghastly image of frozen corpses springing back to life if and when the science has advanced sufficiently. What a sad testimony this is to how desensitized we have become to the inner truths that we once knew instinctively as our birthright. Through spiritual myopia, our lives have become fast, furious, self-destructive and empty, but fortunately, the world crisis is rapidly, if painfully, awakening us from this dangerous ego-centric slumber.
We are being turned around to face ourselves and not a moment too soon. Death through war, famine, disease, terrorism and natural disasters is relayed into our homes on a daily basis via the media – and people are responding to the terrible suffering they see. Through these horrific scenes we are constantly reminded of our own mortality and may ask if there can really be a God or spiritual afterlife for a world that is so full of pain and loss, hate and separativeness. Mass disillusionment with orthodox religions has resulted through their inability to answer such questions satisfactorily, and intelligent, enquiring minds are searching for a philosophy more suited to these present world challenges. Alongside the rapid growth of psychology and the social sciences, the new age has thus burgeoned, full of purported contacts with those on the other side of the veil of death, communications with angels, alien abductions, astral travel and the like, while scientific research is opening up the field of exploration and debate through its research into near death and out of the body experiences.
With all of this comes the steady decline of taboos surrounding the subject of death and a growth of interest as to its nature. The scientific establishment as yet accepts no hard evidence for the afterlife and its generally atheistic stance is partially a karmic payback to the church, previously its dominator and subjugator. And it is striking that now the religious zealot's portrayal of heaven is one that most scientists would regard as an absolute hell, while even orthodox religious ideas on the subject seem to bear little relationship or relevance to the realities of our modern world, and therefore are fast losing their appeal. It is only by understanding the afterlife as an extension of this life that the death process can be understood as simply a transition – a re-location of consciousness from one area of the divine mind to another. And this shedding of form and the adoption of a new, more suitable one, is just part of an unending spiral of progress in line with the divine Plan.
In order to understand the relationship between this world and the next, we need to adopt a more detached, impersonal perspective. We have to let go of our ego-centric view of life for in the grand scheme of things, individual personalities do truly die after their higher qualities have been re-absorbed back into the soul. It is the soul that persists and which, through successive incarnations, is steadily taking control of its vehicles so that it can manifest itself fully on the physical plane. As this occurs en masse, the collective consciousness of humanity will form a vibrant centre of force – an outpost of divinity with responsibility for the stewardship of the planet and the spiritual nurturing of the lower kingdoms of nature – each of which has its role to play in the Divine plan.
When we take this view on board, we begin to view death in a positive rather than a negative manner, and realize that the only real death is limitation, which is what incarnation into dense physical substance is from the perspective of the illumined mind – liberation from it being entrance into greater life. This inverted attitude to what we term life and death is the view of the enlightened and is beautifully summarized in the following passage from Alice Bailey's book, Esoteric Healing:
"Bear in mind, O Chela, that within the known spheres naught is but light responsive to the WORD. Know that that light descends and concentrates itself; know that from its point of chosen focus, it lightens its own sphere; know too that light ascends and leaves in darkness that which it—in time and space—illumined. This descending and ascension men call life, existence and decease; this We Who tread the Lighted Way call death, experience and life."
This turning of the perspective of life and death on its head is beautiful and inspiring to contemplate. As the worlds were created through the enunciation of the WORD so, on a lesser turn of the spiral, each of us is a word enunciated by the soul and made manifest on the physical plane. The WORD attracts lighted substance to itself, which then solidifies into flesh providing our temporary shell or home. And when this form grows old or outgrows its use, as all forms do – why keep it?
This taking and releasing of form is the spiritual side of the evolutionary process, the consciousness that resides in each form is never lost, but spirals in and out of different forms, experiencing, adjusting, learning and evolving in line with what we can only call a plan of some kind in the mind of divinity. Pondering on this we gain a better sense of proportion as we take our eyes off our own personal fate in favour of a more macrocosmic perspective. It is through this impersonal approach that we become filled with awe as we sense the unconditional love that lies behind universal processes and which is driving all onwards to some unknown goal.
Alice Bailey tells us that the work of the Great Life ensouling our planet applies energies and forces-under cosmic law…and creates continuously the new forms needed to express the "life more abundantly" and the "increasing purpose of His will" which the progress of the ages makes cyclically possible. We live at this time in a cycle wherein His intense activity is utilising the technique of divine destruction for the release of the spiritual life. Simultaneously, this great Life is creating the new structure of civilisation that will express more fully the evolutionary attainment of the planet and the kingdoms in nature, leading eventually to the perfect expression of His divine life and purpose. Fortunately we are told that this period of destruction is nearing its end and that if we initiate the necessary changes in consciousness, an era of loving understanding will emerge.
In this way we see that death is not just something that affects individuals – it's all part of a larger process whereby the soul conforms to spiritual laws. This involves the periodic breaking down of all that is crystallized and in need of liberation into new forms. It takes place everywhere at all levels and we see huge cataclysms like earthquakes in the mineral kingdom and the extinction of species. On the human level we see the death process working on an emotional and mental level too; thus we have the constant death and rebirth of institutions, religions, political movements, and cultural trends. We see construction, deconstruction and reconstruction all around us, and all of it made more painful by the fact that we are trying to hold onto the known and familiar forms of the past.
It is hard for us who are so identified with the form aspect to understand this greater purpose of death, especially in the case of natural disasters of which we've seen quite a few recently. According to the Ageless Wisdom Teachings, all so-called Acts of God proceed under Law and Plan, and this understandably causes a troubling paradox, for who can reconcile such terrible suffering with a benign and all loving God? Perhaps part of the contradiction is due to the tendency to unconsciously project onto Him a personality intimately concerned with the affairs of every individual on the planet. However, the great Lives who reside in the Centre where the Will of God is known, including the planetary Logos Himself, are focused more on interplanetary relationships and the direction of cosmic forces for the good of all kingdoms of nature. We can surmise from this that, in natural disasters and times of war, individual destiny and karma are generally superseded by group and racial karma, and even planetary karma in the case of natural disasters. And of course, esoterically death is simply liberation into greater life via the relocation of consciousness into another area of the Divine scheme. So while natural disasters such as earthquakes are under the guidance of planetary intelligences, the great law of Love that rules the solar system is never contravened. It is just that form has to yield to "the pressure of the divine idea", or to put it another way "The garment of God is driven aside by the energy of His movements…"
In the case of human conflict which appears to have nothing to do with the divine, but more with human folly, the great sin of separateness is the ultimate cause of all wars and at all levels – racial, national and individual. It seems that we bring intense suffering upon ourselves to the point of forced relinquishment. When the selfish will has been broken down, new spiritual laws can then take over. The selfish personality then becomes the selfless soul, willing to co-operate with the energy of synthesis that ultimately brings about planetary unification.
Living synthesis is, then, the goal of evolution as far as we can understand it, and it's the sense of separativeness that has to be overcome. This separateness comes from incarnating into dense substance in a coarse physical body. But it is through our evolution through planetary substance, that substance is slowly redeemed and the whole illusion of space and time that springs from it is dissipated. This is our mission and was the impulse that brought the human family into incarnation on a tide of energy from the constellation Cancer. In this connection we are told in Alice Bailey's book Esoteric Astrology:
"It is in order eventually to negate the space-time concept and to prove it an illusion that the door in Cancer opens to the sacrificing, serving soul. Bear this always in mind as you study the subject of rebirth. In themselves, rebirth and reincarnation are misleading terms and 'cyclic impulsion,' 'intelligent purposeful repetition' and 'conscious in-breathing and out-breathing' would describe more accurately this cosmic process. Esoterically speaking, the point of greatest interest is that it is group rebirth which is taking place all the time and that the incarnation of the individual is only incidental to this greater happening. This has been largely ignored or forgotten because of the intense and selfish interest in personal experience and living." (p325)
Could we take a pause now to reflect on the life-death pattern as one of cyclic outbreathing and inbreathing and then I'll say the ancient Indian mantram, the Gayatri, which so powerfully symbolizes this. Those of you who would like to are welcome to join in and at the end we can sound the sacred word, the OM:
O Thou who givest sustenance to the universe
From whom all things proceed
To Whom all things return
Unveil to us the face of the true spiritual sun
Hidden by a disk of golden light
That we may know the truth and do our whole duty
As we journey to Thy sacred feet.
Death process
And so what exactly does happen at death? At the close of a life cycle, the soul exerts its attractive power in a way that it offsets the attractive power inherent in matter itself. In this sense death is a touch of the soul which is too strong for the body. It is an act of Love by the soul and involves three main processes to free the incarnated fragment of the soul from the lower worlds:
The first of these is The Work of Restitution. This signifies the returning of the substance that made up the physical body to the basic reservoir of substance, leaving the person standing in the etheric or vital body; from the soul's angle, this marks the beginning of the return of the divine spiritual energy to its source on soul levels. This restitution is predominantly the work of the human soul within the physical body working through the heart and the head centres.
The second process is The Art of Elimination, which takes place once the restitution of physical substance is over. The person is now freed from all reaction to the attractive pull of physical matter; and stands in the subtle bodies responsive to only three predisposing factors:
The quality of his astral-emotional equipment.
The mental condition in which he habitually lives, and.
The voice of the soul
often unfamiliar but sometimes well known and loved. We're told that it is the overshadowing soul, not the human soul, which works at the elimination of all control by the astral and mental bodies until the ascending soul refocuses itself upon the concrete levels of the mental plane as a point of radiant light. Later in the evolutionary process, this will change and the soul-in-incarnation will effect the needed changes and process of abstraction.
Finally, after the Art of Elimination is concluded we have The Processes of Integration. These concern the liberated spiritual person's efforts to blend with the soul (the oversoul) upon the higher levels of the mental plane. The part returns to the whole, and the person comprehends the true meaning of the words of Krishna:
"Having pervaded this whole universe with a fragment of myself, I remain."
Likewise, the conscious experiencing fragment, which has pervaded the little universe of the form in the three worlds, still remains and knows itself to be a part of the whole.
These three processes of Restitution, Elimination and Integration are what we call death and with them in mind we can now look at the art of death in a little more detail. Although we normally think of death as the immediate discarding of the physical body, from the soul's perspective, a person on the astral plane or the lower mental plane is still in incarnation and the length of time needed to complete this process varies according to the age and experience of the incarnating soul. The majority will remain on the astral and lower mental planes for a long period as the art of elimination proceeds gradually until there is nothing left to magnetically attract them to these levels.
Dissolution and the Art of Death
At the appointed time, the soul sounds forth a "word of withdrawal". The etheric body, which interpenetrates the physical body during incarnation reacts to the note of the soul and organizes itself for abstraction. In response to this, the glands inject a substance into the bloodstream that affects the heart, this being one of the causes of coma and loss of consciousness. Finally, a psychic tremor occurs loosening the connection between the etheric body and the nervous system – often resulting in the relaxation and lack of fear which dying persons so often show. The etheric double now prepares to leave the body through the door of one of the major chakras. This gateway is usually the solar plexus, but the good citizens and aspirants of the world leave through the heart centre while the more advanced exit through the head centre. This point of exit will, of course, determine the person's new location on the inner planes.
During this time the dying person is withdrawing his consciousness steadily into the astral and mental vehicles, preparatory to the complete abstraction of his vital or etheric body. For this reason it is essential that the death room is quiet. He becomes more withdrawn into himself and in the case of the advanced person this process is consciously undertaken. Many people too remain aware of relationship to others even whilst losing their grip on physical existence. Another pause follows and it is at this point where the physical body can regain its hold upon the etheric body if the soul sees this as part of its inner plan and death had not been intended. So it is presumably at this point that many return to relay their Near Death Experiences. Sometimes, the collective, attractive power of the physical body is so strong that it prolongs the process of dying for weeks. Eventually however, it will lose the battle if death is the plan of the soul.
After physical death
After physical death, the same person is still present on the planet, though now intangible. The dying person's consciousness is focused either in the emotional or the mental body (more accurately the desire-mind body) and there is full awareness of what is taking place. The average person becomes consciously aware of himself with a clarity of perception unknown whilst incarnated. As the brain is no longer filtering consciousness, time as we understand it on the physical plane, is non-existent. Invariably there follows a moment of direct soul contact, even in the most ignorant of people, and this is experienced as a long strong pull at a bell rope. The soul responds and the person sees the experiences of the past incarnation roll out before him. From these experiences, 3 seed or conditioning factors are isolated that hold the keys to the forms that will be built in a future incarnation and can be described as follows:
Seed one – determines the nature of the physical environment in which the person will reincarnate – its quality and needed field of contact.
Seed two – determines the quality of the etheric body through which forces from the environment will make their impact on the physical body and along which the incoming energies will circulate. It also specifies which of the seven major chakras will be most active during the next incarnation.
Seed three – determines the key to the astral vehicle. This seed brings us into relation with those previously loved or contacted. Here again the group idea governs all incarnation not only through individual desire but also through group impulse, in line with group as well as individual karma.
These seeds of "determining recognition" as they are called apply to the group but only in the lower three levels of consciousness. For those who are responsive to the soul, an old esoteric Commentary on the subject says: "When soul knows soul and in the meeting place within the Master's call, these seeds shall disappear." This means that while most people are drawn back into incarnation through karma, and the desire for experience including the reunification with those they have forged links with in the past, those who are treading the path and are to some degree "soul infused" are drawn into incarnation more by the work the soul wishes to carry out in line with the divine Plan.
Following this experience of the soul Review and the isolating of the three seeds, the person seeks out those to whom he or she is emotionally attached and re-establishes relations with them. In the case of those who have strong emotional attachments of either love or hate to those who are still in physical incarnation, he or she will be magnetically attracted towards them and will seek them out and remain in their neighbourhood aware of their activities. In both cases however, the lure of desire slowly wears off as the mind becomes more dominating. The second death now approaches – the Art of Elimination – to release the hold of the desire-mind body.
From the perspective of the soul, the astral plane is a place of strong desire and therefore is an even greater world of illusion in many senses than is the physical one. For this reason one of the most powerful things we can do in this lifetime, is to purify our emotions and free ourselves from their controlling forces - then the astral plane won't hold us for long when we depart from physical incarnation and we would have played a part in destroying the glamour of this plane.
Three types of Heaven
We can spend a long time on the astral plane according to the condition of our emotions and desires, especially as the state of consciousness that traditional religions might call "Heaven" is to be found here. It is a condition of sensuous enjoyment, the result of the longing and desire for rest, peace and happiness, and as each individual builds it for himself, much as he or she tries to build an ideal life on the physical plane, there are as many variations of it as there are participants. The time will come however, as the art of elimination proceeds, when the astral body will die allowing the consciousness to withdraw on to the mental plane.
And here, on the mental plane there is also a heaven, often referred to as devachan. It is of a higher vibratory order than the astral heaven and the bliss enjoyed is described as more thoughtful and intense, the sense of reality being overwhelming compared to any experiences on the astral plane. But it is still within the lower world of form and those who are treading the spiritual path and learning to serve need to transcend this state too. This can only occur through the constant practice of dispassion and non-attachment on whatever plane of consciousness we find ourselves. Incidentally, there can be no devachan for the unevolved, for where there has been little intelligent, active thought life, there is little imental experience to take to Devachan and therefore the consciousness cannot work in that environment. In these cases, there is an impulse from the Soul to reincarnate almost immediately.
The third type of heaven is the Nirvana of which we hear so much about. Entry is only possible when the three lower worlds no longer hold a person through inclination or karma. While Devachan gives the sense of unity with others, it is still a reflection of this higher state and is tinged with selfishness and separative pleasure. Nirvana, however is true group consciousness and in this high state of consciousness each separate identity, though self-realising, shares in the group realisation. Therein lies bliss for the individual - separation is no longer felt, only unity and essential oneness are known. It is a state of consciousness that can be known on the physical plane by those who achieve enlightenment.
Factors guiding the conscious decision to reincarnate in those active on the spiritual path
We know that the soul's natural impulse is to give and serve and it is able to impress this desire upon the partially illumined disciple during incarnation. The whole objective, therefore, of the disciple after death is to get rid of the subtler bodies, and acquire new ones. While those who are just starting off on the spiritual path long to be free from the wheel of rebirth, advanced souls are free even while in incarnation, this is because their consciousness is aligned and fused with the soul, and it is this desire to serve humanity and the Plan that determines whether they incarnate or not.
Once the body is discarded, most people will face two great experiences, namely a moment of soul contact and then a relatively violent reorientation to earth life. Briefly, this is a process of "descent and calling" where the needed substance to form the future bodies are gathered and coloured with the qualities and characteristics already attained, amongst other activities. A deliberate choice of parents is made at this stage before awaiting the moment of incarnation. Alice Bailey makes the point that parents therefore only donate the dense physical body except when soul experience is long and a true group relation has been established.
Overcoming the death process and turning it into something we consciously participate in is the next step ahead of intelligent people of goodwill everywhere, and meditation is the key to understanding the death process. If we can refer back to the Gayatri for a moment, this mantram veils many levels of awareness in accordance with our spiritual understanding. For most of us, this will be the light of the soul – a light that many of us are seeking to invoke on a daily basis. For the major part of the cycle of incarnations, however,the soul on its own plane takes little notice of our daily affairs and activities, but when we start to tread the path and deliberately invoke its light, the first law of White Magic tells us that: The Solar Angel collects himself, scatters not his force, but in meditation deep communicates with his reflection.
When this occurs, the personality experiences the impulse to introspection and meditation and, for all that obstructs the soul's light, the positive process of death and destruction starts to take place. St Paul spoke of this process in his speech to the Corinthians when he said "I die daily". "This leads all the way to the Crucifixion of the Christians and the Great Renunciation, in the Orient, with its lesson of sacrifice and its call to the death of the lower nature. This was the lesson, which St. Paul knew, and the goal towards which he strove. 'I die daily', he said, for only in the practice of death daily undergone can the final Death be met and endured." Through the redemption and resurrection of our thought-life, we begin to understand that death itself is part of the Great Illusion and only exists because of the density of the veils of substance we have accumulated in our auras through ego-centric living.
The role of meditation is central to the whole process of death and liberation as it builds a pathway between the lower concrete mind and higher abstract mind and beyond. One day this will ensure continuity of consciousness between this world and the subtler planes that, at present, only reveal themselves to us when we relinquish the physical body at death. The very act of a trained and conscious daily abstraction away from identification with our body, emotions and thoughts prepares us for the "Art of Elimination" which proceeds at death under the jurisdiction of the soul. This detachment process purifies and heightens the vibration of the substance of our vehicles and this will help to bring about a quick and planned release when the soul calls us again, as it has so many times before.
Alice Bailey wrote that death is an act of the Intuition – intuition transmitted by the soul to the personality and then acted upon. If we examine the meaning of the Intuition, we find that it is a direct perception of the will of the soul or inner man, without interpretation by the mind or coloured by the emotions. For many people, death may be the only time in life that they experience true intuition for it is not concerned with the details of the personality life but with the wider group purposes in which the soul is engaged. Here we can relate back to what was said earlier that the whole process of rebirth or "cyclic impulsion" is basically a group activity in which the individual is only incidentally significant.
It is worth bearing in mind that death in one sense is something we experience every night in the hours of sleep. Many don't realize that in sleep we die to the physical plane and are alive and functioning elsewhere. And that it is only the relative coarseness of the brain that fails to accurately record this when we come back into waking consciousness each morning. The processes of daily sleep and dying are very similar in fact, except that in sleep the magnetic thread or current of energy along which the life force streams is preserved intact and is the path of return to the body. In death this life thread is broken or snapped. When this happens, the consciousness cannot return to the dense physical body, and that body, lacking the principle of coherence, then disintegrates.
Disintegration is the way of all things when the cohering principle of the soul is not holding and relating substance in form of some kind. In summing up the nature of death, Alice Bailey gives us a very deep and powerful thought: Death is really deterioration in time and space and is due to the tendency of spirit-matter to isolate itself, whilst in manifestation. Although we don't have time to explore this in detail, perhaps its better left as a point for reflection. This statement sums up the whole process of involution and evolution, of involving into form and an ever more separated, individualistic state of consciousness, and then the return to unity on the ascending arc of evolution, back to spirit carrying the fruits of our experience with us as quality. As we learn to work consciously at this process we are aligning ourselves with the soul's force of liberation and know only greater spiritual Life.
Finally, its reassuring to know that the fear and horror of death will disappear for it is founded upon the love of form—our own form, the forms of those we love and the form of our familiar surroundings and environment. Yet this type of love runs counter to all our teaching about the spiritual realities. The hope of the future, and the hope of our release from this ill-founded fear, lies in the shifting of our emphasis to the fact of the eternal soul and to the necessity for that soul to live spiritually, constructively and divinely within the material vehicles. Sorrow, loneliness, unhappiness, decay, loss—all these are ideas which will disappear as people learn to live consciously as souls, and to regard the form or forms as simply modes of expression. Then a new and more joyful approach to that great experience will take their place.


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It Isn't Always Best to Share
by Stephen James O'Meara
Environmental monitoring stations atop the nearly 4,200-meter-high summit of Hawaii's Mauna Loa volcano are showing that air pollution can be more than a local phenomenon.
That's right. The sensitive instruments have found traces of arsenic, copper, and zinc lofted into the atmosphere from smelting factories in China, thousands of kilometers distant! When industrial pollution first showed up at Manua Loa a few years ago, scientists were startled. Now, after intense study, they know that the pollution that dirties the world's largest cities affects the whole planet.
"It turns out that Hawaii is more like a suburb of Beijing," says atmospheric scientist Thomas Cahill (University of California, Davis)—as is the West Coast of the United States.
But China is not the only culprit. Europe, for instance, gets the brunt of chemical air pollution from the United States, and similar situations occur around the globe. Every industrialized country is creating air pollution that, in turn, is affecting other distant countries.
The fact is, large storms can hoist a plume of particles high enough to hook up with the jet stream. Once high enough, dust from the Sahara Desert or smoke from raging forest fires in the Southwest can easily travel half-way across the globe. "We live in a small world," Cahill says. "We breathe each other's air." This is one case where, if we want to make a global change, we will have to act locally.
- industrialized:
- Having much industry.
- jet stream:
- A high-speed, meandering wind current, generally moving from a westerly direction at speeds often exceeding 400 kilometers per hour at altitudes of 15 to 25 kilometers.
- What was found on Mauna Loa a few years ago?
[anno: Pollution from China was found on Mauna Loa a few years ago.]
- Why did this discovery bother atmospheric scientists?
[anno: This discovery bothered atmospheric scientists because it means that pollution is being spread from countries that are far away.]
- Why is it important to monitor and fix this problem?
[anno: It is important to monitor and fix this problem because if there is too much pollution in the air, it will start to harm plants, animals, and people.]