text:
His goal is the 2026 Olympics. And 10-year-old Jacob Sanchez of Montgomery in Orange County took his first big step in that direction by winning his first national figure skating medal on Friday.
Jacob, a member of the Hudson Valley Figure Skating Club, took the silver medal in the Juvenile Boys category in the opening day of the 2018 Prudential U.S. Figure Skating Championships at Solar4America Ice in San Jose, Calif.
Jacob, who trains six days a week at Ice Time Sports Complex in Newburgh, scored 51.77 points as he skated to the Club Des Belugas remix of "Puttin' On the Ritz."His program included seven double jumps:
- Double Axel + Single Loop + Double Loop combination
- Double Lutz
- Flying Sit Spin
- Double Axel
- Double Lutz + Double Loop combination
- Double Flip
First place went to Keita Horiko, also 10, from the Ice House Of New Jersey Figure Skating Club. He scored 54.35 points for his program to "Peter Pan" music.
Rounding out the podium were Nhat-Viet Nguyen of the Dallas Figure Skating Club, who scored 49.31 points to take the bronze medal, and Andriy Kratyuk, 13, of the Skating Club of Oregon, who finished just one-tenth of a point behind Nguyen at 49.21 to get the pewter medal.
The Juvenile Boys category included the top 12 skaters from around the country.
Jacob qualified for nationals by winning the North Atlantic Regional Championships in New Jersey in October (with 60.40 points) and then coming in third in the Eastern Sectional Championships in Massachusetts in November (with 49.11 points).
He began skating at the age of 5 at the Ice Time Sports Complex in Newburgh.
His coaches are Oleg Makarov and Larisa Selezneva, who won the bronze medal in the 1984 Olympics for the Soviet Union.
Jacob is is a fifth-grader at Montgomery Elementary School. In addition to skating, he enjoys collecting and trading Pokémon cards, playing XBox, drawing and using his iPad, according to his website.
He hopes to be a national champion and compete internationally — all the way to the Olympics. (He will have to move up the skating ranks next to Intermediate, then Novice, Junior, and Senior — the level shown on TV.) Then Jacob wants to be a figure skating coach so that he can inspire other kids in the sport, his website says.
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text:
American Airlines' CEO to get $20 million severance
FORT WORTH — Tom Horton won't get to lead the new American Airlines after it merges with US Airways, but he'll get a going-away prize of nearly $20 million.
Horton will get $9.94 million in cash and an equal amount in stock in the new company after the merger. He'll also get an office and office help for two years, and lifetime flight and travel benefits.
American's parent company, AMR Corp., disclosed the CEO's severance package in a regulatory filing late Thursday, shortly after announcing plans for an $11 billion merger with US Airways Group Inc. The companies hope to win regulatory approval and complete the deal by the end of September.
US Airways CEO Doug Parker will be CEO of the new company, which will be called American Airlines Group Inc. Horton will serve as chairman for about a year before stepping down.
Horton, 51, joined American in 1985, jumped to AT&T for four years in the 2000s, then returned to the airline and became CEO the day before it filed for bankruptcy protection in November 2011.
AMR said in the filing that its board, of which Horton is chairman, approved the severance package as "reasonable and appropriate" because of his long service at the company, the success of the restructuring "and the value created for the company's financial stakeholders."
AMR creditors including employee unions will get 72% of the stock of the new company and shareholders, who normally get nothing in a bankruptcy case, will get a small portion of that. Creditors might get all of their money back, Horton said.
Horton clashed with AMR's unions during the bankruptcy process when he moved to eliminate thousands of jobs, cut pay, freeze pensions and make other changes designed to save about $1 billion in annual labor costs. American's three unions openly supported a merger that would result in US Airways' management running the new company.
A spokesman for the pilots' union declined to comment Friday on Horton's compensation.
"Our focus is on the incoming team and the experience and leadership that they'll bring to the new American Airlines," said spokesman Dennis Tajer.
If the merger of AMR and US Airways Group Inc. is approved by AMR's bankruptcy judge, U.S. antitrust regulators and shareholders, Horton would serve as chairman until about mid-2014 and then leave the board. He hasn't said what his plans are after that.
Helane Becker, an analyst with Dahlman Rose & Co., said Horton would be a good candidate to lead an airline or a company in another industry.
"Doug (Parker) has gotten all the attention, but Tom has quietly done a good job" leading AMR through bankruptcy, she said. "Whatever company gets him will be lucky. He's smart, he works hard, he's energetic."
Follow David Koenig at http://www.twitter.com/airlinewriter

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Treatment of Malignant Sinonasal Tumours With Intensity-modulated Radiotherapy (IMRT) and Carbon Ion Boost (C12) (IMRT-HIT-SNT)
|The safety and scientific validity of this study is the responsibility of the study sponsor and investigators. Listing a study does not mean it has been evaluated by the U.S. Federal Government. Read our disclaimer for details.
|ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT01220752
Recruitment Status : Unknown
Verified April 2013 by Heidelberg University.
Recruitment status was: Recruiting
First Posted : October 14, 2010
Last Update Posted : April 24, 2013
- Study Details
- Tabular View
- No Results Posted
- Disclaimer
- How to Read a Study Record
|Condition or disease
|Sinonasal Malignancies: Adenocarcinoma and Squamous Cell Carcinoma of the Paranasal Sinuses
|Radiation: carbon ion boost
|Phase 2
Local control in sinonasal malignancies is dose dependent. However, dose escalation at acceptable toxicity is technically demanding even with modern radiotherapy techniques. Raster-scanned carbon ion therapy with highly conformal dose distributions may allow higher doses at comparable or reduced side-effects.
Methods/ design:
The IMRT-HIT-SNT trial is a prospective, mono-centric, phase II trial evaluating toxicity in the combined treatment with intensity-modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) and carbon ion (C12) boost in 36 patients with histologically proven (≥R1-resected or inoperable) adeno-/ or squamous cell carcinoma of the nasal cavity or paransal sinuses. Patients receive 24 GyE carbon ions (8 fractions) and IMRT (2.0 Gy/ fraction).
Study objectives:
Incidence of mucositis ≥ CTC°3 will be assessed as the primary endpoint of the trial, local control, disease-free survival, overall survival, and toxicity (incl. mucositis CTC °I-II and late toxicity at 2 years post RT)are secondary endpoints.
|Study Type :
|Interventional (Clinical Trial)
|Estimated Enrollment :
|30 participants
|Intervention Model:
|Single Group Assignment
|None (Open Label)
|Primary Purpose:
|Official Title:
|Treatment of Malignant Sinonasal Tumours With Intensity-modulated Radiotherapy (IMRT) and Carbon Ion Boost (C12)
|Study Start Date :
|November 2010
|Estimated Primary Completion Date :
|November 2014
|Estimated Study Completion Date :
|November 2016
Experimental: IMRT + carbon ion boost
(8 x 3 GyE) carbon ion therapy followed by 50 Gy IMRT (2 Gy/ Fx)corresponding to a total dose of approximately 74 GyE.
Radiation: carbon ion boost
8 fractions carbon ion (8 x 3 GyE C12) therapy followed by 25 fractions of IMRT corresponding to a total dose of approximately 74 GyE. Treatment duration is approximately 61/2-7 weeks
- mucositis CTC grade 3 [ Time Frame: 6-8 weeks post completion of treatment ]Incidence of mucositis ≥ CTC°III will be assessed as the primary endpoint of the trial at completion of radiation therapy
- local control [ Time Frame: 2 years post completion of RT ]
- disease-free survival [ Time Frame: 2 years post completion of RT ]
- overall survival [ Time Frame: 2 years post completion of RT ]
- acute toxicity CTC grade 1/2 [ Time Frame: within 90 days of RT ]
- late toxicity [ Time Frame: from 90 days to trial completion ]
Choosing to participate in a study is an important personal decision. Talk with your doctor and family members or friends about deciding to join a study. To learn more about this study, you or your doctor may contact the study research staff using the contacts provided below. For general information, Learn About Clinical Studies.
|Ages Eligible for Study:
|18 Years to 80 Years (Adult, Older Adult)
|Sexes Eligible for Study:
|Accepts Healthy Volunteers:
Inclusion Criteria:
- Histologically confirmed or surgically removed adenocarcinoma or squamous cell carcinoma of the nasal cavity or paranasal sinuses
- Inoperable tumour or refusal to undergo surgical resection
- Macroscopic or microscopic residual tumour (R2/ R1) or
- ≥T3/T4 or
- written informed consent
- pts aged 18 - 80 years
- effective contraception for pts in childbearing age (<12 months post beginning of menopause)
Exclusion Criteria:
- Prior radio- or chemotherapy for tumours of the head and neck
- Other previous malignancy within the past 5 years except prior, adequately treated basal cell carcinoma of the skin or pre-invasive carcinoma of the cervix
- Significant neurological or psychiatric condition including dementia or seizures or other serious medical condition prohibiting the patient's participation in the trial by judgement of the investigators
- Legal incapacity or limited legal capacity
- Positive serum/ urine beta-HCG/ pregnancy
- Drug abuse
To learn more about this study, you or your doctor may contact the study research staff using the contact information provided by the sponsor.
Please refer to this study by its ClinicalTrials.gov identifier (NCT number): NCT01220752
|Contact: Jürgen Debus, MD PhD
|+49-6221-56- ext 8202
|Contact: Marc W Muenter, MD
|+49-6221-56 ext 8202
|Dept of Radiation Oncology, University of Heidelberg, INF 400
|Heidelberg, Germany, 69120
|Contact: Alexandra D Jensen, MD, MSc +49-6221-56 ext 8202 firstname.lastname@example.com
|Principal Investigator:
|Juergen Debus, MD PhD
|Heidelberg University
Publications automatically indexed to this study by ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier (NCT Number):
|Responsible Party:
|Prof. Dr. Dr. J. Debus, Dept. of Radiation Oncology, University of Heidelberg, INF 400, 69120 Heidelberg, Germany
|ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier:
|Other Study ID Numbers:
|First Posted:
|October 14, 2010 Key Record Dates
|Last Update Posted:
|April 24, 2013
|Last Verified:
|April 2013
carbon ion therapy
paranasal sinus
nasal cavity
squamous cell carcinoma
Carcinoma, Squamous Cell
Neoplasms, Glandular and Epithelial
Neoplasms by Histologic Type
Neoplasms, Squamous Cell


text:
The Creative Assembly, developers of the popular Total War simulation series, have announced a partnership with Sega to make a series of games based on Games Workshops' popular Warhammer license.
An entirely new team is being set up at the UK developer to handle the franchise, with plans to release its first game "beyond 2013," according to an announcement today. There are no details yet on what specific direction The Creative Assembly is planning to take with its video game adaptation of the tabletop wargaming franchise, but Studio Director Tim Heaton promised to "[do] the Warhammer universe justice in a way that has never been attempted before." The new titles shouldn't affect the development of Total War: Rome II or the unnamed Alien-based project currently underway at The Creative Assembly.
THQ and Sega representatives told Eurogamer that the new licensing deal does not affect the future of the related Warhammer 40,000 license, which is currently controlled by THQ. Relic Entertainment's 40K game Dark Millennium is still targeted for an early 2013 release, but THQ announced earlier this year that the title was being scaled back to focus more on single-player gameplay, after starting development as an MMO way back in 2007.
The basic Warhammer license has been used sporadically in video games in the last decade, including the Mythic-developed Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning, which is still running as a moderately successful free-to-play title. The spin-off, fantasy/strategy/football amalgam Blood Bowl has also been developed into a game franchise that was recently revived.


text:
National Aquarium opens dolphin programs all day
Aquarium's regular admission price is rising
Officials at the National Aquarium in Baltimore said they are eliminating scheduled dolphin shows.
The aquarium said dolphin programs will be open all day beginning Friday. Visitors can spend as much time as they want watching the dolphins play, eat and work with trainers.
"You're going to be able to see them swimming, you're going to be able to see us do behind-the-scenes things with them -- such as checking them for medical exams, doing play sessions with them. So, it opens up the door, showing them what we do behind the scenes with dolphins," said Sue Hunter, the aquarium's director of animal programs.
Previously, visitors paid extra to watch dolphins during scheduled shows, limiting public access.
"We had a thing called the total experience package, which cost $27.95, and then we had a basic price of admission, which, I guess, was less than the total experience. Everybody gets the total experience now, and so, in real terms, people get more for the same amount of money," said John Racanelli, CEO of the National Aquarium in Baltimore.
Aquarium officials said the shows could only serve 50 percent of guests on peak summer days.
"We think it's going to be a lot more fun, and fun means better," Racanelli said.
While visitors will no longer have to pay more to see dolphin shows, the aquarium's regular admission price is rising from $24.95 to $29.95 for adults and from $19.95 to $20.95 for children.


text:
Mexico Needs to Proactively Educate Maquiladora Workers
Mexico is not known for an outstanding public education system. Rankings are less than needed to advance the manufacturing sector and move into a more competitive high-tech model to support the needs of North America and fight off the constant threat of outsourcing. In the study described herein a clear deficiency in educating the workforce was a lack of bringing education to the industrial parks and the workforce that requires upgrading to compete on a global stage. Competitiveness and innovation are dominant themes of successful workforce improvement efforts. The government and educational institutions need to understand the limitations and restrictions of potential students and offer classes close to the workplace and, specifically, in the maquiladora industrial parks.
Full Text:PDF
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5296/rae.v5i1.3286
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text:
This item is no longer available. Updated or related products shown below:
The Losi® TEN-Rally X takes the proven TEN-SCTE platform to the streets with unprecedented driving characteristics. Armed with new AVC™ (Active Vehicle Control™) technology, the TEN-Rally X utilizes intuitive sensors to adjust steering and throttle output at a rate faster than humanly possible, this provides a stable and controlled driving experience where drifts are more dramatic, and accelerations are consistently fluid. This advanced stability is indispensable as the Rally X comes equipped with an exceedingly powerful brushless 4-pole brushless motor and a waterproof design that provides drivers with fewer limitations, and more opportunities to tear up the ground.
AVC (Active Vehicle Control) Technology
AVC Technology is the newest Spektrum™ RC innovation from Horizon Hobby. This Spektrum stabilization system adds a whole new level of control to your RC driving experience. AVC technology utilizes sensors to adjust steering and throttle output, providing you with a more stable and controlled driving experience.
Heading Hold – AVC technology's Heading Hold feature allows you to focus on driving faster with the confidence of complete control. Heading Hold manages steering output by automatically aligning a vehicle's tires to your chosen direction, and, when centered, maintains that direction regardless of the amount of traction or ruggedness of terrain. Now lining up and hitting that big jump just became as easy as punching the trigger.
Throttle Management – The Throttle Management function enabled by AVC technology assists in maintaining maximum grip in even the most challenging of environments. AVC technology adjusts a vehicle's throttle output in order to minimize wheel slip, allowing a driver to accelerate with total control. Whether you're heading into a turn with too much speed or driving on a slippery surface where traction is minimized, Throttle Management assists in maximizing traction when you need it the most.
Adjustable Sensitivity – The amount of stability assistance that AVC technology provides can be adjusted to suit any combination of skill level, driving style and terrain. Depending on which Spektrum™ transmitter you are using, adjustments can be made using programming functions or a steering rate knob. AVC can also be turned completely off for a traditional driving experience where you can test your driving abilities.
|Ball Bearings:
|TLR Rally
|Anodized Aluminum
|Completion Level:
|Final Drive Ratio:
|Gear Pitch:
|1.0 Module
|Internal Gear Ratio:
|Motor Type:
|Dynamite Fuze 3900Kv 4-Pole Non-Sensored Brushless
|Shock Type:
|Coil Over, Oil Filled
|Spur Gear:
|4 Wheel Independent
|Wheel Type:
|Rally Type
Technical questions about this Losi product should be directed to Horizon Hobby's Product Support Department:
Horizon Hobby, LLC.
ATTN: Product Support
2904 Research Road
Champaign, IL 61822
To Contact Product Support please email us at firstname.lastname@example.com
If you would like to purchase this product, please go to the Store Locator or contact the Horizon Hobby Consumer Sales Department:
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text:
http://creation.com/london2016 (CMI European Creation Conference)
http://creation.com/science-not-the-bible (where a link to the details of this conference appears)
"At the London Creation Declares conference (9 & 10 September 2016), I will be giving a talk entitled, The Age of the Earth and Why it Matters. This will begin with the issue of authority (whether this should be science or Scripture) but will then go on to give a generous amount of time to the science challenging the ruling paradigm that the rocks are millions of years old. By dealing with the Bible first, I will put science in its proper place."
(Dominic Statham)


text:
For the longest time, I haven't been terribly sure why the writers of Rescue Me kept Callie Thorne around as Sheila. The character could have easily been killed off at the end of season three, and she long ago seemed to outlive her usefulness as a character (her nadir coming when she drugged Tommy and raped him in season three), but the show kept a fine actress around and kept tossing her ridiculous material, designed, seemingly, to keep Sheila as a shrill dingbat, dragging down everything she touches.
But "Sheila" makes one sit up and say, "OK. I get it now." As much as last week's episode gave lots of material to Lou, getting into his head in a way the show hadn't in a while, this week's episode is likely the first since the series' heyday to give Sheila something believable and emotionally honest to play, and Thorne manages great things with all of it. Hell, for as much as I've complained about Tommy dominating the show in recent weeks, this week's episode had him in it in only a few places. He went out for a drink with Dwight, and he dropped in to comment on the Sheila storyline, but the bulk of the episode was given over to Sheila, Sean (who, similarly, hasn't had a major story arc in seasons) and Black Shawn. Even Franco got some stuff to do, although continually shunting him off into Sept. 11 conspiracy theory plotlines is starting to feel a bit been-there, done-that.
The episode started eerily, with what began as a routine scene of the guys out in the truck, looking for a really good restaurant Lou had eaten at that no longer existed, seemingly. When a woman stopped the guys to take a picture of them, her camera flash seemed tied to a giant explosion, and the city descended into chaos from terrorist suitcase bombs. As soon as the suitcase bombs came up, it was obvious this was a dream sequence – Rescue Me's not going to turn into 24 – but the sequence worked as well as it did because of how well it committed to the idea of being trapped in a nightmare, the way Franco seemed to turn up where he had no reason to be, the way the vague sense of order disintegrated, the way the guys standing around Tommy's daughter Katie at the end just STOOD there, waiting for the bomb to blow. Rescue Me's been very good this season about showing how barely healed over the Sept. 11 scab is in the American consciousness, and this sequence also highlighted just how easy it is to evoke those old feelings, to reduce a city to a wasteland and grown men to terrified animals, reacting only based on instinct.
Tommy, who's having the dream of course, wakes up screaming, and even though he knows it's just a dream, the damage is done. He needs to know why he hasn't been hearing from Katie, and his subconscious just handed him a very pressing to-do list. So he heads off to do that, mostly dropping the plot from last week wherein he discovered his cousin, Jimmy, alive in a bit of film footage he shouldn't have been alive in. Lou, then, gets to watch that footage, but so does Sheila (handed a copy by the French journalist, who now knows the secret it holds), and the look on her face when she sees her husband face – one of unalloyed joy at the thought his life didn't end when she thought it did – almost entirely redeems all of the stupid crap the show has put that character through in the last few weeks.
Perhaps fittingly for an episode called "Sheila," she's got a lot to do here. If the show isn't sweeping all of her past behavior under the rug, it's at least finally putting it in context by getting the character into therapy and having much of her residual anger at her dead husband over his profession taking his life come out as she tries to stop her son from becoming a firefighter. Even now, when her therapist has encouraged her to support her son's dream, she's keeping him from training with Tommy, perhaps subtly sabotaging her son by setting him up for training with the sweet but a little slow Mike. Sheila's finally trying, and she's also starting to understand just how bad Tommy was for her and just how deeply screwed up it was for her to pin her hopes to him after Jimmy died. I have no problem with Sheila being a harpy to Tommy if it's clear that he is just as bad to her, and the show got a little too far away from that idea in earlier seasons. It's righting that balance now.
The other major plotlines involve Tommy trying to find out what happened to Katie and getting sidetracked by a day out with Dwight and Sean finally going to a doctor over his back pain. Tommy's car ride to the bar with Dwight is a hysterical moment in a pretty dark episode, as things keep going from bad to worse. None of this would work so well without Michael J. Fox playing Dwight as such a raging, oblivious asshole, but he and Leary make a terrific team. The scenes at the bar aren't quite as good, but they believably back Tommy into a corner where it seems like hardcore substance abuse is definitely back on the table. The reveal that Katie has been packed off to boarding school without Tommy even knowing about it is raised, but it seems like something that will come up more in future episodes.
The Sean storyline is more tragic. He's got a tumor on his kidney, and his health insurance, through rather byzantine logic, won't cover it. Steven Pasquale's a fantastic comedic actor, but he's rarely asked to play the sorts of dramatic shades he does here, and his scene where he breaks down in tears, a friend's arm around his shoulders, is maybe his best dramatic moment on the show yet. (One thing I'm unclear on: Did Sean just imagine the doctor telling him all that stuff about his penis? It sure seemed as if that might be the case, but it also seemed unlikely Sean would just come up with that apropos of nothing.)
The other stuff was just all right. Black Shawn and Colleen sleeping together was bound to happen sooner or later, and, again, it feels like more setup for a punchline that will likely come in future episodes. Similarly, Franco at the Sept. 11 conspiracy rally just seems sort of dropped in from nowhere (as though the show just needed somewhere to cut to in the middle of a longer scene and chose that arbitrarily – the editing on this show is a little odd at times).
Sheila, though, got to close out the episode, talking to the journalist (whom I refuse to call Genevieve, apparently) about her life with Jimmy, who she was before the towers fell, the moment when she knew he was dead, how she's tried to move on. It's a beautiful monologue, played perfectly by Thorne, and it returns to the central theme of the season and the show: We're not built to deal with grief. We can try to cover it up as much as we can, but all it takes is a persistent picking at the scab to bring it all rushing back.
Grade: B+
Stray observations:
- This is the rare episode of Rescue Me that doesn't end with a musical montage. It also doesn't stop in to revisit the bar subplot that's been rather prominent in the last few episodes.
- What do we think about Tommy stealing Dwight's drugs? At first, I thought he was just dumping them out, but it seems clear to me he's taking them, probably to start popping pills again. Furthermore, how about Dwight saying he sees ghosts too? Surely not as literally as Tommy does.
- As predicted, the psychic disappears. I hope we get some resolution to that.
- This show's really on a roll right now, and next week's episode is maybe the best of the season so far. Hopefully, I'll see you all there.


text:
<< back to Teachings on Koan
In topics: General Topics in Buddhism, Koan Studies
Karma (Talk 5 of 8)
Fifth of a series of talks on karmaBy Zoketsu Norman Fischer | May 30, 2007
In topics: General Topics in Buddhism, Koan Studies
This talk is based on the koan "Baizhang's Fox" as published in The Gateless Barrier #14 and the Book of Serenity #8. This Koan deals with Karma and the cause and affect of our actions.
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text:
After fighting its way out of a two-set hole, the University of Nevada volleyball team fell 15-7 in the fifth-and-deciding set against UNLV at the Virginia Street Gym on Thursday night. The Rebels took the match 3-2 (31-29, 25-14, 23-25, 23-25, 15-7).
The Wolf Pack fell to 4-13 (1-3 MW), while UNLV improved to 12-5 (4-0 MW).
Four Nevada players had at least 10 kills for the first time this season, as Tessa Lea'ea, Janelle Batista, Bonnie Paul and Grace Anxo all got into double digits. Lea'ea led the way with 16, followed by Batista (14), Paul (12) and Anxo (11).
In addition to Nevada's strong offense, the Wolf Pack played a solid all-around match, seeing two players record double-doubles. Dana Holt had 48 assists and 13 digs for her team-leading fifth of the season. Anxo had 11 digs to post her third of 2012.
Kelly Chang had 20 digs to lead Nevada defensively. As a team, the Wolf Pack hit .173 on 185 attacks and scored 80 points.
Nevada will stay at home to take on Fresno State on Saturday at noon at the Virginia Street Gym.


text:
Program Goal III: Diverse Learners
The United States has always been an ethnically-diverse nation, and results of the 2010 Census show that it is becoming even more diverse. The U.S. population increased by a little more than 27-million during the first decade of this century, and about 13-million, or nearly one-half, of these new residents are immigrants (Migration News, 2011). Additionally, more than one-half of this growth was due to the increase in Hispanics, who now number more than 50-million and make up about 16% of all U.S. residents (U.S. Census Bureau, 2011). The percentage of Asians in the U.S. population is also growing rapidly, and Asians now make up roughly five percent of the population compared to less than one-percent in 1960 (U.S. Census Bureau,1999, 2010B.) Nowhere are these demographic changes being felt more than in our nation's schools. Immigrant children and youth (those under 18 who are foreign-born or reside with one or more foreign-born parent) "now account for one-fourth of the nation's 75-million children" (Passel, 2011, p. 19), and almost 11-million children residing in the U.S. speak a language other than English at home, including nearly eight-million who speak Spanish (U.S. Census Bureau, 2009). If current trends continue, by 2030 non-Hispanic Caucasians will account for only one-half of all school-age children "and fewer still in the years that follow" (Hernandez, Denton, and Mccartney, 2010, p. 8).
Ethnicity and language are certainly not the only types of diversity present in our nation's schools. Teachers must also be knowledgeable about disabilities; giftedness; economic diversity; religious diversity; and the needs of gay, lesbian, and transgender students. Not only do teachers need to be aware of the various aspects of diversity, but they must have knowledge of appropriate classroom strategies for meeting the needs of diverse learners as well as resources for helping them when their needs are such that they cannot be entirely met in the regular classroom. The following paragraphs provide an overview of the knowledge and skills related to diversity that we believe are essential for beginning teachers.
Multicultural Education: Our department strongly believes in the concept of multicultural education, which is an educational philosophy "built on the ideals of freedom, justice, equality, equity, and human dignity . . . that values cultural differences and affirms the pluralism that students, their communities, and teachers reflect. It challenges all forms of discrimination in schools and society through the promotion of democratic principles of social justice" (National Association for Multicultural Education, 2003). James Banks (1981) was among the first to call for systematic school changes to promote multiculturalism and educational equity for all learners. More recent frameworks have called for school and learning to be built on a foundation of social justice and equal opportunity (Gorski, 2000). The shared goals of these frameworks include ensuring educational equity for all students in order to prepare them to effectively participate in our increasingly diverse nation (Gorski, 2000).
Approaches to multicultural education such as those described by Vasquez (1990) which seek to match instruction to the learning preferences of specific minority groups provide interesting ideas for consideration. However, adopting such approaches ignores student individuality and runs the risk of stereotyping students based on ethnicity. Therefore, our department favors more comprehensive ideas for school and curricular revision such as those offered by James and Cherry Banks (1993). These writers identified four levels of or approaches to multicultural education, each of which requires a different degree of integration of cultural content. These four levels are the Contributions Approach, which focuses on heroes, holidays, and the contributions of cultural groups; the Additive Approach, which emphasizes the addition of content, concepts, themes, and perspectives from diverse cultures without changing the overall structure of the curriculum; the Transformation Approach, which changes the structure of the curriculum to enable students to view concepts, issues, events, and themes from the perspectives of multiple ethnic and cultural groups; and the Social Action Approach, which requires students to make decisions on important social issues and take actions to deal with them. It is our belief that schools and curricula must move beyond the contributions and additive approaches and emphasize transformation and social action.
Ideas provided by Peggy McIntosh (1990) have also influenced our thinking. She has outlined five phases of curricular and personal revision with regard to race and gender that in many ways parallel Banks' levels. We agree with McIntosh that schools should strive to reach her fifth and highest phase of curricular reform, which "involves a reconstruction of consciousness, perception, and behavior" (p. 8) that redefines and restructures the curriculum to include all cultures and ethnicities.
Language: As noted earlier in this chapter, approximately one-fourth of children in the U.S. are foreign-born or live with at least one foreign-born parent. However, since only about 11% of children in U.S. schools need English language instruction (Calderon, Slavin, & Sanchez, 2011), it is obvious that not all immigrant children have limited English proficiency (LEP). It is also important to note that not all limited English proficient (LEP) students are foreign born. In fact, data from the 2000Census showed that only 24% of LEP students in grades prekindergarten to five were foreign born, and about 44% of LEP students in later grades were foreign born. Most of the remainder (59% of prekindergarten to grade five and 27% of those in grades six to twelve) were second generation (Capps, et al, 2005). Surprisingly, about 22% of LEP students are third generation or later, suggesting that "many children of natives who were LEP when they began school remain LEP through secondary school" (Capps, et al, 2005, p. 18). Though the primary language of about three-fourths of LEP students is Spanish, the remaining one-fourth speaks an incredibly wide variety of languages (Capps, et al, 2005). For instance, children who attend our local school district (the Saint Cloud, Minnesota Public Schools) speak 38 different languages in their homes, most frequently Somali (Aeikins, 2011).
The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act, signed into law by President George W. Bush in January 2002, reauthorized the Elementary and Secondary Education Act and replaced the Bilingual Education Act (first passed in 1968). NCLB "requires states to identify LEP students, assess them properly, and ensure LEP students gain English proficiency" (Kihuen, 2009, p. 131). As Gandara & Baca (2008) noted, "NCLB was the instrument that . . . finally removed all references within the Department of Education to Bilingual Education. The Office of Bilingual Education and Minority Language Affairs (OBEMLA) became under NCLB, the Office of Language Acquisition, Language Enhancement and Academic Achievement for Limited English Proficient Students, popularly known as OELA" (p. 205).
Though NCLB uses the phrase "scientifically based research" more than 100 times, it clearly ignores important research findings related to the education of LEP students. For instance, research has consistently shown that unlike interpersonal language skills, which may be acquired relatively quickly, it often takes much longer to become proficient in cognitive academic English, the sort of English-language skills required to master complex academic tasks and succeed on English-language achievement tests. In a frequently cited research study, James Cummins (1981) found that it typically takes five to seven years for students to acquire cognitive academic language proficiency. Similarly, Virginia Collier (1987) found that, depending on age of arrival, it may take "LEP students anywhere from 4 to 8 years or more to reach the 50th NCE (normal curve equivalent) on standardized tests across all the subject areas" (p. 637), and it may take even longer for them to reach the academic levels of native speakers in their school districts. Therefore, schools with LEP populations who can, at most, exempt them from AYP testing for three years, are very likely to be labeled as failing schools that must face NCLB's corrective actions. This situation is often exacerbated by the fact that LEP students often fall into multiple categories (Asian, Hispanic, and/or low-income as well as LEP), making the schools' test data look even worse. Therefore, as Diaz-Rico (2008) noted, the law "appears to be an unfortunate fit with what is known about effective second-language learning" (p. 122).
There is considerable controversy regarding "whether it is more effective to teach English to non-English speakers through bilingual instruction or English immersion" (Tienda & Haskins, 2011, p.5). However, according to Calderon, Slavin, and Sanchez (2011), either approach can be effective as long as the instruction is of high quality. Another crucial research finding regarding LEP students is that early English-language instruction is crucial. For instance, Michael Kieffer (2008) found that "LM (language minority) learners who enter kindergarten with limited English proficiency had large, persistent, deficiencies in English reading achievement" (p. 865) while those entering kindergarten with good oral English skills had achievement similar to that of native-English speakers. Citing this and similar studies, Tienda and Haskins (2011) concluded, "Controversies about pedagogy aside, evidence is incontrovertible that children who enter kindergarten with limited proficiency in spoken English fall behind native speakers in reading and math proficiency; more-over, early achievement gaps widen through primary school and carry over to middle school and beyond" (p. 5).
Though effective early English language instruction is crucial for LEP students, it is equally important for classroom teachers to view all students who are linguistically different or bilingual as children of promise rather than seeing them only as children at risk of failure. Additionally, teachers must provide a classroom environment for these students that recognizes and values their culture and language (Cleary and Peacock, 1998; Heath and Mangiola, 1991).
Students with Disabilities: Students with disabilities constitute another large and important category of diversity. More than 11% of school-age children in the U.S. receive special education because of an identified disability (Smith and Tyler, 2010). Nearly one-half of these students have a specific learning disability (Smith and Tyler, 2010).
In the 1960s and 70s, parents of and advocates for children with disabilities were influenced by the success of the civil rights movement and used the courts to force states to provide appropriate educational opportunities for their children (Banks and Banks, 1993). One important consequence of their advocacy was passage of The Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975 (P. L. 94-142), which implemented the results of much of the disability-rights litigation. This legislation dramatically changed the way students with disabilities are educated in American schools (National Advisory Committee on the Handicapped, 1976). Important aspects of this legislation included Provision of Full Services, which requires that all children with disabilities receive a free, appropriate education; Least Restrictive Environment, requiring that students with disabilities receive their education in the regular classroom whenever appropriate; Individualized Educational Plans (or IEPs), mandating that educational programming for children with disabilities be based on students' individual strengths and needs; Non-Discriminatory Assessment Procedures, meaning that assessment procedures used in identification and placement of students with disabilities must not discriminate, and Due Process, requiring that the rights of parents and students be protected.
In 1990, legislators updated P. L. 94-142, changing its wording and broadening its scope. This revision, called the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), included important changes such as substituting the word disability for handicap, adding autism and traumatic brain injury to the categories of disability, and mandating transition services for secondary students with disabilities (Lewis and Doorlag, 2003). IDEA was reauthorized and updated in 1997 and again in 2004, when it was aligned with the No Child Left Behind act. This latter reauthorization of IDEA included the Response to Intervention (RTI) approach as a means for the early identification of students at risk for specific learning disabilities. RTI provides a three-tiered model for screening, monitoring, and providing increasing degrees of intervention using "research-based instruction " with the overall goal of reducing the need for special education services (Hallahan, Kauffman, and Pullen , 2012).
Though terms used for disability categories vary to some extent from state to state, IDEA currently specifies 14 special education categories that include high-incidence conditions such as intellectual disabilities (formerly mental retardation), specific learning disabilities, emotional disturbance/behavior disorders, and communication (speech and language) disorders. It also includes low-incidence disabilities such as hearing impairments, visual impairments, physical and other health impairments, autism, traumatic brain injury, and multiple disabilities (Smith and Tyler, 2010). As noted by Hallahan, Kauffman, and Pullen (2012), the occurrence of some low-incidence disabilities has increased dramatically in recent years. This is particularly the case for autism (or autism spectrum disorder). Though Hallahan, Kauffman, and Pullen (2012) suggest that factors such as "improved identification procedures and identification of milder cases of autism" (p. 10) provide at least a partial explanation for the increased incidence of this disorder, a complete explanation remains a mystery and topic for speculation.
It is important to note that attention deficit-hyperactive disorder (ADHD) is not currently included within the categories of disability specified by IDEA. However, according to Smith & Tyler (2010), many students with ADHD are classified as having physical and other health impairments or receive services through a 504 Plan (based on Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973). For an in-depth look at definitions, characteristics, and educational needs of children receiving special education, the reader is referred to sources such as Lewis and Doorlag (2003), Hallahan, Kauffman, and Pullen (2012), or Smith and Tyler (2010).
Inclusion of Students with Disabilities: Though not the norm in all states, special education in Minnesota is typically provided within the framework of the inclusion model, which can be defined as" placing students with disabilities in general education classes and other school activities" (Hallahan, Kaufmann, and Pullen, 2012, p. 460). Delivering appropriate instruction for students with disabilities within the regular classroom requires teachers to be familiar with the students' IEPs and work collaboratively with other members of the IEP teams. Additionally, teachers are encouraged to use instructional strategies such as multi-level cooperative learning (Stainback, Stainback and Stefanich, 1996), peer tutoring (Hendrickson and Frank, 1993), and the lecture-pause technique (Ruhl, Hughes, and Schloss, 1987).
Students needing more extensive supports who are included in the regular classroom (such as those with severe or profound disabilities) are typically accompanied by a paraprofessional (special education aid) who provides this support on a one-to-one basis. Though these paraprofessionals are generally quite helpful, they do add another person to the IEP team, and therefore, it is important for the regular classroom teacher to meet with them as well as students' special education teachers in order to clarify goals and expectations.
Often, the goals for students needing extensive supports are more social and behavioral than academic in nature, such as providing opportunities for peer interaction, improving social skills, and helping non-disabled students become more comfortable interacting with persons with disabilities (Benner, 1998). When these students attend regular class settings, the teacher's attitude toward them is especially crucial in helping to accomplish these goals and create an overall atmosphere of acceptance. As Giangreco (1998) noted, the teacher is the primary role model in the school setting, and therefore, it is important that s/he not only welcomes these students, but also spends an appropriate amount of time talking to and interacting with them. To help them feel a part of the classroom community, Giangreco has suggested being sure that students with disabilities are seated with their non-disabled classmates and allowed to take part in as many classroom activities as possible.
Whether the inclusion model is preferable for all students with disabilities is a matter of some debate. As Benner (1998) has noted, the evidence regarding the benefits of inclusion, even for those with mild disabilities, is ambiguous and often contradictory. Therefore, as Zigler, Hodapp, & Edison (1990) noted, the decision regarding whether to include those with disabilities in regular classrooms often "rests on political and philosophical grounds rather than on any scientific evidence" (p.9).
Gifted and Talented: Though certainly not disabled and, therefore, not included in IDEA, students who are gifted and talented (GT) represent another important category of diversity. Concepts of giftedness vary, but Title IX of the No Child Left Behind Act defines gifted and talented students as those "who give evidence of high achievement capability in areas such as intellectual, creative, artistic, or leadership capacity, or in specific academic fields, and who need services or activities not ordinarily provided by the school in order to fully develop these capabilities." As noted by Smith and Tyler (2010), this definition or the similar, but more detailed, definition provided in the Marland Report (1972), provide the basis for definitions used by most states.
There is no federal law mandating services for students who are gifted or talented; however, many states and school districts do make special provisions for them. The most common approaches include ability grouping (placing gifted students together, typically for only a part of the school day, such as in honors sections ), acceleration (moving students through school at a faster pace), differentiation (providing advanced learning experiences along with additional support and assistance in the general education classroom), and enrichment (providing more depth and higher-level topics or projects on which students often work individually or in small groups) (Tyler and Smith, 2010).
Gender: As Quinn and Obenchain (1999) suggested, awareness of gender bias is an important first step in changing teacher behaviors. Awareness alone, however, is insufficient, and Sadker, Sadker, and Long (1993) urged educators to examine textbooks for biases, omissions, and stereotyping. Changes in the curriculum may also be necessary, and as Peggy McIntosh (1983) recommended, teachers need to move past approaches that merely mention the accomplishments of extraordinary women or include a separate unit on women's issues. Instead, she urges that educators teach in ways that truly represent the perspectives of both genders and all cultural groups. Though some educators have advocated for single sex classrooms and schools as a solution to gender bias, the data regarding their effectiveness are inconclusive (Jobe, 2003).
Learning Styles: Popular approaches to describing and assessing learning styles include those offered by Gregorc (1983), Renzulli and Smith (1978), and Dunn and Dunn (1978). Matching one's teaching to students' individual learning styles certainly seems logical and appropriate. However, there is disagreement regarding which learning style variables are most important, and research on the effectiveness of matching one's teaching to student learning styles is, at best, mixed (Lefrancois, 1999). In fact, after their extensive review of learning-styles research, Pashler, McDaniel, Rohrer, and Bjork (2008) concluded, "The contrast between the enormous popularity of the learning-styles approach within education and the lack of credible evidence for its utility is, in our opinion, striking and disturbing"( p. 117).Though we acknowledge the need to use a variety of instructional approaches and realize that students may have different learning preferences, our department agrees with writers such as Willingham (2005) who suggested that it is typically best to match one's instruction to the content being taught rather than to students' learning styles.
Multiple Intelligences (MI): Howard Gardner (1995) offers an expanded viewpoint of intellectual abilities that describes eight separate categories of intelligence (linguistic, logical/mathematical, musical, spatial, interpersonal, intrapersonal, bodily/kinesthetic, and naturalistic). Like learning styles, MI theory has become controversial with critics pointing out that it lacks research to support its claims. As noted by Snowman, McCown, and Biehler (2012), however, "MI theory has nevertheless influenced the preparation and professional development of teachers and curricula around the world" (p. 119).
Religious Diversity: Increased immigration has resulted in increased religious diversity. Though the United States has always been a nation where many religions are practiced, these have been mostly Christian religions. However, as immigrants come increasingly from Asia and Africa, the religious make-up of the United States is slowly changing. Though more than three-fourths of Americans still practice Christian faiths, nearly 5% practice other faiths, including growing numbers of Buddhists, Muslims, and Hindus (Pew Forum, 2010). Increasing religious diversity can provide significant challenges for educators as they develop curricula, plan school calendars, formulate dress and attendance codes, address gender issues, and deal with legal/ethical issues such as censorship and school prayer. School districts with large numbers of Muslim students, in particular, face challenges such as providing prayer breaks and places to pray during the school day, modifying dress codes to allow for Islamic head coverings, and dealing with anti-Islamic prejudices. Though it is obvious that teachers in public schools need to remain neutral and not promote any religion or favor one over another, they certainly can promote religious tolerance. Sources such as Tolerance.org, Religious Tolerance.org, and Fighting Religious Intolerance.org are good starting points for finding strategies and activities for teaching about religious tolerance in schools.
Sexual Orientation: Gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans-gender, and questioning (GLBTQ or LGBTQ) children and youth constitute only about 3-10% of the general population (depending on how homosexuality is defined) (Berger, 2005; Gollnick and Chinn, 2004), yet they are some of the most at-risk young people in our communities. The challenges they encounter become particularly evident during adolescence when they are often harassed for their sexual orientation (or even their perceived sexual orientation). As a result, up to 20% are frequently truant because they fear for their safety at school (Ryan and Cooper, 2004). To avoid harassment and violence, many work hard to mask their sexual identities (Spring, 2000) and end up living with loneliness and isolation (Gollnick and Chinn, 2004). Between a quarter and a third drop out of school, and the Safe Schools Coalition (2004) speculated that as many as 40% of homeless youth are either gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans-gender or questioning.
Challenges for educators with respect to the GLBTQ population include combating the often hostile environment of homophobia that exists in our schools (Ryan and Cooper, 2004) and creating a safe environment in which all students can learn. To accomplish these goals, schools must provide support services, develop and implement anti-bullying and harassment policies, and confront those who bully and harass (Gollnick and Chinn, 2004). For additional information on creating safe school environment for GLBT students, the reader is referred to the GLSEN Library and Ways to Fight Homophobia in Your School from LA Youth.
For more detailed information regarding our departmental plans for improving our students' knowledge of and experience with diverse learners, the reader is encouraged to review the College of Saint Benedict and Saint John's University Education Department Diversity Report and Plan (2012), found on the department's website.
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text:
As a general note, since this seems to be a sort-of Mahāyāna-EBT contextualization and comparative thread, I should clarify on what at least I am able to from an informed perspective, with regards to some understandings of "interconnected/interpenetrating" that might be present, or perhaps better clarify some correct presumptions that were being made.
The tradition of Mahāyāna philosophy that I am most familiar with, and highly interested in, is, as Javi already pointed out, us knowing each other online already, the Tiāntāi school of China headed by Ven Zhìyǐ.
The Tiāntāi school of Buddhism is founded on what Ven Zhìyǐ referred to as "the integrated teaching". Some would later call this "the Tiāntāi synthesis".
Unlike how Mahāyāna (& Vajrayāna) entered into Tibet, and unlike how Indian Buddhism developed into its late complex stages in India, the entirety of the dispensations of the EBTs, the later sects, & Mahāyāna, all enter into China at more or less the same time, or at least in a very truncated timeframe as compared to the native development of Buddhism in the Indian subcontinent.
As a result, early Chinese Buddhists received these texts in more-or-less a freely distributed jumble, and often without commentarial material. For instance, over on DharmaWheel, Malcolm often says that the Tibetans learned their dharma from the commentaries, and the Chinese from the sūtras. How accurate he is in saying this I cannot say.
"The integrated teaching", or "the Tiāntāi synthesis", is, IMO, the logical outcome of how the Chinese inherited the dharma. If Ven Zhìyǐ had not undertook such a project, someone else would have. From the perspective of many here, understandably, they will see it as a pity that Ven Zhìyǐ incorporated some apocryphal (even by Mahāyāna standards) material into this synthesis. From that same perspective, it will be seen as unfortunate that Ven Zhìyǐ placed the Saddharmapuṇḍarīkasūtra as the definitive teaching of the Buddhas, rather than the āgamāḥ or something of the like.
As a result, there are some elements of the teaching that can reasonably be traced to earlier Buddhisms, and some that cannot be found explicitly stated in the dispensation to the śrāvakāḥ. For instance, this thread's language, "Buddha-nature is the universe itself", or "the universe is Buddha-nature", is apparently rooted in the way that the thought of the Japanese people expresses itself in language.
National Teacher Enkan Saian in Kangshū Province was an esteemed Master under Baso. He once pointed out to his assembly, "All sentient beings are possessed of Buddha Nature." Right away, we need to thoroughly examine his words 'all sentient beings'. All sentient beings have different internal propensities and external conditions, which are the fruits of past karma, so their perspectives are different. This holds true for each and every one of them, be they called 'ordinary people', 'non-Buddhists', 'those in the Three Courses', 'those in the Five Courses', or something else. 'All sentient beings', as spoken of in the Buddha's Way in the present instance, means that all who possess a mind filled with craving are 'sentient beings', since having a mind is synonymous with being a sentient being. All those whose mind is beyond craving will likewise be sentient beings, since being a sentient being is synonymous with having a mind. Accordingly, all minds are, without exception, sentient beings, and all sentient beings are, without exception, possessed of Buddha Nature. And even grasses, trees, and our very nation are synonymous with Mind, and because they are synonymous with Mind, they are sentient beings, and because they are sentient beings, they are possessed of Buddha Nature.
Or perhaps Ven Dōgen was being very "idiosyncratic" to assert what he asserted, even in the thought-realm of Japanese philosophy. Similar language of 'this world is the Pure Land of the Buddha' can also be found in Tiāntāi, and I am sure that a Zen teacher has said something similar in the past. What it means here is that the rock "is mind" (note, only Ven Dōgen AFAIK goes further and asserts the rock's sentience on account of this) in the sense that it makes up the world that is within the mind. If sentience is understood as Buddha-nature, than the phenomenological realm of the ordinary mind is the Pure Land.
As such, interpenetration is solely one of emptiness, not appearance, from the perspective of the ordinary being, but also the non-Mahāyānist in general. In Tiāntāi, interpenetration is predicated on the relationship between appearance/aspect and emptiness. It is not that all appearances/aspects interpenetrate and are 'one', if I may refer back to the quote from Ven Zhìyǐ: "[when the first type of fool hears that 'all dharmāḥ are empty'] they take it to mean that all dharmāḥ are inseparable from emptiness and that even if one were to traverse the entire universe, everywhere would be the same suchness [i.e. emptiness] as that found here as the suchness of, for example, this vase." It should lastly be noted that there is a very small occurence of the word "interpenetration" found in all of the writings of Ven Zhìyǐ. "Interpenetration", as applied here, is frequently a construct of Western academia.
On the subject of "interpenetration", it is 圓融. 圓 is etymologically (semantically technically) related to 圍 "to gird" and 國 "country", but in this sense means "encircling and" or "completely". 融 gets its semantic component from 鬲 "cauldron". It means to intermix or fuse or melt into, referring to the way that things melt into each other (for instance in a cauldron during smelting specifically). Together 圓融 is "encircling and melted together" or "completely fused".
The main dictionary I consult gives this "interdependence / consumate interfusion / interpenetration", but that is rather vague. 'Consumate interfusion' seems to be a very popular translation for this, but it seems this is the model perhaps for the English 'interpenetration'.
From the more detailed Digital Dictionary of Buddhism we have:
Basic Meaning: consummate interfusion
Senses: Perfect interfusion; completely interpenetrated; seen more fully written as 圓滿融通 and 圓融無礙. Said of the ultimate reality as understood in Tiantai 天台 and Huayan 華嚴.
In Huayan, all existences are of themselves perfectly interfused. The absolute in the relative and vice versa; the identity of apparent contraries; perfect harmony among all differences, as in water and waves, affliction and enlightenment, transmigration and nirvāṇa, or life and death, etc.; all are of the same fundamental nature, all are thusness, and thusness is all; waves are one with waves, and water is one with water, and water and wave are one.
In Tiantai, the usage of the term is more in application to the nonobstruction among various approaches to the Buddhist doctrine, and thus we see terms such as perfect interfusion of the three disciplines 圓融三學, perfect interfusion of the three truths 圓融三諦, perfect interfusion of the unmoving 圓融無作 and so forth.
[Charles Muller, Robert Buswell; source(s): Ui, Nakamura, JEBD, Yokoi, Iwanami]
Perfect, complete (Skt. pariniṣpanna, paripūrṇa, pariṇāma). [Charles Muller; source(s): Hirakawa]
I am not sure if it is suggesting that 圓融 is an occasional Chinese translation choice for the Sanskrit pariniṣpanna, paripūrṇa, (et al) or not. Running a scan of the Taishō Tripiṭaka we see that 圓融 is a sparsely occuring word, with most of its instances limited to T09b–10 (the Avataṃsaka-Gaṇḍavyūha volume) & T44b–48 (Sarvasamaya, the sectarian teachings).
The oddball occurrence is in the Śuraṅgamasūtra. The rest are in minor apocryphal texts here and there.
Other than in those texts, the other place that it tends to occur is in commentarial material (like in T44b–48 like I already mentioned). Going down the list we have a bunch of commentaries, including two significant commentaries from the Tiāntāi school: Ven Zhìyǐ's 妙法蓮華經玄義 ('The Subtle Dharma of the Lotus Flower Sutra's Profound Meaning') & Ven Zhànrán's 法華玄義釋籤 ('The Dharma Flower's Profound Meaning Guidebook').
Ven Zhìyǐ uses it to refer to the Three Truths in the twice-above-mentioned commentary: 分別者,但法有 麁妙,若隔歷三諦,麁法也;圓融三諦,妙法也。
Interestingly, 圓融 is not a term in the Lotus Sūtra's material text, the textus receptus, as it were.
Ven Zhìyǐ himself was an East Asian Madhyamaka (a subschool of greater Madhyamaka), and his Buddhist education was generally in that milieu. Regardless of whether the above "works" with Ven Nāgārjuna's exegeses of the empty, and by that I refer to the Nirvānaparīkṣā of Ven Nāgārjuna's Mūlamadhyamakakārikā****, looking at the world on terms of the relation between emptiness and appearance/aspect, this is a very fundamentally different philosophical angle than what undergirds Buddhadharma practice as explained and attested to in EBTs, the dispensation (exclusively) to the śrāvakāḥ.
That being said, this, what I present (not necessarily what I am presenting about), is all somewhat surface-level philosophizing, only my own understanding, and perhaps my own misconceptions. You wont find this kind of language or expression in any early Indian Buddhist text. But is it entirely unBuddhist? I do not think so.
****the abovementioned exegesis of the empty, Ven Nāgārjuna, Mūlamadhyamakakārikā:
(Siderits & Katsura translation, [additions mine])25:19-20
न संसारस्य निर्वाणात् किं चिद् अस्ति विशेषणं
na saṁsārasya nirvāṇāt kiṁ cid asti viśeṣaṇaṁ
There is nothing whatsoever of samsara distinguishing (it) from nirvana.
न निर्वाणस्य संसारात् किं चिद् अस्ति विशेषणं। १९
na nirvāṇasya saṁsārāt kiṁ cid asti viśeṣaṇaṁ| 19
There is nothing whatsoever of nirvana distinguishing it from samsara.
निर्वाणस्य च या कोटिः।कोटिः। संसरणस्य च
nirvāṇasya ca yā koṭiḥ koṭiḥ
[That which] is the limit which is the limit of nirvana [is the] the limit of samsara;
न तयोर् अन्तरं किंचित् सुसूक्ष्मम् अपि विद्यते। २०
na tayor antaraṁ kiñcit susūkśmam api vidyate| 20
Even a very subtle interval is not found of (between) them.


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The spectrum of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) is known to be extremely close to a perfect blackbody. However, even within standard cosmology several processes occurring in the early Universe lead to distortions of the CMB at a level that might become observable in the future. This could open an exciting new window to early Universe physics. In my talk I will then explain in more detail why the cooling of matter in the early Universe causes a negative mu- and y-type distortion and how the damping of primordial small-scale perturbations before recombination could allow placing interesting constraints on different inflationary models.


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A Better Way to Talk to CustomersBy Dan Gillmor
Let's go back a few years to the Cluetrain Manifesto. It started out as a pathbreaking Web site, which then spawned a book of the same name (1999), that began with an idea elegant in its simplicity: "Markets are conversations."
This might have been clear enough to students of the stock exchange and similar markets, but the insight was not an obvious one when applied to markets for products and services. Now, its essential truth is evident to a lot of peoplethough there are still plenty of doubters in the corporate world.
It's easy to argue that conversational tools such as blogs are faddish, hard to control, and even frightening, but the response to that notion is simple: The flow of unstructured information is as important as the management of traditional data. What we tell each other matters as much as what we cram into and retrieve from SQL databases.
Blogs are best understood as a proxy for a host of other bottom-upor, more accurately, edge-inmedia forms. The list starts with low-end technologies such as discussion boards. Then there are wikis, the simple databases that allow anyone to edit any page; podcasts, digital audio delivered to individual devices; video webcasts; and "mash-ups" that use Web APIs to combine data and services from discrete sites to create entirely new ways of showing information. Not least, there is the continuing explosion of the malleable RSS, or "really simple syndication," the subset of XML that lets you deliver and receive Web-syndicated content with ease.
Think about the way companies speak to the world. Most press releases look as though they've been written by a Turing machinea computer that mimics human conversation mated with a lawyer. Who wants to be spoken to like that? Not the constituencies of a typical corporationi.e., its owners, customers, employees, suppliers and resellersand certainly not the members of the communities in which the company does business. By contrast, a blog's essential characteristic is its identifiably human voice.
I'm not saying that all communications should be from the "Hey, how's it going" school. Sometimes we should go for simple data, such as in earnings statements and balance sheets (with the fewer opaque "nuances," such as obfuscating footnotes, the better). But the act of talking with people is an act of transparency and, ultimately, of confidence in our peers, not just our bosses.
Some marketing and PR folks scoff at blogs. They say the audiences are too small to be worth the trouble. Yet this medium isn't about mass audiences; it's about serving many niche audiences, each of which will contain so-called "true influencers." When they are genuinely engaged, these influencers can become allies, or at least respectful critics. And since the first rule of conversation is to listen, the enterprise can learn new things. Surely learning leads to better results.
Excellent senior-executive blogs are still rare. One belongs to Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks basketball franchise, who has upended the typical relationship between sports mogul and sportswriters. Cuban's blog tells his side of things with an edge that makes for must-reading. Still, the most effective blogs tend to come from the rank and filepeople who are closest to customers and other constituencies. Microsoft's hundreds of bloggers do more to keep software developers in the know about development tools than all the PR in the world.
Blogging at the world's biggest software company is largely the responsibility of the people who actually work on the products. Here's the top benefit: It has put a human face on a once consummately arrogant corporate culture. I'm still smiling at one recent posting that began: "There are certain places where software should never fail. Obvious ones like aircraft, missile control systems, etc. Well here's a new one: When you are lying in a dentist's chair, mouth wired up, with a tooth freshly dremeled away, and the dentist and his assistant are staring, speechless, at their special PC's screen."
An example of Microsoft's listening quotient is evident in an exchange that took place last spring in the blog of Sue Loh, a company software developer. Loh had taken issue with the author of an article that had appeared in a trade journal: she thought his criticisms of a Windows CE API had been unfair and, in her blog, she explained why. This author responded in the comments section of Loh's blog, as did several other people, and Loh responded in turn. In the end, some light was shed on the topic, not just heat.
I strongly urge corporate bloggers to let readers post comments, and when people are critical, don't delete what they say. A one-way conversation isn't a conversation: It's a monologue.
Giving up a certain amount of control raises many issues, including legal ones. A recent cover story in Forbesfear-mongering about how wicked bloggers can wreck corporate reputationsraised a few fair points, but then drowned them in melodrama and wrongheaded advice. Should companies respond to what others say about them online, especially in blogs? Lies should certainly be countered with the truth. But honorable critics and observers want to get things right. Engagement and respect go further than brandishing legal threats (one of Forbes' uglier suggestions). Companies that engage in discussions outside of their own marketing machines, even when the discussion makes insiders uncomfortable, are only adding to their credibility.
One genuine risk that a company may face is regulatory sanction, if an employee blogger says the wrong thing, or says too much. I'd like to see pharmaceutical companieswhich surely need a boost in consumer respectengage in more honest conversations with outsiders, but federal laws are extremely strict about what medical companies can say publicly. Similarly, a publicly held company doesn't want the Securities and Exchange Commission knocking on the door after reading a blog posting that, in the eyes of some bureaucrat, broke some obscure rule. And everyone has to wonder when trial lawyers will start looking for blog postings that can be the basis of, or support for, shareholder lawsuits.
Yet Microsoft, with perhaps the deepest pockets around, has gone ahead and taken the risk. The basic rule for employee blogs, as far as I can tell, is a terrific one: Use common sense.
Bear in mind that internal conversations are as useful as external ones. People can give each other valuable information outside the normal information stovepipes; in fact, even the Office of the Secretary of Defense is experimenting with internal blogs. Inside-the-firewall wikis may be even more useful: They can become corporate scratch pads, places where people can work together on project planning and other common interests. At the University of Hong Kong, where I've taught part-time for the last few years, my co-lecturer and I have gotten excellent results in planning class projects with wikis. Our students have learned from them, and so have we.
This is the ultimate advantage in joining a conversation: learning. In his latest book, Democratizing Innovation, MIT professor Eric von Hippel argues, persuasively, I believe, that sharing knowledge brings more benefits than hoarding it. No one suggests giving away vital trade secrets, in blogs or any other form. But in an era when markets are turning into conversations, listening is not just one way to do things. It's the best way.
DAN GILLMOR is author of We the Media: Grassroots -Journalism by the People, for the People and founder of Bayosphere.com, a San Francisco Bay Area Web site. His next column will appear in February.


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Do students use Facebook for social learning? YES!Yesterday was interesting. I listened to an interview with Jon Scott, a researcher/educator in Cardiff University about the need for social academic platforms- that would support collaborative learning, for example students working on group projects together, annotating documents, question and answer forums. Theoretically VLEs like Blackboard can support this. But either they aren't used this way or attempts to use them this way fail. The discussion that followed on Twitter considered that whatever platform was developed should be like Facebook. It should seem as easy to use. It should be somewhere that students wants to be and were anyway. Afterall as a student your social and academic life do often collide in any case. But then it was suggested that Facebook wasn't that easy to use. Most people didn't understand the privacy settings. They probably were not using it for academic work.
So I wrote a blog post asking students if they 'used' Facebook for learning and lo and behold they do!
The uses cover:
1. Private messages (as an email replacement?)- to ask close friends questions and to work on projects in a groups as documents can be attached.
2. The use of peer-led academic content groups where students can ask each other questions particularly in the run-up to exams.
3. Following pages from BMJ learning, eMedicine, medrevise to help with revision
4.The use of private (even secret) groups to work on group collaborative tasks by sharing documents. The notifications side-bar is particularly useful for letting students know when something new has happened.
5. For sharing information from face-to-face small group activities. There is no additional task to be shared but the content is useful to others.
6. Instant messaging! If VLEs were set up with instant messaging this would be a big win. It is one of the features that students like most about Facebook.
And why are people using Facebook?
-Privacy - this is a space that does not belong to the university so the chances that what is being said will be seen by a member of staff are reduced
-Accessibility- there is a lot less clicking on Facebook than in the VLE and it is faster than the VLE
-People are there- most people go in to Facebook every day. There is every likelihood that you will get a fast response to a query. This is in contrast to asking a question in a discussion forum to support learning on the VLE. As one student said; " if I asked a question on there, it would be as useful as talking to a brick wall as there's no one else on there!"
I also asked students if they felt pressure to be on Facebook in order to be able to keep up with peers. Would students miss out if they didn't have a Facebook account?
One student described how a colleague stopped using Facebook whilst they were in the middle of working on a project. That meant a lot more to-ing and fro-ing for the others in the group. Another student said that they weren't aware of anyone objecting to Facebook but if they did then they could manage as long as someone else kept them in the loop by sharing what was on Facebook.
There was also an interesting point made that some students thought that there university might not approve of the sharing of notes within these communities. The same might go for the sharing of exam questions. This reminded me of a post by Dave White on the Learning Black Market.
Did students worry about their privacy using Facebook? Some did mention disliking the fact that they had to use Facebook but it worked. It was a trade-off they were prepared to make.
If students use Facebook for social learning then should educators be there too?
Remember yesterday's blog post had emerged out of a discussion about whether an additional social academic platform was necessary and whether Facebook was already acting as that platform. It appeared that to a certain extent it is. The next question is should educators be there too in order to support the social learning that is taking place?
That conversation had been progressing rapidly in tandem! Alan Cann had started a discussion on google + about my post. His opinion " Allow Facebook to be a student owned space. if you want to set up groups to support learning, do it elsewhere". Now in ways this is a little surprising from Alan. His general mantra is "Build networks, not destinations." In Facebook the network is there! The students are there! Trying to take them to another destination that isn't about their network seems slightly doomed.
I'd come across a post by Cristina Costa titled "Why Facebook and teaching don't go together". She makes a few points here. Her strongest contention is that Facebook is not a pleasant organisation and that we don't know how or can not understand how they are using our data. If students wish to organise themselves there then that is up to them, but if educators have a presence on Facebook then they could be seen as giving tacit approval to Facebook. They might also be seen as encouraging students to set up a Facebook account.
On the other hand, Natalie Lafferty shared a post that Donald Clark had written earlier this year giving 7 reasons why Facebook was posed to become THE social learning platform. But as Natalie pointed out, in a survey in Dundee University, there was a 50:50 split when students were asked if they wanted an institutional presence on Facebook. So the university held back.
At this stage I'd like to state that my attitude to Facebook is pragmatic. I have an account. It is personal. Nearly everyone that I am friends with are people who I have went to school with, worked with, met on holiday, met at university. Oh and family! We have a secret group where we can share pictures and videos and updates that we don't wan't to share with others.
But I have also used Facebook as an academic. I have been involved in using a Facebook group to help recruitment to a student research project. I've set up a Facebook page in the past to share content that I was already posting to Blackboard. A few hundred students liked the page. No one asked to become by Facebook friend and I didn't ask them to become mine. These uses of Facebook did not seem to present any kind of boundary confusion. It didn't stop students using Facebook to support their learning in the ways that they had already been doing.
"There be dragons!"
My fear is that as educators we have ended up demonising Facebook. And we've done this in a few different ways.
Particularly in medicine, Facebook has been presented as a place where bad things happen and a challenge to professionalism. Have a look at the references on Pubmed. In the piece I wrote for the GMC in advance of the publication of their social media guidance I made the point that the reactions to Facebook seem to approach moral panic, when in fact most people are using it in very civilised ways.
All of this has meant that some, maybe many, students do not trust us to be anywhere near them on Facebook. Jon Hilton has left a great comment which illustrates that the very accessibility that makes Facebook great (2 clicks and you're there!) is also what makes it feel risky. What if a student posts a drunken photo to the wrong group? What if they say something about a lecturer that they wouldn't have said otherwise? Can educators be trusted to respond responsibly to those events? Can we? I would hope that we could. Mistakes are made. People learn. Students and educators both need to learn about digital literacy and digital professionalism, and I think it would be great if we started as we meant to go on and learnt together.
But what about the accusations that it is irresponsible to lead students to Facebook, or to give tacit approval to the organisation. This is a decision that educators need to make themselves. My instinct is that students have decided that they know they are the product. This is a free service and they are paying for it by handing over their information. But it is a trade-off that has value for them. They are prepared to put up with ads for topics they mention in passing. Being off the grid isn't really an option for them. Yes, we don't know how all this information will be tied together and made sense of in the future.
I also sense that there is a fear amongst educators that their presence on Facebook will be desperately uncool. Private groups that an educator might set up in Facebook might be seen as 'creepy treehouses'. The concept of the creepy treehouse emerged in 2008 just as people were starting to explore the possibilities of social media for learning. But 4 years later how has our understanding shifted? Is it time to explore the opportunities of Facebook in a mature and confident way? Actually, Melanie McBride was arguing that we should do this back then:
"If we do not all venture into these spaces together – as a guided and pedagogically relevant tour – we will become even further disconnected from a student population who are being corporatized at every turn."
"If we do not all venture into these spaces together – as a guided and pedagogically relevant tour – we will become even further disconnected from a student population who are being corporatized at every turn."
We have to be clear to not ask too much of any platform. Can Facebook work with the VLE? Could it be used to support specific pieces of work or just for a big private year group to answer student queries in the way that students are already using it? Any new uses of Facebook by educators shouldn't step on the toes of students who are already doing a great job.
And because I like to put my money where my mouth is, I decided last night to start a Facebook group to try and learn together with Cardiff University students how we could use technology/elearning better in the course. This could have been done through the VLE. I could have set up different forums for each year group. The students would have been less certain about who was reading their posts. The first thing I posted was the YouTube above which gives quite a very negative view of Facebook. The next item I posted was this screencast about how to check how your timeline looks to members of the public.
Is it time that educators started making timid expeditions into the scary land that is Facebook? What do you think?


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I've found out lately that the biggest reason that most automotive enthusiasts shy away from the road course is because they're afraid their car isn't ready. That's the wrong way to look at it. It doesn't take a fully prepped race car for you to be a better driver, or a better defensive driver. Being on a road course teaches you more about car control than you'll be able to experience on the street, I guarantee you that. I highly recommend that every enthusiast spends at least a day learning the car's abilities in a safe and controlled environment, it also truly helps when you have an instructor coaching you on car control.
A common question I'm always asked is how do I prep my car for the road course? My response will always be the same. The more you modify a car the harder it will be to drive; you're raising the car's limits. It's the reason every magazine loves the Toyobaru twins, because the limits of the car are so low that an average Joe can reach the limits at a speed that won't kill you. Now look at a car such as the Corvette or Viper, both of those cars have their limits set so high that most magazine test drivers find it difficult to push and hold the car at its limits. An error in a car such as that could land you in the ambulance. When you look at what the car is designed for and how many years of engineering went into making a masterpiece such as that, the car deserves your respect for it to be driven at the limit.
In short, you don't modify your car for your first few times attempting to reach the limits of your car. Obviously upgrading the brake fluid, brake pads, and decent summer tires will always be a must, it's basic safety. The biggest thing that helped me become a faster driver is investing in a racing seat, having the ability to always be in the same position no matter how many g-forces are being pushed on me helped greatly. Remember that smooth is fast (http://pramoda-ravi.kinja.com/what-it-really…), and being a fast driver doesn't mean you must have a fast car.
(Picture was taken at Gingerman Raceway in South Haven Michigan at a 3 Balls Racing event)


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Platt Magic introduces the means to create some of the most mind-blowing close-up magic you'll ever perform. And the best part - it's all done with apparently everyday objects - Spree candies. Here are just some of the Spree'd routines: LEAST FAVORITE FLAVOR- Display all five flavors of Spree's in your hand. Ask your spectator to name their least favorite flavor- the one they'd choose to put back in the pack. Let's say they name orange. Close your fingers over the Sprees. When you open your hand the orange spree is missing and appears on the end an open pack Sprees! SPREE'CHEROO- A red spree sits at the open end of a pack of Sprees. A green spree sits in your palm. The two Sprees instantly change places. Both can instantly be handed out. TRAFFIC LIGHT- Hopping Halves with everyday candies. Show a red, yellow and green Spree. One by one you place them in your pocket, as one by one they return to your hand.
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- Item #: 501


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Thursday, August 18, 2011
Mexican man captures live fairy
"I was picking guavas and I saw a twinkling. I thought it was a firefly. I picked it up and felt that it was moving; when I looked at it I knew that it was a fairy godmother," Maldonado said. The tale of the fairy that Maldonado claims to have discovered last weekend has run like wildfire through the area and his home is now besieged by the curious, some of whom wait for up to an hour to enter.
What Maldonado shows the paying public is a small container filled with formaldehyde containing a humanlike figure about 2 centimetres (0.8 inch) tall, with a gelatinous consistency and a certain resemblance to Peter Pan's Tinkerbell. Maldonado says that what seems to be just a little plastic figure is a fairy and that it was alive when he found it. And there are those who believe him. "I've seen everything and, yes, I believe the fairy is real. Therefore, I wanted to come to confirm that those myths are true," Cesar Ramirez, one of the visitors, said.
YouTube link.
To be allowed to examine the "fairy" for a few seconds and take a photograph of it, the curious must make a donation to financially help out Maldonado, who recently lost his job. His neighbours have also taken advantage of the situation to sell photographs and keyrings with the image of the fairy for about 20 pesos ($1.60), as well as refreshments including drinks and food to those people while they wait in line outside Maldonado's house.
12 comments:
One born every minute.
- 6:10 am
Hey, at least he has proof, of a sort.
There's people out there who believe in some giant psychopath in the sky who will set them on fire if they set so much as a foot wrong, and all they have is a bunch of folk stories and fairytales written some 2000 years ago by maniacs on bad shrooms.
- 6:29 am
Well, if I understood correctly, his own mother doesn't believe him.
- 1:51 pm
I'd pay for it. You'd gain the experience of seeing a cute hoax and you could talk to your friends about it. It's neat.
They say that experience makes you happier than things, so buy experiences if you can ;)
- 5:45 pm
- Colin said...
Here is a photo of the toy he got it from:
- 6:05 pm
The Rat King, your comment FT-MF-Win ;)
- 6:35 pm
Gee, u think we could maybe get a better pic? I mean yu got something so special right? oh yeah I'll just pull out my pixel vision camera and take a picture of it for the world! The supernatural take shitty pictures.
- 12:03 am
Not impressed. I went to SanFran last year and the place is full of them.
- 2:24 pm
I use a strong insecticide to get them out of my garden!
- 2:56 pm
- twas_brillig said...
Colin's link is the answer to this story, it is a plastic toy.
Faeries ARE real however good luck capturing one considering they are not of this realm.
Simple minded people who scoff at the idea of faeries and that consciousness is limited to the material human body really haven't a fucking clue about the true nature of reality. It's that simple. =D
- 8:20 am
This is why Mexicans are destined to cut grass the rest of their lives. Seriously, I know we have some stupid people in the US but c'mon man.
- 12:16 am
- basicsded said...
they shouldnt have put her in the formaldehyde alive. this is exactly why they hate us and hide from us, if i get the chance ill find a way to get there just to beat their ass. idiots, destructove uncaring idiots. i feel so sorry for her.
- 4:42 pm