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President Obama, a man who actively promotes the audacity of hope and based his presidential campaigns on the idea of change, has combined both concepts in his long gaze at Cuba: he hopes Castro will change. However, that option isn't remotely possible in Cuba. Back in 2003, Castro Bros. added to the Cuban Constitution that the socialist character of the Cuban revolution is irrevocable.
Lest you think the Cold War is over, and it's time to move on, Raul Castro is there to remind you not to forget. Both Castro and Obama had agreed to announce the news of a new dawn for Cuba-USA relations, simultaneously, at noon on December 17th, a day that has particular significance in Cuban lore, as it celebrates San Lázaro, the patron saint of the needy, the one who brings hope to the people.
Obama conducted his press conference standing up in a properly lit room. He's a young man, during his second presidential term, talking naturally. Castro, a player from the Eisenhower era, was sitting down in an obscure mahogany time capsule. He read from several sheets of paper (paper!), with the affected tone reserved for a grandiloquent speech, the only tone with which he has always addressed the Cuban people.
Obama, the Commander-in-Chief of the United States Armed Forces, was wearing civilian clothes. Castro showed up in his military uniform with all the medals he has bestowed on himself over the years (he's been the head of the Cuban Army since he and his older brother took power in 1959). That choice of attire was carefully considered.
Raul Castro appeared between two black-and-white framed photos. In one, he poses with a comrade in arms who died fighting the previous dictator —not Fidel, the one before him. The other photo shows Raul with his late wife, the most powerful woman in Cuba in the last half-century. As much as the president of the United States wants to move forward, Raul Castro is a man living in the past.
But if the retro look wasn't enough, then Castro opened his mouth. These were his first words: "Since I was elected President…" That's exactly the moment the educated audience should have known this is a complete farce: Raul Castro has never been elected.
The agreement to open an American embassy in Havana was preceded by a quid pro quo mambo in which an American spy serving time in Cuba was traded for three Cuban spies. (According to the trophy-of-war selfie Raul Castro took with them upon their arrival, his spies were well fed in their American prisons). The USAID subcontractor Alan Gross, who lost most of his teeth and over 100 pounds in his Cuban prison, was released on "humanitarian grounds" after five years of wrongful imprisonment for handing out laptops and cellphones to the Cuban Jewish community.
Additionally, Obama announced he wants to revisit Cuba's standing in the list of countries that sponsor terrorism. Yet, the same day of this exchange, the long tentacle of North Korean repression reentered America's collective consciousness by dictating to Sony Pictures (and its global audience), that if Sony releases "The Interview," there will be terrorist retaliations.
Nothing has changed in Cuba since July 2013, when the Chong Chong Gang, a North Korean ship, was caught in Panamanian waters carrying 240 tons of weapons concealed under sacks of sugar. The ship and the weapons were coming from Cuba, from the same regime that brought the world to the brink of nuclear war in the early sixties, the same regime this new development is trying to appease.
In his inaugural speech on January 20, 2009, Obama hinted at the Castro dynasty: "To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history, but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist." But Castro's fist is as tight as it has ever been.
On the morning of December 20th, 2014, the news of a Cuban Coast Guard sinking a vessel, carrying women and children, that was fleeing the island started to reach English media outlets. So far, one passenger has been reported missing. Expect more snubs to the US government (and the Cuban people) where this came from.
There's a parable that illustrates the doomed relationship between Obama and Castro. A man sees a scorpion drowning in a puddle. He weighs the outcome of his actions, but decides that his nature is to nurture, so he picks up the scorpion. The scorpion's nature is to sting. The man reacts to this venom by opening the hand, which drops the scorpion back in the water. With his limbs beginning to swell and about to hallucinate, the man sees a scorpion in a puddle. And he feels an urge to save the creature.
Alexis Romay is the author of two novels and a book of sonnets. He blogs on Cuba, literature and other tropical diseases at http://belascoainyneptuno.com.
Note: English text provided by the author.


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Pete Townshend didn't do himself any favors when he got caught up in an international child-porn scandal. Not when he admitted to paying for access to an illegal site, not when his explanation as to why seemed to beg credulity, and certainly not when he refused to appear in court.
In the end, the Who legend was cleared of the worst of the charges – Townshend didn't download any images, an offense that carries a maximum five-year jail sentence – but not the taint of scandal. His excuse ultimately seemed to be true, but it hardly mattered to those who'd already decided he was a pedophile.
He continued work on various musical projects, and completed a 2012 autobiography titled Who I Am. But it wasn't easy. "If I had a gun, I would have shot myself," Townshend wrote in his memoir. "It really did feel like a lynching."
He insisted that there was a logical reason for his actions when the authorities arrived on Jan. 13, 2003 to take Townshend into custody under the Protection of Children Act: He'd been surfing the darker corners of the internet as part of research for the autobiography, in which Townshend intended to discuss his own suspected abuse as a child. Enraged by what he found, Townshend said he decided he'd expose this criminal underworld.
"I am not a pedophile," Townshend said the day of his arrest. "I'd be prepared to have my computer hard drive analyzed. It's important police are able to convince themselves that, if I did anything illegal, I did it purely for research."
By then, a team of Scotland Yard detectives carrying blue plastic crates with evidence bags had already begun a multi-hour search of both his business offices and his home in the exclusive London suburb of Richmond, Surrey. Solicitor John Cohen told the Guardian that Townshend was questioned for an hour and 20 minutes by officers at the police station in Twickenham, as local law enforcement assisted with a world-wide crackdown on internet child pornography.
"The access and payment for child abuse images is an offense, and inciting others to distribute these images leads to young children being seriously sexually assaulted to meet the growing demands of the internet customer," London's Metropolitan Police said in a 2003 statement. "It is not a defense to access these images for research or out of curiosity."
Townshend acknowledged providing his credit-card information to Landslide Productions, an illicit Texas-based portal run by Thomas and Janice Reedy – both of whom had already been convicted of child-porn trafficking. Their former site was subsequently run as a police-sting operation, netting more than 7,200 suspected users in the U.K. alone.
"I have looked at child porn sites maybe three or four times in all, the front pages and the previews," Townshend said a few days after his arrest. "But I have only entered once using a credit card, and I have never downloaded. With hindsight, it was very foolish, but I felt so angered about what was going on, it blurred my judgment."
A year before his arrest, Townshend actually admitted to what he'd done.
He wrote a lengthy essay in January 2002 for his website called A Different Bomb where he said he came to a revelation when a friend killed herself after having been sexually abused as a child by her father. Townshend said he was forced to confront the possibility that he had suffered similarly in his own past. "It is what is unconscious in me that makes me scream for vengeance against my friend's abusers, rather than an adult understanding of what went wrong," he wrote.
Townshend then described how quickly he found a Russian site that provided him with a free image of a man raping an infant. "The awful reality hit me of the self-propelling, self-spawning mechanism of the internet," Townshend said.
"I reached for the phone, I intended to call the police and take them through the process I had stumbled upon – and bring the pornographers involved to book," he added. "Then I thought twice about it. With someone on trial who had once been connected with me – however loosely – I spoke off-the-record to a lawyer instead. He advised me to do nothing. He advised me that I most certainly should not download the image as 'evidence.' So I did as he advised: Nothing."
After a four-month investigation, authorities determined that there were no criminal images on any of Townshend's computers. Still, a court date loomed – and Townshend feared the worst.
"A forensic investigator found that I hadn't entered the website, but nonetheless, by the time the charges came to be presented to me, it was five months," Townshend later admitted. "I was exhausted. I felt that if I went to court I would be offering myself up for sacrifice."
Townshend was said to be paying some $3,000 a day for security at his home, where insults were regularly shouted from passing cars, the Los Angeles Times reported.
"The whole thing is ludicrous," the Who's long-time publicist Keith Altham said in 2003. "I constantly saw him around kids on the road and his behavior was always impeccable. He was foolish to go to this site even for research. But that's all. He doesn't deserve this. He does deserve respect."
Feeling battered, Townshend told the BBC he simply lacked the "courage and strength" to appear before the judge. In his absence, Townshend was placed on a national register of sex offenders by Metropolitan Police, and remained there through 2008.
A sample of his DNA was taken, for the purposes of possible criminal investigations in the future. Townshend was required to notify police of any lengthy trip abroad, as well as any change of address. He was also made to undergo "multi-agency assessment" to ensure that he was no further risk to children.
Meanwhile, the British investigation – called Operation Ore – also led to the questioning of the Bay City Rollers' former manager, popular U.K. TV host Matthew Kelly, and Robert Del Naja of Massive Attack. Del Naja was later cleared, as were a number of Townshend's fellow accused – many of them because the credit cards used in these transactions had, in fact, been stolen.
For Townshend, however, the damage had already been done. He chose to fall silent.
Who I Am arrived four years after Townshend finally left the registry, and it did indeed explore abusive relationships from his childhood. (He'd dealt with the topic before: Townshend's 1969 rock opera Tommy memorably featured a "deaf, dumb and blind" major character who'd been sexually assaulted by a family member.) It was only then, once the book was published, that Townshend felt emboldened to more fully discuss the scandal again.
His intent in paying for access to the site, Townshend said in a 2012 interview, was to expose the financial chain that connects British banks with Russian orphanages.
"It's white-knight syndrome: You want to be the one that's seen to be helping," he said. "I had experienced something creepy as a child, so you imagine, what if I was a girl of nine or 10 and my uncle had raped me every week? I felt I had an understanding, and I could help."
The entire transaction, which Townshend said he cancelled immediately, had cost him £7 – and then so much more.
Who Albums Ranked
See Who Drummer Keith Moon's Craziest Antics

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- Island Breeze Sauce Plate 12cm
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Swim England Swimming Coach – Club Offer – Blended Learning – Wrekin College Sports Centre
This course builds on the Swim England Assistant Swimming Coach certificate, developing your knowledge, skills and abilities ahead of becoming an independent swimming coach.
Blended Learning is a more flexible approach where you complete the theoretical elements of the course online through interactive activities and checks on learning, prior to the practical workshops. The online learning and completion of assessments should take you are approximately 20-25 hours to complete.
Who is the course designed for?
Anyone who has a Swim England Assistant Swimming Coach certificate who wants to become an independent coach.
Course content
The course is delivered through a mixture of online learning, classroom activities and practical poolside learning. You will participate in at least six training sessions, coaching swimmers at county standard and above, to gain hands on practical experience.
You will learn about:
- Roles and responsibilities of a Swimming Coach
- Impact of the Athlete Development Support Pathway in competitive swimming
- Scientific principles of competitive swimming
- Competitive swimming skills
- Types of training used to develop swimmers
- Planning, delivery and evaluation of a series of sessions
- Effective management in training and competition
- Communication skills within the swimming coaching environment
- Motivational techniques
- Developing swimming skills and competitive swimming strokes
- Evaluating swimmer progress
- Reflecting and evaluating on own performance
- Planning for professional development
- How to Enrol:
- Click book on course or use the contact details below.
- Prerequisites:
You must be at least 18 years of age at the start of the course.
Swim England Assistant Swimming Coach
Swim England Assistant Swimming Coach – Blended Learning
ASA Level 1 Coaching Swimming or equivalent post 1994
If you are unsure if your qualification meets the pre-requisites, please check with the Institute of Swimming on 01509 640640
Learners need:
– to have been coaching in the last 3 months on a regular basis
– to be linked to a swimming club with access to 3 sessions per week for off course assessment
– to have access to swimmers that sit within 2 different stages of the ADSP (Athlete Development Support Pathway) i.e training to train and above over the course of a 6 week mesocycle
– to work with a coaching assistant
– to have knowledge and experience of current coaching best practices
Wrekin College Sports Centre


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The World Cafe: Shaping Futures Through Questions That Matter
- 1 What is the power of a good conversation
- 2 What is the World Café?
- 3 Overarching Principles and Perspectives of the World Café:
- 4 The Organization of The World Café:
- 4.1 1. Set the Context.
- 4.2 2. Create a Hospitable Space.
- 4.3 3. Explore Questions That Matter
- 4.4 4. Encourage Everyone's Contribution
- 4.5 5. Cross Pollinate and Connect Diverse Perspectives
- 4.6 6. Listen Together for Patterns, Insights, and Deeper Questions
- 4.7 7. Harvest and Share Collective Discoveries
- 4.8 Roles
- 5 Intelligence
- 6 Resources Needed
- 7 Conclusions
- 8 Resources
What is the power of a good conversation
Why is it that some questions grab the attention and energy of a group, and others don't seem to lead anywhere? How can we enhance our capacity to talk and think more deeply together about the critical issues facing our communities, our organizations, and our planet? How can we apply what we know about living systems to understanding how organizations and communities innovate? What sorts of underlying principles are at the heart of social systems and any complex system, and what does that tell us about the most effective way to create change within those systems? How can we access the mutual intelligence and wisdom we need to create innovative paths forward? These are some of the questions at the root of this facet of civic intelligence.
What is the World Café?
The World Café is essentially a conversational process, based on a set of integrated design principles, that reveal a deeper living network pattern, through which we coevolve our collective futures. (Holman, pg. 180) It is a human process methodology that first emerged in 1995 as a result of facilitation by Juanita Brown and David Isaacs at a series of conversations by Intellectual Capital Pioneers, an interdisciplinary group engaged in a level of deep inquiry into knowledge and leadership.
The World Café is an emergent process for thinking together focused on creating coherence without control. (Holman, pg. 188) It utilizes the natural processes of intimate conversation to create the conditions for the collective consciousness to emerge in a way that cannot be predicted. Through the integrated design principles, a sense of the dynamic qualities inherent in any group are made more visible and palpable, and this often leads to a surprising degree of group resonance and unity around the significant questions at hand.
This format for facilitating what is really important has been utilized by executive MBA programs, Hewlett-Packard, Mexico's National Fund for Social Enterprise, and thousands of other people in widely diverse communities and organizations around the world. It can serve to jumpstart innovation and coherence within a community, and especially across diverse communities. This author believes, therefore that this process, and others like it, must form the heart of any movement to build a society that is more self aware, intelligent, and responsive to the changing demands of the 21st century.
Overarching Principles and Perspectives of the World Café:
There are many concepts at play in the theory and practice of the World Café:
Some of the principles at the heart of the origins of the World Café stem from the work of architect and philosopher Christopher Alexander, author of A Pattern Language (1977), Learn more. and a visionary across many fields. He applied an understanding of how large complex systems are made up of wholes, at every level of scale, up to and including cities and societies. The aspects of his work that contributed to the development of The World Café was the concept that change in complex systems comes from a large number of small adjustments, such as conversations that matter, as opposed to more "traditional" command and control methodologies for business, government, etc…
The World Café is also Open Source in nature, free for communities to use and cross pollinate new ideas into the ongoing exploration of how to catalyze human potential and create fundamental change in an organic and natural way. It has been combined with other large group processes like Open Space, Future Search, and others.
One of the key design principles to be outlined below is Back to the Roots, as many key elements of the theory, metaphor, and language come from the earth and the natural balance of chaos and order in ecosystems and any living system. Imagery such as 'seeding ideas,' 'gleaning insights,' and other natural metaphor can have a deep effect on the states of mind and energy of participants.
The process of Meta Cognition is integrated into the process as well, as participants are invited throughout the café to bring awareness not just on a given topic, but also on the way they speak about the issue. (Holman, pg. 190) This can lead to deeper appreciation of unexamined assumptions, about other people, or a situation, or the various contexts that shape perspective, the framing, if you will.
Another key principle that I've gleaned is the Great Good Place, as sociologist Ray Oldenburg named the importance of informal gathering places in the development of culture throughout history. According to Oldenburg, the third place is a locale that exists apart from the "womb" of family space and the "rat ace" of the modern world. (Brown, pg. 67) In his TED talk, Steven Johnson makes the connection between the flowering of the Renaissance and the presence of coffeehouses in England where people were engaged in generative discussions. [Watch his TED talk here.]
It is also clear that this methodology is designed on the assumption that everyone already has within him or her the wisdom and creativity to effectively address even their most difficult problems. (Holman, pg. 181) That assumption creates the opening, or the listening for participants to be empowered and step into their own leadership. This is crucial in allowing the Collective Intelligence to emerge, as we will explore later.
Systems Theory and the Components of Living Systems
In order to shed light on the design structure of the World Cafe, I will use this field of study to illustrate how this process can work:Living systems are composed of a number of different properties, in an inherently beautiful and graceful complexity that comes when the effects of chaos are observed… Michelle Holliday and many others have discussed the interwoven systems of nature, how there are similar patterns at vastly different scales, and then how a complex system like a human network, an industry, a festival, a weather system, all follow this underlying set of principles.
- There are Diverse Parts of whatever system we are looking at, at whatever scale we are choosing to look, and the more diverse these parts, the more resilient the system.
- There are Relationships, in a constantly changing web. The more Open and Free flowing these relationships are, the more creative, resilient, and adaptable the system will be.
- There is a whole, an Emergent level of living complexity that is more than the sum of it's parts. The more Convergent the whole, the more coherent the form, that is still recognizable as a whole, even as the parts change, (the bodies' individual cells die, animals in the forest die as part of the cycle) the more Resilient and Adaptable.
- There is the Self-Integrating property, or in other words, Self-Organization, that integrates the parts into the whole in a dynamic dance of constant rebirth and change.
Now let's explore the power of a conversation!
The Organization of The World Café:
This project has been based on an integrated design process, and has grown out of other large group processes that have been exploring ways to better harness human potential for many years.There are Seven Key Design Principles that make up the structure of the World Café in practice, and these elements are the foundation of what makes this model work.
1. Set the Context.
The context is similar to framing, in that it involves creating the "flexible boundaries in which the groups collaborative learning unfolds" (Brown, pg. 49). If there were three bowls on a table, nested together, the smallest one would represent the Content of the conversation, the middle bowl would represent the Process that was used to have the conversation, and the larger bowl represents the Context that contains it all. According to Brown, there are important aspects to building context, namely Purpose, Participants, and Parameters. Generally, the larger the gathering, the more extensive pre-planning and work must be put into these elements. "Why are we bringing these people together?" What are the underlying socio-economic, political, or personal issues within this group? Which brings us to the question of Who is coming, and who would it be good to have to build the diversity to allow a potent conversation? According to Brown, diversity of thought and experience is the most important requirement for accessing collective wisdom, and that makes this an opportunity to seek participants beyond the "usual suspects". Finally, the Parameters includes determining how this format will be implemented, whether there will be any more traditional style meeting structures, and what sort of activities are used before and/or after the event to set the tone, and activate potential for carrying the insights and connections made out into the rest of the world.2. Create a Hospitable Space.
This refers to both the physical and the social (and to some people, energetic) environments. The process tends to support people buy creating psychological safety and openness, and lessen personality traits that can shut down conversation, like unchecked ego and attachments to one's own point of view. As for the physical space, small tables are set up in a large room, with four chairs to each table. Tablecloths are laid down, usually big pieces of white paper. At the first World Café, when Jaunita and David brought tables indoors, it was a spontaneous response to the rain, and in a surge of playful creativity, they put down paper, and crayons and art supplies, and flowers in vases. The event was very successful and full of highly innovative, creative energy, and the small tables have become an integral part of the World Café. There are many ways to transform a space into someplace welcoming and relaxing, from large boardroom, to a community art studio. Part of creating a welcoming space also comes through a shared understanding of how participants are encouraged to treat each other through the course of dialog.
Some basic Café Etiquette pointers often mentioned:- FOCUS on what matters.
- CONTRIBUTE your thinking and experience.
- LISTEN to understand.
- CONNECT ideas.
- LISTEN TOGETHER for patterns, insights, and deeper questions.
"Hospitality, is the act of affirming gifts in others. It is entertaining ideas that enable us to see life in a new way. When we offer hospitality to the stranger or guest, we welcome something new, unfamiliar, or unknown into our lives that has the potential to expand our world." ~Herbert Anderson (Brown, pg. 67)
3. Explore Questions That Matter
There is an art to finding the right questions to ask a group, questions that may lead to the kind of inspiring and innovative conversations that we are talking about.
"Genuine questions – ones for which we don't already have answers – are open invitations to innovation." ~(Brown, pg. 90)
Some guidelines for what make a good question comes from The Art of Hosting: A powerful question is one that…
- Is simple and clear
- Is thought provoking
- Generates energy
- Focuses inquiry
- Challenges assumptions
- Opens new possibilities
- Evokes more questions
The process of finding the questions that will be discussed is also a dance, between the facilitator and the group. Certain questions are more powerful than others for eliciting inspired dialog. The sentence construction and scope of the question can have a big impact. This is where the magic starts to happen. Participants are given the first question for the first round, or perhaps the group is polled to get a sense of what is present, and then people sit down at a table with three other people, and discuss, share, listen, doodle, and draw for 20 minutes, at which time one of the people at each table are invited to stay there and anchor that table, and the other three people go find three other tables with totally different groups, for round two. Over the course of 2-4 rounds of conversation, there comes a building sense of group coherency, as participants are aware that while they are part of a small group conversation, they are part of a much bigger whole, and as key themes and ideas come up in different places, in different flavors often the energy in the room can feel electrified.
4. Encourage Everyone's Contribution
By inviting all participants to contribute, there is a slightly different meaning than change methodologies that focus on individuals' participation, or empowerment. Those can sometimes lead to an emphasis on the individual; I'm voicing my opinions, I'm speaking up, etc… There is a subtle difference with contribution, there is more relationality there, between the I and the We. Everything we have talked about so far in terms of the structure combines and enhances a sense of radical self empowerment and self expression, but from a whole systems perspective. Because I am able to deeply listen to people who are very different than me, and we have created a basis of trust and openness of ideas. The facets of Café etiquette mentioned earlier work toward this.
"If you go to someone's home and they offer you their food, they're giving something of themselves. Once people give, then their heart is involved. Giving – making your contribution – is what brings community alive." ~Cesar Chavez
5. Cross Pollinate and Connect Diverse Perspectives
As the rounds of conversations go on, hosts and participants will often marvel at the type and feel of energy that is created, as the energy in the room rises. As people move from table to table and from conversation to conversation, attachments to rigid beliefs are encouraged to fall away, perhaps because everyone takes responsibility for carrying the key insights from their previous conversations forward, and finding the similarities and differences in a spirit of openness and curiosity rather than debate.
In the book The Embodied Mind several cognitive scientists look at the fascinating subject of human learning, and how brain development mirrors the fundamental nature of living systems. They found certain self-organizing and emergent properties, and explored how language and learning in the brain are linked to the "social coupling through language in the network of conversations" (Brown, pg. 113) This led to the theory of a potent question as an attractor that can catalyze this process. In this way, a good question seems to activate the conversational network's self-organizing nature, an experience psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi proposed and articulated as Flow, and which has attracted interest across a number of fields.
Here we see the essence of the Relationships between the diverse parts contributing to something greater than the sum of its parts, as we saw with the 4 characteristics of living systems.
6. Listen Together for Patterns, Insights, and Deeper Questions
At this part of the structure of the Café people tend to tune in to the themes and insights that are popping up everywhere, as well as listening for deeper assumptions and patterns of meaning. In what is really an exercise in Meta-Cognition, the group is encouraged, through the questions in the later rounds of discussion, to practice the kind of reflection and self awareness that can lead to new connections and discoveries. This author associates this element of the process to the third part of a dynamic living system, that of a cohesive whole, held together by the web of interactions and the network of generative conversation.
Tom Atlee calls the type of Collective Intelligence that emerges within this type of situation Co-Intelligence, to describe that sense of individual and group coherence, often described by participants and hosts as 'magic'.
Participants are also encouraged to use provided paper and art supplies to translate these discoveries into visual language, with pictures, diagrams, etc…
This is the last section of the World Café process, where the group gathers together as one large group again, in multiple concentric circles if necessary for larger groups, and a graphic recorder or several will draw on large paper the results as people share their experiences. This can be one of the more challenging aspects of the process, to allow for the flow to continue in a similar fashion when in such a large group. This element has the capability to translate the transformation experienced in the Café session out into the rest of the world, and also has a variety of options as to how it can be guided, depending on the group.
There are a variety of main roles involved in holding this type of event for a group or a community.
- The Café Sponsor or Convenor, this person or group commits to support the gathering and is usually invested in assisting the group reach its highest collective intelligence.
- The Design Team clarifies the purpose, and works in sync to ensure that the project unfolds in an emergent way, listening to the needs and feelings of the community to craft questions, invite participants, and coordinate logistics.
- The Café Host(s) work with the design team, and then Host the Café, and then follow up after with debriefing with the Design Team and the Sponsor.
- Graphics Professional is sometimes able to contribute their skills very effectively in the recording and gleaning of insights, and if present would be an integral member of the design team.
- Participants are responsible for talking about what really matters to them, with radical authenticity and speaking what is really true for them, keeping in mind the keys to Café etiquette. Participants also have the opportunity to make action commitments and carry the energy of the Café into the rest of their lives and communities.
In this study, we have explored a model that uses a complex and nuanced understanding of modern science, psychology, philosophy, and organizational theory be used to activate the mutual intelligence of large groups of people in ways that are only now beginning to be understood.Resources Needed
How do the insights brought out during a World Café continue after the Café is over and everyone has gone home?
The experience of the founders has shown that there are 3 important aspects that contribute to participants turning discoveries into Embodied Knowledge:
- A hospitable space for exploring their dimensions,
- A set of practices to ground them in their daily lives,
- A supportive community of explorers interested and passionate about continuing to ask questions that matter.
Any change initiative requires an ongoing commitment, and this one is no different, however, the potential exists for a community to experience a radical shift in awareness, perspective, and understanding around the issues that are the most present for them.
We have seen that the main way this group process does this is by harnessing the energy between individuals, rather than the focus on the individual that is so prevalent in our culture.
As Meg Wheatley suggests, as quoted in the Change Handbook "intelligence emerges as the system connects to itself in diverse and creative ways." (Holman, pg. 190)
With some of the findings of modern neuroscience, we are seeing an evolving understanding, not only of what intelligence is, but of the powers of the mind, and the effect of very simple practices that can have vast effects on the collective consciousness of groups and communities.
It is the opinion of this author that it is crucial that we explore these areas further and develop more research in these fields, and to adjust the traditional ways of going about our lives in the process. The medium of collective intelligence is also the message, and with dedication and passion, we can shape our common future by learning how to navigate change with innovation and creativity.
Brown, Juanita, with Isaacs, David, The World Café: Shaping Our Futures Through Conversations That Matter, Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc. San Francisco, 2005
Holman, Devane, and Cady, The Change Handbook, Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc. San Francisco, 2007
- Peggy Holman's Web site
- The Co-Intelligence Institute
- The Art of Hosting
- Humanity 4.0
- The Berkana Institute
- more on Christopher Alexander
- The Alia Institute


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Created on Oct. 4, 2013, 1:41 a.m. by Hevok & updated by Hevok on Oct. 4, 2013, 1:44 a.m.
We advocate the advancement of healthy longevity for the entire population through scientific research, public health, advocacy and social activism. We emphasize and promote the struggle against the chief enemy of healthy longevity – the aging process.
The aging process is the root of most chronic diseases afflicting the world population. This process causes the largest proportion of disability and mortality, and needs to be treated accordingly. Society needs to dedicate efforts toward its treatment and correction, as for any other material disease. The problem of aging is grave and threatening. Yet, we often witness an almost complete oblivion to its reality and severity. There is a soothing tendency to ignore the future, to distract the mind from aging and death from aging, and even to present aging and death in a misleading, apologetic and utopian light. At the same time, there is an unfounded belief that aging is a completely unmanageable, inexorable process. This disregard of the problem and this unfounded sense of impotence do not contribute to the improvement of the well-being of the aged and their healthy longevity. There is a need to present the problem in its full severity and importance and to act for its solution or mitigation to the best of our ability.
We call to raise the public awareness of the problem of aging in its full scope. We call the public to recognize this severe problem and dedicate efforts and resources – including economic, social-political, scientific, technological and media resources – to its maximal possible alleviation for the benefit of the aging population, for their healthy longevity. We promote the idea that mental and spiritual maturation and the increase in healthy longevity are not synonymous with aging and deterioration.
We advocate the reinforcement and acceleration of basic and applied biomedical research, as well as the development of technological, industrial, environmental, public health and educational measures, specifically directed for healthy longevity. If given sufficient support, such measures can increase the healthy life expectancy of the aged population, the period of their productivity, their contribution to the development of society and economy, as well as their sense of enjoyment, purpose and valuation of life. We advocate that the development of scientific measures for healthy life extension be given the maximal possible public and political support that it deserves, not only by the professional community but also by the broad public.
United Kingdom ~ Longevity Party UK
Group: http://www.facebook.com/groups/LongevityPartyUnitedKingdom


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Release Date: 1999 | Tracklist
Zaine (4.5)...tiesthatbind (5)Dream Theater combine excellent storytelling and thrilling musicianship and make their mas...Xenorazr (4)Dream Theater simultaneously complete a story and begin a cycle....Cuban Pete (3.5)A well-executed concept album with very impressive musicianship that at times presents a c...
Skishua71 (5)Progressive metal along with all cliche's and stereotypes of the genre....PsychicChris (5)Open your eyes, Nicholas...e210013 (5)A true masperpiece. Perfect, if perfection exists....Kaden (5)...
IamMe90 (5)"Scenes From A Memory" is Dream Theater's triumphant return to the throne of the prog king...fisky009 (5)...ChaosTheory (4.5)...
Album Rating: 3.5Just a suggestion: Have you thought of writing any negative reviews? I'm seeing you do lots of 4s and 5s lately... I love this album, so I'll read the review in a bit.
Album Rating: 4.5I have, and I will, but I'm just on a roll of digging albums right now. I've been in a particularly good mood lately. Besides I don't listen to bad music :scoff:
Album Rating: 3.5Nobody listens to music they consider "bad", I'm just saying it'd be cool to see you step outside the box a little.
I heard a bit of this from a friend. I gotta tell ya, it's a'ight. Good work, too. Anyone else notice that in like a quarter of all reviews, after the first paragraph, there's a single sentance exclaiming something? This Message Edited On 02.24.07
Album Rating: 4.5Hah yeah, I think my next review is going to be Into Eternity's The Scattering Of Ashes, god I hate that thing. I don't want to crucify myself listening to it again but maybe...
Album Rating: 3.0This is my favourite Dream Theater album. Home and Overture 1928 are great songs. Cool review as well.
Album Rating: 3.5Okay, read the review. First Paragraph
it off, but to write a whole album and succeed is insanely tought,
And they ***ing made it work, too.
You don't have to noodle at 3000 npm
Album Rating: 4.0Fatal Tradegy rules this album and is quite possibly Dream Theaters shining moment (the solo is unreal in that song). A strong review I must say. Do you ever criticize anything? hahahaha! Keep up the good work!
I never really liked Dream Theater, though I admire every member's virtuosic playing. I've heard Home and Dance of Eternity from this album, and I liked that latter a whole lot. Good review, btw.
Album Rating: 4.5This album is very nearly my favourite by them. Metal ain't my scene baby, but this prog-epic is pretty incredible. God it sounds like Pink Floyd sometimes though.
Album Rating: 4.5Excellent album. This is a must have. "The Spirit Carries On" on their live album Score is phenominal, maybe the best song on that album. But yeah, ridiculously good album
Never did get into DT. But I can apreciate their talent.
Album Rating: 4.0Great review. All I have is Octavarium from them and It's great. I love the keyboard solos on the title track.
Album Rating: 4.0Excellent album, but I don't think I could ever give a Dream Theater album a 5.
could I get an overrated chant going? no? ok. It's totally LeBrie that kills it for me. The instrumental songs are good though.
^LaBrie is pretty terrible. I always thought it would've been more awesome if Kevin Moore sang, but his style doesn't really fit DT from what I've heard (even though he's miles ahead of LaBrie).This Message Edited On 02.24.07
Album Rating: 4.5I rather enjoy LaBrie's voice. He's got a good set of pipes
This album way overrated. Just because these guys can play fast and accurately in crazy time signatures doesn't mean that its good.
He's decent. Good range, but GOD. The tone completely kills it for me sometimes.
Album Rating: 4.5RPM is revolutions per minute. NPM is notes per minute. XD
Bands: A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z


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By Rebecca Brace
As regulation and competition in the transaction banking space spur higher levels of technology investment, banks and vendors have found new ways of working together.
The demands on global transaction banks for technology investment have never been greater. Over and above the need to invest in solutions to meet changing regulatory requirements, banks must also invest just to remain competitive. But with so many areas to invest in, they have revisited the way in which they develop their technology. Gone are the days when banks would build their own proprietary systems. Today global transaction banks are increasingly working with technology vendors to deliver corporate solutions in order to reduce costs and free their internal resources for more value-added services. "It's becoming less feasible for banks to build rather than buy, both from a cost point of view and also in terms of resource capacity," comments Robert Mancini, senior analyst at Celent.
Mandatory spend falls into two categories, notes Rajesh Mehta, EMEA head of treasury and trade solutions at Citi Transaction Services. "The first is regulatory-driven, whether that's in relation to Dodd-Frank or the Volcker rule or greater reporting requirements to central banks. The second element relates to infrastructure change such as SEPA [Single Euro Payments Area]."
Banks have made heavy investments around providing data to companies to help them achieve straight-through reconciliation, notes Cindy Murray, treasury solutions executive for infrastructure, platforms and e-commerce at Bank of America Merrill Lynch. She adds: "Banks are really starting to invest in replacing their core platforms, and there's a strong focus on the concept of a payment hub, which interfaces more easily with the bank's internal systems as well as with clients." BofAML has moved to a payment hub model and Deutsche Bank was one of the first big transaction banks to do so. Now, even Tier 2 banks are starting to move to hub solutions from external vendors for payments.
There is also a growing focus on collaborative projects. For example, mobile payments system Google Wallet is a collaboration between Citi, Google, MasterCard, First Data and Sprint. Although most such solutions are designed for a wide customer base, in some cases banks are using vendors to support a specific corporate customer. "The banks come to us and say they have a challenge with one of their largest corporate customers, such as helping the corporate send the bank bulk files," comments Marcus Hughes, director, business development, at Bottomline Technologies.
Kevin Brown, global head, transaction services products, RBS, says the bank is using Clear2Pay to deliver its SEPA solution, rather than build an engine in-house. "Working with vendors can be cheaper as the vendor is already working on the solution," he comments. "They have experience in the specific area of development, and as a result it means that we can deliver a solution which is faster to market." Brown says leveraging vendors also helps future-proof systems.
"Banks are really starting to invest in replacing their core platforms, and there's a strong focus on the concept of a payment hub"
–Cindy Murray, Bank of America Merrill Lynch
Increased collaborat ion has change d the relationship between a bank and its technology vendors. "When we first started working with vendors, it was more of a transactional relationship," says Rhomaios Ram, global head of product management and chief information officer, GTB, Deutsche Bank. "You would write a set of requirements, and you would kind of flip it over the wall and hope they turned up with what you wanted later. Invariably that ended in failure and disappointment, which is what drove a lot of the development proprietary in the first place. What we've discovered over time is that actually you have to treat vendors like they are part of your in-house IT department and work with them continuously. That way, you get a much better result."
As banks work more closely with technology vendors, interest in initiatives such as the Banking Industry Architecture Network has grown. Initiated in 2005, BIAN aims to create a flexible underlying technology architecture for banking services development. It now has more than 30 members, including banks, software vendors and systems integrators. "BIAN sets out to reduce the cost of integration and makes it easier for banks to take the risk of a transformation project," explains Jens-Peter Jensen, head of banking architecture and technology at SAP.
However, for most corporates, the key issue is not how it's put together. As one treasurer at a technology company noted: "Most corporates do not particularly care where our banks source their technology. What matters is how well it works, and how quickly it can be updated to match industry trends. Generally, most of us would expect the technology to be more flexible if it is outsourced. But what matters is the result, not how it is achieved."
While much has changed in the past few years, GTB technology continues to evolve. Mobile is one important driver; the Cloud is another. Banks are only just beginning to become comfortable with the concept of the Cloud, but as this gains a greater foothold, new solutions will inevitably evolve.
The world of global transaction banking has changed significantly in recent years, particularly since the 2008 global financial crisis. "Every bank that we know on the planet is investing in global transaction banking right now, whether that's because it's a more reliable part of the bank in terms of producing profit, or because interest rates have been low for so long that it's hard to make money," notes George Ravich, executive vice president at Fundtech.
Poonawala, Deutsche Bank: It is important to see the big picture |
Banks are also restructuring their internal operations—for example, converging their cash management and trade finance activities. A survey carried out by financial technology provider Misys in 2012 found that 81% of bank respondents had already combined their cash management and trade finance businesses, and that only 10% had no plans to do so.
How important are such changes to corporate clients? On the one hand, the quality of products and services offered by a bank are of greater interest to a company than the bank's internal structure. On the other, it's fair to say that the bank's structure can have a significant bearing on the treasurer's overall experience.
"Clients want to work with individuals who can see the big picture," observes Akbar Poonawala, regional head of global transaction banking for the Americas at Deutsche Bank. "It doesn't make sense for one product person to walk into a client's office representing the trade finance business, and as they are walking out, have a depositary receipt person walk in.
Corporates expect coordination and understanding of the overall relationship and of their needs, as well as the ability to think beyond one product or one country.


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VATICAN CITY—The Synod of Bishops for the Amazon is not a "referendum" on priestly celibacy; it is looking for ways to provide for the sacramental life and formation of the people there, U.S. Cardinal Sean P. O'Malley of Boston said.
"Because one of the themes is the terrible shortage of priests in the Amazonia region, I was trying to stress that, if we want to have priests in that area, we are going to have to make sacrifices to have people who can promote vocations and accompany and train seminarians in their own milieu and their own languages," he said he told synod participants.
The cardinal and Bishop Robert W. McElroy of San Diego both were appointed by Pope Francis to be voting members of the synod, which was being held Oct. 6-27 at the Vatican.
The cardinal, who also is a member of the pope's Council of Cardinals, gave a summary on CardinalSeansBlog.org of what he told the synod in his talk to the general assembly and issues being brought up by the pope and others.
"One of the things that the Holy Father held up in his comments was that he asked us to look at the problem of violence in the region. Not only the kind of violence symbolized in the pictures of all those who have been killed, but also understanding the violence to the forests themselves and its effects on the people who are there," he wrote in a post published Oct. 11.
But another topic being widely discussed, the cardinal said, is the lack of priests.
"An indigenous woman from Guyana in our group (for small-group discussions) told us that there are some villages where a priest comes only once a year. She said they have laypeople performing baptisms, presiding at weddings and distributing Communion. In fact, she said she was baptized by a layperson in her village."
"Certainly, one of the issues we have to deal with is the scarcity of ordained ministers in the region and the great need to provide for the sacramental life of the people and their formation," the cardinal wrote. "But despite the impression that is being given in the media, the synod is not some sort of a referendum on priestly celibacy."
Cardinal O'Malley said he told synod participants that promoting priestly vocations in the Amazon region would require "sacrifices" in the form of people and resources dedicated to accompanying and training seminarians in their context and languages.
He said a special seminary for indigenous students he visited in Verapaz, Guatemala, had to close because it had been "very under-resourced. For example, the seminarians' families had to bring food for them."
Despite having a large number of seminarians, the seminary closed, he said.
"I was very sad because the indigenous seminarians I had met at the major seminaries in the capital were like fish out of water. I had seen in the Verapaz seminary an opportunity to train indigenous priests in their own language and in their own cultural context," he said. "I felt badly when the seminary closed because I knew those seminarians would never be able to attend a different sort of seminary."
In his talk to the synod, Bishop McElroy underlined some of the gifts the church in the Amazon region is contributing to "the life and dialogue of the universal church," including the invitation to reevaluate materialist lifestyles.
The "witness to the nature and power of ecological conversion" is one contribution the church in the Amazon is making to the universal church and the world, he said in his intervention Oct. 12, which was published on his diocese's site, www.sdcatholic.org.
Such a conversion would require recognizing the "empirical reality of the environmental destruction that threatens our planet" as well as accepting creation "as a sacred gift whose future is entrusted to our care," he said.
The synod working document talks about "the traditional relationship of the indigenous peoples of the region to nature as one of intimacy, sacredness, giftedness and care" as well as the importance of "good living," the bishop said.
"In my country of the United States, the good life means a life of luxury and ease," he said. "For the peoples of the Amazon, good living means connectedness to faith, to self, to others, to the land. It points to the unity of all of human existence: work, rest, celebration and relationships, and refuses to accept the fractionalization of human existence that modern life places upon us all. It rejects grave disparities of wealth and social inequality. It breathes with the spirit of God."
"The specific form of good living that exists for the indigenous peoples of the Amazon will not be transferable to most other cultures in the world," he added. "But its underlying themes of connectedness, moderation, balance and sharing must become the norm for all peoples in reevaluating our lifestyles if we are to escape the lures of materialism and build a sustainable society for our world."
By Carol Glatz


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Dr. Weeks' Comment: Science is rediscovering the importance of a health gastro-intestinal around which wraps, like an insulation blanket, 80% of our functioning immune system. Pancreatic ("digestive") enzymes are part of Corrective Cancer Care and diet trumps medications on the path to recovery. So, politely refuse the candy and cookies offered by your oncologists after chemotherapy treatments ("to keep your calories up") remembering that cancer loves sugar and junk food like that compromises the health of your gut.
"… if the patient's gastrointestinal tract remains healthy and functioning, the patient's chances of survival increase exponentially…"
"…If you can keep the gut going, you can keep the patient going longer…"
Digest This: Cure for Cancer May Live in Our Intestines
July 31, 2013 "" Treating a cancerous tumor is like watering a houseplant with a fire hose — too much water kills the plant, just as too much chemotherapy and radiation kills the patient before it kills the tumor.
However, if the patient's gastrointestinal tract remains healthy and functioning, the patient's chances of survival increase exponentially, said Jian-Guo Geng, associate professor at the University of Michigan School of Dentistry. Recently, Geng's lab discovered a biological mechanism that preserves the gastrointestinal tracts in mice who were delivered lethal doses of chemotherapy.
The findings, which will appear in the journal Nature, could revolutionize cancer therapy, Geng said.
"It's our belief that this could eventually cure later-staged metastasized cancer. People will not die from cancer, if our prediction is true," said Geng, who emphasized that the findings had not yet been proven in humans. "All tumors from different tissues and organs can be killed by high doses of chemotherapy and radiation, but the current challenge for treating the later-staged metastasized cancer is that you actually kill the patient before you kill the tumor.
"Now you have a way to make a patient tolerate to lethal doses of chemotherapy and radiotherapy. In this way, the later-staged, metastasized cancer can be eradicated by increased doses of chemotherapy and radiation."
Geng's lab found that when certain proteins bind with a specific molecule on intestinal stem cells, it revs intestinal stem cells into overdrive for intestinal regeneration and repair. Stem cells naturally heal damaged organs and tissues, but so-called "normal" amounts of stem cells in the intestine simply cannot keep up with the wreckage left behind by the lethal doses of chemotherapy and radiation required to successfully treat late-stage tumors.
However, the phalanx of extra stem cells protect the intestine and gastrointestinal tract, which means the patient can ingest nutrients, the body can perform other critical functions and the bacterial toxins in the intestine are prevented from entering the blood circulation, Geng said.
These factors could give the patient just enough of an extra edge to survive the stronger doses of chemotherapy and radiation, until the tumor or tumors are eradicated.
In the study, 50-to-75 percent of the mice treated with the molecule survived otherwise lethal doses of chemotherapy. All of the mice that did not receive the molecule died, Geng said.
"If you can keep the gut going, you can keep the patient going longer," Geng said. "Now we have found a way to protect the intestine. The next step is to aim for a 100-percent survival rate in mice who are injected with the molecules and receive lethal doses of chemotherapy and radiation."
Geng's lab has worked with these molecules, called R-spondin1 and Slit2, for more than a decade. These molecules repair tissue in combination with intestinal stem cells residing in the adult intestine.
Journal Reference:
- Wei-Jie Zhou, Zhen H. Geng, Jason R. Spence & Jian-Guo Geng. Induction of intestinal stem cells by R-spondin 1 and Slit2 augments chemoradioprotection. Nature, 2013 DOI: 10.1038/nature12416


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You Can Build Things
02 Sep 2013From a video interview with Steve Jobs:
When you grow up you tend to get told that the world is the way it is, and your life is just to live your life inside the world. Try not to bash into the walls too much. Try to have a nice family life. Have fun. Save a little money.
That's a very limited life. Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact.
Everything around you that you call life was made up by people who are no smarter than you. And you can change it. You can influence it. You can build your own things that other people can use.
Once you learn that, you'll never be the same again.
Check out the video:


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With Shareaholic you'll be able to find the freshest news, videos and blogs as they emerge on the real-time web and easily share them on any of your social networks.
We're fanatical about user experience, design, and improving Shareaholic. Shareaholic is highly rated by users, and recommended by:
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Welcome to Forever Gemstones
What you will see on this site are gemstones from around the world that are mined from the ground and created by mother nature. The majority or the gemstones we sell are natural gemstones that are cut and polished into beautiful gems. Forever Gemstones is a premier gemstone site. We provide a wide variety of beautiful, rare, exotic, and collectable gemstones to meet everyone's budget and needs. Our pricing is usually below wholesale.
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Special pages :
Results of Party Week in Moscow and Our Tasks
Source: Lenin Collected Works, 4th English Edition, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1965, Volume 30, pages 71-75
During Party Week in Moscow, 13,600 people were enrolled in the Party.
This is a huge, quite unexpected success. The entire bourgeoisie, and especially the urban petty bourgeoisie, including the specialists, officials and office workers who lament the loss of their privileged 'ruling' position—all these gentlemen have recently, particularly during Party Week in Moscow, been doing their best to sow panic and to prophesy the imminent collapse of Soviet power and the imminent victory of Denikin.
And with what consummate artistry this "intellectualist" public wields the weapon of sowing panic! And it has indeed become a real weapon in the class struggle of the bourgeoisie against the proletariat. In periods such as the one we are passing through, the petty bourgeoisie merges in "one reactionary mass" with the bourgeoisie and "passionately" seizes on this weapon.
It is Moscow, where the trading element was especially strong, where there was a greater concentration of exploiters, landowners, capitalists and rentiers than anywhere else, where capitalist development brought together a mass of bourgeois intellectuals, where the central state administration produced an especially large body of officials-it is Moscow that has furnished an exceptionally convenient field for bourgeois tittle-tattle, bourgeois malicious talk and bourgeois panic-sowing. The successful offensive of Denikin and Yudenich was a "factor" that favoured to an extraordinary extent the "successes" of this bourgeois weapon.
And yet, when the mass of the proletarians saw Denikin's "successes" and realised all the difficulties, burdens and dangers attaching to the title and duties of a Communist at the present time, thousands and thousands of them rose up to reinforce the Party of Communists, to undertake the incredibly heavy burden of state administration.
The success of Soviet power, the success of our Party, is truly remarkable!
This success has proved and vividly demonstrated to the people of the capital, and then to the whole Republic and the whole world, that it is in the proletarian milieu, among the genuine representatives of the working people, that the most reliable source of the strength and durability of Soviet power is to be found. This successful voluntary enrolment in the Party at a time of maximum difficulty and danger is a real demonstration of that aspect of the dictatorship of the proletariat which its enemies, in their malice, refuse to see but which is valued above all by the real friends of the emancipation of labour from the capitalist yoke, namely, the special strength of the moral (in the best sense of the word) influence of the proletariat (which wields state power) on the masses, the ways this influence is exerted.
With state power in their hands, the foremost sections of the proletariat have by their example shown the mass of the working people, shown them throughout two whole years (an immense period for our exceptionally rapid tempo of political development), a model of such devotion to the interests of the working people, such vigour in the struggle against the enemies of the working people (against the exploiters in general and against "property-owners" and profiteers in particular), such firmness in difficult moments, such self-sacrificing resistance to the bandits of world imperialism, that the strength of the workers' and peasants' sympathy for their vanguard has proved by itself capable of performing miracles.
It is indeed a miracle. Workers, who have suffered unprecedented torments of hunger, cold, economic ruin and devastation, are not only maintaining their cheerful spirit, their entire devotion to Soviet power, all the energy of self-sacrifice and heroism, but also, despite their lack of training and experience, are undertaking the burden of steering the ship of state! And this at a moment when the storm has reached the peak of its fury ....
The history of our proletarian revolution is full of such miracles. They will lead, surely and inevitably, no matter what severe trials may be in store, to the full victory of the world Soviet republic.
We must take care now that proper use is made of the new Party members, Particularly great attention must be devoted to this task, for it is not an easy one; it is a new task and cannot be accomplished by old routines.
Capitalism stifled, suppressed and killed a wealth of talent among the workers and working peasants. These talents perished under the oppression of want, poverty and the outrage of human dignity. It is our duty now to bring out these talents and put them to work. The new members who have joined the Party during Party Week are undoubtedly for the most part inexperienced arid ignorant in matters of state administration. Equally undoubtedly these are most devoted, most sincere and capable people from the sections of society that capitalism artificially held down, reduced to the lowest level and did not allow to rise. Among them, however, there is more strength, vigour, staunchness, directness and sincerity than among other sections.
It follows that all Party organisations must give especial thought to the employment of these new Party members. They must be more boldly given the most varied kinds of state work, they must be tested in practice as rapidly as possible.
Boldness, of course, must not be taken to mean that the new members are to be entrusted at once with responsible posts requiring knowledge they do not possess. We must be bold in combating red tape: not for nothing has our Party Programme very definitely raised the question of the causes of a certain revival of bureaucratic methods and indicated methods of combating it. We must be bold in establishing, first of all, supervision over office workers, officials and specialists by new Party members who are well acquainted with the condition of the people, their needs and requirements. We must be bold in immediately affording these new members opportunities for developing and displaying their abilities in work on a broad scale. We must be bold in breaking with customary routine (among us too-quite often, alasi-there is an excessive fear of encroaching on established Soviet routine, although sometimes the "establishing" has been done not by class-conscious Communists, but by old officials and office workers); we must be bold in the sense that we must be prepared with revolutionary speed to alter the form of work for new Party members so as to test them more quickly and to find the appropriate place for them.
In many cases new Party members can be given posts where, in the course of checking up the conscientiousness with which old officials perform their tasks, these Party members will quickly learn the job themselves and he able to take it over independently. In other cases they can be placed so as to renovate and refresh the intermediary links between the mass of workers and peasants on the one hand, and the state apparatus on the other. In our industrial "chief administrations and central boards", in our agricultural "state farms" there are still many, far too many, saboteurs, landowners and capitalists in hiding, who harm Soviet power in every way. Experienced Party workers in the centre and the localities should show their efficiency through their ability to make intensive use of the new Party forces for a determined fight against this evil.
The Soviet Republic must become a single armed camp where, there is a maximum of effort, a maximum economy of forces, a maximum reduction of all red tape and unnecessary formalism and a maximum simplification of the apparatus which must be not only as close as possible to the needs of the masses, but also something they can readily understand and participate in independently.
Increased mobilisation of old Party members for army work is taking place. This activity must not be weakened in any way, but more and more intensified. At the same time, however and with the aim of achieving success in the war, we must improve, simplify and revitalise our civil administration.
Victory in war goes to the side whose people has greater reserves, greater sources of strength and greater endurance.
We have more of all these qualities than the Whites, more than the "all-powerful" Anglo-French imperialism, this colossus with feet of clay. We have more of them because we can draw, and for a long time will continue to draw, more and more deeply upon the workers and working peasants, upon those classes which were oppressed by capitalism and which everywhere form the overwhelming majority of the population. We can draw from this most capacious reservoir, for it gives us leaders of the workers and peasants in the building of socialism who are the most sincere, the most steeled by the burdens of life, the closest to the workers and peasants.
Our enemies, whether the Russian or the world bourgeoisie, have nothing remotely resembling this reservoir; the ground is more and more giving way under their feet; they are being deserted by ever greater number of their former supporters among the workers and peasants.
That is why, in the last analysis, the victory of Soviet power throughout the world is certain and inevitable.
October 21, 1919


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FabFull Madrid Wall Shelves set of 2
Color: Black
Material: MDF
Reflecting the rich cultural heritage of India, Shri Hari International have an exquisite collection of handcrafted items at most competitive prices.
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My attention was drawn this morning to an ISC Diary "guest post" by Dr. Eric Cole ("What are the 20 Critical Controls?"). In it, he points to the SANS "20 Critical Security Controls - Version 3.0," which was released in August. In the ISC Diary post, Cole talks about using these controls for "quick wins" and in the controls list itself SANS says "These controls allow those responsible for compliance and those responsible for security to agree, for the first time, on what needs to be done to make systems safer."
Unfortunately, while the list isn't technically inaccurate in terms of capabilities available, there are a few problems. And, contrary to their assertion that compliance and security people can finally agree on something, I don't think these controls are actually controls, let alone a source of true consensus.
1. They're not "controls"
I come from the IT UCF school of thinking on controls. When I think of a control statement, I think of something that is discrete (in the mathematical sense) and actionable. The SANS 20CSC list is nothing more than a wish list of products and practices, and they do not immediately translate to actions.
One thing that you might be thinking here is "Sure, that's great, but there are sub-controls under each of those 20 controls, so that's where you get your actionable requirements." I can understand why someone might think that, but it's just not right. Let me give you an example from IT UCF. Here's a list of 4 controls that stack hierarchically under the IT UCF in the "Technical Security" impact zone:
* Establish and maintain an access classification scheme policy and standards.* Establish and maintain a security access classification model that limits confidential access to only those individuals who require access.* Establish and maintain a business security requirement and an access classification statement for users and service providers for the different systems and networks.* Establish clear and consistent guidance between controls, information classification, systems, and networks.
Notice that even the top-level control statement is directly actionable. The SANS list, in contrast, is not nearly so actionable. Really, what they're describing is 20 impact zones (at best), and even that is a bit of a stretch.
2. They're not scalable
This list of "controls" is more like a shopping wish list, which is all good and fine if you're the largest organization with the deepest pockets. However, how do you go to the smaller firms and tell them that they need to go spend a few million dollars on new technologies, or at least a million or two on outsourcing? I think we oftentimes forget that small firms represent 99.7% of all employer firms in the U.S., and employ more than half of all private sector employees (source: "How important are small businesses to the U.S. economy?").
More importantly, the "controls" advocate practices that simply cannot be met by the average small firm. DLP for everybody? A well-trained security staff that is expert in secure network engineering? If nothing else, this list should encourage small firms to simply outsource everything, even if it costs more. However, where's the risk analysis? Is it really sound thinking to arbitrarily tell organizations that they need to adopt certain products and practices?
Certainly, there are places where this makes sense (e.g., AV, patching, basic firewalls, backups). However, beyond that, where do you draw the line? I really disagree with the assertion that this list somehow represents all the practices that every organization should do. Moreover, while I'm sure it maps ok to most major standards or regulations (e.g., FISMA, PCI DSS), it's certainly not the end-all-be-all.
3. They're designed to sell product
Really, they should call this list "20 Pseudo-Critical Faux Controls for Technology Adoption." It's clear that this list exists to push more product (just see the "View the User Vetted Tools" link), and not just to improve security. Unfortunately, while tools are useful when deployed properly, it is irresponsible and inappropriate to advocate specific technologies across the board (especially specific vendors).
Does this list represent useful information? Sure.
Is it the absolute minimum list of things that every org should do? No way.
Is the approach reasonable or comprehensive? Not at all.
What's missing? Context and program development.
The list is technology-centric. It overlooks policies, governance, and a reasonable risk management approach. Perhaps they feel these things are implicit, but if you know anything about controls frameworks, then you know that they must be discrete and actionable, and they should be independent of technologies. It's unfortunate that this has been done, but it's not surprising. It is, however, disappointing.


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This is a write-up of how the Syrian Electronic Army hacked The Onion. In summary, they phished Onion employees' Google Apps accounts via 3 seperate methods.
The SEA began by sending phishing emails to various Onion employees beginning around May 3.
The Washington Post link actually went to a URL like
which redirected to a URL like
which asked for Google Apps credentials before redirecting to the Gmail inbox.
These emails were sent from strange, outside addresses, and they were sent to few enough employees to appear as just random noise rather than a targeted attack. At least one Onion employee fell for this phase of the phishing attack.
Once the attackers had access to one Onion employee's account, they used that account to send the same email to more Onion staff at about 2:30 AM on Monday, May 6. Coming from a trusted address, many staff members clicked the link, but most refrained from entering their login credentials. Two staff members did enter their credentials, one of whom had access to all of our social media accounts.
After discovering that at least one account had been compromised, we sent a company-wide email to change email passwords immediately. The attacker used their access to a different, undiscovered compromised account to send a duplicate email which included a link to the phishing page disguised as a password-reset link. This dupe email was not sent to any member of the tech or IT teams, so it went undetected. This third and final phishing attack compromised at least 2 more accounts. One of these accounts was used to continue owning our Twitter account.
At this point the editorial staff began publishing articles inspired by the attack. The second article, Syrian Electronic Army Has A Little Fun Before Inevitable Upcoming Deaths At Hands Of Rebels, angered the attacker who then began posting editorial emails on their Twitter account. Once we discovered this, we decided that we could not know for sure which accounts had been compromised and forced a password reset on every staff member's Google Apps account.
In total, the attacker compromised at least 5 accounts. The attacker logged in to compromised accounts from 22.214.171.124 which is also where the SEA hosts a website.
Don't let this happen to you
From examining the details of this incident, as well as those effecting the AP, Guardian and others, it's clear that the SEA is not using complex methods of attack. All of the hacks so far have been a result of simple phishing, or possibly dictionary attacks—all of which are preventable with a few simple security measures.
Make sure that your users are educated, and that they are suspicious of all links that ask them to log in, regardless of the sender.
The email addresses for your twitter accounts should be on a system that is isolated from your organization's normal email. This will make your Twitter accounts virtually invulnerable to phishing (providing that you're using unique, strong passwords for every account).
All twitter activity should go through an app of some kind, such as HootSuite. Restricting password-based access to your accounts prevents a hacker from taking total ownership, which takes much longer to rectify.
If possible, have a way to reach out to all of your users outside of their organizational email. In the case of the Guardian hack, the SEA posted screenshots of multiple internal security emails, probably from a compromised email address that was overlooked.


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Perfect fear casts out love
So much of what has been driving the machinations of international Anglicanism over the past 15 years or so has been rooted in fear—fear of women, fear of LGBTQTS, fear of modernity, fear of post-modernity, fear of the loss of privilege, fear of the loss of power and influence.
People who are fearful do funny things.
As often, they will do scary things.
But the one thing that fearful people will consistently do is attempt to assert control.
For the fearful, every discussion inevitably degenerates into a metaphorical (and sometimes not so metaphorical) street fight.
Eventually, right and wrong become an irrelevance. The only thing that matters is how something affects the street fight, and whether or not it is good for "my side."
Sadly, that is the point we've now reached in international Anglicanism, and in the deliberations on the proposed Anglican Covenant. Full and fair debate is no longer on the table—at least at the Anglican Communion Office, Lambeth Palace, or Church House in Westminster.
For those who surround the Archbishop of Canterbury, no quarter can be shown to those of us who dare to question the ineffable perfection of the arbitrarily "final" draft of the proposed Anglican Covenant.
Today's news release (warning—.pdf) describes several ways in which those at "the centre" have conspired to ensure that the majority of General Synod and diocesan synod delegates in the Church of England never have the opportunity to hear the legitimate concerns that have been raised about the proposed Covenant.
- In November 2010, Church of England officials distributed background material on the proposed Anglican Covenant to General Synod members consisting entirely of pro-Covenant material and with no acknowledgement that there even might be contrary viewpoints.
- When Modern Church and Inclusive Church used paid advertisements in the church press to raise their concerns, the Archbishop of Canterbury himself used the bully pulpit of his presidential address to synod to condemn Covenant sceptics for "campaigning."
- Throughout December and January, Church House officials stood firm in refusing to allow any prepared material to be distributed through official channels that was not 100 percent supportive of the Covenant. Indeed, the only concerns ever referenced were part of a document that used vapid "arguments" to suggest that any concerns were completely illegitimate and undeserving of a fair hearing. The one (arguable) exception to this was the distribution of the entire transcript of the Covenant debate at the November sitting of General Synod—and we all know how people love to pour over dry transcripts of debates and proceedings.
- More recently, the Anglican Communion Office has published a "Study Guide" which is nothing more than an intellectually barren puff piece, again with no serious engagement with any arguments against the Covenant.
Real leaders are not afraid of open debate.
Real leaders are not afraid of being contradicted.
Real leaders do not seek to be surrounded by yes-men and sycophants.
The Anglican Communion is dying for real leadership.
Archbishop Williams, I beg you: show real leadership on this. Call off the sycophants who serve you so ill and tell them you want a full, free, and fair debate on the merits of the proposed Anglican Covenant.
To win the debate any other way will discredit both the proposed Covenant and your legacy.


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What do these 3 have in common? ®
The 25th Anniversary of TriBond is here! Play along here and be sure to share the TriBond of the Day!
Place your mouse cursor over "Answer" below and the solution will pop up. Did you get it right?
Place your mouse cursor over "Answer" below and the solution will pop up. Did you get it right?
Friday, March 20, 2015
Coffee, Greenjeans, Rogers
Play the board game that asks, "What do these 3 have in common?" and find out why TriBond has sold over 3,000,000 copies!
3 comments:
Took the test. Got bored after 2 minutes. Went for a cup of coffee.sugar free coffee creamers
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- The Deer Hunter, Wedding Crashers, Pulp Fiction
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- I am a wife, mother and decorator. Welcome to my blog, where I share my projects and design inspiration. I love finding vintage pieces to add character and sense of history to my designs. My other passions are family, cooking, gardening and traveling. Feel free to drop me a line or just say hello!
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5 Tips To Style Your Holiday Table
Happy Friday! Have you been following our design tips to style your holiday table? Little details are not usually planned in advance, but with a little guidance let's make this year a bit different. It's not too late to use … Continue reading
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There's a similar question about windows. This is the same, but for mac. By the way, it's odd there's no question on this yet, since it seems like it's the most hated thing on Mac OS X.
If I try to copy or move a folder to somewhere it already exists, it asks to replace it. That would result in deleting the target. Rather I want to merge.
There's already a aquataskforce request about this, and it's a discussion going for a long time if it's even something that should exist on Mac, due to its whole philosophy. Discussions at Apple are outdated and didn't help much as well.
As usual, there are professional solutions for doing this, such as Changes and Araxis. And there is the rsync or command line alternatives. But I want a free and simple solution, something like how it is done in Windows or Linux. I won't be doing it much anyway. By the way, PathFinder don't have such option as well and FolderMerge doesn't work on Snow Leopard as far as my 1 test went.
Suggestions to whom may come up with a solution:
I think a good idea would be to move everything non-exact-duplicate to the same folder, and leave every duplicate behind. No confirmation is needed in this case, and I can easily check the duplicates later. If it's copying merge, then the target folder will contain everything, and the source will be rather untouched. Duplicate-check is just on the file name. Leave any more complicated thing to third parties.


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Title: Beasts
Author: Ana Levley
Genre: Dystopian SciFi
Hosted by: Lady Amber's PR
What if your whole life was a lie?
What if your whole life was a lie?
The future seems utopian, with telegraphic technology that connects everyone. People speak through feeling, and there is peace, or so Atlia thought. Atlia did not intend on doing anything other than becoming a leader until she was framed for her father's telecide (murder by telegraphic). When sentenced to the farm she learns the darkest secrets her society has been hiding, even her family. Which will she choose? Each path is as dangerous as the next as she uncovers the map of lies.
Buy Link:
Amazon: https://amzn.to/2VTOsAJ
I have always been a storyteller. When I was little it was through art, video, and writing that I loved to express the tales that burst forth from my head. My hands shook as I held the camera for the first time, I remember its weight. Now I can seamlessly film without shaking. My writing is where I hope to first tell the unique stories and then I hope to show them in film.
I finally at age 30 have written my first novel "Beasts" that will be published on Amazon on August 20th. I am so excited to introduce totally different worlds, animals, perspectives, and characters into your life. I hope that my writing moves people to act and see real issues differently, and that it will make people think hard about what they currently are doing. I hope it challenges people to be the heroes of their own lives, as well as others. May we all be heroes striving to bring peace to a world that needs it so much.
Author Links:
Web: www.analevley.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/analevley/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/AnaLevley
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/analevley/
Amazon: https://amzn.to/2DcWhdc
Buy Link:
Amazon: https://amzn.to/2VTOsAJ
I wish I could remember the light. You might not care right now about the light, but when it is taken from you, when you start to forget how it looks, that's when you realize how important it is. If you listen, you may be able to keep this luxury. If not, you may find yourself without it forever.
Light is a gift. The light that sways before your eyes as you rise, or even the sunrise dotting the Earth as it wakes - reflections I believe they were called. You really don't know what light is, how much of a blessing it is until it is taken from you. Imagine. Everything dark. A desolate gaping hole of nothingness. The lack of light fills you with a feeling of emptiness. The darkness consumes you as you try as hard as you can to hold onto anything, even if they are just memories of light. Even if you close your eyes, your mind tries to trick you that it's still there. With small bursts of blue, yellow, so faint, and the illusion of light it satisfies you just a little. If I could show you everything, it would blind you.
So, I will start with the small pieces, the shiny pieces, shimmering with hope until you finish my story. This is the story of Atlia, the blackened, the deserter, the murderer, the martyr, the whatever you would like to call me. To me, I am just a person who has a choice to make, a decision that could change my life forever, and yours.


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Allegro - Introduction
According to the Oxford Companion to Music, Allegro is the Italian for «quick, lively, bright». It is also a recursive acronym which stands for «Allegro Low LEvel Game ROutines». Allegro was started by Shawn Hargreaves in the mid-90's but has since received contributions from hundreds of people over the net.
Allegro 5
Allegro 5 is the latest major revision of the library, designed to take advantage of modern hardware (e.g. hardware acceleration using 3D cards) and operating systems. Although it is not backwards compatible with earlier versions, it still occupies the same niche and retains a familiar style.
Allegro 5.0 supports the following platforms:
- Unix/Linux
- Windows (MSVC, MinGW)
- MacOS X
- iPhone
Allegro 5.1 also adds support for:
- Android
You can see the functionality Allegro provides by browsing the online reference manual.
Allegro only supports 2D graphics primitives natively, but it is perfectly reasonable to use Allegro alongside a 3D API (e.g. OpenGL, Direct3D, and higher level libraries), while Allegro handles the other tasks. Allegro is also designed to be modular; e.g. if you prefer, you can substitute another audio library.
Allegro 4
Allegro 4 is the classic library, whose API is backwards compatible all the way back to Allegro 2.0 for DOS/DJGPP (1996). It is no longer actively developed, but we still apply patches sent to us by contributors, mainly to fix minor bugs. Every so often we will make new releases.
Allegro 4.4 supports the following platforms:
- Unix/Linux
- Windows (MSVC, MinGW, Cygwin)
- MacOS X
- Haiku/BeOS
- PSP (currently in git repository only)
The older Allegro 4.2 branch additionally supports:
- Windows (Borland)
- DOS (DJGPP, Watcom)
You can see the functionality Allegro provides by browsing the online reference manual.