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GRAND CANYON NATIONAL PARK, Ariz. (AP) -- The National Park Service created a national landmark Tuesday to commemorate a 1956 collision between two airliners over the Grand Canyon, a disaster that helped lead to major changes in aviation safety and creation of what is now the Federal Aviation Administration.
The crash killed all 128 people aboard the two planes in the deadliest aviation disaster in U.S. history at the time. A nation already struggling with increasingly busy skies pressured Congress for major changes to improve air traffic control and radar systems in response to the tragedy.
About 200 people gathered Tuesday for a ceremony overlooking the gorge where the wreckage was scattered over 1.5 square miles. Park rangers set up binoculars so people could get a closer look at the buttes where the planes came crashing down. Some of the wreckage still remains in the canyon but is not visible from the overlook.
Mike Nelson, a nephew of one of the passengers, hoped the landmark would help bring new awareness about the crash to the tens of thousands of Grand Canyon visitors. He said most people he meets have never heard of the disaster.
"We are here to care about the victims again, to picture them walking the ground and to tell them how sorry we are," Nelson said.
The park also unveiled a small marker at the overlook that reads: "This tragic site represents a watershed moment in the modernization of America's airways, leading to the establishment of the Federal Aviation Administration and national standards for aviation safety."
Some of the victim's remains never were identified, and most of those that were have been buried together en masse at cemeteries at the Grand Canyon and the northern Arizona city of Flagstaff.
The United Airlines Douglas DC-7 and a TWA Lockheed Super Constellation both left California on June 30, 1956, eventually cruising at the same altitude — 21,000 feet — after the TWA pilot requested to fly above the clouds. Shortly before 10 a.m., both pilots reported to different communications stations that they would be crossing over the canyon at the same position at 10:31 a.m.
The Salt Lake City controller who had that information was not obligated to tell either of the pilots they could be on a crash course. It was the sole responsibility of the pilots to avoid other aircraft in uncontrolled airspace.
The investigative agency, the Civil Aeronautics Board, determined simply that the pilots did not see one another. The agency speculated that the pilots were treating passengers to views of the Grand Canyon while flying through scattered cloud buildup.
Meanwhile, pressure mounted on Congress to move faster to make air travel safer. In 1957, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the Airways Modernization Act, and airliners were required to have flight data recorders. What's now known as the FAA began operating late that year.
"It really did underscore for the general public, for the first time, that much of the air space in America was uncontrolled at that time," said Peter Goelz, former managing director for the National Transportation Safety Board. "Once you got up to 20,000 feet and beyond the terminal radars, it was see and be seen."
The investigators on the Grand Canyon crash pieced together what happened based on the wreckage. No one saw the planes collide.
The family of Leon David Cook Jr., a passenger on the United flight destined for Chicago, was huddled around the television that night awaiting word on what happened. The next morning, dozens of reporters were staked out in front of their Detroit home, said Cook's son Ray, then 12.
The TWA wreckage was found first. More than a mile away and several days later, the United wreckage was discovered.
Ray Cook said the crash destroyed his family. His mother died 14 years later when she drove drunk off an embankment, and his brother committed suicide at 37. Cook, who broke free from heavy drinking after 25 years, couldn't come to terms with the death for several years.
"I used to think every night that my father would walk out of the Grand Canyon, sunburned and scraggly, saying, 'They screwed up, I'm fine, here I am,'" he said.
The recovery operation was one of the most extensive and dangerous in the history of the National Park Service. Rescuers had to contend with harsh terrain, swirling winds and the remoteness of the crash sites where the wreckage was twisted, broken and melted. United brought in a Swiss mountain rescue group and the Colorado Mountain Club to help.
Former Associated Press writer Frank Wetzel wrote of military personnel silently lifting olive-drab body bags into aircraft.
"It was my first look at Grand Canyon," the 88-year-old said in an interview. "I hadn't any concept of its grandeur. At the time, the wreckage was spread out because the impact must have been terrible."
The crash sites near the confluence of the Colorado and Little Colorado rivers now are closed off to the public and being preserved for their place in history.
Grand Canyon National Park archaeologist Ian Hough said the sites can serve as a learning tool for understanding the significance of the disaster and its impact on families, some of whom shared their stories recently with park officials as part of an oral history project.
More from MBTMag.com
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We are spending more time at home than ever before. This impacts how we view
and use our homes. If your home no longer fits your needs in this new
environment, you may be considering a right-size move. The open floorplans and
great room layouts that have been so popular over the past few years may not
allow for the various workspaces your family needs now. Separate and private
areas for work and school needs may require more rooms or nooks, causing you
to wonder if a larger home makes sense.
The fact is, before you buy a larger home, consider your long-term needs. Will the
kids be returning to the classroom? Will you need extra rooms in the future?
Most people need to stay in a home for 5-7 years to recoup the cost of moving,
planning for this time frame is an important factor in considering a move.
Another consideration is the real estate market itself. Most of the country is
experiencing a strong sellers' market. Homes are selling for over the asking price.
Not only can this make the move difficult to achieve, but the potential drop in
future prices can saddle you with a home for longer than your intended
Before deciding to move, consider the impact today's move could have on your
future. It's advised to always plan to stay in a home for at least 7 years and if your
potential new home doesn't fit into that model, it may make more sense to
redesign/remodel your current home.

subset: commoncrawl


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Understanding Classes and Objects in REALbasic
- The Class Hierarchy
- Creating a New Class
- Declaration and Instantiation
- Constructors and Destructors
- Garbage Collection
- Inheritance
- Object Operators
- Adding and Overriding Methods
- Calling the Overridden Method
- Overloading
- Casting
- Oddities
- Encapsulation
- Access Scope: Public, Private, Protected
- Setting Properties with Methods
- Default and Optional Parameters
- Declaring Variables Static and Const
- Revisiting the StringParser Module
- Example: Creating a Properties Class
- Data-Oriented Classes and Visual Basic Data Types
- Advanced Techniques
The Class Hierarchy
A former colleague used to say that he had "developed this new technology" whenever somebody in his department wrote a few lines of VBScript for the website. He is not the first person to use overly fanciful language to describe programming exploits. It happens all the time. Object-oriented programming is a particularly jargon-rich field of study, laden with ill-formed metaphors and polysyllabic titles. There was a time when object-oriented programming (OOP) advocates would say that OOP was easier to learn than more traditional styles of programming. I don't know if that is true; I suppose the fact that I have deferred the discussion of the object-oriented features until the third chapter of this book is some indication of how I feel about this subject.
One of the biggest challenges facing a novice programmer is the reality that knowing how to program and knowing how to program well are two different things. Learning a programming language is cut and dried (albeit a bit tedious at times). Learn the syntax and you've learned the language. It's very much a science. Doing it well, however, is much more like an art—something that is learned over time and something that you get a "feel for" that is often difficult to explain simply and clearly. In this chapter, I hope to provide an overview of object-oriented concepts and how they are implemented in REALbasic, and give some insight into strategies for executing your object-oriented programming effectively.
Cities are full of buildings, and each building has a particular street address, which can tell you how to find the building if you are looking for it. Computers have addresses, too, but instead of identifying buildings, these addresses point to locations in memory. Variables, properties, functions, and subroutines all reside at a particular address, too, when they are being used by your program.
When you declare a variable, you assign a type to the variable. To date, most of the variables in the examples have been one of REALbasic's intrinsic data types. When a variable is used in this way—pointing to an intrinsic data type—it's said to be a scalar variable. The variable represents the value that's stored at a particular location in memory.
Variables can also be used to represent objects. When they do, they aren't scalar variables anymore because an object doesn't represent a value in the way that an intrinsic data type does. The variable is said to be a reference to the object; it points to the location in memory where this object resides. An object is a collection of different things and can be made up of properties and various methods. In this respect it is like a module, but it differs from a module in some very important ways.
Suppose we have an object with two different properties, one called FirstName and the other called SecondName, both of which are Strings. Let's also say that we have a variable called Person that points to this object. Referring to the object itself doesn't refer to any particular value, because the object has multiple properties. This means that to access a particular property of an object, you need to refer to the object itself, plus the property. You do this using the familiar dot notation, like so:
This should look familiar because it's the way you refer to protected properties and methods of modules. The biggest difference is that you always have to refer to an object's members this way, even if the property is public.
Now knowing that an object is a collection of values is only a small part of the story. What makes objects powerful is that they are members of classes. To create an object, you must first create a class.
To explain what classes are conceptually, I'll return to the building and street address analogy. If you pull up to any address, you'll find a building. If you were to come visit me, you could drive until you reached my address; pull in the driveway and you'd be at my house. My house is a building, but it's a different kind of building than you might find down the street a bit where there is a grocery store and a gas station. Furthermore, my house is just one example of a particular type of house. Houses come in all styles—some are ranches and others are Cape Cod or Tudor styles.
Whether you are talking about houses or grocery stores or gas stations, every building has some things in common—a roof and some walls, for example. I live in a single-family residential neighborhood, so every building on my street is a house. The fact that it is a house means that in addition to a roof and some walls (which all buildings have), it also has at least one bedroom, a bathroom, and a kitchen, because buildings that happen to be houses all have those features.
If I were to try to systemize my understanding of buildings, I might start by classifying buildings into the different types of buildings and showing how they are related. A good way to do this is by organizing buildings into a conceptual hierarchy, like the one outlined in Figure 3.1.
Figure 3.1 Different styles of houses can be organized in a hierarchy.
Every node on this tree represents a type of building or, to use object-oriented terminology, a class of building. At the top of the hierarchy is the base class, and it has two subclasses—residential and commercial. You can say that the building class is the superclass of the residential and commercial classes. In addition to the super/subclass terminology, you also hear people refer informally to them as parent classes and child classes.
One way that we make these classifications is based on physical attributes of the buildings themselves—things such as walls and doors. At the same time, we also consider the kind of activity that takes place in them.
This isn't the only way to classify buildings. You might come up with a different hierarchy that's equally valid. For example, you might decide that the most important differentiating factor isn't whether a building is residential or commercial, but how many stories the building has. You might start off with building, and then branch to one-story buildings and multistory buildings, and go on from there.
Even the buildings themselves can be subdivided into smaller units. A house doesn't just sit empty. People live in them and do things. The house is organized into rooms and these rooms are designed for certain activities. In one room you cook, in another you watch TV, and so on. Some rooms have storage areas, such as closets and cupboards, and others have tools, such as stoves and refrigerators and washing machines.
The hierarchy shows classes of buildings, not particular buildings themselves. A description of a house is not any particular house; it's a description of what houses that are members of that class have in common. One way to think of classes is to think of them as a blueprint, or a design, for a building. You can build many houses using the same blueprint. If a class is analogous to a blueprint, an object is analogous to a particular house.
After you've driven to my house and you're standing in the driveway looking at it, you are looking at one particular instance of a house. There are other houses in the neighborhood that were built from the same plan, but they are filled with different people, doing different things.
One thing you may have noticed when I classified buildings and organized them into a hierarchy is that I didn't list all the features of each class of building at each level. At the top level, I said buildings have roofs, walls, and doors. At the second level of the hierarchy, I didn't repeat that they have roofs, walls, and doors because I wrote down only what was new and unique about the next group. The assumption is that the subclass has all the attributes of the superclass, plus some additional attributes that differentiate it from the superclass. To put it another way, the subclass inherits the features of the superclass.
Inheritance is a big deal, and it's just about the coolest part of object-oriented programming. In practical terms, this means that when you write your program, you organize your code into classes. The advantage of this kind of inheritance from a programmer's perspective is that it keeps you from having to rewrite as much code. The subclass inherits all the functionality of the superclass, so that means you don't have to write new methods in the subclass that replicate the basic functionality of the parent.
And this leads to the challenging part. It's up to you to decide how to organize your classes. You can do it any way you like, but you need to do it in a way that makes sense and in a way that maximizes code reuse (from inheritance). Knowing how to write the code that creates a class is only half the battle. Knowing what goes into the class is the hard part. There is no single solution; the answer is really dependent on the kind of program you are going to write. You have to figure out what makes the most sense for your application.
Again, I'll return to the house analogy. Inside my house, the downstairs is divided into six rooms: a living room, a dining room, a kitchen, a bedroom, a bathroom, and a laundry room. In the kitchen are cupboards. Some are full of food and others are filled with plates and dishes. There is a refrigerator, stove, and so on. Likewise, in the laundry room you'll find laundry detergent, and then there is the usual stuff that goes into a living and a dining room.
This makes sense—the reason I put the laundry detergent in the laundry room with the washing machine is because it's convenient and makes sense. Likewise, I put my clothes in my closet so that I can find them in the morning and get dressed.
That's exactly how object-oriented programming works, too. A class in object-oriented programming groups together information and instructions for what to do with the information. It's a place to store information of a particular kind, and a set of instructions for what to do with it. When you are creating classes, you have to decide what kind of information makes sense to be associated with what kind of tasks.
Although objects are capable of having properties, constants, and methods, they are not required to have them. A chair, for example, is an object. By definition, a chair doesn't do anything. It can only have things done to it. It can be sat upon. It can be held in place by gravity. It can be broken and it can be painted red. But it can't scoot itself up to the table, or teeter precariously on two legs, unless a child is in the chair to do the teetering. An object from the programming perspective can be dull and boring like a chair. It can be a thing, a set of values, or, as they are called in REALbasic and other languages, it can have properties.
An object can be nothing more than a set of properties. In this respect, an object is very similar to a struct or User Defined Type familiar to Visual Basic programmers. It can also have methods, constants, events, and menu handlers, all of which will be covered in due time.
There are some basic concepts to discuss first, and the best way to discuss them is to illustrate them by creating a class or two and looking at what we are doing. In particular, I want to discuss some important OOP concepts: inheritance, encapsulation, and polymorphism. Much like calling a new script a new technology, these words create a certain mysterious aura that make everything sound much more complicated than it is. Hopefully, after you've read this chapter you'll have enough mastery of REALbasic's flavor of object-oriented programming to use it with confidence.


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A flood plain is an area of land adjacent to a stream or river that experiences flooding during periods of high discharge. Watch this video and it'll make sense.
If you live in a flood plain lenders will require that you have flood insurance before lending any money to you. But if you live near a flood plain, you may choose whether or not to get flood insurance coverage for your home.
Check the National Flood Insurance Program site at FloodSmart.gov for more information. And work with an insurance agent to construct a policy that fits your needs.


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[Shaun Gehring] wanted an Internet radio player. Although he did have some troubles along the way, the final project turned out very well. Housed inside this case which used to house a spindle of bland CDs is a Raspberry Pi that plays Pandora radio and serves as an AirPlay receiver.
The GPIO header of the RPi makes this project a lot easier. [Shaun] used Adafruit's breakout board to solder connections for the six buttons and the character LCD screen. Plug some speakers into the audio jack and the hardware end of the deal is finished. The software side of things is very similar to the BeagleBone Pandora player we looked at in September. It uses a Linux distribution (Rasbian Weezy) and the Pianobar package.
Pianobar is very versatile. You can control it using a First-In First-Out file. Once [Shaun] figured out how to use mkfifo to set up the file, he was able to control it from a script by monitor button presses and echoing the associated command to the FIFO. The finishing touch was to add AirPlay support via the shairport package.


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CAUTIONARY NOTE 22 The tables in this publication are presented on two bases. Tables 1-11 contain estimates of Australia's international trade in goods and services which have been adjusted for coverage, valuation and timing to a balance of payments basis. Tables 12-15 contain estimates of merchandise exports and imports based on Australian Customs Service records. Paragraph 5 of the Explanatory Notes provides an explanation of the difference between these bases. Document Selection These documents will be presented in a new window. |


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Molex Incorporated has introduced Brad® Direct-Link® unmanaged switches available in 5- and 8-port modules, both featuring patented Ultra-Lock® push-pull technology. The new IP67 sealed Direct-Link switch modules provide a fast, simple and secure on-machine Ethernet switch solution reducing network cabling and installation costs "As our world becomes more connected, manufacturers and installers are increasingly specifying harsh-duty Ethernet devices," states George Kairys, product manager, Molex. "The Brad portfolio of rugged connectivity products for Ethernet infrastructure brings our customers high speed performance in a wider range of industrial applications requiring LAN networks for plant floor robotics and automated manufacturing cells."
The small footprint, field-proven, and rugged design make the Direct-Link switches ideal for heavy-duty transportation and military vehicle applications. Direct-Link Ethernet switch modules allow users to quickly convert from traditional in-cabinet to on-machine mounting. Relocating the switch closer to the machine reduces installation time and costs for lengthy wiring runs, cabling and protected cabinet enclosures. The durable Ultra-Lock system of switch connectors and cordsets features a full sealed connection and secure mating, with easy push-pull plug-and-play installation. Suitable for installations located in extreme temperature conditions, the Direct-Link 8-port switches operate in -40 to +75 degrees Celsius. Tested to NEMA 6 and IP67 environmental ratings, the Direct-Link Ultra-Lock connection ensures continuous operation in ambient dust, pressure washing and submersion in water. The entire printed circuit board and internal connections are fully potted, protecting it from any moisture ingress or connector failures due to severe vibration conditions. Mechanical keying and radial seals eliminate the need for skilled installation and risk of operator error commonly found in other switch connector systems.
"Unmanaged Direct-Link switches provide cost-effective, robust performance across complex networks in a wide range of control and monitoring applications, where harsh environments create vibration, heat and other hazards. Brad brings Ethernet connectivity—for PC-based or PLC-based control, supervision, data storage and protocol bridging—where our customers need it most," adds Kairys. The new Direct-Link switch modules are compatible with other Brad industrial products, including cordsets, receptacles, field-attachable connectors, I/O modules, PC interfaces, gateways, switches and diagnostic tools.
- 5- and 8-port modules
- Ultra-Lock® push-pull technology
- small footprint


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Membership Cancellation
Need to Cancel Your Membership?
While we hate to see any of our wonderful members leave, we understand that sometimes circumstances change. Please check your contract to view the cancellation terms of your membership. Before you leave, we ask that you let us know by filling out the form below a minimum of four weeks before you plan to finish coming to our facility. If you decide to come back and renew your membership, we have to let you know you will be subject to the membership prices on offer at that time. We wish you all the best in your future fitness endeavors!


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The personal blog of Peter Lee a.k.a. "China Hand"... Life is a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to those who feel, and an open book to those who read. Now an archive for my older stuff. For current content, subscribe to my patreon "Peter Lee's China Threat Report" and follow me on twitter @chinahand.
Sunday, August 24, 2008
America Drinks the COIN Kool-aid...
American ignorance concerning Pakistani politics and society is profound. And, in the matter of the "surge" scheduled for Afghanistan for year-end 2008, it may be fatal.
U.S. observers, both on the left and right, view Pakistan primarily through the lens of the war on terror, in terms of Pakistan's role in pumping military forces into its western frontier in order to help George W. Bush burnish his meager presidential legacy by getting Osama bin Laden's head on a pike before he leaves office in January 2009; and to assist the West in rescuing its tottering political project in Afghanistan, the Karzai government.
As any responsible observer of Pakistan politics would tell you—all the Pakistani media majors all have English-language outlets—the Pakistanis view things completely differently.
They believe that unremitting American pressure on Pakistan is turning a serious but manageable problem—ethnic and Islamist extremism in the border regions—into an existential crisis that is ripping Pakistan apart.
In the days since Musharraf's departure, Pakistan has been torn by a series of terrorist attacks, including a coordinated assault on Pakistan's main armory near Islamabad, which left nearly 100 dead.
The attacks represent a highly persuasive demonstration by Taliban extremists that peace inside Pakistan's central, urbanized core requires accommodation with the Taliban, and not participation in America's escalating counter-inurgency campaign in Afghanistan's east and Pakistan's frontier provinces.
It is a message that Pakistan's civilian, military, and intelligence leadership are ready to heed.
But it is a warning that America—including both its political and defense establishment and its two presidential candidates—are determined to disregard in the search for geopolitical advantage, multi-national military support, and votes.
Fatally, the supposed success of the troop surge in Iraq –and the desperate optimism and opportunism an apparent military panacea excites in American politics—is fueling calls for applying the same formula to the intractable Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan.
However, Afghanistan isn't Iraq. And, more importantly, Pakistan ain't Iran.
For Americans infatuated with the apparent success of the surge in Iraq—and its implied vindication of the comforting notion that the scientific application of American military might, brains, and money can succeed in even the most profoundly hostile environment—it is anathema to consider that the relative quiet in Iraq is not attributable to our astounding subtlety in paying off Sunni tribal leaders and malcontents who otherwise would be engaged in a doomed insurgency against U.S. rule and Shi'a domination.
What's probably standing between us and the continuation of our bloody debacle in Iraq is the fact that Iran has eschewed a strategy of political violence through its Iraqi proxies. Instead, it has decided to outwait the United State and secure its gains through the political ascendancy of the Shi'a.
The Dawa party, obedient clients of the Iranians, have downplayed their military struggle and instead form the backbone of Prime Minister Maliki's government.
The normally nationalistic and anti-Iranian Shi'a cleric, Muqtada al-Sadr has, thanks to the threats of legal and personal jeopardy deployed by the American occupation, taken up residence in the Iranian holy city of Qom. Under the influence of Iran's persuasion and perhaps onerous hospitality, al Sadr has apparently decided to discard armed struggle and endorse the political route to power.
Iranian pressure on Iraqi Shi'a forces to stand down is, in my opinion, why the surge has worked. (And it's also the reason why, despite martial chest-thumping from the Right, an armed attack on Iran by the U.S. or even scorched earth economic sanctions targeting Teheran are unlikely).
American politicians look at the Iraqi surge and, by a flawed analogy, expect that an escalation of three or so brigades into Afghanistan by years' end will tip the scales in our favor.
Barack Obama, eager to burnish his CINC qualifications by boosting our "good war" in Afghanistan, talks about pouring in troops. John McCain explictly links a troop increase in Afghanistan with the apparent success of the surge.
The analogies, however, founder, when it comes to the issue of the key western neighbor.
Compare and contrast Pakistan's attitudes toward Afghanistan with Iran's desire to stabilize Iraq on its currently favorable terms.
According to the U.S. think tank Terror Free Tomorrow (TFT), favorable opinions of Afghanistan are at an anemic 48% level.
Hamid Karzai and his U.S. backed regime simply aren't very popular in Pakistan. Pakistani distaste for Karzai is eagerly reciprocated by the Afghan government and relations are pretty much in a deep freeze. The Karzai government will always be closer the United States and India, not Pakistan. The route to increased Pakistani influence in Kabul lies through the violent overthrow of the Afghani government by the Taliban, not by ensuring the Karzai regime's continued survival and success.
The U.S. is responding to Pakistan's lack of enthusiasm for saving Karzai's bacon by unilateral military incursions into western Pakistan in order to root out the Taliban havens (and possible bin Laden hidey-holes) that Pakistan's army and intelligence services have pursued so unenthusiastically.
However, escalating the violence in Pakistan's border regions looks like a recipe for disaster.
American planners originally hoped that Musharraf's armies would be the anvil upon which Western forces crushed the Taliban in eastern Afghanistan.
Pakistan is more like a rotten melon that will fly apart under the hammer blows of a U.S. counter-insurgency campaign in west Pakistan.
The political will inside Pakistan to support the U.S. adventure in Afghanistan is virtually non-existent. According to TFT, opposition to the GWOT clocked in at a thumping 72% in June, with "strongly opposed" at 60.4%. At that time, admittedly before the recent wave of Taliban attacks, over 50% of Pakistanis blamed the US for violence inside Pakistan; the Pakistani Taliban were blamed by only 4.2%--behind India and Pakistan's own ISI!
The salient development in Pakistani politics in the last three months has not been the democratization of Pakistan and an increased or even sustained determination to combat terrorism; it has been the collapse of the political fortunes of two would-be American clients--Pervez Musharraf and the leader of Benazir Bhutto's PPP, her widower Asif Zardari—and the political ascendancy of Nawaz Sharif of the opposition PML-N, whose conservative, non-aligned policies have resonated with Pakistani voters since his return from exile last November.
The general elections in Pakistan in February delivered a clear mandate for removal of Musharraf and the restoration of the judiciary that Musharraf had dismissed in a clumsy attempt to secure his illegal re-election as president last November.
Asif Zardari, head of the main opposition force, the PPP, hopelessly bungled the political endgame and squandered his political capital because he was more interested in executing the political deal that Benazir Bhutto had made with Washington—by which the PPP would act as a political fig-leaf for the terminally unpopular Musharraf and make active Pakistan participation in the anti-Taliban campaign more palatable to the general populace—than he was in following the unambiguous mandate to remove Musharraf.
Six months of ignoble gyrations by the PPP with American connivance on behalf of Musharraf followed, leaving the field of principled opposition leader completely clear for Nawaz Sharif, who unequivocally called for Musharraf's removal and the restoration of the judiciary (and, in a popular move, withdrew his people from the cabinet while continuing to support the PPP government in parliamentary votes).
As a result, Sharif is now by far the most popular political figure in Pakistan, clocking in at a favorability rating of 86%—a fact that is apparently unreported in the West (though not unknown to readers of China Matters) because Sharif also represents the majority strain in Pakistani popular opinion opposed to Pakistan's participation in the U.S. led War on Terror.
Zardari's increasingly risible attempts to straddle the roles of U.S. client and popular leader came to head with the disastrous visit to the United States of his hand-picked prime minister, Yusuf Raza Gillani.
In order to demonstrate that Pakistan's newly-minted civilian government was eager and able to do Washington's bidding in the War on Terror, Gillani announced that the notoriously independent (and pro-Taliban) Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) agency was now subject to control by the cabinet—an assertion he was forced to retract within hours.
Observing the collapse of the credibility of his government, Zardari apparently decided to get in step with popular opinion and neutralize Sharif's appeal by jumping on the dump-Musharraf bandwagon. In contrast to his previous dilatory behavior, Zardari was able to orchestrate the departure of Musharraf in little more than a week.
U.S. political meddling has yielded the usual unimpressive results. As planned, the civilian Pakistani government was split and discredited thanks to Zardari's maneuvering. But instead of insuring Musharraf's survival by allowing him to score political points off of a weakened civilian government, the policy led to Musharraf's political demise.
When the PPP decided to recover its lost political ground by ousting Musharraf, it left Washington with the worst of both worlds: Musharraf gone and the civilian government too divided and unpopular to act as an effective client.
Since Musharraf's departure, the pressures on Zardari have only intensified.
Nawaz Sharif has threatened a de jure withdrawal from the ruling coalition if Zardari does not reinstate the judiciary; and the bloody Taliban attacks have served notice that the survival of Pakistan's civilian government, indeed its civil society, may depend on decoupling its tribal policy from the military campaign the U.S. is escalating in eastern Afghanistan and western Pakistan.
According to Taliban-watcher Syed Saleem Shahzad , the PPP-led civilian government is attempting to remain in Washington's good graces—and establish itself, post-Musharraf, as America's indispensable man in Islamabad—by declaring all-out war on militants (despite the TFT finding in June that 58% of Pakistanis wanted the government to negotiate with the Pakistan Taliban) and agreeing to a planned NATO center in Peshawar, capital of the North West Frontier Provinces, that will direct Pakistan's anti-Taliban operations inside Pakistan.
It remains to be seen whether the Pakistan's government and Pakistani public opinion will support escalated anti-Taliban operations—under US direction!—in the face of unrelenting Taliban attacks against Pakistani assets inside the heartland, the fundamental unpopularity of the U.S.-led GWOT, and Nawaz Sharif standing in the wings ready to assume the mantle of Pakistan's leader and provide an alternative to the close U.S.-Pakistan relationship that a majority of Pakistanis regard as catastrophic.
As Western forces surge into Afghanistan in an effort to defeat the burgeoning Taliban insurgency by assaulting its havens in Pakistan, expect the Pakistani Taliban to retaliate—against Pakistan, in the Pakistani heartland—in order to demonstrate to Pakistani opinion the unacceptably high costs of providing material support to an unpopular American strategy.
Inside the Pakistan elite, the case for disengaging from the U.S. war on terror will be made forcefully by the ISI, which has never abandoned its support for the Taliban—or its desire for a pro-Pakistan regime in Kabul.
There has been one piece of disturbing news that implies that the ISI might be ready to take matters into its own hands and assist the Taliban in to redirecting Pakistani security policy—the ISI's alleged complicity in the terror bombing of the Indian embassy in Kabul on July 8, 2008.
The U.S. government has been in the forefront in providing intelligence linking the ISI to the attack, no doubt a sobering reminder to Islamabad that the Bush administration has a pronounced pro-Indian tilt that no amount of enthusiastic water-carrying by Pakistan on Afghan security is likely to reverse.
Karzai's ties to India as a counterweight to Pakistan have been a source of irritation to the ISI. But orchestrating the bombing of India's embassy might not have been a reckless act of brinksmanship; it may have been a deliberate provocation.
If Karzai indignantly broke off relations with Pakistan, and India responded to the bombing with understandable anger, then Pakistan's army would be free to abandon the thankless project of cooperating with NATO forces in the bloody, border-straddling counter-insurgency campaign in the Pashtun areas of Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Instead, while Karzai floundered to his doom, the Pakistani army could do what it does best: deploying its divisions in a conventional order of battle in Pakistan's east facing India and engage in the crowd-pleasing ritualized hostility that has secured the army's place in the center of national esteem—and fattened its budget—for the last sixty years.
So, a surge into Afghanistan, instead of adding an emollient sheen to waters already smoothed by an interested regional power, might instead apply a highly flammable coating of gasoline to all of South Asia—with the Taliban and the ISI both eager to throw a match.
1 comment:
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Purpose: We've had a ton of requests for a larger fish suited for surfers transitioning down from mid-length boards, something similar but more compact than the greatly successful Over Easy. We needed something slightly fuller than a shortened speed egg, with some added speed off the tail. With that, the Easy rider was born. A perfect half way marker between the Codfather and Over Easy, the Easy rider is a wave snatching machine for intermediate surfers desiring a strong wave count in busy lineups, and a cozy way to introduce newer surfers to fast turns, speed pump sections, and a first go at a top to bottom attack. The longer sleeker fishy template carries extra foam for easy paddling. Its 5-fin setup allows for the trusty, stable thruster, or a zippy, loose quad for more speed and fin release. A subtle single concave to vee bottom carries the same contours as the Codfather for perfect rail to rail rollover and massive acceleration off the back foot. The rails are slightly lower than a retro fish, locking better hold through tight turns and steeper sections. The Easy Rider is the ideal transition board for taking your surfing to the intermediate level or boosting your wave count if you're already dominant in the lineup.
Designed For: Beginner surfer moving down from a mid-length towards intermediate surfing, or intermediate/advanced surfer adding foam to snag more waves when it's crowded.
Sweet Spot: Knee to Slightly overhead, with its true identity revealed in waist to head high surf. Perfect in playful, fun conditions, especially reef and point breaks.


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Bong woman receives the Black Swan Award for "Women Empowerment" in UAE
Smita Banerjee Sasmal, a philanthropist-entrepreneur, was recently awarded the Black Swan Award for her contribution to women empowerment. The prestigious award was given by Asia One, in association with the Global Compact Network UAE (United Nations). The award recognizes modern women's achievements who use their passion, determination, and perseverance to draw attention to and resolve issues of the children & women in rural India. The award was presented to Smita by philanthropist, actress and Miss Diva Universe 2015 Urvashi Rautela & Sierra Leone Ambassador to UAE Rashid Sesay.
Smita expressed happiness on being honoured with the award, as she said, "I feel honoured and humbled on receiving this award. The award will motivate the coming generations of Indian women to continue working to promote the spirit of humanity."
Smita has been promoting women empowerment, water conservation, child education and preservation of the environment through her NGO for the past few years. She has spent time in Africa as well as India & both countries have contributed to her understanding of public issues that often plague developing societies.
Her mission is to empower the women to be independent and counsel them regularly for making their physical and mental health better. For this, the organization keeps arranging charitable projects in rural areas. These projects range from distributing essential educational items and creating awareness among the society as a whole. Her recent initiatives are like plantation, donating plants to schools, conducting training for girl children for health & hygiene. Donated grains, raw materials, and shed for the poorest who lost their home during the flood in Purba Midnapur, West Bengal. Also started an initiative "be self-dependent", programs and camps for women in rural India.
When asked what her plans regarding her life's mission will be, Smita explains, "I am concerned about the plight of young girls in our country, especially those living in remote/rural areas. Such girls face many obstacles in life, ranging from patriarchy to abuse, inequality at home and outside, etc. Sampurti's mission is to focus on the education of the girl child because we believe the way to a successful & bright future for these girls passes through the classroom. For this, we encourage the girls and their families to seek opportunities to educate. We provide financial help, counselling and every other help required putting these girls on to the way to a brighter future."


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The drought is over and the Cleveland Indians are your 2017
World Series Champions!! Short, sweet and to the point but that's how I feel.
The Indians are a young team, a deep team and an experienced team after taking
the Chicago Cubs to the brink in seven games in the 2016 World Series. Behind
the arms of Corey Kluber, Danny Salazar, Andrew Miller and others the Cleveland
Indians are just going to be too tough for anyone to handle in my opinion this
Don't get me wrong, the Washington Nationals are tough and
they will let the Indians know that they have been in a fight but the bullpen
for the Nats may be the difference maker. Without a true closer and without a
deep and dominant bullpen that is capable of giving five-plus shutout innings
of work on any given night I find it hard to believe that Bryce Harper and
company will be able to keep up over a seven game series.
I think this series goes at least six games and may go seven
games but at the end of the day I think the World Series championship goes back
to Cleveland, finally. The Indians paid their dues last season as the watched
Chicago celebrate breaking their curse and drought and now it's time for
redemption. Let me be the first to congratulate the 2017 Cleveland Indians on
their World Series victory.


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WiFi temperature and relative humidity sensor for external probe
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contain CC3220MODSF with FCC ID: Z64-CC3220MOD


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By founding the Pentagon's Victim and Witness Program, Manhattan-native Karen Loftus has become a beacon of hope and a source of comfort for those affected by the tragedies of 9/11.
The New York Post reports on Loftus' profound mission to provide a some sense of comfort and relief to those who lost family and friends on 9/11. Perhaps more importantly, she helps victims' families navigate their way to testify against terrorists at Guantanamo Bay.
"Our goal is when they talk to us, to just listen. These people, they're special. They went through hell and back," Loftus said of the Pentagon's Victim and Witness Program.
The 55-year-old Manhattan native and former Navy captain also personally escorts family members to Cuba for military commission hearings for the 9/11 perpetrators.
"I'm very hands-on with the 9/11 families. I don't delegate that," said Loftus, who maintains a modest staff of seven people.
People who use her services are grateful for her help. "She's an absolute gem," said Tom Acquaviva of Wayne, N.J., whose 29-year-old son Paul was at work at Cantor Fitzgerald, the financial firm hardest hit by the World Trade Center attacks.
"She understands your sorrow and your grief," Acquaviva added. He was among victims' relatives who went to Guantanamo for the most recent round of hearings involving 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed, and will be going back next month.
"It's a bureaucratic job but she's not just a bureaucrat," said Acquaviva. "Let me put it to you this way: All bureaucrats should be like her."
Loftus, who didn't lose anyone close to her in the attacks, was assigned to compile an oral history immediately following the 9/11 attacks in 2001. Soon after that, she moved in to the position of founder of the Pentagon's Victim and Witness Program.
"I spent the next six months trying to help them recover documents," she recalled. From there, Loftus developed what she calls a special attachment to those directly affected by 9/11.
"I don't know why I particularly like it," she said. "It is depressing at times. You can't interview too many people because you absorb their grief."
Loftus continues to help families navigate through their grief and find some solace in counseling them on the criminal hearings the accused are facing for their 9/11 crimes.


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About Us
Volunteer Saskatoon strives to make Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, a better place by helping nonprofit organizations build stronger relationships with individuals in their community.
Our Objectives
At Volunteer Saskatoon, we take pride in:
- linking people with local community organizations;
- supporting persons with disabilities, new Canadians, corporations and professionals connect to organizations in and around the city;
- encouraging youth to get involved;
- helping individuals develop skills to advance their careers;
- developing knowledge resources that support effective and efficient volunteer capacity; and
- making Saskatoon a better place.
How Does It Work?
It is really quite simple! Nonprofit organizations in Saskatoon post their volunteer opportunities and positions, and individuals (e.g., youth, seniors, persons with disabilities) browse and choose what opportunities interest them. We here at Volunteer Saskatoon are just in the middle, trying to streamline the matching process. Apart from the initial registration and posting of opportunities, you will not have to contact us at all (unless of course you want to)! Individuals interested in volunteering will be able to contact nonprofit organizations directly through email.
Promoting the efforts of nonprofit organizations and available volunteer opportunities is an important job. We will, when time permits, promote both our website, participating nonprofit organizations and individual volunteer opportunities.
You may have noticed that we have advertisements on several of our pages. The pittance we generate from these ads will be used to cover costs associated with domain registration, web hosting, etc. As our community continues to grow, we will rely on this revenue to ensure that we secure the necessary resources to scale appropriately!
Contact Us
If you have any questions, concerns, or would like to get in touch, just head on over to our Contact Us page!


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I got word this week that the paper I proposed for the Matthew section at this year's annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature was accepted. Here's the abstract:
Jesus' Teaching on the Law, Deuteronomic Concessions and Eschatological Righteousness: A Re-examination of the Teaching on Divorce and Remarriage in Matthew 5:31–32
In the Sermon on the Mount we find Matthew's most explicit account of Jesus' teaching about his relationship to the Law. However, as is well known, Matthew's report of Jesus' teaching is particularly difficult to follow. In 5:17, Jesus insists that he has not come to "abolish" the Torah. Yet the teachings that immediately follow this, the so-called "antitheses" (5:21–48), appear to do just that, i.e., they appear to nullify the Law. While some of the antitheses may be understood in terms of an intensification of the demands of the Torah (e.g., lust as adultery in 5:27–30), others are harder to explain along those lines. One particularly notable example is Jesus' equation of divorce and remarriage with adultery (5:31–32). The Law in fact allows for divorce and remarriage (cf. Deut 24:1–4). It is difficult then to see Jesus' teaching on this matter as merely an intensification of the Law's requirements; Jesus is here explicitly prohibiting something the Torah clearly permits! Is there any way to explain this apparent problem? This paper proposes a solution. As many Old Testament scholars now recognize (e.g., Goldingay), Deuteronomy appears to have been understood as a kind of "lower law", making concessions that are absent in the previous covenant legislation (e.g., profane slaughter, cf. Deut 12:15–25 with Lev 17:1–4). In fact, recently some have demonstrated that it is likely Ezekiel had precisely these types of concessions in view when he declared that God gave Israel "laws that were not good" (Ezek 20:25; Hahn, Bergsma). Is Matthew's Jesus aware that certain laws were seen as concessions to sinfulness? Did he therefore expect to reinstitute the stricter standards of holiness they abrogated? Here we may find an important key that helps to better explicate Jesus' view of Torah-righteousness in Matthew 5.
The paper builds upon work I did in a section of my dissertation, which analyzed Jesus' view of the cult in the Sermon on the Mount.
I am grateful for the opportunity to present this paper and I looking forward to the conference. I have not yet heard who else is on the panel or what other papers will be read.


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By Lauren Brigolin
Behind the blue door of Practice Room #1 at Seattle Opera, it might have been easy to miss the soft plunk of piano keys without listening carefully. But what the soundproof walls couldn't contain after the modest hum of the piano were the rich tones of an accomplished baritone—Weston Hurt.
In addition to appearing as Sharpless in Madame Butterfly this August with Seattle Opera, Hurt just finished teaching a master class at the newly-created Seattle Opera Academy—a three-week voice and performance training program for young adults in Bellingham, Wash. This combination of teaching and performing is his dream. Being a role model to young singers, encouraging them to embrace who they are, is a job he takes seriously.
Weston Hurt, center, as Sharpless with Lianna Haroutounian (Cio-Cio-San) and Renée Rapier (Suzuki). Philip Newton photo |
"And then I was like, 'Forget this.' I'm not going down this path. I am who I am," says the baritone, who fell in love with opera during his freshman year of college after landing the title role in The Marriage of Figaro at Southwestern University.
Hazel Del Rosario (Sorrow) and Weston Hurt (Sharpless) in Madame Butterfly. Philip Newton photo |
Soon after acquiring a cosmetic prosthesis, he began auditioning and "Boom! I started getting gigs and gigs and gigs."
Weston Hurt teaching a master class at the Seattle Opera Academy. Photos by Rachel Bayne |
During a production of Madame Butterfly earlier in his career, the stage director suggested he perform Sharpless without the artificial limb. This presented the opportunity for Hurt to dive into a character study: His Sharpless became truly human—a man who carries deep emotional wounds after surviving a war; someone who understands loss. After his performance, a confusing review came out in a national opera publication. It said that his voice was amazing even though he only had one hand.
"I had to wear my prosthesis for everything. I felt like I had to fit some mold that administrative people, artistic people, or the audience wanted me to be. I got trapped."
Weston Hurt and his daughter. |
"I had lost my own uniqueness and my own individuality," Hurt says.
Being a singer with one hand has led to spectacular theatrical possibilities. He'll never forget the audible gasps he received each night during one production where he actually got to remove his prosthesis onstage.
Hurt backstage during Madame Butterfly at Seattle Opera. Genevieve Hathaway photo |


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About the book, from the publisher:
Bestselling author, professional speaker, and former editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan, Kate White shares the nine core principles gutsy women need to go bigger, bolder, and achieve the full level of success they desire.Visit Kate White's website, Facebook page, and Twitter perch.
Twenty-two years ago Kate White wrote the bestselling career bible Why Good Girls Don't Get Ahead but Gutsy Girls Do, and helped thousands of women push their success to the next level. Now a new generation of women, still eyeing the pay gap and glass ceiling, needs its own set of rules for today's modern workplace.
In THE GUTSY GIRL HANDBOOK White presents the nine core principles that have guided her career, offering dozens of straightforward, doable strategies for women in any field and at any stage in their professional lives. Drawing on original research, and sharing new success stories and never-before told examples from her time as the editor-in-chief of Cosmo, White inspires women to own their excellence, break the rules (or make their own), ask for the money and opportunities they deserve, and refuse to apologize for who they are and what they want.
THE GUTSY GIRL HANDBOOK is a resource for women who want to build confidence, negotiate a great salary and perks, manage meetings, mansplaining, and interruptions, and create game-changing "notice me" ideas. This all-new, accessible handbook is a great gift for graduates, and a must-read for professional women of all levels.
The Page 69 Test: Even If It Kills Her.
The Page 69 Test: Eyes on You.
The Page 99 Test: The Gutsy Girl Handbook.
--Marshal Zeringue


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Good-looking and effortlessly seductive… It's Lera Himera, you guys! Here, you're going to find the hottest LeraHimera Patreon pictures, along with her latest Instagram photos. Sounds exciting, doesn't it?
What's even more exciting is the fact that you can look at paid content on the NudoStar forum.
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/LeraHimera
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/valery_himera


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The Dawlaty Laboratory at the Genetics Department and the Institute for Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine Research of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine is actively seeking highly motivated postdoctoral fellows to be part of a young and energetic team studying the epigenetics and genomics of stem cells, development and cancer.
Central theme of research: Our research focuses on understanding the epigenetic mechanisms governing the biology of stem cells, development and cancer with an emphasis on the role of DNA modifying enzymes DNMTs and Tets in DNA (de)methylation and hydroxymethylation in pluripotent, multipotent and germ cells. We utilize embryonic stem cells, induced pluripotent stem cells and mice as model systems and combine bioinformatics, cellular and molecular approaches to study how DNA modifying enzymes reshape the epigenome and regulate development and cancer. For more details on our research see previous work (Dawlaty et al Cell Stem Cell 2011, Dawlaty et al Developmental Cell 2013, Dawlaty et al Developmental Cell 2014, Rudenko & Dawlaty et al Neuron 2013).
Lab expertise: The lab specializes in state-of-the-art technologies of genome engineering in mouse and human embryonic stem cells and iPSCs and generating complex strains of conditional, inducible, transgenic and knockout mice to dissect epigenetic pathways and mechanisms in vitro and in vivo.
Application Requirements:
To apply, please email your CV, a cover letter summarizing your previous research experience, current research interests and future goals along with the contact information of three references to email@example.com
The Scientific Community: Among the top tier of the nation's medical schools to receive NIH funding, Albert Einstein College of Medicine offers a highly interactive and stimulating academic environment for scientists in training. Additionally, candidate's research will benefit from the highly interactive environment within the Gottesman Institute for Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine, the Department of Genetics, Developmental and Molecular Biology, the Cancer Center and throughout the college. We are located in a pleasant residential area in the northeast corner of New York City with an easy commute to Manhattan and the suburbs of Westchester County. We offer competitive salary and benefit packages with optional postdoctoral housing on campus.
Contact Information: Meelad Dawlaty Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Genetics, Gottesman Institute for Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine Research, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, 1301 Morris Park Avenue, Bronx, NY 10461.
The Albert Einstein College of Medicine is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer.
Dr. Nick Baker was recently interviewed by Drug Discovery News. read more
Virtual Event
10th Annual Human Genetics in NYC Meeting Hosted by Dr. J. Greally of Albert Einstein College of Medicine Keynote lecture by Dr. C. Seidman of Harvard Medical School read more
Jean Hébert, Professor of Neuroscience and Genetics, has recently published a book, Replacing Aging. read more
view all news & events


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With advancements in technology in recent years, you can now obtain online degrees in many fields, and an online accounting degree is one type of degree you can earn. An online accounting degree will give you the skills necessary to work in the field of accounting, and the degree can lead to a very promising and successful career. Accounting degrees online offer you the flexibility that you need to get a good education on your time table.
The field of accounting offers excellent job opportunities. The profession is in demand, so employment for accountants continues to rise. With the high cost of college, an online accounting degree can save you from paying some of the costs associated with college. Because you can make your own schedule, online degrees give you more flexibility to hold a job. Students who earn an accounting degree online will normally need to complete 120 hours. Some of the levels of accounting degrees include an associate's degree, a bachelor's degree and a master's degree. Some schools might even offer a doctorate in accounting. It only takes two years to earn an associate's degree, so if you are in a hurry to finish, this type of degree can result in a bookkeeping position. If you want to make a higher salary and specialize in a certain accounting area, you might want to pursue a master's degree.
How to Find the Top Online Accounting Degree Programs
Numerous schools have become well-known for offering the best online accounting degree programs. Kaplan University, Post University and Colorado Technical University have recently become popular for their online accounting degrees. Kaplan University awards a BS or MBA degree in accounting. The school also offers several specialized programs, including Accounting/Auditing and Forensic Accountancy. If an associate's degree is what you want, Liberty University Online provides the skills needed to succeed in accounting. Another quality university that offers an online accounting degree is Grand Canyon University. The school provides a Bachelor of Science in Accounting. According to the online rankings, Grand Canyon University offers one of the best online accounting degrees in the world. It is important that you attend an accredited university or your degree will not hold real value.
Careers and Salaries for Individuals with Online Accounting Degrees
With an online accounting degree, you will have the opportunity to earn a high salary. The average salary that people with an accounting degree make is around $60,000; however, some people make more than $100,000. Tax preparation, bookkeeping and payroll services are considered the highest paying accounting salary jobs. Government jobs also have a high salary. Other accounting careers include real estate, financial planning, health care or insurance sales. With an accounting degree, you can work as a CPA or you can work for the Internal Revenue Service. Some states will earn you a higher figure than other states. California and New York are generally two of the highest paying states when it comes to accounting jobs. Texas, Florida, Pennsylvania, Illinois and Ohio also pay accountants well. The salary for accountants is predicted to stay above average for the next five years.
Whether you obtain an associate's degree or a master's degree, an accounting degree can provide you with an outstanding career. An online accounting degree offers a quality education that will prepare you for the intriguing field of accounting.


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On Dec. 16, the Obama administration is expected to finally release new standards for protecting us from mercury and other toxic heavy metals from power plant emissions. All of us have reason to be glad, but parents (and anyone who might ever want to be a parent) should especially welcome this long overdue protection. My wife Mary and I co-authored a column for Sierra magazine that explains why:
It started before we even brought our first child home from the hospital. Electrical sockets needed to be covered, cabinet doors secured, knives stowed out of the reach of tiny hands. We live in earthquake country, so we finally got around to bolting our bookshelves to the wall.
Like any parents, we'll do anything in our power to keep our kids safe. We know that our power has its limits, but that doesn't stop us from trying.
Getting the house ready was just the beginning. We were also determined to protect our daughter from less-obvious dangers. Well aware of the toxic chemicals that increasingly find their way into our bodies, we shopped for the healthiest foods we could find — and still do.
Of course, not all Americans have the same easy access to fresh, organic, and healthy foods that we do. In lots of neighborhoods it can be hard to find decent produce. But even so, you'd think there'd still be plenty of nutritious alternatives to fast food, like the humble tuna sandwich.
Not anymore. Tuna, like many types of fish, is often contaminated with mercury, a neurotoxin that damages the brain and nervous system, particularly in fetuses and young children. Mercury in the bloodstreams of pregnant and nursing women can result in birth defects like learning disabilities, reduced IQ, and cerebral palsy.
We've known about the dangers of mercury for a century. (It's what made the Mad Hatter mad.) We've also known how the fish get contaminated: primarily via coal-fired power plants, whose smokestacks spew almost 50 tons of mercury annually into the air we breathe.
A heavy metal like mercury does not stay in the atmosphere for long. It eventually falls to Earth, inexorably working its way up the food chain until it winds up in the tuna sandwich in some kid's lunch box — or on the sushi platter ordered by a young woman who's just become pregnant.
And that's where we get mad — both as environmentalists and as parents: There is absolutely no reason our kids should be exposed to this poison. The EPA was first charged with limiting toxic air pollutants like mercury more than 20 years ago, during the George H. W. Bush administration. The technology to filter mercury from coal-plant smokestacks is widely available. But there's still no national limit on how much mercury a coal-fired power plant can release into the air. It's like debating what kind of childproof latches to put on the cabinets while the kids are playing with the knives.
This past March, the EPA finally proposed a standard that would require coal plants to keep more than 90 percent of their mercury emissions out of the atmosphere. The new rule would also apply to such cancer-causing metals as arsenic, chromium, and nickel. Filtering out these poisons would prevent hundreds of thousands of illnesses and up to 17,000 premature deaths each year. It would be the single biggest measure to save American lives in a generation.
Incredibly, it might not happen. As we write this, the EPA is under attack by politicians whose first allegiance is not to American children but to the polluters who don't want to clean up their dirty power plants. Possible reason: The polluters shelled out nearly $30 million to these members of Congress who continue to vote for dirty air.
We know that it's impossible to protect our children from every possible harm. Inevitably, knees will get scraped and probing fingers will get pinched in cabinet doors, and that giant leap off the porch might end in a tumble. But to endanger our kids solely for the sake of polluters' bottom line? As parents, and as Americans, that's something we can never accept.
Article by Michael Brune, appearing courtesy ecopolitology.


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Report on Batu Tara (Indonesia) — 1 September-7 September 2010
Smithsonian Institution / US Geological Survey
Weekly Volcanic Activity Report, 1 September-7 September 2010
Managing Editor: Sally Sennert.
Please cite this report as:
Global Volcanism Program, 2010. Report on Batu Tara (Indonesia) (Sennert, S, ed.). Weekly Volcanic Activity Report, 1 September-7 September 2010. Smithsonian Institution and US Geological Survey.
Batu Tara
7.791°S, 123.585°E; summit elev. 633 m
All times are local (unless otherwise noted)
Based on analyses of satellite imagery, the Darwin VAAC reported that during 1-7 September ash plumes from Batu Tara rose to altitudes of 1.5-2.4 km (5,000-8,000 ft) a.s.l. and drifted 45-65 km W and NW.
Geological Summary. The small isolated island of Batu Tara in the Flores Sea about 50 km N of Lembata (fomerly Lomblen) Island contains a scarp on the eastern side similar to the Sciara del Fuoco of Italy's Stromboli volcano. Vegetation covers the flanks to within 50 m of the summit. Batu Tara lies north of the main volcanic arc and is noted for its potassic leucite-bearing basanitic and tephritic rocks. The first historical eruption, during 1847-52, produced explosions and a lava flow.