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This points seems to come up a lot these days.
Howard Berger made the case back in February. Virtually every Sundin article on TSN.ca or Sportsnet will feature several comments from fans that echo the same point. Most recently, eyebleaf made it today over at PPP (edit: and again later on his own site).
He doesn't owe them a trade. He doesn't owe them a hometown discount. He doesn't even owe them a straight answer about what he wants to do next year. He doesn't owe them a thing.
Well, I'm not going to get into a long-winded argument about loyalty in pro sports, because it make me sound like a cranky old man and I'll probably wind up banging my face on my keyboard until I look like Braydon Coburn.
So I'll just say this: for the past few days I've mentioned in a few places that Sundin has made $50 million playing for the Leafs. To be honest, I pulled that number right out of my peddie, but it seemed like a reasonable guess.
Well, tonight I looked it up. And it turns out I was way off.
Since coming to Toronto, Mats Sundin has been paid $73 million by the Maple Leafs.
I know it's pro sports and star players make big money and it's not like he's going to turn it down if they're offering, but.... $73 million in twelve and a half years. No first-team all star selections, no major awards or nominations, no 100-point seasons, and all of four playoff series won with him in the lineup. $73 million.
He doesn't owe the Toronto Maple Leafs or their fans anything at all? Not a thing? Really?
Thursday, May 29, 2008
"Mats Sundin owes the Leafs nothing"
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8 comments:
this is pro sports. this is the nature of the beast. sundin is not, by any stretch of the imagination, the only one pulling in that kind of loot. he's one of many, many, many millionaires in the game of hockey, and one of even more in all of pro sports. and he never demanded that money. if he did, then he would owe the leafs and the fans, us, something. but he simply signed the papers presented to him. teams aren't loyal to players, so why should players be loyal to teams?
there is no loyalty in pro sports. none. that rules out any player or team owing each other.and if sundin remained in quebec/colorado...he makes probably that same amount of money and is a first or second team all-star, has multiple 100 point seasons, and likely wins a personal award or two.
come on DGB, think about the calibre of teams that have played in toronto during the sundin era. who was on this team when he put up 94 points, and scored 40 goals? who have been the upper echelon type of players that have been here while he has put up a point-per-game every single season? nobody! just name the guys who have rode the sundin winger carousel...they are, other than #89, mostly atrocious...roberts was great, but by no means was he natural goal scorer or point-producer.
i don't think it's fair to bring up sundin's situation when it relates to awards and personal accomplishments. does the lack of personal recognition by way of scoring titles, etc. diminish what he's accomplished in toronto? i don't think so. i think you'll be the first to agree with me on the notion that sundin has never, ever, other than alexander mogilny, been surrounded with high-calibre talent, the likes of which would be on par with, at the very least, his own...There are some people at MLSE that "owe" Leaf fans a little more then something, but most of them wear suits. As for players owing a team or it's fans, Mats was never a no-show in a 4-game sweep and Mats never "held out" for a new contract while he was still under contract. That was Yashin, 2001. He really does owe Ottawa.
The only Leaf player who really owes anything is Raycroft: He owes us a goalie.eyebleaf...
I'll grant that Sundin hasn't had great talent around him. I actually wish he had demanded better linemates, but maybe he tried behind the scenes.
...and he never demanded that money. if he did, then he would owe the leafs and the fans, us, something. but he simply signed the papers presented to him.
... this is just silly. Of course he demanded the money -- every contract is a negotiation, and he (and his agent) would have made their expectations known.
I've never been one of those guys who thinks Sundin should give the team a massive discount just for the honor of playing in Toronto, but you can't dispute that he always made top market money with the Leafs, and maybe more given his contributions.
I'll certainly give him credit for never holding out or otherwise causing a distration over his contract. But the fact is that he was paid a huge sum of money over the years and now apparently doesn't think he owes the team a thing, and I think he's wrong.i guess that's where we differ. you believe he owes the team something. i don't. i just can't believe that. we'll agree to disagree.
did the jays owe carlos delgado something when his contract came up with the Jays? carlos made upwards of $70 million with toronto, and the jays didn't even offer him a contract when he became a free agent. did the jays owe him a contract? no. i don't think so. he was a free agent, they were moving in another direction, and delgado went to new york. the situation with sundin reminds me of that.
i just think now we need to focus on what we'll offer big mats.
general borschevsky:
your comment had me on the floor. raycroft is the only pro athlete who owes us something. he def owes us a goalie, lol. what a douche.Correction: the year I'm referring to regarding Yashin was 1999. The four game sweep was against Buffalo in the first round, he had no points, minus 4, but then wanted a new contract because he'd been nominated for the Hart. Sens let him sit out the entire year, only to have him back in 2001 for another 4-game sweep (vs. Leafs) in which he had 1 assist. Then they traded his restricted rights to NYI.
ReplyDeleteUm, what? You've got some great articles here, but this isn't one of them.
The Leafs paid Mats $73 million to be an elite hockey player for the duration of the contracts that they signed him to. He's performed very well, to the tune of at least 27 goals and 72 points a season and almost a point per game in the post season. On his way to becoming the highest scoring player in the history of one of the oldest franchises to exist in the league. What does he now owe, exactly?
Is it somehow his fault that other players on the team failed to live up to their contracts? Does he now owe us for the franchises inability to create a team with sufficient youth and depth to make a cup run a possibility? I fail to see the debt that Sundin has managed to accrue in these circumstances. He gave the Leafs the best years of his career, almost all of them in fact, he was consistently one of the best players in the league (despite his lack of all-star appearances), and for all this we paid him.
There are lots of reasons why you might feel that Sundin has an obligation to stay with the team, the fact that monetarily he gained a lot while he was here is not one of them. You pay a player $73 million over 14 years because he proved he earned that kind of compensation and proved that he will continue to perform, and Sundin did both of those things.
If you want to stress that there's something beyond a simple transaction of $73 million for 1000+ points as a Maple Leaf, then how about this: A star player chooses to stay with a team for 14 years, they don't make him. He chooses to do that with the knowledge that if he plays consistently at the top of his game the team can count on him and build around his abilities in order to achieve what they both want, a championship. On a winning team the player owes the team his best, and the team owes the player a chance to win it all. Mats Sundin never had a bad season, never threatened or complained over his contracts, and proved that he was the kind of captain a team could build around, the Leafs had 14 years to do it. Who then, is really owed here? Between Mats Sundin and the Maple Leafs, who did not fulfill their end of that unspoken bargain?


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Theresa May, the Shadow Leader of the House of Commons, today called on MPs to reject a proposed £10,000 "communications allowance".
"Of course MPs have a duty to communicate with their constituents. But we
also have a duty to spend our constituents' taxes wisely. With modern means
of communication, we can communicate with our constituents without spending
great sums of taxpayers' money. These days, MPs don't just rely on post
and the press, but on websites, email, blogs, text messages, and social
networking services like Facebook. The real risk of these proposals is that the money will be used for political marketing, and therefore give an
unfair advantage to incumbent MPs. I'm sure the sceptical public don't
want more of their taxes spent on MPs' spin funds."
I shall be examining the voting lists on this measure very carefully.

subset: commoncrawl


text: he Winter Palace (Russian: Зимний дворец) in Saint Petersburg, Russia, was, from 1732 to 1917, the official residence of the Russian Tsars. Situated between the Palace Embankment and the Palace Square, adjacent to the site of Peter the Great's original Winter Palace, the present and fourth Winter Palace was built and altered almost continuously between the late 1730s and 1837, when it was severely damaged by fire and immediately rebuilt.[1] The storming of the palace in 1917 became an iconic symbol of the Russian Revolution.


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Ten Most Common Pet Toxins of 2014
The ASPCA Animal Poison Control Center (APCC) in Urbana, IL., handled more than 167,000 calls involving pets exposed to possibly poisonous substances in 2014. Nearly 16% of those calls were from pet parents whose pets got into medicines intended for human use, putting this category at the top of the toxin list for the seventh year in a row.
Here are the 10 most common pet toxins of 2014 ranked in order of call volume:
- Human prescription medications are most often exposed to pets, as mentioned above. The prescriptions that caused the most concern correlated with the most popular medications prescribed to humans.
- Over-the-counter medications, including herbal and other natural supplements, attracted greater concern this year than in previous years resulting in approximately 25,000 calls. This category is exceptionally large, encompassing more than 6,900 different products.
- Insecticides dropped to the third slot this year, comprising 9.1% of calls to the APCC (15,000 cases). These products can be very dangerous, especially if the label directions are not followed.
- Household items were the cause for concern in more than 13,500 cases, especially paints and cleaning products.
- Human foods are appealing to pets, especially dogs. Dogs can get into serious trouble by ingesting onions, garlic, grapes, raisins and xylitol, a sugar substitute which can be life-threatening for animals. Approximately 13,200 cases involved human foods in 2014.
- Veterinary medications made up 7% of total cases in 2014. Pet parents should be aware that chewable medications are very tasty and pets might ingest an entire bottle if it is not kept out of their reach.
- Chocolate ingestion is very common. At the APCC, chocolate calls make up 6% of the total call volume—more than 30 calls a day! The darker the chocolate, the more potential it has to do harm.
- Plants represent approximately 5% of the calls to the APCC and moved up a spot since 2014. Most of these calls involve cats and houseplants.
- Rodenticides are made to kill mice and rats, but they can also kill pets if ingested. APCC handled more than 7,500 calls about rodenticides last year.
- Lawn and garden products round out the top ten, accounting for about 2.7% of all calls. Many of these exposures occurred because people did not store lawn and garden products out of the reach of pets.
Want more poison control information at your fingertips? Download our free APCC by ASPCA mobile app, which features a searchable database of more than 275 toxins as well as helpful information for pet parents of dogs, cats, horses and birds. The app helps users quickly and accurately identify common hazards.
If you have any reason to suspect your pet has ingested something toxic, please contact your veterinarian or the Animal Poison Control Center's 24-hour hotline at (888) 426-4435.


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MMF-2.3LE Turntable
The music hall mmf-2.3le turntable is a 2-speed belt driven audiophile turntable, with a special Ferrari red plinth, at a budget price.
Focus on Components
Constructed using high quality components, the mmf-2.3 has been simplified to focus on the critical components: bearing, motor, and tonearm.
The Complete Package
The mmf-2.3 comes complete with a tonearm and music hall spirit cartridge precision mounted.
Feature List
gorgeous high gloss Ferrari red lacquer finish
special vibration damping adjustable feet
top tier 8.6 carbon fiber tonearm with aluminum headshell
tonearm features a 4-point gimbal bearing assembly using ultra-precision ABEC bearings
tonearm is fully adjustable for VTA and azimuth
low noise fully manual belt-drive design
separately isolated DC synchronous motor for superior speed stability
two-speed stepped motor pulley for 33 1/3 and 45 rpm
music hall Spirit moving-magnet cartridge with replaceable elliptical stylus ($100 value)
the cartridge supplied is properly aligned and mounted
high precision stainless steel and bronze bearing assembly for quiet, fluid operation
high quality gold RCA connectors with detachable phono cable
full-size alloy platter and felt mat
excellent instruction manual
quick and easy to assemble
dust cover and 45 rpm adaptor
power supply 15V / 0-0.8mA DC
universal power supply
power connection 100 240 Volt
50 or 60 Hz
standby power consumption < 1 W
speeds 33 1/3 rpm
(manual change to 45 rpm)
wow and flutter 0.10 %
speed deviation 0.80%
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effective tonearm length 8.6 in. (218.5 mm)
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overhang 18.5 mm
product dimensions w17" x d13" x h4.5"
weight 17 lbs. pkg.


text:
You have selected a
Visa for Vanuatu
Visa requirements
Vanuatu is a dependent territory of the United Kingdom. The U.K. visa requirements apply. U.S. citizens do not need a visa for tourist or business travel to this country for a stay up to 6 months. A valid U.S. Passport is required. For travel with any other purpose, please contact the United Kingdom Embassy directly.


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John Hamel MacGregor Award in Medical Science
An Award of up to $10,000 for MBChB students enrolling part-time or full-time in a BMedSci(Hons) or postgraduate research degree in the Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences before completing their MBChB.
About the scholarship
Application status: Not currently open for applications
Applicable study: MBChB student undertaking BMedSci (Hons) or postgraduate research degree
Opening date: 19 September 2024
Closing date: 31 October 2024
Tenure: One year
For: Support to undertake research
Number on offer: Up to five awards
Offer rate: Annually
Value: Up to $10,000 each
How to apply
Scholarship applications will usually open around six weeks before the closing date. Please read the regulations carefully to be sure you are eligible before you apply.
Help and support
You can find answers to your questions about scholarships, awards and prizes on the University's online help and support centre, AskAuckland.
If you can't find the answer to your question, contact our Student Support Team.
- For questions about a particular scholarship, award or prize, please include the exact name.
- For scholarships or awards closing within the next three days, please mark your enquiry as urgent.
Technical issues or errors
- For technical issues or errors, the most common fix is to clear your internet browser cache. Then try again.
- If this doesn't resolve the issue, please send a screen shot of the page showing the error message or issue, and any details you can, to our Student Support Team.
Every effort has been made to ensure the information we have supplied is correct and up to date. However we strongly advise that you check the regulations, application forms and any other information that is available, to ensure you meet the eligibility criteria for any application you might make, and that you understand the implications of any regulations, awarding value and closing dates.


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When Landon Morris was diagnosed with hemophilia shortly after birth, his mother, Jessica Morris, was devastated. "It was like having your dreams — all the dreams you imagined for your child — just kind of disappear," she recalled.
Hemophilia, a rare bleeding disorder caused by a gene mutation that prevents blood from clotting properly, is typically passed from mother to son. Morris' grandfather had it, and she remembered hearing how painful it was. "It was almost like he was bubble-wrapped," she said. "He was coddled, because his mom didn't want him to get hurt."
But Landon's life turned out to be much different than she expected.
"He's wild. He's probably sometimes the roughest of them all," she said, as she watched the 6-year-old race around a park in Yuba City, Calif., where the family lives. "He leads a totally normal life. He plays T-ball. He'll start soccer in the fall. He runs and jumps and wrestles with his brothers."
His active approach to life is made possible by his medication — the kind that wasn't available in his grandfather's day. For the Morris family, this type of drug — broadly known as clotting factor — is a miracle, helping Landon's blood clot normally. And its cost is almost entirely covered by his father's federal employee health plan.
But for the health care system, such drugs are enormously expensive, among the priciest in the nation. Medications to treat hemophilia cost an average of more than $270,000 annually per patient, according to a 2015 Express Scripts report. If complications arise, that yearly price tag can soar above $1 million. The U.S. hemophilia drug market, which serves about 20,000 patients, is worth $4.6 billion a year, according to the investment research firm AllianceBernstein.
Examining the stubbornly high cost of these medications opens a window into why some prescription drugs the United States — especially those for rare diseases — have stratospheric prices. The short answer: Competition doesn't do its traditional job of tamping down costs.
Vying For Patients
The market for hemophilia medicines in the United States is flooded with 28 different drugs, with another21 drugs in development. Blood factor drugs are biological products — in this case, a protein — and there are no cheaper copies, called biosimilars, available. Not only do prices rise steadily as each new product comes on the market, demand is growing — and pushing costs upward — as more and more clotting factor is used to prevent bleeding episodes, not just to treat them.
Yet competition has not brought prices down in the way someone "operating at the level of undergrad Econ 101 would expect," said Jerry Avorn, a professor at Harvard Medical School who studies prescription drug costs.
The problem is that companies have no incentive to lower prices. Patients generally don't push back because insurers pay the bulk of the cost. And insurers tend not to object because the market for the drugs — expensive as they are — is small and the patients are especially vulnerable.
For drug companies, Avorn said, "it's a magical formula: Lifesaving drug, child at risk of bleeding to death — it kind of casts anybody who looks at costs into the role of some evil Scrooge-like person."
"The insurers don't want to end up on the front page of the newspaper saying Little Timmy bled to death because his drug wasn't covered," he said.
Also, because prices are high across the hemophilia market, no drug company wants to be the one to blink first. "They don't want to get a price war started and end up at a super low price point," said Edmund Pezalla, a consultant to pharmaceutical companies and former executive at Aetna.
So, these drugmakers compete not on price but clinical benefits — such as how long the drugs' effects last — and through intensive marketing. The pool of potential customers is so valuable that companies often vie directly for individual patients.
Manufacturers, as well as specialty pharmacies that sell the drugs, hire patients and parents as recruiters and advisers, hold dinners and holiday parties, offer scholarships to patients and even run summer camps for children with the disease. The Morris family regularly receives such invitations.
Dr. Jonathan Ducore, a pediatric hematologist-oncologist at the UC Davis Hemophilia Treatment Center in Sacramento, said some of his patients are persuaded by drug company presentations to switch medications. "But the real differences between the drugs are limited," he said.
Ducore tells his patients if he thinks they are being misled by drugmakers about what a product will do. "But even though the tactics may seem a little smarmy, if it's the patient's choice, you have to go with it," said Ducore, who has been Landon's doctor since the boy was born.
The first clotting factor products, which came onto the market in the mid-1960s, were derived from human blood plasma, with thousands of donations combined to create one batch. This proved disastrous in the 1980s, when donors unwittingly spread HIV into the blood supply. An estimated 4,000 people with hemophilia— about 40 percent of the patient population in the U.S. — died from AIDS as a result.
In the 1990s, manufacturers introduced a product that did not carry the disease risk of plasma-based drugs — made by cloning human clotting proteins in animal cells. Companies charged a premium for this ever-more-popular "recombinant factor."
Recombinant factor is difficult and delicate to make, said Steve Garger, a development scientist at Bayer, which produces two popular factor products at its Berkeley, Calif., plant — including Landon Morris' drug, Kogenate.
Inside a concrete building on the campus, kidney cells from baby hamsters are grown in stainless-steel vessels called bioreactors, and the clotting factor they produce is then purified in steel tanks kept in cold rooms. Working at full capacity, this factory produces less than a pound of clotting factor each year — but when diluted with other ingredients, it's enough to treat thousands of patients in 80 countries.
The investment in manufacturing and marketing is only part of the reason for the high cost of the drugs, said Kevin O'Leary, vice president of pricing and contracting at Bayer. Bayer does not simply add up the costs, slap on a profit margin and come up with the price, O'Leary explained.
Instead, he said, the company begins by talking to insurers, doctors and patients to get a sense of what value its products bring to the market, especially compared to drugs already available. Bayer then sets a price based on both its investment and the product's perceived worth. In the end, he said, "we're charging a price that's competitive with the other factor products on the market."
Bayer's annual sales from its hemophilia drugs were 1.17 billion euros in 2016, the equivalent of $1.45 billion in the U.S.
Pushing Back On Costs
In Europe, hemophilia drugs cost less than half what they cost in the U.S. That's because payers — usually governments — request bids and pick products based on cost and quality.
Without pushback from insurers in the U.S., "the price of any drug in the U.S. is whatever the market will bear as seen by the manufacturer," said Avorn of Harvard.
Recently, a few insurance companies have quietly started to push back on costs. Bayer's O'Leary said several insurers have approached the company and demanded rebates in exchange for offering the drug to their customers. O'Leary would not discuss the details because he said the contracts are confidential.
State Medicaid programs, which provide health insurance to low-income Americans and cover about half of hemophilia patients, already receive significant rebates from hemophilia drug manufacturers.
Michelle Rice, a senior vice president at the National Hemophilia Foundation, said she has been working with several insurers to help them manage costs safely. "We understand the need to control costs, but they can't impede access to the product a patient needs," she said.
It is not yet clear whether such efforts will work, let alone spread.
Sitting at a picnic bench at a park, Jessica Morris pages through Landon's insurance documents. Over the past year, his care cost over $120,000. She wonders sometimes what would happen if they lost their coverage.
"How much would you be willing to pay to have your child lead a normal life?" she said. "I don't think that there's anything we wouldn't pay or sacrifice for him."
It's a problem she prays they'll never have to face.
Kaiser Health News is a nonprofit news service covering health issues. It is an editorially independent program of the Kaiser Family Foundation that is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.
Copyright 2023 Kaiser Health News. To see more, visit Kaiser Health News.


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Sanitary Lump Breaker with Side-Removal Screens
March 8, 2011
The model RDC1515-SS sanitary lump breaker features side-removal bed screens for rapid, thorough wash down. Materials entering the 15-in. square inlet are reduced in size by dual rotors with three-point, single-piece, stainless steel breaking heads rotating with minimum clearance inside a curved, perforated bed screen. On-size material exits through apertures in twin bed screens ranging from 1/32 to 2 1/2 in. in diameter. The low-profile unit is designed to fit in restricted spaces between bulk storage, processing, and packaging equipment. Whereas conventional units must generally be unbolted from upstream and downstream equipment to access bottom-mounted bed screens, the new unit with side-removal bed screens can remain in place, allowing thorough sanitizing in a fraction of the time. Constructed of stainless steel finished to sanitary standards, the unit is suitable for food, dairy, and pharmaceutical applications, as well as industrial applications where cross-contamination is a concern.
Munson Machinery Company, Inc., Utica, NY 800-944-6644 www.munsonmachinery.com
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Fashion Handbag
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Some evolutionists have stated that creationists cannot be real scientists.
Some evolutionists have stated that creationists cannot be real scientists. Several years ago, the National Academy of Sciences published a guidebook entitled Teaching about Evolution and the Nature of Science.1 This guidebook states that biological evolution is "the most important concept in modern biology, a concept essential to understanding key aspects of living things." Famous geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky stated that "nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution."2
But is a belief in particles-to-people evolution really necessary to understand biology and other sciences? Is it even helpful? Have any technological advances been made because of a belief in evolution?
Although evolutionists interpret the evidence in light of their belief in evolution, science works perfectly well without any connection to evolution. Think about it this way: is a belief in molecules-to-man evolution necessary to understand how planets orbit the sun, how telescopes operate, or how plants and animals function? Has any biological or medical research benefited from a belief in evolution? Not at all. In fact, the PhD cell biologist (and creationist) Dr. David Menton has stated, "The fact is that though widely believed, evolution contributes nothing to our understanding of empirical science and thus plays no essential role in biomedical research or education."3 And creationists are not the only ones who understand this. Dr. Philip Skell, Emeritus Evan Pugh Professor of Chemistry, Penn State University, wrote:
I recently asked more than 70 eminent researchers if they would have done their work differently if they had thought Darwin's theory was wrong. The responses were all the same: No.
I also examined the outstanding biodiscoveries of the past century: the discovery of the double helix; the characterization of the ribosome; the mapping of genomes; research on medications and drug reactions; improvements in food production and sanitation; the development of new surgeries; and others. I even queried biologists working in areas where one would expect the Darwinian paradigm to have most benefited research, such as the emergence of resistance to antibiotics and pesticides. Here, as elsewhere, I found that Darwin's theory had provided no discernible guidance, but was brought in, after the breakthroughs, as an interesting narrative gloss. . . . From my conversations with leading researchers it had became [sic] clear that modern experimental biology gains its strength from the availability of new instruments and methodologies, not from an immersion in historical biology.4
The rise of technology is not due to a belief in evolution, either. Computers, cellular phones, and DVD players all operate based on the laws of physics, which God created. It is because God created a logical, orderly universe and gave us the ability to reason and to be creative that technology is possible. How can a belief in evolution (that complex biological machines do not require an intelligent designer) aid in the development of complex machines, which are clearly intelligently designed? Technology has shown us that sophisticated machines require intelligent designers—not random chance. Science and technology are perfectly consistent with the Bible, but not with evolution.
The main difference between scientists who are creationists and those who are evolutionists is their starting assumptions. Creationists and evolutionists have a different view of history, but the way they do science in the present is the same. Both creationists and evolutionists use observation and experimentation to draw conclusions about nature. This is the nature of observational science. It involves repeatable experimentation and observations in the present. Since observational scientific theories are capable of being tested in the present, creationists and evolutionists are generally in agreement on these models. They agree on the nature of gravity, the composition of stars, the speed of light in a vacuum, the size of the solar system, the principles of electricity, etc. These things can be checked and tested in the present.
Historical events cannot be checked scientifically in the present.
But historical events cannot be checked scientifically in the present. This is because we do not have access to the past; it is gone. All that we have is the circumstantial evidence (relics) of past events. Although we can make educated guesses about the past and can make inferences from things like fossils and rocks, we cannot directly test our conclusions because we cannot repeat the past. Furthermore, since creationists and evolutionists have very different views of history, it is not surprising that they reconstruct past events very differently. We all have the same evidence; but in order to draw conclusions about what the evidence means, we use our worldview—our most basic beliefs about the nature of reality. Since they have different starting assumptions, creationists and evolutionists interpret the same evidence to mean very different things.
Ultimately, biblical creationists accept the recorded history of the Bible as their starting point. Evolutionists reject recorded history, and have effectively made up their own pseudo-history, which they use as a starting point for interpreting evidence. Both are using their beliefs about the past to interpret the evidence in the present. When we look at the scientific evidence today, we find that it is very consistent with biblical history and not as consistent with millions of years of evolution. We've seen in this book that the scientific evidence is consistent with biblical creation. We've seen that the geological evidence is consistent with a global Flood—not millions of years of gradual deposition. We've seen that the changes in DNA are consistent with the loss of information we would expect as a result of the Curse described in Genesis 3, not the hypothetical gain of massive quantities of genetic information required by molecules-toman evolution. Real science confirms the Bible.
It shouldn't be surprising that there have been many real scientists who believed in biblical creation. Consider Isaac Newton (1642–1727), who codiscovered calculus, formulated the laws of motion and gravity, computed the nature of planetary orbits, invented the reflecting telescope, and made a number of discoveries in optics. Newton had profound knowledge of, and faith in, the Bible. Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778), the Swedish botanist who developed the double-Latin-name system for taxonomic classification of plants and animals, also believed the Genesis creation account. So also did the Dutch geologist Nicolaus Steno (1638–1686), who developed the basic principles of stratigraphy.
Even in the early 19th century when the idea of millions of years was developed, there were prominent Bible-believing English scientists, such as chemists Andrew Ure (1778–1857) and John Murray (1786?–1851), entomologist William Kirby (1759–1850), and geologist George Young (1777–1848). James Clerk Maxwell (1831–1879) discovered the four fundamental equations that light and all forms of electromagnetic radiation obey. Indeed, Maxwell's equations are what make radio transmissions possible. He was a deep student of Scripture and was firmly opposed to evolution. These and many other great scientists have believed the Bible as the infallible Word of God, and it was their Christian faith that was the driving motivation and intellectual foundation of their excellent scientific work.
Today there are many other PhD scientists who reject evolution and believe that God created in six days, a few thousand years ago, just as recorded in Scripture. Russ Humphreys, a PhD physicist, has developed (among many other things) a model to compute the present strength of planetary magnetic fields,5 which enabled him to accurately predict the field strengths of the outer planets. Did a belief in the Bible hinder his research? Not at all. On the contrary, Dr. Humphreys was able to make these predictions precisely because he started from the principles of Scripture. John Baumgardner, a PhD geophysicist and biblical creationist, has a sophisticated computer model of catastrophic plate tectonics, which was reported in the journal Nature; the assumptions for this model are based on the global flood recorded in Genesis. Additionally, think of all the people who have benefited from a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan. The MRI scanner was developed by the creationist Dr. Raymond Damadian.6
Consider the biblical creationists Georgia Purdom and Andrew Snelling (both authors in this book), who work in molecular genetics and geology, respectively. They certainly understand their fields, and yet are convinced that they do not support evolutionary biology and geology.7 On the contrary, they confirm biblical creation.
I have a PhD from a secular university and have done extensive research in solar astrophysics. In my PhD research, I made a number of discoveries about the nature of near-surface solar flows, including the detection of a never-before-seen polar alignment of supergranules, as well as patterns indicative of giant overturning cells. Was I hindered in my research by the conviction that the early chapters of Genesis are literally true? No, it's just the reverse. It is because a logical God created and ordered the universe that I, and other creationists, expect to be able to understand aspects of that universe through logic, careful observation, and experimentation.
Clearly, creationists can indeed be real scientists. And this shouldn't be surprising since the very basis for scientific research is biblical creation. This is not to say that noncreationists cannot be scientists. But, in a way, an evolutionist is being inconsistent when he or she does science. The big-bang supporter claims the universe is a random chance event, and yet he or she studies it as if it were logical and orderly. The evolutionist is thus forced to borrow certain creationist principles in order to do science. The universe is logical and orderly because its Creator is logical and has imposed order on the universe. God created our minds and gave us the ability and curiosity to study the universe. Furthermore, we can trust that the universe will obey the same physics tomorrow as it does today because God is consistent. This is why science is possible. On the other hand, if the universe is just an accidental product of a big bang, why should it be orderly? Why should there be laws of nature if there is no lawgiver? If our brains are the by-products of random chance, why should we trust that their conclusions are accurate? But if our minds have been designed, and if the universe has been constructed by God, as the Bible teaches, then of course we should be able to study nature. Science is possible because the Bible is true.
People complain about The New Answers Book. They say that it's so good at giving short, substantive answers that they want more. Well, we listened! In The New Answers Book 2 you'll find 31 more great answers to big questions for the Christian life. Many view the original New Answers Book as an essential tool for modern discipleship. Both of these books answer such questions as: Can natural processes explain the origin of life? Can creationists be real scientists? Where did Cain get his wife? Is evolution a religion? and more!
Read Online Buy BookAnswers in Genesis is an apologetics ministry, dedicated to helping Christians defend their faith and proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ.


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Marriage is typically described as a formal union between a man and woman, although in recent years certain states have been moving to allow marriage between couples of the same sex. In order for a marriage to be legal a marriage license must be obtained. As can be seen in the data presented below, the rate of those choosing to join in this union has been declining over the last 10 plus years. The marriage rate for the U.S. has consistently remained higher per 1,000 people than the rates in Michigan and the Metro-Detroit area (Wayne County, Macomb County, and Oakland County). The divorce rate in the U.S. has also remained higher in the U.S. than in Michigan; this rate has also been declining over the years.
The declining marriage rate has widely been attributed to increased cohabitation between couples and the decision by couples to marry at an older age. In this post we will examine the marriage and divorce rates for the Metro-Detroit area, along with the breakdown of who has been married, widowed, divorced and never married in the area.
All data for this post was obtained from the Michigan Department of Community Health and 2011 American Community Survey (three year estimates). For the American Community Survey numbers, the population considered was male and female residents ages 16 and over.
While about half of Detroit's population has never been married, data shows that males more than females were more likely to be married. More females in the area were divorced. Depending on the area, between 20 and 50 percent of residents in the Metro-Detroit area were married in 2011. Overall though, marriage rates in the area have been decreasing.
Since 1999, Wayne County has had the lowest marriage rate per 1,000 residents of the seven counties that makeup Southeastern Michigan. After 2001, the marriage rate in Wayne County began to decline (going from 9.3 in 2001 to 9.1 in 2002); this overall trend continued until 2007 when the rate reached 7.3. Then, in 2008 the marriage rate began to increase, finally reaching 8.2 per 1,000 residents in 2011. With the exception of Monroe County, all counties in the region experienced an increased marriage rate in 2011 compared to 2010. St. Clair County had the highest marriage rate in 2011 at 11.4. The overall trend since 1999, however, shows a decreasing marriage rate.
Oakland County had the highest total percentage of married couples in 2011 at 51.3 percent; according to the American Community Survey. The City of Detroit on the other hand had the lowest at 21.7 percent. The state average was 48.8 percent.
According to the American Community Survey, there were a higher percentage of married males in from 2009 to 2011 than females. Oakland County had the highest percent of married males with 55 percent; Oakland County also had the highest percent of married females at 50.9 percent. Of the three counties examined, Wayne County had the lowest percent of married individuals (40.9 percent for males and 39.2 for females). Also, Detroit had the lowest percent married, for both males and females, of all the areas examined above. In 2011, 25.6 percent of Detroit males were married and 21.1 percent of Detroit females were married.
St. Clair County not only had the highest marriage rate for 2011, but it also had the highest divorce rate per 1,000 people of the seven county region. That rate was 7.9. Wayne County had the lowest divorce rate in area at 5.4.
The number of divorces in the Southeastern Michigan area has remained fairly consistent since 2000 (long-term trend information on divorce rates for Michigan counties was not available from the MDCH). Wayne County has experienced the most change of the seven counties in the region; there was a drop of 1,614 divorces from 2002 to 2003. Since then, there haven't been more than 5,778 divorces in a year in Southeastern Michigan.
While there was an overall higher percentage of married males than females from 2009 to 2011 (as an average), the opposite was true for divorces. For Michigan, 12.3 percent of females were divorcees, compared to 10.4 percent of males. The percent of both divorced men and women was highest for the City of Detroit, 11.5 and 13.2 percent respectively. Macomb County had the lowest percentage of divorced males and females, 9 and 12 percent respectively.
Detroit had the highest percent of unmarried residents (percent never married) from 2009-2011 for both males and females. According to the American Community Survey, in 2011, 55.5 percent of males in Detroit ages 16 and older had never been married and 50.7 percent of females age 16 and older had never been married. Wayne County had the second highest rate of unmarried residents; 42.9 percent of males 16 and older and older had never married and 37.4 percent of females 16 and older had never married. Overall, there was a higher percentage of never married males than females.
Of the marital statuses examined in this post, the percent of separated married couples was the lowest. For the areas examined, the City of Detroit had the highest percentage of separated individuals. In 2011, the three year rolling average for the city was 3.8 percent for both males and females. Wayne County had the second highest percentage; 2.7 percent of female residents in the county were separated and 2.2 percent of males were separated. Oakland and Macomb counties were tied for the lowest percent of separated male residents at .9 percent; Oakland County had the lowest percent of females of at 1.2 percent.
The percent of widowhood is much higher for females than for males in all the areas examined in this post, with the exception of the state as a whole. For the state of Michigan, 10.4 percent of males were widowers for the three year average from 2009-2011, and 9.7 of females were widows. For the City of Detroit, 11.2 of females were widows while 3.6 percent of males shared the same status. Oakland County had the lowest percentage for both males and females who had lost their spouse; 2.3 percent of males were widowers and 8.9 percent of females were widows.


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My first wife was employed by a non-profit organization that took care of developmentally disabled adults.
Although affiliated with a nationally known organization, her particular office was managed more like a franchise. They got use of the brand but seemed to run independently — and with callous disregard for what was right and appropriate.
She would rant about the conditions in which she served, most notably about the unrealistic budgetary constraints provided to feed the residents. One example that stood out was that she was instructed to feed six residents with one can of tuna.
That was the tip of the iceberg. There were so many that the parent organization forced them to amend their name by adding "…of (our city)" to it. (Why they didn't just make them drop it altogether I do not know.)
Eventually, after my wife complained loudly and forcefully enough, they took action: firing her.
Anyone who has ever been axed harbors revenge fantasies. Usually however, time paints them over and, despite a residual dislike for ex-employers, we move on, hoping for karma to do its thing.
Most of the time, we never know. Once in awhile, we get to see it in action.
Months after her dismissal, the national TV news magazine, 20/20, aired a report on fraud in non-profits, which, joy of joys, was focused where she formerly worked. We watched with smug satisfaction as Geraldo Rivera, microphone in hand, chased her ex-boss across the parking lot, trying to get him to "answer a few questions."
Like I said, once in awhile, justice prevails.
How she and I felt that night is a little bit similar to how I felt recently after learning that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) busted and fined several companies for touting — yet again — more weight-loss "miracles" and for engaging in false advertising.
I don't understand why the last bastion for snake oil salesmen and flim-flam men is the get-thin-quick market. Our desire to be shaped like super-models with six-pack abs and bodies not found in nature — without engaging in any of the work required to achieve them — has caused more than one rotund soul to spend his hard-earned dollars on fake concoctions and deceptive claims. Rarely am I more satisfied then than when I hear tell of the demise of these con men.
Several years ago, in this very column, I went on a rant about one company that particularly got my goat.
Its make-believe claim was that you could lose weight without dieting simply by sprinkling an ingredient on your food. It would supposedly cause you to lose your appetite and therefore eat less. I felt back then — and still do now — that when you're in the midst of a eat-anything-slow-enough-to-get-a-fork-in-it binge, the only ingredient you can pour on your food to stop you from eating would be extremely fast-drying cement. It seemed like another too-good-to-true solution.
The FTC agrees, reaching an agreement where the offending company will shell out $26.5 million because of misleading ads. Other punishments were levied against a provider of a "slimming" body cream, who touted that all you had to do was rub it on your body and it would help you get thin and they put the collar on a provider of an unproven human hormone treatment, as well as one offering the all-too-familiar phony "colon cleanse."
"This is the second-biggest deceptive advertising settlement in FTC history," Jessica Rich, director of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection, told a news conference. "The chances of being successful at substantial weight loss just by sprinkling something on your food, rubbing creams on your body or just using a supplement, well, they're slim to none."
Anyone who tells you that has probably got a bridge in Brooklyn they're looking to sell.
About the author: Scott "Q" Marcus is a weight loss expert for baby boomers and the CRP (Chief Recovering Perfectionist) of www.ThisTimeIMeanIt.com He is also available for coaching and speaking at 707.442.6243 or facebook.com/ThisTimeIMeanIt.


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Once again ordinary people are being told they must sacrifice while markets are used to guarantee profitability for business. The debates on carbon taxes, are yet another round of prevarication and mendacity that delay necessary change while we edge ever closer to ecological catastrophe.
by Tad Tietze and Elizabeth Humphrys
The following essay was originally published at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation website (http://www.abc.net.au/).
What if one of the biggest debates in federal politics today – the increasingly hysterical and partisan debate on a carbon price – actually mattered very little in terms of the practical outcomes purportedly being sought: the de-carbonisation of the Australian economy?
First some basic assumptions so that this doesn't get into a debate between "believers" and "sceptics". We are talking here to those, like us, who believe that climate change is real, human-driven, and poses a serious threat to ecology and society. We proceed on the basis that the consensus scientific opinions on the nature and scale of the threat are roughly right, and that rich countries with high carbon emissions like Australia need to slash emissions by over 90 per cent by 2050 if they are to play a just part in averting a global problem.
Yet it is precisely the immediacy and magnitude of the threat that leads us to reject the argument put by Wayne Swan in his speech to the National Press Club this week, that the "only way to drive investment in [clean-energy] technology is to put a price on pollution. Only a market mechanism does the job." Instead, we believe that seeing a "price on carbon" as central to a low-emissions future, whether in the form of a carbon tax or trading scheme, is both inadequate to the task at hand and a dangerous distraction from effective climate action.
Furthermore, while many people who want serious climate action have understandably thrown their weight behind the current carbon tax proposal being formulated in Canberra because at least "something" is being done, we believe this represents a political dead end for the climate movement which will constrain the possibilities for demanding more serious action in the future.
Market mechanisms: theory and reality
A major problem with indirect market-based mechanisms is that they start by assuming that textbook accounts of how markets work match the operation of economic actors in actual markets. These are the same textbook stories and complicated economic modelling that assured us the GFC could never happen, based on an array of neo-classical economic dogmas that have repeatedly failed to predict market behaviour. Even progressive advocates of market approaches to climate action have to rest their claims on idealised theoretical models (such as when Greens MPs talk of "a properly-designed ETS") because there simply is no successful evidence base to draw on.
For example, it is claimed that a price on pollution will both drive reductions in pollution and promote innovation in clean alternatives. Yet differing strategies used by the US and Germany to reduce SO2 emissions (which cause acid rain) produced a different result. The German government simply told companies to cut their emissions, achieving a 90 per cent cut between 1982 and 1998. The US introduced a cap and trade market in 1990 but by the end of last decade emissions had only dropped by around 40 per cent. Most of the US cuts were delivered through the closure of a small number of smokestacks, and thanks to ready availability of cheap smokestack scrubbers and low-sulphur coal, with little innovation in industrial processes. By contrast, tough regulations in Germany forced businesses to innovate new techniques to reduce emissions (on innovation see here, p. 108-9 of chapter 3).
In the absence of ready and cheap new outlets for investment, price signals do not necessarily cause a move away from existing production, what is known as "price inelasticity." Australia has had very high taxes on petrol since the 1970s, but this has not led to a significant shift to public transport or clean energy vehicles. The lack of transport alternatives and government support for road-building and private-car culture mean that increased costs for consumers merely result in less spending on other things.
Size matters
This underlines the biggest problem for carbon pricing: the sheer scale of the fossil fuel economy means that even the partial success of the American SO2 scheme cannot be translated to carbon emissions. We are not just talking about the fact there are six gases involved, and in very big quantities. Carbon-based energy is at the very heart of the global economy and many other goods and services are heavily dependent on highly inefficient energy use (e.g. private vehicle use, aluminium production). The staggering size of the problem and the lack of ready-made and/or inexpensive alternatives mean that any serious transition will be costly and shake up the existing organisation of production.
It is not that a rapid shift to renewables is technically impossible – Beyond Zero Emissions has shown conclusively that "we have the technology." Yet price signals don't aim to directly shift the economy to what's needed to slash emissions. Rather, they act at the opposite end of the pipe, trying to promote changes in consumption so that eventually production will shift in response. In the absence of mass investment in things like renewables and mass public transit systems, as well as strict regulations on inefficient energy use and polluters, the end result is most likely to be a shift of the costs of the carbon price onto consumers as they struggle to pay for more expensive energy.
Decarbonisation versus 'efficiency'
The size of the carbon problem also reflects the scale of existing business investment in high-carbon areas. Pricing pollution is supposed to allow rapid and "cost-efficient" movements of investment into currently more expensive clean alternatives by making carbon energy less attractive. But it is more than current and future costs that must be accounted for. Most capitalist investment cannot be abandoned without a massive incursion into profits – even in a globalised world productive investments are sunk in specific geographic locations with expected returns depending on long-term use of paid-for machinery and infrastructure, not to mention complex supply and distribution networks shaped by established relationships with local authorities.
Talk of "efficiency," while sold as minimising costs for everyone, is really about making sure that large businesses pay as little as possible in any transition. Market mechanisms also leave decision-making in corporate (and polluter) hands: they can shift to alternatives or choose not to if that's more profitable even under a carbon price. Just one look at Australia's coal-mining and coal-power industries makes this clear – none of the carbon prices being talked about are anywhere near high enough to make these industries unattractive enough for a serious shift to renewable energy (estimated to be at least $100 a tonne).
Similarly, Sharon Beder argues of emissions trading:
What is good for the environment is not necessarily good for encouraging trade in a market. If the cap is too low and too few allowances are issued, or the baseline standard is too low, there will be few allowances or reduction credits for sale – because few firms will be able to reduce their pollution levels below the allowances they are allocated or the emissions standards set. Yet a low cap may be essential to protecting the environment. (p. 176)
Because of the size of the task of decarbonising the economy, price signals are a manifestly inadequate response. The politicians of the major parties concede as much when they set minimal reduction targets and talk of derisory carbon prices while planning compensation for big business polluters, promoting the coal-mining industry and doing nothing to stop new coal-fired power plants. We should judge them by their actions, not their fanciful claims about the power of markets.
A political 'Gordian knot'
Yet there is a deeper problem with not only carbon pricing but even with a solely regulatory approach, what Michael Shellenberger, Ted Nordhaus and colleagues call the "Gordian knot" of climate politics (pdf):
If policymakers limit greenhouse gases too quickly, the price of electricity and gasoline will rise abruptly, triggering a political backlash from both consumers and industry. But if policymakers limit greenhouse gases too slowly, clean energy alternatives will not become cost-competitive with fossil fuels in time to prevent catastrophic global warming. (p. 93)
Already the threat of rising prices has been used by the political Right to undermine public sympathy for climate action. And last weekend's Galaxy poll (graphic here) shows that 58 per cent of people oppose the carbon tax currently being debated, with only 28 per cent in support. Significantly, 73 per cent think it will leave them worse off and 75 per cent think it will have only minor or no impact on the environment.
This is not to give any ground to Tony Abbott's "direct action" approach, which is mainly about showering big polluters with incentives to change their ways, using ordinary taxpayers' money that would otherwise have been spent elsewhere (see p. 10 of this pdf for a useful summary). That only two years ago Abbott was contemplating a carbon tax underlines the hypocritical nature of the national debate.
Yet the Government, by trying to sell a complicated and inherently regressive market mechanism with no evidence of effectiveness, tied to an even more labyrinthine set of guarantees about compensation, is doing more to hurt the case for climate action than all the denialists and direct actionists put together. Why should ordinary people trust this government to do the right thing, especially when it locates this reform as the centrepiece of a revived neoliberal economic agenda?
A faithful servant of the business elites, Gillard must have a screw loose if she thinks she can survive ramming through these kinds of measures in the face of widespread community cynicism, no matter how many rallies and TV ads GetUp! sees fit to organise. Moreover, she has a profound inability to register how patronising her claim is that "people" just don't yet understand the technicalities of what is being proposed.
The trouble with five-minute memories
One of the defining characteristics of this debate is the way that the approaches on offer are sold as transhistorical, as if things have never been done any other way. So it is with the obsession with market mechanisms, a feature of neoliberal ideology that has only really been dominant since the 1980s. Even people on the Left manage to convince themselves that carbon pricing is something other than a paradigmatic neoliberal approach to the way really-existing markets are destroying the environment.
Neoliberal reforms, starting in the Hawke-Keating years, have also resulted in real wage cuts, a massive shift of national income from wages to profits, and an increase in economic inequality. Yet now we are expected to believe they will be used for good and simultaneously deliver social justice. Once again ordinary people are being told they must sacrifice while markets are used to guarantee profitability for business.
But things have not always been like this. When Australia needed a reliable large-scale power supply to undergird post-WWII economic growth, the state stepped in by driving the Snowy Mountains scheme. Author and climate activist David Spratt has pointed to an even more apt example of how a society can mobilize when under threat:
If you look at World War 2, at the height of the war, Australia was spending $3 in $10, 30 per cent of its economy on a threat; in the United States in 1943, it was 42 per cent of the economy. The economies boomed, real wages rose, profits were good.
Shellenberger and Nordhaus also argue that direct public investment (combined with regulation) can break the "Gordian Knot", by producing rapid emission reductions and driving innovation to reduce the cost of clean alternatives. And the UK Campaign Against Climate Change has driven One Million Climate Jobs Now! (pdf, with additional technical data here), which argues for direct, job-creating government investment in the zero-carbon transition even before regulating and shutting down polluting industry. It thereby seeks to mobilise unused human capacity by employing people to make changes to the economy to rapidly achieve needed outcomes.
In such cases it makes much more sense for governments to raise progressive taxes and/or take out loans to underwrite such large-scale investment, again a break from neoliberal orthodoxy. Restoring corporate and high-income personal tax rates to 1983 levels would raise much more money for decarbonisation (and other social goods) than any of the current price models being discussed.
All of these approaches would, however, seriously challenge powerful economic actors who have more to gain by preserving some version of business as usual. Indeed, to respond to the scale of the global warming threat quickly and effectively makes such a challenge inevitable. The question being: is there political will to do it? One has to wonder if the political will is even weaker than first thought, when you read that of projected global carbon reductions it is estimated the developing world will be delivering 60 per cent of the target.
Carbon price: The graveyard of climate politics
Finally, there are three related objections to our position we want to anticipate: (1) That no matter how inadequate a carbon tax is, at least it establishes the principle of climate action, (2) that of course a price signal will have to be in conjunction with other mechanisms like direct regulation and public investment, and (3) that small, politically-realistic changes now can be added to later in an incremental fashion. In many ways this has become the formal line of the federal Greens MPs when challenged on their support for a tax.
Yet this is an unreal view of what is actually happening.
Firstly, if an ineffective and regressive measure is used to establish a principle, it is likely to undermine support for further extension of that principle.
Secondly, mainstream political support for "complementary measures" has been almost completely abandoned. Last month's budget did nothing to directly encourage renewables, instead anticipating a carbon tax's magical properties. By backing the centrality of a price mechanism in Labor's climate change committee, the Greens have legitimised Gillard's neoliberal approach and undermined their own non-market policies.
Thirdly, the acceptance of incrementalism ignores the fact that global warming is not amenable to such approaches. The longer you leave making deep cuts, the harder it is to avoid catastrophic disruptions, and the more socially disruptive serious action will be.
Pricing pollution, then, is not just an environmentally and politically inadequate approach to "the greatest moral challenge of our generation." It is a positive distraction from the task at hand, likely to create greater cynicism and opposition to serious climate action within the community. When we look back years from now on this national carbon tax debate, there can be little doubt it will be seen as yet another round of prevarication and mendacity that delayed necessary change while we edged ever closer to ecological catastrophe.
Tad Tietze is a public hospital psychiatrist who works in Sydney Australia and tweets as @Dr_Tad. Elizabeth Humphrys is a complaint investigator for a public agency and tweets as@liz_beths. They co-run the blog Left Flank.


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Valve diseases
Your heart has these four valves:
- the tricuspid valve, which is located between the right atrium and the right ventricle
- the pulmonary valve, which is located between the right ventricle and the pulmonary artery
- the mitral valve, which is located between the left atrium and the left ventricle
- the aortic valve, which is located between the left ventricle and the aorta
Blood flows from the right and left atria through the tricuspid and mitral valves, which open to allow blood to flow into the right and left ventricles. These valves then close to prevent blood from flowing back into the atria.
Once the ventricles have filled with blood, they begin to contract, forcing the pulmonary and aortic valves to open. Blood then flows to the pulmonary artery and aorta. The pulmonary artery carries deoxygenated blood from the heart to the lungs. The aorta, which is the body's largest artery, carries oxygen-rich blood to the rest of your body.
The heart valves work by ensuring that blood flows in a forward direction and doesn't back up or cause leakage. If you have a heart valve disorder, the valve isn't able to do this job properly. This can be caused by a leakage of blood, which is called regurgitation, a narrowing of the valve opening, which is called stenosis, or a combination of regurgitation and stenosis.
Some people with a heart valve disorder may not have any symptoms, while others may experience conditions like strokes, heart attacks, and blood clots if the heart valve disorder goes untreated.
Symptoms of heart valve disorders
Symptoms of heart valve disorders vary depending on the severity of the disorder. Usually the presence of symptoms indicates that the disorder is affecting blood flow. Many individuals with mild or moderate heart valve disorders don't experience any symptoms. However, signs and symptoms may include:
- shortness of breath
- heart palpitations
- fatigue
- chest pain
- dizziness
- fainting
- headaches
- a cough
- water retention, which can cause swelling in the lower extremities and abdomen
- pulmonary edema, which is caused by excess fluid in the lungs
How are heart valve disorders treated?
Treatments for heart valve disorders depend on the severity of the disorder and symptoms. Most doctors suggest beginning with conservative treatments. These include:
- getting consistent medical supervision
- quitting smoking if you smoke
- following a healthy diet
Medications that are usually prescribed are:
- beta-blockers and calcium channel blockers, which help control heart rate and blood flow
- diuretics to reduce fluid retention
- vasodilators, which are drugs that open or dilate blood vessels
You may need surgery if your symptoms increase in severity. This may include a heart valve repair using one of the following:
- your own tissue
- an animal valve if you're having a biological valve replacement
- a donated valve from another person
- a mechanical, or artificial, valve
Valvuloplasty may also be used to treat stenosis. During valvuloplasty, your doctor inserts a small balloon into your heart where it's inflated slightly. The inflation increases the size of the opening in the valve, and then the balloon is removed.
What is the outlook for people with heart valve disorders?
Your outlook will depend on what heart valve disorder you have and how severe it is. Some heart valve disorders only require routine monitoring, while others require surgery.
Talk to your doctor about any symptoms you have that you're concerned about, and make sure you schedule routine checkups with your doctor. This will make it more likely that your doctor will discover any potentially serious conditions in the early stages.
- Category
- Services
- Type of service
- Surgery
- Cost of service
- Starting from $2500


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Latest GPU market numbers spell bad news for NVIDIA
It's Intel's fifth consecutive quarter of producing CPUs with GPUs integrated into the same package (if not on the same die), and, predictably, the shift has not been kind to NVIDIA. The latest numbers from JPR show the increasing bind that NVIDIA is in, with the GPU maker's shipping volumes down a whopping 28 percent from a year ago. Mind you, the rest of the PC market has largely returned to some semblance of normalcy, so this drop in shipments is not good for NVIDIA.
Meanwhile, Intel and AMD are both up at NVIDIA's expense, with AMD posting 15.4 percent growth in GPU shipments and Intel posting 9.4 percent growth.
The quarter-over-quarter story tells much the same story, but less starkly. NVIDIA is down 1.7 percent from last quarter, while Intel is up 14.2 percent and AMD is up 13.3 percent.
In all, it looks like a combination of in-package or on-die GPUs from Intel and AMD, and NVIDIA's bus licensing dispute with Intel, which prohibited the company from making chipsets with integrated GPUs for Intel's CPUs, has taken its toll on the GPU maker. Right now, the pain is isolated to NVIDIA's integrated graphics processor business, a business that dropped sharply this past quarter and that NVIDIA itself admits will continue to decline. But soon, the pain will begin to spread up through NVIDIA's still-strong discrete GPU business.
The simple fact is that, with performance from integrated GPUs rising at a rapid pace, the discrete GPU market is about to start shrinking right out from under NVIDIA. Intel's upcoming Ivy Bridge platform will feature an on-die GPU that begins to threaten the mid-range of the discrete market the way that Sandy Bridge threatens the bottom end; and the on-die GPU with AMD's Llano is rumored to be some three times the performance of Intel's Sandy Bridge.
So with its bread-and-butter discrete GPU poised for slow and steady cannibalization by integrated GPUs, NVIDIA will increasingly rely on a combination of ARM mobile products and HPC-oriented coprocessors (i.e., Tesla) to see it through the transition to "NVIDIA 3.0&...


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Holy Cow
Posted by ESC on July 01, 2003
In Reply to: Holy Cow posted by nickswuman on July 01, 2003
: Does anyone know where the expression "holy cow" came from?
From the archives under "holy":
: "Holy smoke!, 1889; Holy cats!, Holy mackerel!, both 1803; Holy Moses!, 1906, Holy cow!, 1942." From I Hear America Talking: An Illustrated History of American Words and Phrases by Stuart Berg Flexner (Von Nostrand Reinhold Co., New York, 1976).
: : : From the Dictionary of American Slang :
: : : "Holy cow!" . . . Equiv. to "Holy cats!" both being euphemisms for "Holy Christ!" . . . Although this term is considered to be very popular among teenagers, no self-respecting, red-blooded teenager would dare use such a weak oath. It is, however, the common oath and popular exclam. put into the mouth of teenagers by all script writers, and is universally heard on radio, television, and in movies. It was first popularized by the "Corliss Archer" series of short stories, television programs, and movies, which attempted to show the humorous, homey side of teenage life.
: : : Paul Beale , however, in revising Eric Partridge's Dictionary of Catch Phrases: American and British, from the Sixteenth Century to the Present Day cites a different origin:
: : : The orig. 'Captain Marvel' and 'Batman' oaths, 'holy (something harmless),' were in turn spoofed in later C20 by whatever seemed relevant to the situation: Nigel Rees, in "Very Interesting . . . But Stupid: Catchphrases from the World of Entertainment," 1980, instances holy flypaper!, holy cow!, holy felony!, holy geography!, holy schizophrenia! holy haberdashery!, etc., and adds, 'The prefix 'holy' to any exclamation was particularly the province of Batman and [his boy assistant] Robin, characters created by Bob Kane and featured in best-selling comic books for over thirty years before they were portrayed by Adam West and Burt Ward in the TV film series.'
- Bartisms v Batmannerisms Lewis 07/03/03


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It is the policy of the State of to ensure that people with hearing, visual and other disabilities have equal access to public information that is available on the Internet and the World Wide Web. It is the direct responsibility of the agency and its web page developers to become familiar with the guidelines for achieving universal accessibility and to apply these principles in designing and creating any official State of Rhode Island Portal.
It has been estimated that 54 million people or 20.6% of all Americans have some level of disability. This is a large segment of society waiting for opportunities to interact with all levels of government.
Estimates indicate that 95-99 percent of all Web sites are inaccessible at some level. These statistics are staggering considering the number of sites that come online daily. As of January 2000, there were an estimated 10 million Web sites online, by the end of the year - 25 million and by the year 2002, one hundred million. To date there have been no formal complaints filed against a governmental agency under the ADA of 1990. The use of the guidelines below will ensure that Web sites created by the State of Rhode Island are developed to serve the largest possible audience. Following these guidelines will also provide an added benefit to those users with text-based browsers, slow(er) modem connections and/or no multi-media capabilities on their computer.
The Access Board (the federal board assigned to create Section 508 standards) used the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative guidelines as the benchmark for developing their standards.
RI.gov has adopted the Design of HTML Pages to increase accessibility to users with disabilities as the primary guideline to meet the objectives of the Universal Access for State Design policy. These published guidelines are maintained by professionals trained in the area of assistive and information technology.
RI.gov embraces these standards and will be evaluating our site on a regular basis, increasing the opportunity for all individuals to access information over the Internet. The Universal Access Design Standards are being integrated into RI.gov and will continue to evolve as new technologies and opportunities emerge.


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CARDBUS(4) NetBSD Kernel Interfaces Manual CARDBUS(4)Powered by man-cgi (2024-03-20). Maintained for NetBSD by Kimmo Suominen. Based on man-cgi by Panagiotis Christias.
cardbus, cardslot, cbb -- CardBus driver
cbb* at pci? dev? function ? cardslot* at cbb? cardbus* at cardslot? pcmcia* at cardslot? XX* at cardbus? function ?
NetBSD provides machine-independent bus support and drivers for CardBus devices. The cbb device represents the CardBus controller. Each controller has a number of slots, represented by the cardslot devices. A slot can have either a CardBus card or a PCMCIA card, which are attached with the cardbus or pcmcia devices, respectively.
NetBSD includes the following machine-independent CardBus drivers, sorted by function and driver name: Network interfaces ath(4) Atheros 5210/5211/5212 802.11 atw(4) ADMtek ADM8211 (802.11) bwi(4) Broadcom BCM430x/4318 (802.11) ex(4) 3Com 3c575TX and 3c575BTX fxp(4) Intel i8255x ral(4) Ralink Technology RT25x0 (802.11) re(4) RealTek 8139C+/8169/8169S/8110S rtk(4) Realtek 8129/8139 rtw(4) Realtek 8180L (802.11) tlp(4) DECchip 21143 Serial interfaces com(4) Modems and serial cards SCSI controllers adv(4) AdvanSys 1200[A,B], 9xx[U,UA] ahc(4) Adaptec ADP-1480 njs(4) Workbit NinjaSCSI-32 USB controllers ehci(4) Enhanced Host Controller (2.0) ohci(4) Open Host Controller uhci(4) Universal Host Controller IEEE1394 controllers fwohci(4) OHCI controller SD/MMC/SDIO controllers sdhc(4) SD Host Controller Disk and tape controllers njata(4) Workbit NinjaATA-32 siisata(4) Silicon Image SATA-II controllers
cbb devices may not be properly handled by the system BIOS on i386-family systems. If, on an i386-family system, the cbb driver reports cbb0: NOT USED because of unconfigured interrupt then enabling options PCI_ADDR_FIXUP options PCI_BUS_FIXUP options PCI_INTR_FIXUP or (if ACPI is in use) options PCI_INTR_FIXUP_DISABLED in the kernel configuration might be of use.
options(4), pci(4), pcmcia(4), cardbus(9)
The cardbus driver appeared in NetBSD 1.5.
Memory space conflicts NetBSD maps memory on Cardbus (and therefore PCMCIA cards behind Cardbus) in order to access the cards (including reading CIS tuples on PCMCIA cards) and access the devices using the RBUS abstraction. When the map- ping does not work, PCMCIA cards are typically ignored on insert, and Cardbus cards are recognized but nonfunctional. On i386, the kernel has a heuristic to choose a memory address for mapping, defaulting to 1 GB, but choosing 0.5 GB on machines with less than 192 MB RAM and 2 GB on machines with more than 1 GB of RAM. The intent is to use an address that is larger than available RAM, but low enough to work; some systems seem to have trouble with addresses requiring more than 20 address lines. On i386, the following kernel configuration line disables the heuristics and forces Cardbus memory space to be mapped at 512M; this value makes Cardbus support (including PCMCIA attachment under a cbb) work on some notebook models, including the IBM Thinkpad 600E (2645-4AU) and the Com- paq ARMADA M700: options RBUS_MIN_START="0x20000000" PCMCIA addressing choice By default, on i386 and amd64, the kernel uses RBUS_IO_BASE as 0x4000 and RBUS_IO_SIZE as 0x2000. On some machines, this fails, due to a require- ment that these addresses fit within 12 bits. The following kernel options have been reported as helpful: options RBUS_IO_BASE="0xa00" options RBUS_IO_SIZE="0x00ff" NetBSD 10.99 December 31, 2014 NetBSD 10.99


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[Pages 141 - 142]
Top: behind the curtains, standing (left at the door) Issar Levitt
Micha Baron: The play took place in the hall of the Lithuanian school, which had 200 seats. The rehearsal for the play took place on the eve of my making aliya to Eretz Yisrael.In the picture, behind Issarke Levitt, you can see my shoulder
Henia Sneh (Blacher): There was an amateur theater in Dusiat. The moving force and spirit behind all the plays was Dovid-Leib Aires, who was the director, producer, set designer and actor.
Dovid-Leib Aires: Many of my memories are connected to the amateur theatre in Dusiat. I had a good voice, was considered a good singer, and if there had been good conditions for learning and studying at the time, I might have gotten somewhere. I recall my childhood, the Hanukah celebration at school. The teacher Hirshke Hammer was handicapped, and played accompaniment for me and Feigitzke Itzik-Moishe's [Zeligson], when we sang the song (in Hebrew) Yalda, yaldati, yaffa, yaffati as a duet. Suddenly Feigitzke forgot the lyrics, and stood there as though she were dumb. I continued singing the entire song by myself, and when I finished the teacher Hillel Schwartz came up to me excitedly and lifted me up.
I appeared on the stage for the last time in 1939. The premiere was in Maccabi. All kinds of Yiddish theatre groups and professional actors without permanent jobs used to go from shtetl to shtetl, and they also came to us. They used to carry out tests, select actors from the local population and include us in the play. We used to print tickets for the play. Sixty-percent of the take was given to the actors, and the rest was divided between Maccabi and Bikur Holim[1], which received the major share.
I remember one play organized by Maccabi in honor of the Russian revolution. I wrote the play, and it was called The Jewish King Lear. Among the actors were Berke Levitt, Meir Levitt, Leahke Visakolsky the king's oldest daughter, Rivka Aires the middle daughter, Efraim Zeligson the second son-in-law, and Shaulke Levitt the youngest daughter's fiance. Rachel Shub also took part. We performed in Dusiat, and afterwards we were invited to perform in Salok [Salakas] as well.
Rachel Vitkin (Shub): We also performed Amcha and Zwei Hundert Toisend [Two Hundred Thousand], and the best actress of all was Gitke Baron, who was an energetic girl with initiative.
Henia Sneh (Blacher): Gitke also played in Joseph and his Brothers.
Shayke Glick: I also remember the plays Chasya the Orphan and Mirale Efrat from that time.
Rachel Vitkin (Shub): We went out for a series of Gastrolle [guest-performances] to Antaliepte and Salok [Salakas].
Tzila Gudelsky (Shub): We, the little ones, were also included then and we danced ballet
Yoel Zeif: Noah Poritz was also a talented actor. He wrote the play Hanukah in der Kalter Sukke [Hanukah in the Cold Sukka]. Henke Slep and I also took part in that play.
Dovid-Leib Aires: There was also a prompter. Sometimes it was Yankale Charit.
Henia Sneh (Blacher): I remember Hirshel-Berl [Berman], Bune's son, who was the prompter.
Rivka Shteinman (Shub): Gitke Baron was an excellent actress, but she had the Litvakes defect and used to mix up the letter sh and the letter s. To this day I laughingly recall her doing this in her role in the play The Jewish King Lear, when she said the words: Reisht oif die slishl! Git dem kranken alten taten eshen! instead of Reist oif die shlissl! Git dem kranken alten taten essen! [Break the locks, and bring the sick old father food!]
In the play Satan in Paradise I played the wife of Dov-Berke Levitt, who was an excellent actor, especially in tragic roles. We had a daughter, a baby. My husband suspected me of being unfaithful to him, and he threw me and the baby out. I pleaded with him not to mistreat us that way, promised him that there was no basis for his suspicion, wept bitterly, and while doing so went up to the baby carriage and took out the baby, which was a doll, a naked doll The audience, which up to that moment had sat quietly and tensely, suddenly burst out laughing at the sight of the naked doll. When we went backstage, Dov let out all his anger at me and shouted: What did you do? You completely ruined the play! You completely ruined the play for me!
I was silently angry at the director, who hadn't worried about dressing the baby.
I had concentrated so hard on the play and tried very hard to memorize the words, and how could I think about whether the doll in the carriage was dressed or naked?
That was the end of my theatrical career
We Lack a Stage
Rivka Shoham (Melamed) (from her notebook [2]): Drama alternately arouses feelings of sadness and feelings of laughter and jest Opera is a tragedy or a comedy, in which the characters don't speak but sing, accompanied by musical instruments The operetta is a comedy in which the characters sing, accompanied by instruments, but in the meantime they also speak and argue without a melody Regretfully, our Hebrew literature is greatly lacking in plays of all kinds because it lacks a stage |
A Film in the Shtetl
Rivka Shteinman (Shub): I will never forget the first film that came to the shtetl. It was, of course, a black and white silent film screened on a sheet, on the wall of the firefighter's storehouse. However, in those days it was a rare and thrilling event. Like fire we went from house to house to announce: There will be a film this evening. While I was running, the wing of a flying beetle got into my eye, my eye began to hurt and tear, and - I didn't see the first film that came to the shtetl |
By Yaacov Charit
Have you heard the news? The actor Glivitzki and his wife are coming from Aniksht [Anyksciai] to Dusiat to perform the well-known play 'Bar-Kochba', and afterwards they will also put on the play 'Motke Ganev' [Motke the Thief]
This was the astounding news with which my friend Yoelke [Yoel Zeif] greeted me.
You need to know: we were four friends that were always together, and if you called one of us, all the four would immediately show up: Itzke [Shteinman], Yoelke, Honke [Glick] and Yankale. Years later Itzke became the husband of my sister Itkale and they were both killed in the Holocaust. Yoelke lives in Israel. Honke drowned in Lake Sartai beside Dusiat, and Yankale is stuck in the galut [Diaspora].
In order for you to understand why the shtetl was buzzing and its inhabitants trembled at the actors' performance, I need to draw you a picture of the Dusiat youth of that time, approximately 1926. Listen well:
The School and the Youth Movement
The youth of Dusiat was active, full of energy and life, imbued with the pioneering spirit. The source from which the youth drew its love for The Land of Our Fathers was the elementary folk school, headed by the teachers Hillel Schwartz, Yehuda Slep and Zvi-Hirshl Hammer. They perished during the Holocaust along with their students. Yitzchak Poritz (Porat) also taught for a while. The children of Dusiat attended the school, which had four grades and a preparatory class, for five years, and when they left it they spoke fluent Hebrew and were filled with love for their people and the Jewish history, and they greatly aspired to be among the builders of Eretz Yisrael. As an example they had former Dusiaters, the chalutzim (pioneers), such as Yosef Yavnai [Slep] and his brother Avraham [Slep], Yitzchak Toker, Daniel Zeif, Rasya Kagan and Rivka Levitt, and many more whose names I won't mention.
The ken [cell] of the Dusiat Council - a branch of the Union of Jewish Scouts Hashomer Hatzair in Lithuania - headed by Yoel Zeif and the Hashomer committee, was highly influential in the completion of the pioneering education. The clubhouse was located in the poor home of the Dusiat jester. At kibbutzim (activities) which took place inside dormitory walls or outside in nature, in the paltry Silvitzke's Grove of the farmer Silva, the scouts expanded their knowledge of kibbutz life in Eretz Yisrael, and argued about Hakibbutz Haartzi [affiliated with Hashomer Hatzair] and Hakibbutz Harussi, etc. They spoke only Hebrew and sang songs of the Shomrim [members of Hashomer Hatzair] and the Chalutzim
Every summer Yoelke and his friends organized outdoor camps for a few days. The camp was located in a dense forest beside the river, near the granary, on the land and with the permission of a rich Lithuanian. The camp left a deep impression on every scout and shomer, an impression that was never erased. You could say that the spirit of The Land of Our Fathers pulsated in the shtetl. It's enough to say that the signs in the shops were written in Hebrew and in the national language, Lithuanian.
Right to left, standing: Mirka Slep, Shoshana Musel (from Obeliai), Yaacov Charit, Henka Slep, Rachel Platin (from Obeliai), Noah Poritz, Dalka Slovo Middle row: Dov Shub, Zeldka Charit, Yoel Zeif, (-) Seated: Michle Orlowitz (from Rakishok), Tzirka Kagan, Itale Orlin In front: Shlomo Gurtwitz (from Obeliai), (-), (-) |
In order to complete the collective picture of the shtetl, I also need to mention the library, which was located in the home of Meir Levitt. This library contained books in three languages: Yiddish, Hebrew and Russian. Dozens of young Dusiaters ate and drank from this source, which numbered several hundred books. Obviously, the library could only provide a tiny amount of spiritual food to the residents, and they also enriched their knowledge from the newspapers Yiddishe Shtimme, Folksblatt and Dos Vort, which everyone in the shtetl read. However, since the cost of the newspaper was very high in relation to the shopkeepers' income, three or four of them became wise and together subscribed to one of each paper. More than once the news reached the reader four days later and after their main points had changed. But there was no drop in the readers' spirits. They all considered themselves experts and experienced in the rules of governing the country, and in the synagogue, between minha and maariv [the afternoon and evening prayers], when the shops were already closed, the people gathered around the iron stove that gave off heat as hot as in hell, and that is when they showed off their knowledge of politics. Each one noisily silenced his opponent, and holding the buttons of his coat lest he escape him, he proved to him with signs and wonders and with passages from the newspaper, that only he understood and knew what would happen in the near future. Each one tried to show that the fate of the anti-Semites would be black and bitter, the proof being: Anyone who assassinates Jews finishes up with the Angel of Death...
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Adventurous Travel for the Winter Season
There is something about the winter months that seems to awaken a sense of wanderlust in many people. Whether it's the need for an escape from the bitter, drab conditions or a desire for a break from the hectic schedule that often accompanies the season, carving out time to head south may be the perfect pick-me-up.
In fact, because of the cluster of holidays and time off from school, the winter months can be the perfect time to get away. A destination like Texas offers mild weather in the winter, not too hot or too cold, which makes for an opportunity to spend time at the state's beaches. Of course, the region is also home to a variety of unique activities, museums, restaurants and attractions that can be enjoyed during the colder season due to the climate. When planning your trip, consider these fun-filled vacation ideas.
Get outdoors. Many parts of the country are too chilly to enjoy much time outdoors during the winter months, but heading south to an area like the Rio Grande Valley, home of the World Birding Center and National Butterfly Center, can provide the opportunity to find some time to appreciate nature. If you're eager to see some wildlife, warmer climates can provide a true nature encounter, whether you visit a wildlife refuge or set out on a hike of your own. Plus, the moderate temperatures are appealing to many species.
Bring along your bucket list. Crossing items off your bucket list can be especially exciting when you're on the road. If there's an experience you've always wanted to create, there's no place like vacation to make it happen. For example, if you've never touched a stingray, visit an aquarium with a hands-on display. Learn to surf or go parasailing.
Experience local cuisine. One way to explore the true flavor of a new vacation destination is the culinary scene. Instead of dining at familiar chains and restaurants you can find nearly anywhere, plan your meals around unique, cultural fusion cuisine. On the Texas-Mexico border you can find hybrid cuisine featuring dishes like tacos, grilled steaks and cheese-filled tamales which serves as a nod to the unique crossover culture. If you're in need of a recommendation, ask your hotel concierges where they like to go for a hearty breakfast or where you can find the best patio for lunch.
Seek out unique attractions. The opportunity to see and experience things you can't find anyplace else is one of the best advantages of exploring a new place. A unique destination in South Texas like Quinta Mazatlan, is a luxurious historic mansion constructed in the 1930s that is thought to be the largest adobe structure in the state. Today, the home is open to the public as an urban sanctuary working to enrich people\'s lives by sharing knowledge about birds, plants and environmental stewardship.
Start planning your journey toward warmer weather this winter at TravelTexas.com.
Texas Tourism Board


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These three discs feature a myriad of interesting performances with the Dennis Brain disc particularly desirable as it includes a wide range of his all too brief work. I also enjoyed Brendel's justly-famous barnstorming accounts of the Liszt piano concertos which have plenty of energy in the Vox recordings featuring the Pro Musica Symphony Orchestra of Vienna.
Recordings are obviously variable but the CRD disc is near digital so it's fine enough. At Regis price this tiptych is highly recommended.
Copyright © 2011, Gerald Fenech