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Amor Mundi 3/1/15
Hannah Arendt considered calling her magnum opus Amor Mundi: Love of the World. Instead, she settled upon The Human Condition. What is most difficult, Arendt writes, is to love the world as it is, with all the evil and suffering in it. And yet she came to do just that. Loving the world means neither uncritical acceptance nor contemptuous rejection. Above all it means the unwavering facing up to and comprehension of that which is.
Every Sunday, The Hannah Arendt Center Amor Mundi Weekly Newsletter will offer our favorite essays and blog posts from around the web. These essays will help you comprehend the world. And learn to love it.
Amy Ireland is thinking about a genocide at the level of "genus-cide," the eradication of humanity itself. The threat is not weaponry but technology. And the exemplary precursor is the horse: "In the United States--where competition with the automobile was at its most intense--there were about 26 million horses in 1915. By the 1950s only 2 million remained." The question Ireland asks is whether humans are going the way of horses to be replaced by more efficient machines. Will artificially intelligent machines consume humans' fuel? "Far from being actively malevolent, an artificially intelligent agent endowed with enough power only needs to be indifferent to become a murderer. What are we, after all, but fuel? Atoms that can be freely disassembled and reassembled into something else - a thousand paperclip factories, for instance, or a massive supercomputer, capable of mathematical calculations we can't even begin to imagine in our current state of technological paucity. Even the clearly delimited goal of creating exactly one million paperclips can warrant the wasting of an entire planet, for a fully rational AI would never assign zero probability to the hypothesis that it has not yet achieved its goal.... There is something satisfying about imagining a malevolent artificial intelligence that actively wants to destroy us because it fears us, loathes us, or at least finds our existence frustrating and inconvenient. But the notion that something will destroy us out of sheer indifference is much harder to swallow because it forces us to consider the possibility of our utter insignificance. Bostrom surmises with all the level-headedness of a pure statistician that the odds against humanity's survival are overwhelmingly high. The default outcome of our construction of a single strong artificial intelligence is, quite plainly, extinction. His intention, naturally, is to raise awareness of the risks that lie behind this seemingly anodyne technological innovation and encourage governments, corporations or other entities that may one day attempt to build strong AI to implement rigorously tested control measures before letting the thing out of the box. All this is well and good, but it rests upon a deeper anthropomorphic supposition. What if the most radical gesture a flailing humanity can make at this juncture is not to increase its investment in security and control, but to pass it on? What if we are entangled in a larger evolutionary process that we never had control over in the first place? The real question then, might not be how to survive the construction of strong artificial intelligence but whether or not the survival of the human race is a good thing after all." Ireland is right to pose the question of "genus-cide," although her tone is a bit blithe. The threat is not the eradication of human beings but, as Arendt writes in The Human Condition, the loss of the human condition, those characteristics of being human like labor, work, action, and (sometimes) thinking. As Arendt writes, "This future man, whom the scientists tell us they will produce in no more than a hundred years, seems to be possessed by a rebellion against human existence as it has been given, a free gift from nowhere (secularly speaking), which he wishes to exchange, as it were, for something he has made himself. There is no reason to doubt our abilities to accomplish such an exchange."
Karl Ove Knausgaard was commissioned to travel from Sweden to the Viking's first settlement in Newfoundland and then drive across the United States in order to reflect on the state of America. In part one of his two-part "Saga," Knausgaard offers this insight into a specifically American form of poverty, the poverty of imagination and the abandonment of distinction: "I'd seen poverty before, of course, even incomprehensible poverty, as in the slums outside Maputo, in Mozambique. But I'd never seen anything like this. If what I had seen tonight--house after house after house abandoned, deserted, decaying as if there had been disaster--if this was poverty, then it must be a new kind poverty, maybe in the same way that the wealth that had amassed here in the 20th century had been a new kind of wealth. I had never really understood how a nation that so celebrated the individual could obliterate all differences the way this country did. In a system of mass production, the individual workers are replaceable and the products are identical. The identical cars are followed by identical gas stations, identical restaurants, identical motels and, as an extension of these, by identical TV screens, which hang everywhere in this country, broadcasting identical entertainment and identical dreams. Not even the Soviet Union at the height of its power had succeeded in creating such a unified, collective identity as the one Americans lived their lives within. When times got rough, a person could abandon one town in favor of another, and that new town would still represent the same thing. Was that what home was here? Not the place, not the local, but the culture, the general?"
Peter Railton gave the John Dewey Lecture at the American Philosophical Association Meeting this year, where amidst reflections on philosophical thinking, personal courage, and political activism, he offered a guileless and moving account of his personal struggle with depression. "And what of depression? Perhaps we all know the mask of depression, that frozen, affectless face we catch glimpses of on our students, colleagues, and friends. I can't do anything about that. But perhaps I can do something about the face of depression--its visible image in the minds of our children and parents, teachers and students. Because in truth, we are still to a considerable degree still in a world of 'Don't ask, don't tell' with regard to depression and associated mental disorders, such as anxiety, even though these will severely affect one in ten of us over the course of a lifetime, and often at more than one point in a lifetime. So there's nothing for it. Those whose have dwelt in the depths depression need to come out as well. Some already have, but far too few adult men (big surprise!), and especially far too few of the adult men who somehow have come to bear the stamp of respectability and recognition, and thus are visible to hundreds of students and colleagues. It's no big deal, right? We're all enlightened about this. Then why do the words stick in my throat when I tell you that another theme uniting the three episodes I have recounted from my life, and that has played an equally important role in shaping my philosophy, is that they were all accompanied by my depression. This moody high school student, this struggling protester, this anxious young faculty member--they were all me and they were all living through major depressive episodes at the time. And there have been other such episodes, some more recent. Thankfully, for me and especially for my family who have been through so much already, not right now. Did others know? I don't know. Some must have guessed--perhaps those who themselves had known depression in their lives could see the mask of depression upon my face. But the thing is: I couldn't say it. I couldn't say, 'Look, I'm dying inside. I need help.' Because that's what depression is--it isn't sadness or moodiness, it is above all a logic that undermines from within, that brings to bear all the mind's mighty resources in convincing you that you're worthless, incapable, unloveable, and everyone would be better off without you. Not a steely-eyed, careful critique from which one might learn, but an incessant bludgeoning that exaggerates past errors while ignoring new information, eroding even the ability to form memories. A young man once had the courage to tell me, 'My brain is telling me to kill myself, but my body is saying "no."' Happily, his body won. But it doesn't always. Every year, thousands of young men don't win the battle. We are captive audiences to our own minds, and it can become intolerable." Depression, Railton suggests, is still in the closet, and this causes untold pain at colleges, where, as a recent study shows, the mental health of college Freshmen is at an all-time low--something that will not surprise any of us who teach in this nation's colleges and universities.
In Railton's speech on depression discussed above, he also has this tidbit on meetings: "Oscar Wilde is still right--because the cost of building a society where the people have more say in how their lives are run is still many, many meetings. What is a meeting, after all, but people deliberating together with a capacity to act as a group that is more than just a sum of individual actions, and this sort of informed joint action is a precondition for significant social change. Come together, decide together, act together, and bear the consequences together. We must own our institutions or they will surely own us. As Aristotle told us, one becomes a citizen not by belonging to a polity or having a vote, but by shouldering the tasks of joint deliberation and civic governance. And there is no civic or faculty governance, no oversight of discrimination in hiring and promotion, no regulation of pollutants, no organization of faculty or students to initiate curricular reform, no mobilization by professional associations to protect their most vulnerable members or to promote greater diversity, no increased humaneness in the treatment of animals and human subjects, no chance to offset arbitrariness and bullying within offices and departments, no oversight of progress and revision of plans in response to changing circumstances, without actual people who care spending long hours in the work of planning, meeting, and making things happens. The alternative is for all these decisions to be made at the discretion of those on high--or not at all." At a moment when faith and participation in all institutions is rare and the pursuit of individual pursuits comparatively common, Railton's reminder of what Arendt calls the power of talking and acting together is worth heeding.
David Cole writes that the Senate Torture Report, when read in full, leads to fundamentally different conclusions than most of the headlines and early accounts suggest. Above all, the report blaming the CIA for lying may have missed the real story: "The full story is more complicated, and ultimately much more disturbing, than the initial responses--mine included--suggested. And because these documents may be the closest we come to some form of accountability, it is essential that we get the lessons right.... So why did the committee focus on efficacy and misrepresentation, rather than on the program's fundamental illegality? Possibly because that meant it could cast the C.I.A. as solely responsible, a rogue agency. A focus on legality would have rightly held C.I.A. officials responsible for failing to say no--but it also would have implicated many more officials who were just as guilty, if not more so. Lawyers at the Justice Department wrote a series of highly implausible legal memos from 2002 to 2007, opining that waterboarding, sleep deprivation, confinement in coffinlike boxes, painful stress positions and slamming people into walls were not torture; were not cruel, inhuman or degrading; and did not violate the Geneva Conventions. The same can be said for President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and all the cabinet-level officials responsible for national security, each of whom signed off on a program that was patently illegal. The reality is, no one in a position of authority said no. This may well explain the committee's focus on the C.I.A. and its alleged misrepresentations. The inquiry began as a bipartisan effort, and there is no way that the Republican members would have agreed to an investigation that might have found fault with the entire leadership of the Bush administration. But while the committee's framing may be understandable as a political matter, it was a mistake as a matter of historical accuracy and of moral principle. The report is, to date, the closest thing to official accountability that we have. But by focusing on whether the program worked and whether the C.I.A. lied, the report was critically misleading. Responsibility for the program lies not with the C.I.A. alone, but also with everyone else, up to the highest levels of the White House, who said yes when law and morality plainly required them to say no."
The Little Voice Inside Your Head
Adam Phillips worries about what's inside us: "We are never as good as we should be; and neither, it seems, are other people. A life without a so-called critical faculty would seem an idiocy: what are we, after all, but our powers of discrimination, our taste, the violence of our preferences? Self-criticism, and the self as critical, are essential to our sense, our picture, of our so-called selves. Nothing makes us more critical--more suspicious or appalled or even mildly amused--than the suggestion that we should drop all this relentless criticism, that we should be less impressed by it and start really loving ourselves. But the self-critical part of ourselves, the part that Freud calls the super-ego, has some striking deficiencies: it is remarkably narrow-minded; it has an unusually impoverished vocabulary; and it is, like all propagandists, relentlessly repetitive. It is cruelly intimidating--Lacan writes of 'the obscene super-ego'--and it never brings us any news about ourselves. There are only ever two or three things we endlessly accuse ourselves of, and they are all too familiar; a stuck record, as we say, but in both senses--the super-ego is reiterative. It is the stuck record of the past ('something there badly not wrong', Beckett's line from Worstward Ho, is exactly what it must not say) and it insists on diminishing us. It is, in short, unimaginative; both about morality, and about ourselves. Were we to meet this figure socially, this accusatory character, this internal critic, this unrelenting fault-finder, we would think there was something wrong with him. He would just be boring and cruel. We might think that something terrible had happened to him, that he was living in the aftermath, in the fallout, of some catastrophe. And we would be right." In other words, critical thinking is essential, but let's also recall that it is dangerous. All thinking is an attack on the status quo and the common world in which we live. That is what Arendt means when she wrote, "There are no dangerous thoughts. Thinking itself is dangerous." That doesn't mean we should stop thinking critically, but it does mean that thinking requires knowing when thinking is, and when it is not, needed. That is the moment of judgment.
Novelist Gary Shteyngart spent a week watching Russian television and living like a Russian oligarch: "Here is the question I'm trying to answer: What will happen to me--an Americanized Russian-speaking novelist who emigrated from the Soviet Union as a child--if I let myself float into the television-filtered head space of my former countrymen? Will I learn to love Putin as 85 percent of Russians profess to do? Will I dash to the Russian consulate on East 91st Street and ask for my citizenship back? Will I leave New York behind and move to Crimea, which, as of this year, Putin's troops have reoccupied, claiming it has belonged to Russia practically since the days of the Old Testament? Or will I simply go insane? A friend of mine in St. Petersburg, a man in his 30s who, like many his age, avoids state-controlled TV and goes straight to alternative news sources on the Internet, warns me in an email: 'Your task may prove harmful to your psyche and your health in general. Russian TV, especially the news, is a biohazard.' I'll be fine, I think. Russians have survived far worse than this. But, just in case, I have packed a full complement of anti-anxiety, sleep and pain medication."
Andy Greenwald considers what made the recently concluded sitcom Parks and Recreation successful and what it's legacy might be: "Art doesn't always have to be a dark mirror reflecting reality. It can and should also be a window, thrown open to let in every last bit of possible light. Parks and Recreation never quite resembled the real America. But every episode was imbued with the idea that maybe it could, if only we, the people, cared a little more and tried a little harder. The Wire, the greatest drama of the young 21st century, left us with a tough legacy to reckon with. Parks and Rec, the best comedy of that same century, gifted us with a beautiful model to which we can collectively aspire. I doubt the future will be as bleak as David Simon's vision for it or as rosy as Mike Schur's. The joy of being a TV fan is that we get to consider both. That's not a cop-out, by the way. That's a compromise, and one that even President Leslie Knope could accept. After all, Parks was built on the bedrock belief that opposing ideas could not only have merit, they could coexist. Like the show itself, it's an idea that sounds simple but in practice is anything but."
Lunchtime Talk with Ari-Elmeri Hyvonen, a Hannah Arendt Center Visiting Fellow
"Arendt's Critique of Modern Society as an Analysis of Process Imaginary"
Tuesday, March 3, 2015
The Hannah Arendt Center, 1:00 pm
Now Accepting Applications for Post-Doctoral Fellowships!
The Hannah Arendt Center announces three post-doctoral fellowships for the 2015-2016 academic year.
To learn more about the fellowships, including how to apply, click here.
Application Deadline: Thursday, March 5, 2015
HAC Virtual Reading Group - Session #5
HAC members at all levels are eligible to participate in a monthly reading group led online via a telecommunication website by Roger Berkowitz, Director of the Hannah Arendt Center.
For questions and to enroll in our virtual reading group, please email David Bisson, our Media Coordinator, at email@example.com.
Friday, March 6, 2015
Bluejeans.com, 11:00 am - 12:00 pm
Lunchtime Talk with Angela Maione, our Klemens Von Klemperer Post-Doctoral Fellow
"Figuring Rights: Wollstonecraft and the Right to Political Community
Tuesday, March 10, 2015
The Hannah Arendt Center, 6:00 - 7:00 pm
Film Screening, A Snake Gives Birth to a Snake and Director's Discussion by Michael Lessac
Synopsis: A diverse group of South African actors tours the war-torn regions of Northern Ireland, Rwanda, and the former Yugoslavia to share their country's experiment with reconciliation. As they ignite a dialogue among people with raw memories of atrocity, the actors find they must once again confront their homeland's violent past, and question their own capacity for healing and forgiveness.
Tuesday, March 24, 2015
Weis Cinema, Campus Center, 6:30 pm
Courage To Be: Lecture and Dinner Series, with Uday Mehta
Putting Courage at the Centre: Gandhi on Civility, Society and Self-Knowledge
Invite Only. RSVP Required.
Property and Freedom: Are Access to Legal Title and Assets the Path to Overcoming Poverty in South Africa?
A one-day conference sponsored by the Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College, the Human Rights Project, and the Center for Civic Engagement, with support from the Ford Foundation, The Brenthurst Foundation, and The University of The Western Cape
Monday, April 6, 2015
Bard College Campus Center, Weis Cinema, 10:00 am - 7:00 pm
Courage To Be: Lecture and Dinner Series, with Jeanne Van Heeswijk, Keith Haring Fellow in Art and Activism
Invite Only. RSVP Required.
Thursday and Friday, October 15 and 16, 2015
The Hannah Arendt Center's eighth annual fall conference, "Privacy: Why Does It Matter?," will be held this year on Thursday and Friday, October 15-16, 2015! We'll see you there!
This week on the Blog, Johannes Lang explores the moral and political consequences of emotion entering into the public sphere in the Quote of the Week. American moral and social philosopher Eric Hoffer provides this week's Thoughts on Thinking. In a special feature, we recognize Aliza Becker, one of her Associate Fellows, and her creation of the American Jewish Peace Archive: An Oral History of Israeli-Palestinian Peace Activists (AJPA). And we appreciate Arendt's engagement with Saint Augustine's "Confessions" in our Library feature.
This coming Friday, March 6th, the Hannah Arendt Center will host the fifth session of its Virtual Reading Group. We will be discussing Chapters 10-13 of The Human Condition.
The reading group is available to all members and is always welcoming new participants! Please click here to learn more!
The Aftermath of the Arab Spring: Women, Activism, and Non-Interference
In the two years since its inception, the Arab Spring remains an extraordinarily difficult phenomenon to define and assess. Its local, national, and regional consequences have been varied and contradictory, and many of them are not obviously or immediately heartening. These observations certainly apply to Syria: although growing numbers of the country's military personnel are abandoning their posts, the Assad regime's war with the Sunni insurgency still threatens to draw Turkey, Lebanon, Iran, and Jordan into an intractable sectarian conflict. But they are, if anything, even more relevant to Egypt. There the overthrow of the Mubarak regime occurred with less brutality, all things considered, than we might have reasonably feared. But, the nature of the country's social and political reconstruction nevertheless remains extremely uncertain, given the delicate balance of forces between the Muslim Brotherhood, the Salafist Nour Party, and the country's diverse liberal and activist camps.
The effects of Egypt's revolution have been particularly ambiguous for the country's women. To be sure, women have played a noteworthy role in the Tahrir Square protests in January and February 2011, and many local and foreign observers commented on the lack of intimidation and harassment they faced in the days leading to Mubarak's fall. But as Wendell Steavenson details in the most recent New Yorker, the protests were by no means free of gendered violence, and the revolution has yet to create a more comfortable or equitable place for women in Egyptian public life.
Let me touch on one example from Steavenson's article. Hend Badawi, a twenty-three-year-old graduate student, was protesting against the interim military government in Tahrir Square in December 2011 when she was confronted by a group of soldiers. In the course of her arrest, the soldiers tore off Badawi's headscarf, dragged her several hundred meters by the hair, cursed at her, struck her, and groped her breasts and behind. One of the soldiers also apparently told her that "if my sister went to Tahrir, I would shoot her" After being taken to a parliament building, Badawi was beaten again and interrogated for several hours before landing in a military hospital, where she was treated for severe lacerations on her feet, a broken wrist, and multiple broken fingers.
The next day, Field Marshal Mohamed Tantawi, at that time Egypt's effective ruler, paid a visit to the hospital for a photo op with a state-TV camera crew. Despite her injuries, Badawi confronted him: "We don't want your visit!" she reportedly screamed. "We are not the ones who are thugs! You've beaten us and ruined us! Shame on you! Get out!" News of the tongue-lashing quickly made the rounds on Twitter and Facebook, and when Badawi was moved to a civilian hospital, she used a video camera smuggled in by friends to issue a lengthier statement about her ordeal. The resulting video went viral, and independent TV stations used it to challenge government claims that the Army had not used violence against civilians.
One might expect that Badawi would be honored for her courage and conviction, and I can only imagine that she is, at least among pro-democracy activists. But her family, which happened to sympathize with the Mubarak regime, was appalled. Badawi had gone to Tahrir Square without informing them, and they blamed her not only for the violent treatment she had received, but also for the damage they believed she had done to the family's reputation. Badawi's relatives locked her in her room; her elderly aunt yelled at her frequently; and her brother Ahmed hit her. Later, when Badawi's family did not allow her to return to Tahrir for the first anniversary of the revolution, she basically reenacted the protests of the previous year—only this time on a more intimate scale. As she related to Steavenson, she launched a hunger strike to protest her treatment at her family's hands and made placards that read, "Hend wants to topple the siege! Down with Ahmed!"
Badawi's experience is particular and inevitably her own, but it nevertheless exemplifies the conundrums that many women face in contemporary Egypt. As the daughter of a pious rural family, she has benefitted from the increasing levels of affluence, education, and occupational opportunity that at least some young people, both women and men, have enjoyed over the past several decades. But she has also come face to face with the possibilities and the limits created by Egypt's Islamic Revival, which has established new expectations for women's comportment on the street and in other public institutions. (If many women in Cairo went bareheaded and wore skirts and blouses at the beginning of Mubarak's reign, almost all now wear headscarves, and the niqab is not an uncommon sight.) Finally, Badawi's life has been shaped not simply by her family's notions of appropriate womanly behavior, but by a wider climate of pervasive sexual harassment. According to one 2008 survey, sixty percent of Egyptian men admit to having harassed a woman, and the country's police and security forces either openly condone such treatment or engage in even more serious assaults themselves.
Badawi chafes at the "customs and traditions"—a common Arabic phrase, which she employs sardonically—that mold and circumscribe her life. And, like at least some other women, she regards Egypt's recent upheaval as a potential opening, an "opportunity to mix my inner revolution with the revolution of my country". But it is significant, I think, that Badawi does not seek a "Western" form of women's equality and emancipation. Although she appreciates "the space and freedom" that appear to be available to women on American TV shows, she nevertheless intends to pursue them "in the context of my religion". At the same time, many of the reforms that she and other women's advocates might champion are now thoroughly tainted by their association with the autocratic Mubarak regime. For example, many Egyptians dismiss recent amendments to the country's "personal-status laws"—which allowed women to initiate no-fault divorces and enhanced their child-custody rights—as cosmetic changes that only aimed to improve the government's international image. Many other citizens, meanwhile, view Mubarak's 2010 effort to mandate a quota for female members of parliament as a patent violation of democratic procedure.
These developments offer no clear path forward for Badawi and other Egyptian women, whether or not they regard themselves as activists. But they also pose a distinct challenge to outside observers—like me—who sympathize with their efforts to transform Egyptian society. Ten years ago, the Columbia anthropologist Lila Abu-Lughod drew on the impending American invasion of Afghanistan to question the notion that the U.S. should "save" Muslim women from oppression. Instead of adopting a position of patronizing superiority, Abu-Lughod urged concerned Americans to ally themselves with local activists in the Middle East and to work with them on the issues that they deemed most important. In the context of the Arab Spring, however, even this advice appears to have its shortcomings. I worry that American (or wider "Western") support for women like Hend Badawi, however well-meaning, will unintentionally undermine the very reforms that the activists themselves favor. I also suspect that a considerable number of Egyptians will resent even the most "enlightened" coalitions as yet another instance of anti-democratic meddling if not neo-colonial imposition. After all, the U.S. did much to keep Mubarak in power for thirty years. Why now should Americans, whether they are affiliated with the U.S. government or not, attempt to intervene even indirectly in Egypt's transformation?
I certainly believe, from a political and scholarly perspective, that Americans should care a great deal about the consequences of the revolutions in Egypt and other North African and Middle Eastern states. In the end, however, I wonder if the most advisable practical course may be to adopt an attitude of principled non-interference in those cases where mass violence is not imminent. In short, we should allow Egyptians (and other Middle Easterners) room to work out the consequences and implications of the Arab Spring on their own, even if we are not entirely comfortable with the results.
-Jeff Jurgens
Note: Lila Abu-Lughod's argument, which I reference near the end of this post, appears in "Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving? Anthropological Reflections on Cultural Relativism and its Others." American Anthropologist 104.3 (2002): 783-790.
"Ojos Sin Luz" (Eyes Without Light)-Dan Gettinger
Dan Gettinger is a student at Bard College.
Lately I've been reflecting on my activity surrounding Occupy Wall St. Remembering the minutes before I was arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge, I wonder what I was thinking in those moments. The truth is that I was there largely by accident. I read about the Occupy movement and a friend of mine who had gone down encouraged me to go that weekend. One thing led to another and I was spending eight hours at One Police Plaza, NYC. What led me there? Why did the NYPD decide to arrest 749 people? Why are people pitted against each other in anger?
These questions flew through my mind in a nervous rush in those interminable minutes. As my friend in front of me got hauled away he told me to call his Mom. A girl next to me scribbled a phone number on my arm but, sadly, it was that of the National Lawyers Guild and not hers. I looked up to another Bard student who was safe on the pedestrian walkway and smiled. Chaos and distress and sadness were etched across the faces of those around me. As I came to the realization that I would be arrested I felt more at ease and relaxed. And alone.
All my life I've been for or against something. Growing up overseas I was for America; representing a homeland that I barely knew but swelled with pride over. In the past decade it has become starker. I despised Bush and loved Obama, protesting one and campaigning for the other. My generation is one of extremes and totalities. We grew up defined by the trespasses of the last President, and now we watch as our confidence in this one seeps away. With a crushingly uncertain future we grasp at hope, looking to fill this void with promises.
Why is this? How is that we are so empty that we must be filled with language that is distilled into slogans and ideologically transparent? Why do we allow ourselves to be categorized and set into camps against each other? I think it is because we are lonely. A generation of drifters set loose by the misdeeds of those who came before. Around us we see everything being commodified and isolated. We value the world in terms of totalities, the cold language of polls. Discussion becomes debate. Politics becomes personal. Language gives leeway to the violence of our time. Philip Cushman writes, "We are told by self psychology and object relations theory that the empty self is the natural configuration of human being... that the essence of psychological growth is consumption". Ideas become values, a list of priorities rather than inquisitions. Instead of questioning the origin of a problem, we invest in the answer. The world becomes a sheet of cookie-cutter shapes and we, the unseeing eyes of selfish sentimentality.
Occupy Wall St. has exposed us as a generation of reactionaries. This era is one of immediate responses instigated by the ceaseless swirl of the cyber world. The Internet, modern telecommunications and globalization outline our existence. The information age confines our imagination, creating shapes in which we can mindlessly ease into. It conditions our thoughts. "The greatest poverty is not to live/ In a physical world, to feel that one's desire/ Is too difficult to tell from despair," says the poet Wallace Stevens. The compression of information and language forces immediate reactions, instinctual expressions of sentiment. Instead of taking the time to think, our feelings gush into the abyss that is the Internet. And lost. 'Once more into the breach!' shouts the exhausted soldier and student alike.
The power of online reaction in the cyber world has prompted the opposite in the physical. I see it in the ease in which students are called 'apathetic'. Apathy is the absence of pathos, the detriment of passion. Students, the supposed vanguard for intellectual pursuit, are considered to be endowed with such an extreme indifference that we are devoid of concern, excitement or motivation. This word shows the extent to which isolation has infested our campuses and social activity. It reveals how difficult it has become to really engage with politics and to create community. When the ancient Greeks entered into the public realm of life they expected to enter into discussion with each other. We've seen the opposite occur. As a result of the outpouring of ourselves in the cyber world we withdraw from the physical, preferring to slide into a virtual abstraction of reality and of ourselves. Our passion is put towards filling that inner void and in doing so we exhaust ourselves in chasing our own superficial creations. We live in a TV democracy, secure in our insecurity.
Hannah Arendt writes that loneliness leads to complacency, an unwillingness to judge truthfully and think. We fill ourselves with the tenets of ideology and in doing so we build walls around each other. This isolation prevents communication. It destroys dialogue and leaves us more susceptible to the shallow language of ideologues.
I'm far from regretting my experience on the bridge. It brought so much that I was feeling to the fore and was an illustration of the frustrations of a generation. But I do not revel in that act nor do I celebrate the movement as the answer anymore. The minute that we begin to consider Occupy Wall St the answer to our problems is the time to stop and think. Here is the time to re-evaluate the reasons why it's happening and why we should support it. It's when we've commodified Occupy, making the movement more about ourselves than the problems it confronts. That's when our loneliness is exposed.
The greatness of Occupy Wall St is that it gives people the opportunity to think. The absence of demands or a structured hierarchy allows the true problems that plague this nation to come first. It begins to cleanse the mind of all these barricades we've erected around ourselves by providing a space to talk about issues like class and privilege that we haven't confronted in decades. We've come to the threshold where unless we get a hard punch to the gut we'll continue to resort to phrases and slogans, packaging up our thoughts into sound bites and deluding ourselves with the belief that this is thinking.
David Graeber writes that the word revolution does not, and cannot, mean "a single, cataclysmic break with past structures of oppression," a storming of the Winter Palace or Bastille. It is rather exposing and de-legitimizing the origins of an oppressive system, striking down the pillar of injustice that fuels our plight. Some of those in Occupy Wall St may say that pillar is the bankers that control our democracy. I say the roots of these dark times are within us. They're the fictitious frames, the keyholes and the kissing booths that we use to define our world. A society predicated on constant caffeinated consumption, seeking desperate deliverance in passing fashions, is a violent one. One that seduces our imagination, leaving it languishing in infomercials and Italian leather. We may not be the cause of this crisis, but our complacency leaves us complicit.
Do not expect the revolution to be televised nor even talked about immediately. Hannah Arendt says that true thought occurs in solitude, in those quiet moments of intense reflection. This follows from the Socratic notion that thinking in solitude is the "conversation one has with oneself," a particularly active questioning and critical self-examination.
I would add that the validation of these thoughts occurs in dialogue with others, in the inter-personal connections that we form through experience. Thinking is the relentless investigation of an idea, it's an exploration, but it's also engaging with others in this way on a non-emotional level, allowing for a substantive discourse. To separate one self from an idea and be open to the thoughts of others is an extremely difficult process that requires patience and critical listening. But it's here where we must begin. The lack of curiosity is the greatest symptom of being lonely and the surest way to complacency. Questioning and imagining are activities essential to our freedom.
The raids with batons and bulldozers continue to intrude on unstructured spaces across the nation. The future of Occupy Wall St is impossible to predict and the consequences even more difficult to anticipate. However, we may be certain that Liberty Square has reminded us of a far darker occupation that exists within each of us. An oppressive installment in our hearts that leaves us yearning and fighting for the illusive insoluble 'I'. But, "sudden as a shaft of sunlight," we are experiencing ways of thinking and acting that free us from the past and future, placing this movement in our moment.
-Dan Gettinger


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Brevital Sodium
CHMP Backs Combo Drug Orkambi for Cystic Fibrosis »
"The cystic fibrosis (CF) drug Orkambi (Vertex Pharmaceuticals) has received a green light from the European Medicines Agency (EMA) Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use (CHMP).
Orkambi is a fixed-dose oral combination "...
Read the CHMP Backs Combo Drug Orkambi for Cystic Fibrosis article »
Brevital Sodium
Brevital Sodium can be used in adults as follows:
- For intravenous induction of anesthesia prior to the use of other general anesthetic agents.
- For intravenous induction of anesthesia and as an adjunct to subpotent inhalational anesthetic agents (such as nitrous oxide in oxygen) for short surgical procedures; Brevital Sodium may be given by infusion or intermittent injection.
- For use along with other parenteral agents, usually narcotic analgesics, to supplement subpotent inhalational anesthetic agents (such as nitrous oxide in oxygen) for longer surgical procedures.
- As intravenous anesthesia for short surgical, diagnostic, or therapeutic procedures associated with minimal painful stimuli (see WARNINGS).
- As an agent for inducing a hypnotic state.
Brevital Sodium can be used in pediatric patients older than 1 month as follows:
- For rectal or intramuscular induction of anesthesia prior to the use of other general anesthetic agents.
- For rectal or intramuscular induction of anesthesia and as an adjunct to subpotent inhalational anesthetic agents for short surgical procedures.
- As rectal or intramuscular anesthesia for short surgical, diagnostic, or therapeutic procedures associated with minimal painful stimuli.
Facilities for assisting ventilation and administering oxygen are necessary adjuncts for all routes of administration of anesthesia. Since cardiorespiratory arrest may occur, patients should be observed carefully during and after use of Brevital Sodium. Age- and size-appropriate resuscitative equipment (ie, intubation and cardioversion equipment, oxygen, suction, and a secure intravenous line) and personnel qualified in its use must be immediately available.
Preanesthetic medication is generally advisable. Brevital Sodium may be used with any of the recognized preanesthetic medications.
Preparation Of Solution
Solutions of Brevital Sodium should be freshly prepared and used promptly. Reconstituted solutions of Brevital Sodium are chemically stable at room temperature for 24 hours.
ONLY USE BACTERIOSTATIC-FREE DILUENT – Recommended diluents are based on route of administration (see dilution instructions).
Incompatible diluents: Lactated Ringer's Injection
Dilution Instructions
1% solutions (10 mg/mL) should be prepared for intermittent intravenous and rectal administration; 0.2% solutions (2 mg/mL) should be prepared for continuous intravenous drug administration; 5% solutions (50 mg/mL) should be prepared for intramuscular administration. .
Contents of vials should be diluted as follows:
FOR INTERMITTENT INTRAVENOUS and RECTAL ADMINISTRATION
The preferred diluent for intermittent intravenous and rectal administration is Sterile Water for Injection. 5% Dextrose Injection, or 0.9% Sodium Chloride Injection are also acceptable diluents.
|Amount of Diluent to Be Added to the Contents of the Brevital Vial
|For 1% methohexital solution (10 mg/mL)
|500 mg
|50 mL
|no further dilution needed
|2.5 g
|15 mL
|add to 235 mL diluent for 250 mL total volume
When the first dilution is made with the 2.5 g, the solution in the vial will be yellow. When further diluted to make a 1% solution, it must be clear and colorless or should not be used.
For continuous drip anesthesia, prepare a 0.2% solution by adding 500 mg of Brevital Sodium to 250mL of diluent. For this dilution, either 5% glucose solution or isotonic (0.9%) sodium chloride solution ONLY is recommended as the diluent instead of sterile water for injection in order to avoid extreme hypotonicity.
|Amount of Diluent to Be Added to the Contents of the Brevital Vial
|For 0.2% methohexital solution (2mg/mL)
|500 mg
|15 mL
|add to 235 mL diluent for 250 mL total volume
The preferred diluent for intramuscular administration is Sterile Water for Injection. 0.9% Sodium Chloride Injection is also an acceptable diluent.
|Amount of Diluent to Be Added to the Contents of the Brevital Vial
|For 5% methohexital solution (50 mg/mL)
|500 mg
|10 mL
|no further dilution needed
|2.5 g
|50 mL
|no further dilution needed
Dosage is highly individualized; the drug should be administered only by those completely familiar with its quantitative differences from other barbiturate anesthetics.
Brevital Sodium is administered intravenously in a concentration of no higher than 1%. Higher concentrations markedly increase the incidence of muscular movements and irregularities in respiration and blood pressure.
Induction Of anesthesia
For induction of anesthesia, a 1% solution is administered at a rate of about 1 mL/5 seconds. Gaseous anesthetics and/or skeletal muscle relaxants may be administered concomitantly. The dose required for induction may range from 50 to 120 mg or more but averages about 70 mg. The usual dosage in adults ranges from 1 to 1.5 mg/kg. The induction dose usually provides anesthesia for 5 to 7 minutes.
Maintenance Of Anesthesia
Maintenance of anesthesia may be accomplished by intermittent injections of the 1% solution or, more easily, by continuous intravenous drip of a 0.2% solution. Intermittent injections of about 20 to 40 mg (2 to 4 mL of a 1% solution) may be given as required, usually every 4 to 7 minutes. For continuous drip, the average rate of administration is about 3 mL of a 0.2% solution/minute (1 drop/second). The rate of flow must be individualized for each patient. For longer surgical procedures, gradual reduction in the rate of administration is recommended (see discussion of prolonged administration in WARNINGS). Other parenteral agents, usually narcotic analgesics, are ordinarily employed along with Brevital Sodium during longer procedures.
Pediatric Patients
Brevital Sodium is administered intramuscularly in a 5% concentration and administered rectally as a 1% solution.
Induction Of Anesthesia
For the induction of anesthesia by the intramuscular route of administration, the usual dose ranges from 6.6 to 10 mg/kg of the 5% concentration. For rectal administration, the usual dose for induction is 25 mg/kg using the 1% solution.
Parenteral drug products should be inspected visually for particulate matter and discoloration prior to administration, whenever solution and container permit.
Solutions of Brevital Sodium should not be mixed in the same syringe or administered simultaneously during intravenous infusion through the same needle with acid solutions, such as atropine sulfate, metocurine iodide, and succinylcholine chloride. Alteration of pH may cause free barbituric acid to be precipitated. Solubility of the soluble sodium salts of barbiturates, including Brevital Sodium, is maintained only at a relatively high (basic) pH.
Because of numerous requests from anesthesiologists for information regarding the chemical compatibility of these mixtures, the following chart contains information obtained from compatibility studies in which a 1% solution of Brevital Sodium was mixed with therapeutic amounts of agents whose solutions have a low (acid) pH.
|Active Ingredient
|Potency per mL
|Volume Used
|15 min
|Physical Change 30 min
|1 h
|Brevital Sodium
|10 mg
|10 mL
|Atropine Sulfate
|1/150 gr
|1 mL
|Atropine Sulfate
|1/100 gr
|1 mL
|Succinylcholine chloride
|0.5 mg
|4 mL
|Succinylcholine chloride
|1 mg
|4 mL
|Metocurine Iodide
|0.5 mg
|4 mL
|Metocurine Iodide
|1 mg
|4 mL
|Scopolamine hydrobromide
|1/120 gr
|1 mL
|Tubocurarine chloride
|3 m era
|4 mL
Store between 20° to 25°C (68° to 77°F). (See USP Controlled Room Temperature.)
Brevital® Sodium Vials1:
The 500 mg vials (with 30 mg anhydrous sodium carbonate) are available as follows:
NDC 42023-105-01 – Multi-Dose Vial – Pack of 1
The 2.5 g vials (with 150 mg anhydrous sodium carbonate) are available as follows:
NDC 42023-106-01 – Multi-Dose Vial – Pack of 1
1In crystalline form.
Manufactured by: Par Pharmaceutical Companies , Inc.,Spring Valley, NY 10977. Revised: June 2015This monograph has been modified to include the generic and brand name in many instances.
Last reviewed on RxList: 5/9/2016
Brevital Sodium FDA Prescribing Information
Additional Brevital Sodium Information
Report Problems to the Food and Drug Administration
You are encouraged to report negative side effects of prescription drugs to the FDA. Visit the FDA MedWatch website or call 1-800-FDA-1088.
Women's Health
Find out what women really need.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Media Seattle Weekly: Fefer's the New Editor
So New Times/Village Voice Media has made it official. As I first reported on Slog last week, Mark D. Fefer is the new editor of Seattle Weekly. Fefer is a former Stranger intern and was my assistant for two yearsbiographical details that aren't mentioned in the press release.
Still, welcome home, Mark.


text:
NEW YORK -- Jurors in the Martha Stewart case ended their first day of deliberations Wednesday without reaching a verdict on whether the founder of a gracious-living empire lied about a well-timed stock sale.
Deliberations were to resume today.
The jury received the case after 90 minutes of complex instructions from U.S. District Judge Miriam Goldman Cedarbaum.
After about two hours of deliberation, the jury of eight women and four men requested a readback of testimony regarding former brokerage assistant Douglas Faneuil, the government's star witness. They also asked to see charts detailing phone calls of the main players in the case on the day of the stock sale.
Later in the day, jurors also asked for several pieces of evidence, including what the government claims is a doctored worksheet used to make a supposed stock sale agreement appear legitimate.
The combined charges against Stewart carry up to 20 years in prison, but she would probably get far less under federal sentencing guidelines.
However, if convicted on any charge, the 62-year-old Stewart would have to step down as chief creative officer of her media company, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia.
© 2016. All Rights Reserved. Contact Us


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Scotland Yard Is After Lindsay Lohan
Great Scot! Also, Dakota Fanning goes goth, topless photos of Megan Fox get "leaked," and more events infinitely stranger than anything the mind of man could invent, in our daily gossip roundup.
Lindsay Lohan downed virgin Shirley Temples (we're skeptical) at Axe Lounge in Southampton on Friday, then climbed the Box's stripper pole at 4:30 a.m. the next night, which is interesting because her father left a Hamptons lunch early that day claiming he had to catch a flight to L.A. to see her. Oh, and Scotland Yard is investigating LiLo for potentially stealing $400,000 worth of Dior jewelry from an Elle photo shoot. Anne Hathaway shopped for soap in Soho. Miley Cyrus (who's back with Nick Jonas) makes out with a hot Aussie for her next film, The Last Song in Savannah. Dakota Fanning is suddenly dressing like a badass, kind of like when Jenny Humphrey went all raccoon-eyes on us.
Dan Abrams's new website will pit media honchos against one another, ranking bigwigs like Tina Brown, Katie Couric, and Jon Stewart. Abrams has also been keeping busy by dating an aspiring actress, twenty years his junior, whom he picked up in a bar. Meanwhile, his ex Renée Zellweger is leaving 240 Central Park South for an Upper East Side brownstone. No one wanted to bid on Max Weinberg's 1957 turquoise Corvette at the Hamptons Auto Classic. NBC producers won't let Artie Lange on the Tonight Show because they don't think the recovering heroin addict is sober enough. Mayor Bloomberg sat front-row at Yankee Stadium next to Andrew Murstein and Brian Williams following his stint in the Puerto Rican Day Parade. Al Roker tweeted about Speidi's "bad and vacuous behavior." He's just noticing this now?
Ashley Olsen wore tangerine at last night's CFDA Fashion Awards. Adrian Grenier got friendly with Twilight's Ashley Greene over the weekend, dancing and surfing in Santa Barbara, at least until the cops came, threatening to kick him off the beach because of noise complaints. The Daily News reports that topless photos of Megan Fox were conveniently leaked to the media the same week that Transformers premieres. Except that they were actually leaked about a month ago. Anna Paquin likes skimpy bikinis and short shorts. Paris Hilton is "getting to know" soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo.
Jane's Addiction front man Perry Farrell chatted with some sci-fi nerd about UFOs over dinner with Rage Against the Machine's Tom Morello, photographer Mick Rock, and Iron Chef Masaharu Morimoto. Vanessa Minnillo, who's supposedly still dating Nick Lachey, downed tequila till sunrise in Atlantic City without him. M2 turned away Plaxico Burress and his "inappropriately dressed posse." Brazilian model Ana Maria Macedo gushed to "Page Six" about her "fairy-tale wedding" to the guy who stood her up a year ago. Apparently, it included festivities at Pink Elephant and Kiss & Fly.


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God, I love JoJo so much. One of these days I'll get around to actually reading the thing that started it all, you know...the manga.
Until then though, I'll just sit and drool and imagine the...
Type: Posts; User: CaffeineKnight
God, I love JoJo so much. One of these days I'll get around to actually reading the thing that started it all, you know...the manga.
Until then though, I'll just sit and drool and imagine the...
Thanks, my sadness has been cured.
I'm finally getting a chance to play through Guacamelee. I had heard so much about this game back when it was released but it managed to slip off of my radar until very recently. I'm enjoying it so...
It makes me really sad that no one has responded to my post about Rage of Bahamut yet. This is the most beautifully animated weekly series that has been released in quite some time. It feels like...
I feel like I'm the only person left in this world that still doesn't own a Blu-ray player of any kind. I suppose that if I did though, Cowboy Bebop would be one show that I definitely don't mind...
Sorcery is a choice!
I don't give a fuck what your opinion is because you're wrong.
Ugh, I wish I didn't blow my money on frivolous things so that I could spend it on slightly less frivolous things like clothes and shoes. I really want a pair of these Nike Lunarglide 4's for work...
This really touches me, guys, I'm surprised that anyone remembers me from on here.
I haven't been on the forums in a long time and I was never really active enough that any of you will probably remember me, but what better place to start posting again than in the New Year's thread?...
I just called before I read this thread and Samit answered. It freaked me out so bad that a real person answered, that the number actually worked, and that fucking SAMIT answered that I just hung up....
Hell, man, I'd probably play as long as I could fit it in, which really shouldn't be a problem. I suppose it depends on what we're going to play though. I've never actually played before and I've...
This is getting off to a much better start than last time! And By God, Mikey, I do believe you've become even more amazing.
I love....
Zodiac Eclipse because she's our sweet momerator.
everyone else who I won't call out by name because they probably don't know me and it would be a little creepy.
Yeah, pretty much what I do anyways. I don't even smoke very often anymore.
That makes me not want to visit Japan. Usually when people are talking about Japan it just makes me want to go more and more.
Hmmm, Gollumtastic, indeed.
What do you mean, "what do you mean grow?"?
It's never going to make it to consoles and that makes me sad. Although I'm a PC purist at heart my current PC just won't be able to run it and I absolutely have to fucking play this.
I went with Triss so I could pretend that we were married and I was always out working. You know, the hardworking, seemingly cold Father with the heart of gold type of character?
Welcome to the forums!
You have good taste in music so we are now friends. What do you think of The Decemberist's latest album? I like it alawwwwt.
Welcome to the community, you seem like a guy who can grow.
Forums are all kinds of fucked up for me today, double posting and all.
Traci is the best.
Started reading the first Otherland book today. I think it was this thread that led me towards the series. I'm enjoying it so far but I'm barely 30 pages in.
yea i gotchu homie


text:
WARE Living Room Guinea Pig Home
30"; L X 17.5"; W X 26.5"; H, Offers the ultimate in pet comfort, safety, & convenient cleaning. Strong steel finish offers a unique combination of fashionable color, design, & heavy duty quality that lasts.
- Living space can be expanded with our Add-A-Level addition (sold separately)
- Easy to assemble new Stack-N-Snap technology
- Easy to clean slide out tray
- Comfortable floor grid and ramp
- Easy to clean slide out tray
- Comfortable floor grid and ramp
- WARE Living Room Guinea Pig Home, 30" L X 17.5" W X 26.5" H
The WARE Living Room Guinea Pig Home is an attractive guinea pig habitat that provides your pet with comfort and safety. This guinea pig cage is designed for convenient cleaning, maneuverability and easy access to your furry family member. The WARE Living Room Guinea Pig Home is made from durable, high quality steel to keep your pet safe and secure. The guinea pig cage comes with everything your pet needs in a home. The habitat is large enough to allow your pet to move and rest comfortably. The habitat includes an adjustable shelf, ramp and food dish. The ramp encourages healthy movement, especially if you choose to put the food dish on the included shelf. This guinea pig habitat is spacious enough to fit additional toys and accessories (sold separately). When it's time to play with your pet, the WARE Living Room Guinea Pig Home provides you with plenty of access to your guinea pig through two doors. These entryways make it easy for you to refresh your pet's food dish and rearrange accessories within the guinea pig cage. This guinea pig habitat also makes cleaning a breeze. A full width pull-out tray allows you to quickly and efficiently discard soiled bedding and add fresh litter for your pet. The tray's deep base helps to keep bits of bedding in the habitat and not on your floor. This habitat also comes with four rolling casters, allowing you to move the entire setup to the best spot in your home. Baked on enamel hammertone silver coating gives this habitat an attractive silver shine that helps it blend with your home's existing décor.


text:
Blue T-shirt made of 100% cotton, has a round neck, short sleeves and graphic print on the front
Wash care
Machine wash cold using a mild detergent
Do not soak
Dry flat in shade
Warm iron
Look at the world in a different light with this tantra t-shirt. The graphic print oozes cheeky attitude, while the fabric keeps you fresh and comfortable all day. Team this t-shirt with jeans and sports shoes or shorts and floaters for unparalleled cool.
Model statistics
The model wears size M in t-shirts
Height: 6'; Shoulders: 18"


text:
You are using an outdated browser. Please upgrade your browser to improve your experience.
Google Pulls Voice App From Store
Google has pulled the Voice application from the App Store following iOS 5 crashes.
Chris Conner
| October 16
"iFitness" Redux: "Full Fitness" And Developer Health Xperts Banned From App Store
"Full Fitness" shot to glory just like its "iFitness" predecessor. It fell just as fast.
A.T. Faust III
| May 18
"iFitness" Kicked Out Of Gym, New Spotter Might Leave You Hanging
Though iFitness was banned from the App Store, its code lives on in the re-branded, nigh-identical Full Fitness app from Health Xperts.
A.T. Faust III
| May 5


text:
Email addressVerified
311 Friends
Reviewed1 Review
About Me
- School
- Humboldt Gymnasium Ulm, Uni Stuttgart
- Caro's Airbnb Symbol
Hey, I'm Caro!
Stuttgart, Germany · Member since February 2012
My sister and i living in stuttgart and we are both playing hockey in the 2. league. We love sports in every way. My sister Verena makes a study as an fitnesseconomy and I'm studying to become a teacher in sports and history.
Incidentally I work for my little life ... =) shopping, cinema, meet friends and all the other things.
We very look forward to be your guests.
Regards Carolin und Verena Braun


text:
Integrated Processing and Probabilistic Lifing Models for Superalloy Turbine Disks
Award Information
Small Business Information
VEXTEC Corporation
750 Old Hickory Blvd, Building 2, Suite 270, Brentwood, TN, 37027
Principal Investigator:
Robert Tryon
(615) 372-0299
(615) 372-0299
Business Contact:
Lorenz Nasser
President & CEO
(615) 372-0299
President & CEO
(615) 372-0299
Research Institution:
AbstractThere is a critical need for integrated material prediction tools to assure the United States future competitiveness and national security. Extensive libraries of integrated computational tools are available for structures, heat transfer, fluid dynamics, electronics and manufacturing. These tools have radically reduced the time required to optimize new products for decreased cost and increased performance. However, analogous computational tools are not widely used in materials engineering. As a result, the product design and development cycle now outpaces the materials development cycle, leading to a considerable mismatch. The object of this SBIR is to develop techniques to link validated processing models that predict the following: (a) location-specific microstructure, (b) location-specific size distribution of life-limiting microstructural features resulting from variations in process parameters, and (c) complete distribution of the bulk residual stresses, with probabilistic microstructure-sensitive component life prediction codes. The work plan is based on VEXTEC's core competency in developing multidisciplinary probabilistic frameworks that integrate computational deterministic models for each of several disciplines to create stochastic system simulations. The techniques allows for uncertainty at each discipline to be tracked within the system model. Thus the sensitivities of the modeling parameters that drive the low life component are quantified. BENEFIT: New materials insertion into a new designs takes 10 to 20 years. New computational materials engineering tools integrated with existing product development processes will not only assure our nation security needs but reinforce the competitiveness of U.S. manufacturers. These tools promise to shorten the materials development by up to 80%.
* information listed above is at the time of submission.
An Official Website of the United States Government


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Kenya Bus-Station Blasts Leave Six Dead, 68 Hurt, Red Cross Says
The number of people killed in a series of grenade blasts yesterday in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, increased to six, while another four people are missing, the Kenya Red Cross said.
The death toll rose after one of 69 people admitted to the hospital succumbed to injuries, the medical charity said in a statement on its Twitter account today, citing Internal Security Minister George Saitoti.
Police suspect "sympathizers of al-Shabaab," the Somali Islamist militant group linked to al-Qaeda, were responsible for the attack in which at least three hand grenades were thrown out of a moving vehicle at passengers at a bus station on the fringe of the city center, Charles Owino, deputy spokesman for the Kenyan police, said by phone today.
Al-Shabaab threatened to carry out attacks in Kenya after the East African nation deployed its army in southern Somalia in mid-October to fight the militants. Two weeks after the incursion began, one person died and at least 20 were injured in two separate bomb blasts in Nairobi that the police blamed on terrorists. Elgiva Bwire Oliacha, a 28-year-old man who said he was a member of al-Shabaab, pleaded guilty in court on Oct. 26 to nine charges, including being responsible for the blasts
Yesterday's attack took place around 7:30 p.m. when the attackers "knew it was dark and it was not very easy to capture them," Owino said. "But we can assure the public that we are going to use all the investigation facilities we have available to make sure we catch them."
Kidnappings, Murders
Al-Shabaab has waged a campaign to topple Somalia's United Nations-backed government since 2007 and establish an Islamic state. The group last month became part of al-Qaeda. Kenya's incursion into Somalia came after several foreign tourists and aid workers were murdered and abducted on Kenyan territory. Kenya blames al-Shabaab for the attacks, a charge the militants have denied.
In 1998, near-simultaneous blasts of the U.S. embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, the commercial capital of neighboring Tanzania, killed 224 people. Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, an al-Qaeda operative, was sentenced to life in prison in January 2011 for his role in the attack. Khalid al-Fawwaz, an alleged member of the group, has been indicted in the bombings.


text:
FALL RIVER — The committee tasked with determining a group of finalists from an applicant pool of 19 candidates for the public school district's top education post is slated to begin initial interviews of candidates starting Thursday, May 26.
FALL RIVER — The wing of modular classrooms at the James Tansey Elementary School on Ray Street is staying put — for at least another five years.
BOSTON — In the wake of reports of long-time state employees walking into retirement with lucrative compensation packages boosted by payouts for unused sick time, Gov. Charlie Baker on Wednesday unveiled legislation to cap sick leave...
The Senate on Tuesday tacked onto its budget a directive for the University of Massachusetts to study the feasibility of installing on every campus a system to detect gunfire and alert the authorities.
FALL RIVER — With Mayor Jasiel Correia II's administration slated to submit a fiscal 2017 city budget proposal that includes school department allocations to the City Council by June 1, disagreements over prior fiscal years'...
Parents and School Committee members are wondering whether children's brains might benefit from more recess time.
The hearing is scheduled to begin at 5:30 p.m.
The panel had gathered Monday afternoon in the media center at B.M.C. Durfee High School. Their audience was a group of more than two dozen students, most of them young women, in different grade levels.
FALL RIVER — The school department is contending the net school spending shortfall that they originally estimated to be $1.5 million has now climbed to $2.7 million after the state determined that the city had miscalculated school...
Automated calls to the Chace Street School in Somerset and Matthew J. Kuss Middle School in Fall River indicate bomb threats. Other schools throughout southern New England received similar calls.
Per state law, the School Committee held a hearing last Tuesday before a June 1 deadline to determine if the district would utilize the opt-out measure. Dargon advised the School Committee to opt-out, citing the ongoing feasibility study and all the...
SouthCoast Directory
Business Name
Location, ST | website.com


text:
The Iraqi dead
Silence and the mournful echo of remembrance...hang over this suffering land," wrote James Kitfield, who covered the war in Iraq for the National Journal (April 12) and was clearly shaken by what he saw: "While no accurate tally of Iraqis killed in this war exists, the dead surely number in the thousands upon thousands." Nothing will more deeply mark the American occupation of Iraq than how these dead and their survivors are treated.
Between seventeen hundred and twenty-seven hundred civilians were killed in Baghdad during major combat operations, according to a May 18 report in the Los Angeles Times based on the newspaper's survey of Baghdad's hospitals. Hospital officials stressed to the Times that no official entity, Iraqi or American, has been interested in such information: "No one has asked us for our figures-not the Health Ministry, not the bureau of registry, not the Americans, no one," said Dr. Daoud Jasim, an orthopedic surgeon at Mahmoudiya Hospital, about twenty miles south of the city center, that reported more than two hundred civilian deaths. "And it was a battlefield here, with civilians caught in the middle."
On June 11, the Associated Press published a hospital-by-hospital survey that confirmed at least 3,240 civilian casualties, including 1,896 in Baghdad. The AP report covered only 60 of Iraq's 124 hospitals and only the period between March 20 and April 20. Thus,
the count...
To read the rest of this article please login or become a subscriber.
About the Author
Jack Miles is Distinguished Professor of English and Religious Studies at the University of California, Irvine, and Senior Fellow for Religion and International Affairs for with the Pacific Council on International Policy.


text:
Wooden Arrow Shot Through Elderly Couple's Bedroom Window in Burbank; Grandma Suspects Party Crew Next Door
Big things going down in the Glendale News-Press today, like six unidentified police officers on paid leave for unpolicemanlike conduct and a charity drive to collect 100,000 lemons, grapefruits and oranges.
But one big thing, above all others, stands out to us as northeast L.A. County news item o' the day:
The two-and-a-half foot arrow, carved from wood and glazed in a carbon-fiber finish, that was shot through the bedroom window of Priscilla and Andras Muller, an old couple living in west Burbank, on Saturday evening.
Just the kind of big thing one hopes to leave behind when settling into the 700 block of North Buena Vista Street, like the Mullers did in 1984. (Then again, Gun World's right around the corner.)
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"My thought was just to have a nice home in my older age and be comfortable," Priscilla tells the News-Press, adding that she hasn't gotten a good night's sleep since the arrow landed.
"Something is going on here, and it just needs to stop," says her husband.
The story is a small-town newspaper's dream, allowing for a full bundt cake of masked irony -- a petty homeowner's drama structured like a real big-city crime.
Reporter Gretchen Meier, on the suburban mystery beat:
When Priscilla Muller heard the loud crash through her bedroom window, she thought it was an earthquake, or maybe even a squirrel. What she found was a 2 1/2-foot carbon-fiber arrow lodged in the wall above her bed.
At first, she and her husband didn't know what caused the sound. They found broken glass on the floor near her window, but nothing else appeared amiss.
It was only after the 79-year-old turned off her computer and began to make her bed for the night that she noticed a plastic feather on her comforter and looked up to find the arrow in the wall.
Ah, yes. The ominous plastic feather falls again.
The Burbank Police Department is stumped. But KTLA reporters wade further into the perils of Mr. and Mrs. Muller, sticking their camera up in rowdy neighbors' beezwax (they're the suspected culprits, as the arrow came from their side of the fence) and scolding police investigators for not tearing themselves away from the Super Bowl long enough to put the victims at ease.
An interview with the guy next door at 715 North Buena Vista, who's holding a Corona and overall just looking stupid guilty, is evidence enough to solve the crime:
"I don't know what to say about that, Buddy," he says. "The superbowl's on, you're talking about arrows, really..."
For a good time, skip to 0:56:
Sooo... If we had to guess, some post-college good-for-nothings got drunk, stuck a photo of one evil ex-professor on the fence -- target practice, dude! -- and got a little over-eager when drawing back the longbow. An archery expert tells KTLA that the arrow had to have been travelling between 125 and 175 feet per second at the time it penetrated the Mullers' bedroom wall. Yikes. Must have taken at least an 18-pack of Corona to reach that kind of rage.
"From what we can tell, it does not appear the arrow was shot with a malicious intent," Burbank Police Detective Martha Jimenez tells the News-Press. "But the case is still being investigated."
The story ends on a sad note: The Mullers can't afford to have the window fixed. And today, the Burbank Police Department has yet to return our calls.
Damn hooligans. Maybe the Burbank drive-by paintball gang has something to do with the latest horseplay on North Buena Vista?
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The AAPG Foundation was established in 1967 by the AAPG Leadership to carry out scientific, educational objectives through the use of charitable, tax-deductible gifts and contributions from AAPG members and corporate entities.
In 1978, the AAPG Foundation Trustees officially recognized a distinguished group of contributors, known as the AAPG Foundation Trustee Associates. This select group was organized for the purpose of:
Today, there are more than 280 Trustee Associates who play a stellar role in the development of the AAPG Foundation's financial resources, thereby dramatically accelerating its ability to support scientific educational programs. There are more than 30 funds and programs supported by the Trustee Associates and other donors. Click here to review the annual report for information on the Foundation and programs supported by its donors.
Trustee Associates are governed by Bylaws and meet annually to conduct business meetings and participate in geologic field trips of regional interest. Spouses are encouraged to attend, and interesting activities are planned for their enjoyment. Click here for information on past and future meeting sites, dates and officers.
The Foundation Trustees have established awards for recognition of extraordinary philanthropy and service directed to advance the mission of the Foundation.
More information for current and future Trustee Associates can be found through the links in the menu to the left, or if you are interested in becoming a member of the Trustee Associates.
We are pleased that that so many AAPG Foundation Trustee Associates and their guests were able to attend the 38th Annual Meeting at The Broadmoor in Colorado Springs, CO. Many thanks to Stewart Henry for selecting such a beautiful venue for the meeting and his fine chairmanship. Larry Jones was the perfect fishing chairman and Mike Wisda did a top-notch job as the golf chair.
Rick Fritz is the Chair of the 2016 Trustee Associates meeting which will be held at the scenic Manua Kea Beach Resort in Kohala Coast, Hawaii. We look forward to seeing everyone there October 19-23, 2016.
Mark your calendar to attend the 2017 meeting at the lovely Samoset Resort in Rockport, Maine, September 20-24. Watch for more information on the upcoming meetings.
* NOTE: Individual photos can be downloaded on the website link above. When viewing the images you will see a yellow folder appear on the right when you click on the enlarged photo. Click on the yellow folder tab with the green arrow. That enlarged picture file will then transfer to your computer. Or individual photos can be ordered as prints or other photo products using the shopping cart. Prints are made at wholesale cost from Bay Photo Pro Lab.
During the various meetings held by the Trustee Associates and/or Foundation Trustees, several motions have been approved.


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This paper described a comprehensive study of thermo-mechanical reliability of high input/outputs (I/Os) flip-chip on laminated substrate by using finite element analysis(FEA), response surface methodology(RSM) and interfacial fracture mechanics. Accelerated thermal cycling(ATC) tests for six specimens with different structures and materials were conducted firstly to determine the fatigue life and failure mechanism of the solder joints. Two-dimensional and Three-dimensional FEA corresponding to ATC tests were then conducted individually to analyze the mechanical behavior of the package under ATC conditions. Global-local FEA approach was used because of the large number of solder bumps and the complicated structure of the package. The simulation results of FEA accorded with the tests results well and a fatigue life model in related with accumulated strain energy density was built to estimate the solder joint fatigue life of the package. The combined effect of structural parameters including pad diameter, pad thickness, solder mask open, solder mask thickness and standoff height on the solder joint fatigue life were analyzed by the integration of two-dimensional FEA and central composite design (CCD) based RSM, and a response surface model was established to make the optimization. Due to imperfect manufacturing process, very small interfacial cracks commonly exist between the interface of solder joint and copper pad after reflow, the interfacial fracture behavior of the crack for different crack lengths under ATC conditions were investigated with two-dimensional FEA. Interfacial fracture mechanics and crack surface displacement extrapolation method were used to analyze the variations of strain energy release rate and phase angle at the crack tip
A not-for-profit organization, IEEE is the world's largest technical professional organization dedicated to advancing technology for the benefit of humanity.© Copyright 2016 IEEE - All rights reserved. Use of this web site signifies your agreement to the terms and conditions.


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Mozilla Names Gary Kovacs as New CEO
CEO boasts rich media experience and an eye on mobile.
The Mozilla Corporation announced the appointment of their new CEO, Gary Kovacs. Previously, Kovacs was General Manager of Mobile at Adobe for five years and before that was the vice president of product group and the vice president product marketing and developers at Macromedia.
Former Mozilla CEO John Lilly announced his departure about six months ago for a position at VC firm Greylock Partners. Lilly wrote a welcome post for Kovacs on his blog saying that Kovacs has a "deep background in the battlefields that will define the future of the Open Web: mobile and rich media."
Lilly went on to call Kovacs a great communicator and listener and said that Kovacs understands the unique strengths and weaknesses of Mozilla.
Issue 26: Linux Shell Handbook 7th Ed./Special Editions
Buy this issue as a PDF
SUSE Joins the Microsoft Test Drive Program
Customers can take a free test drive of SLES for HPC on the Azure Cloud
SiFive Launches a Line of Open Source Chips
San Francisco-based chip company announces their first fully open source chip platform.
Fedora 24 Released
The whole distro gets rebuilt on glibc 2.3
Canonical Announces Cross-Distro Support for Snaps
Ubuntu Vendor tries to solve app packaging and distribution problem across distributions.
ownCloud Forked
Founder of ownCloud launches the Nextcloud project.
HP Enterprise Unveils a Futuristic Computer
Will The Machine change the way future programmers think about memory?
CoreOS Announces Distributed Storage System
The new Torus distributed storage system is available under an open source license on GitHub
Google Beats Oracle in the Android Lawsuit
Juries decides Google's use of Java APIs Was Fair Use
Linux is the Largest Software Development Project in History
But if you are not using the latest Linux kernel, your system is insecure.
Linksys Says Yes to Open Source Firmware
Home routers will give room for custom firmware but still comply with FCC rules


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President Obama Shuts Down Task Force X in "Suicide Squad: Rebirth" Preview
Comic Books
Comic Books
The Buy Pile
The Buy Pile
The Buy Pile
Comics Should be Good
Robot 6
Comics Should be Good
Robot 6
Robot 6
Robot 6
Jul 28, 15:54pm
Jul 28, 15:27pm
Jul 28, 15:24pm
Jul 28, 15:21pm
Jul 28, 15:21pm
Jul 28, 15:15pm
Exeter, UK
Early on my mom came up with the plan to introduce me to reading via comics. Her plan worked and gave me both a lifelong love of reading and comics. The earliest comics I remember were some Spider-Man stories where he fought the Kingpin and an issue of Marvelâs âStar Warsâ where Darth Vader battled a cyborg. My early comic habit got a regular fix whenever weâd take the Ohio Turnpike to visit my grandparents in Pennsylvania. Weâd stop at a rest stop and Iâd get a three pack of mostly Gold Key books like âGrimmâs Ghost Storiesâ or reprints of âTurk: Son of Stone.â
In the â80s I started collecting super hero books on a regular basis with âThingâ #24, where he battled the Rhino. From there I picked up a ton of Marvel books. Several years later I was introduced to the DC Universe via books like âBatman: The Killing Jokeâ and âSuicide Squad.â Later my tastes branched out as I discovered companies like Dark Horse and DCâs Vertigo imprint. Currently Iâm a huge fan of all forms of genre comics: super hero, crime, action, horror, science fiction and fantasy
When Iâm not writing for CBR Iâm usually toiling away at the public library I work at or working on book reviews or other pop culture related ramblings at my blog.
FIRST COMIC: âAmazing Spider-Manâ & âStar Warsâ
FAVORITE CHARACTER: Spider-Man, Captain America, The Thing and Luke Cage
Showing results 1511-1530 of 1977
One of comics' most prolific and popular partnerships, writer Jeph Loeb and artist Tim Sale, are finally reuniting for "Captain America: White," which looks at the early days of Cap and Bucky. We speak with both creators.
Editor Tom Brevoort and "Secret Invasion" mastermind Brian Michael Bendis join CBR News to help unveil The Fives in the Skrulls' Secret Invasion poker Ddeck, which includes two mutants, a literal hothead, and a certain web-slinger.
In this final installment, "Captain Britain and MI:13" writer Paul Cornell joins CBR News to discuss his team's one American member, the magic sword-wielding Black Knight.
The spotlight falls on Faisa Hussain, a new character introduced in "Captain Britain and MI-13." The young doctor represents the youth of the UK and writer Paul Cornell tells all, plus we unveil the cover to issue #2.
For part two of our weekend long feature on the cast of "Captain Britain and MI:13," writer Paul Cornell helps us "Imagine" what the team's resident shapeshifter, John the Skrull, is like.
In Part III of our weekend-long look at the cast of "Captain Britain and MI:13," writer Paul Cornell joins CBR to turn the spotlight on England's fastest woman, Lady Jacqueline Falsworth Crichton AKA Spitfire.
Daniel Acuña's secret dream project has been revealed to be "Eternals" with words by Daniel & Charles Knauf. CBR spoke with the artist about his version of Jack Kirby's legendary creations and took an exclusive first look at series artwork.
In Part I of our weekend-long look at the cast of May's "Captain Britain and MI:13," series writer Paul Cornell joins CBR News to profile the UK's premier superhero, Captain Britain.
Writer Bob Gale ("Back to the Future") talks to CBR News about his first storyline as part of the "Amazing Spider-Man" writing team.
Jigsaw, The Punisher's heavily scarred archenemy, has some big plans in store for Frank Castle in upcoming issues of "Punisher War Journal." CBR News spoke with Matt Fraction and new co-writer Rick Remender about the book.
Tom Brevoort joins CBR News to unveil The Sixes in the Skrulls' "Secret Invasion" poker deck, which features two female super spies, a walking weapon, and a national champion.
This May, the Marvel villains discover a new world ripe for plundering, a world without heroes; the real world. This is the premise behind Mark Millar's new mini-series "Marvel 1985" and we spoke with the writer.
In March's "Young Avengers Presents" #3, reluctant brothers Speed and Wiccan go looking for the mother they never knew. CBR News spoke writer Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa about the book.
On sale now, "Criminal" Vol. 2 #1 begins with three stand-alone issues set in the past. CBR News spoke with artist Sean Phillips about the book and his work on a DVD which should interest "Criminal" fans as well.
Leading up to April's "Secret Invasion" #1, today's Edition of EARTH'S MOST WANTED is extra lucky as Marvel editor Tom Brevoort helps us unveil The Sevens in the Skrull Poker deck.
Hulkling finds out just how tense father and son reunions can be when he meets his dad, Captain Marvel, for the first time in "Young Avengers Presents" #2. CBR News spoke with writer Brian Reed about the issue.
In today's installment of EARTH'S MOST WANTED we look at The Eights, two Homo Sapiens and two members of Homo Superior, each representing a threat to the Skrulls' "Secret Invasion" of Earth.
Marvel's cosmic heroes have won two intergalactic wars and will come together to win the peace in May's "Guardians of the Galaxy." CBR spoke with writers Dan Abnett & Andy Lanning, Paul Pelletier and Bill Rosemann about the book.
Britain's superheroes unite to turn the tide of the Skrull onslaught in "Captain Britain and MI:13," a new ongoing series debuting in May from Marvel Comics. CBR spoke with writer Paul Cornell and editor Nick Lowe about the book.
Marvel's Muck Monster resurfaces this week in issue #1 of "Dead of Night Featuring Man-Thing," the first of four fear fraught tales. CBR News spoke with writer Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa about the MAX miniseries.
Home | News | Columns | Reviews | Video | Blogs | Forums | FindAComicShop.com
© 1995-2016 Comic Book Resources. All Rights Reserved.


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I have a large area that needs wireless coverage throughout.
I want to use 3 (or more if necessary) access points to allow roaming coverage for everyone.
There will be 15 or 20 people with 2 to 3 devices each connecting to the network via the access points each day, as well as guests from time to time who will need access to a guest network. Equipment will be Netgear Dual Band WNDAP360 for access points which will be connected to a Edgewater router.
One issue I've had in the past is all of the ip addresses being used up, and me having to clear them out constantly - at least once a day.
Can anyone share with me a diagram or online tool I can use to help build a better infrastructure or can anyone provide a step by step breakdown of how to set up this environment?


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iHerb Customer Reviews
Savings of: $2.36 (24% off)
Sorry, this product is no longer in stock.
Note: Korean Customs will quarantine and inspect this item before final shipment to the customer. Please be advised that ordering this item could cause delivery delays
Posted by 4737989286496036539 on Feb 16, 2016
I've been using this for years and can't fault it in anyway. It tastes unoffensive and it keeps for a long time. Just remember to drink lots of water or it could aggravate constipation.
Love it
Posted by 5429679906830731415 on Jan 21, 2014
Works and mixes fine with a little stirring. I prefer the whole husks to the powder as I feel it works better.
Whole Psyllium Husks Health Benefit
Posted by 5742342770226016010 on Sep 18, 2014
This is a superb fiber supplement and very effective. It also helps in trying to lose weight because it does not contain sugar and it curbs appetite.
good for my tummy
Posted by Reviewer1594004 on Sep 24, 2014
no wonder that psyllium husk helps toilet job i prefer whole husk to pilled out one. it is better to swallow
NOW Foods, Whole Psyllium Husks
Posted by Reviewer1026804 on Apr 10, 2014
Good product that I use in smoothies and yougurt to get more fiber and to get contents thicker.
healthy bowles
Posted by 5576788758130934042 on Oct 07, 2012
great stuff. cannot think of going without it....what a pun.
Really works well
Posted by 5105496926540943183 on Nov 27, 2013
For the additional fiber and bowel movement it works very well. It's thicken very quick compare to my previous brand but if you ok with that I think no issues in swallowing this product.
A spoonful a day
Posted by 5390780354607008531 on Dec 13, 2013
I take a spoonful every morning , mixed into water and it helps keep me regular. Good colon health is essential to all.
Great fiber product
Posted by 5227331951372860786 on May 22, 2016
I use Now Foods Psyllium Husks to get extra fiber into my diet. It is also a natural way to help keep cholesterol levels down. I use 1T daily and drink plenty water throughout the day.
Very hard to swallow
Posted by 4973287443423374403 on May 26, 2016
Fluid starts thickening when water touches it. I don't recommend this product at all


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I've recently made some changes on my website (http://www.trinemarie.com/) and am now having some very annoying issues with my share buttons. They simply won't display until the end of my sidebars. So if my post (in the middle of two sidebars) is shorter than my sidebars you will have a long white gap between the content and the share buttons.
From what I have read online I figured the issue is most likely in this file: /public_html/wp-content/plugins/jetpack/modules/sharedaddy/admin-sharing.css
However I have no idea what code to change so that my share buttons display on the same level as my regular posts - inside of my sidebars. As far as I can tell there is no "clear:both" code in this file stopping the buttons from moving up.


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Most Asian Stocks Retreat as Japan GDP Fuels Growth Concern
Most Asian stocks fell, led by Japanese shares, after the country's economy grew at the slowest pace in three quarters. The Shanghai Composite Index posted its biggest advance this month as China overtook Japan to be the world's second-largest economy last quarter.
Sony Corp., which makes Bravia televisions, retreated 3 percent, while Honda Motor Co. sank 0.9 percent in Tokyo. China Cosco Holdings Co., the world's largest operator of dry-bulk ships, jumped by the 10 percent daily limit in Shanghai as commodity-freight rates climbed. Hong Kong's Sun Hung Kai Properties Ltd., the world's biggest developer by market value, slumped 4.1 percent after the government introduced measures to cool home prices.
"We need to see some sort of catalyst to help investor sentiment recover, especially a good economic indicator from the U.S.," said Yoshinori Nagano, a senior strategist in Tokyo at Daiwa Asset Management Co., which oversees about $104 billion. "The Japanese economy is simply weak."
About five stocks declined for every four that advanced in the MSCI Asia Pacific Index, which was little changed at 117.01 as of 7:35 p.m. in Tokyo. The retreat extended last week's 3.7 percent slump, the most since May, as economic reports indicated the global recovery is faltering.
Japan's Nikkei 225 Stock Average declined 0.6 percent. The country's economy grew at less than a fifth of the pace economists estimated last quarter, pushing it into third place behind the U.S. and China. The Nikkei 225 has fallen 19 percent from an 18-month high on April 5.
China Stocks Advance
South Korea's Kospi index sank 0.2 percent. Australia's S&P/ASX 200 Index retreated 0.5 percent. Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index gained 0.2 percent.
The Shanghai Composite rallied for a second day, advancing 2.1 percent, as higher commodity-freight rates boosted shipping companies and rising power demand drove energy producers higher.
Futures on the Standard & Poor's 500 Index slipped 0.1 percent. The index dropped 0.4 percent on Aug. 13 after a report from the Commerce Department showed retail purchases increased 0.4 percent in July, compared with economists' estimates of a 0.5 percent gain.
Government figures today showed Japan's gross domestic product rose an annualized 0.4 percent in the three months ended June 30, less than the median economist estimate in a Bloomberg News survey for annual growth of 2.3 percent.
'Long Way'
Sony slipped 3 percent to 2,535 yen. Honda retreated 0.9 percent to 2,765 yen. Hyundai Motor Co., South Korea's largest automaker, sank 0.4 percent to 137,000 won in Seoul.
"U.S. retail sales were pretty bad," said Norihiro Fujito, senior investment strategist at Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley Securities Co. in Tokyo. "There's a long way to go before we have a self-sustaining recovery in the economy."
The MSCI Asia Pacific has slumped 8.8 percent from its high for the year on April 15 as disappointing economic reports in the U.S., Chinese measures to curb property-price inflation and Europe's debt crisis fueled concern global growth may stall.
Companies in the index trade at an average of 17.1 times profit from the past twelve months, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. That compares with a median multiple of 32 from the past 15 years, the data show.
Hong Kong's Sun Hung Kai Properties dropped 4.1 percent to HK$110, the largest loss since May 25. Cheung Kong (Holdings) Ltd., the developer controlled by billionaire Li Ka-shing, slumped 2.3 percent to HK$99.35.
Land Sales
Down payments for apartments costing HK$12 million ($1.54 million) or more will rise to 40 percent, from 30 percent, with immediate effect, Hong Kong Monetary Authority Chief Executive Norman Chan said Aug. 13. The government will increase land sales next year, Financial Secretary John Tsang said earlier.
Tsang said last week that home prices are approaching the level of 1997, the height of a previous bubble that was followed by a six-year slump.
CLP Holdings Ltd., Hong Kong's biggest power producer, gained 1.6 percent to HK$58.05. The company reported better-than-estimated profit during the city's trading break. A gauge of utility companies in the MSCI Asia Pacific increased 0.8 percent, the most of 10 industries.
Belle International Holdings Ltd., a retailer of women's shoes, and China Coal Energy Co. advanced after Hang Seng Indexes Co. said both companies will join Hong Kong's equity benchmark. Belle International jumped 2.9 percent to HK$13.34.
China Coal, a unit of the country's second-biggest producer of the fuel, rose 3.2 percent to HK$10.84. The company reported a 25 percent jump in first-half net income.
Largest Share Sale
Agricultural Bank of China Ltd. was the fourth most-active stock by trading volume among Chinese shares after boosting the size of its initial public offering to $22.1 billion. The bank sold more stock in Shanghai to make its IPO the world's largest first-time share sale. The stock rose 0.7 percent to 2.71 yuan.
Shipping stocks in Asia rallied on speculation they will benefit from rising freight rates. The Baltic Dry Index, a measure of commodity-shipping costs, rose for a seventh day on Aug. 13 in London.
China Cosco surged 10 percent to 10.31 yuan in Shanghai. China Shipping Development Co. rose 9 percent to 10.22 yuan. STX Pan Ocean Ltd., South Korea's biggest bulk carrier, gained 2 percent to 12,600 won.
Baoding Tianwei Baobian Electric Co., whose units make solar panels, climbed 6 percent to 26.34 yuan. The China Securities Journal reported the government may introduce a 10-year development plan for the alternative energy industry at the end of next month.
Australia's Woodside Petroleum Ltd., the country's No. 2 oil and gas producer, jumped 3.8 percent to A$43.10 after making a gas discovery.
AWB Ltd., Australia's largest wheat exporter, surged 30 percent to A$1.42 for the biggest gain in the S&P/ASX 200. Agrium Inc. offered A$1.2 billion ($1.1 billion) in cash, or A$1.50 a share, for the company. That's 38 percent more than a bid by GrainCorp Ltd., which values the stock at A$1.09 a share, based on Aug. 13 closing prices.


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2-car crash kills 1, injures 1December 03,2012HIGHGATE Vermont State Police say a two-car crash in Highgate has left one woman dead and another with serious injuries.
The collision happened Saturday evening on Route 207 near the intersection of Cook Road. Roads were wet at the time.
State police said 35-year-old Marissa Knight of St. Albans died at the scene. The driver of the other car, 23-year-old Nicole Greene of Highgate, was taken to a hospital with serious injuries, including possible head trauma and multiple broken bones.
State police say an initial investigation shows that Greene had been traveling south in the northbound lane at the time of impact, but its not clear why. Its unknown if drugs or alcohol were a factor.
Route 207 was closed for several hours while police investigated the accident.MORE IN This Just InSPRINGFIELD Springfield residents will be asked next month during Market Madness for their... Full StoryPHILADELPHIA Many delegates from Vermont arrived at the Democratic National Convention this... Full StoryI could feel the groan rising inside me as I read the subject line of the press release in my... Full Story
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