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Latest News
Price of emissions: House bill would send taxpayers a check
WASHINGTON — Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., said on Wednesday that he'll soon introduce a climate bill that does something different — it would return at least 90 percent of the money from the sale of emissions permits to every American man, woman and child.
The announcement comes a day after President Barack Obama told Congress that he wanted a climate bill to combat global warming and to wean the nation off fossil fuels. As yet, the White House hasn't endorsed any specific plans.
Van Hollen's legislation is a simpler version of previous ones that sought to establish an emissions permits trading system that have died in Congress. It would require companies that sell oil, coal and natural gas to buy permits for amount of carbon dioxide gas the fuels would release when burned. A climate bill that failed in the Senate last year would have required many other companies — including power plants — to buy the permits.
Van Hollen's bill would distribute at least 90 percent of the permit proceeds in the form of dividends to everyone in the U.S. with a Social Security number. It would be the first time a "cap and dividend" bill was considered in Congress.
Van Hollen, who has a leadership role in the House of Representatives as an assistant to Speaker Nancy Pelosi, sketched the rough details of his proposal in a letter to colleagues dated Tuesday that his office made public on Wednesday.
In the letter, he noted that any climate change bill would need popular support from Americans for at least 40 years.
Obama has called for government support for renewable energy and efficiency over the next decade. If Van Hollen's idea prevailed, there'd be little money from the sale of the permits available for scientific research and development of cleaner energy. The government would have to find other savings or would have to budget funds to support the president's spending plan.
Van Hollen wrote in his letter that the most important step to getting the country off fossil fuels was "providing markets with a strong price signal to accelerate the development and deployment of homegrown renewable energy and energy efficiency technologies."
A dividend would be a way to encourage energy savings. As energy companies passed along higher costs, people would pay more for electricity, gas and other goods from fossil fuels. Every person would get the same amount of dividend. Those who use less fossil fuel could end up ahead.
The higher cost of fossil fuels also would help renewable energy companies become more competitive by narrowing the current price advantage of fossil fuel.
Van Hollen said his plan would call for caps on carbon emissions in 2012 that would decline over time until reaching at least an 80 percent reduction by 2050. That amount of reduction is in line with what scientists have said will be necessary for the U.S. to do — while other countries also reduce emissions — to prevent disastrous and irreversible climate disruptions from global warming.
Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., the chairwoman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, was a leading supporter of the climate bill that failed to get enough Senate support last year. Boxer has yet give specifics of plans for a new version. She said on Wednesday, however, that climate legislation will "create jobs, reinvigorate the economy, and make us more energy independent." She added: "The science makes it clear that we must not wait any longer to get started."
Boxer's committee heard testimony from scientists on Wednesday who summed up recent scientific reports showing how global warming is a deepening problem.
Scientists have found that emissions of carbon dioxide from fossil fuel burning have been increasing at a faster rate than a decade ago; sea levels may be rising faster than previous estimates showed; Antarctica is warming; and summer sea ice in the Arctic, which has been decreasing for years, reached a record low in 2007 and a near record in 2008.
Carbon emissions will last for millenia, expert says
Bleak climate outlook for Pacific Northwest
Some climate studies rely on citizen observations


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Consolidated Financial Statements of International Companies in Accordance with SEC Requirements
by KARL A. HERRHAMMER Partner, New York Office
Presented before a meeting of the financial officers and accountants of the Badische Anilin- & Soda-Fabrik A.G., Ludwigshafen al Rhein, West Germany -— April 1970
AFEW YEARS AGO, in my country, when someone spoke of a multinational
company, it was assumed that he was referring to a U.S. company
with operations abroad. That situation is changing rapidly. In recent
years, foreign investments in the United States have been increasing at a far greater rate than have American investments in other countries, and BASF (Badische Anilin- & Soda-Fabrik A.G.) is one of the leaders in this respect. Americans are now becoming as familiar with the names and products of German companies as Germans are aware of our General Motors and its products.
My purpose today is to outline some of the problems you can expect to encounter in preparing consolidated financial statements for American use. In so doing I shall try to give you an overview of reporting variations
in accounting practice, problems resulting from currency valuations and international auditing problems. The main point is that if you plan to register stock on the American capital market, a company will have to abide by the reporting requirements of the Securities and Exchange Commission,
which we refer to as the SEC.
I think it would be well to take a minute to talk about the regulatory body that you will be concerned with.
The SEC has established accounting requirements that govern the type, the form, and the content of the financial statements, but generally speaking it does not actually specify the accounting principles to be used. The accounting principles and practices are established by the accounting
profession and are expressed in the Accounting Principles Board pro-


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Export 47 results:
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hsd2006poster (69.42 MB)
HSD 2007 poster - Small PDF (5.93 MB) SD 2007 poster - Full Adobe PDF (41.76 MB)
Language and power in self-organizing distributed teams. In OCIS Division, Academy of Management Conference. Atlanta, GA.. (2006). LanguageAndPowerInSelf-organizing.pdf (863.7 KB)
Manifesto on Engineering Academic Software (Dagstuhl Perspectives Workshop 16252). Dagstuhl Manifestos (Vol. 6). presented at the 12/2106, Wadern, Germany: Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz Center for Informatics.. (2016).
Opportunities for eScience research on Free/Libre Open Source Software. Proceedings of the Oxford e-Research 08 Conference. Oxford, England, 11-13 September.. (2008). Opportunities for eScience research on Free.pdf (162.39 KB)
The perils and pitfalls of mining SourceForge. In Workshop on Mining Software Repositories, 26th International Conference on Software Engineering. Edinburgh, Scotland.. (2004). The perils and pitfalls of mining SourceForge.pdf (64.33 KB)
A proposed data and analysis archive for research on Free and Open Source Software and its development (Poster). eSocial Science Conference. Ann Arbor, MI.. (2007).
Replication of FLOSS Research as eResearch. Proceedings of the Oxford e-Research Conference 08. Oxford, England, 11-13 September.. (2008). ReplicationOfFLOSSResearch.pdf (50.83 KB)
The role of face-to-face meetings in technology-supported self-organizing distributed teams. IEEE Transactions on Professional Communications, 50, 185–203. doi:10.1109/TPC.2007.902654. (2007). 070122.pdf (1.94 MB)
Self-organization of teams in free/libre open source software development. Information and Software Technology Journal: Special issue on Understanding the Social Side of Software Engineering, Qualitative Software Engineering Research, 49(6), 564–575. doi:10.1016/j.infsof.2007.02.004. (2007). 060918.pdf (282.58 KB)
Social dynamics of FLOSS team communication across channels. Proceedings of the IFIP 2.13 Working Conference on Open Source Software (OSS). Milan, Italy, 7-10 September: Springer Boston.. (2008). DSNAWigginsIFIP.pdf (417.27 KB)
Social dynamics of free and open source team communications. Proceedings of the IFIP Second International Conference on Open Source Systems. Lake Como, Italy, 8-9 June.. (2006). SocialDynamics.pdf (268.56 KB)
The social structure of Free and Open Source Software development. First Monday, 10. Retrieved from http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/1207/1127. (2005). Social structure of Free and Open Source Software development.pdf (506.96 KB)
The social structure of Open Source Software development teams. In The IFIP 8.2 Working Group on Information Systems in Organizations Organizations and Society in Information Systems (OASIS) Workshop. Seattle, WA.. (2003). icis2003sna (1.42 MB)
Stigmergic coordination in FLOSS development teams: Integrating explicit and implicit mechanisms. Cognitive Systems Research, 38, 14–22. doi:10.1016/j.cogsys.2015.12.003. (2016). COGSYS-RS-(HHS)-(2015)-(3).pdf (218.8 KB)
Towards a data and workflow collaboratory for research on Free and Open Source Software and its development (Poster). iConference. Los Angeles, CA.. (2008).
Towards a portfolio of FLOSS project success measures. In Workshop on Open Source Software Engineering, 26th International Conference on Software Engineering. Edinburgh.. (2004). Towards_a_Portfolio_ of _FLOSS_Project.pdf (306.18 KB)
Validity issues in the use of social network analysis with digital trace data. Journal of the Association for Information Systems, 12(12). presented at the 12/2011. doi:10.5281/zenodo.913303. (2011). JAIS.RA-JAIS-08-0130-ReferencesFixed.pdf (1020.33 KB)
Work as coordination and coordination as work: A process perspective on FLOSS development projects. In Third International Symposium on Process Organization Studies. presented at the 6/2011, Corfu, Greece. Retrieved from http://www.process-symposium.com/. (2011). PROS-134.pdf (521.15 KB)
Work features to support stigmergic coordination in distributed teams. Academy of Management Annual Meeting.. (2017). Stigmergy theory paper to share.pdf (261.44 KB)


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Caribbean Mango Chicken Burgers are one of my favorite meals to make ahead! I freeze the cooked patties individually in plastic wrap, then take out what I need later on, defrost the patties in the microwave, and they're ready to go! They're not only great as burgers, but also great crumbled over salads or crumbled into pitas for sandwiches,
That sounds yummy and different from the usual freeze ahead casseroles!
I've had a few people ask for the recipe. It's on my blog... http://snappygourmet.com/2011/04/11/caribbean-mango-chicken-burgers/


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148 Involvement Expo attracts businesses, agencies
Community agencies and local businesses always show up for the annual Involvement Expo, which takes place during Welcome Week at the beginning of each academic year. Here is a brief video from the 2011 event. The 2013 event is August 28 from 4-6 p.m. Here is a list of all UIS calendars and upcoming events.
Posted on August 22, 2013


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June 13, 2006 - VoIP Security
by Dominique Brezinski
In 2000 a co-worker brought an early Cisco VoIP phone into my office. He was tasked with doing a security review prior to a potential deployment in the company. His summation after five minutes with the docs, "It uses bootp and tftp to retrieve its operating image and unencrypted UDP to carry the audio stream." We immediately thought of our CEO and CFO's calls being recorded by anybody with access to the network infrastructure and ubiquitous bugging by patching the operating image. No way were we going to deploy the horrid little things.
In 2006 a few percent of homes have VoIP phones that are not much different from the one we looked at in 2000. And then there are many more software clients and the whole calling infrastructure exposed to the Internet. Moving voice services from proprietary telco protocols and infrastructure to public IP networks made phreaking synonymous with hacking. This is made obvious by the number of voice-service related presentation submission we received this year for Black Hat.
However, the security impacts of prevalent and cheap voice services over IP networks go far beyond device, protocol and server weaknesses. With voice communication comes social engineering, so this year we have presentations demonstrating VoIP phishing, voice analytics used to defend against social engineering attacks, and the more traditional exploitation of technology weaknesses. We hope the combination will be enlightening and get the security community thinking hard about the implications of widespread voice services over IP networks.
Defending Against Social Engineering with Voice Analytics. Is your voice your password? Or something more telling?
by Doug Mohney
I was interviewing a VP of NICE Systems at Spring VON in San Jose; he started telling me about all the wonderful things his off-the-shelf product could do through "voice analytics".
For some bizarre reason, I mapped "voice analytics" to "social engineering" when he started talking about contact centers picking up on competitive offers by word selectionthe whole "I have an offer from your competitor". We started freewheeling on what you could do with all that recorded voice data, including identifying attackers through voice analysis and then sharing that profile/voice print among a group of peerssay, you catch someone trying to scam your credit card company. While you've been burned today, you can alert your competitorswho are, in turn, being burned by some other crew. Swap the voice profiles and it's a win-win. He left muttering, "How can I make a profit off of this?"
Radical idea? Not really, we're talking about the same concept that NSA has been accused of Echelon; suck up all the voice, look for key words, ID voices. With the falling cost of hardware and a migration to VoIP, any medium-sized organization can do thissome already are.
Hacking VOIP Exposed
by David Endler
Lately there seems to be an explosion of press hype around the possibility of hackers exploiting Voice-over-IP networks and services Skype, Vonage, etc. VoIP Spam, Caller ID Spoofing, Toll Fraud, VoIP Eavesdropping, VoIP Phishing, and Call Hijacking are just some of the terms being thrown around that seem to cause a fair share of fear and uncertainty in the market.
We set out to write "Hacking Exposed VoIP" in part to combat this FUD, and also in order to help admins prioritize and defend against the most prevalent threats to VoIP today through real exploitation examples. This presentation is the byproduct of our research for the book. In it, we describe and demonstrate many real-world VoIP exploitation scenarios against SIP-based systems (Cisco, Avaya, Asterisk, etc.), while providing a sense of realism on which attacks are likely to emerge into the public domain.
SIP Stack Fingerprinting and Stack Difference Attacks VoIP Phreaking?
by Hendrik Scholz
Did we learn anything from blue boxing? Yes, it's fun and we get free calls.
Does PSTN convergence ring any bells? The traditional PSTN network nowadays is IP enabled and SIP signaling allows us to place calls over the internet. Previously safe from direct attacks, call control, billing, and lawful interception became prime targets for attacks. My daily work makes me deal with SIP on the server side and having access to a huge playground of devices, I put them to the test. Work includes a open source SIP stack fingerprinting tool as well as targets and exploits to go with them.
People using VoIP usually only care about the obvious features, not the drawbacks that might show up on your phone bill. We need to weed out bugs before they become an administrator's and user's nightmare.
Phishing with Asterisk PBX
by Jay Schulman
I'm hesitant to teach someone how to do something illegal more effectively. As with all disclosure discussions, the more we open people's eyes, the more they'll be prepared to defend against it. At least that's my hope.
So let's show the next generation of phishing attempts. What do all banks say on their websites? "We'll never ask you to enter your information; we'll always ask you to call us." Ok, so if I'm going to send out a phishing e-mail that encourages you to call me what do I need?
Let's start with Asterisk, the open-source PBX platform. It can emulate a professional IVR platform perfectly. Next, I have to have an 800# to be taken seriously. IAX.cc advertises those for 3.9 cents per minute. Done.
Now I need a professional sounding person for my IVR. Pay someone? Nope. Let's call a bank using Asterisk and record their IVR prompts into WAV files. It takes some time to find the right 800 numbers for the right voice prompts, but that's the creative part. Put all of the pieces together using Asterisk at Home's IVR menuing system and we have a professional sounding IVR platform.
Now I just need to get someone to call in and try it.
Enterprise Networks vs. Cisco Vulnerabilities
First, some context. I've been in security for 20 years and started my career as a kernel programmer. However, at Gartner, my job is to serve large enterprise clients (revenue $1B and up). It's fun to play both sides with technical knowledge and the big, strategic business context but let me be up front about one thing; I gave up my hands on technical skills long ago and now I talk for a living... read more
Advances In Anomaly Detection
While we would all love to see bug-free code in our critical applications, we must recognize the reality that we are a long way off from security nirvana. One pragmatic way to make it through until transcendence is to find ways to reliably identify unexpected behavior in our systems as it occurs, and automatically deploy counter-measures. Tzi-cker Chiueh and Stefano Zanero promise to push the state-of-the-art to new levels in the field of software anomaly detection. Their approaches are a bit different from each other, so we hope these presentations will give attendees a lot to chew on and compare/contrast. I really hope to see deployable systems based on the work of these two very bright gentlemen in the near future..... read more
The Black Page is always looking for concise and interesting comments from researchers and experts about issues that affect the security community. Contact us here to learn more about submission rules


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IYA2009 Updates
26 February 2010
First there is some excellent news we'd like to share: From Earth to the Universe has won the IYA2009/Bhaumik Prize for Excellence in Astronomy Education and Public Outreach. FETTU is a truly grassroots initiative, community-driven and has captured the spirit of the award as a whole. The prize is the acknowledgement of hard work from the small task group under the guidance of Kim and Megan, but it's also rewarding the many hours and effort put in by countless individuals all around the world (from wealthy to developing countries) that made the more than 500 exhibits possible. Unfortunately, some projects and resources don't make their products accessible, either by being difficult to translate or adapt to different languages and cultures. Often this is because either the original materials were not developed with portability in mind, or the source files are simply not available. FETTU considered this and had an innovative approach, making all materials freely available as an open source approach to education and public outreach. FETTU is an example of best practices to be followed by other international projects. Congratulations go to them!
More information: http://www.astronomy2009.org/news/pressreleases/detail/iya1002/
The Hubble Classroom Collage Activity
Images from the Hubble Space Telescope inspired classes in the USA to create unique collages of their favourite Hubble photos. http://amazing-space.stsci.edu/iya/collage/
Join the Globe at Night 2010 campaign: March 3-16!
With half of the world's population now living in cities, many urban dwellers have never experienced the wonderment of pristinely dark skies and maybe never will. This loss, caused by light pollution, is a concern on many fronts: safety, energy conservation, cost, health and effects on wildlife, as well as our ability to view the stars. Even though light pollution is a serious and growing global concern, it is one of the easiest environmental problems you can address on local levels. http://www.astronomy2009.org/news/updates/810/
Upcoming events at Ireland's Blackrock Castle Observatory
Blackrock Castle Observatory in Cork, Ireland, have an exciting programme of events lined up. These include children's workshops, viewing sessions using a 16-inch rooftop telescope, and a movies by moonlight film club, among many other things. For the full list of events, please see: http://us1.campaign-archive.com/?u=04b967ac930576c096d46a270&id=085baedd31&e=c3a302e74f
Space Initiatives in the framework of IYA2009
Japanese UN COPUOS representative, in the session of the Scientific and Technical Subcommittee of the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space, covered comprehensively the achievements of the United Nations Basic Space Science Initiative for 1990 - 2010 through the International Heliophysical Year 2007 , International Year of Astronomy 2009, and International Space Weather Initiative in the following two PowerPoint presentations. http://www.astronomy2009.org/news/updates/817/
Aesthetics of Astrophotography
The aesthetics of astrophotography is a one day symposium focusing on the relationship between Hubble images and the history of art. More information: http://www.aestheticsofastrophotography.co.uk/
Viewing the Universe Bit by Bit: New Directions and Uses of Astronomy Visualization Software
New, visually rich, astronomical software environments coupled with large web-accessible data sets hold the promise of innovative and exciting ways to teach, collaborate, and explore the Universe. Exploring the Universe Bit by Bit will be a hands on workshop that will focus on four key visualization software environments: Google Sky, World Wide Telescope, Celestia, & Partiview, with the immediate goals of developing applications and seeding new collaborations during the workshop. http://www.astronomy2009.org/news/updates/815/
Activities of Greece's Hellenic Amateur Astronomy Association for IYA2009
During 2009 the Hellenic Amateur Astronomy Association (HAAA) organised a series of events dedicated to the International Year of Astronomy 2009. The main goal was to the spread to the public of Greece the meaning of observational amateur astronomy and the methods used, according to the constitution of the HAAA. http://www.astronomy2009.org/news/updates/813/
Algerian astronomy boosted during IYA2009
Enthusiastic Algerian IYA2009 supporters from the Sirius Astronomy Association have spearheaded a series of astronomical events, many within their country but some beyond. An online clearinghouse made specifically for IYA2009 activities is available. Members of the Sirius Astronomy Association hope that it will inspire others to engage in space-science outreach beyond 2009. See the website here: http://siriusalgeria.net/sirius09.htm
The World At Night confirms plans for 2010
The World At Night (TWAN) is an IYA2009 Special project which produces and presents collections of stunning photographs and time-lapse videos of the world's landmarks against the celestial attractions. The eternally peaceful sky looks the same above symbols of all nations and regions, attesting to the truly unified nature of Earth as a planet rather than an amalgam of human-designated territories. TWAN has announced its plans for 2010, and looks set to go from strength to strength. http://www.astronomy2009.org/news/updates/814/
International Astronomical Youth Camp 2010 - call for applications
Imagine spending three weeks of your summer in beautiful mountain scenery working with other students from all over the world on an astronomical project of your choice. The International Astronomical Youth Camp (IAYC) is a three-week long summer camp aiming to promote knowledge on astronomy and related sciences in an international atmosphere. Each year it takes place at a different European location, this year from 1 - 21 August in the small town of Klingenthal in the east of Germany, near the border of Czech Republic. http://www.astronomy2009.org/news/updates/809/
Young Irish stargazers bring telescope to Tanzanian peers
IYA2009 saw members of the public join astronomers to gaze at the stars and let themselves be inspired by the mysteries of the universe. While some events lasted just a few nights, a special initiative of Blackrock Castle Observatory (BCO) and Cork City Council in partnership with Cork Printmakers will have a lasting impact in the minds of young children in Cork and in the Arusha region of Tanzania. "Capture the Cosmos" was organised under the umbrella of the international Universe Awareness (UNAWE) programme, one of the IYA2009 cornerstone projects whose mission is to 'broaden young children's minds with the scale and beauty of the universe'. http://www.astronomy2009.org/news/updates/806/
Germany's largest IYA2009 exhibition celebrates its 500,000th visitor
It's called "Out of this World - Wonders of the Solar System" (or "Sternstunden - Wunder des Sonnensystems"), occupies a cylinder 100 metres high, and has been visited 500,000 times in just 10 1/2 months: the largest exhibition devoted to IYA2009 in Germany in the Gasometer in Oberhausen. http://www.astronomy2009.org/news/updates/807/
Search IYA2009 Updates
National Nodes: 148
Organisational Nodes: 40
Organisational Associates:33
National Websites: 111
Cornerstone Projects: 12
Special Task Groups: 11
Special Projects:16
Official Products:8
Media Partners:22


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New in Windows 8 — for XP and Windows 7 Users
If you've used Windows 7 or XP, you'll be up to speed with Windows 8 in no time. Most of the functions you are accustomed to are still available. Keep an eye out for the following changes from earlier versions of Windows:
Faster start and stop: Windows 8 starts and sleeps faster than earlier versions, making it more responsive.
Start screen: The Start menu has been replaced by a screen full of tiles used to launch apps (programs). Just start typing to search for a specific app.
App tiles: The boxes on the Start screen are called tiles and can be square or rectangular. Tiles can show current information, such as the weather or your latest e-mail. Select a tile to open that app.
Microsoft Store: The Store provides a central clearinghouse for you to find and install new apps, many for free. Apps in the Store meet requirements set by Microsoft for function and security.
File Picker: The old File dialog boxes have been replaced by a full-screen file picker that displays more files at once. Select the Files heading to browse locations.
Desktop and taskbar: These mainstays of earlier versions of Windows are no longer front and center – you may find that you never use them. However, they're still there if you need them.
File Explorer: Windows Explorer is now the File Explorer and features a ribbon with the tools you need.
Touchscreen, mouse, and keyboard: Windows 8 works equally well with different methods of input.


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Set custom nameservers for domains registered with GoDaddy
If your domain name is registered with GoDaddy but hosted through another company (or on a server you control), you'll need to change its nameservers. What those are, we don't know! You'll have to talk to your hosting provider or admin to find out what your custom nameservers should be, and then you can easily set them.
Looks like you're not logged in. If you log in above (under ), we can save you a couple of steps.
- Go to the DNS Management page.
- On the DNS Management page, under Nameservers, click Change.
- Under Choose your new nameserver type, select Custom.
- Enter the custom nameservers your hosting provider gave you and click Save.
After updating your nameservers, allow 4 to 8 hours for other networks to access information for .com and .net domain names, and allow 24 to 48 hours for other networks to access information for all other domain extensions. If you have difficulty, contact our 24/7 technical support team for assistance.
More info
- Learn about Custom Nameserver Restrictions on .com, .net, and .edu extensions.


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Reconsidering Rivera
By Robin Herbst
"And what sort of man was I?" asks Diego Rivera toward the end of his autobiography, in the last year of his life. Indeed, with a life as rich in controversy as Rivera's, the ambiguous answers to that question continue to fascinate scholars of his work. But it is the question of what sort of artist Rivera was, and the meaning of his undeniably prodigious contribution to twentieth-century art, that lie behind a new, major retrospective of his work, "Diego Rivera: Art and Revolution," opening at the Cleveland Museum of Art on February 14, 1999.
The show is the first major retrospective of Rivera's work in this country in thirteen years. It contains 146 paintings, murals, prints, and drawings, and will be accompanied by an exhibition catalog that presents new scholarship and interpretations of Rivera's work.
Rivera is generally acknowledged to be one of the most important artists of this century, and its most influential muralist. By the age of forty-five, he was among the most well-known and controversial artists in the world. He developed a painting style that synthesized the influences of European art, socialist ideals, and the cultural riches of pre-Columbian, indigenous Mexico. Today he is still revered as a Latin American folk hero.
But what sort of man was Diego Rivera? And what is the significance of his work? Political artist and visual satirist? Was his greatest contribution the populist mural, whose style he developed after he returned from Europe to Mexico in 1921 to participate in the "Mexican Renaissance?" He was a man of obvious contradictions, and occasionally revolting appetites. He was a devoted Marxist who nevertheless reviled Stalin and painted portraits of his own Hollywood friends. He was a lover of women, fond of marriage, who couldn't remain faithful to any of his four wives, and whose unabashed experiment with cannibalism in 1904 he proudly recounts in his autobiography — including his favorite recipes, which chiefly involve the cadavers of young women.
Rivera's life may be inextricable from his art, but it is the latter that interests the organizers of the massive traveling retrospective. "He's the greatest Mexican artist of the twentieth century," says Graham Beal, director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). The show appears there from May 30 through August 16, 1999, and will complement LACMA's extensive holdings of Mexican and Latin American art. From there it travels to Dallas and Mexico City.
"With the death of communism, we can openly and without fear of repercussion address Rivera's influence on the evolution of American field painting — the whole notion of a wall as a field that the spectator enters. Jackson Pollack and other important artists were looking at his work, yet Rivera had fallen out of favor."
Rivera claimed to want to create not merely a public, but a populist art, according to William H. Robinson, associate curator for paintings at the Cleveland Museum of Art and a curator of the exhibition — an art "possessing the visual and rhetorical power to change the world."
Rivera invoked remarkable disputes and inspired — and contributed to — a body of legend that continues alternately to reveal and cloak the artist in mystery. His physical appetites were Rabelaisian — uncouth, enormous — and his intellect possessed the subtlety and energy to match. The only certainty is that opinion about Rivera's contribution to twentieth-century art remains as sharply divided today as it was during his lifetime.
Why produce a new Rivera retrospective now? "For two reasons," says Robinson. "There's a lot of new research on Rivera at the moment; we're bringing together new scholars." Their articles on Rivera's work appear in the exhibition catalog. "Also, the National Institute of Fine Arts Mexico co-organized the exhibition with Cleveland. They've been pursuing research on Rivera for the past fifteen years, which includes not only locating new works but uncovering new information about Rivera." Robinson contends in the catalog's introduction, "Nearly forty years after his death, Rivera remains an artist in need of serious reassessment."
Diego Rivera was born in the mining town of Guanajuato, Mexico in 1886 and was sent by his parents at an early age to San Carlos Academy in Mexico City. There he studied mathematics and art and mastered the academic drawing style. He surrounded himself with other young artists and intellectuals. In 1907, after receiving an academic stipend to study abroad, Rivera traveled to Spain. Of this period, he writes in his autobiography, "I was twenty years old, over six feet tall, and weighed three hundred pounds. But I was a dynamo of energy…. For days on end, I painted from early dawn till past midnight." This was the sort of schedule he was to maintain throughout his life. He spent the next fourteen years in Europe, mostly in Spain and France. He studied and painted, combining his view of the spatial distortions he found in El Greco's work with strains of European modernism, such as divisionism and symbolism. While in France he became involved with artists of the avant-garde, including Picasso, Mondrian, Juan Gris, and Severini, gradually adopting and furthering cubism — his was an "austere, theoretical" form of the art. But by 1917 Rivera decided that cubism was neither a "collective" or "social" art, and he appeared to abandon its formulae almost entirely. According to Robinson, however, this is but one of the many misconceptions that have dogged Rivera's reputation. Rivera's work may appear to belong to discrete periods, signifying changes in his interest or focus; this, contends Robinson, is an illusion.
"Rather than abandoning ideas and styles," Robinson writes in his introduction to the exhibition, "Rivera characteristically absorbed and redirected them. He was, above all else, a great synthesizer, possessing a remarkable quality to fuse his accumulated experiences of European and indigenous artistic conventions with personal iconography, aesthetics, and national cultural identity."
The exhibition covers Rivera's entire career, but unlike earlier examinations of his work, devotes one-half of its space to the work Rivera produced before returning to Mexico. It is divided into four sections, arranged thematically as well as chronologically. They are titled, From the Academy to the European Avant-Garde, 1886- 1913; Cubism and Classicism, 1913-1921; Muralism: A Proposal for Universal Humanism, 1922- 1932; and finally, The Artistic Languages of Diego Rivera, 1923-1957. In the first, as the title indicates, we follow Rivera as he leaves his roots in the Mexican academy and becomes involved with the European avant-garde. The second section traces his involvement with the Parisian avant-garde and his movement toward a more "socially relevant art," which would synthesize modernist and classical styles. The third theme follows Rivera's development as a muralist. The final section explores the vast range of Rivera's art in the last four decades of his life, in which he produced a dazzling array of work and employed styles, according to Robinson's introduction, "ranging from surrealist-inspired fantasy to the monumental, hieratic simplicity of pre-conquest Indian art."
The exhibition is designed to draw attention from the standard obsessions with Rivera's political interests, personal life, and a narrow view of his work as a muralist, and to shed light instead on the earlier work and the process he developed of assimilating and transforming artistic styles and techniques. For example, rather than promote the accepted view that Rivera "abandoned" cubism, the exhibition traces "his use of the planar, geometric structures of cubism in composing his later murals and scenes of Mexican life," writes Robinson.
"I think Rivera was considered a traitor," says Robinson, because he appeared to have "abandoned cubism and gone back to work for low wages in murals. Supporters of cubism worked to destroy his reputation. There's a very different view of his work from Europe than the Americas."
Rivera had indeed come to believe that cubism as an art form was only accessible to artistic cogniscenti; a view that was influenced at the time by his conversations with Mexican and Russian expatriate revolutionaries in Paris. They urged him to find a "more collective and social" art. At this time he was also greatly influenced by the work of Cézanne and Ingres, and eventually joined other artists in a Paris exhibition that trumpeted their work as "modern classicism." He traveled to Italy where he sketched medieval and Renaissance frescoes – – which he believed ended his search for a "monumental, public art capable of persuading and educating the masses."
Mexico in 1921 had just emerged from a protracted and bloody revolution. Rivera was also at a turning point artistically, tired of France and Italy, tempted by its political climate to go to Russia, but yearning for home. As he put it in My Art, My Life, the autobiography written with Gladys March,"The call of my country was stronger than ever. And a turn in the political situation seemed to favor my prospects…. An artist with my revolutionary point of view could now find a place in Mexico — a place in which to work and grow….the exile was coming home."
Mexico's new leader, President Obregon, supported the notion of free universal education. To further his project, his Minister of Education recruited artists to create murals in public buildings — works of art that would promote his educational programs, "rehabilitate" the indigenous Indian race, and integrate the peasants into mainstream Mexican society. In 1923 Rivera embarked on his second project for the government, a cycle of murals for the Ministry of Public Education. He used styles and subjects inspired by his travels in Mexico, and employed the technique of the true fresco — understood by Europeans and ancient Mayans alike — using earth, rather than commercial pigments, applied on wet plaster. "I had the ambition," Rivera writes, "to reflect the genuine essential expression of the land. I wanted my pictures to mirror the social life of Mexico as I see it, and through the reality and arrangement of the present, the masses were to be shown the possibilities of the future."
Although Rivera's cubist period is dismissed as a lapse by some, other scholars maintain that it is impossible to overestimate its importance to Rivera's later work.
"…Everything about the movement fascinated and intrigued me," Rivera writes. "It was a revolutionary movement, questioning everything that had previously been said and done in art. …cubism broke down forms as they had been seen for centuries, and was creating out of the fragments new forms, new objects, new patterns and — ultimately — new worlds. When it dawned on me that all this innovation had little to do with real life, I would surrender all the glory and acclaim cubism had brought me for a way in art truer to my inmost feelings."
Despite this apparent disillusion, Bertram D. Wolfe, contents in his book, The Fabulous Life of Diego Rivera, that Rivera regarded cubism "as the most important experience in the formation of his art."
The exhibition also traces Rivera's role in the anti- modernist reaction in France during World War I, and the relationship between his art and the Mexican Revolution of 1910.
Massive and ambitious in scope, Diego Rivera: Art and Revolution suggests new interpretations of specific works and revised perspectives on the totality of his contribution. Indeed, its grand scale seems to mirror the man himself — an artist whose near-mythic life force and prolific output never slowed, even toward the end of his life. Suffering from a recurrence of cancer in the mid- 1950s, following the death of his third wife, the artist Frida Kahlo, he returned to Mexico from Moscow, where he had been treated for the disease. Surrounded by family and friends, he contemplated his tumultuous personal life, his contribution to art, and his feelings toward existence. Faced with these mysteries, he returned at length to the heart of the matter. He writes, "Right now, my fingers and I are literally itching to start work on my next mural."
Robin Herbst is a writer in Annapolis, Maryland.
The Cleveland Museum of Art received $100,000 from the Endowment to help produce "Diego Rivera: Art and Revolution," along with a catalog and public programs on the exhibition.


text:
Just in Time Teaching (JiTT)
and is replicated here as part of the SERC Pedagogic Service.
What is Just-in-Time Teaching (JiTT)?Just-in-Time Teaching focuses on improving student learning through the use of brief web-based questions (JiTT exercises) delivered before a class meeting. Students' responses to JiTT exercises are reviewed by the instructor a few hours before class and are used to develop classroom activities addressing learning gaps revealed in the JiTT responses. JiTT exercises allow instructors to quickly gather information about student understanding of course concepts immediately prior to a class meeting and tailor activities to meet students' actual learning needs.
Learn more about Just-in-Time Teaching...
Why use Just-in-Time Teaching?Just-in-Time Teaching improves student learning and increases in-class teaching efficiency and effectiveness. JiTT does this by incorporating research-based knowledge about effective teaching and learning practices. Specifically, JiTT:
- Improves students' preparation for class
- Enhances student motivation for learning
- Promotes ongoing formative assessment of student learning (by both instructors and students)
- Informs in-class activities that target student learning gaps
It is easy to feel disconnected from a science course as a student. Each day can seem as a new set of notes to take from the instructor's monologue, another chapter to read and another problem set to work on, but each unrelated to the previous day, that is, until the exam. The situation changes if the assignments are designed to pose questions that require some real effort and the interaction with other students ahead of class, but providing the assurance that the toughest points will be cleared up in the class makes that work worthwhile. Just-in-Time Teaching can offer that kind of day-to-day motivation and interaction that drives the course forward.
(Project Kaleidoscope, 2007)
Teaching and learning is most effective as an interactive dialogue between a student and an instructor who are at liberty to talk "about" the subject - that is to probe it from different angles and at different depths to satisfy the learner's immediate needs.
Carrying on a "dialogue" with a classroom of students by creating learning needs, assessing those needs and responding to them when they exist is a challenge many instructors simply avoid. If not well-organized, it can be time-consuming and problematic in large classes due to uneven willingness of students to participate.
Using web-technology to coordinate the dialogue is a feature of Just-in-Time Teaching that makes responsive instruction for an entire class possible.
(Project Kaleidoscope, 2007)
Learn more about the benefits of JiTT for students and instructors...
How to use Just-in-Time TeachingA key to successful JiTT implementation is developing a set of effective questions that will be posted online for students to answer before the next class. JiTT questions are generally open-ended and require students to do something - read a textbook chapter or article, analyze a video, complete a simulation, or analyze data - related to material that will be addressed during the next class period. For each JiTT exercise, instructors post JiTT questions in a course management system and students respond online a few hours before class. After the posting deadline - but before class begins - instructors examine students' responses, group them into clusters reflecting similar thinking processes, and select a representative sample of responses to show in class. The instructor also uses the student responses to develop interactive in-class activities targeting learning gaps identified in the JiTT responses.
Learn more about getting started with JiTT in your own class...
ExamplesThe JiTT Examples page includes a collection of ready-to-use JiTT exercises, including follow-up in-class activities and teaching notes on how to best use the JiTT exercise in your own class. Use them as-is or adapt as needed for your own course.
Learn more about JiTT examples you can adapt for your class...
References and ResourcesReferences and Resources page includes a large collection of valuable JiTT information, including web- and print-based resources illustrating JiTT's development, use and effectiveness across disciplines.
Learn more about JiTT, its development, and effectiveness across disciplines...


text:
Takis Restaurant-The Original
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All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewrtitten, or redistributed without express license.
The Talk Awards congratulate those companies that are committed to making their customers' experience the best it can be. For its dedication to providing excellent customer service, Takis Restaurant-The Original of Leesburg, FL has won The Talk Awards for customer satisfaction.
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text:
Sunday Pork Gravy
By á-1910
- Sauce:
- 2 (35-ounce) cans plum tomatoes with basil
- 1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
- 4 garlic cloves, chopped
- 1 medium onion, chopped
- 1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes
- 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
- 1/2 cup red wine
- 1/2 cup grated Parmesan
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 cup water
- 1/2 cup fresh basil leaves, cut into thin strips
- Meatballs and Ribs:
- 1 pound ground sirloin or lean ground beef, pork, turkey, veal, chicken, or any combination
- 2 eggs
- 6 garlic cloves, finely chopped, plus 3 garlic cloves, chopped
- 1 cup seasoned bread crumbs
- 1 tablespoon salt
- 1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
- 1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
- 1/2 cup milk
- 1 cup all-purpose flour
- 1 pound pork spare ribs, trimmed
- 1 cup extra-virgin olive oil
- 1 (6-ounce) can tomato paste, for sauce and ribs
Adapted from foodnetwork.com
Step 1
Strain the plum tomatoes in a colander to extract the juice, breaking the tomatoes apart with your hands. Discard the pulp and set aside.
Heat the olive oil in a large pot over medium-high heat. Add 4 cloves garlic, the onion, red pepper and black pepper. Saute until the onion is soft and beginning to brown, about 5 minutes. Add juiced tomatoes, red wine, Parmesan and salt. Add the tomato paste and the water and stir together over medium heat. *Cook's Note: Tomato paste should be added after making meatballs and ribs.
Put the ground meat in a mixing bowl. Beat the eggs and add them to the meat along with 6 cloves garlic, the bread crumbs, salt, pepper, Parmesan and milk. Mix this all together with your hands. Wet your hands with water and continue to wet them as you pinch meat from the bowl and roll into 2-inch balls. Roll the balls in the flour.
Heat 1/2-cup of oil in a large skillet. Add 3 cloves chopped garlic and saute until golden brown. Remove the garlic with a slotted spoon and set aside. Add the meatballs and saute over medium-high heat, turning them until they are brown all over.
*Cook's Note: As soon as you can pick them up with a fork, they are ready. You don't want them to be well done. If the meatball slides off the fork when you pick it up, it needs to cook a little longer.
Cut the ribs apart and remove the membrane. Saute them in 1/2-cup oil until very brown and remove.
Return the garlic to the oil and add tomato paste (for the sauce) to the pan; Cook, stirring, over medium heat for about 3 minutes until it softens. Remove from the heat and add to the sauce.
Add the meatballs and spareribs to the sauce. Bring to an easy boil, then simmer over low heat for 2 hours. Add the basil and simmer for 15 minutes more. The spareribs should be very tender, falling off the bone and the meatballs should float in the sauce
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text:
Listen free for 30 days
The Facts of Business Life
Being a successful business owner means more than knowing one's industry and understanding the basic concepts of leadership, management, or motivation. It means being able to master many areas of business, and knowing how each of these areas relate to and build on each other. It also means understanding how those areas change as a business goes through its inevitable life cycle, and how the owner must be prepared to change with them. The Facts of Business Life is the first book designed to provide listeners with the means of achieving the kind of long-term understanding that is the key to true and lasting success.
Toward that end, the book covers the seven facts of business life that every successful business owner knows, including: "If You Don't Lead, No One Will Follow", "If You Don't Control It, You Don't Own It", "Protecting Your Company's Assets Should Be Your First Priority", "Planning Is About Preparing for the Future, Not Predicting It", "If You Don't Market Your Business, You Won't Have One", "The Marketplace Is a War Zone", and "You Don't Just Have to Know the Business You're In, You Have to Know Business". Devoting one chapter to each fact, the book explains what it is, what it means, and, most important, how it can help entrepreneurs achieve success and stay away from potentially harmful mistakes.
Equally important, each chapter enables readers to not only understand the facts on their own, but also in terms of how they impact on a business as it passes through each of the five levels of every successful company's existence: "Ownership and Opportunity", "Creating Your Company's DNA", "From Survival to Success", "Maintaining Success", and "Moving On When It's Time to Go".
Written by a successful businessman with four decades of ownership experience, and packed with valuable advice, The Facts of Business Life presents every business owner - whether he or she is starting, building, maintaining, or exiting a business - with the key facts that, applied together, can ensure a strong and lasting enterprise.
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your My Library section along with the audio.
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- Willy
- 08-03-13
A book with impact
Would you consider the audio edition of The Facts of Business Life to be better than the print version?
I have both. Both one for the car and one for the office.
Who was your favorite character and why?
All the "facts' and 'levels' zero in on business ownership basics
Any additional comments?
A must read for any business owner, or those who may want to be. It's easy to see why the press has been active in writing about and reviewing this book.
- Marc Charette
- 19-02-13
Repetition may be defeating purpose
What did you love best about The Facts of Business Life?
The concepts and principles are generally clear and well thought out.
Would you recommend The Facts of Business Life to your friends? Why or why not?
Worth listening if you are either thinking of going into business for yourself or if you are struggling with making your business profitable.
Would you listen to another book narrated by Brett Barry?
Probably would listen to more of Brett's work but I'd recommend hiring a new editor.
Any additional comments?
I know that repetition is key to learning but when it's done in the way it has in this book, it makes you wonder if you've not already listened to that section of the book. If it wasn't for my want and will to be a good student of the core content, I'd probably never finished listening to it out of shear confusion. I kept asking myself, "didn't I just hear this chapter?" I think this may just be a matter of poor editing or poor executive writing skills (or maybe a writing coach?). Ok, repeat yourself but don't make your audience feel like you're a preverbal broken record.
Still, all this said, if you can get past all that, the content is well founded, well thought out and a great wake up call to anyone thinking of starting a business, wanting to grow their business or suffering from all the normal roadblocks in making changes and improvements.