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The short-term politics of picking Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as vice-president on the Republican ticket are more astute than many Democrats are acknowledging. The pick has, in a moment's notice, galvanized the religious right, brought abortion back into the spotlight, and re-energized John McCain's candidacy for president as a maverick.
But the longer-term impact of the choice will likely undermine the confidence the American public will have in McCain's decision-making.
If Palin's choice as his running mate is indicative of his recklessness and willingness to gamble the nation's security for a bump in the polls, then the American public must face the possibility that we would have another president in the White House who would rule by gut instinct, hasty and uninformed decisions, and a reluctance to fully vet an issue before making important decisions.
In choosing Palin, McCain had his first face-to-face conversation with her the day before his announcement; a time that his staff was still researching information about her past and her qualifications. On the day before making her selection public, the McCain staff found out about her 17-year-old daughter being five months pregnant — not an issue in itself, but the fact that it was unknown until the day before more than suggests that the vetting process was rushed and uninformed at the very least. Yet, McCain maintains — as Bush so often did — that the facts are not as they seem; that the contradictory evidence is just the other side making a big deal out of nothing. (It also points out the weakness of those who, like Palin, support abstinence over birth control.)
But brush the last-minute decision-making aside, and imagine this: While running for office as mayor of Wasilla, then a town of 5,000 people (that's 3,000 fewer than Middlebury) she ran a campaign based on her opposition to abortion, her support of gun rights, her born-again Christian faith, and support of term limits — none of which had anything to do with the issues facing the city of Wasilla. She also appealed for advertising help to the state Republican Party and for the first time in its history — because small-town community elections are normally nonpartisan — the state party funded the ads. (Can you imagine a candidate conducting a race like that to run as chair of Middlebury's selectboard?)
Even more jarring to the town, once in office, Palin fired or forced out of office the librarian, the public works director, city planner, museum director, the police chief and others — something unheard of in small town politics. In one particular action, she approached the librarian about banning some books, soon fired her, then reversed herself because of public outrage.
She also changed the town's traditional ways with an edict that no town employee was to talk to the news media without her permission. As a local comparison, that would mean that Middlebury town manager Bill Finger, police chief Tom Hanley, town planner Fred Dunnington, the road commissioner or town clerk could not inform the public about their own areas of expertise without her approval. Why? Not because she wanted the public to know what was going on, but because she wanted to control what they knew.
Ah, yes, that's pure conservatism straight from the playbook of Karl Rove and Bush — stifle the messenger, spin the message. And McCain, who famously refuses to address issues that challenge his beliefs, would seemingly follow suit with Palin's staunch support.
Such facts resonate with voters — particularly after eight years of a federal government willing to tell bald-faced lies about the war, deny spying on fellow Americans, pursue illegal appointments in the U.S. Justice Department, conduct secret dealings with oil companies, turn a blind eye toward corruption with contractors in Iraq, and on and on. Electing a team that fundamentally embraces a secretive, closed-mouth approach to governance that would rival the Bush-Cheney years may not play all that well with voters.
But that is style. On the issues, know that: Palin is not only strongly anti-choice, she opposes abortion even in the case of rape or incest; supported right-wing Pat Buchanan for president in 2000; thinks creationism should be taught in public schools; doesn't think humans are a cause of climate change; has supported drilling for oil in the Artic National Wildlife Refuge; sued the Bush administration for putting the polar bear on the endangered list because it might hamper oil production; and is fully supportive of Bush's and McCain's energy policy that favors big oil.
The clincher, of course, is her lack of experience, though experience isn't nearly as important as judgment. As one commentator noted, Sen. Barack Obama's perceived lack of experience has been thoroughly addressed during the past 18 months in the campaign. And it's not just that he has gained experience running the campaign, but that his judgment passed the test of public approval in a tough, 50-state race. As Americans, we know Sen. Obama as a thoughtful candidate who has fought for what he believes, made well-informed decisions against the war even when it was popular to support it, and whose approach to politics has truly put the nation first — if by that what is meant is putting the people first, not big oil or big business or the banner of patriotism masking as public good.
Palin, on the other hand, is a virtual unknown, appointed by McCain without the public casting a single vote in her favor as a national leader who could be a heartbeat away from leading the nation with views that the vast majority of Americans reject.
McCain had earlier publicly subscribed to the belief that the chief obligation of the presidential candidate was to pick a vice-president who was qualified to serve as president. He discarded that notion without a thought of putting the country first, and chose instead to base his decision on the short-term political gamble that this choice might help his campaign in these last 60 days.
That sounds an awful like putting McCain and his party first, and the country second — just like it's been under the Bush-Cheney reign these past eight years. It also causes a gap in credibility that McCain will be hard-pressed to refute.
Angelo S. Lynn


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A Starbuck man accused of driving drunk and causing the crash that killed a Minnesota coach's son has been sentenced to four years in prison.
Thirty-eight-year old Dana Schoen was sentenced last week in Pope County. Under a plea deal, Schoen pleaded guilty in December to three counts of criminal vehicular operation.
Schoen must submit to random drug and alcohol testing, and remain out of bars and liquor stores as part of his sentence.
Schoen admitted being four times over the legal limit last July when his pickup collided with an SUV carrying Southwest Minnesota State men's basketball coach Brad Bigler.
Bigler's 5-month-old son, Drake, was killed. Bigler was critically injured. His wife, Heather, who was driving the SUV, and her grandmother also were hurt.

subset: commoncrawl


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Atlanta's most advanced Electrophysiology Labs
Gwinnett Medical Center's cardiac services includes two of Metro Atlanta's most state-of-the-art electrophysiology (EP) labs at its Strickland Heart Center in Lawrenceville. These labs will allow the cardiac experts at GMC to diagnose and treat heart arrhythmias, or problems related to the heart's rhythm.
A quivering or irregular heartbeat can lead to blood clots, stroke, heart failure and other heart-related complications. According to the American Heart Association, an estimated 2.7 million Americans are living with these complications, which includes atrial fibrillation (AFib). If you suspect that you may suffer from AFib, have it checked out. Call 678-312-5000 or find a cardiologist near you.
Gwinnett Medical Center's EP program also features the subcutaneous implantable cardiac defibrillator (SICD) procedure. GMC was also only the second hospital system in Georgia and the first in North Metro Atlanta to conduct this procedure, which enables a defibrillator to be placed directly under the skin without touching the heart. Since this amazing innovation in cardiovascular care does not involve placement of a lead inside the heart, it offers an important alternative for patients who have no vascular access or younger patients who may require multiple defibrillators during their lifetime.
An Amazing Facility—Years of Experience
From diagnosing heart disease to treating cardiovascular conditions such as cardiomyopathy, blocked arteries or arrhythmia, Gwinnett Medical Center has provided expert care for cardiovascular diseases in our community for more than 20 years.
One of the most advanced programs we offer is our percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) program. This program allows physicians to perform life-saving coronary angioplasty and stenting procedures within our cath lab. It also allows for advanced techniques for extracting blockages in patients' blood vessels during these procedures. These advanced techniques mean faster response times to cardiac situations—and time saved is heart muscle saved.
Some of our other services and departments include:
- Cardiac Catheterization Lab—For minimally invasive surgery related to a heart attack and other heart-related problems
- Cardiac Wellness Center—Includes comprehensive rehabilitation facilities after a heart attack
- Cardiology Department—For the diagnosis and treatment of heart and vascular conditions
- Chest Pain Center—For chest pain evaluation in an emergency situation
- Electrophysiology—Program that offers consultative, diagnostic and non-surgical disease management
- Open Heart Surgery—Includes state-of-the-art operating rooms and the region's most accomplished surgeons
Find a cardiologist now, or call 678-312-5000 for a physician referral.


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Want T-Mobile's Google Phone? Not in D.C.
T-Mobile's much anticipated G1 phone running on Google's Android software went on sale today across the nation -- except in the Washington region.
Here, you can walk into a T-Mobile retail store and play with a G1, the latest souped-up smart phone to hit the market. But you can't take one home. That's because Washington is one of the several markets around the country that don't have T-Mobile's 3G high-speed data network up and running yet.
So if they were to sell you the phone, it would work on its regular network but downloads of some Internet applications would ... run ...
something ...
like ...
As of now, a Washington area resident can buy the G1 phone over the Web. And 3G will be deployed in the region on T-Mobile's network by late November. The company expects its 3G network will be deployed in 120 cities by the end of the year.
But if you bought one outside the region and try it here today, it'll take a little longer to download applications like Google Maps and Street Views, YouTube clips and other location based services such as local price comparison shopping.
So what's the big deal about 3G? It's faster and therefore provides a better experience for users, particularly with data-intensive Internet applications like video. AT&T announced today that 2.4 million subscribers bought new iPhones that run on its 3G network in the last quarter.
The reason why T-Mobile's 3G network has been delayed can be blamed on an unlikely source: the Defense Department along with other federal government agencies.
The federal agencies occupied the valuable spectrum T-Mobile bought for more than $4 billion two years ago to build out its 3G network. Since T-Mobile bought the spectrum, the Bellevue, Wash.-based company has had to force local governments and the federal government off the spectrum, market by market.
"This is first time we had to move federal government systems from spectrum," said Kathleen Ham, vice president of Federal regulatory affairs for T-Mobile. "They were not slow to move, but were surprised how fast we wanted to move."
Cecilia Kang
October 22, 2008; 4:57 PM ET
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This is true, but the phone also has 802.11b/g support so if you're near an open access point (like many coffee shops and paneras), you will have regular internet speeds.
Posted by: M | October 23, 2008 7:25 AM
The 2G EDGE network is not that bad an experience - yes it's slower than 3G, but in my short experience with the phone, it's fine. I am looking forward to the 3G system when it is deployed next month...
Posted by: G1-user | October 23, 2008 10:16 AM
"Here, you can walk into a T-Mobile retail store and play with a G1, the latest souped-up smart phone to hit the market. But you can't take one home."
I thought you can buy one even if you were in a 3G market. This article states that you cannot even buy one. I have to hit my T-Mobile store to find out.
Posted by: Curious... | October 23, 2008 10:48 AM
"an unlikely source: the Defense Department along with other federal government agencies"
Actually it's not at all unlikely that bureaucratic sluggishness from DoD and other feds would slow down something that a business is trying to get done in a reasonable amount of time.
Sounds about right to me, sadly.
Posted by: mccxxiii | October 23, 2008 2:23 PM
Why would anyone in their right mind would buy a Google Phone when you can buy the best - iPhone for around the same price?
Google phone is plain ugly- I don't even want to touch it. Yuck!
Posted by: Troglodyte | October 23, 2008 9:33 PM
I've been thinking about the Android Insurgency and will it be Successful?
The nascent competition between the iPhone and the Android OS is reminiscent of the (eventually) lopsided battle between Apple and Microsoft in the 1980's to be the dominant software platform for PCs.
Presently, Apple and Google appear to have entirely different philosophies regarding their smartphones: Apple tends to practice a form of digital dictatorship with their products while Google has decided on a path of open-source Android anarchy.
Will smartphones running Android fail against the iPhone, just as the Zune failed against the iPod? Will Android eventually be as common on mobile devices as Windows is currently on PCs?
The Case for Apple:
Like the old Macintosh computers, the iPhone bundles its hardware and software creating a product where for the iPhone's hardware and software are tightly integrated, allowing for better working applications and a better experience.
Unlike the 1980's, Apple holds a unique advantage with iTunes. Today, Apple could be considered a media conglomerate, controlling over 80% of the music download market. iTunes also allows users to store, sync, and manage their phone all in one application.
Currently, there is no equivalent desktop application for Android.
The Case for Google:
Android-based phones should be cheaper than the iPhone and like a PC running Windows, Google's Android is able to function with a variety of parts, processors, and carriers.
Since Android is open-source, free linux-derived software, Google is betting that mobile device makers will embrace Android to save themselves the expense of developing their own software. Most importantly, Google is courting developers with lots of money.
Just as Windows has never had to equal Macs in usability or aesthetics, price is the main consideration of most consumers, allowing for a much bigger potential market.
Besides, it's no coincidence Google's first phone running Android looks eerily similar to the iPhone.
Who will Win?:
Even with Apple's 10-million-unit head start, Google's Android OS will likely begin to erode the market dominance of the iPhone. However, Apple will likely continue to control the high-end smartphone market; Android will probably do better in the mass market.
Android and iPhone will co-exist, competing in different market segments.
I blog about the iPhone at www.kennethkay.com
Posted by: matt31 | October 23, 2008 10:35 PM
I´m from Spain and in our country 3G works since more than one year and a half ago.
I really get surprised that large areas in U.S. aren´t yet conected.
After my experience in 3G I can say that´s really a great forward step in mobile comunications, fast data download, surfin´ web,etc. Makes life easier.
In the other side: The price you pay for it.
It´s easy to see that if you pay for the contents and/or the amount of data, your bill rises like foam.
And only one company gives you the service that means no competence, as we ´ve seen in Spain competence make prices low.
Posted by: DavidCaballol | October 24, 2008 8:09 PM
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Obviously, the Best Attorney For Personal Injury brings a lot to the table: knowledge of legal procedure, support staff to process paperwork, negotiating expertise, and more. However, it is likely that some person, company, or corporation is directly responsible for your injuries; or a beloved family member's wrongful death. Each member of our personal injury legal team is focused on providing the best possible customer service and helping you get the highest amount of compensation possible. After an accident, we understand the stress that can come with dealing with an aggressive insurance adjuster and finding medical providers to treat your injuries. We believe that when you hire an attorney in Duval County, you should be able to communicate directly with that attorney. Our attorneys are rigorous in sharing with each client how their case is going, what they are working on currently and providing a reasonable timetable as to when a settlement can be expected.
How to find the Best Lawyer For Personal Injury in Pine Oaks Mobile Home Park, Florida?
Whether your claim is resolved through settlement or litigation, our legal team is committed to providing you with the expertise and dedication necessary to help you regain the quality of life you enjoyed prior to your accident. The one thing you can count on in virtually every case is that the insurance company wants to avoid paying fair financial damages for your injuries. Seek legal help for your accident before time runs out. If your injuries were minor and liability is clear, you might be able to "go it alone." Your initial, and free consultation appointment with the personal injury lawyer in Florida will occur very quickly with one of our dedicated DC injury lawyers. Knowledgeable and caring staff with over 20 years of combined experience devoted solely to personal injury. If you or a loved one has been injured by the negligence of another, contact the personal injury attorneys at Farkliya"s Briefcase today to schedule your free case evaluation.
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Choosing the best personal injury lawyer in Pine Oaks Mobile Home Park after getting injured in an accident can be difficult. You're not treated like a number at our firm- we work hard to understand the specifics of your situation and to craft a compelling case to fight for the best outcome for you. Our attorneys have been nationally recognized, are members of the Multi-Million Dollar Advocates and have recovered millions of dollars for our clients. These accidents, more often than not, are caused by negligent or distracted drivers, resulting in a substantial number of injuries and significant damage to property. Our top-notch team of staff and complex case litigators have a combined experience of over 30 years assisting various victims of accidents. Learn the types of claims you can probably handle on your own, and those you'll definitely need a licensed attorney for.
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We will provide a free and honest appraisal of your case and answer every question you have about the complicated aspects of personal injury law and the equally intimidating claims process. We want each of our clients to feel informed and empowered with the details of their case. However, if you have suffered serious injuries that require extensive medical care and rehabilitation, causing you a significant loss of wages and out of pocket expenses, you may need the help of an experienced personal injury attorney to obtain the full compensation necessary to properly deal with the situation. If you or someone you love has suffered the consequences of another person's negligence, we're here for you. Our staff of professional Pine Oaks Mobile Home Park Attorney For Personal Injuries has the experience and knowledge to fight for the compensation that you may be entitled to. There is not a set litmus test for how long it takes injury cases to resolve.
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Arts groups across Central Florida are scrambling to plug budget gaps after United Arts pushed back an annual funding allocation from July to January.
Three of Orlando's best-known organizations — Orlando Museum of Art, Orlando Philharmonic Orchestra and Orlando Ballet — each will miss out on more than $100,000 this year. Others warn that programs may have to be cut in order to make ends meet.
Flora Maria Garcia, CEO of United Arts of Central Florida, says the schedule change is necessary to create a sounder budgeting system. Arts leaders agree it's a smart move — but that doesn't help them in the short term.
"It makes all the sense in the world, but it's going to hurt and not be good for us," said Jeffrey Revels, artistic director of Orlando Repertory Theatre. He expects to lose about $30,000 this year on the new payment schedule.
Garcia, who joined United Arts in May, already has shown she's not afraid of making big changes. One of her first acts was canceling the popular ArtsFest, a free festival across Central Florida, saying United Arts should focus on raising money.
The latest change is necessary, Garcia said, because United Arts doesn't find out how much government money it will receive until October. The organization — which supports more than 50 arts and cultural organizations in Orange, Seminole, Osceola and Lake counties — previously estimated how much government funding it would receive and then adjusted allocations if necessary.
"It was not an arbitrary move by us," Garcia said. "We wanted to make sure we had funds in hand before we allocated them. It's best to give money away you know you have."
Fifteen groups receive these annual general-operating-support grants and are affected by the change. Of those, Garcia said, five contacted United Arts to say it would create a hardship. She would not name those groups.
The new schedule was recommended by a United Arts task force during the summer. The 13-member committee included representatives from philanthropic foundations; Orlando and Orange County government; and area arts groups.
That recommendation was approved by the United Arts board in the fall and first presented to arts leaders in mid-November. But some wish they had been given more notice.
"It didn't feel like a lot of lead time," said Ava Doppelt, chairwoman of Orlando Ballet's board of directors.
The ballet's managing director, Katherine Fabian, said several money-saving scenarios have been considered, "most of which would be detrimental to the ballet."
Orlando Ballet is determined to avoid eliminating performances because its top dancers could then seek more lucrative contracts elsewhere, she said.
"The organization is committed to having a full and robust 40th-anniversary season, and we are therefore continuing to examine all options available to us," Fabian said.
As a stopgap, Garcia said, United Arts will more quickly pay out matching funds it collects during its current public-fundraising campaign, a separate initiative from the operating grants.
Even with that money coming early, the ballet still won't have the equivalent of roughly six weeks of dancer salaries, Fabian said.
United Arts is looking at other ways to help groups, Garcia said. The organization is talking with donors about helping pay the interest on short-term loans for groups that pursue that option, Garcia said.
However, "it is incumbent on the arts groups to manage themselves," she said.
At Orlando Repertory Theatre, Revels said the group might shorten the run of a show aimed at middle-school and high-school students or curtail a teacher-education program it facilitates with the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington.
"It's an incredible program, but it's not something people coming through the doors every day would notice," Revels said.
Other local arts leaders said they were doing whatever they could to avoid cutting programs.
•The Orlando Philharmonic will rely on cash reserves to make up the lost funds, said Executive Director David Schillhammer.
"While concerned, we will remain a strong and healthy organization in the short term," he said. "We planned for a rainy day, and by golly we got one."
•Orlando Shakespeare Theater will use special fundraising related to its 25th anniversary to close its funding gap, a spokeswoman said. Based on last year's allocation, that gap would be about $75,000.
•The Bach Festival Society of Winter Park stands to lose about $27,000, which could mean eliminating a guest artist or performance, said Executive Director Elizabeth Gwinn. But the move could spur groups to redouble their fundraising efforts, said Gwinn, who served on the United Arts task force that recommended the change.
"We'll talk to our donors," she said. "We've got to become more self-reliant. I think everybody wants to do the best for their organization and the community. It just gets harder."
email@example.com or 407-420-5038


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SEATTLE — Jewish Community Centers (JCCs) nationwide ramped up their security after a July 28 fatal shooting at the Greater Seattle Jewish Foundation in downtown Seattle.
Thirty-year-old Naveed Afzal Haq opened fire on the JCC charitable foundation with two semiautomatic pistols, killing one person and injuring five others. Police charged Haq with murder and attempted murder and held him on a $50 million bail. According to reports from authorities, Haq was angry about the war in Iraq and U.S. military cooperation with Israel.
In response to the Seattle shooting, the national JCC office in New York organized two conference calls for the leaders of JCCs in the United States and Canada. At least 25 JCC executives joined the calls to discuss security measures in their facilities. The national JCC office as well as representatives from the Community Security Network advised JCCs to keep in contact with local law enforcement officers, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Homeland Security and to stay on top of alerts in their areas, says Miriam Rinn, JCC spokesperson.
Rinn says JCCs across the country are trying to make their facilities as secure as possible. Many of the JCCs are reviewing their existing security plans to ensure they are working and up to date. Other JCCs are beefing up security in different ways.
"Some of the JCCs are limiting access to the building to one entrance to better control access," Rinn says. "Others are checking photo IDs of guests and visitors, where they may not have done that two months ago."
The Gordon Jewish Community Center in Nashville, TN, hired two full-time security officers to guard the fitness center and pool.
"If someone is looking to do harm, they'll look for a soft target," says Ed Finkelstein, executive director of the Nashville JCC. "If it's a security-conscious institution and there's a good chance of them being caught, they'll go somewhere else."
The Nashville JCC has never had any direct threats against it, but Finkelstein says it's important to be prepared.
"Anytime there is a Jewish institution, we're thinking about security," he says. "We're ready to respond if there's a chance we'll be threatened. Our utmost concern is the safety of our members."
Every JCC is taking steps to improve security in some way, says Barry Weifer, executive director of the Memphis JCC, who participated in the conference call.
Rinn says overall, JCC managers are remaining calm.
"I did not get a sense of panic from the JCCs, but I think people feel that anything can happen anywhere," she says.


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To educate, entertain, and enthuse those who venture beyond the shore. 19,347 articles on solo swims, pro races, relays, charity events, ice swims, eco-swims, stage swims, marathon swims, trends, products, services, personalities, coaches, governing bodies, rules, demographics, books, films, blogs, conferences, camps, clinics and happenings in oceans, seas, lakes, rivers, dams, canals, channels, fjords, estuaries, lochs, coves, firths, straits, bays, and harbors. Sponsored by WOWSA.org.
Monday, January 9, 2012
101 Movers And Shakers In The Open Water Swimming World
Open water swimmers who wield power and influence do so in a variety of ways and roles: as swimmers (both former and current), administrators, judges, coaches, officials, writers, reporters, producers or photo/videographers.
Some have impact in a subtle manner; others are aided by the media or their own marketing efforts. Some seek to be influential; others merely wield power by the force of their actions, achievements statements or prose.
However way these individuals are involved in the the sport, the following women can be considered to be among the movers and shakers in the world of open water swimming. It is, by far, an incomplete global list, but these women are open water ambassadors, spreading their enthusiasm and passion for the sport:
Listed in alphabetical order:
1. Alison Streeter MBE (England): Queen of the Channel®
2. Allison Appleby (Australia): Co-owner of Aquadiva swimwear
3. Ana Marcela Cunha (Brazil): World champion and professional competitor
4. Angela Maurer (Germany): Professional marathon swimmer, mother and 2-time Olympian
5. Angela Oram (England): Committee member of the Channel Swimming & Piloting Federation
6. Anna-Carin Nordin (Sweden): Marathon and channel swimmer
7. Anna Rita Strydom (South Africa): Manager for Natalie du Toit
8. Anne Marie Ward (Ireland): 2010 World Open Water Swimming Woman of the Year
9. Beverley Thomas (England): President, British Long Distance Swimming Association
10. Bonnie Ford (USA): ESPN reporter responsible for Olympic sports including open water swimming
11. Carol Sing (USA): Member of the Catalina Channel Swimming Federation board of directors
12.Carolyn Asher (Australia): Coach, learn to swim advocate and member of the Board of Directors of the Royal Life Saving Queensland in Australia
13. Cecilia Biagioli (Argentina): 4-time Olympian, potential Olympic Marathon Swimming 10km medalist and Olimpia de Plata recipient
14. Chako Shinozaki (Japan): Coordinator of the Japan International Open Water Swimming Association
15. Charlene Wittstock (Monaco): Her Serene Highness The Princess of Monaco and fund-raising extraordinaire
16. Chloe Zimmerman (Turks & Caicos): Co-race director of the Race for the Conch and marketer of the West Indies Bluewater Ocean Swim Series
17. Christiane Fanzeres (Brazil): Brazil Swimming Federation administrator
18. Coco Emberson (USA): Co-Race Director of the Maui Channel Swim
19. Dee Llewellyn (England): British Long Distance Swimming Association administrator and International Marathon Swimming Hall of Fame director
20. Deanne Draeger (USA): Founder of Urban Swim and the race director of the Rose Pitonof Swim
21. Diana Nyad (USA): Author, motivational speaker, television commentator, and extreme swimmer
22. Dr. Jacinta Galeai (American Samoa): Director of Education authorized ocean swimming curriculum for high school students
23. Dr. Julie Bradshaw MBE (England): Coach, motivational speaker and Administrative Secretary of the Channel Swimming Association
24. Dr. Marcy MacDonald (USA): Member of the board of directors of the International Marathon Swimming Hall of Fame and 12-time English Channel swimmer
25. Dr. Margo Mountjoy (Canada): FINA Bureau Liaison to Sports Medicine Committee, only female member of the FINA Bureau and International Olympic Committee member
26. Dr. Sakura Hingley (England): Triple Crown of Open Water Swimming member, hypothermia researcher and committee member of the Channel Swimming & Piloting Federation
27. Dr. Susan Ractliffe (England): Director of the Channel Swimming Association
28. Elizabeth Fry (USA): Triple Crown of Open Water Swimming and Swim Across The Sound race director
29. Elizabeth Weil (USA): New York Times reporter interested in open water swimming
30. Erica Rose (USA): Former world champion and USA Swimming committee member
31. Esther Williams (USA): Aquamusical star, swimming icon and entrepreneur
32. Freda Streeter (England): Coach and English Channel motivator
33. Greta Andersen (USA/Denmark): Olympic champion, swimming icon and coach
34. Irene van der Laan (Netherlands): Director of the International Marathon Swimming Hall of Fame
35. Jackie Cobell (England): English Channel swimmer
36. Jacqueline Grossman (USA): Race director of USA Swimming sanctioned open water swims
37. Jane Katz Ph.D. (USA): Author, professor, coach and speaker
38. Janel Jorgensen (USA): Olympic medalist and Executive Director of Swim Across America
39. Jen Schumacher (USA): Sports Psychologist and endurance athlete
40. Joan Metcalfe (England): Director of the Channel Swimming Association
41. June Krauser (USA): Selection Committee Chair of the International Masters Swimming Hall of Fame
42. Kaia Hedlund (USA): President of the Waikiki Roughwater Swim Committee
43. Karah Nazor, Ph.D. (USA): English Channel swimmer, founder of the Chattanooga Open Water Swimmers and race director of Swim The Suck
44. Karen Burton Reeder (USA): International Marathon Swimming Hall of Fame inductee and open water swimming website creator
45. Karen Smidt-Allard (USA): Founder & CEO of SBR Sports and aquapreneur of swimming products
46. Karen Throsby (England): Sociologist and English Channel researcher/swimmer
47. Karlyn Pipes-Neilsen (USA): Coach, author and motivational speaker
48. Kate Rew (England): Author of Wild Swim, TV personality and Outdoor Swimming Society founder
49. Kathy Dykes (USA): Marketing Director at FINIS Inc.
50. Keri-Anne Payne (England): Olympic Marathon Swim gold medal favorite and British media darling
51. Laura Hamel (USA): Editor-in-Chief, SWIMMER Magazine
52. Leslie Thomas (USA): Founder and head coach of Swim Art of San Francisco Bay
53. Liane Llewellyn (England): President Elect, British Long Distance Swimming Association and marathon swimmer
54. Linda Bamford (USA): Catalina Channel Swimming Federation administrator and board director
55. Luane Rowe (Australia): Athlete and industrial designer at FINIS
56. Lynn Blouin (Canada): Board Director of the International Marathon Swimming Hall of Fame
57. Lynne Cox (USA): Author, speaker, extreme swimmer and Hall of Fame inductee
58. Lynn Hazlewood (USA): U.S. Masters Swimming Open Water Committee Chairperson and co-founder of the Jim McDonnell Lake Swims
59. Maddy Crippen (USA): Administrator of the Fran Crippen Elevation Foundation
60. Marcia Cleveland (USA): Author of Dover Solo and coach
61. Marianna Lymperta (Greece): 3-time Olympian and Olympic Marathon Swimming 10km medal favorite
62. Martina Grimaldi (Italy): Olympic Marathon Swimming 10km medal favorite
63. Megan Melgaard (USA): Swimmer, coach and stunt woman
64. Melissa Gorman (Australia): 2-time Olympian and Olympic Marathon Swimming 10km medal favorite
65. Michelle Evans-Chase (USA): Grant writer and Toa o le Tai ocean swimming curriculum specialist
66. Michelle Macy (USA): Marathon swimmer and creator of the Still Water Eight
67. Montserrat Tresserras Dou (Spain): Author and board director of the Channel Swimming Association and International Marathon Swimming Hall of Fame
68. Nadine Day (USA): President of U.S. Masters Swimming
69. Natalie du Toit (South Africa): Olympic athlete, author and inspirational athlete
70. Natalya Pankina (Russia/UAE): Administrator with the United Arab Emirates Swimming Federation
71. Nora Toledano (Mexico): Author, marathon swimmer and Marathon Swimming Hall of Fame inductee
72. Nuala Moore (Ireland): Coach and extreme swimmer
73. Pamela Dickson (New Zealand): Marathon and channel swimmer
74. Pat Gallant-Charette (USA): Marathon and channel swimmer
75. Patti Bauernfeind (USA): Marathon swimmer who does charity swims
76. Paula Selby (USA): Catalina Channel Swimming Federation administrator
77. Penny Dean (USA): Author, coach and Hall of Fame inductee
78. Penny Palfrey (Australia): Extreme swimmer and blogger
79. Pilar Geijo (Argentina): Professional marathon swimmer and 2011 World Open Water Swimming Woman of the Year
80. Poliana Okimoto (Brazil): 2-time Olympian and Olympic Marathon Swimming 10km medal favorite
81. Qingzhu Cao (China): China Swimming Association administrator responsible for open water swimming and FINA official
82. Sally Minty-Gravett (Jersey): President of the Jersey Long Distance Swimming Club
83. Sandy Neilson-Bell (USA): Co-race director of the open water swims sanctioned by the American Swimming Association
84. Sarah Warwick (England): Deputy Editor at H2Open Magazine and freelance writer
85. Sarah Wheeler (Hong Kong): Editor In Chief for TriMag Asia
86. Selina Moreno Pasagali (Spain): Marathon swimmer and cancer survivor and advocate
87. Shane Gould MBE (Australia): Race director of the Devil of a Swim in Tasmania, Australia, 5-time Olympic medalist and Foundation director
88. Shelley Taylor-Smith (Australia): Author, speaker, coach, FINA administrator/referee and Hall of Fame inductee
89. Siga Rose (USA): Channel swimming coach and age-group swimming coach and motivator
90. Silvia Dalotto (Argentina): South America Area President of the International Marathon Swimming Hall of Fame and FINA official
91. Stacey Herbertson (Australia): Executive Officer and Event Manager of the Rottnest Channel Swim
92. Sue Oldham (Australia): Marathon and channel swimmer
93. Suzanne Heim-Bowen (USA): Coach, administrator, marathon swimmer
94. Swann Oberson (Switzerland): 2-time Olympian, first Swiss world champion and potential Olympic Marathon Swimming 10km medalist
95. Tammy van Wisse (Australia): Marathon swimmer, motivational speaker and environmental campaigner
96. Tanya Harding (England): Committee member of the Channel Swimming & Piloting Federation
97. Teruko Onuki (Japan): Author of 7 open water swimming books after 2 English Channel swims
98. Vicki Keith (Canada): Coach, fund-raiser, motivational speaker and extreme butterflyer
99. Wendy Coles (England): British Swimming administrator
100. Yanqiao Fang (China): Professional marathon swimmer and Olympian
101. Yuko Matsuzaki (Japan): Asia Area President of the International Marathon Swimming Hall of Fame
NOTE: The men's list of 101 Movers and Shakers in the Open Water Swimming World is posted here.
Copyright © 2011 by World Open Water Swimming Association
7 comments:
LLIIIIIIIKKKKKEEEE! :-)ReplyDelete
What a powerful and inspirational collection of women!ReplyDelete
So inspirational!ReplyDelete
Kara Nazor Friberg is not only an incredible open water swimmer, but she is also an amazing young woman, a leader among her peers in many ways.ReplyDelete
Some have impact in a subtle manner; others are aided by the media or their own marketing efforts. Some seek to be influential; others merely wield power by the force of their actions, achievements statements or prose. best water filter systemReplyDelete
Almost 5 years since the Movers & Shakers lists! Time for an updated version?ReplyDelete
you are absolutely correct. we will work on an updated list in January 2017ReplyDelete
Thank you very much for your interest in the world of open water swimming.
World Open Water Swimming Association
A Thank You Gift from WOWSA
|WOWSA is celebrating the
1-Year Anniversary of the monthly Open Water Swimming Magazine
by giving you a free copy of the anniversary issue.
Open Water Swimming Magazine Anniversary Issue
File Size: 13MB
Download the file to your computer, and then right-click to extract the magazine which is inside the zip folder. The magazine is in PDF format.
CLICK HERE to download your free copy now.
Open Water Swimming Magazine
Open Water Swimming MagazineThe Open Water Swimming Magazine is the monthly magazine entirely focused on open water swimming heroes and heroines of every age, ability, and background. Published by the World Open Water Swimming Association, the Open Water Swimming Magazine is a free benefit to WOWSA members.
WOWSA Member Benefits include 12 issues of the Open Water Swimming Magazine, the annual 276-page Open Water Swimming Almanac, a free listing in Sponsor My Swim, outstanding product discounts from FINIS, an entry in Openwaterpedia and more...
The Other Shore
The Other Shore follows world record holder and legendary swimmer Diana Nyad as she comes out of a thirty-year retirement to re-attempt an elusive dream: swimming 103 miles non-stop from Cuba to Florida without the use of a shark cage. Her past and present collide in her obsession with a feat that nobody has ever accomplished. At the edge of The Devil's Triangle, tropical storms, sharks, venomous jellyfish, and one of the strongest ocean currents in the world, all prove to be life-threatening realities. Timothy Wheeler's documentary brings Diana Nyad's extraordinary adventure to life as Diana sets out to prove that will and determination are all you need to make the unimaginable possible.
2014 Open Water Swimming Almanac
An Almanac for Open Water SwimmingAn almanac is essentially a body of knowledge which is so complete that it enables people in different fields to make predictions about the future of their respective industries.
This, for example, was the purpose of the traditional farmers almanacs. It enabled farmers to determine as accurately as possible which crops to plant for the greatest harvests in a given year.
But the farmers almanac was just one example among many.
There are, of course, many different kinds of almanacs.
In fact, there is even one for open water swimming...
Preview the Open Water Swimming Almanac:
The trends are very clear.
The tide is rising for open water swimming.


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YellowcabUSA Georgia Customer Service Number, Office Address, Email – toll free helpline number, and with reviews and all other important information is available here. If you are like traveling through taxi and cabs and always do, so as this post we are here to provide you information about taxi and cabs services. YellowcabUSA Georgia also helps you to find out a Limo, a Hotel, and a food restaurant.
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Tomahawk man dies from injuries sustained in fire
A Tomahawk man injured in a July 23 structure fire at a town of Bradley home where he was a caretaker has died.
The Lincoln County Sheriff's Department responded to a 911 call reporting a structure fire on Rapel Road at 10:25 a.m. Firefighters from the Tomahawk and Nokomis Fire Departments responded to the blaze, along with Tomahawk EMS and deputies.
Two Tomahawk EMS rescuers, Paramedic Steve Taskay and EMT/IV-Technician Brian Teeters, entered the attached garage and were able to remove the victim, Phillip Erickson, 74, prior to the arrival of firefighters.
Erickson was taken to Sacred Heart Hospital and then flown by Mayo One Helicopter to Regions Hospital in Saint Paul, Minn., a level one trauma center specializing in treatment of burn victims. The following day, Erickson died as a result of burns sustained in the fire.
Preliminary investigation indicates the fire started in the garage while Erickson was repairing a vehicle. It appears he was using starting fluid in an effort to start the car. The exact cause of the fire is not known, and may never be known, noted Lincoln County Communications Officer Michael Caylor.
Fire Victim Update
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A video store is a place where you could rent or buy video movies to watch at home. Early videos came on cassettes, a storage medium where the video and audio was stored in analog form on a magnetic tape. Whenever you feel bored you could definitely watch a movie to stop your growing boredom. So , here are some Video Stores in Los Angeles, that offers videos you would surely like.
Cinefile Video
Video Journeys
Video Hut
Odyssey Video
Hollynorm Video
Chassis Video Store
Video City
From Beyond DVD & Video
Video Paradise
Pro Video
20-20 Video
Video Hut
Video Box
Andy's Adult World
J C Video Superstore
Glojos Video 2000
Video Hut
Video Hut (4 Movies For $5)
Young's Video
Cahuenga Video
High Quality Video Inc
World 8
L A Music Connection
Game & Video
Bel Air Camera Superstore
Video & Audio Center - Santa Monica
Family Video
Compton Video
A & J Games
Video 21 1 Hour Photo
Samy's Camera
MJB Video
Amoeba Music
No 1 Video
Jungle Video
Next-Gen Video Games
Video Box
Japan Video Games
Siam Photo & Video
Magnolia Audio Video
AbelCine / LA
SIM Digital Los Angeles
A & M Video Games
Gamer Doc
Coco's Video
Bexel Broadcast Services
Barnes & Noble
Audio Video West, Inc.
Global Video Games
El Chasis Video
Gamers International
WOVA World of Video and Audio
Halo 13 Anime & Video
For more Video Stores in Los Angeles,click here: http://us.wowcity.com/losangeles/?what=Video+Store
Watching videos or movies could put a smile on your tight lips. It could create a lighter atmosphere and could surely calm your nerves due to the stress in life,.


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.NET implementation of SMPP v.3.4. protocol. This library can communicate with SMSC, send and receive SMS messages. Also you can create you own SMPP gateway and provide SMS services for your customers.
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.NET library for sending and receiving MMS messages over Internet HTTP protocol.
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What are the release dates for If Walls Could Talk--- - 1998 Backward Brainteaser?
If Walls Could Talk--- - 1998 Backward Brainteaser was released on:
USA: 11 February 2008
USA: 11 February 2008
5 people found this useful
What are the 5Cs of credit?
5 C's of Credit refer to the factors that lenders of money evaluate to determine credit worthiness of a borrower. They are the following:. 1. Borrower's CHARACTER. 2. Borrow…er's CAPACITY to repay the loan. 3. COLLATERAL or security/guarantee for the obligation. 4. Borrower's CAPITAL (business networth) or downpayment for the loan. 5. Present and anticipated CONDITIONS of the borrower, collateral, business, and the industry or economy in general
What does 5c stand for?
The Iphone 5C is Iphone 5Colorful 5c can also stand for thenumber 500 ("c" is the Roman numeral for 100) or for 5 degreesCelsius (centigrade) . +++ . "5c" can not stand fo…r any Roman numerals forthree reasons. For a start you do not mix Arabic and Roman numeralslike that - it would be nonsensical. Secondly, the Roman for 100 is capital " C ", but thirdly, in the Romanscale, 5 is V, 50 is L and 500 is D. The ' C ' isalso capital for degrees Celsius / Centigrade.
What is equal to 5c?
5c =41f=278k
What are the 5cs of leadership?
Confirm, clear, cordon, check, control
What animal is on a 5c coin?
There are multiple animals on 5 cent coins depending on the country and time period such as the Buffalo on the US "buffalo nickel", the Beaver on the Canadian nickel, etc.
What is -5c plus 9 and how?
You can't tell a thing about -5c+9 until you know what 'c' is. And every time 'c' changes, -5c+9 changes.
What is 5c-8 equals 27?
C=7. I'll show my work. 5c-8=27. 5c=35. C=7
13c - 5c?
What are the 5cs in communication?
conciseness completeness clarity convincing correctness
What plant appears on the 5c coin?
the blue crane
In Uncategorized
What is 9d 3c-4d 5c?
In Volume
What is 5c in milliliters?
5cc? cc means cubic centimetres which is equal to ml, so 5ml. if you mean cl, then that is equal to 50ml
In Uncategorized
What is level 5c in year7 equivalent to?
grade c
In Temperature
What is-5c in Fahrenheit?
In Classic Television
What are the release dates for The Jeffersons - 1975 984 W- 124th Street Apt- 5C 4-15?
The Jeffersons - 1975 984 W- 124th Street Apt- 5C 4-15 was released on: USA: 24 December 1977


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An exceptional year for U.S. agriculture" — that's how USDA's economists characterize 2003's record crop yields and record cash net income.
What's more, say Mitchell Morehart and James Johnson of the agency's Economic Research Service, "the financial outlook remains strong for 2004" despite the setback to the cattle sector as a result of the recent "mad cow" scare.
They told attendees of the annual USDA Agricultural Outlook Forum at Arlington, Va., that this year should see crop receipts increase by more than $7 billion to a record $114 billion, based mainly on improved market conditions for corn and soybeans. Although livestock receipts are expected to decline from 2003's record level, the forecast is for the sector to exceed $100 billion for the third time in four years.
Even though crops are expected to generate more revenue in 2004, the economists say less of the farm household's earnings will come from farming, but that an expected 3 percent increase in income from off-farm sources "should help buffer the decline in total household income."
Farmers and their households should benefit from higher asset values in 2004, Morehart and Johnson say, with the value of farm assets projected to increase by almost $43 billion. Real estate values are expected to rise by 3.5 percent, accounting for nearly 90 percent of the increase in the total value of farm assets.
"The importance of the non-farm economy to the economic well-being of farm households is reinforced by the significance of non-farm assets and debt," they say. "About 20 percent of the average farm household's net worth could be attributed to non-farm sources."
For the year just past, they note that the new records for net cash income were due to a combination of strong exports, excellent yields, and strong prices — and "a relatively high amount of government payments." Continued growth in farm real estate values also helped push the aggregate of farm assets to new highs, while "modest increases in debt helped maintain a consistent level of solvency for the sector.
In both 2003 and 2004, Morehart and Johnson note, market receipts are expected to make up a greater share of net income than has occurred since 1997.
Prices for several agricultural commodities increased toward the end of 2003 and are projected to "sustain these relatively high levels through 2004."
Corn, soybean, and wheat prices were sharply higher in 2003 than their average for the past five years, while broiler prices were more than 10 percent over the previous year and egg prices were up over 25 percent.
For the second consecutive year, receipts from crops and livestock should total more than $100 billion each, with 2004 expected to see a total $215 billion for the two sectors.
Corn, the number 1 crop in terms of cash receipts, could see an upward movement of as much as 16 percent in 2004, while soybeans, the nation's second largest crop, are expected to be up 16 percent also.
Strong demand for U.S. cotton in 2004, primarily from China, could boost receipts by nearly $700 million, the economists say. Another factor strengthening cotton receipts is a stocks-to-use ration that "could be the lowest since the 1997 crop."
Projected low lending stocks are also expected to improve rice receipts.
There are "some notable exceptions" to the rosy 2004 outlook, Morehart and Johnson note.
Beef producers could see a $5 billion reduction in receipts as a result of the "mad cow" scare, with most countries that import beef from the U.S. imposing bans or restricting importation of beef from the U.S. "Even with this market uncertainty, beef receipts are expected to remain higher than they were in 2002."
The combination of consumers substituting poultry for beef and the declining dollar's impact on markets could cause expected poultry and egg receipts to rise by 7 percent.
Dairy cow numbers declined in 2003 for the first time in several years, but an expected increase in milk productivity may offset the lower herd size and result in "a relatively small decline in overall milk production." Further productivity gains are anticipated in 2004; that, combined with a lower inventory of milking cows, "could result in unchanged receipts."


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Starting with update 2014, and the latest 2015, SingleClick will often remove my control of the remote session. I am still connected and see the screen, however I have no mouse control (refresh or sending cntrl alt del doesn't help). The control can often come back if the user I am connected to moves the mouse or closes the windows/program which seems to cause this. With the latest 2015 update, this problem can be easily duplicated when launching 'Computer Management', where everything is working fine until I launch computer management to view services for instance, my mouse control is taken away and can only view the remote session. Very frustrating. I am using uvnc viewer ver. 22.214.171.124 32 bit (happens with older viewer versions as well). This only seems to happen connecting to Win7 and Win8 clients.
Is there any way to get around this?
I've been using SC since 2005, any help is greatly appreciated.


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The following is an excerpt from Daniel J. Flynn's brand-new book, Blue Collar Intellectuals: When the Enlightened and Everyman Elevated America.
Stupid is the new smart.
Consider the nostrums of the digital era. "Video gaming is just a new form of literacy." "Reality shows . . . challenge our emotional intelligence." "Who cares if Johnny can't read? The value of books is overstated." "If you're not on MySpace, you don't exist." Watching cartoons is "a kind of mental calisthenics" for small children. "The truth is, we need multitasking as much as we need air."
World of Warcraft is not altogether different from The Canterbury Tales. Vicarious existence through reality television contestants enables us to enjoy healthier interactions with real people. Ignorance is underrated. Living is interacting through online intermediaries. Let your television babysit your kids. Attention deficit disorder is strength, not malady.
Welcome to Idiotville, population seven billion.
The Invasiveness of Stupidity
Pop culture is a wasteland.
The strange paradox of television is that viewing options have decreased even as the number of channels has dramatically increased. Viewers have their choice of hundreds of stations devoted to reality television, celebrity gossip, Faces of Death–lite-style home-video shows, and envy-inspiring vignettes on how wealthy people live. Worse still is television's invasiveness. Standing in the supermarket checkout line, waiting in the airport terminal, pumping gas at the service station, standing on the train, sitting in the backseat—there is no escape. People are afraid to be alone with their thoughts.
The newsstand is increasingly indecipherable from the supermarket checkout aisle. Celebrity news and shark attacks pass for what matters. Even political coverage resembles a dressed-up version of high-school gossip: He's popular/she's not. Can you believe that he is sleeping with her? Fight! Did you hear the outrageous thing he said? Something important generates interest only when reduced to its most trivial aspect. Declining readership has queerly motivated newspaper and magazine editors to race to the bottom to capture "readers" who don't read by dumbing down content and dramatically shaving word counts. All this has left Susan Jacoby to quip in The Age of American Unreason, "It is only a matter of time before a publication markets itself as 'The Magazine for People Who Hate to Read.' "
The cultural rot is especially visible on the silver screen, which advertises Hollywood's lack of creativity by green-lighting sequels, remaking old movies, and providing cinematic treatments of long-canceled television shows. All mediocre movies are destined to be remade as even worse movies. What got red-lighted because The A-Team, Herbie Fully Loaded, The Green Hornet, and The Day the Earth Stood Still got green-lighted? The success of one 3-D movie unleashes a barrage of 3-D movies. An industry made on creativity persists on copycatism.
In popular music, the visual bizarrely trumps the audio. No amount of studio wizardry can make Miley Cyrus, Britney Spears, or Katy Perry sound like Aretha Franklin, Kate Smith, or Mama Cass. Of greater consequence, no amount of airbrushing can make today's Aretha Franklins, Kate Smiths, or Mama Casses look like Miley Cyrus, Britney Spears, or Katy Perry—who clearly possess the most important prerequisite to a successful career as a recording artist. Are fat, ugly, and old people necessarily bad singers too?
The World Wide Web has ironically made life more insular. The popularity of social networking sites extends the clique's reach online; Twitter broadcasts the inane musings of one's favorite celebrities in 140 characters or less; and BlackBerries allow for the illusion of keeping in touch by staying beyond the touch of friends and loved ones. The Staten Island teenager who fell down a manhole while texting, the Sacramento high school senior who sent and received 300,000 texts in one month, and the Pennsylvania woman who obliviously texted her way into a mall fountain are signs of the times.
People are too lost in the virtual life. They have lost track of how to live the real life. New amusements have not made old distractions obsolete. Americans spend more than two and a half hours every weekday watching television. The figure has risen since the advent of the digital age. By way of comparison, Americans spend about twenty minutes per weekday reading and about fifteen minutes "relaxing/thinking." How we spend our leisure time is largely a waste of time.
"I Don't Read Books"
Pop culture, of course, is not high culture. It has always appealed to the lowest common denominator. But reaching the lowest common denominator has never required pop culture to go so low. More disturbing, and injurious, is the go-along-to-get-along mentality of institutions ostensibly committed to cultural betterment. Libraries, schools, and museums rationalize assaults on culture as defenses of it.
At tony Cushing Academy in western Massachusetts, $40,000 in tuition doesn't even get you a library anymore. "When I look at books, I see an outdated technology, like scrolls before books," the prep school's headmaster notes, adding, "This isn't Fahrenheit 451." It is, and 1984, too. In the place of twenty thousand discarded books, the school spent $500,000 on an Orwellian "learning center" complete with three giant flat-screen televisions and a cappuccino machine. School officials guessed that only a few dozen books had been checked out at any one time. "When you hear the word 'library,' you think of books," one student explained to the Boston Globe, "but very few students actually read them." The solution to this problem, so obvious to the administrators at this preparatory school, was to abolish books.
"I don't read books," a Rhodes Scholar and former student body president of Florida State University explains. "Sitting down and going through a book from cover to cover doesn't make sense." He Googles his way to the answer. A Duke University professor of literature candidly confesses, "I can't get my students to read whole books anymore." These aren't dropouts scorning literacy but rather the young adults touted as the best and the brightest. Intelligent people are using reason to rationalize intellectual laziness as progress and ridiculing time-tested methods of acquiring knowledge, wisdom, and understanding as outdated.
Much of K–12 schooling involves educating for a standardized test, superficial learning that does to the mind what Botox, steroids, and plastic surgery do to the body. The type of education predominant in college is professional training that prepares cogs to fit into the economy rather than liberally educated citizens ready for the responsibilities of freedom. Institutions that shun broad knowledge graduate shallow people with narrow interests.
Quest for Learning is a public school in Manhattan where students play video games, blog, create podcasts, film YouTube-style videos, and partake in other digital activities that young people overdose on outside of the classroom. They also call their teachers by their first names, refer to their school as a "possibility space," and forgo traditional lettered grades for "pre-novice," "novice," "apprentice," "senior," and "master." Crassly mixing philanthropy with business, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation helps fund the school. Teacher Al Doyle calls spelling "outmoded," says that podcasting is "as valid as writing an essay," and regards memorization as irrelevant in light of search engines. "Handwriting?" Doyle remarks. "That's a 20th-century skill." It was surprisingly unsurprising when the New York Times Magazine said of the school's executive director, "Until a few years ago she knew little about educational pedagogy and was instead immersed in doing things like converting an ice-cream truck into a mobile karaoke unit that traveled around San Jose, Calif., with a man dressed as a squirrel dispensing free frozen treats and encouraging city residents to pick up a microphone and belt out tunes."
"In the 21st century, libraries are about much more than books!" the American Library Association boasts in conjunction with its National Gaming Day, "the largest, simultaneous national video game tournament ever held!" In the midst of branch closings and budget cuts, public libraries have acquired a new product to lend: video games. "The literacy aspect is huge," maintains Linda Braun of the Young Adult Library Services Association. "Many video games have books related to them. And there is a lot of reading that goes on with actual game play." In addition to lending discs, libraries host massive video-game tournaments and feature on-site consoles allowing patrons to play. "A library is no longer just a place for books," argues Ryan Donovan, a public librarian in Manhattan. He says that gaming involves "a high degree of literacy and problem solving skills" and will "hopefully attract a new audience to NYPL [New York Public Library]." "Video games have evolved," explains Allen Kesinger, organizer of the National Gaming Day at a library in Southern California. "They have become a medium to deliver sophisticated, emotionally charged stories." He claims that "this strong focus on narrative" will help libraries "attract hesitant readers." It is an open question whether games will serve as a gateway to books, as some librarians hope. Settled is their role transforming libraries from centers of education to centers of amusement, from quiet sanctuaries in a noisy world to extensions of that high-decibel environment in which "shh" is the only verboten sound.
Science writer Steven Johnson, author of a book called Everything Bad Is Good for You, lauds the virtues of television zombies and mesmerized gamers: "Parents can sometimes be appalled at the hypnotic effect that television has on toddlers; they see their otherwise vibrant and active children gazing silently, mouth agape at the screen, and they assume the worst: the television is turning their child into a zombie. The same feeling arrives a few years later, when they see their grade-schoolers navigating through a video game world, oblivious to the reality that surrounds them. But these expressions are not signs of mental atrophy. They're signs of focus."
It is later than you think.
The Historians, the Educator, the Economist, the Philosopher, and the Storyteller
It wasn't always so.
For much of the twentieth century, there was a concerted effort among intellectuals to spread knowledge and wisdom far and wide. Correspondingly, many regular people took full advantage of the great educational effort. Rather than mind-numbing amusements invading places of learning, learning invaded the leisure space. Blue-collar intellectuals were those most fervently dedicated to the idea of a well-rounded, educated citizenry.
A blue-collar intellectual is a thinker who hails from a working-class background, and whose intellectual work targets, in part or whole, a mass audience. Given that blue-collar intellectuals benefited by such outreach efforts when they were more blue collar than intellectual, it is hardly surprising that they would lead such efforts when they found themselves in positions to do so.
This book focuses on a half dozen blue-collar intellectuals:
• Before Will and Ariel Durant partnered to write books, they joined in a scandalous marriage uniting a teacher with his child-bride student. Will, a seminarian excommunicated from his church, and Ariel, a pariah within her immigrant family for marrying a gentile, appeared destined for divorce. But the partnership yielded appearances on best-seller lists from the 1920s until the 1970s, and a Pulitzer Prize in 1968. Despite serving as the de facto professors of world history to millions, the Durants have strangely escaped the interest of actual professors of history.
• Mortimer Adler, an Ivy League Ph.D. who held neither high school nor college degree, fittingly launched the most successful adult education program in history, the Great Books Movement. As much a salesman as a scholar, Adler successfully marketed ancient texts to television-age America.
• Milton Friedman received state scholarships to Rutgers, New Deal employment, and government research grants. Then the pragmatic libertarian became the twentieth century's most effective exponent of the free market, winning the Nobel Prize in 1976. Whereas the other giant of twentieth-century economics, John Maynard Keynes, the scion of a famous economist, was educated at Eton and Cambridge and cavorted in an aristocratic bisexual clique, Friedman was the progeny of Jewish immigrants whose Rahway, New Jersey, home doubled as a sweatshop.
• Dubbed "Ike's favorite author," Eric Hoffer captured America's imagination in two prime-time CBS specials and left an indelible mark on political discourse through his landmark book, The True Believer. He was an intellectual everyman who migrated from skid row anonymity to Rose Garden chats with the president. Though readers continue to consult the unschooled but well-educated longshoreman philosopher, writers have overlooked one of the twentieth century's most fascinating lives.
• So destitute that he shared the same cot with his brother into adulthood, so awkward that even dorks brushed him off, Ray Bradbury elevated his lowly finances and meager social status by selling five million copies of Fahrenheit 451, penning teleplays for Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Twilight Zone, and ultimately his own Ray Bradbury Theater, and placing stories in Mademoiselle, Harper's, Playboy, and The New Yorker. In the process of lifting himself up, the "poet of the pulps" elevated not only his readers but heretofore marginal genres such as science fiction as well.
Blue-collar intellectuals spoke to educated laymen without talking down to them. In the process, they uplifted the masses and rescued ideas from the academic ghetto. Such sins are not easily forgiven.
The Great Uplift
A specific time and place gave rise to blue-collar intellectuals. Twentieth-century America witnessed a democratization of education unparalleled in human history. Aided by cheap printing, technological innovations in communications, and a wider dissemination of wealth, strivers bettered themselves through the G.I. Bill and adult continuing education programs; National Educational Television and university-of-the-air style radio programs; Little Blue Books, the Book-of-the-Month Club, the advent of paperbacks, and broad "outline" books; popular middlebrow magazines such as Saturday Review and The New Yorker; and social outlets such as community book clubs, museums, Andrew Carnegie–funded libraries, and Great Books programs.
In America, where yesterday's poor became today's rich, money became a wanting benchmark to distinguish class. Education supplanted money as a measure of status. In 1949, a prophetic Russell Lynes foresaw, "What we are headed for is a sort of social structure in which the highbrows are the elite, the middlebrows are the bourgeoisie, and the lowbrows are hoi polloi." Blue-collar intellectuals proved as unsettling to the intellectual elite as the nouveau riche had been to old money. Worse still, they replicated their numbers through evangelization. Lynes further observed of the highbrow, "The fact that nowadays everyone has access to culture through schools and colleges, through the press, radio, and museums, disturbs him deeply; for it tends to blur the distinctions between those who are serious and those who are frivolous." How dare people who mistook their salad fork for their dinner fork lecture us on culture?
Rather than welcoming the massive attempt at intellectual uplift, intellectuals heaped scorn upon it. They dismissed the democratization of knowledge and wisdom as an invasion of their turf by undesirables. Established intellectuals adopted a vocabulary to demarcate intellectual class—"lowbrow," "middlebrow," "highbrow"—with "middlebrow" becoming a slur akin to "bourgeois" in the Marxian vernacular.
Dwight Macdonald, for instance, held that "there is something damnably American about Midcult." Virginia Woolf threatened, "If any human being, man, woman, dog, cat or half-crushed worm dares call me 'middlebrow' I will take my pen and stab him, dead." Paul Fussell sniffed in his book Class, "It is in the home of middle-class dwelling that you're likely to spot the fifty-four-volume set of the Great Books, together with the half-witted two-volume Syntopicon, because the middles, the great audience for how-to books, believe in authorities."
Highbrows believe in guides, too, only their guides, strangely enough, are the dreaded middlebrows. Highbrows instinctively do the opposite of what middlebrows are doing. So down from the shelves came the classics and up went unread works by Derrida, Barthes, Habermas, and other lords of indecipherability that, if strategically placed on a shelf in the living room, advertised their owners as bona fide intellectuals.
Instead of engaging the mass culture, intellectuals visibly flee from it. The most convincing demonstration of the pseudointellectualism of large parts of academia came from physicist Alan Sokal's success placing a jargon-filled article in the "scholarly" journal Social Text advancing such patently ridiculous ideas as equality in mathematics owing a debt to feminism. "Would a leading North America journal of cultural studies," Sokal wondered, "publish an article liberally salted with nonsense if (a) it sounded good and (b) it flattered the editors' ideological preconceptions?" The cultural guardians had answered "yes." The ivory tower has become a tower of babble.
The insider language used in journals and at conferences, the adversarial politics of alienation, and even the fashion (observe professors in winter dress late during the spring semester) make it evident that academics take pains to appear separate from the surrounding culture. Accomplishment does not define elites; mannerisms, jargon, and appearances do. Never has elitism been so mediocre.
Events have forced a reassessment of the middlebrow's quest for betterment. The domination of television by people named Snooki and Dog and Omarosa, and the transformation of the local library from a repository of books to a center for cruising sex over the Internet, tends to spark such epiphanies. Highbrows have begun having second thoughts about the climbers they formerly denigrated.
"I look back on the middlebrow with affection, gratitude, and regret rather than condescension not because the Book-of-the-Month Club brought works of genius into my life but because the monthly pronouncements of its reviewers were one of the many sources that encouraged me to seek a wider world," Susan Jacoby reminisces. "That people should aspire to read and think about great books, or even aspire to being thought of as the sort of person who reads great books, is not a bad thing for a society."
There was a massive demand for blue-collar intellectuals throughout much of the twentieth century because there was a massive demand for intellectual betterment. There isn't a massive supply of blue-collar intellectuals today because the enlightened do not feel a vocational pull to reach out to the everyman and the everyman expresses little demand for intellectual betterment. There is not even a consensus that reading means intellectual betterment, let alone about what we should be reading. A society in which it is maladaptive to discuss The Nicomachean Ethics, Othello, and The Federalist Papers is a maladaptive society. The cultural common denominators of the past aren't so common anymore. One can reference The Simpsons or Anchorman or an Eminem lyric with the understanding that an educated audience will know what one is talking about. Try doing that with The Odyssey or Moby Dick even. What it means to be an educated person has changed for the worse.
The intellectual and the everyman suffer when the life of the mind is deemed the exclusive domain of intellectuals. Segregated from society by academic jargon, minute specialization, and outright snobbery, intellectuals descend into a ghetto of unintelligible babble remote from mass society. Similarly, today's middlebrow becomes yesterday's lowbrow when Tool Academy, Grand Theft Auto IV, cage fighting, and Internet pornography crowd out the pursuit of higher things within mass culture. Comfortable in the sensate cesspool demanding of neither the intellect nor the soul, the everyman makes no effort to ascend from the muck. Grateful for the status separation, the intellectual does nothing to raise the mass and everything to extenuate his privileged apartness.
"We are increasingly ignorant, but we do not know enough to be properly ashamed," lamented W. A. Pannapacker, writing in the Chronicle of Higher Education. "If we are determined to get on in life, we believe it will not have anything to do with our ability to reference Machiavelli or Adam Smith at the office Christmas party. The rejection of the Great Books signifies a declining belief in the value of anything without a direct practical application, combined with the triumph of a passive entertainment."
Regular people can still find smart if they look hard enough. This is a book about a moment when smart looked hard enough to find regular people.
To find out more about Blue Collar Intellectuals: When the Enlightened and Everyman Elevated America, click here.
By clicking the logo above to shop Amazon.com, every purchase helps to support ISI.


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Tutorials are the worst.
"Use the right stick to look around."
"Hold left trigger to aim down the sights."
"Press A to jump."
Yeah, we get it. Most of us have played a video game before, we know what to do. Even if we hadn't, I think we are probably intelligent enough to figure it out. Pressing a button to see what it does isn't exactly rocket science.
Nevertheless, almost every modern AAA title has a tutorial, and almost without exception they are incredibly dull. Most developers seem to treat game tutorials like a chore; a mandatory but creatively unsatisfying feature that is simply a requirement in shipping a modern video game.
But they don't have to be. They can be a creative an integral part of the game if done thoughtfully. A good or even great tutorial is supposed to be an introduction, a starting point. Most games take this a little too literally. They don't even start players on the ground floor of game literacy, they take players to the sub-basement, telling them how to do every one of the game's basic functions over the course of the first few minutes and then shooing them along so the "real" game can begin.
Maybe if we just rebranded tutorials into introductions they would collectively improve. A great "tutorial" isn't only about familiarizing players with the game's controls, but also introducing them to the world and characters they are about to explore and meet. Like I said, an introduction. Some games do this better than others, but there is one tutorial that I can say without a doubt does it better than nearly any other game I've played: Bioshock Infinite.
Say what you want about the game's over-the-top violence (which annoyed some) or it's linearity (which annoyed others) but Bioshock Infinite boasts the only tutorial in recent memory I could describe as being perfect (Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon comes in at a close second.)
What is so great about it? Everything.
(Spoilers for the first 30 minutes of Bioshock Infinite below)
Players before reaching the tutorial have already wandered about the floating city of Columbia and taken in some of the sights. Everything seems normal; kids play in the street, paperboys hawk papers, couples chat on street side benches. Despite appearances, there is a lingering sense of discomfort that something about Columbia just feels "wrong." Before long you arrive at a fairground, with posters and signs promoting some kind of special raffle. You see, Columbia is celebrating it's Independence today, and you've arrived just in time for the festivities.
Upon first arriving at the fair you are given your first vital piece of information about playing the game: the seemingly magical potions called Vigors, serving as the Plasmids of Bioshock Infinite. What are they, and what all can they do? Well step up on up and learn for yourself, the game invites, as a professional salesman standing atop the stage begins to promote his products. "One swig, and feats of wonderment are at the tips of your fingers!" The game shows, not tells, as two men dressed as devils use Vigors on one another in front of the stage to demonstrate the different abilities available to the player. Over the course of the presentation the salesman drops several names which will continue to appear throughout the game, specifically the character of Jeremiah Fink.
After watching the demonstration the player moves further into the fairgrounds and discovers a small area to freely explore, filled with a variety of games and activities. Almost immediately a salesman directs your attention to "Cast The Devil Out," a game whose name and objective, like nearly everything else in the city of Columbia, draws upon religious symbolism. It's here players get the chance to familiarize themselves with using Vigors for themselves, an essential part of combat in the game. Using the "Bucking Bronco" Vigor players are tasked with knocking "devils" hiding behind furniture into the air. Even before using it themselves the game salesman gives players his sales pitch about Bucking Bronco, explaining its potential uses and power with his enthusiastic flair.
Around the corner is another opportunity to learn more about Bioshock Infinite's combat in the form of a shooting game called "Bring Down The Skyline Vox." Once again the game in name and purpose continues to expose players to important concepts, in this case the skylines players will be using later in the game to zip around the city and the introduction of the "evil" rebels called the Vox Populi. Players are tasked with grabbing a shotgun and blasting a certain number of cardboard Vox Populi targets off the rails, letting players familiarize themselves with Bioshock Infinite's gunplay.
Often times concepts important to understanding the world of Columbia can be found in the fair multiple times, just in case a player misses out on one activity. In addition to the skyline featured in the shooting gallery, a non-interactive exhibit discussing Columbia's skylines and their use in transporting goods is also on display. An additional shooting game continues to reinforce the idea of the Vox Populi as villains, even including the important side character and Vox Populi leader Daisy Fitzroy as a special target that can be shot for extra points.
Better yet, doing well in these "tutorials" cleverly disguised as carnival games grants you rewards like additional money. This gives players an incentive to actually explore everything the fair has to offer.
Even after playing all the carnival games there is still plenty left to see. An exhibit with mechanical horses show the technical capabilities of Columbian inventors, paving the way for the game to introduce the heavily armed motorized "Patriots" that players fight later in the game without having to overly explain why. The game's audio logs, Voxophones, are introduced and explained in a humorous way with player character Booker recording a Voxophone of his own and then spouting the line to the salesman, "Just so we're clear, I'm not paying for this." The colossal Handyman, one of the game's most challenging enemies, is also on display for players to witness and learn more about before having to face one in combat a few hours later.
Minutes after leaving the fair comes the controversial "raffle scene." It serves as the conclusion to Bioshock Infinite's introduction. Picking a numbered baseball from a basket as your raffle ticket, you wait as Jeremiah Fink (the same character responsible for inventing Vigors and introduced just minutes before) announces the raffle winner. Lo' and behold it is number 77 — your number. All the while the player is curious, "What did I win?" The reveal comes as a shock, quickly followed by a sense of discomfort and revulsion — your prize is the "honor" of giving first throw at the public stoning of an interracial couple. It's in this moment that the uneasy sensation creeping just below the surface of Columbia comes to light. This is the real Columbia. After Fink and guards catch a glimpse of the "A.D." tattooed on the back of your hand as you attempt to either throw the baseball at the couple or at Fink, the game begins in earnest. Players grab a skyhook and melee their way out of the area before truly starting their adventure in the dystopia of Columbia.
All the information in the game's fair "tutorial" is presented to you, not forced upon you. That is the key here. While the game does give players a quick cartoon demonstration of how to use new Vigors upon acquiring them, several of the Vigors have already been explained and demonstrated in a non-intrusive and interactive way long before players even get their hands on them. Important characters, game concepts, ideologies, and the true nature of Columbia itself have been revealed naturally as the game went along, not as walls of text appearing in the middle of your screen or journal entries. By the time Bioshock Infinite really begins, it's likely you didn't even realize you had played a tutorial. You were simply absorbed in the world Irrational created and ready to explore it further.
Bioshock Infinite proves that tutorials can be an integral part of the game experience and don't have to be a mandatory afterthought. In fact, the fair, raffle,and scenes leading up to both are my favorite parts of Bioshock Infinite, even taking into account how much I enjoyed the game's combat and dimension hopping storyline. Video games need more tutorials like this. Gamers are (generally) a smart crowd. We know how to shoot and jump. We know how to crouch. Developers, tell us something we don't know. Tell us about the world you've created, the characters you've populated it with. If you do have to tell us how to play, make it part of the game, not separate from it. That's all I'm asking. If you follow Bioshock Infinite's lead, modern games will be all the better for it.


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With 2x12's reappearance of Sif, and the appearance of Vin-Tak, and how it dealt with the "Inhumans", his hunt, so on, I couldn't help feeling cheated. So I had an idea for how the latter half of S2 could have been.
While SHIELD are dealing with the aftermath of the Terrigenesis, elsewhere a Kree arrives on earth, and begins his search. quarter way into the episode, we cut to New Mexico, where we find... DARCY LEWIS, in her own van, with equipment and she stops by an armored figure... who she greets with familiarity... (Sif) Some more stuff, blablabla, Skye in Quarantine... then end-of-episode scene (five minutes or so), we follow an unarmored Sif with Darcy as backup, and find she's following the Kree, only to loose the fight, and the scene ends with Sif asking who Darcy is, and who she is, and Darcy in response, well, pulling a phone out, dialing a number, and saying, "Hi, iPod Stealer... it's darcy..."
Sif is in the Medlab at the Playground, with Darcy and Coulson outside, Darcy explaining what she knows (which isn't much), how Sif was following some guy, and how she managed to be around when Sif arrived in NM. Mention of "What is it with Asgard and New Mexico" has Darcy try to explain about how a thousand years can shift a "something something weakpoint something" from wherever in europe (hence the norse) to New Mexico (which has no local norse mythos), hence why generally, the Bifrost opens there, though it can open elsewhere on earth.
Darcy leaves, no answer as to why or what she'll be doing, but this is her temporary exit from the show.
SHIELD and Sif try to find the Kree, and slowly, Sif begins to remember things - though 'childhood teachings' never left her, her life is returning in drips and drabs. They catch up with Vin-Tak, who explains his mission, and it strikes a chord with Sif, but she doesn't know yet. Also, he cannot restore her memory, his hammer was designed to permanently erase specific knowledge/memories, and a side effect is a temporary near-total amnesia... she will remember who she is, along with events of her life until her arrival on earth. She, doesn't take that explanation well... By the end of the episode, Vin-tak has "escaped" to continue his mission, while Sif now knows who she is, though many events of her life is still gone. She does remember Coulson - both from dealing with Lorelei, and the previous meeting, but most of her adventures away from earth are still blocked. (it's a whole,, familairity helping remember thing).
She decides that, for a short time, to leave the chase for Vin-tak in their hands, and supposedly returns to asgard. End-of-episode, we see her away from the group, spying as they go on a mission... and she mumbles about skye (she knows something is off? that skye is one of the 'inhumans'?)... though only Fitz and Skye herself know about Skye's emergent abilities. (those are dealt with next episode)
Sif Returns, to help Team Coulson. her memory is restored, with a small blankspot of how she found Vin-Tak in the first place, along with the fight when she lost her memory. She lets them think that she only just returned, rather than having never left. (recovered her memories on her own). She has returned to give the team assistance with chasing down an Inhuman who is revelling in his destructive abilities. After awhile (halfway into the episode), she reveals to Coulson alone that "Heimdahl" had informed her about Skye AND how being with the team has helped the girl gain control. She will, not interfere, unless necessary, trusting coulson. (again, not heimdahl, but from her own observation over time. But this is not hinted at in the episode). At the end, Sif ends up having to trust Skye directly, when their target in question does X-y-Z, and Skye has to use her abilities to, counter it...
Vin-Tak returns. SHIELD learns of a "handful" of murders that they suspect to be inhumans, given that people around those incidents report memory loss. The most recent one helping them track the Kree.
Vin-Tak ends up being saved by Skye, who tells the knowing kree that it doesn't matter what she can do, only the why. other than that no ideas. Sif finally returns to Asgard...
Unnamed Future Episode: The SHIELD agents must help the Defenders in defending New York form an attack from outer space while the Avengers are off planet fighting the forces of Thanos.


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CyberLink Media Suite 10 Ultra is a feature-packed media management suite which provides everything you need to play, edit and share your favourite media files.
The suite bundles no less than 11 powerful applications.
PowerDVD 12, for instance, takes on media playback duties, and of course can handle all the regular audio and video files, CDs, DVDs and Blu-Ray discs. But that's just the start. It can also play 3D videos, photos and Blu-ray movies (as well as converting 2D Blu-ray discs to 3D). A new smart media library and DLNA support helps the program manage and play back content from across your network, and this new edition even has integrated browsing for YouTube, Facebook and Flickr.
PowerDirector 10 is on hand to cater for your video editing requirements. The program can handle anything from creating instant photo slideshows to professional movies, and enhancements this time include smarter, much faster (up to 380%) rendering, MKV and FLV import, new 3D video support, and some spectacularly clever paint animation effects.
Worried about Media Management? The MediaShow 6 thumbnail browser now supports 3D files and many RAW formats, offers a Calendar view for speedy access to your images or provides new filter options for ultra-fast searching.
And the list goes on. So Power2Go 8 burns DVD, BD and BDXL discs (and can now mount disc images, too); PowerProducer comes packed with professional templates to help you build quality DVD or Blu-ray discs; MediaEspresso 6.5 converts your videos, photos and media into more mobile device-friendly formats; WaveEditor 2 helps you edit audio files; and other tools on offer here include PowerBackup 2.6, PowerDVD Copy 1.5, LabelPrint 2.6 and InstantBurn 5.
CyberLink haven't cut a single corner, then, and unsurprisingly this does mean that Media Suite 10 Ultra comes with a fairly chunky price tag.
The suite is still notably cheaper than buying the packages individually, though. And if you'd like to save a little more cash yourself, then you could opt for Media Suite 10 Pro, instead. It's essentially the same package, with the Blu-ray and 3D features omitted, along with a few other high-end extras (so its PowerDVD can handle Dolby Digital/ Digital Plus/ DTS, but not Dolby True-HD/ DTS-HD, for instance). And yet the Pro price is notably lower, $99.95 vs $129.95: if your media needs are simple then it could be a very good deal.
Please note that, due to file sizes, the download here is for the official CyberLink Media Suite 10 downloader which will then download the 1.5GB Media Suite trial from the CyberLink server.
A superb media suite, well-designed, powerful and easy-to-use. It's great value for money, too, considering just how much functionality there is here.


text: (ABMS) Training Course: Implementing BS 10500 Led by an experienced BSI tutor, this two day course will guide you through an implementation of an effective ABMS, using a combination of practical exercises, group activities and class discussions Who should attend? Those responsible for anti-bribery management, ethical behaviour, corporate governance, risk and compliance, management systems, anti-bribery measures, human resources, procurement and those managing/selecting business associates especially if operating in high risk bribery environments. Suggested job roles include: Human resource managers Internal legal teams Risk and compliance managers Internal affairs and investigation teams Internal and external management systems auditors who are new to ABMS Procurement managers Private data and records administration teams Learning objectives How to determine the threat of bribery within an organization How to recognize the key management system concepts of BS 10500 What are the benefits specific to my organization in relation to implementing an effective ABMS How to identify a typical framework for implementing BS 10500 following the Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) cycle How to interpret the requirements of BS 10500 from an implementation perspective in the context of your organization How to conduct a base line review of your organizations current position with regard to BS 10500 Course Benefits Your company will be able to recognize the threat of bribery You'll be able to explain the benefits of BS 10500 standard and how it can benefit your organization Your organization will be better placed for the successful implementation of an ABMS Your business will be able to define and communicate it's anti-bribery policy Those managing the ABMS implementation will gain confidence in its roll out Those implementing the ABMS will have a reference toolkit to help guide their implementation Prerequisites There are no formal pre-requisites to attend, however it is recommended that you have some knowledge of ABMS, in particular the BS 10500 standard, as well as an understanding of how your organization operates and the likely risks it faces. Our Requirements course can help you with your ABMS and BS 10500 knowledge. View dates and book now


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Three things we need to know about "SOGI"
May 17 is the International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia, or IDAHOT.
Why should we care about IDAHOT? Because sexual orientation and gender identity, or SOGI, matters.
First, .
Despite some legal and social progress in the past two decades, LGBTI people continue to face widespread discrimination and violence in many countries. Sometimes, being LGBTI is even a matter of life and death. They may be your friends, your family, your classmates, or your coworkers.


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