text:
Conservative presidential candidate paints bleak picture of Iran
Arash Karami April 27, 2017
Ebrahim Raisi expressed support for economic policies that led to high inflation in Iran.
Iranian cleric and head of the Imam Reza charitable foundation Ebrahim Raisi gestures while registering his candidacy for the upcoming presidential elections at the Ministry of Interior in Tehran, April 14, 2017.
In the first televised interview of the six Iranian candidates approved to run in the presidential election, Ebrahim Raisi, the custodian of Iran's largest religious endowment, described a dark economic condition in Iran and said he would be able to fix it.
"In my own life I've tasted poverty," Raisi began when asked what his plans are for the poor. "And since I became the custodian of the Astan-e Quds Razavi, I've encountered men and women who are dealing with numerous difficulties." In March 2016, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei appointed Raisi as custodian of the shrine of Imam Reza, the holiest (and wealthiest) site in Iran for Shiite Muslims. Since his appointment, he began taking trips to poor villages outside the northeastern city of Mashhad, where the shrine is located.
Raisi recounted "a man who came with tears in his eyes and talked of his poverty" and a "woman with four children who asked at least one of them to be given jobs." He said that the many villages he visits are simply depending on their cash subsidy payments as their sole source of income and that this wasn't sustainable.
Raisi also criticized the high level of unemployment in the country. He said that if one looks at the official numbers, it is stated at just over 12%, but the unemployment rate for those with college degrees is as high as 40% and near 30% for the youth. He blamed the unemployment rate for other problems in society such as divorce and corruption. Raisi questioned how it can be that a country with such status and with a voice on the world stage and such scientific progress is still unable to solve the issue of unemployment.
Raisi, however, was not very specific on how he would address poverty other than suggesting doubling or even tripling the cash subsidies to the lowest income brackets in Iran. The policy would essentially undo one of President Hassan Rouhani's key domestic achievements in lowering the inflation rate from 40% to near 10%. Raisi also suggested restarting the Maskan-e Mehr low-income housing project, which was also blamed for high inflation. Raisi argued instead that it would both create jobs and offer affordable housing.
Raisi said one of his first acts as president would be to structure government institutions and banks so that they are incorruptible. In an indirect criticism of the Rouhani administration, he said that if there is corruption, it should be the president and his ministers who first uncover it and not other institutions.
In other news, 10 Iranian border guards were killed in a terrorist attack on the Iran-Pakistan border. The terrorist group Jaish al-Adl took credit for the attack. Iran's Sistan-Baluchistan province has periodically witnessed violence at the hands of Sunni extremist groups. The province is one of the less-developed regions of Iran and its borders are porous. The last time there was a major attack by the group was in October 2013.
Found in: iranian economy, hassan rouhani, iranian politics, corruption, unemployment, presidential elections, ebrahim raisi
Arash Karami is a contributor to Al-Monitor. On Twitter: @thekarami
Will Carlos Ghosn be safe from prosecution in Lebanon?
Iran's fractious hard-liners hold edge as parliamentary election approaches


Speedball has developed a range of screen printing kits featuring all the essentials specific to your screen printing project. Whether you're new to screen printing and experimenting with our Beginner Paper Stencil Kit, or a printing pro ready to make your next epic design with our Advanced All-in-One Kit, Speedball's Screen Printing Kits contain just what you need. Select any of the listings below to learn more about each of these expertly-created kits, designed with you in mind.
This kit provides the best introduction to screen printing by way of the paper stencil method of screen printing and includes (1) each of the following: 10"x14" Speedball Wooden Screen Frame; Red Baron™ Squeegee; 4oz. jar of Speedball Fabric Screen Printing Ink (Black); Bienfang® Graphics 360™ Paper Pad; Craft Stick; Utility Knife; Speedball Screen Printing Instruction Guide.
For artists ready to tackle both the Drawing Fluid/Screen Filler and the Photo Emulsion methods of screen printing to print on paper, this kit is an excellent find! The Speedball Intermediate Kit includes: (1) 10"x14" Speedball Wooden Screen Frame; (1) Red Baron™ Squeegee; (2) 4oz. jars of Speedball Fabric Screen Printing Ink (one each Black, Red); (1) 4oz. bottle of Drawing Fluid; (1) 4oz. bottle of Screen Filler; (1) 3.3oz. bottle of Speedball Diazo Photo Emulsion; (1) bottle of Speedball Sensitizer; (1) 4oz. bottle of Speedball Photo Emulsion Remover; (1) 4oz. bottle of Speedball Speed Clean™; (1) Round Brush; (2) Craft Sticks; (1) Speedball Screen Printing Instruction Guide.
Provides all that's needed to print on either fabric or paper using the Drawing Fluid/Screen Filler and the Photo Emulsion methods of screen printing. This kit contains: (1) 10"x14" Speedball Wooden Screen Frame and Base; (1) 8"x10" Speedball Wooden Screen Frame; (1) Speedball Craft Squeegee (Textile); (1) Speedball Craft Squeegee (Graphic); (2) 4oz. jars of Speedball Fabric Screen Printing Ink (one each Black, Red); (4) 4oz. jars of Speedball Acrylic Screen Printing Ink (one each Black, Process Cyan, Process Magenta, Process Yellow); (1) 4oz. bottle of Drawing Fluid; (1) 4oz. bottle of Screen Filler; (1) 3.3oz. bottle of Speedball Diazo Photo Emulsion; (1) bottle of Speedball Sensitizer; (1) 4oz. bottle of Speedball Photo Emulsion Remover; (1) 4oz. bottle of Speedball Speed Clean™; (2) Speedball Transparencies; (1) Round Brush; (6) Craft Sticks; (1) sheet of black paper; (1) Speedball Screen Printing Instruction Guide.
Ready to take on the Photo Emulsion method for your next creation? Then this kit is perfect for you! Not only does the Speedball All-in-One Kit include all of the tools and inks featured in complementary kits in the line, but it also contains the light source needed to make the process of exposing your screen a breeze! This kit includes: (1) 10"x14" Speedball Wooden Screen Frame and Base; ; (1) Speedball Craft Squeegee (Textile); (4) 4oz. jars of Speedball Fabric Screen Printing Ink (one each Black, Red, White, Blue); (1) 3.3oz. bottle of Speedball Diazo Photo Emulsion; (1) bottle of Speedball Sensitizer; (1) 4oz. bottle of Speedball Photo Emulsion Remover; (2) Speedball Transparencies; (1) Lamp; (1) Photoflood Bulb; (1) Lamp Clamp; (4) Craft Sticks; (1) sheet of black paper; (1) Speedball Screen Printing Instruction Guide.
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Situated in the Werra Valley between the Thuringian Forest and the Rhön mountains, Meiningen offers an abundance of opportunities for active relaxation. Surrounding the city you will find about 280 kilometres of signposted hiking trails and those who climb the Meiningen landmark mountain Dolmar (739m), are rewarded with outstanding views. The Thuringian Forest is located about 25 kilometres north of Meiningen. Germany's most renowned hiking trail, the Rennsteig (169 km), is to be found there. In winter, this trail is transformed into the world's longest continuous cross country ski course.
This premium hiking trail 'Der Meininger' leads through a diverse countryside and offers beautiful views of the town. Keeping close to Meiningen's outskirts, the trail includes picturesque wooded sections as well as several fantastic viewpoints. This attractive short walk is easyly done in 3-4 hours and leaves enough time and energy for a subsequent look around town.
Short loop from Elisabethenburg Castle via Herrenberg hill to the Diezhäuschen viewpoint and back to the castle. Composer Johannes Brahms used to walk here regularly during his stays in Meiningen.
The young poet Friedrich Schiller (LINK) used to walk from Bauerbach to Meiningen during his time of exile to get paper, ink and books from the ducal library. Today you can walk on his traces along the river Werra, through valleys and beech grove to the little village of Bauerbach where Schiller lived from December 1782 until July 1783. His hideout in the farmhouse of the Wolzogen family, today the Schiller museum, can be visited and the tavern 'Zum braunen Roß' offers refreshing drinks and good, hearty meals.


text:
U.S.|Lesson on Islam Shuts Down Virginia School District
Lesson on Islam Shuts Down Virginia School District
Schools in Augusta County, Va., were closed Friday after a teacher asked students to practice calligraphy by writing the Islamic statement of faith prompted anger from parents.CreditCreditReuters
By Liam Stack and Richard Pérez-Peña
A Virginia school district closed its schools on Friday amid an angry backlash, including a possible "risk of harm to school officials," over an assignment that asked high school students to copy a Muslim creed in Arabic calligraphy.
Students in a world geography class at Riverheads High School in Staunton, Va., had been asked to try their hands at copying a passage known as the Shahada, or declaration of faith in Islam. The work sheet distributed to students on Dec. 11 said: "This should give you an idea of the artistic complexity of calligraphy."
But some parents accused the teacher of trying to convert their children to Islam, inciting an angry outcry in the largely rural district nestled in the Shenandoah Valley. The Shahada is recited as part of daily prayer, and translates to, "There is no God but God, and Muhammad is the messenger of God." Speaking the Shahada before witnesses is an important step in converting to Islam.
The complaints were further fueled by the teacher inviting female students to wear a head scarf, as many Muslim women do. The number of angry calls and emails to the district increased sharply as this week wore on, fueled by growing media coverage of the controversy.
"Some communications posed a risk of harm to school officials," and have been turned over to the Augusta County Sheriff's Department, the district said in a statement released on Friday. "Others threatened significant protests on or near school property."
The district said it felt that "the risk of harm to school officials and the risk of further disruption in the educational environment" left the school board with little choice but to cancel classes and extracurricular activities, and begin winter break a day early. Parents were first notified Thursday night, in a statement online.
Speaking to CBS, Sheriff Randall Fisher described the messages sent to the school district in response to the assignment as "profane" and "hateful." The school board consulted with Sheriff Fisher before deciding to shut down the schools.
The outcry in Augusta County comes during a steady drumbeat of anti-Muslim speech by politicians and a nationwide wave of hate crimes targeting Muslims, including physical assaults and acts of vandalism and arson at mosques and Muslim-owned businesses, in the wake of the terrorist attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, Calif.
As part of those precautionary measures, the sheriff's office said it would increase the number of patrols near school facilities in response to the messages.
Eric W. Bond, the superintendent of the Augusta County School District; Max W. Lowe, the principal of Riverheads High School; and Cheryl LaPorte, identified by parents and the local news media as the teacher who assigned the calligraphy exercise, did not respond to requests for comment. Parents who know Ms. LaPorte say she is not Muslim.
The district said the class included similar hands-on exposure to other religions and cultures, not just Islam. And it said that despite the outcry, it would continue to educate students about the world's religious diversity as required by state education guidelines but that "a different, nonreligious sample of Arabic calligraphy will be used in the future."
In an email to parents on Friday, Dr. Bond wrote that "Neither these lessons, nor any other lesson in the world geography course, are an attempt at indoctrination to Islam or any other religion." Students were not told what the writing meant, or asked to recite it, he added, and "the scarf used in the activity was not an actual Islamic religious hijab."
But Kimberly Herndon, a parent who has been an outspoken critic of the geography assignment, said on Facebook that the students "were instructed to denounce our Lord by copying this creed of Islam." She organized a public forum on Tuesday at a local church, at which parents condemned the assignment and demanded that the teacher be fired.
The shehada is the declaration of faith in Islam and the script is used on the Saudi flag.CreditShahzaib Akber/European Pressphoto Agency
"This evil has been cloaked in the form of multiculturalism," she wrote, adding in a separate post that the students had been asked to write words that were "an abomination to their faith."
"This creed is connected to jihad in that it is the chant that is shouted while beheading those of Christian faith," Ms. Herndon wrote.
Some parents have said that any lesson that included a comparable Christian creed would be prohibited.
In an interview on Friday, Katie Reich, president of the district's parent-teacher association, said the matter "has been blown completely out of proportion" by the people who are angered by the assignment.
"The teacher who gave the assignment probably made some poor choices in her decisions, but the real problem are the people who are threatening to riot at the schools and threatening the administration," she said.
Laurel Truxell, a student in the class, told an NBC affiliate in Charlottesville, Va., that she at first refused to try on the head scarf, but "the teacher pushed and pushed and pushed so I did it," she said. Her parents called the school to object after Laurel was told a picture of her wearing the head scarf would be submitted to the yearbook, she said.
"I just felt uncomfortable learning about it in a world geography class," she told the television network. "You shouldn't teach religion in school unless you're in a religious class."
Others on social media encouraged people to show support for Ms. LaPorte. "Enough with the negative and ignorant!" Rob Johnson of Roanoke, Va., wrote on Facebook. "Let's show some common sense and support!"
A version of this article appears in print on , Section A, Page 11 of the New York edition with the headline: High School Lesson on Islam Spawns Furor and Threats, Closing a District in Virginia. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
What happens when a lawyer says withdrawn?
What does it mean when a lawyer says withdrawn?
What does it mean when your case is withdrawn?
What happens when a motion is withdrawn?
What happens after charges are withdrawn?
Does withdrawn mean in court?
Do I have a criminal record if charges were withdrawn?
What is the difference between dismissed and withdrawn charges?
Why are charges withdrawn?
Can withdrawn charges be reinstated?
The attorney is not relieved of his or her duties to represent the client unless and until an order granting the withdrawal is signed by the judge and filed with the clerk of court. … This obligation to pay legal fees survives the termination of the attorney-client relationship.
Withdrawal from representation, in United States law, occurs where an attorney terminates a relationship of representing a client. … Where litigation has been filed and an attorney is representing the client in court, permission of the court must usually be sought in support of an attorney's withdrawal.
In some cases, the court will reach a point where they decide to formally withdraw or dismiss any charges against the defendant. … The withdrawal or dismissal of criminal charges means that a defendant can avoid serving jail time or dealing with probation.
The "motion to withdraw" is a formal request asking the court to let you take back your plea. If the judge grants it, the proceedings will effectively "rewind" back to the arraignment. Any deals you made with the prosecution are undone, and you get a new chance at the trial.
IT IS INTERESTING: How do lawyers find your bank accounts?
The other case when something is withdrawn in court is when a decision is made to remove the charges entirely for someone that is accused of committing a crime. … When a charge is withdrawn, however, this means that the court has made the decision to drop the charges permanently, and no longer seek prosecution.
The term "case withdrawn" means that court has decided, after evaluating the merits of a specific case, that there is no need to continue the trial and arrive at a conclusion of guilty or not guilty. … There are a few reasons why a case may be withdrawn.
If you do end up in court, you will have a court record even if you are found innocent or have your charges dismissed. This record will not show a conviction, but it will show that you were charged and went to court.
What's the Difference Between Dismissed and Dropped Charges
Having a charge dismissed, withdrawn, dropped or acquitted basically means that you are no longer charged.
A charge is withdrawn when the Crown decides that the case either can't be proven or there are some public interest reasons why the case should not proceed. Once a case is withdrawn, it is very hard to bring it back to court, though it can happen in exceptional cases.
That means the matter is over. If they withdraw charges rather than have them dismissed they can re-lay them at some later point.
IT IS INTERESTING: Frequent question: How do lawyers bill you?


text:
author: Michael Paquier
lastmod: 2014-04-06
date: 2014-04-06 15:36:08+00:00
layout: post
type: post
slug: postgres-9-4-feature-highlight-indexing-jsonb
title: 'Postgres 9.4 feature highlight - Indexing JSON data with jsonb data type'
categories:
- PostgreSQL-2
tags:
- postgres
- postgresql
- 9.4
- indexes
- json

---
PostgreSQL 9.4 is shipping with a new feature called [jsonb]
(https://www.postgresql.org/docs/devel/static/datatype-json.html), which is a
new data type able to store JSON data supporting GIN indexing (!). In short,
this feature, one of the most important of the upcoming release, if not the
most important, puts Postgres directly in good position in the field of
document-oriented database systems.

Since 9.2, an integrated [JSON datatype](/postgresql-2/postgres-9-2-highlight-json-data-type/)
already exists, completed with a set of functions ([data generation]
(/postgresql-2/postgres-9-3-feature-highlight-json-data-generation/)
and [parsing functions]
(/postgresql-2/postgres-9-3-feature-highlight-json-parsing-functions/))
as well as [operators]
(/postgresql-2/postgres-9-3-feature-highlight-json-operators/)
added in 9.3. When using "json" data type, data is stored as an exact
copy of the input text which functions working on it need to reparse causing
some processing overhead.

The new jsonb data type stores data in a decomposed binary format, so
inserting it is less performant than json because of the overhead necessary
to put it in shape but it is *faster* as it does not need reparsing, and
it has the advantage to support GIN indexing. For this last reason it is
actually recommended to use jsonb for your applications instead of json
(you might need only json depending on your needs though). Note as well
that jsonb has the same operators as functions as json, you can refer to
my previous posts on the matter to get some insight on them or directly at
the documentation of Postgres.

Now let's see how jsonb works and let's compare it with json with as data
sample a dump of [geobase](https://www.geonames.org/export/), worth 8.6 million
tuples and 1.1GB, with many fields like the city name, country code (you can
refer to a complete list of the fields [here]
(https://download.geonames.org/export/dump/readme.txt)). After storing the
data into a new table with a raw COPY, let's transform it into json/jsonb
in a set of tables with a fillfactor at 100 to see how much space they use:

    =# COPY geodata FROM '$HOME/Downloads/allCountries.txt';
    COPY 8647839
    =# CREATE TABLE geodata_jsonb (data jsonb) with (fillfactor=100);
    CREATE TABLE
    =# CREATE TABLE geodata_json (data json) with (fillfactor=100);
    CREATE TABLE
    =# \timing
    Timing is on.
    =# INSERT INTO geodata_json SELECT row_to_json(geodata) FROM geodata;
    INSERT 0 8647839
    Time: 287158.457 ms
    =# INSERT INTO geodata_jsonb SELECT row_to_json(geodata)::jsonb FROM geodata;
    INSERT 0 8647839
    Time: 425825.967 ms

Inserting jsonb data took a little bit more time. And what is the difference
of size?

    =# SELECT pg_size_pretty(pg_relation_size('geodata_json'::regclass)) AS json,
              pg_size_pretty(pg_relation_size('geodata_jsonb'::regclass)) AS jsonb;
      json   |  jsonb
    ---------+---------
     3274 MB | 3816 MB
    (1 row)

Creating indexes on json data is possible even with 9.3, for example by
indexing some given keys using the operators present (note that '->>' is
used as it returns text, and that the set of keys in the index is chosen
depending on the queries):

    =# CREATE INDEX geodata_index ON
        geodata_json ((data->>'country_code'), (data->>'asciiname'));
    CREATE INDEX
    =# SELECT pg_size_pretty(pg_relation_size('geodata_index'::regclass))
        AS json_index;
     json_index
    ------------
     310 MB
    (1 row)
    =# SELECT (data->>'population')::int as population,
              data->'latitude' as latitude,
              data->'longitude' as longitude
       FROM geodata_json WHERE data->>'country_code' = 'JP' AND
            data->>'asciiname' = 'Tokyo' AND
            (data->>'population')::int != 0;
     population | latitude | longitude
    ------------+----------+-----------
        8336599 | 35.6895  | 139.69171
    (1 row)
    =# -- Explain of previous query
                                                           QUERY PLAN
    -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
     Bitmap Heap Scan on geodata_json  (cost=6.78..865.24 rows=215 width=32)
       Recheck Cond: (((data ->> 'country_code'::text) = 'JP'::text) AND ((data ->> 'asciiname'::text) = 'Tokyo'::text))
       Filter: (((data ->> 'population'::text))::integer <> 0)
       ->  Bitmap Index Scan on geodata_index  (cost=0.00..6.72 rows=216 width=0)
             Index Cond: (((data ->> 'country_code'::text) = 'JP'::text) AND ((data ->> 'asciiname'::text) = 'Tokyo'::text))
     Planning time: 0.172 ms
    (6 rows)

In this case the planner is able to use a bitmap index scan and uses the
index created previously.

Now one of the new things that jsonb has and not json is the possibility
to check containment within some data with the operator @>, which is indexable
using GIN, as well as the existence operators ?, ?| and ?& (to check if given
key(s) exist) by the way. GIN indexing is possible with two operator classes:

  * Default operator class that all four operators listed previously
  * jsonb\_path\_ops, supporting only @> but performing better when searching
data and having a smaller on-disk size.

Here is how it works:

    =# CREATE INDEX geodata_gin ON geodata_jsonb
          USING GIN (data jsonb_path_ops);
    CREATE INDEX
    =# SELECT (data->>'population')::int as population,
          data->'latitude' as latitude,
          data->'longitude' as longitude
       FROM geodata_jsonb WHERE data @> '{"country_code": "JP", "asciiname": "Tokyo"}' AND
           (data->>'population')::int != 0;
     population | latitude | longitude
    ------------+----------+-----------
        8336599 | 35.6895  | 139.69171
    (1 row)
     =# SELECT pg_size_pretty(pg_relation_size('geodata_gin'::regclass)) AS jsonb_gin;
     jsonb_gin
    -----------
     1519 MB
    (1 row)
    =# -- EXPLAIN of previous query
                                         QUERY PLAN
    -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
     Bitmap Heap Scan on geodata_jsonb  (cost=131.01..31317.76 rows=8605 width=418)
       Recheck Cond: (data @> '{"asciiname": "Tokyo", "country_code": "JP"}'::jsonb)
       Filter: (((data ->> 'population'::text))::integer <> 0)
       ->  Bitmap Index Scan on geodata_gin  (cost=0.00..128.86 rows=8648 width=0)
             Index Cond: (data @> '{"asciiname": "Tokyo", "country_code": "JP"}'::jsonb)
      Planning time: 0.134 ms

Depending on the application needs, you might prefer a less space-consuming
index like a btree tree on the field names of the JSON data as showed
previously, the GIN indexing here having the advantage to be more generic as
it covers all the fields of JSON and checks their containment.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


Speech Pathologists are health professionals who are trained to assess and treat all kinds of communication difficulties. It is a young profession, with the first course offered by Sydney University in 1939.
A Speech Pathologist will have a Bachelors or Masters level degree. They will have knowledge on normal communication development, methods of assessment and remediation, psychology, anatomy and neurophysiology.
A Speech Pathologist may work with a wide range of clients with difficulties such as; articulation, slow language development, autistic spectrum disorder, stuttering, cleft palate, hearing impairment, voice difficulties, swallowing problems in babies or after an injury/stoke, communication difficulties after a brain injury/stroke or when a degenerative process is occurring.
The type of work places in which a Speech pathologist may work include preschools, schools, hospitals, public health centres and also in private practice.
Speech Pathology Australia is the professional association of Speech Pathologists in this country. To work as a Speech Pathologist one must be eligible for practising membership of S.P.A.. The association ensures a code of ethics is adhered to by all members. It also provides ongoing professional development.
Members who commit to participating in regular professional development, as monitored by the association, are allowed to claim Certified Practising Speech Pathologist status.


Prof Duncan Hand has been at Heriot-Watt for 25 years, following a PhD in fibre optics at the University of Southampton. He plays a lead role in the Applied Optics and Photonics Research Group, which covers manufacturing, sensing and medical applications, and in particular he directs activity in the applications of high power lasers. Duncan's work on lasers in manufacturing includes laser precision machining; laser surface processing; and laser micro-joining processes. In this work he collaborates with a range of companies including SPI Lasers, AWE, Renishaw, Oxford Lasers and Finmeccanica. He has further research activity, in collaboration with Bath and Leeds Universities, on the delivery of high peak power laser light through novel microstructured optical fibres, with applications in manufacturing and medicine. He also has an interest in optical sensing, with current activity in optically-addressed fibre optic micro-cantilever sensors.
Duncan is the Director of the Centre for Innovative Manufacturing in Laser-based Production Processes, and is a member of the Heriot-Watt School of Engineering and Physical Sciences management team as Deputy Head of School; he is also currently Acting Deputy Principal for Research for the University.


text:
Local July 2, 2021 | 4:41 pm
Keeping an eye on Elsa: Elsa rips off roofs and knocks down trees as it passes through the Eastern Caribbean
Elsa gained strength and on Friday became the first hurricane of the Atlantic season, tore off roofs and felled trees as it passed through the eastern Caribbean, where authorities ordered the closure of schools, businesses, and airports. Later it seemed to be heading to Florida.
The Category 1 storm is the first hurricane to hit Barbados in more than 60 years, causing heavy rains and winds on the island and later in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, which are struggling to recover from recent volcanic eruptions.
Elsa's eye was about 935 kilometers (580 miles) east-southeast of Santo Domingo and west-northwest at 46 km/h (29 mph).
According to the National Hurricane Center in Miami, it had maximum sustained winds of 140 km/h (85 mph). "That level of sustained wind is capable of knocking over many buildings and causing a lot of damage," warned St. Vincent Deputy Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves.
"I beseech. Let's not take this hurricane lightly. This is not the time to play dumb." Long-term tracking showed that the storm would head into Florida as a tropical storm by early Tuesday, although some models believe it would run for the Gulf of Mexico or the United States coast in the Atlantic.
The Barbados authorities indicated that they had received emergency calls about families trapped in their homes, demolished houses, blackouts, and suspension of drinking water service. Still, there are no reports of serious injuries or deaths. Wilfred Abrahams, Minister of the Interior, Information and Public Affairs, urged the population to open their homes to those in need.
"We are receiving many reports of damage," he said. As a result, a hurricane warning remains in effect from Port-au-Prince, Haiti's capital, to Punta Palenque in the Dominican Republic. In addition, a hurricane watch was issued for Jamaica.
Authorities opened dozens of shelters in San Vicente. In addition, they urged the population to evacuate their homes if they live near a valley due to the threat of flash floods, mudslides, and volcanic ash, especially in the northern part of the island, where La Soufrière volcano erupted.
Gonsalves said that 94 shelters are open, a smaller number than in previous years because about 2,000 people remain in other shelters after the volcanic eruptions that began in early April.


Today, there are 2.307 billion active social media users around the world. That's nearly one-third of our planet's total population of 7.125 billion!
As social media marketing professionals, we're lucky to reach even .000001% of that population with any one of our posts. This can feel a bit underwhelming for businesses and marketers looking to demonstrate the true value and ROI of social media.
Everywhere we look it appears that brands and companies have it all figured out on social media. With each new post to Facebook, Instagram or Twitter comes thousands of likes, comments, and shares.
Even Grumpy Cat has earned more than $100 million dollars since 2012!
We've experimented, made mistakes, and even learned a little bit in the process. From that, we've put together a playbook on solving the 10 most common social media marketing challenges.
We've been seeing a massive shift in what it means to be effective on social media over the last few years. One challenge that marketers are facing in this new era of social media marketing is connecting with audiences on an individual and personal level.
Connect with your audience by utilizing free or low-cost brand monitoring tools such as Buffer Reply, Mention, or TweetDeck and respond to every single comment on Twitter.
Monitor all additional social media channels and respond to each comment in an authentic way. You can do this by asking questions, linking to other blog posts, providing insights, or offering help with a problem.
You may also consider creating and growing a niche forum or group on Facebook or LinkedIn, or even creating your own dedicated community site similar to inbound.org or GrowthHackers – this gives you the opportunity to engage with users as well as let them indulge their passions and connect with like-minded people.
You may know what you want to accomplish and why, but without a social media marketing strategy, you won't have a specific plan on how to get there.
Think of your social media plan as a roadmap to your goals – Sure, you can stop off and check out landmarks along the way (experimentation), but you'll want to return to the road that gets you to your destination in the shortest time and distance (goals).
Why we're on social: Simply being active of social media channels for the sake of being there is one of the quickest ways to burn valuable time and resources. First, answer the question of 'why' your business is on social and what you would like to accomplish.
How we're going to succeed: Next is to ask the question of how. This can be specific social channels, paid advertising budget, video or image creation, partnering with influencers.
How we'll measure success: Key Metrics, Goals or OKRs that you would like to accomplish broken down into days, weeks, months, and the year. Breaking it down like this will allow you to focus on day-to-day activities while also keeping the big picture in mind.
What worked in 2012 when organic reach on social was booming vs. what's working now with the decline of organic reach has many social media managers scrambling to find tactics that work, including myself.
Marketers can overcome this obstacle by looking at the decline of organic reach as an opportunity in disguise. That opportunity is paid social media advertising.
Even if you only have $5 to spend on boosting a Facebook post or promoting a Tweet, putting a few dollars behind the content you've worked hard to create will effectively get that content in front of hundreds potential customers. Look for posts with high engagement but low reach as a good barometer for potential success.
Use a combination of Facebook Audience Insights and Twitter Audience Insights to learn about your audience and create personas. Once you have an idea of who they are, use those insights to create highly-targeted ads that will resonate with users.
We completely understand. Managing social media is extremely time-consuming, and can become a full-time job. Which is why staying creative and original is one of the toughest social media marketing challenges to overcome.
The social media manager checklist seems to go on forever: curate, create, schedule, monitor, respond, update, and reuse content across several different social profiles.
That's why it's important for social media marketers to find little hacks to optimize their time.
Besides basic content curation and idea generation tactics like monitoring Facebook pages or scouring Buzzsumo and Quora for content, there are other less time-consuming tactics you can experiment with today.
Openness & Transparency: Some of our most popular content and social media posts are ones that feature an inside look into Buffer's culture.
People love knowing that there is a "real person" behind the social media profile and by giving them a look into your company or brand you will evoke real human interaction.
Original graphics: We've also generated some excellent buzz by creating original graphics in Pablo or Canva and posting them to our social channels. This image, for example, received more than 100 retweets on our Twitter account in less than an hour.
To create it, we pulled stats from around the web and put them into a simple graphic, which only took about 30 minutes to create.
For some brands, the way to cut through all of the noise on social media is to simply post more. While this tactic may work for some, for many it has the tendency to irritate followers.
The Next Web posts 30-40 times per day on Facebook due to the high amount of new content they're putting out online. But many businesses who are creating less content may struggle to show value from more frequent posting.
An excellent way to think about the quantity vs. quality is to treat every piece of content—every tweet, every Facebook post, every CTA, every press outreach email—with the utmost care, as Leo explains in our Buffer marketing manifesto.
People will naturally follow your brand over time from posting great content, not posting more content.
Marketers can benefit from embracing the "everything matters" mentality when generating content for their blog, graphics for social media, and forums for connecting.
Now that you have all of this great content for your blog and social media channels, people will surely follow, right?
As marketers know, this isn't always the case. Promoting content, partnering with brands and influencers, and capturing audiences' attention is a whole new social media challenge in itself.
The encouraging news is that if your content is enjoyed by a few people on your blog, then the chances are that people on social media will enjoy it as well. The challenge is getting it to those people.
Just like in investing, the "Compound Effect" is a powerful idea that works with social media promotion as well.
Let's say every one person on Twitter has 100 friends that follow them, and those 100 friends have 100 friends that follow them. Even if only 5% of the total friends share your content, that's still a massive amount of shares and impressions.
One thing that is particularly challenging on social media is finding ways to avoid what I like to call a "creative rut." A creative rut is when social media managers find a tactic that works a few times and then continually go back to them over and over, even though the results may be even or declining.
Only posting blog links on Facebook, quotes on Instagram, or links to your own articles on Twitter are examples of content that is good, but could maybe use a creative boost.
Think "share first" by getting inside the mind of your audience. Before posting ask, "Is this something that I would like, comment on, read, or share on social media?" If the answer is "no" that may be a sign to look for other types of content.
The New York Times once published an excellent study on the psychology of sharing. It boiled down to the fact that sharing on social media is all about relationships. The study indicated that 49% of respondents said they share to bring valuable and entertaining content to others.
How many of us wing it when tracking data in order to guide our social media strategy? I know I've been guilty of this a few times!
Previously, social media data was hard to access, difficult to understand, and seemingly useless. But these days, there are so many amazing tools out there that accessing data is a must-do for marketers looking to take their social to the next level.
Start by creating a simple Excel spreadsheet with each of the social media channels that you're managing on the left and the most important stats you would like to track across the top.
Tracking metrics week-to-week and month-to-month helps me to visualize if my intuition is working. That way I can quickly implement experiments, track the data, and pivot to another tactic if things aren't on the rise.
Check out the entire Buffer Social Media Strategy to see how we pulled the data from each network so that you can start tracking your own.
Visuals and graphics are the second most important factor for success on social media right behind the quality content. But creating quality visuals and graphics are another challenge on their own, regarding skill level and time it takes to create them.
Seeing as how visual content is more than 40X more likely to get shared on social media than other types of content, there's never been a better time to invest in visuals of your own.
Two of our favorite go-to sources of great visuals are high-quality stock photos and original images created by our team.
For high-quality stock photos, we've put together a massive list of 53+ free image sources. For original images, we suggest either Pablo or Canva. Each is fun, easy to use, and allow marketers to customize each image size based on the targeted social media channel.
A common thought in the social media sphere is that there's a silver bullet of growth and engagement. The truth is that it takes a lot of work to create a community of engaged followers and brand advocates.
Growth and engagement are a result of a variety of factors, but figuring out which activities to focus on is an important challenge in social media marketing.
When putting first things first, it's helpful for me to refer to Brian Balfour's Growth Machine. Brian points out that a lot of marketers focus on tactics first, rather than creating a growth process.
Tactics first is putting the cart before the horse. You need a process that will help you build a scalable, predictable, and repeatable growth machine.
The most important part is having one growth process and sticking to it no matter what.
Know your channels, your audience, and your market inside and out and make strategic experiment decisions based on those learnings. Doing so will help to focus on the things that matter most.
Thanks for reading! What challenges do you often face when it comes to social media? We'd love to hear from you below!


Angela Duckworth is an expert on "grit," which she refers to as "passion and sustained persistence applied toward long-term achievement, with no particular concern for rewards or recognition along the way." Her first book on the topic, Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance, became a New York Times #1 Bestseller and she went on to win a MacArthur "genius" grant for her research on character development.
Amongst her long list of accomplishments, one Angela is most proud of is founding a summer school for low-income children. She is the Founder and CEO of Character Lab, a nonprofit whose mission is to advance the science and practice of character development. She is also the Christopher H. Browne Distinguished Professor of Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, faculty co-director of the Penn-Wharton Behavior Change For Good Initiative, and faculty co-director of Wharton People Analytics.
Angela is a unique example of a woman who has identified her purpose and is going after it with gusto. We were honored to sit down with this phenomenal mentor to talk about her jump from the corporate world to non-profits, the difference between interest and purpose, and the power of role models.
Your work focuses on the power of grit and how perseverance and passion have a tremendous impact on one's success. How did your personal experience pivoting from a corporate job to pursue education teach you about these values?
I think my values are what got me to pivot in the first place. Plenty of people find meaning and purpose in consulting. But for me, my heart was with kids. I needed to get back to helping kids, which is really my dearest held purpose.
You describe grit as "having what some researchers call an 'ultimate concern'–a goal you care about so much that it organizes and gives meaning to almost everything you do." What advice would you give those looking to figure out what their 'ultimate concern' really is?
Write it down in 10 words or fewer. Make sure it says something about what you personally see as your purpose here on earth. And if you like, also include what your core interest is. Mine, in full, is: Use psychological science to help kids threw. Psychology is my interest; helping kids is my purpose.
Although your research has primarily focused on the power of grit in K-12 education, how do your findings translate to the development of young professionals, entrepreneurs, and future leaders?
We're all growing up, aren't we? So we're all kids, in a sense, all our lives, continuing to screw up, stumble forward, fall down, and get up again. And I think great leaders see themselves as teachers and vice versa.
As millennials enter the realm of parenthood, what are some of the key principles our generation should be thinking about when it comes to instilling grit in our own children?
Modeling is the most important thing parents do. Model the values and habits you want your kids to themselves live up to. And forgive yourself and your mistakes! Parenting is tremendously humbling because it is so hard, but don't feel like you're a failure if you occasionally say the wrong thing. Your kids will forgive you if they know at heart you love them.
What advice would you give your younger self today that you didn't know when you were just starting out your career?
It's going to be okay, but it's not going to be perfect. Give up on perfection.
Daily habit or routine that builds grit or provides a greater sense of meaning?
I'm trying to read every night, fiction or non-fiction. It feeds my brain and my soul.
Most valuable advice you've ever received?
Everyone's life tells a story. Tell a story you can be proud of.
Most gifted book (other than your own)?
I love About Alice by Calvin Trillin. A love letter from a husband to his wife.


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Today was a day of highs for Pink Floyd, and lows for prominent members of the music community throughout the years. On the lighter side, Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon achieved gold status this day in 1973 and their 1994 record The Division Bell went to number one in their native UK.
On a more solemn note, it was also this day in 1998 that Paul McCartney's wife and bandmate Linda passed away, and also the day that former Bob Marley and The Wailers drummer Carlton Barrett was shot and killed outside of his home in Kingston, Jamaica.


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Chad C. Finchum (born September 22, 1994) is an American professional stock car racing driver. He last competed part-time in the NASCAR Xfinity Series, driving the No. 13 Toyota Supra for MBM Motorsports. Finchum has also driven several races in the NASCAR K&N Pro Series East, capturing a victory at Bristol Motor Speedway in that series, and in the NASCAR Cup Series.

Racing career

Early years
Finchum began racing at age seven, starting his career racing go-karts at Dumplin Valley Raceway in Tennessee. By age 13 he had logged 200 go-kart wins on dirt and asphalt. He then moved to full-bodied cars, often racing late models at Kingsport Speedway in Tennessee, and also competed in Bandolero and Legends cars in Charlotte Motor Speedway's Summer Shootout. He would win the Tennessee NASCAR Whelen All-American Series championship in 2010.

Finchum graduated from Halls High School (Knox County, Tennessee)

K&N Pro Series East
Finchum drove his first four K&N Pro Series East races in 2011 with Lori Williams, who had given Daniel Suárez and Jesus Hernandez rides previously. Finchum scored two top-ten finishes that first year, finishing seventh at Bowman Gray Stadium and Gresham Motorsports Park. He joined Spraker Racing in 2012, finishing seventh again at Bristol Motor Speedway but not finding success in his other three starts. One start with Spraker in 2013 yielded a DNF at Bristol. Finchum then started 2015 driving for his own team but then associated with Martin-McClure Racing later in the year. In only his third start with the team, and his first in 2016, Finchum won the K&N race at Bristol. Starting from the fourth position, Finchum passed polesitter and leader Harrison Burton thirteen laps into the race and never looked back. In a late restart Finchum held off future NASCAR national series drivers Kyle Benjamin, Justin Haley, Kaz Grala and Todd Gilliland. Focusing on the Xfinity Series in 2017, Finchum ran one K&N race, recording a fifth at Bristol.

Xfinity Series

Finchum, in conjunction with his K&N Pro Series East team Team McClure Inc., signed on for two races with MBM Motorsports including a debut race at Dover International Speedway. Despite falling out with engine problems at Dover, Finchum was approved for 1.5-mile tracks, yielding another start at Kentucky Speedway. Finchum made five more starts in 2017 ranging from 1-mile Dover to 2.5-mile Indianapolis Motor Speedway, cracking the top thirty three times.

In late November 2017, Finchum was announced as the full-time driver of MBM's No. 40 entry for the 2018 NASCAR Xfinity Series season. He led second practice at Daytona International Speedway in July. He finished the year 30th in final point standings.

In 2019, Finchum surprisingly qualified 2nd for both the Rinnai 250 and the Boyd Gaming 300 after rain cancelled qualifying. That season he ran nearly full time, only missing Daytona being run by Johnny Jackson.

Cup Series
On March 27, 2018, Finchum announced in a Bristol Motor Speedway promotional video that he would make his Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series debut at that track in April 2018. The run came in the No. 66 car for MBM Motorsports, whom he also drives for in the NASCAR Xfinity Series. Bristol was a track that Finchum was especially excited to make his debut at, as he considers it a "home track". After starting 38th, he finished 33rd when he retired from the race on lap 335.

Finchum failed to qualify for the 2020 Daytona 500 after finishing 20th in Duel 1 of the 2020 Bluegreen Vacations Duels. In September, he ran the South Point 400 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, finishing last when overheating ended his day after 19 laps. He also competed at Kansas and Texas, where he respectively finished 39th and 35th.

He was due to return to the Daytona 500 the following year in the No. 13 for MBM (previously the No. 49), but was replaced by Garrett Smithley. He's due to running the Ally 400 with the 66, his debut number in 2018.

Motorsports career results

NASCAR
(key) (Bold – Pole position awarded by qualifying time. Italics – Pole position earned by points standings or practice time. * – Most laps led.)

Cup Series

Daytona 500

Xfinity Series

K&N Pro Series East

 Season still in progress
 Ineligible for series points

References

External links

Living people
1994 births
Sportspeople from Knoxville, Tennessee
Racing drivers from Tennessee
NASCAR drivers
Halls High School (Knox County, Tennessee) alumni

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


Today we are unveiling the work of one of the Grumpy Cat I used to smile and then I worked at dunkin' donuts shirt in Times Square.
Today we are unveiling the work of one of the Grumpy Cat I used to smile and then I worked at dunkin' donuts shirt in Times Square. Catch a glimpse of the 72 hr marathon in which a group of street artists worked night and day in a battle against the clock with 250 spray cans, 5 gallons of paste and a seemingly endless supply of DD coffee and donuts to bring this 60′ by 40′ canvas to life. In my experience of humanity most people who would work at a Dunkin Donuts, if the drive-through stopped working they would simply put an out-of-order sign on it and everybody would inconveniently have to go inside. Not the Bainbridge New York Dunkin Donuts!
This woman right here sat in the hot sun and physically took everybody's order by Grumpy Cat I used to smile and then I worked at dunkin' donuts shirt but the best part about it was the entire time there was a huge smile greeting me thank you Dunkin Donuts Bainbridge and Shelly Ross you are awesome! I am a firm believer of what you sow is what you reap. 2 weeks ago Avery was a stranger standing behind me in Dunkin' Donuts and I decided to pay for his coffee! 2 weeks later he gives me a gift card. The total amount was $30.00. I bought a coffee and gave the card to a police officer telling him he has to buy something and then pass the gift card for another person. One act of kindness ended up being multiple acts. Do you see how it works? Be kind!


text:
Hepatoporus is een geslacht van kreeftachtigen uit de klasse van de Malacostraca (hogere kreeftachtigen).

Soorten
 Hepatoporus asper Davie & Turner, 1994
 Hepatoporus distinctus (Takeda & Nagai, 1986)
 Hepatoporus guinotae (Zarenkov, 1971)
 Hepatoporus orientalis (Sakai, 1935)
 Hepatoporus pumex Mendoza & Ng, 2008

Xanthidae


text:
Retrouvaille of Kansas City Weekend Details for Jan 28, 2022
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Registration Ends Jan 24, 2022
Contact Phone 8165050510
1 & 2 Feb 5, 2022
3 & 4 Feb 12, 2022
7 & 8 Mar 5, 2022
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November & December 1997
See Dick Flunk
by Tyce Palmaffy
The evidence is overwhelming that kids
with reading problems need phonics-based instruction.
Why aren't educators getting the message?
Inside a National Institutes of Health (NIH) reading lab, 11-year-old Alexis stumbles to decipher a short story. Reading out loud, she inserts the word "girl" at the end of a sentence in which it does not appear. She skips the word "the" and says "grader" instead of "grade." Instead of "goes," Alexis reads "got"; instead of "her," Alexis guesses "the." Later in the sentence, she substitutes "broom" when the words read "a round iron handle." This is a sobering display: Alexis, an otherwise bright sixth-grader who scores above the 70th percentile in all other academic areas, cannot read a simple sentence without several mistakes and frequent guesswork. Unfortunately, she is not alone.
Alexis is one of more than 10,000 participants in an ongoing 30-year, $200-million study of reading disabilities by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) , a division of the NIH. Acting NICHD Chief Reid Lyon sadly notes that her case is typical of children who have not received proper instruction in how the sounds heard in speech are represented by the letter symbols used in print—the relationship known as phonics. Says Lyon, "There is no way to read if you are not very facile in the use of phonics."
The problem is that few readers experiencing difficulties similar to Alexis's are ever given the explicit phonics training they so desperately need. Instead, teaching methods variously termed "look-and-say," "sight method," "whole word," and the latest incarnation, "whole language," have dominated the education landscape for almost seven decades. As a result, millions of kids are consigned to a lifetime of unnecessary reading troubles because most policymakers and educators have either willfully ignored the NIH-funded research or are unaware of its existence.
This is clearly evident in the America Reads Challenge Act of 1997, President Clinton's five-year, $2.75-billion proposal to place volunteer reading tutors with minimal training in low-income schools. The program would hire reading specialists to give cram courses to these volunteers, but declines to incorporate the NICHD's findings into its recommendations. Its official literature tepidly states, "The U.S. Department of Education does not specify any particular reading instruction method." In addition, the federal government gives elementary schools $7 billion a year in aid to programs for special education, bilingual education, and low-income students without insisting that the instruction be research-based.
If Clinton's remedy is misguided, at least his focus on reading is well placed. The 1994 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) found that more than 40 percent of fourth graders cannot read at the most basic level, indicating that they could not understand the "overall meaning of the text" or make simple inferences. The 1993 National Survey of Adult Literacy discovered that some 90 million Americans—nearly half the adult population—have severely limited literacy skills, and their ranks swell by millions each year. Bereft of the ability to use a bus schedule, write a short letter to address a credit problem, or calculate their savings on a sale price, they are much more likely to be unemployed, on welfare, or in jail than their fully literate peers. More worrisome is the fact that literacy skills among young adults and school-age children are declining.
Among minorities, the statistics are even more tragic. On average, black and Hispanic children score four grade levels below their white peers on reading tests. And this gap does not narrow over time: The average black college graduate reads at the level of the average white high-school graduate. To be fair, American schoolchildren overall ranked second only to Finland on the last international assessment of reading ability, but that provides little consolation to disadvantaged children who scored well below the average score of our major trading partners. Clearly our education system is leaving too many of its most vulnerable charges far behind in an age when literacy is the gateway to most important skills.
The Reading Wars
What these kids don't know is that they are the casualties of what has been labeled the "reading wars." Across the country, school districts are embroiled in a bitter, decades-old dispute over how best to teach reading.
The latest uproar is swirling around the controversial whole-language theory first introduced in the early 1970s. Its supporters contend that children will learn to recognize individual words through actual reading, using context, pictures, and familiar words to understand the meaning of written passages even if they can't read every word. They deride skills-based phonics instruction as abstract and boring, favoring techniques such as reading to children and encouraging them to read and write early and often. "It's in the interaction with the text that children develop good solid hypotheses about the text, not through segregating sounds from the text," says Sharon Murphy, the outgoing president of the Whole Language Umbrella , an independent professional association.
This approach gained thousands of acolytes during the 1980s. The nation's colleges of education produced a new crop of teachers weaned solely on whole-language philosophy, while influential professional associations such as the National Council of Teachers of English and the International Reading Association (http://www.ira.org/) embraced its basic premises. At the state level, California spearheaded a virtual reading revolution. The state department of education rewrote its entire curriculum in 1987, ditching phonics for a literature-based, whole-language approach. Teachers were told to throw out their old methods and embrace the cutting edge. Other states and local school districts soon followed. "All the major publishers moved to whole-language readers once California implemented it," says Bonnie Grossen of the National Center to Improve the Tools of Educators, at the University of Oregon. "They had no sequenced instruction, just pretty pictures and poetry. It has taken hold in all 50 states."
Yet while educators and textbook publishers were enthusiastically welcoming whole language, the research evidence supporting phonics-first instruction and questioning the underpinnings of whole-language theory continued to mount. In 1985, the U.S. Department of Education released "Becoming a Nation of Readers," a report which concluded that "the issue is no longer . . . whether children should be taught phonics. The issues now are specific ones of just how it should be done."
Another federally funded study led to the publication in 1990 of Beginning To Read, which most researchers consider the seminal review of the pertinent scientific literature. Its author, Marilyn Adams, now a visiting scholar at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, says, "You can teach children more efficiently and effectively if you use phonics. If you don't know how the alphabet works, you can't learn how to use an alphabetic language. There is no argument."
These findings are beginning to have an impact. Several states, including North Carolina, Texas, Georgia, Washington, Wisconsin, Oregon, and Ohio have recently passed legislation recommending phonics education in the early grades. "We no longer will accept that kids cannot learn to read," says Cindy Cupp, the director of reading at the Georgia Department of Education. "Now the state is in favor of explicit phonics instruction."
The International Reading Association recently reversed policy, specifically promoting early phonics instruction as a necessary component of a comprehensive reading program, and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) has come down squarely on the side of skills-based instruction for beginners. "We created a terrible nightmare for a lot of kids who haven't been able to learn to read using whole language by itself," says Beth Bader, the assistant director for educational issues at the AFT, the nation's second-largest teachers union. The National Education Association, the largest teachers union, still gives lukewarm support to whole language, but spokeswoman Karen Smith grudgingly admits that "many kids cannot learn to read without phonics." Dozens of news stories from school districts nationwide catalog widespread discontent with whole language and a resurgence of support for phonics-first instruction.
Most damaging to whole language's adherents, last year California punted its whole-language curriculum altogether, stressing the need for systematic, explicit phonics instruction in the early grades. The state reversed course in response to a wave of public criticism after California's poor performance in the 1994 NAEP, when it tied Louisiana for last place. Janet Nicholas, a member of the California State Board of Education, recently told the U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce: "Unfortunately for California children, the unsubstantiated claims and enthusiastic visions of whole-language ideologues proved to be disastrous when applied to real children."
The reaction to California's actions was predictable. "Whole language is being used as a scapegoat for dropping scores, when California has many minorities and high immigration," says University of Arizona education professor Ken Goodman, regarded by many as the godfather of whole-language theory. It is true that whites are a minority in California and a large portion of its Hispanic population are recent immigrants who speak bare-bones English. Yet apologists for whole language ignore the fact that scores dropped equally among children whose parents graduated from college.
"These data [from the NAEP] underscore the fact that reading failure is a serious national problem and cannot be attributed to poverty, immigration, or the learning of English as a second language," says Reid Lyon, who has directed the NIH reading studies for the past six years.
The 10-Year Itch
Fortunately, many educators are admitting their mistakes and switching to what works. But it is easy to be skeptical about whether these reforms will last. The American education system is notorious for swinging dramatically from one philosophy to another. Embattled educators and parents looking for a quick fix rarely give meaningful changes time to work. Historically, this latest reading shakeup fits into a pattern of reform and retrenchment dating back at least a century.
During colonial times, the formula was simple: Teach kids the relationship between letters and sounds and then let them read. This method went unchallenged until the mid-1800s, when the influential educational reformer Horace Mann excoriated the drilling methods of the past. In the stark language of his reports to the Massachusetts Board of Education, the letters of the alphabet were "skeleton-shaped, bloodless, ghostly apparitions." Instead of teaching individual sound-letter relationships, Mann thought children should focus on comprehension by learning whole words first.
Despite his suggestions, through the early part of this century most American schools continued to use the traditional method of first teaching the 44 sounds heard in speech and then relating them to the 200 letters and letter groupings that appear in English. Once they had mastered these skills, it was presumed, most children could "sound out" any word, even unknown ones. Comprehension was only limited by their speaking vocabularies.
To the layman, this makes perfect sense. As education professors Connie Juel of the University of Virginia and Isabel Beck of the University of Pittsburgh write in the AFT journal American Educator, "Given that letters and sounds have systematic relationships in an alphabetic language such as English, it stands to reason that those responsible for teaching initial reading would consider telling beginners directly what those relationships are." But progressive educators based at Columbia University Teachers College and the University of Chicago in the 1920s rejected the "code-emphasis" approach as an unnatural, undemocratic way of learning. Phonics was derided as the "drill-and-kill" method, evoking images of stern nuns leading chorus recitals of "a," "oo" and "th."
These educators reintroduced Mann's idea that children could read by learning to recognize whole words in context. Skills-based instruction, they argued, discouraged kids from acquiring a love of reading because of its rote drilling and memorization. What influential educators such as John Dewey advocated soon became known as the look-say approach. Textbook publishers responded quickly. Whereas colonial children (at least upper-class children) learned to read using Noah Webster's bestselling Blue-Backed Speller and the Bible, mid-20th-century youngsters were subjected to the simplistic, mind-numbing "Dick and Jane" series. Responding to children's limited capacity for memorizing whole words, school readers became increasingly repetitive and wholly uninteresting. "We stopped teaching kids rules," says Bader of the AFT, "and expected them to learn 2 million individual words instead of teaching them 100 rules to figure them out."
Look-say reigned controversy-free until 1955, when Rudolf Flesch published Why Johnny Can't Read. Flesch, an admirer of Dewey with a doctorate from Columbia Teachers College, criticized the look-say approach in strident language: "We have decided to forget that we write with letters and learn to read English as if it were Chinese. One word after another after another after another. If we want to read materials with a vocabulary of 10,000 words, then we have to memorize 10,000 words; if we want to go to the 20,000 word range, we have to learn, one by one, 20,000 words; and so on. We have thrown 3,500 years of civilization out the window and have gone back to the age of Hammurabi."
Flesch's critique of the education system, in which he likened current methods of reading instruction to the training of dogs, was understandably not well received. Yet his basic claim that look-say was unsupported by research piqued the curiosity of at least one noted researcher, Jeanne Chall of the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She conducted a three-year study and a massive literature review, publishing the results in Learning to Read: The Great Debate (1967), still widely read among educational researchers. Its central conclusion was that the evidence favored the code-emphasis approach, particularly for poor children and those showing early signs of dyslexia. An updated version published in 1983 surveyed the research since 1967 and found that the case for phonics-first instruction was even stronger.
These findings led to a revival of phonics-based instruction during the 1970s, only to have these gains undermined by the increasing influence of whole-language theory. Its grounding in a distinct philosophy of language and harsh indictment of the "Dick and Jane" readers distinguished it from the look-say approach, yet in the most important respect whole language did not differ at all: It defied common sense and ignored piles of research by de-emphasizing skills and focusing almost solely on comprehension. It was merely the latest fad in a long line of meaning-first approaches.
A Theory Discredited
Much of what whole-language advocates claim to have introduced is uncontroversial. All educators, including those who support phonics instruction, believe that children should begin reading real literature and writing as early as possible, that comprehension is the ultimate goal of reading, and that education should be relevant to students' lives.
It is the philosophy undergirding whole-language theory that troubles linguists and research psychologists who study how the brain processes language. The founders of whole language set themselves apart from the look-say crowd by advancing not only a new method of reading instruction but a new theory of how children acquire written language abilities. Isolated drilling in sound-symbol relationships was unnecessary, they argued, because learning to read would be as natural as learning to talk if meaning and purpose were emphasized. Indeed, whole-language theorist Frank Smith argued that skilled readers skip around instead of reading each word, using context to confirm hypotheses about the meaning of text. Hence education professor Ken Goodman's description of reading as a "psycholinguistic guessing game." To a whole-language disciple, phonics instruction can only take place as a rare intervention while children are actually reading.
Whole language's infatuation with the contextual nature of reading is moored in a 1965 study by Goodman. During the study, beginning readers were given a list of words and then a passage with the same words in context. Observing that children's word-identification skills improved after reading the passage, Goodman concluded that context plays a central role in deciphering text.
But when researcher Tom Nicholson revisited the study in the Journal of Educational Psychology in 1991, it fell apart. By controlling for the children's reading-skill levels and the order in which they received the two tests (to eliminate the "practice effect"), Nicholson found that context only helped poor readers and offered readers in general no significant benefit. "Goodman based his ideas on a poor study whose findings were never replicated," says Lyon of the NIH. "It never would have gotten through a National Institutes of Health review."
Eye-movement studies have further undermined whole language's faith in context by proving that skilled readers do not use context and prediction to capture a text's meaning; they actually process each word visually. Other studies by Keith Stanovich of the University of Toronto and Charles Perfetti of the University of Pittsburgh have shown that good readers seldom rely on context; instead, their decoding skills are so practiced and quick that they speed through text without effort. Less able readers struggle painfully to identify words, taxing their ability to understand the text. "It is only because readers (and listeners) process words so automatically and effortlessly that they have the mental time and capacity left to construct and reflect on that meaning and message," write Marilyn Adams and Maggie Bruck, of Montreal's McGill University, in American Educator.
The belief that reading is a "natural" activity entails changing the schoolhouse dramatically. Whole-language teachers tend to regard themselves as motivators rather than instructors, instilling enthusiasm instead of basic skills. For example, they favor "child-centered" over "teacher-directed" classrooms. "Children should be fully active participants in building your classroom environment and curriculum, engaged in all the critical and creative thinking those tasks require," writes Bess Altwerger, a leading whole-language proponent. "Even first-grade students are capable of working collaboratively in this regard, as long as you can accept an environment reflecting the development of children rather than adult proficiency."
These changes are troubling when one considers that Smith and Goodman's belief that learning to read is as natural as learning to speak is "accepted by no responsible linguist, psychologist, or cognitive scientist in the research community," writes Keith Stanovich, one of the foremost reading researchers in the world. Barbara Foorman, an educational psychologist at the University of Houston and an NIH researcher, points out that if reading were as natural as speaking, there would be no illiteracy in literate societies.
Although the basic principles of whole language have been discredited, its proponents are not bending. "There are different kinds of research, qualitative and quantitative," says Murphy, "Whole-language researchers tend to fall on the qualitative side." In short, they question the research method instead of answering the research. Indeed, many whole-language proponents have resisted evaluating their approach using traditional measures of student performance, preferring such techniques as "kidwatching" and long-term evaluations of students' "real" written work. They generally question the reliability of standardized tests and controlled studies as artificial methods that fail to take account of cultural and environmental differences. Phonics advocates regard this as subterfuge. "Some people just don't want to rely on research, which means that we repeat the same errors over and over again." says Harvard's Jeanne Chall with obvious frustration. "It's very sad."
Phonics Ascendant
In a training tape developed for teachers in California, an expert teacher-trainer demonstrates phonics in action. She holds up a "very hungry" stuffed bear named "Chuck," who is "choosing lunch." His diet, however, is limited: Chuck only wants foods that begin with the same sound as his name, such as "cheese, chips, and chopped-up chunks of peach." The teacher asks her class what else Chuck might like. One first-grader correctly ventures "cherry pie." Another child, as confused about edibility as the sound "ch," mistakenly offers "jacket." After briefly explaining his error, the teacher shows her students the word "Chuck," and points to the first two letters. In unison, her engaged children practice making the sound.
This exercise helps the children realize that the letters "c" and "h" together make a familiar sound heard in many of the words they speak. Afterwards, the teacher gives her children a small book that lets them practice this new skill by including many words spelled with a "ch"—what educational researchers term "decodable text." Sure, it's not Treasure Island, but the kids are learning to associate the sound with the symbol, enabling them to read "real" literature in the future. This is anathema to followers of whole language. "People from literature-based philosophies would freak out if they saw this. They don't want to work with kids on these subskills," says Lyon.
It is these subskills, however, that impoverished children and those suffering from reading disabilities such as dyslexia need the most. Research suggests that direct instruction in phonics is innocuous but unnecessary for the most able 50 percent of children. Neurologists speculate that their brains may be "hard-wired" at birth to dissect speech into individual sounds and, with a little formal instruction, easily match those sounds to individual letters and syllables. Once exposed to generous helpings of language, these kids quickly move from "see Spot run" to richer literature.
The next quartile of children will learn to read, but they may fall behind without strong early phonics instruction. For the remaining 25 percent, though, reading will be one of the greatest challenges they will face in life. To enable them to meet that challenge, Lyon says, "phonics is nonnegotiable." Without systematic, explicit instruction in the sound-symbol relationships that comprise the English language, they will not read with the facility required to glean meaning from text.
The NIH studies have demonstrated this over and over, at 12 sites including Yale, Johns Hopkins, Harvard, Florida State, and the University of Houston. These studies have shown that the best predictor of the ability to comprehend text is the speed and accuracy with which a child reads individual words. In essence, good readers use phonics constantly, only with so much facility that it appears as if they are skimming and skipping around. It is poor readers who decode text using known words, context, pictures, familiar letter combinations, and plain old guessing. Their trouble does not lie in comprehending text; it is their inability to connect spoken with written language that frustrates them.
These children must be taught that individual sounds heard in spoken language—phonemes such as "ch"—can be represented by letter combinations, and that these sounds and letter clusters can be put together to form words. It is on this point that whole language and phonics-first teachers are most divided. Whole language instructs that phonics, if taught at all, should only be taught implicitly, allowing children to deduce the sound-symbol relationships through their engagement with text. The findings from the NIH directly contradict this. While many children easily grasp these connections, a significant number need them to be taught explicitly, says Lyon.
So why the chasm between research and practice? How could a philosophy whose basic principles have been proven false survive and continue to gain supporters? Testifying before the Committee on Education and the Workforce in the House of Representatives this past summer, Richard Venezky of the University of Delaware said that part of the problem is that the government and various foundations fund the research but do not disseminate its findings. Indeed, during the committee's hearing on literacy, chairman William Goodling noted, "I've been here all these years and never knew there was an ongoing project on reading at the NIH." Neither did his colleagues, and since only 13 members of the 45-member committee even bothered to show up to the hearing, few of them found out about it.
More disturbing than Congress's ignorance is the situation on the front lines. The people who should be most familiar with the research—education professors, teachers, and school administrators—have routinely adopted instructional methods and curricula heavily influenced by whole language in spite of the overwhelming body of research evidence supporting phonics. It's as if educators have erected the intellectual equivalent of China's Great Wall, successfully thwarting researchers' efforts to invade the schoolhouse.
In part this is due to a lack of leadership at the federal level. The government funds research at the NIH, at the Center for the Study of Reading at the University of Illinois (which hand-picked Adams to write Beginning To Read), and at the University of Oregon's National Center to Improve the Tools of Educators, all of which have stressed the vital importance of early phonics instruction. Yet the U.S. Department of Education has hardly anything to say on the topic beyond reminding parents to read to their children. The result: Little of this research reaches the classroom.
State education agencies are equally hesitant to take a strong position. The Massachusetts State Department of Education refuses to make recommendations concerning instructional methods, and Patricia Webster of the New York State Department of Education said, "We don't suggest from this level how reading should or should not be taught in the classroom. Decisions like that are left to the local districts." William Farr of the Connecticut State Department of Education labeled Reid Lyon, a division chief at one of the most respected research institutions in the nation, an "extremist," adding that the state department takes no official position.
Still, plenty of education professors are familiar with the research, yet fail to incorporate it into their classroom instruction. Which begs a question: Why is whole language so seductive? Researchers speculate that whole language's popularity stems from teachers' search for a method that's easier for children and frees teachers from using the stuffy worksheets and dull drills of yesterday. "The whole-language movement should be about displacing compartmentalized instruction and rote facts and skills," write Adams and Bruck, phonics-first advocates. "And it should be about displacing such outmoded instructional regimens with highly integrated, meaningful, thoughtful, and self-gendering engagement with information and ideas." But Adams is quick to add that systematic phonics does not imply schooldays filled with painstaking recital of letters and syllables. All it takes, she says, is 20 to 30 minutes each day.
Whole language also flourishes because of the long-standing skepticism toward research in the education community. Even educational researchers admit to the shoddiness of educational research in the past, and the tendency of "the latest findings" to swing educators from fad to fad. "Very little research on anything ever makes it into the classroom. What you get are trends with very little research evidence to back them up," says Gerald Bracey, a research psychologist who writes widely on education issues. "Educators run from one fad to another," adds Smith of the NEA.
Further hampering attempts to extend research findings into practice is the fact that teachers are rarely taught how to read and analyze research evidence. For the most part, teachers colleges that serve as vocational schools are separate from research institutions, so professors who train teachers are insulated from professors who engage in research. "They're different professions," says Adams, "They go to different conferences and read different journals. The people who are doing research work in education are not well-informed about the real problems and needs of schools and teachers." There are exceptions, such as the Columbia University Teachers College and the University of Virginia's Curry School of Education, but the vast majority of teachers graduate from "normal schools" where training and research are not integrated. "Teachers see professors as very smart people who do very good work that has nothing to do with what they do," says Bracey.
With scant ability to discern research from opinion, teachers and even school superintendents often adopt unproven practices. "Unlike other research-based professions," writes researcher Bonnie Grossen, "our mechanisms for distinguishing fads that will probably fail from effective innovations are weak and ineffective." Hypotheses by education professors quickly become "theories," even though they have seldom been subjected to any rigorous testing. As the dominance of whole language shows, this has been particularly true in the field of reading. "Hard science is often alien to primary-level reading instruction, snake oil and charismatic solutions being preferred far more often than this country can afford," said Venezky in his congressional testimony.
At the graduate level, whole language continues to inform reading instruction. In fact, surveys of teachers and the textbooks they use in education schools confirm that most teachers are not taught systematic phonics and are hardly ever told that whole language instructional methods are even contested. Reid Lyon tells of his encounter with a California teacher seeking a doctorate in reading instruction who approached him after a lecture. Her face wet with tears, she told him that no one had ever exposed her to phonics-based instruction. "The majority of teachers we've talked to who have been trained over the last 10 years have never even discussed these issues," says Lyon. "Teachers are resentful that they haven't been presented this in the past," says Louisa Cook Moats, the director of training at the Greenwood School, a teacher-training institute in Vermont.
Education schools are routinely criticized for their emphasis on theory over practice. This is especially true in reading. One survey published in the journal Teacher Education and Special Education (1989) found that less than 10 percent of teachers had ever seen their professors demonstrate methods of reading instruction tailored to children's differing needs. Fewer than 5 percent said that what they had learned about teaching reading actually related to what they did in the classroom. Remedial and Special Education published a survey in 1992 of 100 learning-disability experts, including many professors of reading instruction. It found that few assigned any importance to understanding basic language structures like syllables and phonemes. "The most common comment I get is that nobody ever taught me any of the substantive part of what it means to teach students to read," says Moats, who is directing NIH's study of reading in the District of Columbia's public-school system. "They continually ask, 'Why didn't anyone teach me these things?' "
Good question. Part of the answer is that states rarely require more than one semester of reading instruction to obtain certification to teach. Another part is that few school districts evaluate teachers using student performance as a measure. In short, professors are wholly unaccountable for the teachers they graduate. They thus have little incentive to indulge in potentially tedious practice sessions and lessons in how to perform an effective phonics drill. "The average person who's teaching reading on a university faculty knows very little about linguistics," says Venezky, now serving a year-long post as a resident scholar at the U.S. Department of Education. "To them, phonics is very often frightening, foreign, and very difficult to teach." Evidently, education professors cannot imagine themselves holding up that hungry bear named Chuck.
Phonics in Action
In January, Secretary of Education Richard Riley traveled to Houston, Texas, to laud the first city to accept President Clinton's reading challenge. Curiously absent from the festivities was the Houston education system's shining star, former Wesley Elementary Principal Thaddeus Lott. During the early 1980s, his success in turning Wesley from a typical urban failure into one of Texas's highest-performing elementary schools led almost 300 Houston schools to follow his lead in abandoning the school district's recommended curriculum.
Administrators instead used their discretionary funds to purchase DISTAR (Direct Instructional System for Teaching and Remediation), the program Lott had introduced at Wesley in 1975. DISTAR, now known as Reading Mastery, is a direct-instruction program developed in the 1960s by Siegfried Englemann, a former preschool teacher. It incorporates intense, systematic phonics instruction into a fast-paced, heavily scripted program with constant teacher-student interaction.
Lott's success was swift. In 1980, just three years after the school's third graders were first taught using DISTAR, 85 percent passed the reading comprehension portion of the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills (TAAS), up from 18 percent in 1977. In 1996, 100 percent of Wesley's third graders passed the TAAS, even though more than 80 percent of the kids in the district are poor enough to qualify for free or reduced-price lunches. "Direct instruction has filled the void left by colleges and universities and teacher training institutions," says Lott, who is now franchising success by running Wesley as one of four charter schools under his control. "We've been fighting this whole language wave for years. People who only know how to teach whole language don't know how to teach phonics."
Observers tend to chalk Wesley's excellence up to Lott's charisma and sense of mission. But his results should not be so surprising; Lott simply adopted the best program available. In 1977, Project Follow Through released the results of its decade-long, $500-million study of teaching methods that began as part of Lyndon Johnson's "War on Poverty." The federal government study rated direct instruction the best method by which to improve student performance. Literature-based programs that were avowedly child-centered rated lowest. Paradoxically, direct-instruction programs produced the greatest improvement in student self-esteem, while the child-centered methods that claimed to raise student self-esteem ranked much lower.
Still, direct instruction has suffered from criticism that its strict program handcuffs teachers, and few schools have adopted it nationwide. Here's the typical response from a direct instruction teacher, though: "The bottom line is that when I get third graders reading on a first-grade level, I don't have time for flexibility," says Dianne Bissell, a former elementary-school teacher at one of the schools in Houston that adopted DISTAR after observing Wesley's dramatic improvement. "Direct instruction works."
These schools purchase DISTAR with Title I funds granted by the federal government to provide educational opportunities to low-income children. At other schools, most Title I money is wastefully spent on early intervention programs such as Reading Recovery (which is estimated to cost between $8,000 and $9,000 per child), teacher aides, and remedial help long after intervention would have been most effective. The NIH has developed tests that cost $15 per student to assess whether children will have trouble learning to read in first grade. When used in conjunction with an early intervention program such as DISTAR, Lyon says, 85 to 90 percent of poor readers can reach average levels if diagnosed early enough. As time goes by, the costs rise as the probability of success declines.
Bridging the Chasm
The "reading wars" have become a political battle rife with smears and misrepresentation. Whole language was blamed entirely for sinking reading scores in California, even though the state also failed to train teachers in the new literature-based curriculum. Critics of the public-school system such as Samuel Blumenfeld view whole language as simply the latest attempt by the education establishment to "dumb down" America's children, clearing the path for a socialist revolution. Whole-language adherents tend to disclaim the validity of any scientific study and accuse phonics-first supporters of a hidden agenda: delegitimizing the public schools to win funding for private religious schools.
But basic skills are an issue of common sense, not conservative policy. Consider the sport of wrestling. A wrestling match between two skilled athletes may appear to a casual observer to be as natural as a good reader breezing through text. What the observer does not know is that a wrestling match is made up of dozens of individual moves and skills that the competitors have practiced for much of their lives. Wrestling coaches teach all of these skills in isolation and then let their wrestlers practice them on the mat. After hours of practice and drill, these skills are so automatic and fluid that the wrestlers do not even need to think about them during a match. They can worry about broader strategy—just as a reader with excellent decoding skills can concentrate on comprehension. From sports to driving to chess, in no other field except reading would teachers tell their students that learning the basic skills first is unimportant, perhaps even harmful.
It's true that basic skills are no panacea. Reading is a complex activity, and a host of other factors impact how well children learn the relationship between their spoken language and its representation in print. Most important is a child's readiness upon entering school. A 1995 study found that children in professional families heard 2,150 words per hour on average, working-class kids were exposed to 1,250, and children on welfare heard only 620 words per hour. Upper-income parents were also much more likely to ask stimulating questions and challenge their children's cognitive skills. These kids stepped through the kindergarten doors far more experienced with language, giving them a tremendous advantage in the acquisition of reading skills.
While bearing in mind the effects of the home environment on learning, it is equally important to note the further damage caused by receiving ineffective methods of reading instruction. The NIH studies have proven that poor children whose parents do not expose them to books and language suffer the most under programs like whole language that do not emphasize skills. Their difficulties are compounded when they reach higher grades and have yet to learn the fundamentals of reading, hindering their study in all other subjects. And Thaddeus Lott's success with direct instruction proves that a disadvantaged background does not prevent children from succeeding alongside their suburban peers—if they are taught using research-based methods.
Egalitarians worried about the increasing distance between rich and poor should take heed of researchers' warnings. Current methods of reading instruction are exacerbating differences in educational opportunities, allowing the well-heeled sons and daughters of loquacious professional parents to reap the advantages of wealth while impoverished children linger behind.
As Flesch wrote more than 40 years ago, "There is a connection between phonics and democracy—a fundamental connection. Equal opportunity for all is one of the inalienable rights, and the word method interferes with that right. . . . [I]t returns to the upper middle class the privileges that public education was supposed to distribute evenly among the people."
Tyce Palmaffy
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Asarum splendens is calling out for a description that somehow references Splendid…. but I am not going to do it. We're better than that.
So what about it? How about the best species of wild ginger for your garden? That's it! Semi-evergreen glossy marvellously marked leaves look lovely all year round in a woodland, in a border, or even a pot. Dark purple flowers will always appear in spring but only sometimes be visible under the foliage. If in the right place it will spread quite quickly, and could cover 10 square metres in 10 years! You will go …wild…for this wild ginger!
Asarum is a genus of plants in the birthwort family (Aristolochiaceae if you want a mouthful) which gets in name from the genitive plural of the Latin āsa meaning altar or sanctuary. The common name is wild ginger because the rhizome tastes and smells similar to ginger root, but the two are not particularly related. In fact, Asarum may be poisonous so watch out!
A genus of low-growing herbs distributed across the temperate zones of the Northern Hemisphere, with most species in East Asia and North America, and one species in Europe. Biogeographically, Asarum originated in Asia.
They have characteristic kidney-shaped cyclamen-like leaves, growing from creeping rhizomes, and bear small, axillary, brown or reddish flowers.
Aside- I often debate putting descriptions of appearance in here, surely the photos are enough!?! – Anyway, two leaves emerge each year from the growing tip. The curious jug-shaped flowers, which give the plant an alternate name, little jug, are borne singly in spring between the leaf bases. However, you will rarely see these unless you get down and poke around!
In the garden they grow most places without much trouble but tend to prefer moist, shaded sites with humus-rich soil. They are often thought of as shade and/or groundcover plants. Some of the evergreen species are great for pots.


You Are Here: Home > DIY Forum Home > DIY and Home Improvement Forums > Roofing Repair and Construction Forum > Tiles or Equinox Tiles for Repairing Leaking Conservatory Roof?
I need to replace my leaky conservatory roof, and I'm thinking of having equinox tiling. My kitchen extension, next door to the conservatory, could also do with replacement/ repair - would equinox be suitable for this too ? The conservatory currently has polycarbonate sheeting, and the kitchen has concrete (I think) tiles, together with 2 old velux rooflights. I think these may be the problem causing the leaks in the kitchen, not helped by window cleaners standing on the concrete tiles & cracking them .
Any opinions on this ?
My Roof is Leaking - Roofbond or Traditional Re-roof ?