With its flowing, silky red colored coat the Irish Setter is considered to be one of the most beautiful breeds of dog out there. Its wonderful coat of hair is nicely complemented with its soft expression, long years and a royal beating. The Irish Setters is pretty much a head turner wherever it goes.
The unique appearance of this dog is not the only appreciated quality of the breed rather this mutt has an equally impressive personality. Irish setters are known to possess a rather playful and fun loving personality.
This is the reason why it makes a terrible guard dog. It is quite likely that the dog will shower the intruder with overwhelming affection.
Mischievous yet intelligent this dog is full of surprises. It loves to please its masters but when taken on hunting trips it shows its true independent nature. It has a tendency to go its own way if it decides upon it.
The most practically beneficial feature of this dog personality is the strong hunting instinct that it possesses. Over the years the Irish setter has become a world renowned breed that makes a great companion in the hunting field.
Biological and temperamental development is slow. Irish setter puppies will remain puppies for quite some time. This is why many people find it difficult to train this dog.
On the contrary the Irish setter is an extremely smart dog. In many cases it can even outsmart his master. Patience is a must have when training this dog. This dog is also renowned to have great learning skills. It never forgets a lesson learnt. This is why the trainer should be loving yet firm. Harshness and cruelty are not effective when it comes to training this dog.
One of the things that make it extremely easy to take care of this dog is the fact that it is naturally clean. This makes it incredibly easy to house train the dog. The Setter quickly adapts to its surroundings and does well around people and in moving cars as well.
The Setter is not at all aggressive. Rather it announces the arrival of your guests or strangers for that matter with enthusiasm and energy. Hence if you are looking for a dog that is going to protect you from harm then this is the last of your choices.
Anyone interested in owning an Irish setter needs to provide it with ample outlets for releasing its high level of energy. It needs to have a place to run around and play so that it gets to stretch its legs and unload its energy. Failing to provide it with such facilities the dog could actually become very irritable and the energy could thus be released in a very negative and harmful manner. This of course does not mean you should let your dog go free because the Irish setter in its curiosity is bound to head over into other people's property.


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Tomkins signs new West Ham deal
West Ham defender James Tomkins has signed a new deal with the club that will keep him with the Hammers until 2020, it has been announced.
The 25-year-old, who suffered a broken nose in Sunday's 1-1 draw with Manchester United, is a graduate of the fabled West Ham academy and has already made more than 150 appearances for the club.
The Hammers confirmed Tomkins' new contract on Tuesday afternoon, hours after manager Sam Allardyce had hit out at United striker Robin van Persie for elbowing the defender during the weekend's clash.
James Tomkins has signed a new contract at West Ham
Former England Under-21 international Tomkins made his West Ham debut as an 18-year-old in 2008 after a short loan spell at Derby and has been in the first-team fold at Upton Park ever since.
"I think it's brilliant that the club has shown faith in me and offered me this deal and I'm delighted to sign it," Tomkins told the club's official website upon penning his new deal.
"I've been here since I was seven and this is a long-term deal which is going to take me up until I'm in my thirties, so it's nice to commit my future here.
"It's been a good season, but it's still got a little way to go yet and the job is not done. We've had a good year so far and we want to continue it. I feel like my performances have come along a lot this year and I am just enjoying playing really."
Despite his broken nose, Tomkins is expected to start at Southampton on Wednesday evening as he is Allardyce's only fit, experienced centre-half - with stand-in Cheikhou Kouyate likely to be his partner again on the south coast.
The deal means Tomkins will remain at the club well beyond their move to the Olympic Stadium - something the Basildon-born defender is relishing.
"Being a West Ham fan, I want to spend my future here as it is exciting times with the Olympic Stadium move coming up in 2016," said the man who made two appearances for Great Britain at the London 2012 Olympics.
"The club is going in the direction I wanted it to go and I want to be involved in. It's exciting all-round, for the club and for me.
"It's a good time and this year has been a great step forward. Now we just need to see it out.
"I look back at all the times I've been in the team, from when I made my debut at 18 years old, and this is as well as we've done."

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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Top city schools to observe 'Black Day'
Teaching, non-teaching staff, principals and owners of over 40 city schools that are part of Association of Progressive Schools (AoPS) will wear black dresses and tie a black ribbon on their arms to observe 'Black Day' on Thursday.
It comes in the wake of the nation-wide call by National Independent Schools Alliance (NISA) to ensure free and conducive working environment in schools that are part of AoPS and create awareness regarding contribution of private unaided schools to education and their current circumstances induced by the RTE Act. It comes after NISA's country-wide survey that pointed at 7,349 schools shutting in Maharashtra over last four years due to the RTE Act.
Manan Choksi, co-founder and secretary of AoPS, said, "Recently, there is too much government interference and instead of focusing on education, it is focusing on non-academic issues. Hence, we have decided to support the call."
A statement by AoPS said, "Since private schools are autonomous and non-profit making, these kind of intervention is not acceptable. However, the protest will not compromise on the safety or education of students in any way."
Liza Shah, director of Apple Global school, said, "The government needs to keep faith in private schools as we are trying to improve the level of education."
A trustee of a school requesting anonymity said, "We are facing a lot of issues from the state government. This is just a silent and non-violent protest against avoidable interference by the government."
Regulatory act which stipulates how much schools should charge irrespective of the facilities given to students.
Child safety rules such as biometrics and character verification of all employees came as a sudden reaction to the Ryan School incident
http://www.dnaindia.com/ahmedabad/report-top-city-schools-to-observe-black-day-2...


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The Poverty of Nations: Wal-Mart Efficiency and The Destitution of America
Sebastian A. Stern | December 1st, 2012
"The decisive weakness . . . is not the error in the assumptions by which [economic analysis] elides power. Rather in eliding power – in making economics a nonpolitical subject – neoclassical theory destroys its relation with the real world. –(J.K. Galbraith. Power and the Useful Economist 1973: 2)
Firms crave predictability. The modern corporation applies Taylorist, reductionist and mechanistic methods to the production process. Where a craftsperson would produce every item uniquely, massive bureaucracies like Wal-Mart, Standard Oil, McDonalds and Monsanto needed every product to be identical. Firms seek to minimize risk, and the dual bedfellows of risk are uncertainty and variability.
"It is essential that most of the basic factors in the social environment of the corporation be stable enough to be predictable into the future—factors such as the value of the dollar, the fiscal and regulatory policies of the government, the law under which they do business. This stability is a prerequisite to a second need for corporate enterprise—the ability to plan and affect the future. […] Freedom of action—discretionary power—minimizes external interference with its decision making process. Potential sources of intrusion are owners and creditors, workers, consumers, and the government." [1]
In their quest for hegemony, dominant companies have reaped great reward from standardization. Monsanto has standardized cotton quality and maturation time, and every MacDonald's Big Mac is the same. [2] Rockefeller was known for his dependable Standard(-ized) brand kerosene, which were easily identified by his branded blue tin barrels:
"On January 10, 1870, five men, led by Rockefeller and Flagler, established the Standard Oil Company. At the time, kerosene of widely varying quality was sold. The name was chosen to indicate a 'standard quality of product' on which the consumer could depend." (Italics added). [3]
Wal-Mart, the largest private employer in the world, has managed to standardize more than merely the products it sells. Wal-Mart has ensured predictability by externalizing inventory-holding costs onto their small suppliers. Wal-Mart has even commoditized labor and made it divisible into smaller chunks. The company is deeply dependent upon state violence for profitability, and the consequences of Wal-Mart's strategy for the United States economy are dire.
Supply Flows
Thorstein Veblen referred to the control of supply chains as "managing the interstices" of business. Wal-Mart's first major boon was the use of information technology (even buying their own satellite) to manage supply flows.
There is a carrying cost to holding excess inventory, which Wal-Mart minimized and externalized onto their smaller suppliers – not contributing to global efficiency but actually extracting value in a zero-sum game.
"[…] [T]he most powerful element of the entire Wal-Mart system [is] control over their suppliers. Crucial to this control is something called 'Retail-Link,' which was implemented in 1991. This system allows suppliers to use the internet to get daily updates on the quantity of their products selling at each Wal-Mart, to download purchase orders, and to check other aspects of their dealings with the firm. […] Wal-Mart's ability to demand lower costs, tagged products, and, more recently, radio-frequency identification tagged products, and to place orders for specified size of shipments to minimize re-sorting costs in Wal-Mart distribution centers are all a result, in some large measure, of their monopsonistic power, power similar to that enjoyed by Standard Oil in their dealings with the suppliers of crude." [4]
This is known as the "Wal-Mart Squeeze Cycle," where it is awful to be a Wal-Mart supplier but also awful not to be one. It all began with lean production and "just-in-time" inventory management, which
"[…] gained its greatest early fame in manufacturing industries when Japanese automobile manufacturers, and later Boeing and Dell and other companies in the US, began to manufacture output in rapid-fire response to changes in demand, thus avoiding the costs of holding inventories.
The perception was that such manufacturing would reduce overall costs to the economy because fewer goods would be held in idle status. When, however, this approach is employed in retail and with multiple suppliers, many of them of small scale, the saving is more likely to be to the purchasing firm, Wal-Mart in this case, and the aggregate effect one of shifting rather than saved costs.
A simplified example will suffice: If Wal-Mart does not want shipment of shirts until the last possible minute and if those shirts take some days to cut and assemble in a far-away factory, then the factory owner will have to assume the costs of having money tied up in the shirts (money already paid to workers but not yet received from Wal-Mart) and of storage." [5]
Government Privilege
"The more state intervention, the greater incentive business has to intervene in the economy." – Haggard, Maxfield and Schneider, in Business-Government Relations: An Overview of Alternative Views of Business.
"By one account, over $1 billion in state and local subsidies, in the form of free or reduced—cost land, tax reductions, infrastructure assistance, job training and recruiting funds, and assorted other assistance programs, were granted to Wal-Mart prior to 2004." [6]
Multinational corporate bureaucracies are inflexible and suffer diseconomies of scale, but they are more agile than states. Therefore, even if politicians were willing to enforce the aggregate interest of the people, states are disadvantaged in outmaneuvering corporations. States are quite adept in buttressing corporate power, however. Fortunately the motives of politicians are not always in line with corporations. Thus, to manage and predict potential state interference, bribery becomes an operational expense.
Concern should lie not only with overtly illegal corporate action (like using the CIA as a political tool in Latin America), but also with activities that are legal and even widely accepted as legitimate. The acute offenses are bad, but structural corporate protections and opinion-molding enable chronic, ongoing injustice.
"Business interests have increasingly seen the advantages of utilizing governmental power to further their own economic interests. For example, as Gabriel Kolko points out, the early legislation on meat inspection came at the instigation of the large meat packers, who needed enforced standards of purity in order to take advantage of a growing export market. [Also to erect capital-intensive barriers to entry to their smaller competitors]. The Interstate Commerce Commission and the Federal Trade Commission were either created for or utilized by corporate interests. Rather than being a restraint by government, these agencies have often provided a more accessible framework for the exercise of corporate power." [7]
Wal-Mart did not pull itself up by its bootstraps; the company enjoys considerable state advantage. Wal-Mart relies upon publicly funded highways to truck its goods. The company uses these roads intensively but does not pay for them. In effect, the taxpayer subsidizes Wal-Mart's transport costs. [8] The subsidization of petroleum has a similar effect. Wal-Mart also benefits from low-cost labor thanks to Chinese state repression, which lowers manufacturing costs.
The company has been accused of underpaying labor and inducing US workers to depend on welfare and government aid – costs that Wal-Mart would have to pay if the state were not ready to pick up the bill.
Finally, Wal-Mart employs "illegal" immigrants that can't bargain for higher wages. If state immigration policy were not so punitive, these workers would have more bargaining power. "In a widely publicized story that appeared in 2005, Wal-Mart paid $11 million to settle a federal investigation into the use of undocumented workers who were employed 'off-clock' to clean stores." [9] [10] This humiliation of labor relates to Wal-Mart's next innovation.
Labor Commoditization
Wal-Mart has commoditized labor and split it into smaller denominations (part time, on-demand work without benefits, at peak hours). Wal-Mart's monopsonistic leverage gives it the power to demand these conditions.
"Wal-Mart has led the way in reducing the availability of full-time, well-paying jobs for the American labor force. […] Workers became just-in-time suppliers of hourly labor, wages were kept low, and benefits minimal. Computer tracking of hourly sales volume in the different stores made very close management of hours worked technically feasible, and the drive to sell goods as cheaply as possible provided the imperative. From the standpoint of workers, this has meant part-time work for those called by Wal-Mart 'peak-time associates,' with schedules built around in-store demand rather than accustomed rhythms of life as dictated by school schedules, social obligations, and family life. To an extent not fully implemented in many other places in modern capitalist societies, labor has been successfully transformed by Wal-Mart into a commodity just like any other. Rather than hiring people, Wal-Mart has successfully hired units of labor in quantities that they can vary with the need of the company and have done so on a large scale." [11]
Wal-Mart expropriates small business owners and makes the community dependent upon the company. Although Wal-Mart claims that it creates 100,000 new jobs a year, wages actually fall in counties where new Wal-Marts open up. [12]
The mechanism of Waltonization: Wal-Mart first seeks concessions from local governments in the form of tax breaks or eminent domain seizures. Then, the "every-day-low prices" undercut small businesses and force them to close. Some of the competitors and their employees, now jobless, must go work at Wal-Mart. This abundance of labor lowers bargaining power. Now that the competition has been cut down, Wal-Mart is free to raise prices or lower benefits. Since the company is the dominant force in the community, they hold sway over the local government for even greater privileges.
"Wal-Mart … supplies about 25 percent of the U.S. apparel market with goods that are virtually all imported from abroad. While Wal-Mart's provision of cheaper and cheaper imports is unquestionably a boon to the apparel consumer and to the economy at large, virtually every aspect of the firm's behavior has drawn protests, and the very behavior that gives consumers a windfall is at the same time the target of critics.
Protestors want Wal-Mart to stop their union-bashing, and to improve its pay and benefits for employees. The company is also criticized for its merciless squeeze on supplier pricing, and for its failure to effectively monitor the working conditions in the overseas factories that produce the apparel for its stores." [13]
Wal-Mart is the de novo company store, imposing predation not by price-gouging but by enticing with low prices and subsequently destroying competition (and bargaining power). The goods do cost less, but worker paychecks are reduced more than the margin of cost savings.
"Wal-Mart [has] led the way in reducing the availability of full-time, well-paying jobs for the American labor force. What Wal-Mart did was to extend the managerial practices developed for its suppliers to those who worked in the stores.
[…] Wal-Mart's squeeze on its American suppliers has bankrupted them, and led the firm to China where it squeezes Chinese suppliers, who in turn squeeze their own suppliers as well as their sweatshop workers. At the end of the squeeze cycle, we can buy our T-shirts for 25 cents less, so on average we are richer, but at what cost?" [14]
Mobility and Monopoly
The movement of capital is not bad in and of itself, but the relative immobility of labor is. Even if states ever intend to manage the conduct of businesspeople on behalf of their subjects, large corporations and their trade networks span borders and contract out the unsavory sweatshop work, activities outside any one state's jurisdiction.
Quicksilver capital results in a race to the bottom vis-à-vis wages. Labor cannot move freely due to social constructs called "borders" and "citizenship." Wal-Mart benefits from the existence of "illegal" people, or undocumented laborers. If they attempt to unionize, the Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency will be called in—the Pinkertons of the early 20th century.
The state is not good at disrupting monopoly, only market competitors are. If the state breaks monopoly firm A into two firms, B and C, these firms may not compete with each other because they are de facto still one firm. But if another firm, D, enters, with no allegiance to the members of firm A, the monopoly may be disrupted. Typically, though, the state is instrumental in protecting monopoly and creating artificial scarcity with licensing laws, barriers to entry and patents. The breakup of Standard under the 1911 Sherman Anti-Trust Act did not effectively ameliorate the anti-competitive practices, nor did it punish the perpetrators.
"Neither Rockefeller nor other standard oil executives suffered meaningful punishment for their decades of evasion. The Supreme Court decision actually multiplied Rockefeller's wealth. Because he held approximately 25 percent of Standard Oil stock before the atomization of the corporate structure, he received that percentage of stock in Standard Oil of New Jersey in addition to cash from each of the thirty-three spinoffs formed in response to the Supreme Court mandate. Anticipating a boom in automotive travel, investors eagerly bought into the new companies. As the stock prices rose, Rockefeller's net worth tripled, and then quintupled, making him almost certain the first billionaire in America's existence. Four years after the Supreme Court had seemingly given Roosevelt what he wanted, the former president noted acidly the presumably unintended consequences, 'No wonder that Wall Street's prayer is now: Oh Merciful Providence, give us another dissolution.'
In other words, the impacts of the Supreme Court ruling were far-reaching but slow moving. In 1923, twelve years after the ruling, Tarbell wrote 'the price we pay for gasoline is the price fixed by the Standard Oil Company. Although the components of this company were segregated by the U.S. government in 1911 with the expectation that thereafter there would be open competition, its control over the production and price of oil is as great as ever.' " [15]
To this day, the oil sector is still monolithic enough to drive the nation to war, restrict high-speed rail development, [16] and suppress higher efficiency vehicles. Evidently, the Sherman act did not suffice. Similarly, Wal-Mart has leveraged its political power as the largest private company in the world to reshape the interstices of the global economy, a level of central planning akin to the U.S.S.R. (albeit more effective).
"Wal-Mart's systems make possible a completely Stalinesque organization involving an astonishing [2.1] million employees. It is wonderfully ironic that the dreams of the Soviet central planners have come true – thanks to modern information technology – in a worldwide empire run from a small town in Arkansas rather than from Moscow. (Baily, Hall: 2002: 187)." [17]
The Unsustainable Corporate-State Model
"One classic problem of political life looms large—the problem of accountability. Modern economic organization and technology have vested enormous concentrations of resources in relatively few hands. These resources are readily translatable into political power; and that power is hardly accountable even to the nominal owners, let alone the larger community." [18]
Wal-Mart's success has been exceptional, and its actions prove shrewder than past retailers. The company has become the largest private employer in the world, with an army of 2.1 million workers. [19] Wal-Mart is certainly an outlier. But perhaps Wal-Mart is an outlier in the sense that it is merely the first to establish their global exploitation model – in the way Columbus was an outlier in "discovering" the New World (omitting native people who lived there, or the Vikings and Asian seafaring cultures before him). Perhaps Wal-Mart is an outlier because it is leading the charge in reviving a neo-feudalist Gilded Age of sharecropping serfdom. The question is not whether Wal-Mart is an aberration, but to what extent this model will be copied going forward.
The corporate-capitalist ownership structure is inherently oppressive. Corporations are chartered by the state and enjoy legal and tax protections. There will always be antagonism between the boss and laborer, and profit itself is the result of an unfree market. Under perfect Walrasian competition, prices asymptote to cost and profits toward zero. Within the current paradigm, the state intervenes on behalf of politically connected capitalists. In a just, truly socialistic stateless system, workers receive the full product of their labor. This is best accomplished through private contracting and worker's cooperatives, where there is no employer to extract surplus value from his laborers. Instead, workers share in the revenues of their co-owned enterprise.
Multinational corporations are disconnected from the communities they parasitize / service, and the corporation's sole motive of profit without concern for others is literally psychopathic.
"A wide range of activities that influence the lives of workers and consumers are excluded from [economic] analysis. The omissions are serious because negative public reactions to both Standard Oil and Wal-Mart, two firms who did, after all, lower costs to consumers, show clearly that people care about far more than the prices of products produced.
People are part of the production and distribution processes as much as they are consumers. They live in communities with others whose well-being affects their own. Standard Oil, by its power over the location of refineries, its differential treatment of railroads, and its decisions about distribution affected where people could live and prosper. Wal-Mart, in like manner, determines the commercial landscape of great portions of America. Decisions made in Bentonville, Arkansas, determine not only whether or not a particular small town will be one of reasonably prosperous service establishments, while a neighboring town will die, but also much else about the lives of those who supply the Wal-Mart stores and work there." [20]
In one of his rare bursts of insight, Paul Krugman wrote in 2005 that Wal-Mart has become "the symbol of the state of our economy, which delivers rising GDP but stagnant or falling living standards for working Americans." Not even rising GDP is certain – only a rise in Wal-Mart's share price.
Wal-Mart's state-conferred advantage must be revoked in order to revive the U.S. manufacturing sector. This would result in a revitalization of the middle-class and an increase in aggregate demand. Consumers would have less cheap-toxic-plastic crap, but would be better off in the long run because wages would rise. As it stands, the poorer consumers / workers get, the more desperately they depend upon Wal-Mart's "every-day low prices." It is a vicious cycle of dependency.
Human beings are not so good with deferred utility—they prefer the instant gratification of upfront price savings (discounts) even if they suffer a greater decline in purchasing power later (lower wages). Hopefully, consumers and workers will wake up to the scam, organize Wal-Mart's labor and selectively patronize local businesses instead. To be truly sustainable, such a castration of corporate power must occur in conjunction with the dissolution of the state power that underlies it.
"If employers can't be trusted with power, how on earth can politicians and bureaucrats be so? The solution is to smash the structures of government-imposed privilege that put workers into a position of dependency on employers in the first place." – Roderick T. Long [21]
[1] Nadel, Mark. Corporations and Political Accountability. Heath Publishing. 1976. (9-10).
[2] Charles, Kenny. The Big Mac Theory of Development. Bloomberg Businessweek. 2012.
[3] Yergin, Daniel. The Prize. Simon & Schuster. 1991. (40).
[4] Mayhew, Anne. Narrating the Rise of Big Business in the USA: How Economists Explain Standard Oil and Wal-Mart. Routledge. 2008. (27-28)
[5] Mayhew (120).
[7] Nadel (17).
[8] Carson, Kevin. Mutualist Political Economy. 2004. (234).
[9] Mayhew (58).
[10] Barbaro, Michael. Wal-Mart to pay $11 Million. Washington Post. 2005.
[11] Mayhew (57).
[12] Neumark, Zhang, Ciccarella. The Effects of Wal-Mart on Local Labor Markets. NBER. 2005.
[13] Mayhew (121).
[15] Weinberg, Steve. Taking On the Trust: The Epic Battle of Ida Tarbell and John D. Rockefeller. 2008. (257)
[16] Dorsey, Thomas. America Must Build Interstate High Speed Rail. Soul of America (2010).
[18] Nadel (8).
[19] The Economist. "Defending Jobs: Employment." 2012.
[21] Libertarianism Means Worker Empowerment. Bleeding Heart Libertarians. 2012.
capitalism, class war, corporate, corporate state, hierarchy, labor, Walmart, work,


A blistering report into the NSW health system's failure to appropriately manage scores of complaints against a gynaecologist has found the system failed to protect the women in his care.
The report, by Gail Furness SC, reviewed the management of complaints by NSW Health made against Emil Gayed between 1994 and 2017 when his registration was suspended, effectively banning him from practicing medicine.
The inquiry examined complaints management and processes in the public health system at five hospitals across NSW.
In a statement, the department said the report would be provided to police for investigation and to consider prosecution.
No complaints were recorded against him during his time at Grafton or Kempsey hospitals, however scores of patients and hospital staff registered complaints against him during his time at Manning Base Hospital in Taree, Mona Vale Hospital on Sydney's northern beaches, and Cooma Hospital in the state's south.
"Of most concern is that a repeated theme has been the unnecessary removal of organs, unnecessary or wrong procedures, perforations of organs and reluctance to transfer to tertiary facilities" Ms Furness wrote.
The report found that almost every year between 1999 and 2016 a concern was raised about Dr Gayed's practice.
Following the establishment of a public inquiry line at Manning Base Hospital, almost 200 women contacted the hospital with concerns about their treatment.
Ms Furness has referred 50 women to the Health Care Complaints Commission to take further action.
"In most years from 1999 to 2016 there was a complaint or concern raised about Dr Gayed's clinical treatment of a patient," Ms Furness wrote.
"They were expressed by nursing staff, anaesthetists and other medical practitioners as well as, more recently, patients themselves.
"The health system failed each of these women."
The Egyptian-trained gynaecologist began practicing in Australia in 1994 after he was offered a position at Grafton Base Hospital in northern NSW.
Seven days after making his application to the medical board (now medical council) to begin treating patients in Australia, he was registered to practice in the specialty of obstetrics and gynaecology.
The report made three recommendations, including that public hospitals with visiting medical officers have access to patient records and information about their treatment to ensure they're been appropriately cared for.
It also suggested local health districts ensured "external oversight" of practitioners in regional, rural, and remote areas where they're responsible for the bulk of all obstetrician and gynaecologist services.
NSW Health's deputy secretary Nigel Lyons said the department accepted the recommendations in full.
"Ensuring that our patients receive quality services and appropriate and safe care remains the priority of NSW Health and we are very sorry that this was not the case for many women who were treated by Dr Gayed," he said.
"Nothing can be done to change the mistakes of the past, but we can ensure that the recommendations in this report are fully implemented to prevent these failures from happening again."
Mother of four Emma Strybis underwent surgery by Dr Gayed where she said he removed a healthy fallopian tube and ovary, as well as cutting her ureter in half.
"I had to have a spinal block as the pain was so bad but they sent me home regardless ... then my belly was swelling up and eventually I couldn't pass urine," she said.
"I was in excruciating agony and had to call an ambulance — I thought I was dying, I pretty much thought he'd killed me."
Ms Strybis was transferred to a different hospital where doctors had to drain two litres of urine from her abdominal cavity.
Urosepsis had set in and she said she was lucky to survive.
Her physical and mental pain is ongoing and Ms Strybis says Dr Gayed has completely destroyed her and her family's lives.
"Sometimes I feel like I'm his prisoner," she said.
She said she experienced a "rush of happiness" when she found out police were investigating Dr Hayed and wanted to see him behind bars.
However she feels the system she trusted let her down entirely and a complete overhaul is needed with stricter guidelines around doctors who have complaints made against them.


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Q: Symmetry of the (Riemann) curvature tensor of the Riemannian connection: $\nabla_{\nabla_Y Z}W = \nabla_Y(\nabla_Z W)$? My book is Connections, Curvature, and Characteristic Classes by Loring W. Tu (I'll call this Volume 3), a sequel to both Differential Forms in Algebraic Topology by Loring W. Tu and Raoul Bott (Volume 2) and An Introduction to Manifolds by Loring W. Tu (Volume 1).
I refer to Theorem 22.6 in Section 22.4. While the term "Riemann curvature tensor" is not introduced until Section 22.6, I believe what Theorem 22.6 refers to is the Riemann curvature tensor.
For proving Theorem 22.6, I'm trying to understand what it means when Tu says that adding (22.5) and (22.6) cancels out the $\langle R(Y,Z)X,W \rangle$ term.
I think the canceling out is in that $\langle R(Y,Z)X,W \rangle + \langle R(Y,Z)W,X \rangle = 0$, which I can show assuming $\nabla_{\nabla_Y Z}W = \nabla_Y(\nabla_Z W)$ for all $Y,Z,W \in \mathfrak X(M)$ is true.
Question if $\nabla_{\nabla_Y Z}W = \nabla_Y(\nabla_Z W)$ is true: Why is $\nabla_{\nabla_Y Z}W = \nabla_Y(\nabla_Z W)$ true?
Question if $\nabla_{\nabla_Y Z}W = \nabla_Y(\nabla_Z W)$ is false: How else do I approach this?

A: No, $\nabla_{\nabla_Y Z}W = \nabla_Y(\nabla_Z W)$ is not true in general.
All Tu means is that $\langle R(Y,Z)X,W \rangle$ in (22.5) will cancel with $\langle R(Y,Z)W,X \rangle$ in (22.6), due to the skew-symmetry (Prop 12.5).

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


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Poonasar Khurd - Jodhpur
Poonasar Khurd Population - Jodhpur, Rajasthan
Poonasar Khurd is a medium size village located in Osian Tehsil of Jodhpur district, Rajasthan with total 211 families residing. The Poonasar Khurd village has population of 1423 of which 746 are males while 677 are females as per Population Census 2011.
In Poonasar Khurd village population of children with age 0-6 is 271 which makes up 19.04 % of total population of village. Average Sex Ratio of Poonasar Khurd village is 908 which is lower than Rajasthan state average of 928. Child Sex Ratio for the Poonasar Khurd as per census is 1007, higher than Rajasthan average of 888.
Poonasar Khurd village has lower literacy rate compared to Rajasthan. In 2011, literacy rate of Poonasar Khurd village was 54.95 % compared to 66.11 % of Rajasthan. In Poonasar Khurd Male literacy stands at 71.19 % while female literacy rate was 36.60 %.
As per constitution of India and Panchyati Raaj Act, Poonasar Khurd village is administrated by Sarpanch (Head of Village) who is elected representative of village. Our website, don't have information about schools and hospital in Poonasar Khurd village.
Poonasar Khurd Data
Population 1,423 746 677
Schedule Caste 12 5 7
Total Workers 795 390 405
Marginal Worker 25 4 21
Schedule Caste (SC) constitutes 0.84 % of total population in Poonasar Khurd village. The village Poonasar Khurd currently doesn't have any Schedule Tribe (ST) population.
In Poonasar Khurd village out of total population, 795 were engaged in work activities. 96.86 % of workers describe their work as Main Work (Employment or Earning more than 6 Months) while 3.14 % were involved in Marginal activity providing livelihood for less than 6 months. Of 795 workers engaged in Main Work, 713 were cultivators (owner or co-owner) while 1 were Agricultural labourer.


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Photography has always had the incredible power of touching the hearts of people of all nationalities, languages and ages, while being a tool to create awareness on the most varied issues. And this is what British photographer and photojournalist Jimmy Nelson is trying to do by visiting the Planet's remaining indigenous cultures. Through his lens, he shows us the value – and beauty – of the world's cultural diversity.
His images bring us to the world's remotest corners and testimony the speed with which these communities adapt and change as they relentlessly approach and embrace the future. Nelson's journeys to visit the world's tribes have given life to the photo book Before They Pass Away (part 1 and part 2). We talked to him about his vocation, his adventures and connections with indigenous tribes. You started off your journey as a photographer travelling through Tibet. How and why did you begin to focus on indigenous cultures? When I was 17 I didn't start out to be a photographer. I ran away. I had some strange experiences as a child that disconnected me. My hair fell out when I was 16 so my appearance changed and I was very creative so some people thought I was stupid. I wasn't a happy teenager. I disappeared to Tibet not because there were indigenous peoples but because there were monks there with no hair. It was a connection. My journey was a process of reconnection: who am I? How do I look? How do you see me? How do I see you? And my camera was a metaphor for recording who I met. On the journey of two years, more people gave me love and kindness than had ever given me before in my own culture. So maybe today, 33 years later, I'm still doing the same. I'm not an anthropologist, I'm not an ethnologist. I'm selfishly trying to keep reconnecting with people who are humanly very rich and real.
The book Before They Pass Away part 1 is about 35 chosen indigenous communities. How did you select them and how did you contact them? They were meant to be a visual kaleidoscope of geographical diversity: the world's most colourful and the world's most isolated cultures in varying landscapes. The whole idea is an aesthetic cross-section. I've connected to them through the experiences I've had by spending my whole life travelling. So I know roughly where they are but I leave it to chance when I get there to see what happens. The second part of the project – Before they pass away part 2 – which is coming out next autumn, is about 85 more indigenous groups. But now people are approaching me: "Visit us. We're special, we're unique". And in part 2 I'm returning to some of the tribes in the first book to complete the circle of discussion.
When you photograph indigenous people, are they in their "Sunday dress" or do they actually live like that? I argue it's 80 per cent real and 20 per cent their Sunday dress. For example, I can come to your house to photograph you on Saturday morning after you've been to a party the night before, your hair isn't done up and you're wearing your pyjamas. This is real. Or I can say "I'll come on Sunday at 1 o'clock, be prepared, go to the salon, buy a nice shirt because I want to take very beautiful pictures of you". This is also real, but with preparation. How do indigenous communities react to your work? They're grateful. Then, they all have an opinion. They say, "right, you think we're special. We aren't sure whether we are or we aren't special. Are we rich? Are we poor? Where should we go? Should we stay or move to the city?". So there's big discussion. They're a little bit confused because now almost all of them have access to the world. Many of them have telephones and some even smartphones. So visually they realise that the world is becoming homogeneous. So they say, "is our identity and authenticity important or should we leave it behind?". Have you ever been rejected? I've never been rejected, but I rejected myself from the aborigines in Australia because I wasn't comfortable, they didn't want to be photographed, they were insecure. Their history and politics is very complicated. So I didn't push myself. I could have taken the picture. But it's not just about taking a picture, it's about a connection.
What community has impressed you the most? And which is the one you learned from the most – and what did you learn? I can't choose one, because each one is different, each one has a different world. One lives in the heat, one lives in the cold. One is in the nearest city, one is further away. But something very special happened very recently when I went back to the Kazakhs in Mongolia. They were very kind when I first went to visit them because it's very cold there and I wasn't prepared, so they took me in. When I went back they said, "thank you for coming back" and then they told me: "We're now online. We heard you talking about us. And now people from around the world come visit us, asking us to make a 'Jimmy picture'. We charge for this picture but you have given us an identity, again. We feel proud to be who we are. And we can make a living now holding on to our culture. Because we were close to leaving it behind and moving to the city. We actually want to stay here but we want to find a way to financially realise staying as we develop". So we're learning from each other. They're teaching me and I'm teaching them. Are there indigenous communities you photographed that have already vanished? This is a very difficult question to answer because everything we've photographed and filmed has changed. For example, there are many Himba in the media but only one per cent lives like traditional Himba. They're all leaving their traditions and environments very quickly. They're not vanishing as people. I titled the book and everyone goes, "nobody's dying". I know nobody's dying. Something is dying. But even then it's not definitive because it is evolving and changing.
How do you feel about that? You carry a sort of burden as you see and get to know cultures that you know could no longer be there tomorrow. I see it in the other way, I see no burden. People say: "How can you go there? You show them to the world". I say, well, the world knows everything anyway. We've evolved and become globalised and digitalised. So there are no more secrets. I could build a wall around you and leave you in a bubble. But this doesn't work. This is disconnection. I would say: "Break down the walls. Make everybody know where we all are. And make sure these people know how special they are". To be proactive and not inactive. We have to talk to these people, we have to tell them "don't go away!", and teach them how special they are. We've come across some criticism directed at you from the NGO Survival International. Why do you think your work can be misunderstood? The criticisms came at the very beginning. Survival International didn't investigate what I was doing. They just judged us. I would say what I'm doing is about judgement: "Don't look at me and judge me, I'm not going to look at you and judge you, don't look at them and judge them because they're black and naked". So Survival International was a hypocrite because if they had looked further they would've realised that we're trying to do the same thing. We're trying to realise a better understanding and an education for them and for us. But I don't do this by screaming and yelling and saying "everybody is dying and it's all your fault". I try to do it the other way round. I say something remaining is still very beautiful and we have to understand that. With the Foundation we try to raise money to send young, creative cinematographers and photographers into the world of tribes to teach them to photograph and film themselves to make an online digital library, like a sort of "Google for tribes". So in the future they and we will have access to their traditions, so they don't lose them. Have you ever experienced first-hand some of the struggles these indigenous communities are facing? The reason why every indigenous tribe (and culture) is remote is that they live on the world's last untouched natural resources. The two end up becoming one. But if you only focus on natural resources you forget about human beings. So we have to focus on their values, too. For example, in Ecuador the government wanted to remove the Huahorani who live in the jungle. They said, "we don't need this community because they sit on oil and gas". A consultant came in and said, "it's probably a more valuable and sustainable asset in the longer term if you leave them there and protect the rainforest than exploit it for mineral resources". In the short term, gain of mineral resources; in the long term, loss in losing a culture, a heritage and a tradition. In the end they decided to leave them there. So this is about education. Having the world's last untouched rainforest with the tribe living in it would be much more valuable. But I don't focus on the politics because I would never win, because it's just me. I try to do something more romantic and bigger.
So, photography is a powerful tool to help them? Yes, photography is a metaphor. The whole world understands pictures. The whole world has become a photographer. The whole world isn't a politician, the whole world isn't a logger or an oil man. But if we start a momentum of respect and appreciation of beauty then I think we have more power than going on in the political debate. You also visited an indigenous community in The Netherlands. This is impressive because we always think these cultures are far from us. There are people in Holland who still wear traditional clothing, but they obviously have cars and telephones. There's a fine line, they're not off the grid but it's more like active cultural respect. The world is becoming the same and I think that the rich diversity and authenticity are extremely valuable. So whether you're a tribe or you wear traditional clothes in the Western world is the same thing. They're keeping their diversity and authenticity. And the journey I'm on is also going to the end of the world and then coming back to this one. Both worlds are important. Before They Pass Away part 2 will be produced next autumn. What's new compared to the first book? We're two thirds of the way through the production and until May we have another seven trips: to the Amazon, to Siberia, to Africa. What's exciting is that we filmed everything with virtual reality cameras. So wherever I've gone there's a 360 degrees film. And we're going to build an app. When you look at a picture you like in the book and you want to know more about the person in the picture, the app activates a 360 degrees film on your phone. So it becomes an interactive book where you can come with me to these spaces. What is the Jimmy Nelson Foundation? We established the foundation a year ago, but we're growing. I hope that in five years' time the foundation will be bigger than the project, with hundreds of people travelling around the world teaching these tribes to film and photograph themselves to preserve their traditions. The foundation will simply create a digital library, like a Google or a Wikipedia for tribes. So I'm not giving money back, I'm not building schools or water wells, I'm carrying on doing what I do here, making this visual library of films, pictures, sounds, traditions, languages. What can we all do? What is your call to action? If you're curious, if you're hungry, if you're young, if you're daring, and if you care and want to do something sustainable, come and join the foundation, present us your ideas, and we'll see if we can send you to these places to make more films and more pictures. I don't know if what I'm doing is right, I don't have all the answers, but I want to take you with me so that you get a better insight into the world I go to and that we all start asking more questions together.


Build an AI application without code People say that AI and Machine Learning is an occupation of the future. But after seeing these tools it seems like this job title is the first to go, in the automation of work.
Today 18 monkeys tried to follow along when Zakaria Mahomood showed how to build an Azure AI application without a single line of code. This manual is an excelent case of read the manual first then only do the last two items in the instruction and delete the rest. Just so you have been warned. Azure is a cloud platform from Microsoft that contains many different services. Today we will use two API:s, the Face API and the Computer Vision API and two applications. The Blob Storage and the Logic App.
The Logic App is a generic template for building applications with buttons and forms and so on. But we are only going to use it behind the scenes, as a service. It only cost money if it is running so you could have an installation and turn it on using an app in your phone when you need it to be running. When you create a new account you get 1600 SEK to spend, but remeber to delet the account when you are done. Otherwise you risk to pay for it after 30 days or so.
Inside Azure we create a new Resource Group called BarrelWorkshop where we will build our application.
Now we create our Logic App and select North Europe as location, primarily for latency but you should also consider where you are allowed to store your data when selecting a location, especially with the new GDPR regulations on the rise.
The Logic App contains many services but we want to go for a Blank Logic App and the goal is to use our smart phones to take pictures and save in One Drive. (Be aware of the difference between One Drive and One Drive for Business.) And then let the Azure application fetch the images and perform some AI analasys and finaly send the result to a Slack channel.
The Blank Logic App runs on Triggers and Actions and we want to focus on Triggers that can run each time a file is created in our One Drive.
"Add new connection" - When a file is created: Here you select a folder and how often you want to check. There is no event that is executed from the One Drive side. So, you have to check the folder on an intervall. Each check cost about 0.003 SEK, so you will not run our of money soon.
Here we want to create a place to store the file on Azure. Using the "Azure Blob Storage" to "Create Blob". But before we can do that we need to setup a "Storage Account". Open a new tab in the browser so you do not get lost from the app you are currently building.
Back to the Resource Group barrelworkshop and create new "Storage Account". This is used to store blobs, files, tables and queues. Here you need to set a unique name, then you set the Resource manager to Classic, the Account to Standard the Replication to Locally-redundant storage (LRS) and Subscription to Pay as you go. Now you got your extra storage in the cloud, in just a couple of seconds. In this regard Azure is a lot faster then IBM that takes over 40 minutes to boot up a new machine.
With the Storage Account in place we can open the Keys menu and copy the primary key and head back over to our Logic App. Here we are about to create a new connection, you can set the Connection name to anything you like and then paste the Azure storage Name and Key into the Connection interface.
Finaly we are ready to Create the Blob and select a folder and a blob name. A blob is a file in Azure terminology. Blob name is File name and Blob content is File content. This moves the file from our One Drive to our Azure Storage that we just created. Go back to the Storage Account, Blobs and press Click to copy on the api url then return to the Logic App insert the url. Now you get a list and ther you select the blob called "Name"
+ New step, Choose an action. Search Face and select the "Face API" (This is like playing with bricks, they got tons of actions for Facebook, Video and many more).
When using the Face ID funtion to recognize if the same face is back Azure only stores the ID for 24 hours. Then it creates a new Face ID. This is to prevent Azure applications to be used for tracking people over longer periods of time. Other providers like amazon and IBM does not have the same kind of limit.
In the Face API we pick the action "Detect faces"
Click faceapi select the "KEY 1" and remeber your service name. Go back to the Logic App, goto Overview in the faceapi and copy End point and insert it into the Face API url and press create.
+ New step add a connection and type Vision and pic "Computer Vision API" we are going to use the Computer Vision API and select Image source: Image Content.
Shift tab and enter your Resource Group Vision API and copy KEY 1. Go back to the Logic App and insert the account key, change to overview and copy your endpoint and insert into the Logic App in the site URL.
Now you can select Image Content and then what features you want to extract from the image.
Now here is a place for consideration. The system creates one output for each feature it is supposed to extract and if you are tempted to use mail as output, be aware that a 100 uploaded pictures and abuot 100 features for each image will render 10 000 mails, a mistake our presenter has done so that we do not have to. Instead we send our output to a Slack group. But you could just as well send it to facebook as to your own application.
Select the Slack API and sign in to the slack group and authorize. Pick a channel name, for instance general. Create a message text, enter your name, then select the informaion you want, like "Caption text", "Age", "Beared" and face ID.
Now Click Save in the top left corner and we are ready to take a picture. And make sure that the picture is stored in the right folder in your one drive on the phone.
Delete the blob, it need to be publically available. You can create a secure access. But it is not that easy.
Now take a picture and see how the Slack channel fills up with information about the images.
Remeber to delete your account and deactivate by clicking the "Enable" button in the top bar. And do not use any storage space because you will eventually pay for that, you can also disable and enable you App from an app in your phone.
So how does Azure compare to other suppliers of AI and cloud services?
IBM is old and slow. Amazon only have basic funtionallity, but Amazon does has an ML function where you can train your own model. Azure is more user friendly but more clicking than Amazon. Microsoft also has Machine Learning Studio, a separat product from Azure with up to 10 GB for free data for you to analyze. And in the MLS Microsoft will not use your data to train their own models as they do in Azure. You can also setup a webservice to stream data instead of reading from a file.
Bonus: videoindexer.ai created by Zakaria and a colluege is completely based on the Azure API:s and it is easy to just plug and play with the advanced ML features. There is lots of documentation and there are more advanced guides online to do other cool stuff!
Let your imagination run wild. This is easy, and you can create almost anything.


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Catholic And Muslim Leaders Meet For Historic Talks
Vatican City – Top Roman Catholic and Muslim clerics and scholars began Tuesday historic talks in Rome aimed at defusing tensions between Christianity and Islam. The talks are part of an initiative by moderate Muslim individuals and groups that began in the wake of the violent protests in the Islamic against the publication in a Danish newspaper in 2005 of cartoons depicting the prophet Mohammed.
They are also fruit of a gradual rapprochement between the Vatican and Muslims since Pope Benedict XVI's controversial 2006 speech in Regensburg, Germany in which he appeared to associate Islam with violence. Benedict is scheduled to receive participants on Thursday following the last session of the three-day talks which take place under the theme "Love of God, Love of Neighbour."The meeting of Christians and Muslims on such a topic goes beyond issues "of good neighbourliness, they involve the future of humanity," the Vatican's newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, said ahead of the talks. The two delegations, each made up of 29 participants are meeting as the Catholic-Muslim Forum, the formation of which was announced in March when a delegation of Muslim representatives from the moderate A Common Word grouping, visited the Vatican.
The Vatican invited the group, following the release in 2007 by 138 high-profile Muslims, of a letter addressed to Christian leaders, in which they called for greater co-operation on achieving peace. Heading the Vatican delegation is Cardinal Jean Louis Tauran, President of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue while his Muslim counterpart was the Grand Mufti of Bosnia, Mustafa Ceric. The Muslim group's spokesman, a scholar of Islam from Turkey, Ibrahim Kalin, told L'Osservatore Romano there was a need for Christians and Muslims to overcome mutual "scepticism."There is a need for followers of each religion to "conquer diffidence," and "move beyond tolerance," Kalin.
Tauran, in a interview ahead of the talks with the French Catholic newspaper La Croix, reiterated the Vatican belief that relations with Muslims must be based on "reciprocity."This, the Cardinal said, can only be achieved if Christians and followers of other faiths are allowed freedom to practice their religion in Muslim-dominated nations.
Copyright, respective author or news agency


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You May Now Listen to Nickelback's Cover of Don Henley's 'Dirty Laundry,' If You Wish
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The members of Nickelback blew off a little steam by recording a cover of Don Henley's "Dirty Laundry" during the sessions for their next album, and now they're sharing the results with fans.
"Sometimes you play a song in the studio for fun," explained the band on Twitter. "Sometimes it's so fun you have to record & share it with everyone!"
Nickelback's version of "Dirty Laundry" is now available through Spotify and Apple Music, and is being promoted as something of a teaser for the group's upcoming European tour, which is scheduled to begin Sept. 2 in Helsinki and continue through late October, when they wrap up their currently announced dates with an Oct. 25 show in Newcastle, England. The group also remains at work on its ninth studio album, which serves as the follow-up to 2014's No Fixed Address and is reportedly tentatively scheduled for early 2017.
It's a sweet tribute to Henley, but as his fans are well aware, it's anyone's guess as to how he'll react to the idea of the Canadian rock titans putting out a cover of his first major solo hit. In 2014, Okkervil River attempted a similar gesture toward the Eagles co-founder by recording a version of his "The End of the Innocence," only to reportedly be slapped with a cease-and-desist letter from Henley's legal team.
The track, initially part of a series of mixtapes released by the group, was ultimately taken down in response to what Okkervil River frontman Will Sheff referred to as "a real dick move."
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Source: You May Now Listen to Nickelback's Cover of Don Henley's 'Dirty Laundry,' If You Wish
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A cook is employed at the nursery to prepare healthy meals for the children and staff. A weekly menu is provided appropriate to age groups, consisting of healthy nutritious dishes; vegetarian meals and special diets can also be provided. The menu is rotated at 4 weekly intervals.
Our children's menus keep winning the Nutrition and Oral Health Award each year.
Our onsite kitchen is rated 5* by Food Standards Agency.
All our meals are freshly prepared by an experienced nursery chef providing a well-balanced diet.
For breakfast between 7.30am and 8.30am, we offer cereals, raisins and yoghurts. We serve a variety of fruit during mid-morning snack between 10am and 11am. A two-course dinner is served between 12pm and 1 pm, followed by a two-course tea between 3.00pm – 4.00pm. Each meal is served with a drink of milk, diluted fruit juice and water. Throughout the day children have access to water and in Preschool classroom they pour it themselves using real glassware.
Our children are encouraged to serve the meals themselves and clean the tables after they finished eating, in line with Montessori principles. They do a variety of baking and food preparation activities that promotes further interest in cooking and gives them confidence in trying different foods.


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Vijaya Shewale: An Inspiration For Her Village
By Rasika Bhalerao
Of the small gathering of women in the village of Sukali (near Nagpur in Maharashtra), there was a young girl sitting close to me who caught my attention.She seemed to be smart and an active participant of the discussion going on there. This purpose of this gathering at the community hall (more of a tiny room that doubled as a shed for the villagers working in the fields nearby) of the village was so that we could interact with the womenfolk there. This village was carefully chosen as Grameen Foundation had previously conducted some activities under an awareness campaign there and this informal session was just a means of understanding how effective it had been.
The girl named Vijaya indeed turned out to be a smart one. Not only was she well educated but was also the first one from her village to have pursued and successfully completed her degree in MBA.
On asking how this came about, she explained with a lot of fervour that it was the unconditional support that she received from her family that helped her overcome all obstacles and achieve what she did. Her father was the one who had high regards for education and thus encouraged her to study.He himself was one of the highly educated members of the village and thus knew the importance and scope of literacy on the whole.It was with this motivation that Vijaya managed to stay in the nearby city of Nagpur and pursue higher studies.Provided with the opportunity, not only did she complete her MBA in Marketing from Nagpur, she is also looking for job opportunities there.
Vijaya has become a source of inspiration not only for other girls there who are looking for avenues to pursue their dreams and aspirations, but also the boys of her village. Getting the exposure to technology and its ubiquitous use there, she is well versed with mobile banking and other financial services offered online. When in the city or her college premises, Vijaya prefers to transact using mobile apps such as Paytm, Freecharge and Bhim as she doesn't have to carry physical cash with her all the time. Her mobile phone is enough to get her through the day, no matter where she goes.
What is most striking is that she wishes to pass on this knowledge and subsequent habit of transacting through online means to her fellow villagers back home. She wants to help them become literate and smarter in terms of using technology to avail the benefits that are laid out for them by the government via schemes, banks via their services and other mobile apps (that offer cashbacks and sale on merchandises/services).


Sure, it's a little old-school. I say felt board, and all of a sudden you're smelling chalk dust and watching your Sunday school teacher tell the story of Joseph and his amazing technicolor dreamcoat on a big felt board at the front of the classroom.
Well, think of it this way. The felt board isn't retro or dated- it's classic!
A felt playset is fun to play with, versatile, educational, and it happens to be just about the easiest craft you can possibly make.
Did you learn how to cut with scissors in Sunday school? Yeah? Then you can make a felt playset.
The first step, and the hardest part, is figuring out what felt to use. Do you prefer to craft with natural materials? Then use wool felt. Are you vegan? Buy traditional felt, which is manufactured from recycled plastic bottles. Do you only craft with recycled materials? Gather some thrifted wool sweaters, and check out my felting wool sweaters tutorial.
Now you need to figure out what to cut. Feel free to freehand your shapes, but I'm a bit of a neatnik, and I like my felt shapes uber-precise. I always cut from templates that I trace directly onto my felt, either with a Sharpie on light-colored felt or chalk on dark-colored felt. For templates, you can gather stencils from the Internet or trace pictures from a kid's coloring book. I have my graphic designer husband draw me stuff, and I make ample use of die-cutting machines, as well.
Of course, there's nothing like a ruler and some basic geometric shapes to really kick a kid into a high creative gear. You can also make a felt playset based on a theme. Some of the sets I've made for my daughters are a dinosaur scene, with dinosaurs and volcano; a cityscape, with a skyline and buildings and cars; a rainbow, in which each color is a separate piece of felt and is put together like a puzzle; and a paper doll set, with two figures and lots of clothes to put on them.
Stuck for ideas? Give a stack of felt, some fabric scissors, your Sharpies to a kid. They'll be thrilled about having their own kid-made felt sets.
The last thing that you need is a surface on which to play with your fabulous new playset. My daughters really love their felt playsets, so I covered a large piece of scrap plywood with felt and mounted it on a wall at kid-level. For those of you less committed, you can cover a square of corkboard and get the same effect. For a travel playset, cover a Scrabble board with felt, or just sew ribbon onto a large piece of felt and roll it up when you're done playing.
I'm a firm believer in simple toys for creative kids, and if they're handmade, all the better. Do you make some simple toys for your creative kids? Tell me about it in the Comments section below, and link to your blog post about it if you have one.
What a good idea! It just jogged my mind of felt boarding when I was little. It would also be good if studing a special topic. We are going to be studying Christmas around the world and we could make a globe. Each time we visit a county I could have my daughters place the felt country on the globe. Thank you for spurring me on your great idea.
Love this idea. Felt and kids=great combo. These boards are not only fun but make great teaching tools. I made a felt Pin the Tree on the Earth game that we use at birthday parties. Years ago I bought a wonderful felt doll house when a store was going out of business–before I had grandkids. Just the other day, one of our granddaughters begged me to get it out so she could play. We often forget that it's a good thing for young children to develop their tactile abilities and I think felt helps that too!
A felt dollhouse?!? A felt globe?!? Those are the awesomest felt project ideas that I have ever heard of!
My girls use their felt playsets so much that I have a huge felt board mounted to the wall in my study. They often stop in to play while I craft. I'm curently teaching my older daughter to sew, and I just cut out some felt rectangles for her to sew into simple wall pockets to hold all their different playsets.
Great ideas! I'm definitely going to have to make some of these before our next roadtrip!


First we identify environmental impact at each stage of the product lifecycle, considering all parties involved – the Ricoh Group, suppliers, customers and recycling companies. From here we promote the development of environmental technology and the reuse and recycling of our products to reduce their total ecological impact.
Used products are valuable resources. We recover our used products and reuse and recycle their parts. Parts that can't be reused are recycled as high quality materials. We repeat the cycle as many times as possible to reduce the need for new materials and minimise waste.
We work with our partners to reduce environmentally sensitive substances in the manufacturing process, improve transport efficiency and promote green marketing. And we help our recycling partners improve the quality of recycled resources and minimise the energy and costs involved in the process.
Once our products go to market, we provide solutions to customers and communities to help minimise the environmental impact of their activities.
Through our lifecycle design system, we minimise component use and invest in alternative resources like Plant Based Plastics and Biomass toner. We work to make devices smaller, simpler and lighter and recycling and reuse is key to component design. Since 2001, our factories in Europe have a zero-waste-to-landfill policy, meaning that 100% of our resources are recovered. Consumables like toner cartridges are reborn as garden planters and equestrian equipment. And our green-line machines are manufactured from end-of-life equipment, resulting in a 40% carbon emission reduction over their lifetime.
We use solar power and other renewable energies for electricity generation and continually evolve our production processes to realise low carbon manufacturing methods. At the distribution stage, we carefully monitor CO2 emissions and continually improve distribution efficiency within our distribution chain.
Our concern is with both the environment and the health of the people who make and use our products.
All our products comply with the Restriction of Hazardous Substances directive, ensuring that electrical and electronic products aren't put onto the market if they contain six key hazardous substances. We've also banned an additional six substances not currently included in the list.
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Ricoh is committed to conservation of biodiversity and believes that not only reducing environmental impact, but also maintaining and improving the Earth's self-recovery capabilities play important roles toward building a truly rich society that is founded on the sustainable global environment. Biodiversity, which is short for biological diversity, is used to describe the whole variety of life on earth. It is well documented that the world's biodiversity is under threat from various dangers, the majority of which have been caused by humans.
Ricoh Group started biodiversity conservation activities in 1999 with the Forest Ecosystem Conservation Project around the world. To find out more about biodiversity conservation, please click here.


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9animes.org - Just a better place for watching online anime for free!
9anime - Watch Anime Online, Watch English Anime Online Subbed
The hype around 9anime is not without reason. 9anime is gaining popularity day by day. With easy access, anime is now available to everyone. Streaming platforms like Netflix, Crunchyroll, 9anime, etc., have made it relatively easy for fans to get anime easily.
While Netflix and Crunchyroll are paid services, 9anime allows you to watch your favorite shows for free. There are thousands of anime collections on 9anime. They keep adding new episodes and shows frequently. ?
Anime (Stream on 9anime)
Anime, as it is quite apparent, is the short form of animation. All the animated media in Japan fall under this category. So, when you hear of anime, it has to be from 9anime. It emerged as an art in Japan in the 1960s and eventually got quite a wide audience. Anime are also adapted from manga (Japanese comics), video games, or some light novels.
While in Japan, anime is referred to as all the animation work from all over the world. The whole world considers only Japanese animation as anime which can easily be streamed on 9anime
Availability on 9anime
Anime caters to the needs of all the people. They are based on different themes suitable for children, boys, girls, and even adults (with complex plot twists). Due to a large production scale, there is so much available on 9anime that anybody can get something of their liking from anime.
Why stream anime on 9anime?
The visual effects used in anime are superior in quality compared to the animated media produced in other parts of the world. 9anime usually have 1080p version of anime . The line between imagination and reality disappears when people watch anime on 9anime because of its excellent quality.
It is believed among fans that they could connect with 9anime on a different level. The characters are depicted quite differently than those in other cartoons. The characters have depth. They have their strengths, weaknesses, and emotions. To sum up, they have real personalities. These things add a strong appeal to anime.
Craze for 9anime
There are various misconceptions about anime. Some people think that they are like Pokémon, while others think they have pornographic content, and still others think that it is meant only for children. None of these are true. Anime is crazy popular and so as 9anime as it is the best site to stream anime.
9anime is meant for people of all age groups.
People like anime for different reasons which are:
a) For its artwork
b) For its storytelling
c) For its music
9anime lets people escape from their boring and stressful lives to a fantastic world in anime where everything is possible. Different dimensions, time-traveling, music, extra colorful graphics, interesting themes and storyline, and more. 9anime have something for everybody.


text:
Corporate biodiversity accounting and reporting in mega-diverse countries: An examination of indicators disclosed in sustainability reports
Antonis Skouloudis*, Chrisovalantis Malesios, Panayiotis G. Dimitrakopoulos
Operations & Information Management
Ongoing biodiversity decline threatens ecosystem stability and reflects an overarching planetary boundary being breached. It undermines enabling conditions for sustainable development and posits alarming risks to the global economy. All business entities are dependent to biological diversity and the planetary spectrum of ecosystem services either directly or indirectly and there is a strong debate on why and how the private sector can effectively contribute to ecologically sustainable societies. In this context, corporate biodiversity accounting and reporting seeks to capture information relevant to biodiversity management by employing a certain set of comprehensive, valid and credible quantitative as well as qualitative indicators. This paper seeks to contribute to this direction by providing a critical evaluation of what business entities of mega-diverse countries report on biodiversity conservation and management through widely-accepted performance metrics disclosed in their sustainability reports along with underlying determinants. The assessment relies on a composite disclosure index devised to investigate the comprehensiveness of reported performance on biodiversity management and conservation. By employing Poisson and Gaussian Bayesian regression modeling, potential associations of biodiversity indicators with national specificity, organizational size and industrial affiliation are examined. Crucially, the constructive role of biodiversity accounting and reporting in communicating performance and discharging accountability towards relevant stakeholders is investigated, under the scope of an ecologically sustainable society. Most important predictors of biodiversity indicators disclosure pertain to spatial characteristics (i.e. country effects), along with the industry affiliation of the organizations. In contrast, organizational size does not seem to have a significant effect on the disclosure of biodiversity indicators. In particular, Brazilian, Bolivian and Malaysian enterprises exhibit the highest disclosure levels in biodiversity indicators, whereas the lowest levels are observed for those from Philippines. In terms of differences according to the business sector the sample reporters pertain to, we find biodiversity indicators are mostly reported by enterprises of the materials, energy, industrials, consumer staples and utilities sectors. Comparatively lowest levels are observed for the health care and information technology sectors. Considerable variation among companies, sectors, countries as well as individual indicators is evident. The analysis derived from the study suggests that performance indicators of biological diversity, as part the firm's broader management accounting system, are still underreported and in most cases confined to generic and/or vague statements, with quantitative data and narratives on managing biodiversity being sporadic and limited.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolind.2018.11.060
Biodiversity indicators
Corporate biodiversity disclosure
Disclosure index
Mega-diverse countries
Sustainability accounting and reporting
10.1016/j.ecolind.2018.11.060
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1470160X18309245?via%3Dihub
Fingerprint Dive into the research topics of 'Corporate biodiversity accounting and reporting in mega-diverse countries: An examination of indicators disclosed in sustainability reports'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.
Sustainability Reports Business & Economics
Biodiversity Business & Economics
biodiversity Agriculture & Biology
accounting Earth & Environmental Sciences
sustainability Earth & Environmental Sciences
indicator Earth & Environmental Sciences
Biological Diversity Business & Economics
sustainable communities Agriculture & Biology
Skouloudis, A., Malesios, C., & Dimitrakopoulos, P. G. (2019). Corporate biodiversity accounting and reporting in mega-diverse countries: An examination of indicators disclosed in sustainability reports. Ecological Indicators, 98, 888-901. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolind.2018.11.060
Skouloudis, Antonis ; Malesios, Chrisovalantis ; Dimitrakopoulos, Panayiotis G. / Corporate biodiversity accounting and reporting in mega-diverse countries : An examination of indicators disclosed in sustainability reports. In: Ecological Indicators. 2019 ; Vol. 98. pp. 888-901.
@article{df3a30c910924311aaa3862eca356f03,
title = "Corporate biodiversity accounting and reporting in mega-diverse countries: An examination of indicators disclosed in sustainability reports",
abstract = "Ongoing biodiversity decline threatens ecosystem stability and reflects an overarching planetary boundary being breached. It undermines enabling conditions for sustainable development and posits alarming risks to the global economy. All business entities are dependent to biological diversity and the planetary spectrum of ecosystem services either directly or indirectly and there is a strong debate on why and how the private sector can effectively contribute to ecologically sustainable societies. In this context, corporate biodiversity accounting and reporting seeks to capture information relevant to biodiversity management by employing a certain set of comprehensive, valid and credible quantitative as well as qualitative indicators. This paper seeks to contribute to this direction by providing a critical evaluation of what business entities of mega-diverse countries report on biodiversity conservation and management through widely-accepted performance metrics disclosed in their sustainability reports along with underlying determinants. The assessment relies on a composite disclosure index devised to investigate the comprehensiveness of reported performance on biodiversity management and conservation. By employing Poisson and Gaussian Bayesian regression modeling, potential associations of biodiversity indicators with national specificity, organizational size and industrial affiliation are examined. Crucially, the constructive role of biodiversity accounting and reporting in communicating performance and discharging accountability towards relevant stakeholders is investigated, under the scope of an ecologically sustainable society. Most important predictors of biodiversity indicators disclosure pertain to spatial characteristics (i.e. country effects), along with the industry affiliation of the organizations. In contrast, organizational size does not seem to have a significant effect on the disclosure of biodiversity indicators. In particular, Brazilian, Bolivian and Malaysian enterprises exhibit the highest disclosure levels in biodiversity indicators, whereas the lowest levels are observed for those from Philippines. In terms of differences according to the business sector the sample reporters pertain to, we find biodiversity indicators are mostly reported by enterprises of the materials, energy, industrials, consumer staples and utilities sectors. Comparatively lowest levels are observed for the health care and information technology sectors. Considerable variation among companies, sectors, countries as well as individual indicators is evident. The analysis derived from the study suggests that performance indicators of biological diversity, as part the firm's broader management accounting system, are still underreported and in most cases confined to generic and/or vague statements, with quantitative data and narratives on managing biodiversity being sporadic and limited.",
keywords = "Biodiversity indicators, Corporate biodiversity disclosure, Disclosure index, Mega-diverse countries, Sustainability accounting and reporting",
author = "Antonis Skouloudis and Chrisovalantis Malesios and Dimitrakopoulos, {Panayiotis G.}",
doi = "10.1016/j.ecolind.2018.11.060",
journal = "Ecological Indicators",
Skouloudis, A, Malesios, C & Dimitrakopoulos, PG 2019, 'Corporate biodiversity accounting and reporting in mega-diverse countries: An examination of indicators disclosed in sustainability reports', Ecological Indicators, vol. 98, pp. 888-901. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolind.2018.11.060
Corporate biodiversity accounting and reporting in mega-diverse countries : An examination of indicators disclosed in sustainability reports. / Skouloudis, Antonis; Malesios, Chrisovalantis; Dimitrakopoulos, Panayiotis G.
In: Ecological Indicators, Vol. 98, 01.03.2019, p. 888-901.
T1 - Corporate biodiversity accounting and reporting in mega-diverse countries
T2 - An examination of indicators disclosed in sustainability reports
AU - Skouloudis, Antonis
AU - Malesios, Chrisovalantis
AU - Dimitrakopoulos, Panayiotis G.
N2 - Ongoing biodiversity decline threatens ecosystem stability and reflects an overarching planetary boundary being breached. It undermines enabling conditions for sustainable development and posits alarming risks to the global economy. All business entities are dependent to biological diversity and the planetary spectrum of ecosystem services either directly or indirectly and there is a strong debate on why and how the private sector can effectively contribute to ecologically sustainable societies. In this context, corporate biodiversity accounting and reporting seeks to capture information relevant to biodiversity management by employing a certain set of comprehensive, valid and credible quantitative as well as qualitative indicators. This paper seeks to contribute to this direction by providing a critical evaluation of what business entities of mega-diverse countries report on biodiversity conservation and management through widely-accepted performance metrics disclosed in their sustainability reports along with underlying determinants. The assessment relies on a composite disclosure index devised to investigate the comprehensiveness of reported performance on biodiversity management and conservation. By employing Poisson and Gaussian Bayesian regression modeling, potential associations of biodiversity indicators with national specificity, organizational size and industrial affiliation are examined. Crucially, the constructive role of biodiversity accounting and reporting in communicating performance and discharging accountability towards relevant stakeholders is investigated, under the scope of an ecologically sustainable society. Most important predictors of biodiversity indicators disclosure pertain to spatial characteristics (i.e. country effects), along with the industry affiliation of the organizations. In contrast, organizational size does not seem to have a significant effect on the disclosure of biodiversity indicators. In particular, Brazilian, Bolivian and Malaysian enterprises exhibit the highest disclosure levels in biodiversity indicators, whereas the lowest levels are observed for those from Philippines. In terms of differences according to the business sector the sample reporters pertain to, we find biodiversity indicators are mostly reported by enterprises of the materials, energy, industrials, consumer staples and utilities sectors. Comparatively lowest levels are observed for the health care and information technology sectors. Considerable variation among companies, sectors, countries as well as individual indicators is evident. The analysis derived from the study suggests that performance indicators of biological diversity, as part the firm's broader management accounting system, are still underreported and in most cases confined to generic and/or vague statements, with quantitative data and narratives on managing biodiversity being sporadic and limited.
AB - Ongoing biodiversity decline threatens ecosystem stability and reflects an overarching planetary boundary being breached. It undermines enabling conditions for sustainable development and posits alarming risks to the global economy. All business entities are dependent to biological diversity and the planetary spectrum of ecosystem services either directly or indirectly and there is a strong debate on why and how the private sector can effectively contribute to ecologically sustainable societies. In this context, corporate biodiversity accounting and reporting seeks to capture information relevant to biodiversity management by employing a certain set of comprehensive, valid and credible quantitative as well as qualitative indicators. This paper seeks to contribute to this direction by providing a critical evaluation of what business entities of mega-diverse countries report on biodiversity conservation and management through widely-accepted performance metrics disclosed in their sustainability reports along with underlying determinants. The assessment relies on a composite disclosure index devised to investigate the comprehensiveness of reported performance on biodiversity management and conservation. By employing Poisson and Gaussian Bayesian regression modeling, potential associations of biodiversity indicators with national specificity, organizational size and industrial affiliation are examined. Crucially, the constructive role of biodiversity accounting and reporting in communicating performance and discharging accountability towards relevant stakeholders is investigated, under the scope of an ecologically sustainable society. Most important predictors of biodiversity indicators disclosure pertain to spatial characteristics (i.e. country effects), along with the industry affiliation of the organizations. In contrast, organizational size does not seem to have a significant effect on the disclosure of biodiversity indicators. In particular, Brazilian, Bolivian and Malaysian enterprises exhibit the highest disclosure levels in biodiversity indicators, whereas the lowest levels are observed for those from Philippines. In terms of differences according to the business sector the sample reporters pertain to, we find biodiversity indicators are mostly reported by enterprises of the materials, energy, industrials, consumer staples and utilities sectors. Comparatively lowest levels are observed for the health care and information technology sectors. Considerable variation among companies, sectors, countries as well as individual indicators is evident. The analysis derived from the study suggests that performance indicators of biological diversity, as part the firm's broader management accounting system, are still underreported and in most cases confined to generic and/or vague statements, with quantitative data and narratives on managing biodiversity being sporadic and limited.
KW - Biodiversity indicators
KW - Corporate biodiversity disclosure
KW - Disclosure index
KW - Mega-diverse countries
KW - Sustainability accounting and reporting
UR - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1470160X18309245?via%3Dihub
U2 - 10.1016/j.ecolind.2018.11.060
DO - 10.1016/j.ecolind.2018.11.060
JO - Ecological Indicators
JF - Ecological Indicators
Skouloudis A, Malesios C, Dimitrakopoulos PG. Corporate biodiversity accounting and reporting in mega-diverse countries: An examination of indicators disclosed in sustainability reports. Ecological Indicators. 2019 Mar 1;98:888-901. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolind.2018.11.060


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Q: Создание меню в консольном приложении С++ Начал тут писать меню для консольной игры.
Есть несколько пунктов, переход между ними осуществлен с помощью switch. К примеру у меня имеется пункт "Новая игра", как только я выбираю его, у меня выводится просьба ввести имя персонажа и выбрать класс.
Так вот, вопрос такой: вместо использования cin, можно ли сделать выбор по нажатию? Пользуюсь linux и code::blocks. как понимаете библеотеки conio.h тут нету.
Что можно заюзать? Заранее спасибо

A: #include  <curses.h>

А потом делаешь getch();
Эта библиотека вообще-то предназначена для работы с псевдографикой, но ее можно использовать и так.


text:
Las Vegas is a hockey desert no more
Posted on May 29, 2018 by JetsFan in NHL News | 0 Comments
If anybody can provide perspective on what the hockey scene is like in Las Vegas, it's the Zucker family.
Long before the NHL's Golden Knights arrived and Stanley Cup fever swept the Strip, the Zuckers quietly worked to put the city on the hockey map.
"I like to say in the most non-conceited way possible that we are the first hockey family of Vegas," says Evan Zucker, who is the director of player development for the Nevada Amateur Hockey Association.
For a family rooted in the desert, the Zuckers have enjoyed considerable success on the ice. All four of the Zucker boys, including Evan, played junior hockey. The best is Jason, who plays for the NHL's Minnesota Wild and scored 33 goals this season.
The family`s deep connection to the game has made the Golden Knights' improbable run to the Stanley Cup Final as an expansion team all the more enjoyable.
"It's amazing how people have gravitated to the sport. There's a lot of people who had never been to a hockey game before, so it's amazing how the fan base has attached itself to the Knights," says family patriarch Scott Zucker, the president of the NAHA.
'Crazy' interest
The Knights' magical season has created what could become a lasting interest in what was once a foreign game for most Las Vegas natives. For years before the team arrived, hockey in the desert was the dominion of a committed few.
Currently, in the entire state of Nevada, there are five sheets of ice. They're housed in three arenas, all located in Las Vegas. Two more are expected to be added next year. There are 1,200 registered players, with about 450 of those under the age of 18.
Scott Zucker expects a massive increase in those numbers.
"Having an NHL team here has made a huge, huge, difference. We are seeing a huge influx in the learn-to-skate programs," he says. "At the beginning of the year I was saying if it doubles or triples in the next few years, that would be great. But I could see it now going at a faster pace based on the success of the Knights."
Evan Zucker says there has been a growing curiosity about hockey and skating since it was announced the Knights were coming.
"As soon as the Knights started, out of nowhere we had 400 kids show up at our first learn-to-skate program, so we doubled our participation overnight. It was pretty crazy."
Take a look at the newly named Vegas Junior Golden Knights players inside the teams NHL Practice facility! @GoldenKnights @FOX5Vegas pic.twitter.com/rSR1FGeOmL
—@VinceSapienza
The NHL team has lent its name to a local hockey program and donates some equipment for those new to the game.
Evan Zucker says the goal is to initiate youngsters into the Las Vegas Junior Knights house league program and eventually into the travel program, which sends more-developed players to tournaments across North America.
And it goes beyond youth leagues. Evan Zucker says there is growing interest from area high schools about adding hockey to the sports calendar.
Hockey business 'booming'
Jordan Van Son is the hockey director at the Las Vegas Ice Center, the city's main arena complex. He says hockey is slowly carving out a place in the youth sports landscape, which has been traditionally dominated by soccer and baseball.
He says the introduction-to-hockey programs are especially popular.
"When I started them last year, we only offered it two days a week and only had about 60 kids. Now we had to move to four nights a weeks and we have 130 kids."
Van Son says adults are also flocking to the arena.
"It's booming. I have 30 guys a night. These are guys that have never played before," Van Son says. "People like the speed and the physicality. You don't see that in baseball, soccer or basketball. That's definitely what people are drawn to out here."
Attracting players to the ice used to involve a lot of convincing. In a desert city with no real connection to hockey, selling a game played indoors on ice was difficult.
"We have never really had hockey fans here," Evan Zucker says. "They have never seen anything with the speed and aggression and just the overall feel of hockey."
These days, the game sells itself, according to Scott Zucker.
"We're not having to sell the game at all right now," he says. "Last summer there was a big advertising push but now we're not having to do that. They are just coming in and they want to play. And the people that I talk to say they never realized what an exciting game this is and now they are hooked. And once they are hooked they want to get their kids involved."
Amazing what a Stanley Cup run can do.