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Feds Link Water Contamination To Fracking For The First Time
Abrahm Lustgarten December 9, 2011
by Abrahm Lustgarten and Nicholas Kusnetz, ProPublica, Dec. 8, 2011, 8:18 p.m.
In a first, federal environment officials today scientifically linked underground water pollution with hydraulic fracturing, concluding that contaminants found in central Wyoming were likely caused by the gas drilling process.
The findings by the Environmental Protection Agency come partway through a separate national study by the agency to determine whether fracking presents a risk to water resources.
In the 121-page draft report released today, EPA officials said that the contamination near the town of Pavillion, Wyo., had most likely seeped up from gas wells and contained at least 10 compounds known to be used in frack fluids.
"The presence of synthetic compounds such as glycol ethers 2026 and the assortment of other organic components is explained as the result of direct mixing of hydraulic fracturing fluids with ground water in the Pavillion gas field," the draft report states. "Alternative explanations were carefully considered."
The agency's findings could be a turning point in the heated national debate about whether contamination from fracking is happening, and are likely to shape how the country regulates and develops natural gas resources in the Marcellus Shale and across the Eastern Appalachian states.
Some of the findings in the report also directly contradict longstanding arguments by the drilling industry for why the fracking process is safe: that hydrologic pressure would naturally force fluids down, not up; that deep geologic layers provide a watertight barrier preventing the movement of chemicals towards the surface; and that the problems with the cement and steel barriers around gas wells aren't connected to fracking.
Environmental advocates greeted today's report with a sense of vindication and seized the opportunity to argue for stronger federal regulation of fracking.
"No one can accurately say that there is 'no risk' where fracking is concerned," wrote Amy Mall, a senior policy analyst at the Natural Resources Defense Council, on her blog. "This draft report makes obvious that there are many factors at play, any one of which can go wrong. Much stronger rules are needed to ensure that well construction standards are stronger and reduce threats to drinking water."
A spokesman for EnCana, the gas company that owns the Pavillion wells, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In an email exchange after the EPA released preliminary water test data two weeks ago , the spokesman, Doug Hock, denied that the company's actions were to blame for the pollution and suggested it was naturally caused.
"Nothing EPA presented suggests anything has changed since August of last year — the science remains inconclusive in terms of data, impact, and source," Hock wrote. "It is also important to recognize the importance of hydrology and geology with regard to the sampling results in the Pavillion Field. The field consists of gas-bearing zones in the near subsurface, poor general water quality parameters and discontinuous water-bearing zones."
The EPA's findings immediately triggered what is sure to become a heated political debate as members of Congress consider afresh proposals to regulate fracking. After a phone call with EPA chief Lisa Jackson this morning, Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., told a Senate panel that he found the agency's report on the Pavillion-area contamination "offensive." Inhofe's office had challenged the EPA's investigation in Wyoming last year, accusing the agency of bias.
Residents began complaining of fouled water near Pavillion in the mid-1990s, and the problems appeared to get worse around 2004. Several residents complained that their well water turned brown shortly after gas wells were fracked nearby, and, for a time, gas companies operating in the area supplied replacement drinking water to residents.
Beginning in 2008, the EPA took water samples from resident's drinking water wells, finding hydrocarbons and traces of contaminants that seemed like they could be related to fracking . In 2010, another round of sampling confirmed the contamination, and the EPA, along with federal health officials, cautioned residents not to drink their water and to ventilate their homes when they bathed because the methane in the water could cause an explosion.
To confirm their findings, EPA investigators drilled two water monitoring wells to 1,000 feet. The agency released data from these test wells in November that confirmed high levels of carcinogenic chemicals such as benzene, and a chemical compound called 2 Butoxyethanol, which is known to be used in fracking.
Still, the EPA had not drawn conclusions based on the tests and took pains to separate its groundwater investigation in Wyoming from the national controversy around hydraulic fracturing. Agriculture, drilling, and old pollution from waste pits left by the oil and gas industry were all considered possible causes of the contamination.
In the report released today, the EPA said that pollution from 33 abandoned oil and gas waste pits — which are the subject of a separate cleanup program — are indeed responsible for some degree of shallow groundwater pollution in the area. Those pits may be the source of contamination affecting at least 42 private water wells in Pavillion. But the pits could not be blamed for contamination detected in the water monitoring wells 1,000 feet underground.
That contamination, the agency concluded, had to have been caused by fracking.
The EPA's findings in Wyoming are specific to the region's geology; the Pavillion-area gas wells were fracked at shallower depths than many of the wells in the Marcellus shale and elsewhere.
Investigators tested the cement and casing of the gas wells and found what they described as "sporadic bonding" of the cement in areas immediately above where fracking took place. The cement barrier meant to protect the well bore and isolate the chemicals in their intended zone had been weakened and separated from the well, the EPA concluded.
The report also found that hydrologic pressure in the Pavillion area had pushed fluids from deeper geologic layers towards the surface. Those layers were not sufficient to provide a reliable barrier to contaminants moving upward, the report says.
Throughout its investigation in Wyoming, The EPA was hamstrung by a lack of disclosure about exactly what chemicals had been used to frack the wells near Pavillion. EnCana declined to give federal officials a detailed breakdown of every compound used underground. The agency relied instead on more general information supplied by the company to protect workers' health.
Hock would not say whether EnCana had used 2 BE, one of the first chemicals identified in Pavillion and known to be used in fracking, at its wells in Pavillion. But he was dismissive of its importance in the EPA's findings. "There was a single detection of 2-BE among all the samples collected in the deep monitoring wells. It was found in one sample by only one of three labs," he wrote in his reply to ProPublica two weeks ago. "Inconsistency in detection and non-repeatability shouldn't be construed as fact."
The EPA's draft report will undergo a public review and peer review process, and is expected to be finali
zed by spring.
Newt Gingrich's Orwellian Campaign
Romney Super PAC Leaks Brutal Anti-Gingrich Ad
rustacus21 December 9, 2011
… the nation can see relief from the benefits of an environmental agency that adheres to its mandate, of preservation & protection of not just the environment, but the welfare of citizens & the nation. Those of us who have been watching the evolution of the "fracking" battle, have seen it unsuccessfully waged in communities beset by joblessness, geographic isolation & media dependent on corporate advertising dollars, which dictate suppression of news warning of the dangers posed by "fracking." W/the TarSands pipeline looking more uncertain, b/c of the obvious (a major spill in a section of which occured near the Wyoming/Montana border last year), threats to the environment & our national resource treasures, dictate greater oversite of companies who put profit over safety & the environment! BIG cheers out to the EPA – a government agency that has proven it's worth yet again!
Matt Taylor December 9, 2011


If principals want teachers to do their best work, they must protect their teachers' time like a mother polar bear protects her cubs.
Time is every teacher's scarcest resource. Teachers always, always need more of it. American teachers, because they spend more time in front of their students than any other developed nation, need it even more. Time is valuable to everyone. For teachers, and American teachers in particular, it is precious.
No employee in the history of employeedom has ever been upset over a cancelled staff meeting. Not one. Everyone feels like my favorite professor of education policy, Morgan Polikoff.
Having a meeting on your calendar that is subsequently canceled is so much better than never having scheduled that meeting at all.
If I were a principal, I'd be tempted to overschedule staff meetings just so I could give my teachers the gift of cancelling the majority of them. There's nothing better than found time; it's why we all love snow days so much.
Housekeeping stuff that could be shared in an email.
Teachers bitching about things, most of which don't apply to the majority of the people in the room.
A timid attempt at professional development (book studies, jigsawed articles, a slick instructional video produced by some company selling something in which a teacher instructs a small group of perfectly behaved students using a technique that is obviously better than anything you do but that might not work quite as well in your classroom) that might apply to a small number of people in the room.
The sharing of grand plans that have little chance of being implemented or pursued for longer than six months.
Principals, if you must conduct a meeting, then have a tight, relevant agenda, stick to it, and dismiss everyone as soon as the meeting is over or stops being productive. Your teachers, all of them, have better things to do.
Teachers should almost never join unpaid committees, and principals should not ask them to. This should be easy because most of the time a committee isn't needed at all.
Principals, before you start a new committee, ask yourself this question: Is the time I'm going to ask teachers to spend on this work more valuable than the time they would spend on their own work?
Whose decision is it to make? If it's yours and you'd like some input, then run it by a few staff members. You don't need a committee to do that.
Are you really going to listen to dissenting views? I've heard so many stories from teachers who've served on committees that made recommendations only to see them ignored by decision makers. That's the leaders' prerogative, but it's also a waste of everyone's time.
Have you already made up your mind? If yes, then skip the dog and pony show. Teachers can see through the pretense. We can tell, usually very early on, when a committee has only been formed to give the appearance of consensus-building and hearing all sides. Skip the committee and make the decision.
What is the minimum number of teachers needed for this committee?
What is the minimum amount of time you need to meet to come to a decision or get the work done?
Don't make teachers attend things that don't apply to them. Yes, I know. There are state laws requiring x amount of PD hours. So what? Do you really think states that don't want to fund public education are going to perform a thorough audit of teachers' PD time? Do what's best for your students and give teachers as much time as you possibly can to do their jobs as well as they can.
If you're worried about compliance, then schedule your PD day and allow your teachers to develop themselves in the manner they see fit. Set some parameters, provide some resources, and allow teachers to decide how creative they'd like to be when they log their PD hours. Damn near anything can be considered professional development, and your teachers are already experts at justifying everything they do.
Can someone other than teachers do the small things? That's a question principals should regularly ask themselves. I changed districts this year and one of the first differences I experienced was in how many fewer small tasks I was asked to complete at my new school.
At my previous school, I had to print off and sign my own attendance reports every week. Everything related to a field trip, from scheduling the buses to creating, sending, and collecting permission slips and money was my responsibility. If I needed a sub for any reason, it was my job to put in for one.
At my new school, office staff deals with the attendance reports, every permission slip is made for me, copied, and put in my mailbox, buses are scheduled by the office, as are substitutes for anything that's district-related. I'm going to a conference this week and the office signed me up and booked the hotel for me. All I have to do is show up.
Removing small tasks from teachers' plates does two things. First, every minute that a teacher spends on administrative tasks is a minute not spent on things that have the potential to directly affect students, which is what teachers are there for. Second, it shows teachers how valued their time is.
Here are just five small things principals who want to give their teachers more time might consider. With some thought, you can probably come up with many more.
1. Office staff should find substitute teachers, sign teachers up for conferences, and submit extra duty hours to accounting. These administrative tasks are just better handled by people who do administrative work all day. Fewer balls will be dropped when one or two people are responsible for these tasks instead of expecting teachers to take care of them.
2. Data entry should be done by someone other than your most highly-trained professionals. Don't ask teachers to scan tests or input numbers into a data warehouse. That's a huge waste of time and literally anyone in a school can do it.
3. Expedite the process teachers use to request help with technology or maintenance needs. Make the online form easy to find and easy to complete and submit.
4. Consider the location of copy machines. The farther your teachers have to walk to pick up copies, the more time they're spending doing nothing.
5. Assign recess, bus, lunch, and hall duties to non-teaching staff. It makes zero sense to have teachers stand around watching kids when they could be planning to better educate them.
These may seem like small things. It feels petty listing them. Surely, teachers can take a few minutes to print off attendance reports, sign them, and put them in a tray in the office. But all of the above adds up, and teachers already don't have enough time.
We don't care how effective you are.
We expect you to be effective, but we don't want to provide you with the time you need. Therefore, we expect you to use your personal, unpaid time to ensure effectiveness.
If you work for a district that has taken away your planning time, you either work for people who have no clue what it takes to do your job well, or who do and don't care what it does to your well-being.
This includes scheduling meetings during planning time. It includes forcing teachers to do PLCs during planning time. If those things are important, then schedule them outside of teachers' planning time.
One of the more inequitable practices in schools occur in those that schedule IEPs and other parent meetings during teachers' planning time. I worked for a district that did this and you did not want to be a teacher with more than a couple of identified students because it meant hours of additional work without pay.
Pediatricians don't work around parents' schedules, and no one accuses them of being insensitive to the needs of their patients. If it's important, and most meetings with parents are, then expect parents to find the time to attend, just like they do to get their kids to the doctor and themselves to the bank.
Provide planning time. Treat it as sacred. Move mountains to ensure that teachers never lose it so they may use it for its intended purpose.
As I wrote here, principals don't need lesson plans if their teachers are required to teach a board-approved program with strict fidelity. The lesson plans are done for them. If principals want to know if those scripted lessons are being followed, then they need only visit teachers' classrooms. The only time principals should ask for lesson plans is if they have a teacher who is struggling and the principal believes part of that struggle might be her inability to effectively plan. Even then, principals should only require plans for lessons they will observe, because plans don't actually mean anything unless they're followed.
Requiring lesson plans does two things: It sends a message of distrust, and it wastes teachers' time. Why any principal would want to do those two things is beyond me.
Good teachers communicate with parents; bad principals force them to. I've worked for a principal who required weekly newsletters that she wanted to see before they were sent home, a principal who strongly encouraged having a class website for parents to access, and a principal who expected teachers to make five positive parent phone calls per week. None of those things are bad (except asking to see the newsletters ahead of time), but there are good reasons teachers balk at being told to do them. The main reason is time.
Principals, everything single thing you require of teachers takes time that they do not have. Asking them to make five positive phone calls home is stealing 15-30 minutes from them. Either something doesn't get done, it gets done poorly, or it gets done when your teachers should be detaching from work. Avoid mandates. Let teachers decide how to best use their time.
I've written about this here, here, and here, so I won't belabor the point.
Principals should allow teachers to design their own homework policies and establish their own expectations. Since homework and grading has the potential to eat up hours of a teacher's time, it should be up to the teacher to manage it.
Too many principals pretend as though trade-offs do not exist for their teachers. They see little problem with adding one more thing to teachers' responsibilities. But principals who want to help their teachers do their best work don't just avoid giving their teachers more to do. They look at the way things are done in their buildings and find ways to free up more time for their staffs. Teachers know they'll pay for squandered time later. Principals who want the best from their teachers should recognize it, too.
For a long time, libraries have served as sanctuaries for many students and teachers. Libraries aren't being visited as often as they once were, but educators can still benefit from utilizing libraries in their lessons. Additionally, they provide a place of solitude and refuge from the hardships associated with day-to-day school life. Within the rows of books, there are other worlds to escape to, history to be revisited, and information to gather.
Many consider libraries to be dead because of today's focus on technology. This is a common misconception; in fact, many libraries are thriving across the country. As a teacher, offering the chance for your students to spend time in their local library will continue the support that is needed for libraries to keep their doors open.
Including a visit to your local library in your curriculum can benefit your students. It is there they have access to the news stories and history of their town that they cannot find in any other library. Today, many of the libraries' newspaper collections and historical photographs are being digitized and are available on their websites. However, research being conducted on students shows that information retention for data obtained in print is greater than digital media.
They serve as a community hub and meeting place.
They can offer a place for oral histories and storytelling.
Libraries create ties and partnerships between community members and organizations.
Many people aren't going to the library anymore because they can find answers to questions online so easily. The danger of the age of the internet, however, is the lack of credible sources. This has created a need for instilling critical analysis skills to enable our students to conduct effective research. Although there are a number of perks of the age of information, access to credible resources available at the library simply can't be beat.
With a deliberate focus on sustainability in schools around the globe, many teachers and students are asking themselves how to lessen their carbon footprint — and the answer can be found in supporting their local library. For example, much of the population believes that by purchasing a book to read on their tablet, they're helping to reduce waste. Many people also prefer to own their books, rather than renting them — but neither of these things are necessarily good for the environment. Especially after the rise of big booksellers like Amazon, it turns out that purchasing books online is actually worse for the environment than just borrowing the physical book from the library — whether digitally or not.
However, a lessened impact may be true when purchasing or reading books online in some communities. For those that live in rural areas, the combination of technology and library support can be found online. If a student or teacher possess a library card, they can gain access to any of the digitized material on the library's website, including e-books. Making information gathering available to all populations has always been the goal of public libraries.
Libraries provide a safe space for students to focus on their learning as well as access information from their numerous resources, including librarians, texts, and technological offerings. One study found that students whose first language is something other than English benefit from libraries the most. As a teacher, making libraries feel more available and beneficial may open new pathways for students you couldn't have anticipated before.
As a teacher, placing your student in a library can offer an opportunity for them to discover new interests. What students see in their feeds and their searches on the internet are all tailored to their previous preferences. They see the same advertisements in their social media for video games and clothing lines as a result of their search history. Their newsfeeds are filled with reports from questionable sources and saturated with pop culture.
Introducing them to new sources of reliable information can open them up to a range of thought-provoking, diverse perspectives. From their pre-K years to the day they reach for their high school diploma, books can help children learn how to take better care of themselves, make informed decisions, and strive for greater social equality. For example, Kindercare lists nine books that can help kids learn how to eat better, potentially avoiding major chronic health conditions later in life.
Moreso, allowing a student to disappear among the stacks of books at their local library may offer a chance to explore new worlds they have never known. Fostering independent reading has been found to significantly increase vocabulary development and reading comprehension. It also empowers students with the ability to use different technologies and become more competitive when they enter the global workforce.
Due to the diverse offerings at the library, there is something to appeal to every learning style and individual student. As a teacher, the numerous educational tools are invaluable resources, enabling you to develop more cohesive and engaging lessons in your classroom. If you don't have a library within your own school, consider scheduling your next field trip to explore your local library.


I didn't know (until recently) about the org.http4s.server.staticcontent package object. It seems to be a much more convenient way to host static content (one line, like wai-middleware-static). I've updated the docs to include it.
I think this is needed for Hugo to interpret the frontmatter in the file.
Looks like we haven't flagged all the flaky tests.


text:
Q: Storing small and simple persistent data on Google App Engine Java? I need to know what's the best way to store persistent data on google app engine in a situation like mine:
I only need to store a few relatively small amounts of data (a few hashmaps of strings to strings, with no string exceeding over ~300 characters). i'm estimating maybe maximum usage is 5 of these hashmaps and 3000 keys per hash map... The data needs to be around indefinitely, and will be updated once every ~30 minutes. would REALLY prefer not to have pay for service, as it would require a ton of beaurocratic procedures (corporate policy).
I've been trying to wrap my head around how data storage really works on app engine...

*

*can i just continue to use a static HashMap<String, String> to store all the data? this is how i currently have my deployment set up, and it seems to be working just fine for the past couple of hours (no data reset). i dont think i have any backend instances or anything set up.

*how long can i expect this data to last if it is in memcache or jcache? the documentation says it's volatile, but if something is used incredibly infrequently, will it just stay forever in cache?

*I've been looking at the Datastore options, but i'm so confused on what/if anything will cost money.

*can i store it in just like a raw .txt file somehow??

any help would be appreciated. thanks!

A: You can setup a little table on the DB, so that you have your pairs stored on a non-volatile place. You cannot rely on Memcache if these data should be preserved.
for point #4, you cannot use the filesystem on backend instances.
Hope this helps

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


Today's Reading: "Summer Images" by John Clare (1793-1864).
The C&O Canal Boat Festival begins today in Cumberland, Maryland.
Sodbuster Days start today at Fort Ransom State Park in Fort Ransom, North Dakota.
In 1977 on this day, the lights of New York City went dark after electrical storms knocked out power supplies.
It's the birthday of Nigerian novelist and playwright, Wole Soyinka, born in Abeokuta, Nigeria in 1934.
English novelist and playwright, David Storey (THE SPORTING LIFE) was born today in Wakefield, England 1933.
It's the birthday of French civil engineer, Eugene Freyssinet, born in Objat, France in 1879, who developed pre-stressed concrete.
It's the birthday of poet John Clare, a peasant born near Peterborough, England in 1793.
William Hedley, inventor of the first workable steam locomotive using friction between wheels and rails, was born today in Newburn, England in 1779.
Pistol and rifle maker Simeon North, who invented a way of using interchangeable parts in manufacturing, was born in Berlin, Connecticut in 1765.


X-Copper's experienced team of former police officers, criminal defence lawyers and paralegals will use our expert knowledge of the laws, court procedures and methods of law enforcement to fight for the best possible outcome for you. We are professional, effective and affordable. Can you afford not to have us on your side?


SRHS Theater from 4:00 p.m. - 6:00 p.m. Invited graduates and their parents attend this program to honor achievements of the Class of 2019. Invitations are sent from the counseling office to seniors receiving awards.
Senior Prom will be from 7:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. Prom bids are expected to be on sale at the Finance Office Monday, May 13, 2019 afterschool, through 3:00 p.m. Friday, May 31, 2019. Sale dates are subject to change. Cost of the bids have not yet been determined.
2:15-3:00 p.m. – Falcon's Nest (Cafeteria). Current 2018-19 I.D. card required.
Seniors must return all instructional materials AND have cleared all DEBTS before Tuesday, June 4, 2019. Students who owe a debt will not receive their cap & gown until the debt is cleared. See the Library Technician for options to clear debts.
Seniors report to school by 7:25 a.m., on Wednesday, June 5 for Periods 1, 3 & 5 & on Thursday, June 6 for periods 2, 4 & 6.
Tickets will not be sold at the door. A ticket will be required for individuals 3 years of age and older. Children under 3 without a ticket, must sit in the lap of someone holding a ticket.
Seniors will be given four (4) complimentary tickets for the graduation ceremony. Additional commencement tickets will go on sale in the Finance Office starting Friday, June 7, 2019 at 7:00 a.m. through June 11, 2019 at 3:00 p.m. The cost for additional tickets is $10.00 each. The four complimentary tickets for graduating seniors will be provided the day of cap and gown distribution.
Cap and gown distribution will be outside the Counseling Office from 8 a.m. to 12 p.m. There will be only one station to pick up gowns along with four (4) complimentary graduation tickets for graduating seniors.
Rehearsals will be held in the gym from 8:30 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. Rehearsal is MANDATORY for those who plan to participate in the Commencement Ceremony.
USD Jenny Craig Pavilion, Wednesday, June 12, 2019, 10:00 a.m.
During the Commencement Ceremony, caps and gowns are to be worn over the appropriate dress as discussed in the attachment. Report to USD north side of the JCP no later than 9:00 a.m. to be checked in and to form lines for the ceremony. Families will be allowed into JCP at approximately 9:00 a.m. Admittance to the graduation ceremony will be by ticket only. No tickets will be sold at the door.
Families wishing to purchase announcements or other graduation keepsakes may do so by contacting Josten's at 1-800-567-8367 or www.Jostens.com and/or @jostens_tallguy on Instagram. All purchases are optional. Caps and gowns (unless purchased) must be returned after the ceremony is completed prior to picking up diploma. We recommend families take pictures prior to graduation. Participation in the ceremony is voluntary for those meeting all graduation requirements.
Transcripts should be ordered first via Naviance and second through the Registrar for applications submitted electronically. For college applications submitted by mail as well as final transcripts requested for NCAA eligibility, please bring stamped, addressed envelopes to the Registrar's office before Friday, May 31.
Orders are optional. Contact information for the graduation photographer is www.diFrancophoto.com/SRHS or call (858) 472-6929.


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Sports / RSL / Sub-sections: More sections »ScheduleStandingsStatsRSL on KSL
NCAAF NFL NBA MLB NHL MLS NCAAB
Scott G Winterton, KSL
Sam Johnson can't stop scoring as Real Salt Lake tops Columbus, 1-0
By KSL.com | Posted - Jul 3rd, 2019 @ 11:05pm
Real Salt Lake vs. Columbus Crew SC | HIGHLIGHTS - July 3, 2019
SANDY — Even when the ball was supposed to be played to someone else (sorry, Damir Kreilach), Real Salt Lake forward Sam Johnson can't help but go for goal.
On Wednesday night, he bagged another — this time, a ball meant for him.
Johnson scored the only goal of the match just before the 40th minute, and Real Salt Lake went on to top the visiting Columbus Crew, 1-0 in front of an announced crowd of 19,030 fans at Rio Tinto Stadium.
Aaron Herrera's booming clearance — a rocket sent downfield from his own 18-yard box — provided the space for Johnson to scurry on to the end of it. The Liberian international raced past a pair of Crew defenders and furiously finished inside the bottom corner for his team-high seventh goal of the season.
Just as goalkeeper Nick Rimando drew it up, he said (and yes, he was kidding).
"I just told him to hit it away," Rimando said of Herrera. "I know, seeing that locker room, that we didn't have our best performance tonight. But we fought, and the bounce went our way on that play."
RSL coach Mike Petke praised the pass, praised the decision, and even posited that maybe — just maybe — Johnson would've been a star track and field sprinter in another career, another life or on another day.
"He's deceptively fast," Petke said. "He has very long strides, and it's very great to see that from the sidelines. And it was a great finish."
Columbus Crew midfielder Eduardo Sosa (20) and Real Salt Lake midfielder Nick Besler (13) work to get at the ball as Real Salt Lake and Columbus Crew play a Major League Soccer game at Rio Tinto Stadium in Sandy on Wednesday, July 3, 2019. RSL won 1-0. (Photo: Scott G Winterton, KSL)
Rimando earned the shutout for Real Salt Lake, which out-shot Columbus 14-7 and held the Crew without a shot on target. This, despite owning a simply majority of 55.4 percent of possession — and drawing four yellow cards, on Herrera, Corey Baird, Nick Besler and Bofo Saucedo.
Still, a win is a win — something RSL will take for the second-straight home match, to pair with a draw in its last road outing at Chicago. Those three points helped Salt Lake inch up the standings to a tie for sixth place in the Western Conference with 26 points — one point behind Minnesota United and the Houston Dynamo.
"Six points in two games, four days apart," Petke recounted. "But — and this is a compliment to my team when I say (it) — I know they can play a lot better. Great shutout, great grittiness to keep the result. But when we are at our best, it's far from what we were tonight. And again, that's a compliment to my players."
RSL will hit the road briefly Saturday at San Jose. Kickoff is scheduled for 8:30 p.m. MDT on KMYU and KSL.com.
The club returns home next Saturday, July 13 to face Philadelphia.
'I think I stole it': Real Salt Lake beats Sporting KC behind Sam Johnson's 2 goals

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Mark Twain said that the nice thing about science is that one gets such wholesale returns of conjecture from such a trifling investment of fact. Amazingly, he said it without even being exposed to modern astrophysics. The purpose of this review has been to summarize the facts now known about Seyfert galaxies, but the reason for their existence remains one of the most pressing astrophysical mysteries. The primary difficulty in explaining Seyfert nuclei is in accounting for their energies. Many have bolometric luminosities as great as 1045 ergs sec-1. Even this is 1012 solar luminosities, which has to arise in a volume about a parsec in diameter. Such a nucleus can be visualized by imagining the Crab Nebula radiating 107 as much energy as it does, since the absolute size, nonthermal radiation, and filamentary structure of the Crab likely resemble that of Seyfert nuclei. Obviously, some very efficient mechanism of energy production that can arise in a small volume is called for. The various possibilities for a theoretical explanation of the energy source(s) are reviewed by Saslaw (1974) and Burbidge (1970). To the extent that there is now a developing consensus, it seems to be in the direction of using gravity to explain things. This is not so much because of improvements in the theory of galactic nuclei, but is because observations of stellar X-ray sources have demonstrated empirically that gravitational accretion onto compact objects is a potent energy source (e.g. Blumenthal & Tucker 1974). Admittedly, such accretion is on a much smaller scale than needed in Seyferts. However, if a 107 M black hole or even 107 neutron stars were inserted into a galactic nucleus, most of the activity in Seyfert nuclei could be made to happen as a consequence of accretion onto these objects. But an explanation of how the required compact objects get into the nuclei requires comprehensive knowledge of galactic evolution, and that's another story.
I thank Vanderbilt University and the National Science Foundation for continued support of research on the problems reviewed herein. As it is customary to acknowledge one's working environment, I wish to report that this review was prepared at the Dyer Observatory, in the quiet and pleasant Tennessee forest.


The Early Childhood program offered by Lemont-Bromberek Combined School District 113A serves students who have been identified as having a disability. Students typically enter the Early Childhood program via Early Intervention Transition or Preschool Screening which identifies students who are in need of further assessment.
The Early Childhood program is delivered by staff members with different areas of expertise working together within the same setting. The program meets 5 days per week for 150 minutes per day (Both AM and PM Sessions are offered.). Door to door transportation is provided by the district for many students. The District 113A Early Childhood Program is housed at Oakwood School, 1130 Kim Place, Lemont.
Preschool students with speech only needs are served in our walk-in speech program which meets at one of our district's schools, as arranged with parents.
The Learning Friends Preschool offers blended Early Childhood programming to the district. Housed at Oakwood School, it blends children with disabilities and their typical peers, in a 5 day per week, half-day program, morning or afternoon. Several evening parent/child activities are offered throughout the year to complement the learning and solidify the home-child-school connection.
Learning Friends follows the Creative Curriculum for Preschool, which focuses on project-based investigations as a means for children to apply skills while addressing four areas of development: social/emotional, physical, cognitive, and language. It is designed to foster the development of the whole child through teacher-led, small and large group activities. Opportunities exist for self-selected activities which center around 10 main interest areas (blocks, dramatic play, toys and games, art, library, discovery, sand and water, music and movement, computers, and outdoors). In addition, students participate in daily gross motor time, and weekly library and music classes. The Illinois Early Learning and Developmental Standards provide the framework for instruction.
Registration is ongoing. All potential registrants will attend our early childhood screening. If you're interested in learning more about this program, please contact Sue Buhle, Student Services Administrative assistant, at 630-257-2286 extension 4615 for details.
Please first see our Learning Friends FAQ for a list of frequently asked questions. You may find an answer to your question there.
Morning Session 8:45 - 11:15 A.M.
Afternoon Session 12:45 - 3:15 P.M.


As you use your Blackboard course you may find that you received achievements in the form of certificates or badges.
1. You can view what achievements may be possible by clicking on the achievements menu in your course (if your instructor has added this menu) or by clicking on Tools and then achievements.
3. When you unlock an achievement you will be immediately notified within Blackboard. Click on View Now.
4. If you have received a certificate you may print it by clicking on the print icon.
5. To print the certificate click on Print Certificate.
Instructors can reward students on their Blackboard courses with achievements in the form of badges and certificates. These can be set up so that students receive the badge or certificate when they have fulifilled certain criteria that the instructor has set, for example achieving a certain level in a test, completing certain course activities, and participating in group work.
This guide demonstrates how to create achievements and badges for your Blackboard course.
1. Enter your Blackboard course.
2. Check that Edit Mode is set to On.
3. Enter a content area where you wish to hold the achievement.
4. Hover over the Tools menu and choose Achievements.
5. Enter the name for the achievement; pick a colour if you wish.
6. The location of the achievement will be automatically set as the content area you were in at step 4 above.
8. Choose whether you would like for students to know that this achievement is attainable by setting the Visible to students before receiving option. If you wish for students to know about this achievement before they have earned it select Yes. If you wish students not to be aware of this achievement until they have earned it select No.
9. Enter a description about this achievement.
10. Click on Define Triggers.
7. Choose the type of achievement you wish to give.
Course Completion: A certificate reward is given, optionally a badge can be given too. A certificate can be printed out. A badge can be sent to Open Backpack.
Milestone: A badge is given. A badge can be sent to Open Backpack.
Custom: The reward could be a badge or a certificate. A certificate can be printed out. A badge can be sent to Open Backpack.
11. Next we define the rules that must be met in order to qualify for the achievement. Multiple rules can be created that must all be met in order to qualify. Rules are created one at a time.
12. Choose the name for your rule.
13. Next we will go through the different types of criteria you can use to determine whether a student qualifies to receive the achievement. You can use any of the following criteria for each rule you create.
14. The date setting allows you to choose a specific due date for the achievement to be awarded. If students meet the criteria after the due date they would not qualify for the achievement.
15. Membership. Here you can select that the students have to have a certain username (i.e. the achievement is only available to certain students) or belong to a group. To use the group feature you should already have created the groups in your Blackboard course.
16. Grade. This allows you to set that the student must have achieved a certain graded outcome via the Grade Centre. For example achieving a 70% or above in a test. If you set a grade rule click on Add Item. You may then add further grade rules if you wish.
17. Review status. Set that students must have reviewed certain content in order to obtain this achievement. You should have set review status on those content items already.
18. Choose to add another rule, or click Select Reward.
19. Set the Name of the Issuer of the badge. The default is University of Southampton but you can change this.
20. If you wish you may set the badge or certificate to only be valid for a limited time.
22. Note that you may upload your own badge image if you wish.
23. The "publish to mozilla" functionality is no longer working.
24. Click on Save and Exit.
25. Your achievement is shown together with an indication of how many of your students could currently qualify to receive it.
26. When students view the Achievements menu item you added in the previous guide they will see what achievements they could earn.
Instructors can reward students on their Blackboard courses with achievements in the form of badges and certificates. These can be set up so that students receive the badge or certificate when they have fulfilled certain criteria that the instructor has set, for example achieving a certain level in a test, completing certain course activities, and participating in group work.
In non-academic uses of Blackboard badges and achievements can be used to demonstrate extra-curricular activities.
If you plan to use badges and achievements it's a good idea to have a special menu item that will allow students to see all the badges and achievements they could possibly earn within your course.
This guide demonstrates how to create achievements with badges and certificates for your Blackboard course.
This guide for students covers receiving a reward and putting it into their Open Backpack.
2. To do this ensure the Edit Mode is enabled and click on the Plus (+) icon at the top left of your course menu.
3. From the menu that appears choose Tool Link.
4. Type in a name of your choice.
5. From the Type dropdown menu choose Achievements.
6. Tick Available to Users.
8. Move your newly created menu item to the position your would like it to have in your menu.
9. Now when students click on this menu they will see what achievements they have earned and what achievements they could earn.


Forget Angry Birds , We Have Fire Birds !!!
Very interesting commentary! And it looked like the birds were going to take your camera away!
I had a hard time understanding the commentary, but those birds are bit like you crocs with wings, are they not? Take cover!


text:
By Jess Fournier • 1 year ago
Everyone Deserves to Live: A Feminist Conversation about Gun Violence
This piece was coauthored by Mahroh Jahangiri and Jess Fournier
In the wake of another horrific school shooting in Texas, I am feeling many things, and I imagine that you reading this are too. Sadness, at the loss of ten children the same age as my sister, who will never get to grow up. Rage, at our morally bankrupt politicians and their latest spineless suggestions (less doors in schools, anyone?) that mention anything and everything but guns.
Disappointment, at the fact that this has happened again, despite the badass young people who restarted a national conversation about American gun violence in the wake of Parkland.
I think at this point we all know what the mainstream response to this shooting will be: thoughts & prayers, mental health, calls for high-capacity magazine bans and age limits, NRA fear-mongering. In the aftermath of Santa Fe, there are, understandably, divided responses among the survivors and their community about the proper way to respond to the shooting. As a feminist and as a young person who has grown up seeing this happen again and again, I feel the same sense of desperation and need for something to be done after so much inaction.
But while I'm heartened to finally see movement on this issue, as a feminist I find myself generally skeptical about methods which rely on the state to fix gun violence. Mahroh and I discussed this and together, we realized this: some reforms pushed by gun reform activists actively deny people freedom. While there are other solutions we support, in order for them to be truly liberatory, they need to be rooted in a far more expansive understanding of what gun violence looks like in people's everyday lives.
Let's start with the demands we disagree with from the gun control movement, because some of these — creating registries and increasing the power of the police — are just terrible ideas.
Jess Fournier: Demands that attribute mass shootings to mental illness and propose limiting medical privacy laws to let healthcare providers collaborate with police are incredibly disappointing. A hyperfocus on mentally ill people as the cause of gun violence is dangerous and ineffective. The vast majority of mentally ill people (who, by the way, make up one in six U.S. adults, including me!) do not commit mass shootings: less than 5% of gun killings in the US are committed by people with a diagnosed mental illness. Banning people with mental health conditions from owning guns wouldn't have prevented Parkland, and demonizing people with mental health conditions allows for further encroachment on their civil rights.
Mahroh Jahangiri: Right and the same goes for relying on terrorist watch lists. Of those people killed by mass shooters in 2017, there is no clear evidence that any were on a terror watchlist (we would have heard, if otherwise) — so the argument that a watchlist ban would have prevented Parkland is entirely moot. More importantly, watch-lists already exist and while ineffective at preventing mass shootings, they are very effectively used to limit the civil rights and liberties of Muslim communities, prevent our free movement, and place us in indefinite detention in torture cells.
JF: It has been really encouraging to see black young people — who have historically led gun activism — call out white gun control advocates and show how these racist demands are a direct result of them being silenced before and since the Parkland shooting. Black Parkland survivors have vehemently rejected their peers' demands to put more cops in schools, which inevitably leads to students of color being assaulted and criminalized by police.
The gun rights movement has a long history of advocating only for the gun rights of white men: the murders of black gun owners like Philando Castile are considered justified, regardless of their legal gun ownership, and black women defending themselves from domestic violence are criminalized. But as the black Parkland students have shown, if the gun control movement does not take into account racism, they may also cause terrible harm.
MJ: Right, Noor Salman's trial (and thank goodness acquittal) a few weeks ago also reveals the brutal disregard for survivors of color by those prosecuting gun violence. It is both horrifying and not terribly shocking that the only partner of a recent mass shooter to be taken to trial is a Muslim woman married to — and abused by — a Muslim man who committed mass violence.
As an aside, I also want to make a point here about the push to call white mass shooters "terrorists". Trust me, I've spent nearly 20 years fuming about Muslims being labeled as "terrorists" while white men are described as experiencing "mental health issues." And yet, now that the American left has finally caught up on the absurd racism of this media framing, I find little solace in calling Nicholas Cruz a "terrorist." Sarah Schulman writes about the Parkland shooter:
The killer's father died 3 years ago. He started posting scary racist images of guns and hurting animals. Then his mother died 3 months ago. His girlfriend broke up with him and got a new boyfriend. He started telling people he wanted to shoot up the school. He got expelled. Why expel a messed up kid whose parents just died? What do we do with people who cannot handle immense pain and loss? Kick them to the curb and let them buy guns?
I agree and I wonder: does calling individual shooters — many of whom may indeed have been experiencing a mental health crisis — terrorists do anything other than score white people woke internet points? Calling white shooters who are not state agents "terrorists" seems to merely expand the category of people that the state can use other seemingly legitimate forms of gun violence against. I'd rather reject that analysis altogether and instead ask: where could society have better raised these young men so that they didn't become shooters?
JF: I appreciate you pointing this out. Like calling someone a criminal, calling someone a terrorist is dehumanizing and meant to distance them from the rest of society. Our entire prison system supports the idea that people who commit violence deserve to be locked away forever. But if we want to stop this violence from happening, I believe we need to consider the humanity of people who have harmed and even murdered. We owe it to ourselves and to the world we want to create.
So we've established that the most disturbing "reform measures" are ones that would give the state more license to surveil, imprison, and kill black people and other people of color, Muslims, and disabled people. But what about other gun control measures, like Vermont raising the gun ownership age to 21 and banning high-capacity magazines? Do we think that kind of reform is useless?
MJ: I don't think so! I'm truly happy with Vermont raising the age from 18 to 21, etc etc. My issue then is not that remaining gun control demands are nonsensical — they make sense! — it is that they only focus on murders by civilian shooters and do not address the other very important ways in which people are killed with guns: by the state. (They also ignore the reasons — i.e. poverty, racism — many men pick up guns in the first place.)
JF: That makes a lot of sense. Like obviously arming teachers is ridiculous. But we're missing the larger context of who has the most power to wield and kill with guns in our society: the police and military.
MJ: Yeah. To be clear: every movement has short and long term demands — and I get that raising an age is more doable than abolishing the government's stockpile of tools of violence. An expanded anti-racist position on gun control doesn't mean we can't or shouldn't do anything immediately to block rifle sales. What it does mean is that we need a far more broader vision of what and who we are fighting for.
To create that vision, let's talk about who is killed by guns. And who they are killed by.
JF: The Gun Violence Archive reports that 15,593 people in the U.S. were killed by guns last year. 458 people were killed by mass shooters. And approximately 1,147 people (probably more) were killed by police. Every single one of these people is one victim too many. But why don't we consider people shot by cops as part of the overall narrative of American gun violence?
MJ: As Black Lives Matter activists have been pointing out for decades, police violence is gun violence. To some extent, mainstream and white-led gun control organizations are responding to the demands of black activists to acknowledge the victims of gun violence who are people of color, as evidenced by Naomi Wadler's speech at the March for Our Lives. But these organizations are unwilling to truly support black victims of gun violence by calling out the most common perpetrators: police officers.
JF: Last month, campus police at the University of Chicago shot a black student experiencing a mental health crisis. The week before, NYPD murdered Saheed Vassell for the crime of standing on the street in Brooklyn holding a shower head. Family said Mr. Vassell also had mental health issues. But the response from mainstream gun control organizations to two black people with mental health conditions becoming victims of gun violence was noncommittal at best.
Everytown for Gun Safety posted the following statement on Facebook after Saheed Vassell's murder:
Saheed Vassell, 34, was fatally shot by police in Brooklyn after receiving calls he was threatening people with a gun. The object, however, turned out to be a metal pipe with a knob on it. [...] Every day in America, 96 people are shot and killed. This includes shootings by police, which disproportionately affect the Black community. Police shootings are part of the daily toll of everyday gun violence in America, and law enforcement must be part of the solution (italics added)
In other words, these advocates are saying that the solution to law enforcement murdering people of color and people with disabilities is more law enforcement. This is profoundly disturbing.
MJ: Also worth noting is that the issue of agents of the United States government being given the license to shoot people, and the dehumanization of their victims, extends far beyond the U.S.' domestic police force. While Customs & Border Patrol don't release statistics on how many people they kill, they also shoot and kill undocumented immigrants. The number of people murdered by U.S.-led occupation forces in Iraq and Afghanistan is so grossly high that it is impossible to accurately count — but can be assumed to be in the millions.
Central to the gun control movement is the notion that people do not deserve to live in fear of being murdered by a gun. If we know that the only purpose of AR-15s is to kill large numbers of people very quickly in incredibly painful ways that have no purpose in "civilian life," they are no more moral when the US military is using them to kill people in other countries.
These numbers only capture violence that ends in murder. Does gun violence have to include murder to demand our attention? What if we were to expand our understanding of gun violence to include all of the ways in which guns make it possible for the state to harm, incarcerate, assault, detain, and deport people?
JF: The threat of gun violence (and its ultimate result: death) is central to the state's control of marginalized and criminalized populations. Police use guns to violently suppress indigenous water protectors and black communities in Ferguson, allow Border Patrol agents and cops to rape undocumented people and people in custody, and prevent people from crossing arbitrary borders.
MJ: Guns aren't just about individual deaths; the government's organized control of access to guns is a way to organize and monopolize violence. What would the cops be without guns? What would the military and the state be without them?
Ultimately, our vision of an anti-racist, anti-imperialist, pro-feminist gun control is one that not only acknowledges that no one deserves to die, but that everyone deserves to live — and to thrive — free from state as well as interpersonal violence.
Image credit: Nate Gowdy, The Stranger
Jess is a first-gen college graduate, cat parent, and LGBTQ person living in Boston, MA. At Feministing, Jess writes about the intersection of state and interpersonal violence, LGBTQ communities and radical activism. They can usually be found on public transportation or the internet.
Jess is a first-gen college graduate, cat parent, and LGBTQ person living in Boston, MA. They can usually be found on public transportation or the internet.
Read more about Jess
Why do the cops keep protecting white supremacists?
glo Merriweather, anti-police violence activist targeted by police, goes free
This past weekend in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, dozens of police assaulted and arrested community members holding an anti-racist canned food drive and potluck on the campus of the University of North Carolina.
The community potluck was a response to the wave of right-wing backlash since a racist Jim Crow-era confederate statue on the campus was finally toppled three weeks ago. In response, white supremacists have gathered at the pedestal of the former "Silent Sam" statue with heavy police protection – ...
This past weekend in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, dozens of police assaulted and arrested community members holding an anti-racist canned food drive and potluckRead More
Last Friday in Columbus Ohio, Donna Castleberry Dalton, a 23-year old woman and mother of two was shot and killed by an undercover police officer after he forced her into his car and attempted to arrest her during a "prostitution sting."
Dalton's friends and family are challenging the official police narrative of events. CPD Officer Andrew Mitchell is claiming he shot Donna Dalton 8 times in self-defense after she stabbed him in the hand during the attempted arrest. But the fact Dalton was not handcuffed at the time of the murder suggests ...
Last Friday in Columbus Ohio, Donna Castleberry Dalton, a 23-year old woman and mother of two was shot and killed by an undercover police officer after he
"My life is currently in the hands of the state," glo Merriweather, a black trans and queer activist based in Charlotte, North Carolina, told me a few months ago. They were fighting for their freedom after being criminalized for protesting in the wake of the police murder of Keith Lamont Scott in Charlotte in 2016.
glo's trial was set to begin this week. Only a few weeks ago, Mecklenburg District Attorney's office dropped all charges against glo. But while glo is now free, state repression against black liberation activists in Charlotte continues, and glo's reflections—on their case, state violence and the role of feminism in all of it—are as essential ...
"My life is currently in the hands of the state," glo Merriweather, a black trans and queer activist based in Charlotte, North Carolina, told me a few months ago. They were fighting for their freedom ...
gun control▪gun violence▪Parkland▪police violence▪state violence


The Solar Roadways will collect solar energy to power businesses and homes via structurally-engineered solar panels that are driven upon, to be placed in parking lots and roadways in lieu of petroleum-based asphalt surfaces. The Solar Road Panels will contain embedded LEDs which "paint" the road lines from beneath to provide safer nighttime driving, as well as to give up to the minute instructions (via the road) to drivers (i.e. "detour ahead"). The road will be able to sense wildlife on the road and can warn drivers to "slow down". There will also be embedded heating elements in the surface to prevent snow and ice buildup, providing for safer winter driving. This feature-packed system will become an intelligent highway that will double as a secure, intelligent, decentralized, self-healing power grid which will enable a gradual weaning from fossil fuels. Replacing asphalt roads and parking lots with Solar Roadway panels could be a major step toward halting climate change. Fully electric vehicles will be able to recharge along the roadway and in parking lots, finally making electric cars practical for long trips. It is estimated that is will take roughly five billion (a stimulus package in itself) 12' by 12' Solar Road Panels to cover the asphalt surfaces in the U.S. alone, allowing us to produce three times more power than we've ever used as a nation - almost enough to power the entire world.
The Solar Roadway™ is a series of structurally-engineered solar panels that are driven upon. The idea is to replace all current petroleum-based asphalt roads, parking lots, and driveways with Solar Road Panels™ that collect and store solar energy to be used by our homes and businesses. This renewable energy replaces the need for the current fossil fuels used for the generation of electricity. This, in turn, cuts greenhouse gases literally in half.
The Sagle, Idaho-based Solar Roadways has been awarded a U.S. Department of Transportation contract that will enable it to prototype the first solar road panel.
Road Surface Layer - translucent and high-strength, it is rough enough to provide great traction, yet still passes sunlight through to the solar collector cells. It is capable of handling today's heaviest loads under the worst of conditions. Weatherproof, it protects the electronics layer beneath it.
Electronics Layer - Contains a large array of cells, the bulk of which will contain solar collecting cells with LEDs for "painting" the road surface. These cells also contain the "Super" or "Ultra" caps that store the sun's energy for later use. Since each Solar Road Panel™ manages its own electricity generation, storage, and distribution, they can heat themselves in northern climates to eliminate snow and ice accumulation. No more snow/ice removal and no more school/business closings due to inclement weather. The on-board microprocessor controls lighting, communications, monitoring, etc. With a communications device every 12 feet, the Solar Roadway™ is an intelligent highway system.
Base Plate Layer - While the electronics layer collects and stores the energy from the sun, it is the base plate layer that distributes power (collected from the electronics layer) and data signals (phone, TV, internet, etc.) "downline" to all homes and businesses connected to the Solar Roadway™. The power and data signals are passed through each of the four sides of the base plate layer. Weatherproof, it protects the electronics layer above it.
The proposed Solar Roadway™ would become an intelligent, self-healing, decentralized (secure) power grid. A large-scale system such as in North America would allow the east coast to power the west coast during the first three hours of the day when the west coast is still dark. Conversely, the west coast would power the east coast during the last three hours of the day when the east coast was dark. A world-wide system could potentially see the "lit" half of the world always powering the "dark" half of the world.
In the contiguous 48 states, there are over 25,000 square miles of impervious surfaces (roads, parking lots, driveways, sidewalks, etc.), not including actual buildings and structures. Continuing development adds another quarter of a million acres each year. If these impervious surfaces were replaced with Solar Road Panels™, how much electricity could be produced?
If we average only 4 hours of peak daylight hours (1460 hours per year), this gives us: 9.19 Billion Kilowatts x 1460 hours = 13424295514511873.350923482849604 Kilowatt-hours (or) ≈ 13,424 Billion Kilowatt-hours of electricity.
Now, keep in mind that this is a conservative estimate.
According to the Energy Information Administration, the United States (all 50) used just over 4,372 Billion Kilowatt-hours of electricity in 2003, while the entire world (including the U.S.) used approximately 14,768 Billion Kilowatt-hours of electricity total. It is easy to see that the Solar Roadways™ could produce over three times the electricity that we currently use in the United States. Slightly increasing the conservatively low 15% efficiency would allow the U.S. (the "lower 48") to produce the entire world's electricity needs.
About 40% of U.S. carbon dioxide emissions stem from the burning of fossil fuels for the purpose of electricity generation. Coal accounts for 93% of the emissions from the electric utility industry.
This is where some of the numbers become "fuzzy": as best we can tell, it is estimated that approximately half (different agencies provide different estimates, but the average is about 50%) of the greenhouse gases that are causing global warming come from the burning of fossil fuels (primarily coal) to generate electricity. The Solar Roadway™ could, therefore, eliminate half of the greenhouse gases currently being produced. Summary: the Solar Roadway™ can cut the causes of global warming in half!
The average cost of asphalt roads in 2006 was roughly $16 per square foot. The cost does not include maintenance (pot hole repair, repainting lines, etc.) or snow/ice removal. The average lane width is 12 feet, so a 4 lane highway would be 12' (width per lane) x 4 (lanes) x 5280' (one mile) = 253440 square feet. Multiply this by $16 per square foot and your one-mile stretch of asphalt highway will cost $4,055,040.00 and will last an average of seven years.
We plan to design the Solar Roadways™ to last at least 21 years (three times that of asphalt roads), at which time the panels would need to be refurbished. Adding no additional cost to the current asphalt system, this will allow us to invest about $48 ($16 x 3) per square foot. This means that if each individual panel can be made for no more than $6912.00, then the Solar Roadway™ can be built for the same cost as current asphalt roads. However, asphalt roads don't give you anything back.
Based on 15% efficiency, each Solar Road Panel™ can produce an average of 7.6kWh per day. Our hypothetical 4-lane, one-mile stretch of road would require 1760 Solar Road Panels™. That means that, each day, this stretch of Solar Roadway™ would produce at least 13,376 kWh of electricity. That's 4,882,240 kWh per year - enough to take 500 homes completely "off grid". You don't get that out of asphalt!
In addition, the Solar Roadway™ replaces our current aging power grid. The Solar Roadways™ carry power – not from a centralized point like a power station, but from the power-producing grid itself – along with data signals (cable TV, telephone, high-speed internet, etc.) to every home and business connected to the grid via their driveways and parking lots. In essence, the Solar Roadways™ becomes a conduit for all power and data signals.
For an accurate cost comparison between current systems and the Solar Roadways™ system, you'd have to combine the costs of asphalt roads, power plants, and power and data delivery systems (power poles and relay stations) to be compatible with the Solar Roadway™ system, which provides all three.
2003: the US used just over 4,372 Billion kilo-Watt hours of electricity. This would require 14,574 300MW power stations (coal-fired, nuclear, etc.). For the sake of argument, let's assume coal-fired power stations, which cost roughly $1B each for a 300MW plant.
4.84 billion (12' by 12') Solar Road Panels™ would be required to replace the current asphalt road system, parking lots, and driveways in the 48 contiguous states. This is enough to provide three times more electricity than the United States used in 2003 and almost enough to supply the entire world.
If the Solar Road Panels™last 21 years before needing to be refurbished (not replaced), then we can triple the amount of money spent on asphalt roads, which have to be replaced every seven years.
Adding the cost of the power plants and tripling the cost of the asphalt roads, we get a total cost of $48,059,670,000,000. Divide this amount by the 4.84 billion Solar Road Panels™ required to replace the asphalt, and we get a target cost of $9923.16 per panel. This number is considerably higher if you pad in the costs of utility poles and relay stations that will no longer be needed with the Solar Roadways™ system.
In addition, there is no way to calculate additional savings such as the reduction in costs of vehicle and health insurance (due to lighted night roads, wildlife avoidance systems, snow/ice removal, etc.). Accidents and the loss of life (both human and wildlife) will be drastically reduced upon the Solar Roadways™.
Then there is the whole environmental issue: elimination of the fossil fuel plants will take away about half of the CO2 emissions that are known to be contributing to the climate crisis. Providing a means to recharge all-electric cars anywhere along the roadside will open the door for the elimination of the internal combustion engines, which account for most of the other half of the CO2 emissions. With internal combustion engines now obsolete, our dependency on oil - foreign or domestic - will finally be over with.
Conclusion: for roughly the same cost of the current systems (asphalt roads and fossil fuel burning electricity generation plants), the Solar Roadways™ can be implemented. No more Global Warming. No more power outages (roaming or otherwise). Safer driving conditions. Far less pollution. A new secure highway infrastructure that pays for itself. A decentralized, self-healing, secure power grid. No more dependency on foreign oil.


text:
Criticism of the Media Giving Legitimacy to Sexist Tripe…
Posted by antigonemagazine in Media, women's issues
criticism, Media, Sexist
Australia's The Age has a great article about how news outlets cover the ridiculousness that is Maxism's recent poll of the World's Five 'Unsexiest Women'. Because women's sexiness or unsexiness is obviously their defining feature. And their can't possibly be anything to women besides whether they are considered 'Do-able' by young Maxim men…
According to the editors at Maxim, Spears scraped in at number five because she carried excess "pudge" following the birth of her two sons. Madonna featured following her "rapid post-nuptial deterioration" and appearances in "pharmacy menopause aisles". Sandra Oh, star of the TV drama Grey's Anatomy, made the list for her "cold" manner and "boyish figure". British singer Amy Winehouse sported "translucent skin" and a "rat's nest mane".
Former Sex and the City star Sarah Jessica Parker must be thrilled to discover that she topped the poll. The magazine editors thought her a clear winner, whose presence in a show with sex in the title was apparently inexplicable given the fact that she has a head like a horse.
So this is how I see it. Giving birth is not sexy. If you used to be sexy, but now carry a bit of healthy post-pregnancy weight, you're also out of favour. If you don't strut around with your breasts on display or are an otherwise prickly character (which means, I think, unwilling to get said breasts out for the boys at Maxim), you're a sure bet for the list. Best of all, if you display the natural signs of ageing or are experiencing natural bodily processes like menopause, then you're fair game.
Perhaps buoyed by the knowledge that celebrity sells, the results of the Maxim poll have done the circuit as a news item — yes, a news item — over the past week. I saw the list on at least one commercial network's nightly news bulletin and it has been news in India, the United States and Britain. It even made its way onto The Age website, which is where I first read about it. All this comes on the back of a recent Esquire poll ranking the sexiest women alive. That too, it seems, was newsworthy.
In calling this kind of vicious, sexist rubbish "news", the poll is given a smidgen of legitimacy. The media implicitly support the notion that it is OK to scrutinise and rank women on the basis of the most superficial and degrading of all criteria — their appearance.
In the past three decades, as women have made advances in public life and steps have been made towards greater equality between the sexes, the scrutiny of women's bodies seems to have gathered pace. Take politics as an example. In Media Tarts, Julia Baird's excellent book examining the media's treatment of Australian female politicians, Baird argues that women in politics are rarely judged on their merits. Media commentators are far more interested in women's hairstyles (Bronwyn Bishop, Julia Gillard), sexual histories (Cheryl Kernot), polka-dot dresses (Joan Kirner), sexiness (Julie Bishop, Natasha Stott Despoja) or unsexiness and weight (Amanda Vanstone) than their policy stances or the contributions they might make to the fabric of our nation.
Indeed, in many respects, women are still seen as less the sum of their parts and more the sum of their "bits".
I can hear the naysayers: if you don't like lists like these, don't read them. And I agree. But even if — like me — you don't actively seek out polls like these, assessments of women permeate every aspect of our culture. Ask any woman and she'll tell you that such images are the reason she spends hours in front of the bathroom mirror, worrying about her every blemish or ripple of cellulite.
Media outlets need to be much more reflective about the role they play in fostering this kind of self-scrutiny among women. They must abandon the practice of uncritically promoting sexist material about women, of the kind we see in the Maxim poll. Because, as a woman, I can only do so much to avoid such harmful nonsense.


Every once in a while, we need a jolt of energy to keep us moving. Maraca is a proud Mexican brand that makes tasty cold brew coffee for on-the-go coffee lovers. Inspired by movement and energy, they chose the name Maraca to go with the perfect colorful and vivacious identity. Their tagline Activamente Activo, which means actively active, is the brand's heart & promise. We wanted to give the brand a playful and unperfect feel that reflects in the roughness of the wordmark variations. We created a fun and carefree brand that makes you want to jump up and go.


Each year during the Shravan months, a big fair is organized in which many devotees and pilgrims flock to this place in order to worship Lord Shiva in a traditional way. You will find that the whole of the temple complex is decorated with lights. You will be able to hear conch shells reverberates the whole place. All in all you will find 124 temples whether small or big.
People from all walks of life celebrate this fair with joy and happiness. 15 days before the advent of the fair the shopkeepers come from different places for selling their items. Brahmakund is considered to be an auspicious place where the people are able to take a holy dip in the Brahma Kund also known as a pool. They also worship Lord Shiva and pray to the God to fulfill their dreams.
The fair is held around the 15th of the Shrawan month which is between August and September as per the Hindu calendar. It is celebrated atop the hills Dantrai in Dantrai village.
You can easily reach Jageshwar from any part of Uttarakhand. The city which is the nearest is that Almora from where you will be able to get taxis and buses in order to reach Jageshwar town.
For a comfortable stay there are many small hotels and guest houses in Jageshwar. Those of you who wish to stay in a luxury hotel then you can stay in Almora.


Some I held as a child.
No room to pour out, no echo to rattle in their ears.
My mouth felt like the arroya split.
Until we met near the December pines.
You pushed me out into that frozen lake.
My mouth filled up in frost.
When I spoke, my words emerged slowly, like icy swirling ghosts.
You were the miracles in those days.
The founder of my blue heart.
was the day I lost my voice again.
To speak endlessly, while you smile back at me.
You're the tiger eye to my wobbly mind.
To teach me what I mouth on a pixelated spread.
And not just be another chalkboard poet.
You were the core to my apple.
The yin in my yang.
Before you all I knew was to forget, to stop asking, to stop tearing, and to bobble like drift-wood.
Trapped an alien connection, of what we said in the dark.
We found a common need.
When daylight came streaming in, duality, apparently.
You came to my rescue and built within me a honest temple.
So where did all the magic go?
Must've palmed my ego too tightly.
And I was too eager to rise.
For the feast is tossed over cliff's edge.
And my heart, like bruised blueberries scattered on the floor.
Somehow I'm back digging in the ruins. As the seeker surrounded, in bleeding hearts.
In the sap-like of the night.
Spun in the heady amber-burnt midnight.
Living in the archaic Aspen.
To pluck me out of this ground.
Stepping barefoot out into a leafy glimmering patch. Junebearers shoo-in little red desires. O' how they dazzle my senses.
Like when I was nine and picked all the wild strawberries from Gram's patch. Couldn't resist the taste. With stained fingertips and crimson mouth…I buried the leftover leafy evidence.
That Metamora June, when I was nearly seventeen; I gave you more than a handful of plump red gems. I had somewhere buried my leftover stained heart in that festival ground.
Your daughter, now seventeen, is the Jen gem of June. She harvest her own Junebearers with hands like yours.
O' Junebearers…Junebearers, the truth you hold about June. They are here, as you are. They are gone, as you are.
Hannah, you always soared higher than the skylark. Your dawn song, the loudest, banishing all the darkness of our childhood days.
I often tried to mimic the way you caught their attention, your energy, your beauty, your unshattered confidence—how you sought more life then the day could bring.
You showed me how to be brave through all our youthful escapades. Held my hand when we jumped into that crystal dusk lake. It's okay, the fish will only caress your legs.
When we climbed out on that roof, it mattered not what season…The country midnight fields echoed our laughter. Your voice booming the loudest and aliveness for the both of us.
When did you start banishing the day? Throwing fire at the sun? You're battling against your strengths.
Yes, there is time to lie under the grieving rock, but the moss has begun to grow on top. And the air pockets are closing in on your withdrawal. It must be hot!?
In the stark night, you pour poison down your throat, but you're not meant for this bitterness. Even so you broke your wing, the dawn still misses your summoning.
I'm only your little sister, but I'll fly and sing out…Tell the sun you're just under the shade. That your song will shimmer in the reflective morning again. Once your done being the Nova of the night.
Poem and Photo by : Naomi Ruth S. W.


text:
Landing without nose gear: 'That was rough'
by Mari A. Schaefer, Inquirer Staff Writer, Posted: December 9, 2008
Deb Shapiro knew there was a problem when she saw the flight attendant's face "go blank" during a call from the pilot of her flight into Philadelphia.
Shapiro, of Souderton, first thought the delay in her usually 15-minute flight from Allentown on the morning of Nov. 16 was routine. Instead, the 35 passengers and three crew members found themselves bracing for a landing without the plane's front wheel.
by Mari A. Schaefer, Inquirer Staff Writer
Crew members on the de Havilland Canada Dash 8 turboprop, operated by Piedmont Airlines as a US Airways Express flight, reported hearing a "creaking and groaning noise" as the plane taxied to the Allentown runway. They thought the noise was normal. Once airborne, the nose gear took "three to four seconds longer to retract than the main landing gear," according to a National Transportation Safety Board preliminary report.
Upon the approach to Philadelphia, a red light indicated unsafe nose gear when the crew tried to extend the landing gear.
"That is when the pilot made an announcement," said Shapiro, 49, a computer trainer for Oracle, who was on her way to San Francisco for business. Her heart sank "about a good foot."
Crew members tried other ways to drop the gear, according to the NTSB report. They contacted the control tower, and performed a flyby. The nose-gear doors were open, but the gear was not visible.
In the cabin, Shapiro said, the flight attendant prepared passengers for an emergency landing. One passenger, who was also an airline flight attendant, helped explain the crash position - feet on the floor, hands on legs, head down - and answer questions. No one panicked or cried, Shapiro said.
"I'm sure we were all getting religious or getting upset inside, but for the most part, we were pretty good," she said.
A passenger across the aisle from Shapiro pulled out the air-sickness bag.
When the attendant "said no sharp objects, and take your glasses off, I think a lot of it really hit home then," Shapiro said.
As the plane descended, she heard the two attendants yelling, "Head down, brace; head down, brace," even as one went hoarse.
The plane landed on its back wheels. The crew tried to keep the front of the plane from coming down until the slowest speed possible, according to the NTSB report.
Shapiro thought she would "fly out of her seat" when the plane's nose hit the runway and skidded 525 feet.
"Oh, that was rough," she said. "It is amazing how much smoother a landing is with wheels."
When the plane stopped, the cabin erupted in cheers and applause for the crew. Out the window, Shapiro saw emergency crews surrounding the plane with hoses.
"They just started foaming us like crazy," she said. "They were all dressed up in those suits and looked like space guys."
The preliminary NTSB report said the links - cables or tubes on top of the steering columns that help center the wheel - in the nose gear were broken.
Steven Farrow, president and chief executive officer of Piedmont Airlines, called the landing "very, very unusual," and praised the crew.
"This is the first time we have had to make a landing without all three wheels," he said. Piedmont has 55 planes and about 150,000 landings each year, and has flown this type of 50-passenger plane since 2001. Farrow declined comment on the specifics of the investigation.
According to the NTSB, there were 32 landing accidents involving large U.S. commercial aircraft between August 2000 and November 2007.
Passengers got off the tilting plane in Philadelphia using stairs pushed up to the front exit. A bus took them to a US Airways lounge, where they were treated to fruit and pastry. Airline personnel retrieved luggage left behind and rebooked missed flights.
When a friend asked if she was going to continue on her trip, Shapiro said she would.
"Unless I flap my arms, I'm not going to get to San Francisco any other way," she said.
Contact staff writer Mari A. Schaefer at 610-892-9149 or mschaefer@phillynews.com.
Posted: December 9, 2008 - 3:01 AM
Mari A. Schaefer, Inquirer Staff Writer
Young mother missing since September is found dead in the basement of a South Philly twin
Ellie Rushing and Mensah M. Dean
Philadelphia Defender Association refuses to recognize public defenders union — for now
Juliana Feliciano Reyes
Virginia's Supreme Court upholds weapons ban at gun rally planned for Monday where violence is feared
Denise Lavoie, Associated Press
Human remains in submerged vehicle ID'd as Burlco woman missing since 2014
Robert Moran
Body found in Olney dumpster identified as 22-year-old man
Ellie Rushing
Alan Dershowitz, Kenneth Starr on Trump impeachment legal team
Eric Tucker and Zeke Miller, Associated Press


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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


Kate Bradley is as passionate about health as she is about cooking and eating. Kate discovered her love of cooking at a young age, and quickly evolved a sugar-free, gluten-free, vegan approach to cooking that focusses on delicious, nourishing whole foods and recipes that are simple enough to cook every day. Kenko Kitchen takes healthy eating to a whole new level, with recipes for every meal of the day, including drinks, snacks and delectable sweet treats. Kate reinvents old favourites such as pop tarts, burgers, pizza and banoffee pie (free of all that makes them unhealthy, of course) as well as bringing her unique flair and knowledge of global cuisine to create new iconic dishes such as banana chia bread, Japanese miso eggplant with tamari soba, rainbow Thai stir-fry, chipotle black bean tacos, turmeric and flax-seed crackers, chocolate and almond bread and butter pudding, and coconut dulce de leche. Welcome to Kenko Kitchen, you'll like it here.


This week, in Parshat Terumah (Ex. 25:1-27:19), we hear of G-d's plans to build the Mishkan, a portable holy space which the Levites would end up shlepping through the desert for forty years. The details of it are mind-numbingly repetitive—even in their gold-inlaid wood and purple and blue and argamon splendor—perhaps an indication of what it means to build sacred space or sacred community: lots of little details, wash, rinse, repeat.
One word that caught my attention this time around was what the Mishkan was to be built to house. It doesn't say "Torah" or "the tablets," but rather הָעֵדֻת/haEdut, literally "the Witnessing," commonly translated as "the Pact" (JPS) or "the Testimony" (Everett Fox). This Hebrew root ע–ו–ד means "to return, repeat, do again," and an עד/eid is a witness, as you might need for a trial or a wedding.
I've been doing a lot of witnessing lately. I'm currently taking a class with Tiffany in a practice called Authentic Movement, an opportunity to deeply explore the self through free association of the body moving in space while being witnessed. This last piece, I'm learning, is so important. What does it mean to be authentic while being witnessed? What I've experienced is that there is an observation effect, as with a photon that can be both wave or particle until you point an instrument at it. The act of being witnessed is a powerful clarification and crystallization of the unconscious in the moment, bringing up into light what had previously been in shadow.
As witness, though, I feel a special charge. In witnessing, there is great trust being put in me, to hold vulnerability and confidentiality, to behold the externalization of someone's innermost process.
So, what is it Divine Will, however you understand that, asking us to put into the very center of our spiritual lives? What are we called to bring to the core of authentic community? Witnessing. The act of recalling ourselves and each other to our highest selves, our vulnerable truths, the ones we didn't fully know until they were witnessed. And the only container that I know of which can hold this kind of power isn't gold-inlaid wood and purple and blue and argamon; it's human. It is humans coming together in belonging. May we all be blessed with that kind of authentic belonging somewhere in our lives!


This year I have been very excited for the Easter range and it is finally here. The 2016 Easter range has lots of new products as well as many favourites returning from last years collection. There are also three Oxford Street exclusive products as part of this years range.
This bath bomb has a sweet candy scent.
A bath bomb/ bath melt mix, this is a super sparkly toffe scented egg.
Brand new this year, this huge bath bomb is caramel scented and is designed to be cracked in half! There is even a little surprise inside.
This is an Oxford street exclusive product, but can also be found inside the Bouncy Bunny and Carrot Gift sets. This product has a lovely citrus scent.
Which Came First Bath Bomb – £6.95 each.
Another very large bath bomb that is designed to be cracked in half, there is a little mini bath bomb waiting inside this one.
This bubble bar has had a redesign this year and it now exstremly bright and colourful! These carrots smell just like the snowman shower jelly from the Christmas range.
This is an Oxford street exclusive product.
Again another Oxford street exclusive, tweet it's designed like a little tiny chick and is very cute indeed.
A huge bubble bar with a wonderful violet scent.
A colourful and fruity soap with lots of added sparkle.
A very cute rabbit shaped showe jelly with a subtle orange scent.


text:
Boy-racers and bylaws again
> ThePress: "Police sought ban for boy-racer hot spots" I've previously commented on Christchurch City's moves to close roads because of boy-racer concerns, largely raising jurisdictional concerns about whether it's legal possible to do so: >LAWS179: "Boy-racers and bylaws banning cars on roads" Putting those concerns aside for one moment, it's encouraging to see the City is genuinely grappling with Bill of Rights implications, namely whether a ban might unreasonably affect people's freedom of movement:
Council staff are compiling a report for councillors on ways to tackle boy racers in McLeans Island Road, but a car ban could prove difficult as it may violate the Bill of Rights Act. ... Banning cars is a problem on a main route like McLeans Island Road as it is more likely to violate the right to freedom of movement enshrined in the act than a ban on a minor road. Council solicitor David Rolls said a ban would be considered, but it had to be looked at carefully to avoid a legal challenge. "You have to consider if it is a reasonable intrusion on the freedom of movement, and the more well-used the road is, the greater the intrusion on freedom of movement," he said. "You have to weigh that against other competing factors and weigh up if the intrusion is warranted, given the mischief you are attempting to remove." Rolls would write a legal opinion on ways to deal with the McLeans Island Road problem for a February council meeting. The Manukau City Council has banned cars on 160 streets, including about five main roads. Manukau traffic engineer Bruce Conaghan said the ban could be imposed on main roads without violating the Bill of Rights Act. "We are not being restrictive on those that are carrying out something that is legal. The Christchurch council is in a good position to include those roads in their bylaw," he said.
It's always important to remember that the Bill of Rights does not provide a blanket restriction on regulation which affects people's freedom of movement. Limits are permissible if they are demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society, generally treated as insisting that the limits are proportionate to their objective.
The comments from the City's solicitor seem to be heading in the right direction and indicate they are testing carefully regulation by applying this proportionality calculus. In contrast, the comments of the Manukau City engineer demonstrate a complete lack of appreciation of the Bill of Rights.
I look forward to seeing how this issue plays out when it comes to Council in February next year.
Hi ther I was just wandering if you can answer this question for please: How much of a problem do you think boy racers are?
Please get back to me a.s.a.p!
What do you think of the ways that the police are dealing with boy racers?
Can you suggest other ways that the community can deal with this percieved problem?
New Zealand Order of Merit (Titular Titles) Bill: ...
Boy-racers and executive road closures
NZ Centre for Public Law Public Lecture: "The Unit...
TV3, opinion polls and calculating the seats
The Lobbies and Fighting in Public
Pōwhiri and Human Rights: A Contest of Values?


Great idea, thanks for contributing!
Your third one www.bib-arch.org is one I frequent often because I subscribe to their Biblical Archaeology Review (BAR) magazine. They also hold annual conferences/symposiums in the US where leading Syro-Palestinian/Biblical archaeologists come to speak to give the latest updates on their fieldwork or discuss special topics, one of which I attended just last year in Atlanta.
1. Archaeology: Digging up Bible Stories - A personally run site by a guy named Steve Rudd who knows a heck of a lot about archaeology as relates to the Exodus and also a lot about the "desert nations" like Edom, Midian, the Amalekites, and the Arabians (from his [foot]notes you can tell that he is very well acquainted with the scholarly literature). He also has lots of personally annotated maps taken from Google Maps, which he then puts labels of different regions, dates of occupation, and travel routes on top of. I don't agree with all his conclusions but it is interesting nonetheless.
2. Luke Chandler's Blog. He gives updates with pictures almost every week of different archaeological projects (many of which he digs on) in Israel. I've chatted with him in the comments section of some of his articles before. I love his blog, its very informative and up-to-date. He also has a YouTube channel with some great footage of both modern and archaeological sites in Israel from his video camera - it is at least second best (in a good sense) to actually being able to be there yourself!