Had a clear out of too small shoes and donated them to shoe aid.
Re-loaned our repayments from KIVA – this is a micro loan site that allows you to support small operations around the world to start their new business. I was given a KIVA token for a birthday, and we enjoyed deciding which project to support, and have enjoyed redistributing the money as it's repaid. KIVA feature as a gift idea on the first part of our Gifts That Keep On Giving post at Less-Stuff and I would agree it's a brilliant gift!
Today we also went to a local a school Christmas Fair and Christmas Tree Festival in our town – we bought several presents which supported four small businesses in our area, as well as donating to the school and church via raffles and tombolas. It's also meant the kids got a run around and some sweets – which is also their perfect Saturday morning!.


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This Handbook of Civil Engineering Calculations covers over 500 key calculations that show you exactly how to compute the desired values for a particular design-going quickly from data to finished result. Using both customary and SI units, this comprehensive engineer's must-have resource is exactly what you need to solve the civil engineering problems that come your way. From structural steel to reinforced concrete, from bridges and dams to highways and roads, lets you handle all of these design calculations quickly-and more importantly, correctly.
Risk and Reliability Analysis: A Handbook for Civil and Environmental Engineers presents key concepts of risk and reliability that apply to a wide array of problems in civil and environmental engineering. The authors begin with an overview of the art of making decisions in the presence of uncertainty and then explain the fundamentals of probability that will be applied throughout the book. Ample illustrations and detailed real-life examples make Risk and Reliability Analysis essential reading for present and future engineers in the fields of civil, environmental, biological, and agricultural engineering, as well as the watershed sciences.
The ultimate field companion for construction professionals. It covers: Earthworks and landscaping, Drainage, sewers, and irrigation, Temperature, area, and time measurement, Map and surveyor information, Worldwide weather data, Metric conversions and much more. Presents all of the formulas and calculations you need most when working on-site. Provides fast access to the information you want, when you want it. Invaluable for all areas of general site construction, it gives you fasr access to the information you want when you want it complete with practical examples.
The Earthquake Engineering Handbook is a comprehensive resource that covers the spectrum of topics relevant to designing for and mitigating earthquakes. In it, international experts present engineering practices, research, and developments in North America, Europe, and the Pacific Rim countries. The emphasis is on professional applications, with discussion ranging from basic dynamics and geoscience to new technologies intended to avoid rather than resist the forces of earthquakes. Formulas, tables, and illustrations give immediate answers to questions arising in practice, and summaries of the essential elements of each topic paint a global picture from which readers can develop understanding and the ability to think beyond the results presented.
Compiles all the data necessary for efficient and cost-effective highway design, building, rehabilitation, and maintenance. Includes metric units and the latest AASHTO design codes. It includes latest techniques for designing, building, rehabilitating and maintaining highways. You'll see how to apply modern technology--and how to capitalize on state-of-the-art materials--to successfully deal with every major aspect of highway engineering: Environmental issues; Highway location, design, and traffic; Design and construction of subgrade and base course; Pavements; Bridge engineering; Culvers, drainage, and short span bridge repalcement; Safety systems; Retaining walls; Lighting, marking, and signing; Sound barriers and glare screens; Life cycle cost and value engineering.
The support you need to build high-quality temporary structures. All the technical, business, and legal know-how you need to build and maintain 17 different temporary support and access structures has been gathered in one convenient problem-solver. In the completely revised Second Edition of the Handbook of Temporary Structures in Construction, Robert Ratay and a team of experts provide you with full coverage of the latest construction materials and methods, different contracting techniques, new codes and standards, new dispute resolution procedures, tested cost controls, using temporary structures in repair and rehab work, OSHA updates on construction site safety and much more.
Provides you with the quality assurance plan - a systematic outline of all the procedures you must perform to evaluate project quality. Shows how the QA plan is correlated with codes and standards. It includes specifically Total Quality Management, ISO 9000, and quality control. The Codes and Standards Section, Contract Documents, and Legal Documents Sections have also been extensively updated. Construction Inspection Handbook systematically reinstates the importance of quality by providing you with a comprehensive quality assurance plan.
A complete reference that gives concise, information on the planning, design, and construction of a variety of engineered structures and includes practical examples and detailed descriptions of design procedures. It includes current standard specifications and codes (including the 1994 AASHTO specifications) and the latest design developments. Concise, practical and user-friendly, this one-of-a-kind resource gives you not only up-to-the-minute information on the planning, design, and construction of a variety of engineered structures, but also practical examples and detailed descriptions of design procedures.
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This Wide-ranging reference book encapsulates every aspect of civil engineering-from structural design soil mechanics, sewage disposal, and statistics to hydraulics and land surveys - and related areas such as mining, and electrical and mechanical engineering. It includes material on quantity surverying and contract terms.
This practical resource offers complete coverage of foundation engineering, emphasizing the geotechnical aspects and the use of the 2006 International Building Code. Foundation Engineering Handbook explains how to develop a complete program of foundation investigation, conduct geotechnical field and laboratory studies, and analyze data for the design of foundations. Evaluating construction and preparing foundation engineering reports is also covered. It includes: Soil mechanics, Field testing, Earth slope stability evaluation, Seismic analysis, 2006 International Building Code and much more.
An international team of experts has joined forces to produce the Bridge Engineering Handbook. They address all facets-the planning, design, inspection, construction, and maintenance of a variety of bridge structures-creating a must-have resource for every bridge engineer. This unique, comprehensive reference provides the means to review standard practices and keep abreast of new developments and state-of-the-art practices. An abundance of worked-out examples give readers step-by-step design procedures and the section on Worldwide Practice provides a broad and valuable perspective on the big picture of bridge engineering.
This well established text provides a succinct introduction to the theory of civil engineering hydraulics, together with a large number of worked examples and exercise problems with answers, to help readers assess their understanding of the theory and methods of analysis and design. It includes hydraulic structures and an expanded section on the gradient method for pipe networks design. This first/second year textbook provides a succinct introduction to the theory of civil engineering hydraulics, together with a large number of worked examples and exercise problems with answers. The revised edition features a new chapter on some basic hydraulic structures and an expanded section on pipe networks design, with some more worked examples.
This unique handbook compiles essential information on the theory, regulation, analysis, and design for the construction of seismically safe structures throughout the world in one comprehensive volume. Experienced engineers from thirty-four countries present their national seismic codes and demonstrate their application with quantitative examples. Seismic codes of seismically active countries are included, from Mexico to Italy to Egypt to India. Each chapter details a country's geography and geology; history of recent significant earthquakes; and the socioeconomic context of the seismic code and its implementation.
Land Development Handbook includes six sections: feasibility and site analysis, conceptual design, schematic design, final design, plan submission and permitting, and construction. The engineering perspective is dominant, and the book's brief mentions of smart growth and new ways of designing feel largely extraneous to the business at hand. It includes suburban street design devotes two pages to pedestrians, and the list of suggested readings in the chapter on development patterns and principles. The engineering perspective is dominant, and the book's brief mentions of smart growth and new ways of designing feel largely extraneous to the business at hand.
Written by Robert Day, one of the most respected names in the field, Geotechnical Earthquake Engineering Handbook is a one-stop resource that gives you instant access. Provides in-depth earthquake engineering analysis as applied to soils. Includes worked-out problems illustrating earthquake analyses and current seismic codes. Specifically devoted to seismology, geotechnical engineering basics, earthquake analysis, and site improvement methods. It gives you instant access to: Field and laboratory testing methods and procedures Current seismic codes Site improvement methods, In-depth earthquake engineering analysis as applied to soils, Subsurface exploration data, Fundamental geotechnical engineering principles and much more.
A complete guide to the design of earthquake resistant structures, with up-to-date information on planning, analysis and design. Provides engineers, architects, developers and other professionals with a bridge between theories and concepts of seismic design and their implementation. Its intention is to provide engineers, architects, developers, and students of structural engineering and architecture with authoritative, yet practical, design information. It bridges the gap between advances in the theories and concepts of seismic design and their implementation in practice..


8 years after the first album, two 7″ from Kernkrach and a CDr self-released in 2016 with singles and tracks previously featured on compilations, Moonlandings is the latest long awaited album from Gertrud Stein, a solo act from London who's striking again with a self-released 4 tracks EP.
It kicks off with 2m2, a killer track rhythmed by synthetized percussions evoking whiplash sounds over a gritty bassline and a pulse that could drive people berserk on the dance floors. Monotonie carries on with the drive of tight analogue drums and a raw bass that is typical of her sound. On the B side, Sad Song is a throbbing slow track with more robotic rhythms and melancholic lyrics with spacey effects reminiscent of laments from beyond. Then Wires and Lights ends in beauty with another generous dose of lovely synth tunes and dissonant percussions. In its whole, the minimal groove and trippy synths that were assembled here should satisfy the cravings of any minimal electronics junkie.
The dark energy emerging from Moonlandings definitely seems to come from outer space. I was glad to find back the trademark sound of Gertrud Stein, but more importantly, I was very excited to find the same drive and madness that was pushed even further.


text:
John Michael Greer: False Promises
Tags: "diminishing returns", "john michael greer", false promises, law, progress, retrotopia, techno utopia
Categories : collapse, technology
How an obscure Austrian philosopher saw through our empty rhetoric about 'sustainability'
"Sustainability" is, ironically, a growth industry. Ever since the term "sustainable development" burst onto the scene in 1987 with the release of Our Common Future (also known as the Brundtland report), there has been a dizzying increase in rhetoric about humanity's relationship with our planet's resources. Glossy reports – often featuring blonde children in front of solar panels or wind turbines – abound, and are slapped down on desks as proof of responsibility and stewardship.
Every few years a new term is thrown into the mix – usually preceded by adjectives like "participatory" or "community-led". The fashionability of "resilience" as a mot du jour seems to have peaked, while more recently the "circular economy" has become the trendy term to put on grant applications, conference notices and journal special editions. Over time journals are established, careers are built, and library shelves groan.
Meanwhile, the planetary "overshoot", to borrow the title of a terrifying 1980 book, goes on – exemplified by rising concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide, warmer oceans, Arctic melting, and other signs of the times.
With all this ink being spilled (or, more sustainably, electrons being pressed into service), is there anything new to say about sustainability? My colleagues and I think so.
Three of us (lead author Ulrike Ehgartner,
second author Patrick Gould
and myself) recently published an article called "On the obsolescence of human beings in sustainable development".
In it we explore the big questions of sustainability, drawing on some of the work of an unjustly obscure Austrian political philosopher called Gunther Anders.
Who was Günther Anders?
He was born Günther Siegmund Stern in 1902. While he was working as a journalist in Berlin, an editor wanted to reduce the number of Jewish-sounding bylines. Stern plumped for "Anders" (meaning "other" or "different") and used that nom de plume for the rest of his life.
Anders knew lots of the big philosophical names of the day. He studied under Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger. He was briefly married to Hannah Arendt, and Walter Benjamin was a cousin.
But despite his stellar list of friends and family, Anders himself was not well known. Harold Marcuse points out that the name "Stern" was pretty apt, writing:
His unsparingly critical pessimism may explain why his pathbreaking works have seldom sparked sustained public discussion.
While Hiroshima and the nuclear threat were the most obvious influences on Anders' writing, he was also crucially influenced by the events at Auschwitz, the Vietnam War, and his periods in exile in France and the United States. But why should we care, and how can his ideas be applied to modern-day ideas about sustainability?
Space precludes a blow-by-blow account of what my colleagues and I wrote, but two ideas are worth exploring: the "Promethean gap" and "apocalyptic blindness".
Anders suggested that the societal changes wrought by the industrial age – chief among them the division of labour – opened a gap between individuals' capability to produce machines, and their capability to imagine and deal with the consequences.
So, riffing on the Greek myth of Prometheus (the chap who stole fire from Mount Olympus and gave it to humans), Anders proposed the existence of a "Promethean gap" which manifests in academic and scientific thinking and leads to the extensive trivialisation of societal issues.
The second idea is that of "apocalyptic blindness" – which is, according to Anders, the mindset of humans in the Age of the Third Industrial Revolution. This, as we write in our paper:
…determines a notion of time and future that renders human beings incapable of facing the possibility of a bad end to their history. The belief in progress, persistently ingrained since the Industrial Revolution, causes the incapability of humans to understand that their existence is threatened, and that this could lead to the end of their history.
Put simply, we don't want to look an apocalypse in the eye, even if it's heading straight towards us.
The climate connection
"So what?" you might ask. Why listen to yet another obscure philosopher railing about technology, in the vein of Lewis Mumford and Jacques Ellul? But I think a passing knowledge of Anders and his work reminds us of several important things.
This is nothing new. Recently, the very notion of 'progress' has come under renewed assault, with books questioning our assumptions about it. This is not new of course – in a 1967 short story collection about life at the United Nations, Shirley Hazzard had written:
About this development process there appeared to be no half-measures: once a country had admitted its backwardness, it could hope for no quarter in the matter of improvement. It could not accept a box of pills without accepting, in principle, an atomic reactor. Progress was a draught that must be drained to the last bitter drop.
The time – if ever there was one – for tinkering around the edges is over. We need to take stronger action than simply pursuing our feelgood preoccupation with sustainability.
This begs the question of who is supposed to shift us from the current course (or rather, multiple collision courses. That's a difficult one to answer.
The hope that techno-fixes (including 100% renewable energy) will sort out our problems is a dangerous delusion (please note, I'm not against 100% renewables – I'm just saying that green energy is "necessary but not sufficient" for repairing the planet).
Similarly, the "circular economy" has a rather circular feeling to it – in the sense that we've seen all this before. It seems (to me anyway) to be the last gasp of the "ecological modernist" belief that with a bit more efficiency, everything can simply keep on progressing.
Our problems go far deeper. We are going to need a rapid and fundamental shift in our values, habits, behaviours, and outlooks. Put in Anders' terms, we need to stop being blind to the possibility of apocalypse. But then again, people have been saying that for a century or more.
Tags: "apocalyptic blindness", "Promethean gap", behaviours, circular economy, climate, collision course, division of labour, Günther Anders, habits, progress, renewable energy, sustainability, techno-fixes, values
Categories : sustainability
Limits to growth: policies to steer the economy away from disaster
Samuel Alexander, University of Melbourne
Samuel Alexander
If the rich nations in the world keep growing their economies by 2% each year and by 2050 the poorest nations catch up, the global economy of more than 9 billion people will be around 15 times larger than it is now, in terms of gross domestic product (GDP). If the global economy then grows by 3% to the end of the century, it will be 60 times larger than now.
The existing economy is already environmentally unsustainable. It is utterly implausible to think we can "decouple" economic growth from environmental impact so significantly, especially since recent decades of extraordinary technological advancement have only increased our impacts on the planet, not reduced them.
Moreover, if you asked politicians whether they'd rather have 4% growth than 3%, they'd all say yes. This makes the growth trajectory outlined above all the more absurd.
Others have shown why limitless growth is a recipe for disaster. I've argued that living in a degrowth economy would actually increase well-being, both socially and environmentally. But what would it take to get there?
In a new paper published by the Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute, I look at government policies that could facilitate a planned transition beyond growth – and I reflect on the huge obstacles lying in the way.
First, we need to know what we're aiming for.
It is now widely recognised that GDP – the monetary value of all goods and services produced in an economy – is a deeply flawed measure of progress.
GDP can be growing while our environment is being degraded, inequality is worsening, and social well-being is stagnant or falling. Better indicators of progress include the Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI), which accounts for a wide range of social, economic and environmental factors.
Cap resources and energy
Environmental impact is driven by demand for resources and energy. It is now clear that the planet cannot possibly support current or bigger populations if developing nations used the same amount of resources and energy as developed nations.
Demand can be reduced through efficiency gains (doing more with less), but these gains tend to be reinvested in more growth and consumption, rather than reducing impacts.
A post-growth economy would therefore need diminishing "resource caps" to achieve sustainability. These would aim to limit a nation's consumption to a "fair share" of available resources. This in turn would stimulate efficiency, technological innovation and recycling, thereby minimising waste.
This means that a post-growth economy will need to produce and consume in far less resource-intensive ways, which will almost certainly mean reduced GDP. There will of course be scope to progress in other ways, such as increased leisure time and community engagement.
Work less, live more
Growth in GDP is often defended on the grounds that it is required to keep unemployment at manageable levels. So jobs will have to maintained in other ways.
Even though GDP has been growing quite consistently in recent decades, many Westerners, including Australians, still seem to be locked into a culture of overwork.
By reducing the average working week to 28 hours, a post-growth economy would share the available work among the working population. This would minimise or eliminate unemployment even in a non-growing or contracting economy.
Lower income would mean we would have less stuff, reducing environmental impact, but we would receive more freedom in exchange. Planned degrowth is therefore very different to unplanned recession.
Redirect public spending
Governments are the most significant player in any economy and have the most spending power. Taking limits to growth seriously will require a fundamental rethink of how public funds are invested and spent.
Among other things, this would include a swift divestment from the fossil fuel economy and reinvestment in renewable energy systems. But just as important is investing in efficiency and reducing energy demand through behaviour change. Obviously, it will be much easier to transition to 100% renewable energy if energy demand is a fraction of what it is today.
We could fund this transition by redirecting funds from military spending (climate change is, after all, a security threat), cutting fossil fuel subsidies and putting an adequate price on carbon.
Reform banking and finance
Banking and finance systems essentially have a "growth imperative" built into their structures. Money is loaned into existence by private banks as interest-bearing debt. Paying back the debt plus the interest requires an expansion of the monetary supply.
There is so much public and private debt today that the only way it could be paid back is via decades of continued growth.
So we need deep reform of banking and finance systems. We'd also need to cancel debt in some circumstances, especially in developing nations that are being suffocated by interest payments to rich world lenders.
The population question
Then there's population. Many people assume that population growth will slow when the developing world gets rich, but to globalise affluence would be environmentally catastrophic. It is absolutely imperative therefore that nations around the world unite to confront the population challenge directly.
Population policies will inevitably be controversial but the world needs bold and equitable leadership on this issue, because current trends suggest we are heading for 11 billion by the end of this century.
Anyone who casually dismisses the idea that there is a limit to how many people Earth can support should be given a Petri dish with a swab of bacteria. Watch as the colony grows until it consumes all of the available nutrients or is poisoned by its own waste.
The first thing needed is a global fund that focuses on providing the education, empowerment and contraception required to minimise the estimated 87 million unintended pregnancies worldwide every year.
Eliminating poverty
The conventional path to poverty alleviation is the strategy of GDP growth, on the assumption that "a rising tide will lift all boats". But, as I've argued, a rising tide will sink all boats.
Poverty alleviation must be achieved more directly, via redistribution of wealth and power, both nationally and internationally. In other words (and to change the metaphor), a post-growth economy would eliminate poverty not by baking an ever-larger pie (which isn't working) but by sharing it differently.
The richest 62 people on the planet own more than the poorest half of humanity. Dwell on that for a moment, and then dare to tell me that redistribution is not an imperative of justice.
So what's stopping us?
Despite these post-growth policy proposals seeming coherent, they face at least four huge obstacles – which may be insurmountable.
First, the paradigm of growth is deeply embedded in national governments, especially in the developed world. At the cultural level, the expectation of ever-increasing affluence is as strong as ever. I am not so deluded as to think otherwise.
Second, these policies would directly undermine the economic interests of the most powerful corporations and institutions in society, so fierce resistance should be expected.
Third, and perhaps most challenging, is that in a globalised world these policies would likely trigger either capital flight or economic collapse, or both. For example, how would the stock markets react to this policy agenda?
Finally, there is also a geopolitical risk in being first to adopt these policies. Reduced military spending, for instance, would reduce a nation's relative power.
So if these "top-down" policies are unlikely to work, it would seem to follow that if a post-growth economy is to emerge, it may have to be driven into existence from below, with communities coming together to build the new economy at the grassroots level.
And if we face a future where the growth economy grows itself to death, which seems to be the most likely scenario, then building up local resilience and self-sufficiency now will prove to be time and energy well spent.
In the end, it is likely that only when a deep crisis arrives will an ethics of sufficiency come to inform our economic thinking and practice more broadly.
Samuel Alexander, Research fellow, Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute, University of Melbourne
Tags: banking, consumption, economy, environmental, finance, GDP, growth, impact, limits, measuring, population, poverty, progress, public spending, reform, samuel alexander, work less
Categories : limits to growth
The Myth of Human Progress
After reading this excellent article, you will know why I admire Chris Hedges so much……
Posted on Jan 13, 2013 on the Truthdig website
Clive Hamilton in his "Requiem for a Species: Why We Resist the Truth About Climate Change" describes a dark relief that comes from accepting that "catastrophic climate change is virtually certain." This obliteration of "false hopes," he says, requires an intellectual knowledge and an emotional knowledge. The first is attainable. The second, because it means that those we love, including our children, are almost certainly doomed to insecurity, misery and suffering within a few decades, if not a few years, is much harder to acquire. To emotionally accept impending disaster, to attain the gut-level understanding that the power elite will not respond rationally to the devastation of the ecosystem, is as difficult to accept as our own mortality. The most daunting existential struggle of our time is to ingest this awful truth—intellectually and emotionally—and continue to resist the forces that are destroying us.
The human species, led by white Europeans and Euro-Americans, has been on a 500-year-long planetwide rampage of conquering, plundering, looting, exploiting and polluting the Earth—as well as killing the indigenous communities that stood in the way. But the game is up. The technical and scientific forces that created a life of unparalleled luxury—as well as unrivaled military and economic power—for the industrial elites are the forces that now doom us. The mania for ceaseless economic expansion and exploitation has become a curse, a death sentence. But even as our economic and environmental systems unravel, after the hottest year in the contiguous 48 states since record keeping began 107 years ago, we lack the emotional and intellectual creativity to shut down the engine of global capitalism. We have bound ourselves to a doomsday machine that grinds forward, as the draft report of the National Climate Assessment and Development Advisory Committee illustrates.
Complex civilizations have a bad habit of destroying themselves. Anthropologists including Joseph Tainter in "The Collapse of Complex Societies," Charles L. Redman in "Human Impact on Ancient Environments" and Ronald Wright in "A Short History of Progress" have laid out the familiar patterns that lead to systems breakdown. The difference this time is that when we go down the whole planet will go with us. There will, with this final collapse, be no new lands left to exploit, no new civilizations to conquer, no new peoples to subjugate. The long struggle between the human species and the Earth will conclude with the remnants of the human species learning a painful lesson about unrestrained greed and self-worship.
"There is a pattern in the past of civilization after civilization wearing out its welcome from nature, overexploiting its environment, overexpanding, overpopulating," Wright said when I reached him by phone at his home in British Columbia, Canada. "They tend to collapse quite soon after they reach their period of greatest magnificence and prosperity. That pattern holds good for a lot of societies, among them the Romans, the ancient Maya and the Sumerians of what is now southern Iraq. There are many other examples, including smaller-scale societies such as Easter Island. The very things that cause societies to prosper in the short run, especially new ways to exploit the environment such as the invention of irrigation, lead to disaster in the long run because of unforeseen complications. This is what I called in 'A Short History of Progress' the 'progress trap.' We have set in motion an industrial machine of such complexity and such dependence on expansion that we do not know how to make do with less or move to a steady state in terms of our demands on nature. We have failed to control human numbers. They have tripled in my lifetime. And the problem is made much worse by the widening gap between rich and poor, the upward concentration of wealth, which ensures there can never be enough to go around. The number of people in dire poverty today—about 2 billion—is greater than the world's entire population in the early 1900s. That's not progress."
"If we continue to refuse to deal with things in an orderly and rational way, we will head into some sort of major catastrophe, sooner or later," he said. "If we are lucky it will be big enough to wake us up worldwide but not big enough to wipe us out. That is the best we can hope for. We must transcend our evolutionary history. We're Ice Age hunters with a shave and a suit. We are not good long-term thinkers. We would much rather gorge ourselves on dead mammoths by driving a herd over a cliff than figure out how to conserve the herd so it can feed us and our children forever. That is the transition our civilization has to make. And we're not doing that."
Wright, who in his dystopian novel "A Scientific Romance" paints a picture of a future world devastated by human stupidity, cites "entrenched political and economic interests" and a failure of the human imagination as the two biggest impediments to radical change. And all of us who use fossil fuels, who sustain ourselves through the formal economy, he says, are at fault.
Modern capitalist societies, Wright argues in his book "What Is America?: A Short History of the New World Order," derive from European invaders' plundering of the indigenous cultures in the Americas from the 16th to the 19th centuries, coupled with the use of African slaves as a workforce to replace the natives. The numbers of those natives fell by more than 90 percent because of smallpox and other plagues they hadn't had before. The Spaniards did not conquer any of the major societies until smallpox had crippled them; in fact the Aztecs beat them the first time around. If Europe had not been able to seize the gold of the Aztec and Inca civilizations, if it had not been able to occupy the land and adopt highly productive New World crops for use on European farms, the growth of industrial society in Europe would have been much slower. Karl Marx and Adam Smith both pointed to the influx of wealth from the Americas as having made possible the Industrial Revolution and the start of modern capitalism. It was the rape of the Americas, Wright points out, that triggered the orgy of European expansion. The Industrial Revolution also equipped the Europeans with technologically advanced weapons systems, making further subjugation, plundering and expansion possible.
"The experience of a relatively easy 500 years of expansion and colonization, the constant taking over of new lands, led to the modern capitalist myth that you can expand forever," Wright said. "It is an absurd myth. We live on this planet. We can't leave it and go somewhere else. We have to bring our economies and demands on nature within natural limits, but we have had a 500-year run where Europeans, Euro-Americans and other colonists have overrun the world and taken it over. This 500-year run made it not only seem easy but normal. We believe things will always get bigger and better. We have to understand that this long period of expansion and prosperity was an anomaly. It has rarely happened in history and will never happen again. We have to readjust our entire civilization to live in a finite world. But we are not doing it, because we are carrying far too much baggage, too many mythical versions of deliberately distorted history and a deeply ingrained feeling that what being modern is all about is having more. This is what anthropologists call an ideological pathology, a self-destructive belief that causes societies to crash and burn. These societies go on doing things that are really stupid because they can't change their way of thinking. And that is where we are."
And as the collapse becomes palpable, if human history is any guide, we like past societies in distress will retreat into what anthropologists call "crisis cults." The powerlessness we will feel in the face of ecological and economic chaos will unleash further collective delusions, such as fundamentalist belief in a god or gods who will come back to earth and save us.
"Societies in collapse often fall prey to the belief that if certain rituals are performed all the bad stuff will go away," Wright said. "There are many examples of that throughout history. In the past these crisis cults took hold among people who had been colonized, attacked and slaughtered by outsiders, who had lost control of their lives. They see in these rituals the ability to bring back the past world, which they look at as a kind of paradise. They seek to return to the way things were. Crisis cults spread rapidly among Native American societies in the 19th century, when the buffalo and the Indians were being slaughtered by repeating rifles and finally machine guns. People came to believe, as happened in the Ghost Dance, that if they did the right things the modern world that was intolerable—the barbed wire, the railways, the white man, the machine gun—would disappear."
"We all have the same, basic psychological hard wiring," Wright said. "It makes us quite bad at long-range planning and leads us to cling to irrational delusions when faced with a serious threat. Look at the extreme right's belief that if government got out of the way, the lost paradise of the 1950s would return. Look at the way we are letting oil and gas exploration rip when we know that expanding the carbon economy is suicidal for our children and grandchildren. The results can already be felt. When it gets to the point where large parts of the Earth experience crop failure at the same time then we will have mass starvation and a breakdown in order. That is what lies ahead if we do not deal with climate change."
"If we fail in this great experiment, this experiment of apes becoming intelligent enough to take charge of their own destiny, nature will shrug and say it was fun for a while to let the apes run the laboratory, but in the end it was a bad idea," Wright said.
Tags: "chris hedges", "climate change", "clive hamilton", catastrophe, collapse, complex civilization, conquer, doomsday machine, earth, easter island, economic, exploit, false hopes, history, long-range, loot, mayans, military, myth, overpopulation, planning, plunder, poor, power, progress, rich, romans, ronald wright, stupidity, sumerians, transition
Categories : philosophy
Tags: "limits to growth", debt, divestment, economy, energy, flawed, GDP, less, live, more, paradigm, poverty, progress, resources, samuel alexander, waste, work
Limits to growth on 'Mainstream Media'
Dr Kerryn Higgs
I know not everyone would consider the ABC 'Mainstream Media', but all the same, the subject of Limits to growth and that evil Club of Rome crowd appearing there feels like some sort of breakthrough….. you can listen to the podcast at the above link, or read the transcript below if you prefer……
Australian writer Dr Kerryn Higgs (a Tasmanian no less…) has written a book called Collision Course – Endless Growth On A Finite Planet, in which she examines how society's commitment to growth has marginalized scientific findings on the limit of growth, calling them bogus predictions of imminent doom.
Robyn Williams: Growth or no growth? You may have heard Dick Smith on Breakfast a couple of weeks ago saying that unlimited growth is impossible and we must do something else. But what? There is, of course, a way of improving what we do more efficiently and stopping waste. Peter Newman from Perth gave an example on Late Night Live late last year: If we used trains instead of trucks for freight, it would halve the costs and save many, many lives. We don't do it because we always do what we've always done. Kerryn Higgs, who's with the University of Tasmania, has just brought out a book called Collision Course – Endless Growth on a Finite Planet, published by MIT Press and she has recently been appointed a Fellow of the International Centre of the Club of Rome.
Kerryn Higgs: I came across The Limits to Growth quite by accident in 1972, just when it was published. It was commissioned by the Club of Rome and written by a team of researchers at MIT, led by Donella and Dennis Meadows. The book changed the way I thought about Nature, people, history, everything. It persuaded me that physics matters, and that the idea of ever-expanding economic growth is a delusion. Up to then, I was a mainstream humanities person, history being my main discipline, and writing my passion. I did grow up in the countryside and loved the natural world, but I had no real intuition of an impending environmental crisis. And here was this little book suggesting that if we carried on with our exponential expansion, our system would collapse at some point in the middle of the 21st century.
Although galloping economic growth already seemed normal to most younger people living in the developed world in 1972, the growth that took off after WW2 was not normal. It is absolutely unprecedented in all of history. Nothing like it has ever occurred before: large and rapidly growing populations, accelerating industrialisation, expanding production of every kind. All new. The Meadows team found that we could avoid collapse if we slowed down the physical expansion of the economy. But this would mean two very difficult changes— slowing human population growth and slowing the entire cycle of physical production from material extraction through to the disposal of waste. The book was persuasive to me and I expected its message to have an impact on human affairs. But as the years rolled by, it seemed there was very little—and then, even less. In fact, I gradually became aware that most people thought "the Club of Rome got it wrong" and scorned the book as an ignorant tract from "doomsters", an especially common view among economists. I want to point out, though, that recent research from Melbourne University's Graham Turner, shows that the Meadows team did not get it wrong. Their projections for what would happen if we carried on business as usual tally almost exactly with what has actually occurred in the 40 years since 1972.
But while scientists from Rachel Carson onwards sounded alarm about numerous problems associated with growth, this was not the case in our governments, bureaucracies, and in public debate, where economic growth was gradually being entrenched as the central objective of collective human effort. This really puzzled me.
How come the Club of Rome got such a terrible press?
How did scientists lose credibility? When I was young, science was almost a god. A few decades later, scientists were being flippantly brushed aside.
How did economists displace scientists as the crucial policy advisers and the architects of public debate, setting the criteria for policy decisions?
How did economic growth become accepted as the only solution to virtually all social problems—unemployment, debt and even the environmental damage growth was causing?
And how did ever-increasing income and consumption become the meaning of life, at least for us in the rich world? It was not the meaning of life when I was young.
Answering these questions took me back through human history. A few developments were especially decisive.
Around 1900, the modern corporation emerged. Over just a decade or two, many of the current transnationals came into being in the US (with names like Coca Cola, Alcoa and DuPont). International Harvester amalgamated 85% of US farm machinery into one corporation in just a few years. Adam Smith's free enterprise economy was being transformed into something very different. A process of perpetual consolidation followed and by now, frighteningly few corporations control the majority of world trade and revenue, giving them colossal power. The new corporations of the early 20th century banded together into industry associations and business councils like the immensely influential US Chamber of Commerce, which was formed out of local chambers from across the country in 1912. These organisations exploited the newly emerging Public Relations industry, launching a barrage of private enterprise propaganda, uninterrupted for more than a century, and still very healthy today. Peabody coal, for example, recently signed up one of the world's PR giants, Burson-Marsteller, for a PR campaign to convince leaders that coal is the solution to poverty.
Back in 1910 universal suffrage threatened the customary dominance of the business classes, and PR was an excellent solution. If workers were going to vote, they'd need the right advice. No-one expressed it better than Edward Bernays, Freud's nephew, who is credited with founding the PR industry. Bernays was candid:
The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the… masses is an important element in democratic society (he wrote). Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism … constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country… It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.
PR became an essential tool for business to consolidate its power right through the century, culminating in the 1970s project to "litter the world with free market think tanks". By 2013, there were nearly 7,000 of these, all over the world; the vast majority were conservative, free market advocates, many on the libertarian fringe, and financed by big business. They cultivate a studied appearance of independence, though one think tank vice-president came clean. "There is no such thing as a disinterested think tanker," he said. "Somebody always builds the tank, and it's usually not Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy." Funding think tanks is always about "shaping and reshaping the climate of public opinion".
Nonetheless, the claim to independence has been so successful that most think tanks have tax-free charity status and their staff constantly feature in the media as if they were independent and peer-reviewed experts.
Another decisive development was the "bigger pie" strategy. Straight after World War 2, governments took on a new role of fostering growth. The emphasis increasingly fell on baking a bigger pie, so the slices could get bigger but the pie would not have to be divided up any more equitably. Growth could function as an alternative to fairness. Thorny problems like world poverty were designated growth problems and leaders in the decolonising world often embraced a growth-oriented version of development, a version that rarely helped their poor majorities. Growth allowed the privileged to maintain and even extend their opulence, while professing to be saving the world from poverty. It's frequently claimed that growth is lifting millions out of poverty. But, apart from China, this is not really the case. China has indeed decreased the numbers of its extreme poor, though this has been achieved with disastrous environmental decline and increasing inequality.
Meanwhile, progress is patchy elsewhere. After 70 years of economic growth, with the world economy now 8 to 10 times bigger than it was in 1950, there are still 2 and a half billion people living on less than $2 a day, more than a third of the people on earth, and about the same number as in 1981. Growth has not been shared. Underlying the popularity of growth, there's a great clash of values between mainstream economics and the physical sciences.
Economists see the human economy as the primary system—odd when you consider that the planet's been here for about 4.6 billion years, and life for something like 3.8 billion. The human era is less than a whisker on this timescale, but for economists Nature is just the extractive sector of their primary system, the economy. For scientists and ecological economists, the primary system is the planet – and it's self-evidently finite. The human economy with its immense material extraction and vast waste, exists entirely within the earth system. Self-evident as these boundaries might seem, they remain invisible or contested in mainstream economics and are of little concern to politicians or citizens in most countries. Hardly a news bulletin goes by without stories of growth expected, growth threatened, or growth achieved. Growth is the watchword of both major parties here and around the world and remains the accepted solution to poverty, pollution and debt.
And yet, however necessary growth is to our current economic arrangements, and however desirable from the point of view of our expectations of material well-being and comfort, it's hardly a practical aim if it's based on a misperception of reality.
While we assume that a high and increasing level of material consumption is normal and desirable, we ignore the peculiarity of our times and the encroaching threats to us and our planet.
We are well into dangerous territory in three areas:
Firstly, species are going extinct 100 to 1000 times faster than the background rate.
Secondly, the nitrogen cycle is completely disrupted. In nature, nitrogen is largely inert in our atmosphere. Today, mainly through making fertiliser, nitrogen is flooding through our rivers, groundwater and continental shelves, fuelling algal blooms that lead to dead zones and fish kills.
And thirdly we are on the way to a very hot planet. Unless we change rapidly in the extremely near future, we risk an increase of 4 degrees Centigrade by 2100. So far, an increase of less than 1 degree is melting the West Antarctic icesheet, glaciers nearly everywhere and even the massive Greenland icecap.
Meanwhile, the rate of carbon dioxide and methane emissions continues to rise. In fact, right through the decade it took to write my book, I was staggered as these emissions defied all protocols and agreements, and rose faster and faster every year, setting a new record in 2013. Four degrees may be a bridge too far, and yet our culture is cheerfully crossing it.
I started out as a student of human history and ended up studying the intersection between human history and natural history. Humans have had local effects for thousands of years but on a global scale, the collision is new. Humans were a flea on the face of the earth for most of our history and it's probably true to say this is the very first time one species—ours—has taken over the entire planetary system for its own sole use. In human-focused terms, this may seem perfectly reasonable. In planetary terms, it's weird and completely impractical.
While our best agricultural land, last remnants of white box woodland and the Great Barrier Reef are put at risk for the extraction of gas and coal, which we should aim to stop burning anyway if we want a liveable world, it seems that only citizen revolt is left to counter it.
Let's hope we succeed.
The ground of our being is at stake.
Robyn Williams: Kerryn Higgs. She's with the University of Tasmania and her book, published by MIT Press, is called Collision Course – Endless Growth on a Finite Planet. Kerryn has recently been appointed a Fellow of the International Centre of the Club of Rome. Next week I shall introduce the proud Professor who's just moved into that crumpled brown paper bag designed by Frank Gehry for the University of Technology, Sydney: Roy Green on innovation in Australia and what's not right.
Tags: "2 degrees"., "ABC TV", "club of rome", "Curtin University", "dennis meadows", "Economic Growth", "great barrier reef", "limits to growth", 1970, corporations, Dr Kerryn Higgs, economics, humans, lifting, nature, Ockhams's razor, poverty, PR, privileged, progress, risk, RN, transnationals, university, UTAS, woodland
Chris Hedges at The Earth at Risk Conference 2014
Interview with Chris Hedges at The Earth at Risk 2014 Conference and the moral imperative of resistance thru non-violent direct action and mass movements of sustained civil disobedience…
Tags: "chris hedges", "climate change", "earth at risk", change, civil, civilization, collapse, dismantle, disobedience, dregs, end, fragility, global, hope, mass propaganda, power, progress, reality, resistance, revolution, science, scraping, society, technology
Categories : climate change, collapse, economy

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Tonight Dr. Howard Benedikt will present "Nutrition 317: Endocrine Disruptors in Health & Disease" from 7:00-9:00 PM Central Time. Don't miss it!
Course Description: in this 2 hour webinar we will discuss toxins in disease as well as toxins and fetal development. We will review xenoestrogens, xenobiotics, and the role of phytoestrogens, and understand thyroid dysfunction and fatigue.


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WWE news: Roman Reigns to fight [Spoiler] at WrestleMania; Hollywood star returning
Roman Reigns will reunite with the Shield at Fastlane but his possible WrestleMania opponent may steal the limelight.
By : Arinjay Ghosh
Mar 1, 2019 17:57 IST
In one of the most positive occurrences in recent times, Roman Reigns returned to Monday Night Raw and announced to the WWE universe that he has successfully put his leukaemia into remission. This announcement was met with immense glee and happiness prompting the rumour mills to go into overdrive predicting the Samoan's roadmap till WrestleMania.
Reigns opened the February 25 show of Raw and thanked the fans for being the best in the world. Reigns then went on to make the announcement, "The good news is I'm in remission you'll. So with that being said, 'The Big Dog is back!' So before I go -- I'll probably say this a whole bunch more times -- but I'll say it one last time. Thank you so much you'll. I love you'll."
The former Shield member was not done for the night as he came back to the ring, along with Seth Rollins, to rescue their former Shield brethren Dean Ambrose from an ambush. In that segment, Reigns threw around one "Superman Punch" after another like he had never left. The "Big Dog" wrapped things up with a trademark "spear" on Drew McIntyre.
This may well have sown the seeds for his first match since his return. It is being reported in several media outlets that WWE has more or less confirmed a Shield reunion in the upcoming pay-per-view, Fastlane. Here, they will most likely take on Bobby Lashley, Baron Corbin and McIntyre. This match may also be an eight-man tag team match with Braun Strowman joining the good guys and Elias the bad guys.
But the bigger story is Reigns' opponent going into WrestleMania and it might well be his poster-boy predecessor John Cena. Cena is now only a part-time wrestler in the WWE and last appeared on television before the Royal Rumble. He was slated to be a part of the Royal Rumble match but had to pull out at the eleventh hour due to an injury.
Despite his part-time status, Cena has been a regular at the "showcase of the immortals" and faced the Undertaker in 2018. Cena is currently busy with his Hollywood commitments but it is being reported that these commitments will be over in time for a wrestling return at WrestleMania.
Facebook / John Cena
Although nothing has been confirmed yet, Vince McMahon will be licking his lips at a potential bout between his two favourite wrestlers across two generations. Reigns and Cena had fought on pay-per-view once before but a match between the pair at WrestleMania could possibly steal the show and ensure its success.
Roman Reigns has been confirmed to appear on the March 4 episode of Raw.
'He never let us down': Wenger praises Giroud ahead of Chelsea move


Adam Schiff appeared on CNN's "State of the Union" Sunday and he said that he planned to call Matt Whitaker to testify before his committee. He was asked what evidence he had of wrongdoing. Schiff said he had none but he planned to manufacture some.
Well, he didn't actually say that, but you know that's what he meant. He is going to try to Kavanaugh him. The Democrats are deathly afraid of Whitaker because he knows the Mueller probe is a witch hunt and he will not grant Mueller a fishing license like Deep Stater, Rod Rosenstein did.
Welcome to Bizzaro World now that Democrats own the House. Time's Person of the Year should be the people who found all the votes that changed Republican wins to Democratic wins. Brenda Snipes should get an honorable mention.


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Online.net is used by 0.4% of all the websites that use PNG as image file format.


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Lithgow is een stad in de Australische deelstaat New South Wales. De stad ligt ongeveer 150 km ten westen van Sydney. Het is de hoofdplaats van het lokale bestuursgebied City of Lithgow. In juni 2018 werd het aantal inwoners van Lithgow geschat op 12.973.

Omgeving
De stad ligt aan de westrand van het zandsteenlandschap van de Blue Mountains. In de directe omgeving liggen het oude mijnbouwgehucht Vale of Clywydd en het fameuze staal-dorp Oakey Park, te midden van uitgestrekte staatsbossen. 60 km naar het westen ligt de volgende stad, Bathurst.

Geschiedenis

Het bergachtige terrein van de Blue Mountains en de kosten voor het aanleggen van lange tunnels vereisten de bouw van de Great Zig Zag-spoorweg (1866-1869). Deze lijn is in 1869 geopend en eindigde toen bij Bowenfels, ten westen van de plaats Lithgow; station Lithgow werd pas in 1877 geopend. Na vier decennia verving men deze spoorlijn door modernere technische methoden, waaronder tien tunnels. De Zig Zag is sindsdien uitgegroeid tot een populaire toeristische attractie. Door de industrialisatie tussen 1860 en 1870 bloeide de stad Lithgow in de daarop volgende jaren op. In 1889 kreeg zij de status van gemeente.

De stad Lithgow vormt het centrum van een mijndistrict en er is een kolencentrale in de buurt. Op deze plek verrees de eerste commercieel levensvatbare staalfabriek van Australië. De ruïnes daarvan kunnen worden bezocht in "Blast Furnace Park". De overvloed aan kolen en de relatieve nabijheid van Sydney leidde tot de bouw van twee van de grootste elektriciteitscentrales van New South Wales in de omgeving van Lithgow.

Toeristische attracties
Lithgow grenst aan een aantal nationale parken en ligt ook dicht bij de Jenolan Caves, die tot het UNESCO werelderfgoed behoren.
Naast de Zig Zag Railway bevinden zich er de Glow Worm Tunnel en Glen Davis in de Capertee Valley, de op een na grootste kloof ter wereld.

Het populairste evenement in Lithgow is Ironfest, dat jaarlijks druk bezocht wordt. Aan het gelieerde St George's Day Jousting-toernooi nemen mensen van over de hele wereld deel. Het festival heeft ook een re-enactment van de koloniale strijd, the Battle of Lithgow; deelnemers dragen daarin authentieke 19e-eeuwse militaire kleding.

De zaterdagwedstrijden en de Lithgow Golden Muzzle (in december) van de Lithgow Greyhound Racing Club trekken ook veel toeristen.

Musea
 Lithgow Small Arms Factory Museum
 Eskbank House Museum

Bekende inwoners
 Edward Bede Clancy, kardinaal
 Joseph Cook, premier
 Marjorie Jackson, atlete en gouverneur van Zuid-Australië
 Leon Morris, hoogleraar theologie

Plaats in Nieuw-Zuid-Wales

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Trusting intuition is about making the choice to heed the voice within and follow your gut knowing. Often when we have a choice to make, there is an immediate answer, or knowing, that is right there. I have spent years over-riding that voice, questioning it, or mistrusting.
Today, I know that immediate hit, the inner yes or no that I hear right in the moment someone asks me a question, is the answer. It isn't always a fun experience, as we may want to say yes, when we just heard a startling no inside. Intuition often requires blind faith, turning down something even when we don't yet know why.
To truly follow the path of your guidance, you have to be willing to say no, even when you may want to say yes. It's a path of trust and faith, that in time, reaps huge rewards.
I remember one cold, winter's night in high school when I was 16. My friends and I were all headng up to the mountains to a friend's cabin. My friend Dan picked me up at my house and we went off to pick up the next person. The whole way I felt my resistance, heaviness.
It was so hard for me, but I said, "I don't think I want to go. Can you drop me off?" I felt so uncool and I didn't understand why I didn't want to go.
My friends, when they came back from the trip, informed me that the car had broken down on the side of the road and they were out there for hours in the freezing cold. When they made it to the cabin, they had no heat. They were up at that cabin without permission, turns out, and everyone met with disappointment from our friend's parents who owned the cabin.
My psychic knowing prevented my participation in an event that would not have been very enjoyable for me. My life has been full of such experiences, and when I've ignored the voice and pushed on, I've experienced painful times that could have been avoided.
It is about being willing to care for ourselves and listen to our bodies. We know the answer, we are the answer.
The bottom line is you can trust that voice, that knowing, every time. If you get grounded, close your eyes, and ask, you will hear an immediate answer. You don't even have to close your eyes, or ground, truly, that knowing is there all the time and speaks to us regardless. Yet, we can create practices to assist us in hearing our answers.
Another way to choose well for yourself is to notice if you are wavering in the decision-making process. If you feel anxiety or uncertainty in the moment of making a choice, perhaps that is your intuition guiding you that it is not right for you. For me, I have learned the hard way, that every time I am uncertain in the moment- that is my sign.
Notice if that happens for you, or what happens for you. There may be that thing you always do in the moment of choosing, one way or another, that is key to insight about following your intuitive knowing.
Furthermore, guidance can come in the way of dreams. Pay attention to your dreams, write them down, and know that spirit may give you guidance ahead of time to assist you on your path. You, and only you, can really know what your dreams mean and how to interpret the information.
Pay attention and trust that your answers come to you.
Intuition comes down to subtlety. Pausing to notice the difference between the mental chatter in our mind and the still, small, voice that simply states our answer.
If I hear go left, I go left. I don't question it at all anymore.
Once we begin to put our attention on something, it grows, so know that your intention and attention is enough.
Emotions tell us how we feel too, so honor how you feel. If it feels good, and you are being pulled in that direction, go! Let yourself receive what you love.
If you feel uncertain, hesitant, resistant, or like you want to leave, don't override with your mind and rationalize– rationalizing is always mind. Intuition is knowing, a small voice, or a gut feeling that can't be denied and your intuitive voice is a gentle nudge, never a fearful voice.
Happy intuiting! Enjoy heeding the call of your inner guidance system and continue to create a life of ease and grace!
Very fine post. Inner knowing is so very important.


Every person, who is interested in bodybuilding, is pretty much destined to come to a certain realization that will define his future progress. At a certain point, one's body is going to need somewhat of a push that will enhance muscle building and will allow you to lift bigger weights, improving your performance and your capabilities.
With that said there are two ways to do so – through sports nutrition or through steroids. Unfortunately, many bodybuilders, especially beginners, mix these two terms and do not know the difference. This is mostly due to the mass media and its war on the anabolic steroids. The media positions any supplements that will help you gain muscle mass faster as something completely unnatural and extremely dangerous.
In truth, sports nutrition is absolutely risk free and can become a large benefit for anyone, who wishes to get better results. Let us take protein for instance – this sacred substance is absolutely vital for any bodybuilder in case he wishes to gain more muscles. And what is protein? Well, it is something that we get every single day from various food items. Protein is the main element of muscle building and it is absolutely invaluable for you. There is plenty of protein in meat and eggs, but still not entirely enough for bodybuilders. Hence, it is good for them to acquire pure protein in order to get all the muscles they can.
Creatine is also a great sports nutrition that will allow you to improve your power and will help you gain muscles. Creatine is a substance that can be found in the muscle tissues. However, in order to boost your performance, you will need to get supplemental creatine that will help you get the most from your training.
All of the above-mentioned sports nutrition supplements are completely natural and do not pose a threat for any person. On the other hand, there are anabolic steroids – chemical substances that will help you to build enormous muscles within the very least period of time, but come with certain side effects that may have a negative impact on your health and wellbeing. One way or the other, it is crucial to know the difference and to realize that sports nutrition is necessary and healthy, whereas steroids can result in some bad side effects. Do some more researching and you will realize that the media is trying too hard to blame any substances for their "horrifying" side effects.


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Returner Program
Region selectorBR
Macquarie Group's Delaware Investments rebrands as Macquarie Investment Management
Philadelphia, 03 April 2017
Rebrand reflects integrated global capabilities
Delaware name retained for US retail funds and separately managed accounts
Macquarie Group's Delaware Investments today announced that it is adopting the name of its parent and rebranding as Macquarie Investment Management to better reflect the firm's integrated global capabilities. Given the firm's strong name recognition among retail investors in the United States, its US registered mutual fund and separately managed account offerings will continue to carry the Delaware name.
"Bringing our organization together under one global brand makes it easier for clients to access the strength of the entire investment platform," said Ben Bruck, global head of Macquarie Investment Management. "While our firm name is changing in the US, our commitment to investment excellence, our multiboutique structure, active management, and successful client outcomes is unwavering."
Macquarie Investment Management, headquartered in Philadelphia, has US$256.9 billion in assets under management worldwide as of Dec. 31, 2016 and employs more than 500 people in the Americas. It is a division of Macquarie Asset Management, a top 50 global asset manager1, with US$362.1 billion in assets under management as of Dec. 31, 2016.
"Delaware Investments has a long and rich history in the United States," said Shawn Lytle, head of Macquarie Investment Management, Americas. "We are known for high-conviction, active management and taking a long-term view. We'll continue to embrace that philosophy on behalf of clients, and, importantly, our portfolio management teams will retain the autonomy they have always enjoyed to pursuetheir areas of specialization."
Macquarie Investment Management offers a suite of investments across equities, fixed income, and listed alternatives.
One of the oldest asset management firms in the United States, Delaware Investments was founded in 1929 at the start of the Great Depression and introduced its first mutual fund in 1938. Macquarie Group Limited acquired the firm from Lincoln Financial Group in 2010.
1. Pensions and Investments Money Manager Rankings (May 2016)


text:
Tag Archives: Chris Matthews
Hardball and Up
January 5, 2013 Media, MetaphorsChris Hayes, Chris Matthews, media, metaphors, politicsAndrew Gallagher
News broadcasts are normally given literal names such as "CBS Evening News" or "NBC Nightly News." Some news commentary shows are simply named after the host as in "Hannity," "The Rachel Maddow Show," or the "O'Reilly Factor." Others have titles reflecting current news such as "Happening Now," or "Your World." In a few cases, however, the titles are metaphors designed to catch the viewers' eyes and ears.
Hardball is the type of baseball played by professional teams, as opposed to softball played by younger players learning the game. Playing hardball indicates that a person is talented, experienced and willing to take risks in a dangerous game. In politics, playing hardball indicates that a politician is very serious and works at the highest levels of government.
Example: A popular television news show called Hardball is hosted by the liberal commentator Chris Matthews.
In contrast to hardball journalism, we can also have softball questions in politics. These are easy questions asked by a journalist to allow the politician to provide an easy answer and look good on TV.
Up with Chris Hayes
Another news commentary show on MSNBC is called Up with Chris Hayes. I cannot presume to know why he chose this name, but the preposition up has many interesting semantic properties. Given the fact that the show airs very early in the morning, the viewers must literally be up early to watch it. However, there is also a metaphoric sense of people being up on the news, as in the phrase, "what's up?" I am sure that the creators of the show enjoy this double meaning of the viewers being up early and up on the latest news. I have heard that the twitter hashtag for fans of the show is #uppers, originally created as a joke, referring to the stimulant drugs by that name, now referring to the people who get up early to watch the show.
Next time: With all the college football bowl games on TV this week, can you think of any football metaphors?


text:
Access Statistics for Nooman Rebei
A Two Sector Small Open Economy Model. Which Inflation to Target? 0 0 0 2 2 6 18 328
Characterization of the Dynamic Effects of Fiscal Shocks in a Small Open Economy 0 0 0 153 0 0 6 404
Determinants of Interest Rate Spreads in Solomon Islands 0 0 0 28 0 0 1 59
Evaluating Changes in the Transmission Mechanism of Government Spending Shocks 1 1 3 53 2 5 12 79
Has Exchange Rate Pass-Through Really Declined in Canada? 1 1 1 199 1 7 25 617
Informality, Frictions, and Macroprudential Policy 0 0 26 55 1 10 76 89
Nominal Rigidities and Exchange Rate Pass-Through in a Structural Model of a Small Open Economy 0 1 1 413 3 11 21 990
Optimal Pass-Through of Oil Prices in an Economy with Nominal Rigidities 1 1 3 174 2 2 10 460
Optimal Taylor Rules in an Estimated Model of a Small Open Economy 0 0 0 263 0 2 6 642
Price Subsidies and the Conduct of Monetary Policy 1 1 2 126 2 2 8 241
Production Stages and the Transmission of Technological Progress 0 0 2 55 0 1 9 444
Stochastic Trends, Debt Sustainability and Fiscal Policy 0 0 3 91 0 0 9 145
Taylor Rules in an Estimated Model of a Small Open Economy 0 0 0 0 2 4 7 283
Technology Shocks and Business Cycles: The Role of Processing Stages and Nominal Rigidities 0 0 0 73 0 0 1 363
The Macroeconomic Effects of Military Buildups in a New Neoclassical Synthesis Framework 0 0 0 131 0 3 4 666
The Macroeconomic Effects of Non-Zero Trend Inflation 0 1 2 187 1 4 12 639
The Welfare Implications of Fiscal Dominance 0 2 4 145 0 3 13 374
The Welfare Implications of Inflation versus Price-Level Targeting in a Two-Sector, Small Open Economy 1 2 4 211 1 3 18 855
The Welfare Implications of Services Liberalization in a Developing Country; Evidence from Tunisia 0 0 1 61 0 1 5 115
Transitory and Permanent Shocks in the Global Market for Crude Oil 0 0 2 20 0 6 29 54
Transitory and Permanent Shocks in the Global Market for Crude Oil 1 3 13 13 5 50 125 125
What (Really) Accounts for the Fall in Hours After a Technology Shock? 0 0 0 42 0 0 3 90
Why Does Private Consumption Rise After a Government Spending Shock? 1 1 3 434 1 5 17 1,210
Why Does Private Consumption Rise After a Government Spending Shock? 0 0 0 1 0 3 17 824
Why Does Private Consumption Rise After a Government Spending Shock? 0 0 0 1 0 2 9 489
Working Paper 98 - Africa and the Global Economic Crisis: Strategies for Preserving the Foundations of Long-Term Growth 0 0 1 17 0 3 17 126
Total Working Papers 7 14 76 3,463 25 142 512 12,078
Has exchange rate pass-through really declined? Evidence from Canada 0 0 1 145 1 2 10 397
Price subsidies and the conduct of monetary policy 1 1 2 75 2 2 6 175
Stochastic trends and fiscal policy 0 1 3 10 2 3 10 40
The Macroeconomic Effects of Nonzero Trend Inflation 0 0 0 0 1 2 2 2
The Macroeconomic Effects of Nonzero Trend Inflation 0 0 0 136 0 1 3 336
The welfare implications of services liberalization in a developing country 0 0 1 59 1 1 7 216
What (really) accounts for the fall in hours after a technology shock? 1 1 1 33 1 2 12 91
Why does private consumption rise after a government spending shock? 0 0 0 281 1 4 22 866
Why does private consumption rise after a government spending shock? 0 2 5 5 1 4 13 13
Total Journal Articles 2 5 13 744 10 21 85 2,136


text:
package entities;

import java.io.Serializable;
import java.util.Date;
import java.util.HashSet;
import java.util.LinkedList;
import java.util.List;
import java.util.ResourceBundle;
import java.util.Set;

import javax.faces.context.FacesContext;
import javax.persistence.CascadeType;
import javax.persistence.Column;
import javax.persistence.Entity;
import javax.persistence.FetchType;
import javax.persistence.GeneratedValue;
import javax.persistence.Id;
import javax.persistence.ManyToOne;
import javax.persistence.OneToMany;
import javax.persistence.Table;

import org.hibernate.validator.Length;
import org.hibernate.validator.NotNull;
import org.jboss.seam.annotations.Name;

@Entity
@Table(name="TRIAL")
@Name("trial")
public class Trial implements Serializable {

	private static final long serialVersionUID = 1L;

	@Id @GeneratedValue
	@Column(name="TRIAL_ID")
	private Long id;

	@NotNull
	@Length(min=1,max=50)
	@Column(name="NAME",nullable=false,length=50)
	private String name;

	@Column(name="FULL_NAME")
	private String fullName;

	@Column(name="BEGINDATE",nullable=true)
	private Date beginDate;

	@Column(name="ENDDATE",nullable=true)
	private Date endDate;

	@Column(name="STATUS")
	private TRIALSTATUS status = TRIALSTATUS.CREATE;

	@Length(min=0,max=5000)
	@Column(name="DESCRIPTION",length=5000)
	private String description;

	@Column(name="SUPERVISOR")
	private String supervisor;

	@OneToMany(mappedBy="trial")
	private List<TrialForm> trialForms;

    @ManyToOne(fetch=FetchType.EAGER,optional=false)
    private User user;

    @OneToMany(mappedBy="trial")
    private List<Participation> participators;

    @OneToMany(mappedBy="trial",cascade={CascadeType.PERSIST,CascadeType.MERGE,CascadeType.REMOVE}, fetch=FetchType.LAZY)
    private List<TrialAttachment> trialAttachments = null;

    public Trial() {
    	// per default -
    	this.status = TRIALSTATUS.CREATE;
    }

	public Date getBeginDate() {
		return beginDate;
	}

	public void setBeginDate(Date beginDate) {
		this.beginDate = beginDate;
	}

	public String getDescription() {
		return description;
	}

	public void setDescription(String description) {
		this.description = description;
	}

	public Date getEndDate() {
		return endDate;
	}

	public void setEndDate(Date endDate) {
		this.endDate = endDate;
	}

	public Long getId() {
		return id;
	}

	public void setId(Long id) {
		this.id = id;
	}

	public String getName() {
		return name;
	}

	public void setName(String name) {
		this.name = name;
	}

	public List<TrialForm> getTrialForms() {
		if(trialForms == null)
			trialForms = new LinkedList<TrialForm>();
		return trialForms;
	}

	public void setTrialForms(List<TrialForm> trialForms) {
		this.trialForms = trialForms;
	}

	public User getUser() {
		return user;
	}

	public void setUser(User user) {
		this.user = user;
	}

	public List<Participation> getParticipators() {
		if(participators == null)
			participators = new LinkedList<Participation>();
		return participators;
	}

	public void setParticipators(List<Participation> participators) {
		this.participators = participators;
	}

	public String getFullName() {
		return fullName;
	}

	public void setFullName(String fullName) {
		this.fullName = fullName;
	}

	public TRIALSTATUS getStatus() {
		return status;
	}

	public void setStatus(TRIALSTATUS status) {
		this.status = status;
	}

	public String getSupervisor() {
		return supervisor;
	}

	public void setSupervisor(String supervisor) {
		this.supervisor = supervisor;
	}

	public List<TrialAttachment> getTrialAttachments() {
		if(this.trialAttachments == null)
			trialAttachments = new LinkedList<TrialAttachment>();
		return trialAttachments;
	}

	public void setTrialAttachments(List<TrialAttachment> trialAttachment) {
		this.trialAttachments = trialAttachment;
	}

	public boolean isEditable() {
		return entities.TRIALSTATUS.CREATE.equals(getStatus());
	}

	public boolean isFillable() {
		return entities.TRIALSTATUS.EXECUTE.equals(getStatus());
	}

	public String getLocalizedStatus() {
		ResourceBundle rb = ResourceBundle.getBundle("messages", FacesContext.getCurrentInstance().getViewRoot().getLocale(),Thread.currentThread().getContextClassLoader());

		if(rb == null)
			throw new NullPointerException("Could not get ResourceBundle for messages");

		return rb.getString("label.status." + getStatus().toString().toLowerCase());
	}

	public List<TrialForm> getActiveTrialForms() {
		List<TrialForm> active = new LinkedList<TrialForm>();

		for(TrialForm tf : getTrialForms()) {
			if(!tf.getArchived())
				active.add(tf);
		}
		return active;
	}

	public List<TrialForm> getArchivedTrialForms() {
		List<TrialForm> archived = new LinkedList<TrialForm>();

		for(TrialForm tf : getTrialForms()) {
			if(tf.getArchived())
				archived.add(tf);
		}
		return archived;
	}

	public Set<Patient> getAllPatients() {
		HashSet<Patient> set = new HashSet<Patient>();
		for(Participation p : getParticipators()) {
			set.addAll(p.getPatients());
		}
		return set;
	}

}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
EN ITESES-LATAMFRTRDEpt-BRVNIDTH
Diego Simeone Takes Responsibility for Atletico Madrid's Shock Defeat to Eibar
Atletico Madrid 'Willing to Lower Asking Price' for Saul Niguez Amid Man Utd Interest
Adam Aladay 14 Dec 2019
Atletico Madrid are willing to lower their asking price for star midfielder Saul Niguez to around £85m, according to reports, following recent reports that Manchester United would need to pay £128m to land the player.
The Spaniard has started all 15 La Liga games for Atletico this season, racking up the most minutes in the league of any outfield player at the club.
As a result of his fine performances in recent seasons, there has been plenty of interest in his services from around Europe for a while now.
One club that has shown a strong interest is United. The Red Devils have long been linked with the player and they are continuing to show an interest as manager Ole Gunnar Solskjaer attempts to strengthen his midfield.
It was reported recently that Los Rojiblancos are demanding a staggering £128m for the player. This is partially to do with the fact that Saul has around six-and-a-half years remaining on his current deal.
However, the Telegraph are now reporting that the Spanish side would, in fact, be willing to drop their asking price to around £85m, but only if the 25-year-old is keen to leave the club when the transfer window opens.
The report does note that he has a buy-out clause standing at a similar number to the initial report, but having played his entire senior career for Atletico up to this point, they will 'agree to let him go' for less if he seeks a transfer.
While this appears to be a major boost for the Red Devils and Solskjaer, there has been no mention of whether the player himself is indeed actively seeking a move elsewhere.
As the January transfer window fast approaches, United have been linked with a number of players.
And although Solskjaer hinted at 'two or three signings' in the window after the recent win over AZ Alkmaar, he has since claimed that they may not necessarily be doing business in January, with the club focusing on long-term targets that may not be available in the winter window.
Newcastle & Burnley Have Hamza Choudhury Loan Bids Rejected By Leicester City
Newcastle United Eye Move for Out of Favour Inter Full Back Valentino Lazaro


SNOWBOARDER is bringing you a series of how to snowboard videos to help fill up that bag of tricks, and help you learn how to ride that snowboard a little better. This week Scotty Vine takes you step by step through a frontside 720 off the toes.
1. The first part of this trick is dialing in the run-in, because you have to get the right speed before going off the lip, since you'll be carving on your toes before you pop.
2. Start the rotation with your upper body once you leave the lip. Your upper body is going to throw you into the spin, and your lower body will follow. It helps to pick a midpoint in the jump to have the first 360 around and get a comfortable grab. I like grabbing indy because it's comfortable and you can spot your landing mid-spin.
3. One you're halfway through the spin and you've got the grab, start spotting your landing. Put your legs down, stomp it, and ride away.
4. You'll probably land either heel-heavy or toe-heavy, so prepare to adjust based on whichever way you're balanced in the air.
Do you have any additional tips for learning a frontside 7 off the toes? Let's hear them.


text:
package org.carlspring.strongbox.visitors;

import org.carlspring.strongbox.security.jaas.Group;
import org.carlspring.strongbox.security.jaas.authentication.NotSupportedException;

import java.util.LinkedHashSet;
import java.util.Set;

import org.junit.Test;

/**
 * @author mtodorov
 */
public class ParentGroupVisitorTest
{

    @Test
    public void testVisitor()
    {
        Group group1 = createGroup("employees", "Employees", null);
        Group group2 = createGroup("developers", "Developers", group1);
        Group group3 = createGroup("java-developers-uk", "Java Developers UK", group2);

        Set<Group> nestedGroups = new LinkedHashSet<Group>();
        ParentGroupVisitor visitor = new ParentGroupVisitor();

        try
        {
            visitor.visit(group3, nestedGroups);
            for (Group group : nestedGroups)
            {
                System.out.println(group.getName());
            }
        }
        catch (NotSupportedException e)
        {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }

    }

    private Group createGroup(final String name, final String description, final Group parent)
    {
        //noinspection UnnecessaryLocalVariable
        Group group = new Group()
        {

            @Override
            public String getName()
            {
                return name;
            }

            @Override
            public String getDescription()
            {
                // We don't care.
                return description;
            }

            @Override
            public Group getParent()
            {
                return parent;
            }

        };

        return group;
    }

}


text:
Q: How to slow the rate at which light sensor listens? I want to limit the frequency at which light sensor detects light, to save battery power and CPU usage.
After reading SO as well as trying it myself, I've found that changing the parameters of the registerListener method does nothing.
So next bet I guess is to make it sleep or wait every time the sensor senses light? How would I do that? I tried just putting wait(2000); inside it but that gives an error.
Here's the light sensor code:
SensorManager sm = (SensorManager) getSystemService(SENSOR_SERVICE);

Sensor light = sm.getDefaultSensor(Sensor.TYPE_LIGHT);

SensorEventListener listener = new SensorEventListener() {

          @Override
          public void onAccuracyChanged(Sensor sensor, int accuracy) {

          }

          @Override
          public void onSensorChanged(SensorEvent event) {
                //Here is where I want to do my stuff
          }

};

sm.registerListener(listener, light, SensorManager.SENSOR_DELAY_NORMAL);

A: Do your stuff at minimum interval:
    private final long minimumInterval = 100;
    private long lastRefresh;

    SensorEventListener listener = new SensorEventListener() {

        @Override
        public void onAccuracyChanged(Sensor sensor, int accuracy) {

        }

        @Override
        public void onSensorChanged(SensorEvent event) {
            long timeMillis = System.currentTimeMillis();
            if (lastRefresh - timeMillis > minimumInterval) {
                lastRefresh = timeMillis;
                //do stuff
            }
        }

    };

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
Q: 'xmlParseEntityRef: no name' I've spent several days trying to resolve this issue, but all advices from Internet does not work. You are my last hope
I have xml file:
<yml_catalog date="2023-01-10T10:35:13.797">
<shop>

    <name>test</name>

    <company>test</company>

    <url>test</url>

    <currencies>

        <currency id="RUB" rate="1"/>

    </currencies>

    <categories>

        <category id="1" parentId="3"></category>

    </categories>

    <offers>

        <offer id="111" type="test" available="true">

            <name>test</name>

            <publisher>test</publisher>

            <ISBN>2</ISBN>

            <page_extent>268</page_extent>

            <language>test</language>

            <age unit="year"></age>

            <author>test</author>

            <series>test</series>

            <url>test</url>

            <price>249.99</price>

            <currencyId>RUB</currencyId>

            <categoryId>750</categoryId>

            <picture>test</picture>

            <delivery>false</delivery>

            <pickup>false</pickup>

            <store>false</store>

            <downloadable>true</downloadable>

        </offer>

    </offers>

</shop>

</yml_catalog>`
Every other xml parcer is reading it good, no problems, but that one, that I need return error
xmlParseEntityRef: no name :  line 6: column 21
xmlParseEntityRef: no name :  line 6: column 22
xmlParseEntityRef: no name :  line 7: column 51
xmlParseEntityRef: no name :  line 7: column 52
I read that these errors can be caused by &, <, > and other spec.symbols, but there are no simbols like these. Where the problem can be?
I've tried to google this problem, but everyone speaks about spec.symbols


text:
Date published, oldest first
Date published, newest first
Date added, oldest first
Date added, newest first
The Determinants of Health for Children and Young People in the Hawke's Bay (2012)
Craig, Elizabeth; Dell, Rebecca; Reddington, Anne; Adams, Judith; Oben, Glenda; Wicken, Andrew; Simpson, Jean
In exploring the underling determinants of health for New Zealand's children and young people, each of the indicators in this report has been assigned to one of four sections: 1. The Wider Macroeconomic and Policy Context: ...
The Determinants of Health for Children and Young People in the Hutt Valley and Capital and Coast DHBs (2012)
The Determinants of Health for Children and Young People in Canterbury and the West Coast (2012)
The Determinants of Health for Children and Young People in Nelson Marlborough and South Canterbury (2012)
The Determinants of Health for Children and Young People in the Midland Region (2012)
The Determinants of Health for Children and Young People in New Zealand (2012)
In exploring the underling determinants of health for New Zealand's children and young people, each of the indicators in this report has been assigned to one of four sections: 1. The Wider Macroeconomic and Policy ...
The Determinants of Health for Children and Young People in MidCentral and Whanganui (2012)
The Determinants of Health for Children and Young People in the Northern District Health Boards (2012)
The Determinants of Health for Children and Young People in the Southern District Health Board (2012)
The Determinants of Health for Children and Young People in the South Island (2012)
AuthorAdams, Judith (10)
Craig, Elizabeth (10)
Dell, Rebecca (10)
Reddington, Anne (10)... View MorePublication Date
Research TypeCommissioned Report for External Body (10)Access Level


Discover all summer activities in Cortina in the Dolomites.
In Cortina d'Ampezzo every season has its charm and the Hotel Pontechiesa is the perfect starting point to discover the beauty of the Dolomites, UNESCO World Heritage Site.
During the summer, the Dolomites offer many chances to experience nature and to practice sports and outdoor activities. The town of Cortina d'Ampezzo Italy offers a wide range of excursions (both demanding and suitable for families with small children), road bike and mountain bike routes.


You can easily create a livid image gallery in each article with this add-on.
This add-on helps you create Image Article for your Portfolio gallery.
This add-on helps you insert a video including youtube and vimeo into your articles.
It creates a wonderful experience for you to insert an audio into your articles.