text:
HomeTeachings of Srila PrabhupadaBooks by & about Srila PrabhupadaBy Srila PrabhupadaTeachings of Queen Kunti – Pocket
Teachings of Queen Kunti – Pocket
Queen Kunti, a tragic and heroic figure, emerges from an explosive era in the history of ancient India. Her teachings are simple and illuminating outpourings revealing the deepest transcendental emotions of the heart and the deepest philosophical and theological penetrations of the intellect.
SKU: A-TQK/W. Categories: Books By Srila Prabhupada, Books by & about Srila Prabhupada, By Srila Prabhupada.
This series of lectures on Srimad-Bhagavatam Canto one, Chapter seven adds new light to the original purports.
At the conclusion of the devastating Kurukshetra war, Queen Kunti approaches Lord Krishna as He prepares to depart the scene of the battle. Kunti's words are words of glorification impelled by a divine love steeped in wisdom. Kunti's spontaneous glorification of Lord Krishna and her description of the spiritual path are immortalized in the Mahabharata and the Bhagavata Purana (Srimad-Bhagavatam), and they have been recited, chanted, and sung by sages and philosophers for thousands of years.
The Bhaktivedanta Book Trust
Hardbound, 238 pages, 8 colour photos, size 13 x 18 x 1.5 cm.
Books By Srila Prabhupada, Special Offers, Super Gifts, Books by & about Srila Prabhupada, By Srila Prabhupada
Srila Prabhupada Introductory Book Set
Books, About Srila Prabhupada, About Srila Prabhupada, The Combo Packs, Books of Srila Prabhupada
Books of Srila Prabhupada (set of 15 books)
Veda – Secrets of the East
Books, Books By Srila Prabhupada, Teachings of Srila Prabhupada, Books by & about Srila Prabhupada, By Srila Prabhupada
The Nectar of Devotion
Books By Srila Prabhupada, Books by & about Srila Prabhupada, By Srila Prabhupada
Teachings of Lord Kapila – Pocket
Books By Srila Prabhupada, Books by & about Srila Prabhupada, By Srila Prabhupada, Books of Srila Prabhupada
Sri Caitanya-caritamrta Indian Edition


text:
Q: How do you read in .dat files in xcode 4? I keep getting "open file failed". I've tried putting the "dino.dat" file in the same folder as the run code. I've tried dropping it into the project itself. Tried "Build Phases" tab under project- copied file there.(????)
void ShowDino()

{
glColor3f(0,0,0);                   //set the drawing color
glLineWidth(3);                 //set the point size

//glBegin(GL_POLYGON);
//glVertex2d(randomPx,randomPy);            //Set the position of the vertex
ifstream infile;
infile.open ("dino.dat");

if(!infile)
{
    cout << "open file failed\n";
    exit(0);
}

N_MAP_POINTS=0;

while(!infile.eof())
{

    infile >> polylines; //read how many polylines
    for(int i = 0; i<polylines; i++)
    {
        infile>>line;
        glBegin(GL_LINE_STRIP);
        for(int j = 0;j<line;j++) //read each lines
        {
            infile >> x >> y;
            glVertex2d(x, y);
        }
        glEnd();
    }

I thought I copied the "dino.dat" into the folder where the code resides.  In Visual Studio, that's how it works.  Thought Xcode might be similar.  So, are you telling me I should read the full path kind of like:
infile.open ("/Users/me/Desktop/dino.dat")

A: You need Xcode to open the file? or your compiled program to open the file?!  Two very different things.
Xcode needs to open it
Xcode might not want to open a .dat file because it doesn't know what it is.
My compiled program needs to open it
If your compiled program needs to open the file then you need to give it the appropriate path to the file.  When Xcode compiles your program, the actual executable might be anywhere.  It could be in Xcode's ~/Library/Application Support/.....  "dine.dat" is a relative file path.  Your program thinks your file is within the same folder as the program.  To avoid that, try giving it an absolute file path.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


Getting a business or idea up and running is not as easy as it may sound. This is a statement that many entrepreneurs and businesspeople will tell you. The good news is that now, there are business accelerator programs designed to help get your business standing on its own two feet.
The biggest challenge for most startups is that they do not know exactly what accelerators can do to their companies. This complicates the question of whether or not they should join a startup. An accelerator is meant to give you the valuable items that a startup needs most – funding, experts, knowledge, and exposure.
According to Statistics Brain Research Institute, about 50% of startups fail. It has also been claimed that about 90% of accelerators and incubators fail. These figures may be inauspicious, but that is the reality. As an entrepreneur, you have to remain focused on what you believe in. Joining an accelerator will enable you to work with like-minded people, which makes it easier to focus on developing your business ideas.
Choosing an accelerator could be somewhat challenging since there are hundreds available in the space. You have to take the time to scrutinize each accelerator and talk to previous participants since there are many accelerators out there and each offers different services. Examples of successful accelerators are Techstars, 500 Startups, AngelPad, University of Chicago New Venture Challenge, StartX, MuckerLab, Alchemist, Y Combinator, The Brandery, and Dreamit, among others.
The role of accelerators cannot be overemphasized. Several companies have attributed their success to the accelerators they joined. Examples of these companies include Dropbox, Airbnb, Rallyteam, Night Zookeeper, ChoreMonster, and ClassDojo. Some of these companies have even become multinationals.
The need for a startup to join an accelerator is almost certain as long as the founders are ready to learn. Some of the key benefits of an accelerator program are: creating strong business connections and relationships; developing partnerships; capitalizing on resources so as to increase scalability; getting valuable feedback from experienced executives, investors and entrepreneurs; gaining shared mentorship and learnings; accessing early-stage capital; as well as getting exposure and PR value. These are benefits that cannot be easily found in one place, which makes accelerators very important for first-time, second-time or even third-time entrepreneurs.
An accelerator is considered to be a place where your business or revenue models, capital raising skills and business execution skills are extensively fine-tuned by seasoned entrepreneurs, CEOS, business specialists, and peers. If you want to get up your learning curve as a first-time entrepreneur, an accelerator is definitely one of the best tools to use. You will meet people who have previously been where you are and managed to go through successfully. They will tell you the do's and don'ts to make your startup a success. However, remember that getting admitted into a good accelerator may be difficult because of stiff competition.
It is also important to know some of the disadvantages working with an accelerator may entail. Some of these are giving away your company equity, usually between 5 and 10%; sometimes you may not get the right network to add enough value to your company; and there are lots of events to be attended, some of which may be unnecessary.
Strategy – The accelerator should have clearly defined strategies, goals, and expected outcomes. This helps entrepreneurs know what to anticipate and how to achieve these parameters. It also helps in deciding whether the accelerator meets the entrepreneur's specific needs.
Location – The accelerator should be developed in an environment that inspires creativity, stimulates personal motivation, and attracts external community. Above all, it should allow startup entrepreneurs to maximize their strengths.
Flexible – This is beneficial because both the needs of any business, as well as the condition of the market, fluctuate on a daily basis. As a result, the accelerator should be able to adapt to new industry changes as long they help the startups to grow. This kind of flexibility enables internal employees to rise up to challenges easily.
Empowerment – It is very important for accelerators to empower their employees so as to drive innovation and develop the concept stage until the final product is built. The accelerator should also allow specialized third parties to participate in the program.
Risks – The main risks associated with accelerators are financial and operational/focus risks. You should ensure that your valuation matches what the accelerator will put into your startup during and after the program. The accelerator should also not displace your team and make you lose focus. You have to use every second of the time very well.
Screening accelerators based on these five factors will help you select the one that will benefit your startup the most. Remember that you will be giving away equity of your business. It is important to make sure that you select an accelerator that provides you with the resources you need for your startup growth. This accelerator should have a reliable community of mentors, entrepreneurs, and investors, and be managed by people who have been through this journey before.
There are many accelerator programs available today, but not all of them will help your startup prosper. The Soho Loft has launched an exclusive accelerator program aimed at providing startup businesses with essential guidance and the services needed to bring their ideas from the concept stage to completion. The startup is run by experienced executives, investors, and entrepreneurs. Interested startups can also get a wide range of affordable web and business services to improve the growth and success of their businesses.


text:
Ask any professional who has ever been out of work or looking for new opportunities, and they'll tell you that finding a job isn't exactly a piece of cake. It can be overwhelming and frustrating, especially if you've been looking for a while. Working with the assistance of a GRN search consultant gets rid of the pressure and keeps the process moving.
At Global Recruiters of West Bend, we will discuss your career goals, geographic preference and other priorities to identify potential opportunities on a confidential basis. If your interests include Industrial Automation or related industries, contact us to begin a long-term relationship!
View Biographies
Explore a Career as a GRN Search Consultant
GRN West Bend
1530 Corporate Center Drive
West Bend, WI 53095 USA
Copyright © 2020 Global Recruiters Network, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Our Privacy Policy.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Q: Xcode mach-o linker error when archiving project with test targets I'm getting mach-o linker errors pointing to missing files in my test targets when I try to create an archive, I can build and run my app on both on the simulator and device without any problems though. I've tried looking at the bundle loader and test host configurations for the test targets, and both look fine. What else could cause this?

A: In my statution, i solve this issue to change Bit Code Enabled from Build Settings. if you use 3.party framework in your project and these framework is not supported bit code for compression in release time. You must change Bit Code Enabled flag from YES to NO.
i hope this will help someone.

A: Not the exact solution, but I realized that I don't want or need my unit tests to run during archived builds. If anyone else is having this problem try checking your scheme's build settings to make sure your test targets are not being built when you build for archiving.
Select your scheme -> Edit Scheme -> Build and uncheck Archive for your test targets.


Information about the Department's procurement process, working with the Hawaii Electronic Procurement System (HePS), development fees and more. Please contact the Office of School Facilities and Support Services with any questions relating to procurement and development.
All construction projects for the Department are conducted on the state's Hawaii Electronic Procurement System (HePS). The Office of School Facilities and Support Services uses HePS for goods, services and construction.
If you already have an account, proceed to Vendor Login. Review/respond to solicitations, change your profile, add employee e-mails, etc.
If you don't have an account, please review these registration instructions and then proceed to Vendor Registration.
Public Notice: Public notice of competitive sealed bid solicitations and small purchases open to all registered vendors can be found on the DOE's HePS Public Procurement Notices website.
Questions about how HePS is utilized by the DOE? Contact us: email or call 808-586-3452. You can also view our Frequently Asked Questions for vendors.
School Impact Fees were established by the Hawaii State Legislature in 2007 by way of Act 245. These fees assign a portion of the cost of land and construction to residential builders for expansion of school facilities in School Impact Districts approved by the Board of Education. Districts must be areas of high growth that will require new schools, or the expansion of existing schools, to accommodate the increase in new families and school enrollments. Commercial projects, industrial projects, senior housing projects, replacement homes or projects to enlarge existing homes are exempt.
The Educational Specifications and Standards for Facilities provide the basic guidelines in the acquisition and development of school sites and in the master planning, designing and construction of facilities for all public schools in the State of Hawaii. The documents below, referred to as the EDSPECS, were developed to meet the need for a comprehensive guide for consultants, the Department of Education, the community, other government agencies, and the public in the design and planning of new schools and additions to existing schools.
The EDSPECS are divided into three volumes, for use at each of the three educational levels: elementary, middle/intermediate and high. Although much of the information for school design is the same across levels, the volumes are meant to be used independently. Each volume is categorized into various chapters which provide the appropriate design criteria for a school.


3Days/2Nights Discover Package, from Rs 11,000 onwards .
4Days/3Nights Escape Package, from Rs 17,000 onwards.
Far from the madding crowd, laze on sunny mountain sides, interact and lunch with the rosy cheeked mountain villagers.
One Week Experience Package, from Rs 35,000 onward.
Feel your pulse slowing down as you spend your days not having to plan and run timetables and schedules .Its the level of life you work so hard to get to.


text:
Evans hopes police department"s good work…
Evans hopes police department"s good work means no body cameras
By Brian Dowling |
PUBLISHED: April 19, 2016 at 12:00 a.m. | UPDATED: November 18, 2018 at 12:00 a.m.
Police commissioner William Evans said he hopes Boston will change course on police body cameras, citing declines in shootings and killings in the Hub as evidence the department is a "class act" that doesn't need the cameras.
"I know the momentum is for everyone having them, although I don't really think we need them," Evans told Herald Radio. "I think we've shown what kind of a class act department we are, but we are going to give them a try and see if the results are positive."
Evans said shootings are down by 20 from the same time last year, and a "record-low" 38 homicides and 230 guns off the street last year. He said the work of Boston police during yesterday's marathon — which had no arrests — showed the good work Hub cops do everyday.
"The guys are out there working hard with the community both on making it safe but also building relationships," Evans said.
"I am hoping the result is the community can see more or less that maybe we don't need them, and we can put that $5 million or $3 million into giving kids from the neighborhood scholarships or job opportunities."
Evans said the department is working out the technicalities of a pilot body camera program with the union and community groups. He expects cameras to be issued to cops by the end of May or early June.
Brian Dowling


text:
Home Resources Resource library Case of the month Swollen leg
Swollen leg
...The GP suspects a DVT and makes arrangements to refer Ms J to the local thrombosis clinic but there is no record of a referral made that same day...
BACKGROUND: A 38-year-old woman – Ms J – presents to her GP practice requesting a sick note having had arthroscopic surgery for a meniscal tear in her left knee. The GP – Dr S – provides the note, recording that the patient is mobile with the aid of crutches.
Three weeks later Ms J attends the surgery complaining of pain and swelling in her left leg. Dr S examines the leg and notes persisting left knee pain with minimal non-tender swelling and a very tight bandage in situ. He advises the patient to remove the bandage and to continue with analgesia.
Ms J is back at the GP surgery six weeks later still complaining of a painful and swollen left leg. On examination Dr S notes tenderness and swelling and also that the left calf is 3cm larger in circumference than the right calf. The GP suspects a DVT and makes arrangements to refer Ms J to the local thrombosis clinic but there is no record of a referral made that same day.
The next day a work colleague of Ms J takes her to A&E complaining of chest pain. A senior registrar notes the swelling in her left leg. Investigations reveal extensive left leg deep vein thrombosis (DVT) and a CT pulmonary angiogram shows a clot in the distal left pulmonary artery.
Ms J is admitted to hospital and treated with heparin and commenced on warfarin therapy. Later she develops a respiratory infection which is treated with broad-spectrum antibiotics.
The patient is discharged from hospital a week later on warfarin under the care of the anticoagulation clinic. Her left calf is now soft and non-tender but she is prescribed further antibiotics to deal with a chronic chest infection.
A letter of claim is sent to the practice from solicitors acting on behalf of Ms J alleging clinical negligence in the care provided by Dr S. It is claimed that on two occasions the GP failed to urgently refer the patient to hospital for treatment of her DVT. This delay resulted in Ms J developing pulmonary embolism and requiring hospital treatment, with prolonged recovery complicated by a serious chest infection.
ANALYSIS/OUTCOME: MDDUS instructs a primary care expert to provide an opinion on the case. In regard to the second consultation in which Ms J presented with a painful and swollen knee the expert argues that any potential sign of DVT would have to have been persuasive given the patient was recovering from knee surgery. However, failure to remove the bandage in order to examine the knee did, in his opinion, constitute a breach in duty of care – as it is difficult to speculate what signs might have been present.
The expert is also critical of the third consultation in which it was clear that Ms J was at risk of DVT. An urgent same-day referral should have been made so that anticoagulation could have been started promptly to prevent pulmonary embolism.
A respiratory consultant is also instructed to provide a view on the consequences of the GP's actions in the case (causation). The expert states that – on the balance of probabilities – Ms J did have a DVT at the second consultation. Removal of the bandage and examination of the leg at that point would have likely revealed tenderness and an enlarged left calf in comparison to the right – with a Wells score of two or three indicating a moderate to high probability of DVT.
Urgent referral with a D-dimer test and ultrasound investigation would have confirmed DVT. Anticoagulation treatment with heparin and later warfarin would have prevented the pulmonary embolism. Urgent referral on the day of the third consultation – rather than a delay of 24 hours – would also have likely prevented pulmonary embolism and the later chronic chest infection necessitating an extended hospital stay.
Given the unsupportive expert views MDDUS settles the case with agreement from the member.
Consider expected post-operative findings masking other symptoms in diagnosis.
Facilitate urgent referral in cases with clear risk.
Record justifications behind clinical decisions.


Next lines are taken from Antony Beevor's Stalingrad, The fateful siege : 1942 - 1943.
the German military archives or SS records of SS officer Heinz Thorwald.
This great story can be classified as Sovjet propaganda.
Vasiliy Zaitsev - W.W. II - Russia - about 400 kills.
Zaitsev years after the battle for Stalingrad.
-The highest scorer only identified as "Zikan" killed 224 Germans by 20 November 1942.
-Sergeant Passar of 21st Army was credited with 103 kills.
-Kucherenko, an Ukrainian, killed 19.
-An Uzbek from 169th Rifle Division killed five Germans in three days.
-Anatoly Chekov killed (picture) 17 Germans in two days !
-Corporal Studentov killed 170 Germans.
Sniper V. Kozlov, just being decorated for his 30th kill. A sniper reaching forty kills would receive the "for bravery" and the title of "Nobel Sniper".
habits and methods, and patiently await the moment for one, and only one, well-aimed shot."
"For a long time I examined the enemy positions, but could not detect his hiding place.
To the left was a tank, out of action, and on the right was a pillbox. Where was he?
firing slit under the sheet of metal, and then creep up to it during the night."
would have to change his own position, which had clearly been marked by the German.
to a new vantage point. By dawn they were ready.
sights? Kulikov carefully, as only the most experienced can do, began to raise his helmet.
raised his head from beneath the sheet of metal. That was what I had been banking on.
Zaitsev with killing 149 (232 ?) Germans before the end of the battle of Stalingrad.


text:
Getty.edu
Conservation Institute
Explore the Era
Delve into the postwar Los Angeles art world in this online archive, which provides additional material related to the exhibitions on view at the Getty Center. Learn about hipsters and happenings, and the venues across the city where all the action took place through images from the archives and first-hand accounts with the artists.
Historic Map
Elyse and Stanley Grinstein
Stanley Grinstein, Elyse Grinstein, and Sidney B. Felsen in the 1960s. Image courtesy of Stanley and Elyse Grinstein
Elyse and Stanley Grinstein have been generous patrons and supporters of artists in Los Angeles since the early 1960s. Elyse has worked for many years as an architect, and Stanley Grinstein was a co-founder with Sidney B. Felsen of the world-renowned printmaking workshop Gemini G.E.L. in West Hollywood. The Grinsteins have collected works by numerous artists from Southern California. They also helped introduce L.A. artists to a large network of international artists, both through their work in the studios of Gemini, and at the famed receptions and gatherings that the Grinsteins hosted at their home.
Time Periods & Venues
Topanga Seed, 1969–70, Wallace Berman. Dolomite rock and transfer letters. 39 x 40 3/4 x 41 in. Collection of the Grinstein Family. Permission courtesy of the Estate of Wallace Berman and Michael Kohn Gallery, Los Angeles
Powered by WordPress. Built on the Thematic Theme Framework.


Sash windows have been a common choice of window for a long time due to their attractive look, but their slight design flaws have previously resulted in them being prone to let in a draught, rattle and stick during the opening and closing process.
New technology has resolved these issues whilst still keeping the charm of the historical sash window alive – meaning they are a fantastic choice for a traditional looking home.
Our sash windows are made to last with a modern manufacturing process that will increase the security and energy efficiency of your home.
Face fitted Georgian bars are also available to help keep the look of your sash windows as traditional as possible.
PVCu – By combining the expertise of traditional craftsmanship with modern day manufacturing processes, the new PVCu vertical sliding window from Sunrise Windows is your answer to replacing old style box sash windows, with a cost-effective like for like alternative.
Timber – If you want a more traditional look then we can fit timber frames to give your house more established look.
Aluminium – These are maintenance free with very slim sight lines and available in the colour of your choice.


text:
Home Columns
Regular My Old Man Said columns
How Aston Villa Have Taken Advantage of the League Cup to Positive Effect
Five Reasons to be Cheerful as Villa Fans, as Team Needs Christmas Points
Five Reasons to be Cheerful as Villa Fans as Bruce is Sent Packing
Five Reasons to be Cheerful as Villa Fans as Villa Fans as a Third of the Season is Almost up.
Five Reasons to be Cheerful Despite Late Liverpool Horror Show
It was a bitter pill to take at the weekend, as Aston Villa managed to lose a game they were 1-0 up...
Five Reasons to be Cheerful as Villa Fans, After 10th Consecutive League Defeat at...
When you consider Aston Villa's 3-0 defeat at the Etihad was the 10th consecutive Premier League loss at Manchester City (by an...
Five Reasons to be Cheerful as Villa Fans, as Grealish Defies VAR for Last...
For Aston Villa in their first season back in the Premier League, capitalising on big opportunities arising in-game that give them an...
Five Reasons to be Cheerful as Villa Fans Apart From the Five Goals at...
It would perhaps be remiss of MOMS not to fire-up the long-running 'Five Reasons to be Cheerful as Villa Fans' column, after...
Confirmed: John McGinn is off to Manchester United via Magaluf
MOMS was going to crank the Media Muppets column up into action once again as a reaction to all these stories about...
Aston Villa Hit By Infamous Curse Going Into Wembley Play-off Final
*Contains a light Game of Thrones spoiler in the last paragraph Curse Origin Story Derby...


The government in China, long suspicious of internet companies, now sees ambitious titans like Tencent and Alibaba as useful partners.
BEIJING — For the last decade or so, China has defied the truism that only free and open societies can innovate. Even as the Communist Party has kept an iron grip on politics and discourse, the country's technology industry has grown to rival Silicon Valley's in sophistication and ambition.
President Xi Jinping's tilt toward strongman rule could put all that to the test.
As Mr. Xi starts his second term, the Chinese government, which once viewed the internet primarily as a threat to its stranglehold on information, is harnessing big tech companies' capital and knowledge to realize its broader goals for the country.
At a time when the Trump administration is moving to counter China's tech prowess, Beijing's heavier hand could pose its own threat to the country's competitiveness, and to the innovation that has transformed Chinese firms into global heavyweights.
For China's government, WeChat, the country's most popular messaging and social media service, has become a key tool for policing what people say and do. Political activists have reported being followed based on WeChat conversations; chat records have turned up as evidence in court. The e-commerce titan Alibaba, meanwhile, is helping city authorities manage traffic.
In scientific research — a focus for Mr. Xi as economic growth becomes harder to sustain — tech giants have joined with government institutes to run labs in fields like quantum computing, deep learning and human-computer interaction. Soon, Chinese citizens may even be able to use their accounts on Tencent's and Alibaba's apps as digital versions of their national ID cards.
American tech firms also do business with governments, of course. And they, too, are sometimes asked to hand over user data to law enforcement agencies.
But in the United States, disagreements can be hammered out in court. China's judiciary is controlled by the Communist Party. Making themselves useful to the government is often the price that Chinese firms must pay for regulatory and financial blessings — even for the very right to exist as a business.
Phoenix subsequently removed that portion of the interview from its website. A Sogou spokesman declined to comment.
Chinese tech companies have found a variety of ways of moving in sync with Beijing. Last year, they injected money into a struggling state telecom carrier, precisely the kind of company they had long sought to disrupt.
Regulators picked Tencent and Ant Financial, an Alibaba corporate sibling, to build credit-scoring databases, though their role in those efforts has since been curtailed. Still, their systems and data would be key, analysts say, for China's ambitions to build a broader "social credit" system that would track people's financial activities, police records and other public behavior.
Until recently, Tencent's website said its cloud services helped the Communist Party "standardize and streamline party-building work." But that page was removed after The New York Times asked Tencent about it. The original web address now points to a page that describes how Tencent can help local governments manage data.
For many years, as Chinese companies became major players in online services, telecom gear, drones and more, the government neither boosted them nor meddled much in their operations. Now, though, as Beijing aims to make China a world technology leader, it is trying to steer private companies more directly, particularly in research and development.
The government's "Made in China 2025" plan, which seeks to upgrade national capabilities in electric cars, robotics, semiconductors and other advanced industries, is a big factor behind the spiraling trade tensions with the United States.
In areas such as supercomputers, satellite navigation and drones, Mr. Xi has pushed Chinese companies to work alongside the military to chase breakthroughs. At a speech last month in Beijing, Mr. Xi said that the internet and information technology represented the "most dynamic and promising area for civil-military integration," according to the state news agency Xinhua.
China's internet titans have already been roped into the government's plans to lead in artificial intelligence. Alibaba was designated, in November, as the national champion for developing "smart city" infrastructure. Tencent was picked to fill that role in medical imaging; the search giant Baidu is to lead for self-driving cars. A fourth company, iFlyTek, was named to spearhead voice recognition.
Divvying up an industry before it has matured risks stifling competition, though. And shoehorning companies into specific activities could discourage them from exploring others.
"Having the state define and pick winners and losers is not how long-term sustainable innovation really happens," said Tai Ming Cheung, a professor at the University of California, San Diego, who studies technological development in China.
Countries that have tried it, from the Soviet Union to Japan, "haven't really fared well over the long run," Mr. Cheung said.
China's record is mixed. In the 1960s and '70s, Mao's "two bombs, one satellite" program helped the government develop a nuclear bomb, a ballistic missile and its first satellite. More recently, state guidance has helped Chinese companies gain ground in high-speed rail and renewable power. In other fields, including flat-panel displays and cars, the country's industrial policy has flopped repeatedly.
For China's tech giants, working with Beijing has become more important for another reason: Mr. Xi has tightened China's controls on the internet, and moved with remarkable force against companies that step out of line.
Sina Weibo, a service that resembles Twitter, lost some of its appeal as a raucous forum amid a coordinated crackdown early in Mr. Xi's tenure on what regulators called rumor-mongering. Last month, regulators clamped down on Bytedance, one of China's most successful start-ups, shutting down its humor app and ordering it to clean up "vulgar" content on several of its other apps.
As a result, tech potentates are trying harder than ever to keep the leadership happy.
On the third floor of a gleaming Tencent high-rise in Shenzhen, the Communist Party makes its presence within the company literal.
Tencent's mascot, a jaunty winking penguin, appears throughout with a hammer and sickle on its chest.
Growing numbers of tech industry leaders have also joined the National People's Congress, China's rubber-stamp Parliament, and the People's Political Consultative Conference, an advisory group.
In December, Jack Ma, Alibaba's executive chairman, announced that the company had started a $1.5 billion poverty relief fund. At a news conference before this year's legislative session, Pony Ma, Tencent's chief executive and a returning member of the congress, offered suggestions for improving schools and health care.
Follow Raymond Zhong and Paul Mozur on Twitter: @zhonggg and @paulmozur.
Raymond Zhong reported from Beijing, and Paul Mozur from Shanghai.
When Xi Speaks, Chinese Officials Jump. Maybe Too High.


BRENDAN SHEERIN AND NIKI EVANS JOIN ASHLEIGH & PUDSEY IN CINDERELLA – THE GREATEST PANTOMIME OF THEM ALL!
Channel 4's popular TV show Coach Trip's Brendan Sheerin and X Factor finalist Niki Evans have joined the cast of this year's spectacular family pantomime Cinderella at Darlington Civic Theatre. The news follows the theatre's recent announcement that Ashleigh Butler leads the cast as Cinderella, with her talented four-legged friend Pudsey.
Veteran travel expert Brendan Sheerin became a household name through Channel 4's runaway hit reality programme Coach Trip, having started his travel career in Costa Brava in the late 70s. Coach Trip and Celebrity Coach Trip catapulted Brendan to fame, with more than 300 episodes having aired since the series started in 2005. Brendan's other TV credits include Brendan's Magical Mystery Tour and Brendan's Love Cruise. Brendan has written about his travel adventures in his autobiography titled My Life: A Coach Trip Adventure.
Niki Evans, who rose to fame in the fourth series of ITV's The X Factor will play The Fairy Godmother. Niki has performed extensively as a solo vocalist and has recently toured the UK as Mrs Johnstone in Blood Brothers and as Paulette in Legally Blonde the Musical. Most recently she starred in Cool Rider, the concert-production of Grease 2 in the West End and has starred in a number of critically acclaimed pantomimes.
Tickets are already on sale for Cinderella, which runs from Saturday 5 December 2015 to Sunday 16 January 2016. For tickets and more information visit darlingtoncivic.co.uk or call 01325 486555.


text:
Former NBC5 anchor Jane McGarry joining Good Morning Texas as full-time co-host
@unclebarkycom on Twitter
Former longtime NBC5 anchor Jane McGarry is joining Gannett8's Good Morning Texas as a full-time co-host after earlier contributing with a series of "Texas Legends" segments.
She'll be teaming with incumbent Mike Castellucci on Monday, March 9th.
"They knew I was very interested in being a part of the team," McGarry said in a telephone interview Wednesday morning. "I just like the show. It's really a lot of fun."
McGarry is replacing co-host Amy Vanderoef, who as previously posted is leaving GMT on Friday, March 6th after the two sides couldn't agree on a new contract.
McGarry said it's her understanding that the host/contributor lineup otherwise will remain in place with Paige Smith, Carrie McClure and Shannon Powell Hart being retained. But a Gannett8 publicity release does not mention them.
McGarry also will continue to do the "Texas Legends" segments that first introduced her to GMT viewers in 2013 and have re-profiled the likes of Laura Bush, Roger Staubach, Jerry Jones, Willie Nelson and Mark Cuban.
"I'm working on several of them right now," McGarry said. "There are so few venues where you can still do long-form journalism these days. I just like it. It's really a lot of
fun. I really enjoy interviewing people and getting to know people."
GMT for several years also has been home to five-minute segments in which participants pay Gannett8 to appear on the show and sell their products. That apparently isn't changing either.
"Obviously I don't make any programming decisions," McGarry said. "As far as I know, the program is going to be the same. But if you look at those paid segments, there's a lot of valuable information in many of those."
McGarry was a high-profile anchor/reporter for 30 years at NBC5 before resigning in July 2012 after pleading "no contest" to a Class B demeanor charge of driving while intoxicated. She also apologized for "my irresponsible behavior" on her Facebook page.
In Wednesday's phone interview, McGarry declined to specifically address her long career at NBC5. "Honestly, I have enjoyed every single thing I have done in television news," she said. "And this seems like the right fit for this phase of my life."
GMT airs weekdays at 9 a.m. In the just-concluded February "sweeps" ratings period, it averaged 55,792 D-FW viewers to run fourth in its time period behind network or syndicated programing on Fox4, NBC5 and CBS11.
GMT likewise placed fourth among advertiser-prized 18-to-49-year-olds with 12,615 viewers in that age range.


text:
Home News Featured News Dangerous assumption, says coroner
Dangerous assumption, says coroner
Home NewsFeatured News
By Nicole Chang and Trinity Chua
The coroner's inquiry into the death of national service man Ganesh Pillay resumed after the lunch break on Thursday with the medical officer at the Khatib camp saying he did not inform the recruit's superior about his condition.
"He came in for chest pains… when I reviewed his records I noticed he had a history of schizophrenia for which he was seeing a psychiatrist," said Dr Mogilan Mogan.
He said he did not inform Ganesh's superior, Captain Jessie Goh about the situation. Captain Goh was Ganesh's manpower officer.
When asked why he did not inform Ganesh's unit officer, Dr Mogilan said: "S1 (the manpower officer, Goh) should have been 'handed over' (about) this case when the person (was) newly posted to Khatib camp, as well as the relevant excuses, for example in this case excuses from firearms, that the patient has already been given previously.
"It is actually in the interest of the S1 to find out why this person has this grading."
Dr Mogilan said, "My usual practice, when I would get in touch with the unit is when there is a change in the person's functioning, or when there are new problems to address."
He also acknowledged that he could not be certain whether Captain Goh would have had access to the reasons for Ganesh's condition.
"I'm not sure what system they are using because they don't have access to the same records as us, the same system that the medical officers have."
He said that he did not tell Captain Goh about the drugs that Ganesh was on or the side effects of these drugs when the two finally spoke about Ganesh's psychiatric condition on July 4, a day before Ganesh was found dead at his family's apartment block.
The State Coroner Imran Abdul Hamid then said: "The problem I have is you did not know if Captain Jessie knew (about Ganesh's psychiatric illness)… That is a very dangerous assumption." The inquiry continues on April 8.


Asked during a regular press conference in Washington, Rice said the IMF has not been notified on an official level by the Greek government of a "possible early termination" of Greece's fiscal programme at the end of the current year.
"As far as I know the issue was never raised," Rice said, adding the emphasis is now placed on the programme's sixth review and that the issue of an early exit for Greece will not be discussed in the upcoming meetings of the troika of Greece's lenders with Greek officials.
He also said the participation of countries in the IMF's programmes is voluntary.
Rice reiterated the Fund's position that it has seen progress in some areas of the programme and that emphasis is now placed on the new review.
Outlining the upcoming milestones, Rice said an IMF team, headed by Rishi Goyal, will begin talks in Athens on "key issues" – the 2015 budget and non-performing loans – on September 30, and that "later in autumn" the "full IMF team" will return to Greece (after the annual IMF meeting in Washington) for the sixth programme review.
Asked if Poul Thomsen would be part of the team, Rice said Thomsen has been appointed Director of the IMF's European department and his plans do not include a trip to Athens, adding he's ready to help if needed.
Commenting on a recent interview of the head of the IMF, Christine Lagarde, where she claimed she received "threats" against her life when she spoke of tax evasion in Greece, Rice said threats appeared in social networks a few years ago, after which Lagarde strengthened her security measures.
He also confirmed Lagarde received a letter by Greek justice minister requesting for more information on possible threats received.
Asked to comment on Greek Foreign Minister Evangelos Venizelos' view that the IMF's interest rate paid by Greece on its loan is higher than the rate offered by markets, Rice said he was not ready to comment on the issue and promised to reply soon.
The post IMF's Loan Agreement with Greece Expires in March 2016, Says Spokesman appeared first on The National Herald.


Halmstad University, School of Business and Engineering (SET), Mechanical Engineering and Industrial Design (MTEK).
Tribology is the science of friction, wear, and lubrication; the interaction of surfaces in relative motion. The tribological conditions in sheet metal forming influences the flow of material in forming operations, the strain distributions of sheet material, extent of wear, and thereby the quality of products. The purpose of the thesis is to increase the knowledge of why and how sheet surface topography influence the frictional response in stamping, to characterise the geometrical properties, and make results applicable for industry. The frictional response of different surface topographies have been measured in a Bending Under Tension test under mixed lubricated conditions. The studied materials have been stainless steel sheets and uncoated and coated carbon steel sheets. The results did show the influence of roughness, skewness, and anisotropy of surface topography. The findings could be explained by the theory of pad bearings. A new functional 3D parameter (Sq>0) was developed for pressing performance that is sensitive to the effects of roughness and skewness. The texture-aspect ratio parameter (Str) was found to be correlated to the anisotropical behaviour of the frictional response. The results are very tangible and mean increased control of stamping operations. An initial step was taken to introduce more advanced tribological models in FE simulation of sheet metal forming operations. The aim is to decrease the trial-and-error time in the design process of dies and tools. A friction model considering surface topography (Sq>0), sliding velocity, lubricant viscosity, and apparent pressure, was successfully implemented. Simulations of a part were evaluated with real stamping tryouts. The results did show the potential of improving the precision in forming simulations with more advanced tribological models. Finally, theory and characterisation methods of active micro-oil pockets in the contact zone of tool and sheet were investigated. The real contact area was shown to be the critical feature to determine. Therefore, two topographical methods and one microscope-imaging processing technique were studied, but no method was found to be viable. However, the experimental results did not confirm the importance of microoil pockets in mixed lubricated regime.
Epsilon Development AB, Gothenburg, Sweden.
Calmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden.
The continued globalisation of the automotive industry, leading to increasing demands for competitiveness and escalating legislative requirements, is the main driving force of research activities of steel sheet surfaces. Recent studies on the stamping process have been carried out among others within AUTOsurf, a project funded by the European Community, and by Wihlborg and Crafoord. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the viability of the proposed parameters for friction prediction. Seventeen different surface topographies were investigated. The sheet materials were either, hot-dip galvanised, electrogalvanised or galvannealed, and electron beam or electric discharged textures. The frictional response was measured in a bending under tension (BUT) test under mixed lubricated conditions. This BUT test simulates the conditions of the die radius in a stamping tool. The laboratory test differs from the experimental work performed in AUTOsurf which simulated the conditions of the holding-down plate. In spite of the differences in test equipments in AUTOsurf, e.g. the rotational friction tester (RTF), on a comparison the correlation of frictional response was significant. But neither of the proposed parameters could predict the frictional response with sufficient accuracy in this study. In addition, the friction model in AUTOsurf describes peak lubrication as a dragging phenomenon on sliding surfaces. The movement eased friction in inverse proportion to the average peak area. However, the trend in this study showed the opposite, movement eased friction proportionally to the average peak area. The result indicates a switch of dominant friction mechanism when the sliding velocity is increased, i.e. from a dragging phenomenon at low velocities to micro-hydrodynamic wedge effects at high velocities.
KIMAB, Corrosion and Metals Research Institute AB, S-114 28 Stockholm, Sweden.
The friction is of critical importance to sheet metal forming operations. It affects the flow of material in the tool and thereby the scrap rate and final quality of products. In the experimental work the frictional response was measured in a bending under tension (BUT) test under mixed lubricated conditions. The study includes stainless steel, but previous research on carbon steels, coated and uncoated, are discussed also. The experimental results could be explained by the theory of pad bearings. The frictional response showed a correlation to the surface topography, e.g. the amplitude parameter (Sq) and texture aspect ratio parameter (Str). When predicting the frictional response of surfaces with multi-component distributions, the standard deviation of the distribution above the mean line could be used.
Institutionen för material- och tillverkningsteknik, Tillverkningsteknik, Chalmers tekniska högskola.


text:
The Zoo Alternative: 3 Wild Animal Sanctuaries in Florida & Georgia
Erin M.
Hilton Mom Voyage Team Member
If your kids love animals like mine do, then a visit to a wild animal sanctuary can be an entertaining and fulfilling side trip while on vacation. Not only can they provide much-needed breaks during long car rides, animal sanctuaries are usually low-cost (or free) and help support a worthy cause. Wildlife sanctuaries are a great way to learn about animals indigenous to the region you're visiting and help children understand how humans can participate in animal welfare. Although some of the stories of animal exploitation and endangerment can be hard to hear, our daughters are learning all about the animal world and the importance of environmental stewardship.
WHY VISIT A WILDLIFE SANCTUARY?
Different from zoos, most wildlife sanctuaries are not-for-profit facilities whose main mission is to accommodate rescued animals who may be too injured or too tame to return to the wild. Refuges or sanctuaries are typically much smaller than zoos and are often located on the outskirts of major cities. By allowing the public limited access to these sheltered animals, they tap into a much-needed revenue stream.
My main concern in choosing a wild animal sanctuary to visit is ensuring that it is a reputable organization whose mission is animal welfare and NOT profit via animal exploitation. While planning a trip, I research any wildlife sanctuaries that might be en route or close to our destination. Our travels in the southeastern U.S. have taken us to several wildlife centers that we would recommend as great places to visit and worthy of our support.
1. BIG CAT RESCUE – TAMPA, FLORIDA
Located a short distance from Busch Gardens in Tampa, Big Cat Rescue (BCR) is the world's largest, accredited wildlife sanctuary dedicated to abused and abandoned big cats. This well-run facility offers 90-minute, guided tours through their expansive refuge housing more than 100 big cats. Tours are offered once per day during the week, and twice on the weekends. Tickets must be purchased in advance.
Important to note: Children under 10 are not permitted on the regular tour. There is a special tour for kids under 10 available at noon during the weekends.
We visited in April and were impressed with how knowledgeable our guide was about each of the cat's traits and personalities. BCR provides a unique opportunity to observe at close range some of the world's most beautiful and endangered big cats.
Hilton Tampa Downtown is only 10 miles away from Big Cat Rescue, and Hilton Clearwater Beach is about 16 miles from the center and also close to the Clearwater Marine Aquarium mentioned below.
2. CLEARWATER MARINE AQUARIUM – CLEARWATER, FLORIDA
Have you heard of or seen the movies Dolphin Tale and Dolphin Tale II? The Clearwater Marine Aquarium is home to Winter, the star of the movie, along with other animals and birds who cannot be released back into the wild. Due to Winter's popularity, this wildlife sanctuary is enjoying its day in the sun and crowds may be a factor during your visit.
Located just across the bridge from the beach and Hilton Clearwater Beach, this small aquarium offers an up-close look at Winter, as well as sea turtles, otters, sea birds and sting rays. Tickets can be purchased online, and if you're staying in Clearwater Beach, you can take the trolley for a small fee.
3. NOAH'S ARK ANIMAL REHABILITATION CENTER – LOCUST GROVE, GEORGIA
Located an hour outside of Atlanta right off of I-75, Noah's Ark wildlife refuge is home to an unlikely trio: Baloo, Leo, and Shere Khan, a bear, lion and tiger (affectionately referred to as "BLT") who have shared the same habitat since they arrived at Noah's Ark back in 2001. The refuge is also home to 1,500 animals and birds, all of whom had been abused, neglected or abandoned.
The animal habitats are only open from 12 pm to 3 pm daily, but the welcome center and picnic area are open all day on Tuesdays through Saturdays. On the day we visited, we arrived early, enjoyed a picnic lunch and then spent the full three hours touring the park. Afterwards, we returned to the picnic area to play on the playground before we made the trip back home.
Similar to the other sanctuaries, Noah's Ark does not charge admission, but does accept donations. Hilton Garden Inn Atlanta South is not far from Noah's Ark off of Interstate 75 in McDonough, GA.
We usually leave these wildlife centers feeling a little closer to nature, grateful for the ecology lesson, and satisfied in the knowledge that the animals we just encountered are no longer in jeopardy. And after a week's vacation in where ever you consider paradise, a stop at a wild animal sanctuary can be a pleasant way to ease back into reality.
Let's Get Physical: A Short and Active Weekend Escape in Ottawa-Gatineau
Tips for Traveling to Los Cabos Mexico
Lugares en dónde hospedarse
Hoteles en Chicago
Hoteles en Dallas
Hoteles en Atlanta
Hoteles en Boston
Hoteles en San Francisco
Hoteles en Hawaii
Hoteles en Washington DC
Términos y condiciones†
Acuerdo De Uso Del Sitio
Declaración De Privacidad Mundial
Declaración Acerca De Las Cookies
Garantía de mejor precio de Hilton
Accesibilidad del sitio Web
Términos y condiciones del descuento de Honors
Derechos de autor 2021 © Hilton


text:
NARAL Ohio can't stand fetal heartbeat bill
By David Daleiden | July 29, 2011 , 05:03pm
Kellie Copeland, Executive Director of Ohio NARAL, can't believe you're so worked up about fetal heartbeats. Lady Macbeth would be proud of her.
CantonRep in Ohio has a detailed, surprisingly fair profile of the abortion debate going on in the state right now over fetal pain and fetal
heartbeat-based abortion bans. The article notes that:
Virtually all [abortions] would become illegal if the fetal heartbeat bill, known as House Bill 125, becomes law.
The proposed heartbeat bill, already passed by a large majority in the House and pending in the Senate, bans abortion as soon as the unborn child's heartbeat can be detected, which is about 6 weeks LMP at the latest. The leader of NARAL in Ohio gives this tone-deaf rebuttal:
"They can give it whatever cute name they want," said Kellie Copeland, executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Ohio. "(HB 125) is a virtual ban on abortion. It's a direct challenge to Roe v. Wade. By the time you find out you're pregnant, abortion is already illegal."
Most Americans find the first heartbeats of their children, observed via ultrasound, to be fascinating and magical. Not sure they would take so well to the jeering cynicism of a bitter pro-abortion hack like Copeland, who has made oafish remarks about unborn children with heartbeats in the past, too.


text:
Health News • Medical Advice
Why Did Angelina Jolie Give Up Her Breasts? Here's the Scientific Explanation.
by Oni
Angelina Jolie has revealed that she underwent a double mastectomy to prevent the development of breast cancer.
In an article entitled "My Medical Option" published in the New York Times, the American actress wrote that she underwent this operation because she is a carrier of a "poor" gene that increases the risk of ovarian and breast cancer.
According to the 37 year old actress, who is Brad Pitt's life partner, doctors told her that she has a 87% risk of developing breast cancer and a 50% risk for ovarian cancer because this gene ( BRCA1).
Angelina Jolie's mother died at the age of 56, because of cancer. "My mother has fought cancer for nearly ten years and died at 56 years. She lasted long enough to know her first grandson and hold him in her arms. But the rest of my children will not have the chance to know and find out how full of gracious she was," the actress starts the editorial in The New York Times.
"When I learned about the situation, I decided to take steps to minimize the risks as much as I could," wrote the artist adding: "I decided to do a double mastectomy, preventively. We started with the breasts because the breast cancer risk is greater than that of ovarian cancer, and the operation is more complex," the star wrote, adding that after this complex procedure, which lasted three months, the risk of breast cancer has decreased to 5%.
"I'm lucky to have a life partner, Brad Pitt, who loves me and supports me. So anyone who has a wife or a girlfriend who goes through this, knows that you are an important part of this transition process. Brad was at the Pink Lotus Breast Center, where I was treated, and the whole time operations lasted. We managed to find moments to laugh together. We knew that this was the best thing that we could do for our family and that it would bring us even closer. And so it happened," wrote Angelina Jolie.
The couple has six children together, three of whom are adopted. "I can tell my children that they no longer have any reason to fear that they will lose me because of breast cancer," she added.
"I chose to make my story public because there are so many women who do not know that they could have cancer. I hope that they are able to be genetically tested and if they find out that they have a high risk of getting cancer, they will know that they have great alternatives," explained Angelina Jolie.
"Things that should not frighten us are the ones that we can control," Jolie concluded.
What is the BRCA1 gene?
BRCA1 and BRCA2 are human genes that belong to a class of genes known as "tumor suppressors". The mutations in these genes are associated with a hereditary risk of breast and ovarian cancer.
The risk of a woman developing breast cancer and / or ovarian cancer significantly increases if she inherits a harmful mutation of the BRCA1 or BRCA2 gene. Men who inherit such a mutation present, in turn, an increased risk of suffering from breast cancer. Also, both men and women with these mutations may have an increased risk of suffering from other cancers.
Several companies have developed genetic tests that identify the BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutation. This is achieved by using a blood sample. Tests cost between several hundred and several thousand dollars.
According to estimates by experts, about 12% of women (120 of 1,000 women) will develop breast cancer over their lifetime. In contrast, 60% of women who have inherited a harmful mutation of the BRCA1 or BRCA2 gene (600 of 1,000 women) will develop breast cancer. In other words, a woman who has inherited a harmful mutation of the BRCA1 or BRCA2 gene will have a five times higher risk of suffering from breast cancer compared to women who do not have such a mutation.
Also, statistics show that 1.4% of women (14 per 1,000 women) will be diagnosed during their life with ovarian cancer. In contrast, 15%-40% (150-400 of 1,000 women) with a harmful BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutation will receive this diagnosis.
Genetic analysis shows that the harmful mutation is present in a proportion higher among the Ashkenazi Jews. Also, Norwegians, Dutch and Icelandic have a higher frequency of these mutations in comparison with other nations.
People who are carriers of a harmful mutation in the BRCA1 or BRCA2 gene have four options:
• Supervision – tests (such as mammograms) to identify the cancer early. This method does not reduce the risk of developing cancer, but increases your chances of detecting it early when it is most treatable.
• Prophylactic surgery – this method involves the surgical removal, as much as possible, of the tissue presenting the risk of developing cancer to reduce the risk. This does not guarantee that the patient will develop cancer because surgeons often cannot completely remove the tissue. Therefore, some women who have opted for this option later developed breast cancer, ovarian cancer or peritoneal carcinomatosis (a cancer similar to ovarian cancer).
• Reducing risk factors – certain behaviors were associated with a higher risk of breast or ovarian cancer. For example, birth control pills seem to reduce the risk of developing ovarian cancer even among people with a harmful mutation of the BRCA1 or BRCA2 gene. Obesity increases the risk of suffering from breast cancer, and vigorous physical activity reduces the risk. Also, alcohol increases the risk of breast cancer.
• Chemoprevention – the use of natural or synthetic substances to reduce the risk of cancer. For example, the drug tamoxifen reduces by 50% the risk of developing breast cancer in women who are at risk and also reduces the risk of the tumor returning in women previously diagnosed with breast cancer.
Dealing with Postnatal Depression
Dealing Better with PMS and Menstrual Cramps
What Does the Tongue Reveal About Your Health?
What Health Risks Involves Hair Removal
Stay Two Steps Ahead of Allergy Season
What You Need to Know About Mesothelioma
angelina jolie angelina jolie cancer angelina jolie surgery breast cancer breast cancer awareness cancer treatment cancerm surgery mastectomy ovarian cancer
Problems You Can Face Throughout the Menstrual Cycle
Eliminate Habits That Prevent Good Sleep
Latest Inventions: Anti-depression Spray
Finding Relief from Migraine Headaches Naturally
All about Leg Cramps
Natural Solutions for Constipation Relief
What You Should Know Before Getting a Tattoo
Medical Advice • Nutrition
Foods that Worsen Indigestion


text:
"Economic Hit Man" John Perkins on the coronavirus and our global "death economy"
By Site Reporteraccess_time2 years ago
The coronavirus pandemic, enabled and accelerated by Donald Trump, has killed more than 60,000 Americans. At least a million Americans are known to be infected. The numbers of dead and infected are likely far higher than officially reported.
Beyond the tens of thousands already dead or who will die in the months ahead — and not including those whose lives will be shortened by the virus — the coronavirus pandemic has caused economic ruin in the United States.
At least 30 million Americans are unemployed, close to one in five adults in the workforce. Again, the real number is almost certainly much higher. Leading economists warn that this pandemic may lead to a second Great Depression — and conceivably even an economic calamity worse than the one that transformed our country and the world in the 1930s.
Note this report from Politico:
Across Wall Street and the economic world, forecasters are quickly ramping up their predictions of massive job losses and declines in economic activity by as much as an annualized 50 percent in the second quarter of the year. They're offering estimates unseen since the Great Depression that began in 1929 and continued for a brutal decade, reshaping governments and economies across the globe.
Morgan Stanley economists on Monday said they now expect a 30.1 percent annualized decline in gross domestic product in the second quarter, the worst quarterly performance in 74 years. The firm's estimates assume the virus peaks in April and May before growth starts to recover. But if the peak comes later and economic disruption continues in the second half of the year, they wrote, U.S. growth for even the entire year will be down to levels last seen in the early 1930s.
In total, the American economy has lost trillions of dollars because of Donald Trump's willful, malicious, corrupt and likely intentional negligence in responding to the coronavirus pandemic.
This crisis has left millions of Americans desperate for such basics as food and shelter. Many unemployed Americans — and others who have seen their salaries and work hours reduced — are either on the precipice of homelessness or are now without a stable place to live.
The richest Americans do not live in the same world as the middle class, working class or poor. They have largely insulated themselves from the impact of disasters, both manmade and natural. Moreover, the plutocrat class finds ways to profit from human misery.
As reported by Business Insider, dozens of America's billionaires have become even more fabulously rich during the pandemic.
The "coronavirus relief bill" provided more than a trillion dollars in relief for multinational corporations and other large businesses. In that same bill, Republicans gave the very richest Americans $90 billion in tax cuts. Writing at GQ, Luke Darby explains: "The Joint Committee on Taxation, a nonpartisan arm of Congress, calculates that 80 percent of the tax cuts in the coronavirus relief legislation will go to people making more than $1 million annually — just 43,000 people — and will cost $90 billion in 2020 alone."
Small businesses have been left unable to access promised loans and other supports. The average American will only receive $1,200 in assistance from the coronavirus relief bill.
Donald Trump has said there will be no more direct payments to the American people beyond the pittance provided so far. Yet the Trump family and his allies are evidently using this national emergency to enrich themselves.
Trump has not been subtle — or apologetic — in using the coronavirus relief money as a personal slush fund to pay off his political allies and friends and to punish his enemies and other Americans he deems disloyal.
Once again, the rich and the powerful are leveraging a human catastrophe to further empower and enrich themselves while others suffer. I recently spoke with someone who knows about this first hand: John Perkins, author of the bestselling "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man." He is an expert on how economic and political crises present unmatched opportunities for the rich and the powerful.
For several decades beginning in the 1970s, Perkins worked for multinational corporations and global finance organizations, including the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.
His job was to prey upon developing and "Third World" nations by offering "solutions" to the very economic and political crises that his employers and clients had caused. If those countries and leaders refused Perkins' "bargain," then the "jackals" — meaning mercenaries or foreign military forces — could be sent in to destabilize or overthrow those governments.
In this conversation, Perkins explains how the destruction caused by the coronavirus pandemic offers an illustration of why America and the world need to move beyond a "death economy" — where all areas of life are financialized and profits rule over people — and toward to a new way of thinking and living that he describes as a "life economy." Perkins also outlines how the corporate oligarchy and its leaders plan to flourish both during and after the coronavirus pandemic.
Economic hit men like him, Perkins argues, have long operated within the United States, reducing local economies to rubble to generate profits for multinational banks and corporations.
As usual, our conversation has been edited for clarity and length.
Given the state of the world with the coronavirus pandemic and Donald Trump's regime in the United States, how are you feeling? What is your emotional state?
It wavers. I'm a very hopeful person. I proceed from a fairly reasoned standpoint in my thinking. Over the last several decades I have been thinking and writing about how we as a species need to make changes in the way human beings relate to each other and to the planet. We need to move from what I call a "death economy" into a 'life economy." A life economy is one that pays people to clean up pollution and regenerate destroyed environments. A life economy also develops new technologies that do not ravage the Earth. As I travel around the world, I have seen signs that we are moving in that better direction. The coronavirus is a reminder we need to move much faster towards creating a life economy.
Given your background working as an "economic hit man" for some of the world's largest corporations, banks, the IMF, the World Bank and other organizations, how do you make sense of this moment?
People often ask me, "In order to move from a death economy to a life economy, don't we all need to be hit over the head by some terrible crisis?" I believe that is not necessarily the case. Half the world is already in a state of terrible crisis. We've been struck by hurricanes, fires, tsunamis and earthquakes. These are once-in-a-hundred-year events that are happening every year or so now.
Planetary ecosystems are changing rapidly in ways that are not conducive to life as we know it. These are also events that are local in their impact as much as they are global.
With the coronavirus the world is in crisis. No outside force is going to show up and come to the rescue, making everything better. We're all in this together. Everyone on the planet is talking about this pandemic.
People deep in the Amazon are feeling it. People who live in the Himalayas are feeling it. People in all the major cities are feeling it. I am not sure if I really see any possibility for true recovery from this pandemic. I would not say that it is impossible. But I do believe that it is highly unlikely that there is a return to a state of "normal" as previously understood before the coronavirus pandemic. We will have to create a new type of normal — and that may be something that we will have to recreate frequently, because the health experts and scientists are warning that the coronavirus is not going to end soon. It is likely to be something recurring and may very well mutate over time.
Societies all over the world experience sudden economic change. The coronavirus is not novel in that respect. In Latin America, Eastern Europe, Africa and elsewhere, economies were changed, sometimes overnight and mostly for the worse, by the actions of the United States and other Western countries. The bankers and financiers have that much power. Most Americans have never experienced such shocks and do not have the vocabulary or emotional and cognitive skills to make sense of it.
I was in Ecuador when it was forced by the IMF and the World Bank to use the dollar as its currency. In that one moment everything changed. The people that had their money in sucres — which was all of the lower classes and most of the middle class — lost half their money relative to the world economy. People who had their money in dollars — the rich families and the foreign corporations in Ecuador — increased their net worth and spending power. That happened the minute, the second, the dollar was put into effect. Similar shocks are hitting the United States and parts of Europe as well as Asia, places which are not used to such sudden economic change.
How do plutocrats and other financial and economic elites make sense of a crisis like the coronavirus pandemic? How do they see crisis as an opportunity to maximize profits?
First, we have to be careful about generalizations: If you're the executive of an oil company right now, you're probably not feeling very good. If you're the president of Boeing, you're not feeling good right now. On the other hand, if you are someone like Jeff Bezos who is the CEO of Amazon, or the CEO or other senior executive of a company that deals in computers, online services and similar technologies, then there is tremendous opportunity available. Such companies are going to thrive. Universities are at a critical juncture right now because of this crisis. Their deans and presidents are saying to themselves, "OK, there's an opportunity here for us to move more and more into online schooling and get rid of tenure, get rid of our buildings. We don't need all this maintenance. We don't really need all these buildings. Where are my opportunities here to cut way back on expenses, cut back on tenure, do all of our classes virtually?"
If you happen to run a grocery business or a restaurant, you are suddenly seeing the importance of being able to do things through the internet and providing services where you deliver to people's homes or where people come up to a window and buy things. What one sees in terms of opportunity and challenges from the coronavirus is really a function of their economic and social location.
I think we do have to ask ourselves what happens if the government is not able to subsidize all these people that don't have jobs, and they can no longer buy food? These big supermarkets that are currently thriving by selling things remotely and delivering to the home or having people come up in their cars or whatever, how are they going to protect themselves from the starving people? These are questions that are hypothetical now, but those horrible events may very well happen in the near to far future, depending on how the coronavirus pandemic continues or not.
For decades you were an economic hit man. Looking at the United States, what are some of its vulnerabilities and choke points? How has the coronavirus exposed those societal and economic weaknesses?
The coronavirus pandemic has shown the world that the United States is very ill-prepared for any real emergency. That lack of preparedness is true on any number of levels.
The Trump administration appears to be paralyzed. The national government keeps wavering on what to do. President Trump is wavering almost every day. It is hard to understand what he really wants. This is a leadership crisis at the highest levels. Trump is causing a crisis in confidence among the American people during the coronavirus crisis.
It is not just Trump. The coronavirus is really exposing many other deep problems in American society. America spends roughly $700 billion a year on weapons. The country just spent $2.2 trillion to fight this virus. Wouldn't it have made more sense if the United States put a lot less money into the defense budget and a lot more money into preparing for emergencies such as the coronavirus? Money on a proper health care system or even a guaranteed income?
Economic hit men are now working within the United States and not ,just abroad. Predatory gangster capitalism has made the coronavirus much worse here in the United States. Flint, Michigan, is one example of that fact and its horrible outcomes for real people.
Flint is a city that at one point was the beating heart of the American car industry. Consider what the death economy does to itself. It consumes itself into a state of extinction. Here in the United States, the corporations dispatched their economic hit men to places within the country where the corporations could operate with fewer taxes, cheaper labor costs and the like. The corporations basically abandoned Flint. Production was largely moved overseas. The economic hit men and corporations also targeted the American people through debt — health care debt, college debt, credit cards.
The economic hit man has become stronger since I first wrote my book "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man" in 2004. Now every major corporation has its own economic hit men. They are operating both within the United States and around the world on behalf of huge multinational corporations.
You are advocating a move from a death economy to a life economy. At present, Donald Trump, the Republican Party and their propagandists and supporters are a death cult that wants older people, people with pre-existing conditions, the poor and working class and any others they deem "less than" to go out and risk their lives for "the economy." How does that fit into your framework? Trump and his allies want exactly the opposite of a life economy.
Such encouragements are absolutely disgusting and very disturbing. One has to suspect that such behavior is being driven by the desperation of Donald Trump and his family, his son-in-law's family and other Trump allies who have huge holdings in real estate and are probably losing enormous amounts of money because of the coronavirus pandemic. They are actively trying to figure out a way to take advantage of the pandemic. I am sure that is happening.
Previous Post Previous Post Carper, Coons join bill to repeal GOP tax break to high-income earners in CARES Act
Next Post Next Post Trump and Republicans never miss an opportunity to help the top 1%, not even during a pandemic


Join us for a very special, super-sized episode of the show covering the epic poem Beowulf!
Thanks to all of the Kickstarter supporters who made the show possible.
Special thanks to our reader, Andrew Leman, and our composer, Reber Clark.
EXTRA special thanks to our illustrious guests, Mr. Bob Hanske and Dr. Catherine Batt!
You may download the Beowulf theme here. Please credit any usage to Reber Clark.
More notes to come. Stay tuned for info on this year's Kickstarter for live shows in Providence and Chicago!


text:
fo/mo/deep – TheGroovyGoodness
Local groove explorers fo/mo/deep will officially release their 3rd album, TheGroovyGoodness, on June 3rd. The band's core lineup has changed since 2012's A Beautiful Bang, as Joshua Boyd is their new keyboardist and plays on most of the new album. The personnel change does not seem to have affected the band's mission much, though, as the album reveals continued experiments in the jazz, funk, world, and fusion realms.
The seven original compositions here show growth in the band's songwriting, especially the funky ode to a soulful dessert, "Peach Cobbler," written by bassist/bandleader Ron "Fatkat" Holmes, and the buoyant contemporary tune "That Song (This Love)," written by saxophonist Dr. Keith Newton. Of course, the album also continues the band's custom of featuring a strong selection of covers, though they dug deeper for the tunes this time around. "Groidology," written by Peven Everett and recorded by bassist Curtis Lundy, is an unsung groove classic that I fell in love with when I first heard fo/mo/deep play it in November. The version here cuts a bit of the fluff from the original while maintaining the hypnotic groove and featuring great solos, including one from guest trombonist Michael Goecke. The album concludes with "Chamsa," a touching Boyd solo piano tribute to Israeli pianist Shimrit Shoshan, who tragically died in 2012 at the age of 29.
TheGroovyGoodness sounds to me like fo/mo/deep's best album so far, a well-rounded collection of varied jazz grooves. The band is celebrating the release and Holmes' birthday with a free listening party at Brothers Drake on Friday, May 30th, from 7 to 8:30pm. You will be able to hear selections from the new album and the previous albums, and CDs will be available for purchase. Visit the band's website for more details and online ordering information.
Here are a couple of the new songs for your previewing pleasure:
Previous Post: Live Jazz in Columbus, Weekend of May 23rd 2014
Next Post: JazzColumbus Weekly – May 29, 2014


The Central Mass Repertory Theatre presents "Over the River and Through the Woods" at 7 p.m. at St. Anna School, 213 Lancaster St., Leominster. Proceeds to benefit the school. Call (978) 534-4770 or (978) 537-5293.
Ernie Spencer & Friends will perform in concert from 7:30 to 11 p.m. at Le Café Restaurant, 446 Lancaster St., Route 117, Leominster. Enjoy acoustic music, comedy, and stories. Call (978) 466-1880.
"Nunsensations: The Nunsense Vegas Revue" will be performed at 8 p.m. at Theatre at the Mount, 444 Green St., Gardner. Call (978) 632- 2403.
A Fitchburg Ghost Tour will be held at 8 p.m. beginning at the Upper Common Gazebo, Main Street. For reservations, call (978) 790-0862.
Always On Call Health Services, Inc. will offer an American Red Cross Babysitting Course from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. at 285 Central St., Suite 217, Leominster. For ages 11 to 15. Cost is $65. Call (978) 537-9900, Ext. 204.
St. Leo's Troop 11 will host a round-up campout from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Leominster Sportsmen's Club, 1455 Elm St. For boys, grades 6 and up. If you enjoy the rugged outdoors, then check out the Boy Scouts. Call (978) 537-2642.
Pine Grove Cemetery, located behind Carter Park, Leominster, will be dedicated into the National Register of Historic Places at a ceremony at 1 p.m. at the South Gate to the cemetery. Call (978) 534-7519.
The Leominster Public Library presents a free two-hour workshop "Getting Into Genealogy" from 1:30 to 3:30 p.m. at the library, 30 West St. Presented by members of the Massachusetts Society of Genealogists, Inc. Registration required by calling (978) 534-7522, Ext. 3.
Superhero Readers will discuss the book "The End of the Beginning: Being the Adventures of a Small Snail (and an Even Smaller Ant)" at 2 p.m. at the Leominster Public Library, 30 West St. This book group is for children, ages 7 to 10, who love to read. Call (978) 534-7522, Ext. 117.
In celebration of Art Longsjo, the Bay State Speedskating Club is partnering with Fitchburg State College and FMC Arenas to host a funfilled, family-friendly, interactive speed skating event from 3 to 5:20 p.m. in the Gaetz Arena at the Wallace Civic Center, 1000 John Fitch Highway, Fitchburg.
A Sunday Night Supper will be held from 5 to 6:30 p.m. at St. Marks Church, 60 West St., Leominster. Chicken, potatoes, vegetables, dessert and beverage served. Cost is $7, $5 for children under 12. Call (978) 537-3560.
The Central Mass Repertory Theatre presents "Over the River and Through the Woods" at 7 p.m. at St. Anna School, 213 Lancaster St., Leominster. Proceeds to benefit the school. To 5 Cal l (978 ) 534-477 0 o r (978 ) 537-5293. "Nunsensations: The Nunsense Vegas Revue" will be performed at 8 p.m. at Theatre at the Mount, 444 Green St., Gardner. Call (978) 632-2403.
The Reduced Shakespeare Company performs "The Complete History of America (abridged) - Special Election Edition!" at 8 p.m. at Weston Auditorium, Fitchburg State College. Call (978) 665-3347.
Ladies Auxiliary, Unit 13, presents a 50's and 60's Dance Karaoke Night at 8 p.m. at the Franco Vets, 300 Water St., Leominser. Dress in your best 50's attire; prizes and raffles awarded. Admission is $8. Proceeds to benefit Leominster veterans.
A Fitchburg Ghost Tour will be held at 8 p.m. beginning at the Upper Common Gazebo, Main Street.. For reservations, call (978) 790-0862.
The Montachusett Twirlers Square Dance Club will hold a Mainstream and Round Dance from 8 to 10:30 p.m. at First Baptist Chruch of Fitchburg, 1400 John Fitch Higheway. Call (978) 348-1515.
Members of the Leominster Land Trust and the Leominster Recreation Department are planning a hike of the 11-mile Monoosnoc Trail. Hikers should meet at Samoset School at 8 a.m. or call (978) 534-7529 to make arrangements if you choose the shorter hike.
An American Red Cross Blood Drive will be held from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. at St. Bernard's Activity Center, 260 Summer St., Fitchburg. Call (800) 448-3543.
The Destare First Annual Poker Bicycle Ride for Charity will be held at Destare, 320 Main St., Fitchburg. Riders leave from 11 a.m. Call (978) 582-1013.
Dinnertime For Tito will perform from 1 to 3 p.m. at Sholan Farms, 1125 Pleasant St., Leominster. Enjoy music from the Jazz Age. Stratton Players will perform "The Full Treatment" at 2 p.m. at the Stratton Playhouse, 60 Wallace Ave., Fitchburg. Call (978) 345-6066.
Leominster American Little League Board of Directors will hold its Annual Meeting at 5 p.m. at the Ronnie Bachand Memorial Field, 12th Street, Leominster. Call (978) 537-5651.
The National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) of North Central Massachusetts will sponsor a Candlelight Vigil from 7 to 8 p.m. at the Gazebo on the Upper Common in Fitchburg. Refreshments served at Prospect House, 16 Prospect St., Fitchburg.
A Fitchburg Ghost Tour will be held at 7 p.m. beginning at the Upper Common Gazebo, Main Street. For reservations, call (978) 790-0862.
Dance2Swing presents The Love Dogs at 7:30 p.m. at the Leominster Lodge of Elks, 134 North Main St. A beginner's friendly group swing dance lesson will be held at 6:30 p.m. Admission is $12. Call (978) 263-7220.
Leominster VFW Post 1807 will meet at 7 p.m. in the Veterans Center, 100 West St., Leominster.
Author Elizabeth Winthrop discusses her latest book, "Counting on Grace," at 7 p.m. in Kent Recital Hall, Fitchburg State College. Call (978) 665-3347.
The Garden Club of Leominster will discuss fall preparation from 7pm to 9 p.m. at The Trustees of Reservations', Doyle Conservation Center, 464 Abbott Ave., Leominster. Free. Call (978) 840-4446, Ext. 1910.
Leominster Disabled American Veterans Chapter 24 will meet at 7 p.m. in the Veterans Center, 100 West St. Plans for Veterans Day will be discussed. Please attend.
La Leche League of North Central Mass will meet from 9:30 to 11:30 a.m. at Our Lady of the Lake, 1400 Main St., Leominster. Topic will be "The Baby Arrives: The Family and the Breastfed Baby". Call (978) 345-8717.
Montachusett Mother of Multiples (MMOM) will meet from 7 to 9 p.m. at Our Lady of the Lake Church, 1400 Main St., Leominster. "Financial Options" discussed. Call (978) 537-6930.
Leominster Lassie League will hold its October Board Meeting at 7 p.m. at the Leominster Knights of Columbus, 484 Lancaster St. Elections for the 2008-2009 Board of Directors and Officers will be held. Open to the public.
Members of the Leominster Land Trust and the Leominster Recreation Department are planning a hike for women to the South Monoosnoc Overlook on the Monoosnoc Trail, Leominster. Hikers should meet at the West Street trailhead at 9 a.m. Call (978) 534-7529.
An American Red Cross Blood Drive will be held from 2 to 7 p.m. at Cushing Academy (Hockey Arena Foyer), 39 School St., Ashburnham. Call (800) 448-3543.


Storytelling is a buzzword in marketing these days. It has been a part of the advertising world for a long time, and of course storytelling has always been a fundamental form of human communication.
As humans we're hardwired to listen to stories. Stories are a universal currency for finding common ground, sharing ideas, and learning new things.
At Audienz, we focus on storytelling marketing as a core part of how we approach communications in the B2B technology space. In the past, technology marketers would typically lead with the technology itself, promoting new technical features and the benefits these features can offer.
By bringing in storytelling marketing, we're fundamentally changing the focus from the technology to the people that technology impacts. It starts with understanding the people themselves. Look at your target audience. What challenges are they trying to overcome? What goals are they trying to achieve? In this way, your audience becomes the hero of the story. Then the product comes in to help them move through their story.
But what form should a story take? There are a lot of ways to tell a good story. Here are three great approaches to consider.
In Barbara Minto's The Pyramid Principle, which is a major influence in our consulting approach at Audienz, stories use the Situation, Complication, Question, and Answer structure. The Situation is the opener to the story. You use it to set the stage with something relevant to the audience that will entice them to continue, for example, "Like all marketers in a world flooded with information, Marsha needed a way to break through and reach her audience with her product messaging." The Complication introduces a problem or obstacle that gets in the way of achieving the goal. This creates tension in the story: "However, Marsha's email campaign hasn't been successful. Even though she is including the latest product information that should be interesting to her audience, the response rate to her campaign has been lower than expected." The Question arises logically from the Complication: "Why isn't it working? What can Marsha do differently?" Then the Answer is the solution—the main point of what you're conveying in the story: "Now Marsha's campaign is exceeding her goals. Using the power of story in her marketing communications, she is able to connect with her audience in a world with a limited attention span." This approach works well by choosing a situation and a main character your target audience can relate to, and then showing them how to overcome the challenge. "How" they solved the problem is with the help of your product.
The hero's journey is a story construct developed by mythologist Joseph Campbell that has been influential in movies and literature, and perhaps most famously used by George Lucas in the Star Wars movies. The hero's journey includes 17 stages, but in general it can be broken down into three components. It includes multiple templates and character archetypes, but they all involve a hero who goes on an adventure, and must go through a transformation to overcome obstacles and ultimately succeed in his or her mission. This fundamental story structure, objective, challenge, transformation, and successful outcome, is a common template and is used frequently in marketing and advertising because even though it can be predictable, it is a really effective way to tell a story.
In another approach, Ira Glass, the story guru behind NPR's This American Life, says storytelling in broadcasting includes two basic building blocks. First there is the anecdote, which simply means telling a story in the form of a sequence of actions from someone's perspective: "This happened, which led to this happening, which led to this next thing…" According to Glass, just using this basic narrative form of a story naturally creates a kind of suspense. You can feel that the story is taking you somewhere. Along the way, you want to be constantly raising questions and answering them to continue the sense of suspense and engagement.
The second building block of the story is what Glass calls "the moment of reflection," which is where you explain to the audience the meaning behind the story, saying essentially, "Here's the point. This is the interesting takeaway from this story." These components, the anecdote and the moment of reflection, can be interspersed throughout the story. Essential to this approach is to take the story somewhere interesting and unexpected to the audience.
Whatever storytelling marketing structure you use, putting your audience in the center of stories makes for impactful and effective marketing. Storytelling can not only be entertaining, but stories provide a great way to educate someone on a new complex subject. By showing them new concepts in the context of a story, you can convey large amounts of information and make complex concepts accessible, understandable, and relatable to the audience. More and more, as we are all bombarded with endless sources of information, the role of marketing – especially in tech marketing – increasingly includes an educational component. With good stories, we can quickly help people understand what an offering does for them and how it can change their lives for the better.


Two adjacent 2-acre lots in Scott's Creek Estates! Lot 15 has standard septic approval so is ready to build! Great getaway for fishing with access to Drew's Reservoir only a short walk away!
From Klamath Falls, take Highway 140 E approximately 81 miles and turn right onto Andy Hill Road. Go 4.3 miles and turn right onto Dog Lake Lane, then drive 6.2 miles to Scott's Cabin Circle.


text:
Home | News & Stories | Church acquires gas station fueling youth ministry and more
Church acquires gas station fueling youth ministry and more
When the current sanctuary at FUMC Pittsburg was constructed in 1905, the congregation had already been established for nearly five decades. Now, the structure with its gabled roof and towers has become a landmark in the town, and the church celebrates 165 years of history. As time passed, a number of buildings were added to campus. Some might be expected, like a fellowship hall and parsonage. Others are a little more unusual – a doctor's office, grocery store and gas station. Moving into the future, the church is reassessing its facilities and working on a gameplan to make the best use of each space.
Rev. Jeff Dungan, now completing his second year as Pastor at FUMC Pittsburg, explained that in the 1950s, the fellowship hall and parsonage were built. "And that was the campus for a long time," he said.
Then in the 1990s and 2000s, a doctor's office across the street was added, retrofitted into an adult discipleship building, and a next door gas station was also acquired, which became a youth building. Around 2008, the grocery store that shared a parking lot with the church went up for sale.
"It all just kind of evolved," Dungan said. "These were buildings contiguous to campus that became available."
Everything made sense at the time. "Fast-forward 20 years," the pastor said. "There have been a lot of things that happened in the life of the church. Ministry is changing."
Not all of the buildings seem to fit their functions – and some seem too tied to their original design. The grocery store, for instance, can feel too large except for hosting big events.
Dungan thinks of the updates made to chicken houses common in the area. The town is home to Pilgrim's, a poultry business. "What if they didn't modernize? We have to update to be relevant like industry has," he said.
He began to ask the congregation, "If we were going to start from scratch, what would it look like? How would we use what we have and how would we envision something new?"
"We could come up with a vision or dream to aspire to," Dungan said.
This past February, the pastor was sharing that conversation on the phone with Rev. Robert Besser, Associate Director of Church Leadership in the Center for Leadership Formation.
Besser told Dungan about the newly launched Ministry Specialist Initiative (MSI) in the Texas Annual Conference. The program, which started in January, pairs clergy and congregational leaders with Ministry Specialists who are prepared to help.
There are currently 64 categories of coaches. Dungan was paired with Wesley Duncan, Lead Pastor at Alvin UMC, who serves as Architecture and Facilities Management Specialist.
Duncan had been a registered architect before becoming a pastor and even worked for an architectural firm specializing in churches for two years. Becoming a Specialist allows him to again utilize this skill set.
Duncan is passionate about architecture. He looked forward to heading to Pittsburg, even though it was more than a five-hour drive from Alvin. "I absolutely love doing this," he said.
In March, Duncan spent two days touring the campus, taking measurements, talking with Dungan and members of the congregation and imagining the possibilities. "We tackled into the wee hours of the night," Duncan said.
Now, the Ministry Specialist is drawing up the campus – and preparing suggestions to present to the congregation. "I want to help them reimagine what the church can do," Duncan said.
His questions include:
– What facilities are in great shape that we don't want to touch?
– What's in disrepair?
– What is absent?
– What aren't we using?
– What could we use for something else?
Duncan said that the Ministry Specialist Initiative speaks to the connectional system of the United Methodist church. "A lot of churches can work together to accomplish things that they couldn't before," he said. "That's the thing I love the most – our connection."
Dungan said this is the first phase of the project – and the second will be in early June. "We can start dreaming big and set a vision," he said. "This helps us start the process of what's possible. It lets us dream."
He is also leading the congregation in a visioning process with TMS Global, a nonprofit that started as The Mission Society for United Methodists in 1984.
Dungan explained that the process is critical. He said, "A lot of churches have been on cruise control for a long time and have not stepped back and thought, why are we in ministry? What is the purpose of it? How are we making disciples for the transformation of the world?"
He added that a pastor's job is to journey with the congregation as it asks those questions and then to help follow where God wants them to go.
"There is no cookie cutter that fits everyone," he said. "These things take planning, visioning, listening, talking and getting everyone on board. And you've got to start somewhere."
Dungan said that the MSI provides a starting point. "Having specialists, you can call is just a tremendous resource," he added.
FUMC Pittsburg is asking important questions – and spending time in discernment – to step into the future and continue serving its community.
Tags: Annual Conference, Community, Discipleship, Leadership, Leadership Formation, Love, TAC, Youth Ministry


text:
Q: Is TREE provably total in analysis? Is Friedman's TREE-function provably total in second order arithmetic?
A simple definition of the TREE function can be found in an FOM post by Harvey Friedman.

A: The statement "for all $n$, TREE($n$) exists" is a direct consequence of Kruskal's theorem along with König's lemma. Both of those theorems are provable in second-order arithmetic, and the quoted statement is as well.
The papers by S. Simpson and by R. Smith in the book "Harvey Friedman's Research on the Foundations of Mathematics" have many proof details and references, although the material is technical.
To give a nontechnical summary: the provability of "for all $n$, TREE($n$) exists" from Kruskal's theorem and König's lemma is not much different from the way that the finite versions of Ramsey's theorem are provable from the infinite version of Ramsey's theorem along with König's lemma. This is by design: the definition of TREE($n$) was intentionally chosen to be a kind of finitistic analogue of Kruskal's theorem.
To say one more thing: The way that this kind of nonprovability result goes is by showing that some statement (like "for all $n$, TREE($n$) exists") implies some consistency or reflection statement for some strong theory. For example, Kruskal's theorem itself implies the well foundedness of $\Gamma_0$ and hence the consistency of $\mathsf{ATR}_0$ over $\mathsf{ACA}_0$.
In the end, however, all of these consistency results and reflection results are provable in full second-order arithmetic, because full second order arithmetic has such a high consistency strength. So results about unprovability in subsystems do not lead in any direct way to unprovability over full second-order arithmetic.
Indeed, the only natural result known to be expressible but not provable in second order arithmetic is Borel determinacy (this is due to Harvey Friedman also). As far as I know, no recognizable combinatorial theorem is expressible in second-order arithmetic but not provable in the full system - I would be very interested in an example of that kind...