Sparwood Council stands firm with off street parking

Over the course of several recent council meetings held in Sparwood, the discussion of the new off street parking bylaw was discussed, reviewed and finalized. The launch of the new bylaw began with many concerned residents of Sparwood attending Council meetings and expressing their concerns over snowplowing issues, with windrows at the top of the list.

After hearing the distress from residents, Council felt that they must put some necessary action into place. After thorough discussions with the District of Sparwood Public Works Department, it was resolved that vehicles parking on the street was one of the biggest problems facing snowplows and effective street by street snow clearing. To achieve efficiencies in snow removal and to reduce unequal windrow distribution while plowing, Council approved the adoption of Bylaw 1106 on October 15, 2012. Bylaw 1106 amends the “Sparwood Traffic, Parking and Highways Regulation Bylaw No. 472” to prohibit on-street parking from six o’clock am to four o’clock pm October 1 to March 31, inclusive. "People just need to be off the street at all times during plowing," says Mayor Lois Halko. "People can back in their driveway in the order they are leaving in the morning and things like this can become a family habit and minimize hassle to people.Our vinyl floor tiles is more stylish than ever! I can foresee some challenges, but we really want to support Public Works. People should know, were are not out to punish residents, but even though our snow removal is excellent we have still had concerns from the public who want it better," she says.

Residents should note that parking on the street during snow plowing, snow removal, snow hauling, or sanding operations is prohibited. It is also an offence to push, place or throw or allow to be pushed, placed or thrown any snow or ice upon a highway or lane and that no advance warning is required under the bylaw and the Motor Vehicle Act and offending vehicles will be towed.

Residents of Sparwood have came forward expressing their concerns over the new bylaw, stating they have several vehicles and one parking space or unsure on how to ensure a vehicle is off the road with shift workers parking on the street and going to sleep. Council listened to their concerns and expressed that they understood and identified with residents in those types of situations,The TagMaster Long Range hands free access System is truly built for any parking facility. but stated that they must stand firm to the bylaw for each and every resident. "We have the same situation where we have more vehicles than parking space," says Councilor Joanne Wilton. "We park on the lawn during the winter. It gets the vehicle off the road and doesn't hurt the lawn at all," she says.

"Even if you hear the snowplow coming, and drive around the block until plowing is done," says Councilor Ron Saad. "I have worked for this town for 35 years,Posts with indoor tracking system on TRX Systems develops systems that locate and track personnel indoors. and there is no better system for snow removal, the only better system is moving vehicles off the street."

Ultrasonic wave sensors are already in commercial use in systems that support vehicle parking, for example, to assist drivers when the car is backing into a parking space. However, the detection range is narrow, and multiple sensors were required to widen the area of visibility around a car. By developing a scanning angle expansion lens for the laser beam and a high speed,Find detailed product information for Sinotruk howo truck. multipoint laser scanning system for detecting a wide range at high speeds, Fujitsu Laboratories has now roughly doubled the detection range compared to previous sensors to approximately 140 degrees, both horizontally and vertically.

Through the use of a high speed laser scanning system that employs a high speed laser driving circuit and a MEMS (Micro Electro Mechanical Systems) mirror, a high speed, multipoint scanning system has been developed that enables 3D measurement at QVGA resolution of 76,800 pixels (320 × 240) across a detection range of 140 × 140 degrees horizontally and vertically.

As a result, objects can be detected in three dimensions over a wide range with fewer sensors and a sophisticated vehicle backing support system can be created. Moreover, in contrast to vehicle-mounted cameras, which simply display a vehicle’s surroundings, the technology enables systems that detect when objects are abnormally close. It also provides warnings to drivers when backing up a vehicle, which is when accidents are more likely to occur, or when backing into a parking space, which is difficult for many drivers. It is hoped, therefore, that this technology can contribute to safer and more secure driving.If you want to read about buy mosaic in a non superficial way that's the perfect book.

Microsoft rips a page from Spotify's playbook to take on iTunes

Apple has been the king of the digital music world for most of the last decade, and its iTunes Store continues to dominate the online music industry despite recent challenges from Amazon and Google. The combination of a tightly-integrated storefront and killer hardware gave Apple a combination that other competitors were unable to match — but just as consumers started shifting from physical to digital media a decade ago, we're at the beginning of another sea change in music. Companies like Spotify, MOG,If you want to read about buy mosaic in a non superficial way that's the perfect book. and Rdio have emerged over the last few years, offering the promise of all the music you can handle anywhere you go, for the same price each month that you'd pay iTunes for a mere ten songs.

While Apple hasn't yet mustered a response to this growing trend, sticking with its hugely successful virtual record store model, Microsoft just announced it's ready to take on the streaming competition. The new Xbox Music is an all-in-one service that's equal parts iTunes and Spotify — while Microsoft is keeping the same a la carte store that it has offered for years, it's augmenting that with an updated version of its Zune Pass streaming service. For the first time, Microsoft will offer free, ad-supported streaming to anyone using a Windows 8 PC — just like Spotify — or a Windows 8 or RT tablet.Western Canadian distributor of ceramic and ceramic tile, There's also a Pandora-style Smart DJ feature for making artist-specific "stations," and for $9.99 a month, users can access also sync music to their Windows Phone 8 device and Xbox 360.

With this new service, Microsoft isn't directly trying to beat Apple — it's going after Spotify, Rdio, and all the rest of the streaming players out there. If Microsoft can be successful, Apple will be in the unfamiliar position of having to play catch-up in the digital music space for the first time. Success for Microsoft is far from assured — the company hasn't made much of a dent in the music world thus far — but it's hoping to use the strength of the Xbox brand, the ubiquity of the Xbox 360 console, and the wave of interest in its massive Windows 8 redesign to carve out a place of strength in the streaming world.

"We really wanted to build something from the ground up that solved a consumer problem," says Jerry Johnson, GM of Xbox Music. "It was clear to us that rebranding Zune doesn't solve the problem.Our technology gives rtls systems developers the ability." Chief among the issues Johnson's team identified was the fragmented music experience many consumers have to deal with. Many music listeners have legacy collections of MP3s and also now use streaming services, sometimes more than one — Microsoft hopes to offer them a single experience that encompasses all listening options. Easier discovery and sharing of new music is another area that the company hopes to improve upon. "We wanted to do this with an all-in-one solution — music shouldn't be work, it should just work," Johnson says.

Social has long been an Achilles' heel for Apple, and iTunes continues to be no exception. As the software and store are based off an ownership model, users are not permitted to share songs with each other — the only built-in option is sharing links to songs in the iTunes Store via Facebook, Twitter,A wide range of polished tiles for your tile flooring and walls. or email. Ping, Apple's recently-shuttered, first-party attempt at a social music service, was one of the company's most uninspired products and a perfect example of how out-of-touch Apple can be when it comes to the web. Sooner or later, that's going to have to change — if Apple ever launches a music service that isn't based on a la carte purchasing, social integration and easy sharing of music will need to be at the forefront, and the company hasn't yet really proved it's up to the task.

For its part, Microsoft is certainly not downplaying social, but nor is it going overboard at launch. "Sharing of music is very important," Johnson says, "and it's something we believe needs to be done in a measured and careful way." Specifically, Johnson's referring to "passive" sharing via the social graph and Facebook — "the hardcore group will like it if their friends are very much music enthusiasts, but you'll also hear a big group say they get very annoyed at the volume of things that flow through there." Xbox Music allows for active sharing via the Windows 8 charm bar, but passive sharing won't be implemented until next year. In addition to the "overshare," Johnson also wants to protect users who might not want to share their "guilty pleasure" listening habits to all of their friends on Facebook — though Johnson wasn't able to share how it'll overcome these pitfalls.

As important as those social hooks are, it's the integration with smartphones and tablets that really makes this generation of streaming, subscription services a viable option compared to their predecessors from the mid-2000s. For years, the vertically integrated iTunes and iPod combo was untouched by competition, but the launch of Apple's App Store in 2008 helped to break up this stranglehold. Finally, competing services had a way into Apple's hardware, which was previously locked down as tight as a bank. As iOS users now have a wide variety of music services to choose from, it seemed that Apple would have to offer streaming services of its own — but Apple's only move into the cloud has been iTunes Match.Load the precious minerals into your mining truck and be careful not to drive too fast with your heavy foot.

Will Pop-Up Stores Help?

As part of its Windows 8 kickoff, Microsoft has opened more than 30 "pop-up" stores across the United States. Eschewing walls and confined spaces, these would-be retail hotspots are essentially mall kiosks on steroids. They're situated in the open, just like the fingernail accessory vendors and carts full of cellphone accessories or novelty license plate frames. But, with a large series of tabletops showing off the long-awaited Surface tablet, a team of attentive staffers engaging customers and a tower emblazoned with the company's logo, the Microsoft installations, to say the least, stand out from the crowd.Largest gemstone beads and jewelry making supplies at wholesale prices.

The stores, which are scheduled to remain open throughout the holidays, include a location at the San Francisco Centre in California. InformationWeek visited the store Friday, Oct. 26, during its first day of business. The experience was both predictably familiar and pleasantly surprising.

The traces of deja vu stemmed from the fact that Microsoft had already been cultivating a retail presence in the Bay Area prior to the new store's opening. Silicon Valley boasts full-fledged, rather than pop-up, sites in Palo Alto and Santa Clara, and a Corte Madera location -- in Marin County, just across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco -- will open on November 3, complete with not only Surface and Windows 8 but also a performance by Kelly Clarkson.

The older stores' design cues,A stone mosaic stands at the spot of assasination of the late Indian prime minister. as others have pointed out, borrow heavily from Apple's successful model, and the San Francisco pop-up store, to a certain extent, follows suit. Each employee wears a bright, monochromatic t-shirt and a long lanyard with a simple name tag on the end, for example. An abundance of illuminated, semi-translucent signage is arranged in minimalist fashion. Devices are lined up without fuss in neat rows, enticing passersby to stop and pick them up.

But thanks to the kiosk-style setup, the new San Francisco location also gives off a fresh vibe. Spend some time people-watching at a mall and you'll likely see many shoppers who quicken their pace at the sight of a temporary mall vendor,A stone mosaic stands at the spot of assasination of the late Indian prime minister. their gazes fixed forward so as to avoid making eye contact with a beckoning salesperson. Microsoft's store is different; it manages to exude a sense of spectacle without compromising its elegant design. Attractive, prominently displayed gadgetry -- rather than unsolicited summons -- provoke interest from passing foot traffic. Interested shoppers are greeted by employees who are (or, at least, were on opening day) enthusiastic but not overbearing.Find detailed product information for howo tractor and other products. It gives the impression of an event, not an obstacle.

Is it worth your time to check out one of Microsoft's pop-up stores? Will they help the Redmond, Wash.-based giant infiltrate the consumer space with Surface,Find detailed product information for Low price howo tipper truck and other products. or bring Windows 8 to both homes and businesses? Read on to learn for yourself.

Microsoft's first attempt at building its own hardware is unquestionably an impressive device. Though, with the tablet market getting more and more crowded, only time will tell if it's impressive enough to sway consumers in large numbers. Nevertheless, Surface inspires confidence. It's not just the magnesium alloy construction that impresses but also the overall balance. Nothing feels cheap or -- at least on first blush -- out of place.

Harm Diaconesu was part of the Microsoft retail team at the San Francisco store's opening day, and Surface's build quality was a big part of his pitch. He mentioned that enormous attention had been paid to small details, such as the device's kickstand, which he said had undergone upward of 70 revisions before the design was finalized. He also expressed tangible enthusiasm for the Touch Cover and Type Cover keyboard accessories, which magnetically connect to the tablet with ease.

"It's one of the most satisfying things you can do with technology," he said, clicking a Surface cover into place and touting the "nice luxury sound." Such comments would be expected of a retail employee, of course, but Diaconesu's earnest effusiveness was persuasive -- as was the fact that the tablet's quality seemed to fulfill his descriptions.

The keyboards have attracted skepticism, notably from HP CEO Meg Whitman. The relatively flat layout of the Touch Cover might prove difficult for power users, though Diaconesu said most people were comfortable after only a few minutes of use. The Type Cover, however, which features larger keys that more closely resemble those of a typical keyboard, appeared serviceable for heavier needs.

On one Nigeria

The General, former Military Head of State of Nigeria said, in reference to his leadership of the civil war, “I’ll ever be grateful to all those who supported one Nigeria.” To keep Nigeria one was his battle cry. He won a decisive battle over the secessionist republic of Biafra. He kept Nigeria one.

For that, Jack Gowon deserves his place as a defender of the republic. I did say that Gowon and the Federal Army won the decisive battle. But it seems it has not won the war. The war seems to be raging still in the quiet corners of Nigeria; in various homes; on the Nigerian streets, and up north and down south.

He won a war but not the peace because true peace is just and it is not merely declarative; nor does it thrive on the silence of the oppressed. Wars are won when peace returns to the land.Find detailed product information for Sinotruk howo truck. But Nigeria is not at peace with itself, and many of us know why. Nigeria is not destined to be at peace in Jack Gowon’s life time,The stone mosaic comes in shiny polished and matte. and the signs are all there, because what Gowon won was a peace of the graveyard, in which he declared the hollow truce “no victor,One of the most durable and attractive styles of flooring that you can purchase is ceramic or porcelain tiles. no vanquished.”

The fragility of Nigeria today stems from the irresolute and unfinished nation which Gowon and his war cohort left as legacy to Nigeria. As the Igbo would say,China plastic moulds manufacturers directory. given the current situation,Western Canadian distributor of ceramic and ceramic tile, “onweghi ebe anyi ji azu eje” – we ain’t going anywhere soon. We seem mired to one spot.

Even the General knows this, and that is perhaps why none of his children lives in Nigeria. His children are in some sort of permanent exile in the UK. For a man who fought to keep Nigeria one, it seems like an ambivalent gift to his own children – that war “for unity” fought even on the graves of other innocent children who were deliberately starved to death.

So, what is this Nigeria that General Gowon fought to keep one? For whom did he fight? The idea of a “One Nigeria” seems loaded with possibilities. Let me make a confession: I do not mind one Nigeria. I love the idea of a great and vibrant multi-ethnic nation interfusing the cross-current energies of all its parts to form a colorful and powerful whole.

This was the dream and the vision of the Nigerian anti-colonial liberation movement. As a Zikist intellectual, I’m stirred by that vision. But I’m equally not unaware of the cynical use of the word “unity” that has shaped contemporary Nigeria.

The debate this past number of weeks of Achebe’s memoir for which Achebe has suffered contumely from certain parts demonstrate the broad divisions and the fault lines that continue to determine and characterize Nigeria. There’s no real unity of insight that conceives of the common good. There’s also the sad truth that the absence of a well-developed idea of nation has failed to materialize beyond the hollow concept of “One Nigeria.”

The question, again, is “One-Nigeria to what end? As we look closely at Nigeria, its past promise and its failure, something rings very hollow in Gowon’s birthday message. Here is why.

The “One Nigeria” that his generation bequeathed us is a fractured, corrupt, flatulent, ignorant, impoverished, neo-colonial nation. It even stopped being a sovereign nation. It is buffeted by many hates. Nigerians resent themselves.

Achebe says Nigerians generally resent the Igbo. But it has to be said also that the Igbo themselves are not without their own disdain of others. The worst of them are distrustful of the Yoruba, intolerant of the Hausa, and dismissive of the rest. Yet the Igbo seem to be the glue of the nation in many unique and important ways – in a sense far more tolerant of the rest perhaps because of their unique location and situation in the nation. But this very fact seems to be the basis of their troubles.

The January 15, 1966 coup overthrew the government of the first republic. The Prime Minister was killed and so were the premiers of the North and the West, as well as senior military officers from the North and the West and one senior Igbo officer, who seem always forgotten and conveniently ignored in the annals of that coup. The coup failed, foiled by Ojukwu in the North, and Ironsi in the South. Ironsi became Supreme Commander and Head of state.

On July 29, he too was murdered in a coup masterminded by Northern officers led by Gowon but spearheaded by Murtala Muhammed and T.Y. Danjuma. Gowon became head of the military government in Lagos with Ojukwu foiling the coup in the East.

Disputes about political succession and the pogrom of the Igbo led to war when the East and Nigeria did not press home the compromises arrived at in Aburi. Nigeria went to war with Biafra from July 1967, when Ojukwu declared the secession of the East. Gowon led the federal government of Nigeria to restore the nation.

Gowon fought on the grounds of “One Nigeria.” He won; reunited the secessionists, and governed till 1975 when he was overthrown. History shall be kind to the General for two reasons if “one Nigeria” survives: he led a war that restored Nigeria to its “oneness” and he supervised a post-war peacemaking process that was relatively without witch-hunt and extreme bloodshed in spite of the pressures by the hawks within his cabinet; and he ran a comparably capable administration that was set on positioning postwar Nigeria on a keel towards economic and political stability and leadership in Africa. Although he may not escape the judgment of history on the charge of war crimes perpetrated under his watch, his personal apology to the victims will humanize him.

Haunted house exploration

Once the Olivia Apartments welcomed Joplin's wealthiest citizens. Now it hosts paranormal investigators and tour groups eager to hunt down spooks.

The Paranormal Science Lab has been conducting weekend tours of the Olivia during October, and one such tour was held Friday.

The tour began with the setting up of lights in selected areas and various types of cameras.

“We have four cameras running,” said Lisa Livingston-Martin, PSL co-team leader, explained to those gathered for the tour. “The full-spectrum cameras pick up everything from infrared to ultraviolet. Low-light cameras can capture an image with one lumen. We have film that goes 33 times faster than real-time.”

Also in use during their investigations are electromagnetic frequency detectors, which will indicate a spike if energy is detected.
Bill Martin, co-team leader, an electrician by trade, works to develop more devices for detecting paranormal activity.

“I've invented a machine that shoots electronic volts into the atmosphere, and we got some EVPs (electronic voice phenomena) after that,” Martin said.“It's just my opinion, but I believe the paranormal travel by electricity and sound waves. We pick up a lot of stuff when a long train goes by. We experience a lot of battery drainage and cell phone drainage here.”
A few tour goers brought equipment of their own, including ghost hunting apps on their phones. Dacy Crockett, Lamar, Mo., showed her Ghost Radar Classic, which was doing radar sweeps of the Olivia lobby.
“I used this at my dad's house, and we think my grandmother and aunt are haunting it,” she said.

Martin and Livingston-Martin gave a brief history of the Olivia Apartments, explaining that it was built in 1906 by Arthur Bendelari, a partner in the State Lead and Zinc Company and the Southwestern Machinery Company,Installers and distributors of solar panel, and later president of the Eagle-Picher Lead Company. He named the building, which cost $150,000 to build, after his mother, Olivia.

“This was built for the ultra wealthy, the richest of the rich,” Martin said. “This was the place you lived while you were waiting for your mansion to be built.”

He and Livingston-Martin warned that the tour would not be like the paranormal hunt shows on TV.

“It has to be dramatic on TV, so they take hours and hours of film footage and edit it to get one hour on TV,” she said.

Some dramatic things have occurred, including the sounds of voices so loud that the investigation team feared live people had broken into the building.

"For awhile matters ran along all right.The stone mosaic comes in shiny polished and matte. Then the man and his wife were awakened at night by "pecking sounds." At first, they could not locate [the source of] it; afterward, they thought it proceeded from the stone quarry, and they decided that some thieving wretch . .Interlocking security cable tie with 250 pound strength makes this ideal for restraining criminals. . was stealing stone. They went outside, to the quarry. No rogue hastily left work and vanished into the darkness. . . . To tell the solemn truth, nobody was there. They returned to the house, and went back to bed, but soon they heard that knocking again, somewhat louder than before. They made a second search. Nobody at the quarry. Nobody anywhere."

By that time, their nerves were jangled. So, on the next day, "a big, stout friend was called in," and he agreed "to stay the night." But if that approach was meant to frighten the spooks away, it failed:

"His presence did not intimidate the ghosts . . . for they gave their regular nightly entertainment, increasing the "pecking sounds" to noises that seemed like sledge-hammer blows. Every inch of curiosity in the stalwart friend was satisfied; and every pennyweight of courage oozed out of him."

Since the loud, clanking noises came from outside, the new owner and his husky friend felt compelled to investigate, and what they saw, or thought they saw, would have unnerved Vincent Price:

"The two men got up and tremblingly went to the door.The TagMaster Long Range hands free access System is truly built for any parking facility. They were horrified at the sight that met their gaze. . . . For there, in phantom procession, was a delegation of silent, somber, musty-looking coffins, unsupported by human hands (or unhuman ones either,The MaxSonar ultrasonic sensor offers very short to long-range detection and ranging. for that matter), gliding through the air, filing before their riveted gaze. There were hundreds of them. . . .

And that was not all, for while the coffin procession was on the march, the performance was varied by the ghost of a former citizen of the region of Wigwam Hollow, who years ago had died and passed to dust, and who was seen running down in the bottom, with his throat cut from ear to ear."

Obama needs to come clean on what happened in Benghazi

There is an urgent need for full disclosure of what has become the “Benghazi Betrayal and Cover-up.” The Obama national security team, including CIA, DNI and the Pentagon, apparently watched and listened to the assault on the U.S.Find detailed product information for Sinotruk howo truck. consulate and cries for help but did nothing. If someone had described a fictional situation with a similar scenario and described our leadership ignoring the pleas for help, I would have said it was not realistic—not in my America – but I would have been proven wrong.

We now know why Ambassador Christopher Stevens had to be in Benghazi the night of 9/11 to meet a Turkish representative, even though he feared for his safety. According to various reports, one of Stevens’ main missions in Libya was to facilitate the transfer of much of Gadhafi’s military equipment, including the deadly SA-7 – portable SAMs – to Islamists and other al Qaeda-affiliated groups fighting the Assad Regime in Syria. In an excellent article, Aaron Klein states that Stevens routinely used our Benghazi consulate (mission) to coordinate the Turkish, Saudi Arabian and Qatari governments’ support for insurgencies throughout the Middle East. Further, according to Egyptian security sources, Stevens played a “central role in recruiting Islamic jihadists to fight the Assad Regime in Syria.”

In another excellent article, Clare Lopez at RadicalIslam.org noted that there were two large warehouse-type buildings associated with our Benghazi mission. During the terrorist attack, the warehouses were probably looted. We do not know what was there and if it was being administrated by our two former Navy SEALs and the CIA operatives who were in Benghazi.Find detailed product information for howo tractor 6x4 and other products. Nonetheless, the equipment was going to hardline jihadis.

Once the attack commenced at 10:00 p.m. Libyan time (4:00 p.m. EST), we know the mission security staff immediately contacted Washington and our embassy in Tripoli. It now appears the White House, Pentagon, State Department, CIA, NDI, JCS and various other military commands monitored the entire battle in real time via frantic phone calls from our compound and video from an overhead drone. The cries for help and support went unanswered.

Our Benghazi mission personnel, including our two former Navy SEALs, fought for seven hours without any assistance other than help from our embassy in Tripoli,The TagMaster Long Range hands free access System is truly built for any parking facility. which launched within 30 minutes an aircraft carrying six Americans and 16 Libyan security guards. It is understood they were instrumental in helping 22 of our Benghazi mission personnel escape the attack.

Once the attack commenced, Stevens was taken to a “safe room” within the mission. It is not known whether his location was betrayed by the February 17 Martyrs Brigade, the local force providing security to the consulate, which had ties to the Ansar al-Sharia terrorist group conducting the attack, and to al Qaeda. Unbelievably, we still do not know how Ambassador Stevens died.

The Obama national security team, including CIA, DNI, State Department and the Pentagon, watched and listened to the assault but did nothing to answer repeated calls for assistance. It has been reported that President Obama met with Vice President Joseph R. Biden and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta in the Oval Office, presumably to see what support could be provided. After all, we had very credible military resources within striking distance.We recently added Stained glass mosaic Tile to our inventory. At our military base in Sigonella, Sicily, which is slightly over 400 miles from Benghazi,China plastic moulds manufacturers directory. we had a fully equipped Special Forces unit with both transport and jet strike aircraft prepositioned. Certainly this was a force much more capable than the 22-man force from our embassy in Tripoli.

I know those Special Forces personnel were ready to leap at the opportunity. There is no doubt in my mind they would have wiped out the terrorists attackers. Also I have no doubt that Admiral William McRaven, Commander of U.S. Special Operations Command, would have had his local commander at Sigonella ready to launch; however, apparently he was countermanded—by whom? We need to know.

I also understand we had a C-130 gunship available, which would have quickly disposed of the terrorist attackers. This attack went on for seven hours. Our fighter jets could have been at our Benghazi mission within an hour. Our Special Forces out of Sigonella could have been there within a few hours. There is not any doubt that action on our part could have saved the lives of our two former Navy SEALs and possibly the ambassador.

Having been in a number of similar situations, I know you have to have the courage to do what’s right and take immediate action. Obviously, that courage was lacking for Benghazi. The safety of your personnel always remains paramount. With all the technology and military capability we had in theater, for our leadership to have deliberately ignored the pleas for assistance is not only in incomprehensible, it is un-American.

Somebody high up in the administration made the decision that no assistance (outside our Tripoli embassy) would be provided, and let our people be killed. The person who made that callous decision needs to be brought to light and held accountable. According to a CIA spokesperson, “No one at any level in the CIA told anybody not to help those in need.” We also need to know whether the director of CIA and the director of National Intelligence were facilitators in the fabricated video lie and the overall cover-up. Their creditability is on the line. A congressional committee should be immediately formed to get the facts out to the American people. Nothing less is acceptable.

Common Council committee to review proposed special event policy

The changes are a second round of adjustments to the way the city deals with special events that began two years ago when former Mayor Carolyn Peterson, in anticipation of the city needing to reduce its workforce and tighten resources, tasked a team to evaluate and modify the special events process.

Initial changes were made for 2012, but a special events subcommittee of the City Administration Committee has continued to evaluate the policy in collaboration with event organizers and county tourism programs to propose additional changes for 2013. Some of the regulations from the 2012 policy (for example, the city will only approve one special event per calendar day) will remain the same with the new regulations aiming to encourage event organizers to use volunteers as much as possible for tasks like setting up no parking signs, picking up trash or blocking off the streets.

“The primary goal is to bring our special events in line with the services and support the city is reasonably able to provide,” said Alderperson Cynthia Brock, who served on the subcommittee.If you want to read about buy mosaic in a non superficial way that's the perfect book. “It will require increased organization and funding for managers who want to bring forward an event. Up until those points, those resources and funding have come through the city, and we are no longer in a position to ask departments who are already facing reduced.”

The new policy also requires that event organizers submit a volunteer management plan (showing how many, the scheduling etc.) as well as a resource mitigation plan that shows how the organizers will minimize use of city resources.

“This will favor special event organizations which are well established because they have a strong organizational structure,Find turquoise beads from a vast selection of Jewelry & Watches. like the Ithaca festival,” Brock said. “Events that do not have an organized management team will have a harder time under the structure because the structure demands the event be more organized.”

One of the largest pieces of the policy is the addition of a fee structure for use of city resources. The fees include rental fees for city parks and facilities as well as the fees for use of city resources and staff. For example, the baseline cost for use of city Department of Public Works labor and equipment in 2012 is $70 an hour, with overtime at 1.5. Based on that figure, the policy lays out that the cost for posting and removing street block of “no parking” would be $44 an hour, delivering and picking up barricades would be $35 an hour.The TagMaster Long Range hands free access System is truly built for any parking facility.

“Part of the change in thinking is to not only encourage organizers to take on more responsibility on their own through the use of volunteers, but also to consider the city’s resources almost as a vendor,” said Brock. “You can either volunteer to do the services or you can pay for the services if the services are deemed non-routine by the city. And that’s obviously a definition that’s open for speculation — what is a routine service and what is a non-routine service. First and foremost the city is going to make sure that we are going to be protective of public safety. If there’s a large gathering of people at any location and it’s deemed appropriate that there should be police personnel then there will be additional police personnel to ensure public safety. So it’s open to that discretion.”

Alderperson Chris Proulx,We have a wide selection of dry cabinet to choose from for your storage needs. who served on the subcommittee as well, also pointed to the fee structure as a way to encourage greater use of volunteers.

“We looked first to find ways to encourage event organizers to use volunteers in many ways, such as posting no parking signs or manning traffic barricades,” he said. “The fees, in most cases, are designed to be the second option, when an organizer does not have sufficient volunteers and when the City must perform the function for public safety purposes. In the case of new fees for Stewart Park, we were already charging fees for the use of Cass Park, so we wanted consistency and we wanted to offset additional maintenance costs for events at Stewart Park.Purelink's real time location system protect healthcare workers in their daily practices and OMEGA interventions.”

The special events team, which is made up of city staff from the Clerk’s Office, Ithaca Fire Department, Ithaca Youth Bureau, Department of Public Works and Ithaca Police Department, evaluates the applications for special events and has the discretion to determine what would be non-routine for the city.

Brock pointed to the necessity of giving city staff some discretion in evaluating the applications because of the broad range of events that occur in Ithaca and how they could each differently affect city resources.

“One of the big challenges is that we have such a variety of events,” she said. “We have tiny little 5Ks or neighborhood walks all the way up to the Ithaca Festival, which could easily bring in 20,000 people. So how do you create a policy that encapsulates all of the conditions of how to give guidance of how these might be managed. This policy provides general guidelines and a great deal of discretion among staff to work within those guidelines. And I think because the guidelines are broad, it lends to a level of uncertainty for organizers who are not sure how it will impact their event specifically.”

Halloran hard to define

A sly disposition matched with hubris; mixing talk of nuclear energy technology with stop and frisk. Councilman Dan Halloran (R-Whitestone) is the sort of guy who can arrest your attention by crossing oceans of topics, and he wants to take that ubiquity to Congress in a run for the open 6th Congressional seat.

To say Halloran’s reputation precedes him is an understatement. The councilman has had public run-ins with every major power broker at the City level and a whole host of agency and community figureheads who have managed to draw his ire. He brings the same principled hubris to his Congressional candidacy. Halloran is a bit more casual about it.

“I have consistently been a voice for reform and transparency,” he said in an interview at the Queens Chronicle’s office.

Halloran was first elected to the City Council in 2009, after now-state Sen.Find detailed product information for Sinotruk howo truck. Tony Avella’s (D-Bayside) departure. His pre-political career includes stints as an NYPD officer, prosecutor and defense attorney.

The councilman considers his tenure in office a success so far, pointing to being ranked No. 1 in the council for constituent services every year since he was elected. Halloran has also brought back more discretionary funds than his predecessor, which he lists openly online as a nod toward his penchant for transparency. He also championed various causes that go part and parcel with being a councilman (ie: the Auburndale rezoning).

But making sure out-of-character houses aren’t built on a neighborhood block is a far cry from tackling a capitol that has, according to many, become a morass of legislative obstruction.

Halloran’s answer? A four-point good government plan made up of consitutional amendments, which would require passage by two-thirds of both the House and Senate before as well as approval by three-quarters of all states.

His proposal boils down to tackling the deficit, setting term limits, enacting campaign finance reform and declaring an official language.

The balanced budget portion would call for spending to equal revenue within five years, wiping out the much-ballyhooed deficit.

His plan would set term limits for all members of Congress — four six-year terms for the Senate, and four four-year terms for the House. Halloran has pledged he will not serve more than four terms if he goes to Congress, to set an example.

“This way, you’re not running for office the second you walk into office,We mainly supply professional craftspeople with crys talbeads wholesale shamballa Bracele ,” he said. “The more you’re in politics, the more corrupt you are. I don’t care if you’re the best person on the planet. You make deals, the line becomes blurry.”

For campaign finance reform, Halloran hopes to limit campaign contributions in monetary and material form to the current $2,500 amount for individuals.

Possibly the most contentious proposal — making English the official U.Klaus Multiparking is an industry leader in innovative parking system technology.S. language — is posited as a common sense measure that will streamline the way government interacts with its citizens, especially at the voting booth, while uniting the country.

“There is no other nation in the world that lets you vote in more than one language,” Halloran said. “I want a melting pot and not a mosaic.”

The councilman also has a three-tiered tax plan: 5 percent for everyone earning up to $50,000; 10 percent for anyone making between $50,000 and $500,000; and 15 percent for the rest. All write-off’s would be eliminated save education and mortgage deductions.

Halloran’s plan also calls for lowering the corporate tax rate down to 20 percent while eliminating all deductions that aren’t geared towards capital expenditures for U.S. operations and employee increases.

It should be noted Halloran has refused to sign Grover Norquist’s pledge to never increase taxes.The stone mosaic comes in shiny polished and matte.

Halloran also showed a steadfast “originalist” streak when decrying the Supreme Court’s recent Obamacare ruling, which verified the constitutionality of President Barack Obama’s healthcare overhaul. The Constitution and founding documents should be the sole source of guidance for the Supreme Court, Halloran asserted.

“The Declaration of Independence […] means something when it says we have certain inalienable rights,” he said when talking about his legal philosophy. “It seems to me that we’ve often forgotten that these aren’t rights given to me by a government; they’re rights that existed by my condition as a human being.”

Halloran, always adverse to labels, is a steadfast hawk on foreign policy matters. Iran has a nuclear weapon? “Give the green light to Israel to do whatever it wants,Thank you for visiting! I have been cry stalmosaic since 1998.” he said, and warn Iran’s regime there is a price to pay for crossing the line.

Six candidates seek 3 Scarborough Town Council seats

Turnover in the Town Council will continue this year as six candidates seek three seats and one incumbent seeks re-election.

Councilor Jessica Holbrook of Beech Ridge Road is seeking a second three-year term, while veteran Councilor Carol Rancourt cannot seek a fourth consecutive term because of local term limits.

Running with Holbrook for the two seats with three-year terms are Paul Andriulli of Two Rod Road, Forest Street resident Ed Blaise and Christopher Coon of Meeting House Road.

The election to replace former Councilor Karen D'Andrea, who resigned in August, and serve the remaining two years of her term is between Morning Street resident Bill Donovan and Kate St. Clair of Woodfield Drive.

Scarborough Town Council seats are elected townwide and without party affiliation.

Coon, 45, and St. Clair, 35, are running for elected office the first time. Andriulli, 56, missed winning a council seat in 2011 by 79 votes. Donovan, 65, and Blaise, 69,Selecting the best rtls solution is a challenging task as there is no global solution like GPS. served on school boards in New Hampshire and Vermont, respectively.

Andriulli, a contractor, is married to Toni Andriulli. A 26-year town resident, he served 20 years on the Scarborough Fire Department.

Blaise, 69, is married to Faye Blaise. The couple are 14-year Scarborough residents and have two grown children. Blaise worked for IBM near Burlington, Vt.Find detailed product information for Sinotruk howo truck.The MaxSonar ultrasonic sensor offers very short to long-range detection and ranging.

Coon, 45, is unmarried, has no children, and works in financial management at Maine Medical Center. He has lived in Scarborough for six years.

Donovan, 65, has lived in town for six years and is married to Molly Donovan. Between them, they have seven grown children. Donovan was a lawyer who oversaw a firm in Manchester, N.H.

Holbrook, 31, is married to Benjamin Holbrook and the couple have two children. She was first elected in 2009 and is a Scarborough native who owns a salon.

St. Clair is married to Mark St. Clair. They have four children; she has been involved with the March of Dimes for eight years, including as chairwoman overseeing an online support group for parents of children born prematurely.

In a year where the candidates said the there are no "hot-button" issues, taxation and spending are resonant themes.

Four of six candidates said they support the town referendum to spend up to $900,000 for a new ladder truck for the Black Point Road fire station. The bond question anticipates a total repayment of $1.08 million in principal and interest over the next 20 years at 2 percent interest.

Blaise said he is unconvinced the cost is justified.

"I don't see why we should spend $1 million for a truck that will depreciate 30 percent to 40 percent in three or four years," he said.

At a Oct. 11 forum, Coon said he was undecided about the sole local referendum question on the ballot.

Andriulli's support is experience-based.Selecting the best rtls solution is a challenging task as there is no global solution like GPS. "You want to know the truck under you is safe," he said.

Donovan and Blaise said they are committed to keeping property tax increases equal to or under the rate of inflation.

"A lot of people are neither rich or poor and own the vast majority of houses and pay the vast majority of taxes," Donovan said.

Blaise and Coon vowed to bring their management and accounting skills to council chambers.

"I will spend time thinking and wondering how things will look in five or 10 years," Coon said.

Holbrook, who serves on the council finance committee, said staffing shortages in public safety and at Town Hall and other municipal needs have been postponed too long.

"I don't care what the economy is doing, people always worry about their back pockets," she said.

Scarborough School Department operations account for 60 percent of municipal appropriations, and council candidates said they are aware they are limited in their input on education spending. The council has final say about how much is spent on education, but no say in where it is spent.

St. Clair said the key to council and School Board relations comes in communication. She said her friendship with Scarborough School Board member Kelly Murphy is a reason she is running.

"It is critical to have a good relationship. They might not like what you have to say, but they will be more open to it," St. Clair said.

Andriulli said his work as a contractor will help him reconcile and compromise with a basic idea in mind.

"I want the best education everyone can afford," he said.

Coon said he is running because of the budget process last winter. He was distressed by School Department plans to add new staff and programs despite the loss of federal and state subsidies.

"If enrollment is level, then growth should not be beyond the cost of living increases," he said.

Donovan said it is not his intention to do "what the School Board is charged to do," adding he would still speak up if projected spending increases are higher than the rate of inflation.

Blaise said he would like to expand the council role in determining the education budget, and said he sees little financial management in any municipal area.

"I don't feel the school system or town government has a responsibility of providing or ensuring jobs are kept,Installers and distributors of solar panel," he said. "I'm not out to cut programs; I am out to get the town more efficient."

Holbrook said her first term showed her the limitations councilors have on education spending.

Shifting focus in a time of awareness

In any given month throughout the year, you can find a multitude of events or issues to commemorate. October happens to be National Book Month and National CyberSecurity Awareness Month, but it's probably better known as both National Breast Cancer Awareness Month and National Domestic Violence Awareness Month.

I’m not going to say one cause has more significance than the other. Thousands of lives are affected each year by both breast cancer and domestic violence. Statistics will show you these facts, but numbers could never relay the personal feelings, struggles and emotions of someone who has encountered one of these hardships.Gecko could kickstart an indoor tracking mobile app explosion.

You will never hear me say breast cancer awareness is not important. I know beautiful lives who have lost their battle with the disease and I’ve seen how it affected the people around them. But given what transpired here,We mainly supply professional craftspeople with wholesale agate beads from china, shouldn’t this campus rethink its focus?

One of our own was taken from us because of domestic violence. If anyone can show me how breast cancer has touched this many students this deeply, I encourage you to email me and try to help me understand. Otherwise, I can’t comprehend why we haven’t put more emphasis on domestic violence awareness,The stone mosaic comes in shiny polished and matte. why we haven’t put more effort into remembering Alex Kogut on this campus and why we haven’t done more in general.

I know it wasn’t the college’s intention to prioritze one cause over the other. I love this school and I know it’s a sensitive time here. But still, we need to honor our own, and it doesn’t feel like much is happening to make us feel comforted in the weeks after Alex’s death.

It may not be the intended meaning, but to me it feels like this issue is being swept under the rug. It feels like the college has shied away from supporting domestic violence awareness. I look around campus and see all the attention being paid to breast cancer awareness, and feel angry that the college isn’t doing more to make us remember. One example that comes to mind is in Brockway — the painted windows feature ribbons, most of them happen to be pink, while only one of them is purple.

I've heard similiar sentiments over the last few days from fellow students. A common theme in the dissent seems to be about the amount of pink compared to the amount of purple on campus.

It’s comforting to see purple in the details -— Alex's initials painted on the football field, ribbons wrapped around poles, silicone bracelets or a purple painted pinky nail. However,The stone mosaic comes in shiny polished and matte. it feels like pink is still the color of choice throughout this campus.

By not putting domestic violence awareness on the forefront, or even just prominently displaying purple throughout the mass of pink on campus, it feels like the college is trying to forget what has happened. That feels wrong. It’s been less than a month, and people are still mourning. We shouldn’t move on this fast. We shouldn’t forget this quickly.

I know remembering is hard. As more details come to light, we’re forced to relive the tragedy all over again and deal with the overpowering emotions we’ve been trying to work through. Small reminders bring us back to the aftermath, and we’re brought back to square one and left trying to heal all over again.

I know we can’t keep focusing on the bad things that happen in life, and I don’t think we should. By no means is this the way life was meant to be lived. Yes, purple is the symbolic color of the tragic way in which Alex died, but it’s also become symbolic to us as the color to remember her by.

I don’t look at the purple around campus as an attempt to make known what happened. We know the end result of what transpired the last weekend of September. I look at the color purple and remember Alex, a girl I never knew, but am forever changed by. To me, the color purple symbolizes the remembrance of the life she lived, more so than how it was taken away.

Unfortunately for a lot of us, because we didn’t know her, we can’t have one without the other. We didn’t know her,If you want to read about buy mosaic in a non superficial way that's the perfect book. and we won’t ever have the opportunity to. Remembering Alex means remembering how she died. Words can’t express how unsettling this is, how hard it is to move on from.

Breast cancer is not a choice — no one chooses to get the disease. Domestic violence is a choice — someone chooses to be violent toward his or her partner. A friend of mine pointed this out, and it really resonated with me. While it is important to raise awareness for breast cancer, as I’m sure fundraising will help in its own way, shouldn’t more awareness be given to a cause that people can learn from, and possibly change their lives for?

The fact that I can’t mention all the different fundraising or awareness events that have taken place on campus over the past month, for space purposes only, is an incredible thing. People are actively supporting and working toward a common cause, whichever cause it may be. And it may seem trivial to simply be offended by the amount of one color over the other around campus, but I know I’m not the only one who felt this way this month.

Issues at stake in election

Abortion and birth control are divisive issues in politics, and they've flared up at times in this campaign despite the candidates' reluctance to dwell on them.

President Barack Obama supports abortion rights. And his health care law requires contraceptives to be available for free for women in workplace health plans.

Republican Mitt Romney opposes abortion rights, though he previously supported them. He says the Supreme Court ruling establishing abortion rights should be reversed, allowing states to ban abortion.Directory ofchina glass mosaic Tile Manufacturers, He's also criticized mandatory coverage for contraception as a threat to religious liberty.

Romney's ability as president to enact federal abortion restrictions would be limited unless Republicans gained firm control of Congress. But the next president could have great influence over abortion policy if vacancies arise on the Supreme Court. If two seats held by liberal justices were filled by Romney-nominated conservatives, prospects for a reversal of Roe v. Wade would increase.

U.S. troops are still in Afghanistan, 11 years after they invaded. Why? The answer boils down to one word: al-Qaida. The goal is to damage the terrorist group enough to prevent a repeat of the 9/11 attacks.

After nearly tripling the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan in 2009-10, Obama is pulling them out, aiming to end all U.S. combat there by December 2014. He says Afghans are now "perfectly capable" of defending themselves. Romney now endorses ending combat in 2014, saying flatly "we're going to be finished" then.One of the most durable and attractive styles of flooring that you can purchase is ceramic or porcelain tiles.

Neither says,China plastic moulds manufacturers directory. though, what happens if it turns out that by 2014, Afghan forces are losing ground and need U.S. forces to avoid a Taliban takeover.

Only small numbers of al-Qaida fighters are still in Afghanistan. But the concern is that if U.S. and allied forces leave prematurely,If you want to read about buy mosaic in a non superficial way that's the perfect book. the Taliban would regain power — and al-Qaida would not be far behind.

There's little doubt the government bailout of General Motors and Chrysler kept the automakers afloat and saved huge numbers of jobs. But there's also little chance the government will get all its money back.

Taxpayers are out about $1 billion on the Chrysler rescue. GM stock is selling for less than half the price needed for the government to recover all of its nearly $50 billion investment in that company.

Obama carried forward a bailout begun by his predecessor. Romney opposed it. He said the companies should have gone through a private restructuring, with certain government guarantees after they reorganized.

Three years later, both companies are profitable. Chrysler has added almost 12,000 workers; GM, about 2,Why does moulds grow in homes or buildings?000. It's been estimated that 1 million jobs have been saved at automakers, parts companies and related businesses.

This presidential election is on track to cost nearly $2 billion. It's a staggering tab, and those who kick in big money to cover it stand to gain outsized influence over policy decisions by whoever wins. Your voice may not be heard as loudly as a result.

Recent court decisions have stripped away restrictions on how elections are financed, allowing the very rich to afford more speech than the rest. In turn, super PACs have flourished, thanks as well to limitless contributions from the wealthy — including contributors who have business before the government.

Disclosure rules offer a glimpse into who's behind the money. But the information is often too vague to be useful. And nonprofits that run so-called issue ads don't have to reveal donors.

History, poetry, and pragmatics by Syed Nomanul Haq

IN recent years, a new harvest of historical writings has sprouted forth out of the ashes of devastating eruptions from Victorian ideologies. Practically all fundamental presuppositions of the older generation of historians have now been called into question. For example,Western Canadian distributor of ceramic and ceramic tile, the historical orthodoxy embodied in the hardened maxim “history repeats itself” has been rendered suspect; pushed off board along with it are the oversimplified spicy stories of the absolute “rise” and “fall” of world civilisations, stories that have remained so familiar to us. Then, the spectacle of ideology masquerading as history has been caught, exposed, and censured ruthlessly, and so has been the fate of a chronic standard practice: that of privileging the account of the elite-victor over the tale of the lowly-defeated — this is now dethroned as a practice which only engenders histories that are truncated and lopsided at best.

But above all, it is the racial arrogance of colonial, or colonial-infected, historians that has been thrown out of the arena of historical discourse.We have a wide selection of dry cabinet to choose from for your storage needs. This arrogance used to form the very ground of universal world histories, hiding underneath a grand narrative — namely that European civilisation is in its very essence superior to all others, that it has a pure and linear pedigree, and all pre-modern history is just a preparation of the human society for the inevitable “rise of the West.” In the discarding of this arrogance, monumental writings such as those of Edward Said have played a decisive role — Said questioned the very categories of the “the East” and “the West” or “the Orient” and “the Occident,” and this is well-known.

On the South Asian side, the new generation of histories came with a bang. Starting from the 1960s, a sizeable corpus of writings not only on history but also about history — that is historiography — has emerged in a steady and powerful stream. We have, for example,A wide range of polished tiles for your tile flooring and walls. the many daring works of Romila Thapar that have changed the very landscape of how we imagine India’s journey over time, particularly in relation to Hindu-Muslim relations, challenging the old habit of projecting the viciousness of communalism deep into the past. Then, there are numerous writings on Mughal history by Irfan Habib that shake our comfortably held common beliefs, beliefs that are nourished by the all-pervading winds of propaganda. A watershed in this flow is Ranajit Gauha’s Subaltern Studies — this term taken over from the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci, denoting what in simple terms could be called, “history from below,” reconstructing history out of the reports and perceptions not of the elite but of low-ranking ‘commoners’. And as for the history of Pakistan, Ayesha Jalal’s books have marked a decisive breakthrough indeed, opening up with tremendous energy many new vistas not only in history but also in historiography.

In the story of this onward march one would painfully miss the eloquent Yale historian María Rosa Menocal who died just a few days ago. Menocal wrote extensively on al-Andalus, medieval Muslim Spain, and threw the whole standard, received discourse on Europe’s literary and intellectual ancestry into jeopardy. Through seminal works such as The Ornament of the World and The Arabic Role in Medieval Literary History: A Forgotten Heritage, she provided a glimpse of the Arabo-Muslim blood running through all aspects of latter-day European life, particularly in its literary and cultural life. No history of European literature, whether it is lyrical poetry or the picaresque novels such as the redoubtable Don Quixote, can be written without recourse to Arabic sources — this is what we learn from Menocal. She provided a learned antidote to the divisive ideologies of an eternal clash between “the Orient” and the “the Occident” — if these are two distinct cultural spheres, she taught us, then they have gravitated towards each other, one transmitting its motion to the other. The grand historian Marshall Hodgdson had written many years ago that what we call European “ascendency” is a convergence of many streams, the Arabo-Islamic stream is one of most gushing among them. Menocal grafted more flesh onto this groundbreaking observation. To be sure,Installers and distributors of solar panel, she will be missed.

But all of this throws into sharp relief one fundamental lesson — the lesson that history, far from being an antiquarian romance for the past, for the “dead and gone,” is our contemporary concern. And this is one meaning of the fashionable adage, “all history is local” — indeed, we look at the past from our own cultural, intellectual, and temporal location; we “aspect” the past from our own time-bound soil. And by suppressing or mutilating or forcing actual facts selectively into racist or divisive molds we do grave harm to our contemporary life: giving rise to all kinds of isolationist extremisms, and providing grist to the ever-productive mill that churns out “the other”.

So here we come to the pragmatics of history. See how Romila Thapar will tell us that it is wrong to read Hindu-Muslim communalism back into the remote alleys of the past and forming the essence of these two peoples, fundamentally revising in the process the so-familiar Mahmud Ghaznavi-Somnath story. And note how Ranajit Gauha will lend an ear to the voice of the voiceless masses, now underscoring and restoring their human dignities. Listen to Irfan Habib speaking about the extra-ethnic, extra-communal administrative and sheer imperial concerns of the Mughals; and Ayesha Jalal laying out before us the complex mapping of the Pakistan movement and of the legal cause of the Quaid-i-Azam. Then, note too Menocal writing like a sage a prescription for the remedy of rigid Europe-Islam extremisms, and handing us the tool for scratching clean the ugly deposits of the clash of civilisations thesis…

The moral of the tale is clear: history enables us to explain ourselves. It gives us the know-how to read our bearings in space-time coordinates, it provides us an anchorage for our otherwise suspended temporal existence. Yes, it is more than a “romance with the dead and gone”; it is relevant for our lives here and now. To put it crudely, history is useful.

Let’s make a turn here. It is generally said, and drummed into the ears of impressionable youngsters, that if history is just a romance with that which has slipped away into the dark world of non-existence, poetry is worse: it is through and through romance, utterly useless! We live in an age of science and technology, it is pronounced, and poetry can teach us nothing in making progress in this field, let alone in achieving excellence. This attitude seems to be part of a colonial hangover, and manifests the worst species of terror wrought by the commercial-financial industry. It is also based on historical ignorance, and on a complementary ideology that represses the basic human liberty of self-expression and self-realisation, generating a sinister rebirth of alienation. To prevent human beings from entering into the free world of imagination, to outlaw the construction of universes parallel to this given one, and to place barbed wires at the entry points of creative expression, is to deprive them of their very humanity. To be human is to be free to create.

But we are here concerned with the pragmatics of poetry. Of course,Allows you to securely organize any group of cable ties or wires. one is tempted to say that poetry is its own defense, its very being is its justification, it needs no arguing. Perhaps this is the reason why, unlike the case with the discipline of history, the pragmatics of poetry is an area that has received almost no attention from the scholar or the literary critic. Why would they address something they don’t recognise? And yet, let me briefly confront the question pragmatically.

One notices how in the standard discourse a dangerous obfuscation of the distinction between science and technology appears, both spoken in the same breath. This is a historical travesty — for technology can grow without science and science proceeds without being encumbered by questions of technological applications. The invention of the steam engine is a case in point, a technological achievement which had nothing to do with Newton in Cambridge, and whose operation could not be explained scientifically until much later. Likewise, we have the glaring example of the nineteenth-century logician George Boole, whose pure logical studies were not carried out with a view to any technological gain, but then much later his system found application in digital electronics. Such episodes are numerous.

Electric Bikes Go on a Roll in Rome

Liliana Ginanneschi rode an electric bicycle to her wedding at City Hall here recently to avoid getting snarled in traffic, and rented out the bikes for her guests, too, so they wouldn't miss her vows.

"When the wedding ceremony ended we jumped on our bikes and headed to the reception," the film director says. "Two guests liked it so much that they later bought electric bikes.One of the most durable and attractive styles of flooring that you can purchase is ceramic or porcelain tiles."

Rome's notorious traffic, the high cost of gasoline, shortage of parking, limited metro system and frequent transportation strikes are prompting Italians to explore different ways of getting around. Electric bikes, with rechargeable battery-powered motors that aid pedaling, are gaining popularity.

No official figures are available, but Diego Porta, deputy head of Rome's municipal police, says electric-bike use is growing in the nation's capital, even among the police force, which has eight of them. "It seems like a natural response to combat higher costs of living, such as gasoline," he says.

Italian gasoline prices rose to more than 2 a liter ($2.60 a liter, or $9.85 a gallon) this summer due to higher oil prices and new Italian gas taxes. Prices today are at about 1.80 a liter.

Sales of electric bikes have climbed across Europe during the economic slowdown,Find detailed product information for Sinotruk howo truck. says Kevin Mayne of the European Cyclists' Federation in Brussels. Italian car sales, meanwhile, have dipped. New-car registrations in September fell 26% on the year, falling to 1970s levels. Motorcycle sales have also skidded.

However, sales of electric bikes, which unlike motorcycles and scooters don't require insurance, road taxes or gasoline,This document provides a guide to using the ventilation system in your house to provide adequate fresh air to residents. are rising. Italy's bicycle and motor association ANCA expects electric bike sales to grow at least 10% next year.

"Interest has been phenomenal,Allows you to securely organize any group of cable ties or wires. and potential buyers were lining up to check out the bikes," says Franca Camplone, head of renewable energy company Enel Green Power SpA's EGPW.MI -2.02% retail sales, who expects 50,000 electric bicycles to be sold overall in Italy this year, compared with practically none five years ago.We specialize in howo concrete mixer, The company began selling the bikes in September and has launched a campaign to promote e-bikes as Christmas gifts.

"We are speechless over the number of people who have showed up at our store buying or inquiring about a bike," said Valerio Verrino, owner of Ecovia, an electric bicycle shop near the Colosseum.

Mr. Verrino says the price of an electric bike with gears ranges between 950 and 2,000—about a third less than a small scooter and less than half of a motorcycle's cost.

Despite Italy's top standing in professional cycling, conventional bikes haven't taken off as a mode of transportation in Rome due to its hilly terrain and reckless drivers. A 2011 Eurobarometer report said 4.7% of Italians use bicycles as their main vehicle, below the European Union average of 7.4% and far short of the Netherlands's 31.2%.

Roman authorities hope to change that, in September announcing plans to build 1,650 kilometers (1,025 miles) of cycling lanes in Rome and surrounding areas, from almost none now.

The public transport system is patchy. Rome's metro lines don't reach key destinations because underground ancient ruins limit its scope. The city is often beset by transportation strikes.

Rome is Europe's third most congested city, alongside Brussels and after Warsaw and Marseille, according to the July congestion index put out by navigation company TomTom.

"One evening I was so fed up with not finding a parking space for my car near a club where I had arranged to meet friends that I drove back home in frustration," said Anna Paulis, a 42-year old psychiatrist who bought an electric bike about 18 months ago. "I now ride my bike almost daily everywhere."

Enel Green Power calculates that Italian car drivers spend an average of 3,600 a year for their average daily usage of 14 kilometers. The same commute costs 10 in electricity for electric bike users, the company said.

Electric bike fans also say the two-wheeled contraptions provide a solution to stylish Rome's long-standing cycling dilemma: how to zip around without arriving sweaty and exhausted.

On a conventional bike, "You'd be unpresentable if you cycled to a romantic dinner with your girlfriend," says Tommaso Giacchetti, a 28-year old engineering Ph.D. student at the city's Roma Tre university. "Appearance is important."

Curbing the parking crunch by cutting disabled placard abuse

Cities should set the right prices for curb parking because the wrong prices do so much harm. A yearlong study in 1984 estimated that cruising for underpriced and overcrowded curb parking on 15 blocks of Westwood Village created about 950,000 vehicle-miles of travel a year, equivalent to 38 trips around Earth or four trips to the moon. This cruising wasted 47,000 gallons of gasoline and produced 728 tons of greenhouse gases. Studies have found similar results in other cities.

Because underpriced curb parking causes so much cruising, transportation experts around the world are watching California's experiments with flexible prices at curb parking meters. In San Francisco,If you want to read about buy mosaic in a non superficial way that's the perfect book. the SFpark program charges meter rates that vary by location and time of day, depending on demand, to create one or two open spaces on each block. Los Angeles recently adopted a similar pilot program called LA Express Park that operates in parts of downtown. If these programs work as planned, drivers will usually see an open curb space on every metered block.

Parking fees that rise and fall with demand can reduce cruising, but new flexible programs in San Francisco and Los Angeles suffer from a problem that is rampant throughout the state: disabled placard abuse. California allows drivers with disabled placards to park free for an unlimited time at any on-street meter. If cities increase the price of curb parking on crowded blocks to create a few open spaces, they also increase the financial incentive to misuse disabled placards. Higher meter rates may simply drive out paying parkers and make more spaces available for placard abusers.

In 2010, a UCLA survey of placard use on several blocks in downtown Los Angeles found that cars with disabled placards occupied most of the curb spaces most of the time. For five hours of the day,We mainly supply professional craftspeople with crys talbeads wholesale shamballa Bracele , cars with placards occupied every space on one block. The meter rate was $4 an hour, but the meters earned only 32 cents an hour because cars with placards consumed 80% of the meter time. Drivers with disabled placards were often seen carrying heavy loads between their cars and the adjacent businesses.

The problem is not confined to California.If you want to read about buy mosaic in a non superficial way that's the perfect book. Studies in other states have found flagrant placard abuse. When police officers in Alexandria, Va., interviewed drivers who returned to cars displaying disabled placards, they found that 90% were using them illegally. These placard abusers are, in essence, stealing money from the city and depriving genuinely disabled drivers of a convenient place to park.

Reforms in other states show how to end placard abuse at meters. Michigan, for example, adopted a two-tier system that takes into account different levels of disability. Drivers with severe disabilities receive special placards that allow them to park free at meters. Drivers with less severe disabilities receive ordinary placards and must pay at meters. Before this reform, Michigan had issued 500,000 disabled placards that allowed all users to park free at meters. After the state enacted its two-tier reform, only 10,000 drivers applied for the special placards that allow free parking at meters. Enforcement is simplified because any able-bodied driver who uses a severe disability placard is conspicuously breaking the law.

Illinois adopted a similar two-tier placard reform after Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel learned that free parking at meters for disabled placard users cost the city $22 million last year, about 25% of the total meter revenue. Raleigh, N.C., allows placard users to park for an unlimited time at meters but requires them to pay for all the time they use. Some cities also make it easier for placard holders to use their cellphones to pay for parking by waiving the usual surcharge of about 30 cents for each transaction.

How would these reforms affect the flexible prices for parking in San Francisco and Los Angeles? During the first year of SFpark, prices declined at 31% of the 7,000 meters, remained the same at 37% and increased at 32%. If the reform reduces placard abuse at meters,Selecting the best rtls solution is a challenging task as there is no global solution like GPS. more spaces will open up for paying customers. Prices would then go down to fill the more plentiful open parking spots. But with more spaces available,One of the most durable and attractive styles of flooring that you can purchase is ceramic or porcelain tiles. more parkers would pay for the time they use. Total revenue could increase or decrease, but one thing is clear: The lower prices and greater availability of spaces would benefit almost everyone except placard abusers.

Disabled placard abuse is both despicable and ubiquitous. Now it also undermines innovative programs like SFpark and LA Express Park that promise to reduce traffic congestion and greenhouse gas emissions. Other states have shown the way. California now needs only political will to end disabled placard abuse.

A seat at Asia's table

The YouTube sensation - 500 million hits and counting - created by the droll rapper and dancer Psy (Park Jae-sang) went live in Sydney last week, with Psy being swamped by excited Australians including, naturally, many of Korean descent.

This shows us what the Asian Century is starting to look like.

Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said about Asia on a visit to Australia a few days ago: "We are entering a new phase - the economy is mature."

Smart commercialisation of a fun idea - one that parodies itself and its roots in the nouveau riche suburb of today's Seoul - is a face of this new, mature Asia.

Note the way that Samsung wraps itself around "Gangnam Style". And Samsung is, of course, just one of the Korean brands that have gone global, with Hyundai, LG and Kia also to the fore. Those companies, and today's sensational Psy, are everywhere.The oreck XL professional air purifier,

Australia's engagement with Asia, on the other hand, is not so evident. While we send two-thirds of our exports to Asia, only about 7 per cent of our direct investments are there. Almost no one among our top chief executives and chairmen, public service chiefs or university heads has ever lived or worked in Asia or speaks an Asian language - although we did once have a prime minister who spoke Chinese.

However, at another level Australians have developed a deep awareness of their dependence on Asia, and especially on its economic performance.

Former prime minister Paul Keating once said wryly: "I guarantee if you walk into any pet shop in Australia, what the resident galah will be talking about is microeconomic policy."

Today, it would be talking about Asia, especially about China's appetite for our iron ore, and even - if it is a slightly more sophisticated galah - about whether China's recent downturn is merely cyclical or the start of a deeper structural transformation. Especially a transformation towards a more diverse, Korea-style economy with a stronger services sector and a bigger role for its own consumers.

Asia, with its thoroughly integrated manufacturing structures - say, machine tooling in Japan, electronics in Taiwan, financing in Hong Kong, screens in Malaysia, with assembly in China - is feeling the pain not only from the European and American slowdowns but also from slackening domestic demand.

Asia outside Japan hit 7.2 per cent economic growth last year. But this month the Asian Development Bank again revised down its forecast for the year, to 6.1 per cent, the slowest rate for three years. The bank's predictions for the year have fallen steadily - from 6.9 per cent in April and 6.6 per cent in July.

The bank has also just scaled back its forecast for next year, from 7.1 per cent to 6.7 per cent.

Commodity prices have been falling from their stratospheric levels, reflecting declines in demand from Asia more than a step up in supply from elsewhere in the world.Manufactures flexible plastic and synthetic rubber hose tubing,

So, then, is the Asian Century over so soon after it began? After we in Australia finally "got" the message that this is where the centre of economic gravity has shifted? If that proves to be the case, where can we turn next for salvation?

This is to be a core theme at the forthcoming conference Securing the Future - the eighth Economic and Social Outlook Conference to be jointly presented by The Australian and the Melbourne Institute - at the University of Melbourne on November 1 and 2.

Julia Gillard, like most of Australia's political leadership, remains confident about Asia continuing to take up the global slack and driving growth, despite weaker numbers in the past few months. The Prime Minister retains the hope that maximising our economic engagement with India,We specialize in howo concrete mixer, which includes the sale of uranium once safeguards are in place, as well as China, will broaden our prospects of navigating troughs, such as the one we are now experiencing.

She said during her three-day visit to India last week that the countries had "set a goal of $40 billion trade in 2015 - in other words, our trade could double". She added that trade between the two nations was growing at 13 per cent a year. Indian investment approvals in Australia grew last year alone to more than $11bn.

But India's recent decline in growth has been sharper than China's, and as Saul Eslake, chief economist Australia at the Bank of America Merrill Lynch, said last week, India will find it hard to match even the slower rate of Chinese growth.

At the Securing the Future conference, economist Ross Garnaut will expand on his theme that the Asian story is radically different in different countries - but that the overall outlook is benign, despite the current slowdown and structural shifts.

"Japan is the first post-developed country: incomparably comfortable for its citizens, natural calamity aside," he says.

Japan has the world's greatest longevity and excellent health, education, arts at all levels, household financial security, employment, personal and public security, information technology, and substantial and improving environmental efforts, both domestically and contributing to the international scene.

Japan is experiencing "rapid ageing and slow growth, but low unemployment and with output per work-age person growing only slightly more slowly than the US". This is where South Korea and China are headed too, says Garnaut. "If Japan is the destination of modern economic growth, then modern economic growth is a good thing." He points to the high income of more recently developed economies and societies of Asia - Hong Kong, Taiwan,Quickparts builds injection molds using aluminum or steel to meet your program. Singapore, South Korea. Economic growth in these countries is still on a stronger trend than in high-income countries elsewhere.

China, says the former ambassador to Beijing, "is making a start on a historic transition, to greater domestic orientation on growth, higher wages and consumption, less inequity in income distribution, greater focus on the impact on the global and domestic environment - all rather more smoothly and rapidly than widely anticipated".

Moderately slower growth is emerging there, as anticipated by analysts who have stayed close to Chinese developments, he says - including by Garnaut's own projections, as in his Climate Change Review. The structural change, he says, is more significant than the accompanying fall in China's growth trajectory.

China is still,The stone mosaic comes in shiny polished and matte. he says, "headed to be the world's largest economy by all measures within a decade, and towards sustained strong growth for another decade after that".

But the nature of China's change is now different, "with less opportunity for coal and iron ore, the staples of the post-2004 Australian resources boom, and more for other things".

The Zeitgeist of those "other things" is typified by Psy's Gangnam Style "soft-power" bandwagon.

Parking tickets drove me away

MORPETH is missing out on valuable business because of parking problems, it has been claimed.

Businesswoman Josie Donaldson, who has run The Complementary Therapy Clinic in Newgate Street for 18 years, has decided to take some of her trade away from the town.

And if she continues to be hit with parking fines and threats of tickets, she says her whole business could follow.

“Morpeth is so lovely, but the council is making it a misery with the parking problems,” she said.

Mrs Donaldson said there are not enough long-stay spaces for workers and when people have to park in short-stay car parks there is not enough flexibility from traffic wardens.

She attracts clients from across the country to her clinic, as well as students from around the world.

And in January she was planning to book a venue in the town, as she has done many times before, for biochemical aromatherapy workshops, which will be attended by 25 students, including ten from Japan and one from Ireland.

But after picking up two parking tickets in a month she says the situation has made it impossible to hold the courses in Morpeth and has switched to a venue in Cramlington, where parking is free.

“I could have had them in Morpeth because I was willing to pay for parking passes, but the students would be out all the time trying to find spaces,” she said.

“The courses start at 10am so there won’t be any long-stay spaces left and the students would be having to leave the course every two hours to move their cars so I have cancelled the booking for Morpeth and am going to Cramlington. Not only is it cheaper to hire a room there,Find detailed product information for howo spareparts and other products.One of the most durable and attractive styles of flooring that you can purchase is ceramic or porcelain tiles. but parking is free.

“The people on the courses would have had lunch in Morpeth every day, they would have bought things here and the last time we had people staying in B&Bs in Morpeth. Now all of that will go to Cramlington.

“I treat people from all over the country and after their treatment they would stay here and do some shopping, but now they have two-hour parking so they have their treatment and leave and do their shopping in Newcastle or York on the way home.

“This is what this problem is doing to Morpeth, it is killing it.”

Mrs Donaldson said many people have complained of getting parking tickets even if they are just a few minutes late, while she has been threatened with one while unloading outside her business.

“If I’m going to keep getting tickets I will leave Morpeth. I don’t want to because I’m well established here, but it is getting more and more stressful. It’s just something silly like car parking, but it can ruin my whole day because it feels like I’m trying to rush people out as quickly as I can,The stone mosaic comes in shiny polished and matte. which I don’t want to do just to move my car.

“The days when you have an all-day space are bliss — you can relax.

“I live in Morpeth and I don’t want to move my business and take other money out of Morpeth that comes with that because of parking, but it is so hard.

“If you have a business in Morpeth I don’t know why the council can’t give a bit of leeway of ten minutes or so. That would help us a bit.

“I have a parking disc so I’m not trying to evade paying or do anything illegal — I just want to park all day.”

The Morpeth and District Chamber of Trade has requested a meeting with Northumberland County Council’s Parking Manager Lynne Ryan to discuss the problems.

Chairman John Beynon said: “We are having a lot of problems with parking, the traffic wardens and the restrictions.

“We are happy that the wardens are in the town to move people on who are abusing the system, but they are not giving any leeway, it is just black and white.

“We are an ancient market town and we want people to be able to park in the town easily enough and stay here for long periods. In the short-stay car parks people are rushing back and not staying in Morpeth.This document provides a guide to using the ventilation system in your house to provide adequate fresh air to residents.

“The wardens are fairly strict and we think a little bit of common sense should be used.Why does moulds grow in homes or buildings? The prime example is 8.30am on a Sunday when we were putting hanging baskets out and we were told to move on.

“We are getting a lot of complaints. If not daily then every other day either a trader or member of the public is coming to see me about these problems.”

Which Policies Matter Most to Manufacturers?

One Voice, a lobbying group formed by the National Tooling and Machining Association (NTMA) and the Precision Metalforming Association (PMA),Selecting the best rtls solution is a challenging task as there is no global solution like GPS. has announced a “Get Out the Vote” effort directed at manufacturers, urging them and their families to vote in the presidential and congressional elections on November 6. Manufacturers and their families, says an announcement from the group, “account for 7 percent of the voting age population — a critical number in a Presidential race that may be won by a 1 or 2 percent margin.”

One Voice points to rising energy costs as a vital concern for manufacturers. Manufacturing is inherently energy intensive, and energy costs affect industry across the supply chain.

“Energy costs have increased rapidly over the last two years, placing U.S. manufacturers at a significant disadvantage over foreign competition,” One Voice explains. “Small business owners and middle-market manufacturers in particular are not able to adjust the price of their goods and services enough to match steep energy cost increases.”

Manufacturers use a third of all U.S. energy resources,We mainly supply professional craftspeople with wholesale turquoise beads from china, NAM says. This necessitates an “all-of-the-above” energy policy that takes advantage of “oil, natural gas, clean coal, nuclear power, renewable and alternative energy, and energy efficiency.”

In the regulatory arena, One Voice explains that small and mid-sized manufacturers “are often trapped between their much larger customers and suppliers and government regulators.The stone mosaic comes in shiny polished and matte.” Even if they are not directly affected by restrictive regulations, such as those on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, they can get hit by a “trickledown” effect.

“All actions have unintended consequences,” One Voice warns, and “if the cost of manufacturing in America increases for a key supplier or customer, then the cost also increases for small businesses.”

Regarding tax reform,We specialize in howo concrete mixer, One Voice says that the U.S. “has the highest corporate tax rate in the developed world” and that the current tax structure is “a myriad of high rates, temporary credits, loopholes and outdated policy that restricts growth and reduces competitiveness.” Congress needs to drastically simplify and stabilize the tax code to increase incentives for the crucial small- and medium-sized business sector.

NAM adds that “nearly two-thirds of all manufacturers pay income taxes at individual rates.” In effect, this means that “a tax increase on individuals is a tax increase on manufacturers.”

In discussing trade enhancement and enforcement, One Voice zeroes in on currency manipulation and trade barriers imposed by China and other international trading partners. Interestingly, the organization says that 58 percent of its members are exporters, demonstrating the potential importance of trade enforcement to the manufacturing sector.

One Voice’s policy manifesto charges that, “Any fundamentally misaligned currency is an illegal trade subsidy and should be considered as such under U.S. laws.” Tariff and non-tariff trade barriers unfairly target U.S. manufacturers and make it “more difficult for small businesses in particular to navigate the hurdles put in place by our trading partners.”

In the area of workforce recruitment and training, One Voice urges increased funding for manufacturing job training to strengthen the country’s manufacturing base.High quality mold making Videos teaches anyone how to make molds. “Washington should support public-private partnership projects that recruit, screen, train, place and retain workers in critical metalworking industries,” so the U.S. will be in a better position when the global economy rebounds.

The Association for Manufacturing Technology (AMT) echoes many of the themes set out by One Voice and NAM. In addition, AMT urges the creation of a comprehensive national manufacturing strategy aimed at rebuilding and strengthening the sector through its “Manufacturing Mandate.” AMT supports creating public-private partnerships, such as NAMII and the 10 other partnerships being funded by the federal government, coupled with intensive interagency collaboration at the federal level to bring off this strategy.

Such a policy would identify manufacturing innovation clusters around the country and marshal the resources of businesses, universities, community colleges, vocation-technical schools and manufacturing extension agencies to spur advances in manufacturing technology.