text:
In this lesson, I explain what an
Array is, properties of Array instances, and methods of
Array.prototype that were added in EcmaScript 5.
What is an Array[edit]
Array instances also have a special definition for the internal method called
[[DefineOwnProperty]] ( P, Desc, Throw ) used for property assignment and a special
length property that affects and is affected by the properties in the array. The
[[Class]] internal property value is "Array" (§ 15.4.5).
Arrays are Objects. Array instances inherit properties from the
Array prototype (§15.4.4) object and Array.prototype inherits properties from Object.prototype.
Length and [[DefineOwnProperty]][edit]
<source lang="javascript"> // length. var a = ["a", "b" , "c", undefined]; "3" in a; // true; a[3]; // undefined; a.length = 2; "2" in a; // false.
// DefineOwnProperty a[4] = "CC"; a.length; // 5; "3" in a; // true. a[3]; // undefined.
// Sparse array DO NOT DO THIS. delete a[2]; // true "2" in a; // false </source>
NodeLists Are Not Arrays[edit]
There are many collections in the DOM that have indexed properties but are not Arrays. NodeList is one such example. For example, <source lang="javascript"> document.getElementsByTagName("div"); </source> — returns a live collection.
In modern browsers Array methods can be used generically on these Array-like host objects. For example:
<source lang="javascript"> var slice = Array.prototype.slice;
var divs = document.getElementsByTagName("div"); divArray = slice.call(divs); // create a new Array
function filterOutEmptyDivs(el) { // Using ES5 String.prototype.trim; assuming textContent is supported.
return el.getElementsByTagName("*").length > 0 && !el.textContent.trim();
divArray.filter(filterOutEmptyDivs); </source>
However, IE8 and below will throw an error when slice is called on a Host object. See also:
- Array.prototype.slice (start, end)
- Re: [whatwg WebIDL and HTML5]
- Slice:MDN
- What is a Host Object?
EcmaScript 5 Array Methods[edit]
The normative reference for Array is the EcmaScript 5.1 specification, a mature, official standard. See §15.4 Array.
EcmaScript 5 formally standardized the "Array Extras" that were previously introduced in Firefox 1.5 (Mozilla JavaScript™ 1.6) in 2006.
These added methods are present in common modern browsers, but can have a noticeable performance impact for lengthy arrays, particularly on limited devices, and especially with large data sets.
<source lang="javascript"> Array.prototype.indexOf Array.prototype.lastIndexOf Array.prototype.every Array.prototype.some Array.prototype.forEach Array.prototype.map Array.prototype.filter Array.prototype.reduce Array.prototype.reduceRight </source>
Each method description has an overview of what it does, followed by the algorithm. The complete list of methods is to be found in the EcmaScript specification. See Array.prototype.
It is interesting that these methods can also be used generically on something that is Array-like. <source lang="javascript"> var filter = Array.prototype.filter;
filter.call("foo", function (ch) { return ch == "o"; }).join(""); </source>
Array-like was proposed as a standard interface (I championed this idea for a while), but was not included. Perhaps it will be, some day.
But for now, it is useful to know that these methods are natively supported in modern browsers.
Assignment 1 Write a function that removes an element from an array.[edit]
Write a function that that takes an array and a specified element, and returns the array, minus the first occurence of the element from the array.
Given: <source lang="javascript"> var thing = {}, f = function(){}; var input = [f, [], /foo/, thing, []];
removeElement(input, thing); // [f, [], /foo/, []]; </source>
Assignment 2 Write a function that removes duplicate numbers from an array.[edit]
<source lang="javascript"> var input = [1, 2, 3, 1, 0, 1]; var result = arrayUniqueNumbers( input ); // [1, 2, 3, 0]; </source>
Assignment 3 Write a function that sorts an array of strings case-insensitively.[edit]
Write a function that sorts an array of strings case-insensitively. <source lang="javascript"> var input = ["penguin", "Beard", "pelican", "bear", "ostrich"]; sortStringsCI(input); // ["Bear", "pelican", "penguin", "ostrich"]; </source>


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Did you know there are women who will try and steal your husband while you're fighting breast cancer, struggling with surgeries and chemo and trying to maintain some semblance of a normal life? Before a couple of these women lunged for my husband, it never occurred to me I knew anyone like this: women with no moral code, and more importantly, no concept of self-worth. Who does that sort of thing? A woman at my church, that's who.
One Sunday, because of chemo, I barely had enough energy to blink, much less get dressed and make it to church, I told James to go on without me. Moments after he walked into the church, one of these husband-stealing Jezebels leaned into him, gave him a full contact body hug and proceeded to grind her crotch into his leg. "If I can ever do anything for you," she whispered in his ear. "Call me."
Another time chemo zapped me of energy, I asked James to meet a woman, I thought was my friend, and a workman at our Little House so they could hang light fixtures. This hair-flipping floozy came-on to James bigger than Dallas. When her floor-length trench coat came off, she had on a micro mini skirt, cowboy boots and a thong. Repeatedly she bent over, as though retrieving something from her bag, fanny side toward James. James said each time he moved, so he didn't have such an up close and personal view of her derrière, she moved so that he did. The Little House is only 22 feet by 22 feet, so there wasn't much room to escape her, plus there was a rain storm going on outside. When he tried to move toward the front porch, she cornered him.
"Has anyone ever told you what pretty eyes you have," she asked.
"Yes," he said. "My wife."
James never liked her because, as he put it, she was always looking to "better deal herself." When he told me the "pretty eyes" bit, I knew it was true because she says that to most everyone she meets, men and women alike. Later I discovered some of the other women who knew her had a saying: "Don't ever leave your husbands alone with her."
While neither woman's true character surprised me, I was disappointed at their lack of compassion for me and for James. Women who brazenly offer themselves like that show disrespect for husbands as well. We all know husbands can be overwhelmed with their wife's breast cancer, even vulnerable in many respects. The statistics about marriages that breakup after a breast cancer diagnosis are well-known. I know how hard it is to be wife, mother, lover, housekeeper, and hold down a job while going through breast cancer, but hear me when I say this: Talk to your husband about his fears and yours and sex, or lack of sex during breast cancer.
A man's "little brain" has a tendency to dominate his "big brain," and while you may not be as interested in sex during treatment as your husband is, his sexual needs do not go away. Even if you're not lucky enough to be best friends with your husband, this is a time to treat one another like best friends. Try to talk honestly and openly with one another about different ways you can handle sex, and other issues, over the course of your treatment and recovery. Perhaps a counselor can help. If your marriage is a good marriage, this is an opportunity to grow even closer. If your marriage is rocky, perhaps you can find a way to role reverse with one another. Work at becoming best friends, and seeing things from your spouse's point of view. James was a great husband who loved me beyond all reason and placed our marriage first and foremost. We both did. We talked daily about everything, and for the most part, we were usually on the same page.
Women who try and steal another woman's husband, while his wife is fighting for her life, are contemptible creatures. At least vampires come out at night, but these desperate housewives brazenly do their best work in the daylight with no remorse or misgivings as to the consequences of their actions. They are sad pathetic women in search of an ego fix with no regard for anyone, not even themselves. These women are little more than pit vipers with the word, "Juicy," emblazoned across their butts. Watch out for them, girlfriends. I guarantee you; they're closer than you think.

subset: commoncrawl


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I got a lot of flack last weekend when I wrote about Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn's launch being a disaster. I get the feeling people thought I was dissing the game. That's just not true.
I was dissing the fact that so many people who wanted to play it could not do so, myself included. Perhaps "tragedy" would have been a better word, though I somehow doubt that would have stemmed the tide of angry tweets, emails and comments.
Now that the server issues have calmed somewhat, it's back to the MMO review process as usual, only this time with a video touch. I'll be doing two or three of these leading up to a full review of the game, and by then all of this congestion nonsense will be behind us, and I'll never have to play as a Marauder again.
For those of you who'd rather not watch the video, here's a synopsis: I'm having a good time. Hit me up on Sargaranrtantiris (or whatever) server as Mister Fahey, should you get a chance.
Oh, and I'm sorry for pretending I had no idea what Kotaku was to that one person who messaged me the other day. I was feeling impish.


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In 2004, Washington University in St. Louis researcher Jianmin Cui was handed a puzzling clue to the structure of an ion channel his lab had been studying for five years.
Scientists at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation in Ohio had located a large family whose members suffered from epilepsy, sudden attacks of involuntary movement or both, a syndrome called generalized epilepsy and paroxysmal dyskinesia (GEPD).
By analyzing the DNA of the 16 family members who had inherited the syndrome, the Cleveland Clinic scientists identified a mutation in the study family in the gene that encodes the big-conductance potassium ion channel (also known as the BK or MaxiK channel). This was one of the ion channels Cui, PhD, the Spencer T. Olin Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering in the School of Engineering & Applied Science, had long studied.
Ion channels are small, highly selective pores in the cell membrane that allow specific ions (charged atoms) to enter or leave the cell. They are not continuously open but instead have gates, which open briefly and then close again in response to electrical, mechanical or chemical signals.
The mutation changes a single amino acid, or protein building block, in the BK channel.
The scientists thought that the mutation led to an increase in channel activity and thus nerve-cell excitability, causing epilepsy or involuntary movement, depending on which parts of the central nervous system were affected by the mutation.
But there was a problem. The altered amino acid was not part of the gate that opens and closes the channel.
Cui and his colleagues were thus faced with the problem of action at a distance. How did the mutation that apparently didn't interfere with the channel's gate nevertheless alter how often it was open?
Meticulous work that involved mutating other amino acids and testing the electrical properties of the mutated channels in frog eggs finally led to an answer, published in the June 24 issue of the journal Neuron.
It turns out that the mutation makes part of the channel more rigid, altering its dynamics in a way that makes it easier to toggle it open. This is the first time, says Cui, that protein dynamics have been implicated in the functioning of an ion channel.
Ion channels
Life itself depends on ion channels, the tiny pores in our cells that open on cue, letting charged atoms rush in or out. These influxes and effluxes create the electrical signals that make our eyes blink or our ribs expand to draw breath.
But because the channels are tiny and stuck in the greasy cell membrane, they are hard to study. Their existence wasn't even confirmed until the 1970s. Working out the structure and function of a single ion channel (there are more than 300 types) earned researchers a Nobel Prize as recently as 2003.
Nerve impulses are actually changes in the electrical potential across a nerve cell's membrane. The traveling wave of electrical excitation, known as an action potential, is orchestrated by the synchronized opening and closing of ion channels.
At rest, cells are slightly more negative (a matter of millivolts) inside than they are outside. An action potential starts when sodium channels open, allowing positively charged sodium atoms to rush into the cell, reversing the polarization of the membrane.
The sodium channels then automatically close and potassium channels open, repolarizing the membrane by allowing positively charged potassium ions to flood out of the cell.
What the BK channel does
One of the BK channel's functions is to allow a nerve to adapt to constant stimulation by becoming less responsive. This loss of sensitivity is what allows us, for example, to ignore the constant pressure of our clothing.
Ion channels are gated, or triggered, in a variety of ways. Voltage-gated channels respond to the voltage, or potential difference, across the membrane. Ligand-gated channels are triggered by the binding of a chemical messenger, such as calcium. The BK channel's gate responds to both types of stimuli.
Normally action potentials aren't strong enough to trip the BK channel's gate. But each action potential lets calcium ions into the cell. At higher calcium concentrations, the BK channel's voltage threshold is shifted to lower voltages. Now action potentials can trip the gate, opening the BK channel.
The BK channel, also called the Big K channel or MaxiK channel, lets about 200,000 potassium ions through a millisecond, roughly 20 times more than a typical potassium channel. So when the BK channels open, they quickly repolarize the membrane, lopping off the action potential.
How might a BK channel mutation lead to epilepsy? Because the mutation allows the membrane to repolarize more quickly, the nerve cell can fire at higher frequencies, an excitability that may lead to seizures.
Cui emphasizes, however, that the link between the mutation and epilepsy has not been fully worked out.
The channel's structure and mechanics
The various parts of the channel are only loosely associated, like chunks of pull-apart bread, and the voltage and calcium sensors are at some distance from the pore. So it is not at first clear how changes in the electrical field or the binding of calcium ions open the pore.
The voltage sensor includes a helix that is loaded with several copies of the positively charged amino acid arginine. The electric field across the membrane works on these positive charges, pushing the helix out of the membrane or pulling it deeper in, depending on the field's polarity.
When it is pushed up, the helix pulls on the linker chain that connects the bottom of the voltage sensor to the bottom end of a helix in the pore. So pushing the charged helix up opens the pore, and pushing it down closes the pore.
What about the ligand gating? When calcium binds to the cystolic domain, it changes the cystolic domain's shape (its conformation), and the domain tugs on another linker chain connected to one of the pore-lining helices as it warps.
The channel's dynamics
In trying to clarify the effect of the mutation on BK channel function, Cui's group uncovered yet another mechanism for action at a distance.
After the mutation's discovery, experiments showed that it affects the pathway between a calcium-binding site on the cystolic domain called D367 and the channel's pore. The epilepsy-causing mutation is very close to the binding site but not part of it.
So how was the mutation making it easier to open the channel?
Cui wondered if it didn't have something to do with the mechanical properties of the amino acid that is substituted into the mutated form of the channel. The amino acid is glycine, which is exceptionally flexible; the presence of gylcine can allow a protein to bend at that position like a mechanical joint.
The scientists' idea was that this local flexibility might actually make the pathway between the D367 binding site and the pore more rigid, which in turn might make the channel more sensitive to calcium binding.
To see whether dynamics mattered, Cui's team immersed wild type channels in thick solutions of sugar or glycerol. The viscous solutions, which mimicked a more rigid D367 pathway, did indeed increase the channel's sensitivity to calcium.
To explore further, Cui's team then simulated the D367 pathway and its dynamics. The simulation showed that the wild-type protein is more flexible than the mutated protein and that glycine did indeed reduce the flexibility of other areas of the pathway.
The effect of the mutation, Cui concluded, was to make the D367 pathway move as a more rigid entity that couples the calcium binding site more tightly to the pore, so that it was easier to toggle the channel open and closed.
What it all means
As far as he knows, Cui says, this is the first study to focus on the dynamics of ion channels and to show that dynamics matter to function.
He suspects, however, that dynamics might be generally important to ion-channel function. A class of ion channels called TRP channels, Cui says, respond to heat or cold — and also to menthol, which is why menthol is a "cool" taste. At colder temperatures, proteins would move more sluggishly, so in this case, too, it is possible that dynamics influence function.
Understanding ion channels is also important to medicine. Many poorly understood diseases, such as epilepsy, migraine, cardiac arrhythmias and some autoimmune diseases, are being revealed to be disorders of the ion channels, or channelopathies, as they are called.
Based on what is known of the BK channel's roles in the body, work on the channel might lead to the identification of several more channelopathies.
The BK channel is implicated not just in epilepsy and movement disorders but also in hypertension (it regulates the tone of smooth muscles like those that line the blood vessels). It is a suspect in schizophrenia because some antipsychotic drugs function much as BK does to increase outflows of potassium, and it may also play a role in autism and mental retardation.
In short, the basic research now underway in Cui's lab may one day have an impact far beyond its walls.
To learn more about the methods Cui uses to study ion channels, go to our video newsroom.


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Henon Attractor
|Henon Attractor
Henon Attractor
- This image is a Henon Attractor (named after astronomer and mathematician Michel Henon), which is a fractal in the division of the chaotic strange attractor.
- 1 Basic Description
- 2 A More Mathematical Explanation
- 3 Teaching Materials
- 4 About the Creator of this Image
- 5 References
- 6 Future Directions for this Page
Basic Description
The Henon Attractor is a special kind of fractal that belongs in a group called Strange Attractors, and can be modeled by two general equations. The Henon Attractor is created by applying this system of equations to a starting value over and over again and graphing each result.
Making the Henon Attractor
Say we took a single starting point (x,y) and plotted it on a graph. Then, we applied the two Henon Attractor equations to the initial point and emerged with a new point that we graphed. Next, we took this new point and again applied the two equations to it and graphed the next new point. If we continued to apply the two equations to each new point in a process called iteration and plotted every outcome from this iteration, we would create a Henon Attractor. Click here to learn more about iterated functions.
Furthermore, if we plotted each outcome one at a time, we would observe that the points jump from one random location to another within the image. If you take a look at the animation, you can see the irregularity of the plotted points. Eventually, the individual points become so numerous that they appear to form lines and an image emerges.
Magnification of the Henon Attractor
If you magnify this image, you would find that the lines (really many, many points) that appear to be single lines on the larger image are actually sets or bundles of lines, that, if magnified closer, are bundles of lines and so on. This property is called self-similarity, which means that even as you look closer and closer into the image, it continues to look the same. In other words, the larger view of the image is similar to a magnified part of the image.
History of the Henon Attractor
Michel Henon was a French mathematician and astronomer who developed the Henon Attractor in the 1970s. At that time, Henon was interested in dynamical systems and especially the complicated orbits of celestial objects. The Henon Attractor emerged from Henon's attempt to model the chaotic orbits of celestial objects (like stars) in the mist of a gravitational force.
A More Mathematical Explanation
- Note: understanding of this explanation requires: *Algebra
Fractal PropertiesThe Henon Attractor is often described as being similar to the Cantor Set [...]
Fractal Properties
The Henon Attractor is often described as being similar to the Cantor Set. Let us zoom into the Henon Attractor near the doubled-tip of the fractal (as seen in the animation). We can see that as we continue to magnify the lines that form the structure of the Henon Attractor, these lines become layers of increasingly deteriorating lines that appear to resemble the Canter Set.
The Fractal Dimension of the Henon Attractor is not calculable using a single equation, but it is estimated to be about 1.261.
Chaotic System
The Henon system can be described as chaotic and random. However, the system does have structure in that its points settle very close to an underlying pattern called a chaotic attractor. The basic Henon Attractor can be described by the equations, where is the x-value at the nth iteration.
Astronomer Michel Henon created the original Henon Attractor using the values a = 1.4 and b = 0.3 and starting point (1,1). These are also the values used by the artist to create the featured image at the top of the page. However, by changing the values of a and b, we can obtain Henon Attractors that look slightly different.
Changing "a" and "b"
Although the original Henon Attractor uses a = 1.4 and b = 0.3, we can alter those values slightly to produce various-looking Henon Attractors. However, the values of a and b are limited to a small range of values, outside of which the fractal ceases to resemble the Henon Attractor.
Here are some more examples of Henon Attractors with different a and b values.
Fixed Points
Looking at the system of equations that describe the fractal, the Henon Attractor uses only two variables (x and y) that are evaluated into themselves. This results in two equilibrium or fixed points for the attractor. Fixed points are such that if the two Henon Attractor equations are applied to the fixed points, the resulting points would be the same fixed points. In algebraic terms:
- and
- where is the x-value at the nth iteration and is the x-value at the next iteration.
Therefore, if the system ever plotted onto the fixed points, the fractal would become stagnant. By solving the Henon Attractor's system of equations with a = 1.4 and b = 0.3, we can find that the fixed points for the original Henon Attractor are (0.6314 , 0.1894) and (-1.1314 , -0.3394).
To solve the system of equations:
Since and , we can simplify the equations and refer to the variables as just and , respectively
By substituting the value of defined by the second equation into the in the first equation, we get
Using the quadratic equation
Using a = 1.4, b = 0.3:
Using y = bx:
There are two types of fixed points, stable and unstable. The first fixed point (0.6314, 0.1894), labeled "1" on the image, is located within the attractor itself and is stable. This means that if a point is plotted close to the fixed point, the next iterated points will remain close to the fixed point. The second fixed point (-1.1314 , -0.3394), labeled "2", is considered unstable, and it is located outside of the bounds of the attractor. An unstable fixed point is such that if the system gets close to the fixed point, the next iterated points rapidly move away from the fixed point.
Teaching Materials
- There are currently no teaching materials for this page. Add teaching materials.
About the Creator of this Image
Piecewise Affine Dynamics is a wiki site that was created by a group of French mathematicians that is dedicated to providing information about "dynamic systems defined by piecewise affine transformations".
- Glenn Elert, The Chaos Hypertextbook
- Heinz-Otto Peitgen, Hartmut Jürgens, Dietmar Saupe, Chaos and fractals
- Bill Casselman, Simple Chaos-The Hénon Map
- www.ibiblio.org Henon Strange Attractors
- Michele Henon, Michele Henon
Future Directions for this Page
A better, less vague description of how sections of the Henon Attractor resembles the Cantor Set
Also, the description of the Henon Attractor can be expanded to include a discussion about the fractal's "basin of attraction". For more information, click here.
Leave a message on the discussion page by clicking the 'discussion' tab at the top of this image page.


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Evacuated passengers wait on a road after a shooting at Los Angeles airport (LAX), California November 1, 2013. Several people were injured in a shooting incident that sparked chaos at the Los Angeles International Airport on Friday and authorities said the suspected gunman was in custody. [Photo/Agencies]
Several people were injured in a shooting incident that sparked chaos at the Los Angeles International Airport on Friday and authorities said the suspected gunman was in custody.
The airport halted outgoing flights after the shooting and passengers were evacuated, authorities said. Local media reported a gunman with a high-powered rifle had been shot by law enforcement.
"About 9:30 this morning, there were some shots fired on or near Terminal 3, obviously some people were injured, two possibly three," LAPD spokesman Gus Villanueva told KTLA television.
Los Angeles police spokeswoman Officer Norma Eisenman said a suspect had been taken into custody and was believed to be the only one. Eisenman described the situation as a multi-victim incident, but there was no immediate word on any fatalities.
Passenger Robert Perez told a local CBS affiliate that airport security agents had come through the terminal shouting that a man had a gun.
"I heard popping and everybody dropped to the ground," Perez said.
Alex Neumann told cable network CNN that he was in an area inside the airport past a security checkpoint when he heard loud noises and screaming and saw people running in a scene that amounted to mayhem.
"We were at the food court and all of a sudden I hear a big commotion and people started running. People were running and people getting knocked down," Neumann said, adding that he heard screams. "Mayhem is the best way of describing it."
Television images on cable network CNN showed at least one person being loaded into one of several ambulances at the scene, and passengers were seen being evacuated from the area.
Footage showed emergency responders setting up what appeared to be a triage area outside an airport terminal, and outgoing flights were halted.
"The general public is being held back... Other than arriving flights, flight operations have been temporary held," airport spokeswoman Katherine Alvarado said in an emailed statement.
Airport police and airport officials would not offer any additional information.
President Barack Obama was briefed on the incident and White House officials are in touch with law enforcement officials on the ground, White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters.


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Climate change: Are women the solution?
A new UN report says that women are the key to helping countries prepare for climate change and mitigating the damage.
| Johannesburg, South Africa
It is often asserted that climate change will affect women the most in the developing world. That's because most women will have to walk farther for drinking water, work harder to grow food, pull daughters out of school to help with family chores, and fuss more about family hygiene as the world – and particularly the developing world – becomes a hotter, drier place to live.
But women could also be the key agents of change that help countries to do a better job of preparing for climate change, and mitigating the damage.
That is the intriguing idea that comes out of a new report, issued Tuesday by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), at an Arab League summit held in Cairo this week.
"We cannot successfully confront climate change if we neglect the needs, rights, and potential of half the people on our planet," said Thoraya Ahmed Obaid, executive director of the UNFPA, last week at the launch of the UN's State of World Population 2009 report, which is getting a second push at the Arab League summit in Cairo.
"Women should be part of any agreement on climate change – not as an afterthought or because it's politically correct, but because it's the right thing to do," Ms. Obaid said. "Our future as humanity depends on unleashing the full potential of all human beings, and the full capacity of women, to bring about change."
What women do now
Women in the developing world don't need to be told that 10 of the warmest years since 1880 have occurred in the past 15 years. That the world's climate is changing rapidly is not a matter of debate for women in the developing world, especially in the arid regions of North Africa and the Middle East.
From Senegal to Sudan and down to the Persian Gulf, traditional roles still assign men the task of earning wages, and women the task of scratching out an existence cooking food, gathering firewood, fetching water, raising food crops, as well as giving birth to, raising, cleaning, and feeding children:
• Women are behind 80 percent of all food production in sub-Saharan Africa, including the rapidly drying region of the Sahel, from Senegal to Sudan.
•In 56 developing countries, the poorest fifth of women still give birth to an average of six children, compared with 3.2 births for the wealthiest fifth.
•More than 200 million women say they want to delay or prevent pregnancies, but do not use contraception.
•There is a strong link between smaller families and greater prosperity. Researchers attribute a large portion of East Asia's phenomenal postwar growth to the fact that the region had relatively slow population growth, with more productive workers and fewer dependants
•Studies suggest that investing in women's education and expanding their numbers in the workforce can boost per capita income in some countries by 14 percent by 2020.
Step for women equals leap for mankind
Improving education and healthcare choices for women, and even access to clean fuels, would have profound effects not just on the prosperity and health of individual families, but more broadly on the developing countries they live in. Keeping a lid on population growth, in particular, would also allow developing nations – which make up 80 percent of the world's overall population – but which consume only 20 percent of the world's energy resources and contribute only 30 percent of the world's greenhouse gases.
"Women can be more affected by climate change, but they can also be agents of change in their communities and in their families," says Hafedh Chekir, regional office director of UNFPA, speaking by phone between sessions at the Arab League summit. "Women can push to be more organized in their community around common issues, like in Darfur about water issues or about wood for cooking, about desertification, about forced migration."
In Djibouti, for instance, women in rural areas organized a collective bus service for pregnant women to travel into urban areas for checkups and to give birth at maternity hospitals. The initiative has spread to 40 communities, where women collect money from residents, thereby ensuring that any prospective mother will be able to have a safe birth.
"Women's participation can ensure that problems are solved more creatively," says Mr. Chekir.
Not an easy sell
Selling a more women-friendly policy on climate change is hard enough in developed countries of the West, so it will certainly not be easy at the Arab League summit. Even so, UN officials are hoping that moderate regimes will act in their own enlightened self-interest. Desertification is expanding rapidly in north Africa and the rest of the Arab world, and with some 5 percent of the world's population, but 1 percent of the world's fresh water resources, the Arab world is rapidly approaching a water crisis.
"We have to do this step by step, and it's a long-term work," says Chekir. "But we have to be optimistic, or else nothing will change in the Arab region. We believe we can do small changes, and the Arab League wants our help to do development issues."
US to specify target for emissions cuts, at talks on global warming


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American Idol's Malaya Watson Explains Why She Almost Didn't Audition
At age 16, Malaya Watson is American Idol's second youngest finalist of all time (behind Lauren Alaina). And the Season 13 contestant - who made it to the Top 8 before being eliminated last Thursday - says she strongly considered waiting a couple of years to audition.
"My mom called me and she's like, 'Oh, American Idol's coming,'" Watson, who was 15 when she initially auditioned, tells TVGuide.com. "I was telling her, I want to wait until I'm 17 or 18 rather than jump out and do something like this. But I thought about it, and you never know when this opportunity's going to come again, so you might as well take it and run with it. I didn't imagine to make it this far."
Idol'sMajesty Rose: I think my performance was save-worthy
Watson, who says her one regret was not playing the piano more on the show, will be focusing on school and making music before embarking on the Idol tour this summer. Check out her answers to our American Idol exit interview lightning round below.
1. Name three albums you would bring with you to a desert island. Any Ray Charles album, the new Sevyn Streeter album, and a Tamela Mann album.
2. What was the first album you fell in love with? Probably the Jackson 5 Christmas album.
3. If someone wanted to torture you with a song on repeat, what would it be? "What Does the Fox Say." That would be complete torture.
4. Name a song you wish you'd written. Probably "Hard Times" by Ray Charles
Shows on the bubble: Which will survive?
5. If you could duet with anyone living or dead, who would you pick? I keep saying his name, but Ray Charles.
6. What's your most embarrassing karaoke or singing experience? At my mom's old house ... we used to karaoke all the time and I was singing a Beatles song. I totally blanked out and forgot all the words to the song. It was in front of all of my family on my mom's side. That's a lot of family. I think I was like 7 or 8, maybe 9.
7. What's your favorite album or song that you're listening to currently? A song called "Step Aside" by Tamela Mann, and there's a song called "Sorry Mama" by YG. Oh, and "Can You Stand the Rain" by Boyz II Men. Oh, my God. That is amazing.
8. What song or artist made you want to be a singer? Probably the Jackson 5 and Ray Charles. All the music from Motown and Ray Charles.
9. What's your biggest musical guilty pleasure? I'm not a huge fan, but a couple songs by Skrillex. I don't know why I like that. Not all of them, but some of them.
10. What's one song you would have loved to perform on Idol that you didn't get to? Probably "I Have Nothing" by Whitney Houston and "Orange Colored Sky" by Nat King Cole.
Will you miss seeing Malaya on American Idol?
View original American Idol's Malaya Watson Explains Why She Almost Didn't Audition at TVGuide.com
Other Links From TVGuide.com


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This article is more than 1 year old
High-speed asteroid pile-up prompts X-File
Astronomers probe 'peculiar' object
The Hubble Space Telescope has captured the aftermath of just what happens when two asteroids collide at 11,000 mph (17,702 km/h), prompting an explosion "as powerful as the detonation of a small atomic bomb".
The result is a "peculiar" object - dubbed P/2010 A2 - which boasts a comet-like debris trail behind a mysterious X-shaped formation.
The asteroid belt pile-up happened in early 2009, according to NASA, but it wasn't until January this year that the Lincoln Near-Earth Research (LINEAR) Program Sky Survey spotted the tail.
Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 observations indicate a surviving 400-foot-wide (122m-wide) object, which was hit by a smaller body, "perhaps 10 to 15 feet wide" (3 to 4m). The latter was vapourised in the blast, and its remains and material thrown off from the former were swept into a tail by solar radiation.
Astronomers are keen to find out just how much dust such high-speed encounters eject into interplanetary space, and while they reckon that "modest-sized asteroids smash into each other about once a year", they're difficult to spot.
But P/2010 A2 doesn't conform to the scientists' predictions. David Jewitt, of the University of California in Los Angeles, said: "We expected the debris field to expand dramatically, like shrapnel flying from a hand grenade. But what happened was quite the opposite. We found that the object is expanding very, very slowly."
The X shape, meanwhile, has the boffins stumped. NASA says: "The crisscrossed filaments at the head of the tail suggest that the colliding asteroids were not perfectly symmetrical. Material ejected from the impact, therefore, did not make a symmetrical pattern, a bit like the ragged splash made by throwing a rock into a lake. Larger particles in the X disperse very slowly and give this structure its longevity."
Jewitt and colleagues plan to turn Hubble's attention back to P/2010 A2 next year, in order to "see how far the dust has been swept back by the sun's radiation and how the mysterious X-shaped structure has evolved".
The P/2010 A2 findings are published in the 14 October edition of Nature. NASA has more here. ®


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New York state Legislature: Part time or full?
The National Conference of State Legislatures, which tracks legislative bodies across the country, says New York lawmakers do enough work to be considered full time.
New York state law, however, says otherwise.
A new round of financial disclosure forms released last week — some of which show New York legislators with lucrative outside jobs that pull in six figures — has re-sparked a decades-long debate over whether state lawmakers should be constitutionally recognized as full time and whether they should be able to hold other jobs.
"Under our system, we have part-time legislators. That is the system we have — citizen legislators," Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Wednesday. "They work as legislators part time, and they have businesses, law practices, et cetera — part time. That's the design of the system by the constitution."
Changing the system would have a significant effect on New York's legislative branch.
While most lawmakers say they work — or exceed — full-time hours while serving constituents, maintaining their part-time status as lawmakers allows them to obtain outside employment. About two-thirds of the 213-member Legislature report some type of extra income on top of their base legislative salary of $79,500 and added stipends.
Reform advocates say that leads to a potential for conflict. Several good-government groups have long lobbied for a full-time Legislature, eliminating their ability to hold other jobs while increasing lawmakers' pay to compensate for the change.
Assemblyman Kevin Cahill, D-Kingston, Ulster County, said the work that comes along with the job is "not just full time, but more than full time."
"My personal opinion is, yes, the Legislature should be full time," Cahill said. "Certainly the work justifies it. It would avoid the potentials for conflict."
The lawmakers' 2012 financial disclosure forms, which were expanded under a new ethics law that required them to publicly reveal their outside income level for the first time, showed a broad range of compensation. The forms were released last week.
Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, D-Manhattan, reported a salary of between $350,000 and $450,000 in 2012 from Weitz & Luxenberg, the Manhattan-based personal injury firm that has long employed him. Senate Co-Leader Dean Skelos, R-Nassau County, reported between $150,000 and $250,000 from a Long Island law firm, while fellow Co-Leader Jeff Klein, D-Bronx, earned between $57,001 and $106,000 as a partner in his own firm and as a lecturer at Mercy College.
Their counterparts in the minority legislative conferences, however, both showed no outside income, though Senate Democratic Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, D-Yonkers, reported receiving a legal settlement of as much as $350,000.
"I haven't given it much thought because I don't have any outside income," said Assembly Republican Leader Brian Kolb, R-Canandaigua, Ontario County. "I've done some consulting on the side over the years, but I've just found to really immerse yourself in everything (as a lawmaker), it's a full-time job."
The debate over the merits of full- or part-time legislative bodies has long been waged among academics, with some arguing that the perspectives given by citizen legislators in different lines of work outweigh the potential conflicts.
In New York, the debate goes back to at least the late 1980s, when Gov. Mario Cuomo — the current governor's father — at one point had called for a study of the benefits and drawbacks of changing the system.
In April, Andrew Cuomo publicly weighed the issues associated with a change after a New York City news conference, calling it one of the "big questions" following a string of bribery arrests that shook the Legislature earlier this year.
"The number of potential conflicts goes way up," Cuomo said of a part-time Legislature.
"Now, a full-time Legislature is also problematic," he continued. "We're supposed to be a citizen Legislature. You have to pay (lawmakers) more. Some people think if they're actually in Albany more, they'll do more harm."
A look at legislative bodies in other states shows no clear consensus. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, 10 states — including New York — have a system that more closely resembles a full-time job, based on issues like the length of the legislative session, compensation and the size of a lawmaker's staff.
Seventeen states are closer to a part-time model, while the remaining 23 states maintain something of a hybrid.
The compensation issue, however, has proved to be a sticking point in New York, where a $79,500 salary goes much farther in upstate counties than in New York City and its suburbs.
Assemblyman Thomas Abinanti, D-Greenburgh, Westchester County, says he has to maintain a few legal clients on the side to supplement his income. Abinanti lives in one of the more wealthy districts in the state.
While $150,000 may get you a house in some portions of upstate, Abinanti said, it would fetch a one-bedroom apartment in parts of New York City's suburbs. He earned between $5,000 and $20,000 in additional income last year, according to his disclosure form.
"Being an assemblyman is a full-time job but does not pay a full-time salary," Abinanti said. "So you've got to attempt to make a little money on the outside. I don't make a lot, but it does give me an opportunity to have another office and get a little bit."


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Job Details:-
Hiring Organization: Wayfair
Position Name: Customer Service Representative
Qualification: Graduation
Industry: Private
Employment Type: Full Time
Work Hours: 8
Salary: $20 To $30/An Hour
Location: Pittsfield, USA
To apply to this jobs please enter below information:
Position Description:
A vital link between businesses and their customers is provided by customer service representatives. Excellent customer service is provided by them while they address customer questions, complaints, and inquiries. Customer service representatives are responsible for creating a positive experience for each customer.
Ensuring that customers have a positive experience with your organization is your primary responsibility as a customer service representative. You will have to take calls from customers, respond to emails and web chats, and address customer issues. You should be able to handle a variety of tasks at the same time. Prompt and accurate solutions to customer inquiries and complaints are your goal. You need to be aware of the products and services your organization offers.
You need strong communication skills to be successful in this role. The ability to listen and interpret customer needs is included. You need to explain complex information in a clear and concise way. You should maintain a professional attitude, be calm under pressure, and have a friendly demeanor.
Quality service can only be delivered if you understand customer service best practices. You should be aware of industry trends, new products and services, and any changes to existing offerings. It's important that you keep up with the policies and procedures of the organization. You need to be able to handle difficult conversations with customers in a respectful, understanding, and courteous manner.
Customer service representatives need strong communication skills and the ability to think on their feet. If you're organized, detail-oriented, and have a passion for customer service, then this may be the job for you.
Full Job Description
Top 10 Tips for Interview
- Keep your mind and body, relax.
- Never try to give a long answer to an interview question. Keep your answer short and effective.
- If you don't know the answer of any question, do not try to mislead the interviewer because he knows everything. Here your answer should be just some simple words "Sorry Sir/Ma'am, I do not know the answer".
- Your dress should be formal. Formal dress always leaves a good impact on the interviewer.
- Take the permission from the interviewer before going inside the interview room by saying "May I come in Sir/Madam?".
- Do not shake your leg and hand again and again.
- Your clothes should be neat and clean.
- If the interviewer asks the question in English/Hindi, you should give the answer in the same language. If you are not comfortable in that language, you should ask your interviewer "I am not comfortable in English/Hindi. Sir, Can I give the answer in 'your comfortable language'". Do not try to give the answer in which language you are not comfortable because in this situation. You would not be able to give your 100% in that language.
- How much time you will stay in the interview room, do not be out of focus. Your focus should be on the interviewer. Do not miss any single word out of what he would be asking. Because if you do so, you will need to listen to that question again. And trust me guys. This is very bad impact. So try to understand and listen to the question properly at once.
- Before leaving the room. You should say 'Thank you to your interviewer'
Wayfair Customer Service Representative Jobs
Some rules which are followed in good companies by good employees. About what you should know so that you may easily adapt them, given below.
- Company always wants you to be on time and you should be.
- Take less leave from the office.
- Focus on your work and try to learn more.
- Speak from your work not for your mouth.
- Keep on trying to get new things from your seniors, regarding your profile.
- Raise your point but only then when you are 100% sure about your point.
- Never hurry because haste makes waste.
- For earning some extra points than others. Just play out of your comfort zone.
- Always respect your seniors.
- Learn from mistakes made by you and others and do not try to repeat them.
Wayfair Customer Service Representative Jobs
Educational Qualification:
Candidates Who Have Passed Graduate or its Equivalent from a Recognized Board or University Are Eligible For this recruitment.
Kindly check the Official Notification for more qualification details. Notification Link Is Given Below.
Document Required:
Required Documents for This recruitment: Candidate should have this Document Before Apply Online. Candidates Are Suggested To Read the Official Notification Before Applying.
- Document – Qualifications certificate with mark sheets.
- Passport size Photographs
- Signature
How to apply:
- All the eligible candidates can apply for This Job as mentioned below
- Read official notification carefully From the Official Website.
- Read Notification Carefully Before Apply.
- Fill The Application Form (Link Is Given Below)
- Attach Required Document and Passport Size Photo with Signature.
- Then Submit. Done.


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A Ponzi Scheme Called America
As we all know, the eurozone credit crisis has taken away any chance of economic growth in the global economy.
Spain—the current epicenter of the credit crisis in the eurozone—has seen its credit rating downgraded to a credit rating of BBB- from BBB+ by the Standard and Poor's (S&P) credit rating agency. A credit rating of BBB- is the lowest investment grade credit rating issued by S&P and just one notch above "junk" status. (Source: Standard & Poor's, October 10, 2012.)
In 2007, eurozone member Spain saw its national debt equate to 36% of its gross domestic product (GDP) that year. Now, with the government's plan to borrow more than 207 billion euros next year, the country's debt as a percentage of GDP will reach 91%. (Source: Business Week, October 11, 2012.)
Let's not forget; Spain is a major contributor to the eurozone economy and is the 12th largest economy in the world.
From all of this, what bothers me is that the U.S. economy—the biggest economy in the world—is sitting on the credit rating of AAA, as issued by Moody's Investor Services, and AA+ by S&P, the same credit grading that puts Spain's rating at BBB-.
While the U.S. enjoys a strong credit rating of AAA, the national debt compared to GDP for the U.S. is much higher than that of Spain, a eurozone country. In the U.S., this year's GDP is estimated at $15.5 trillion. (Source: Bureau of Economic Analysis, September 27, 2012.) But the total national debt of the U.S. stands at $16.2 trillion (see the U.S. debt clock at www.investmentcontrarians.com). This makes the U.S. national debt equal 105% of GDP, and it is growing each passing day!
So why does Spain, an economy in the eurozone with a debt to GDP of 91%, have its credit rating cut to almost junk, while the U.S. enjoys one of the top investment grade credit ratings when its debt-to-GDP ratio easily surpasses that of Spain?
Spain will eventually get a bailout from its eurozone peers—the funds it needs to recapitalize its banks will be given to the government.
When it comes to the U.S. economy, who will come to its rescue?
Oh, I forgot the big difference. When the U.S. needs to issue Treasuries to pay for its debt, the Federal Reserve prints money to buy the debt. That's the difference; the U.S. prints money, Spain can't. The U.S. is a Ponzi scheme, and eurozone member Spain isn't; so the U.S. gets a top credit rating. Now I understand how it works.


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Getting firsthand information from an actual car owner is one sure way to get an idea of car performance once it leaves the lot. Autobytel features real consumer reviews that give the unbiased experience of a car.
one very cool car
Pros: driving it
Cons: cost to insure it more than my $200000 motorhomeheratage edition / napa leather /comfortable / dash good to look at /plenty of power /doesnt look like everyother car on the road / when driving its the inside that counts and this one is great
My Heritage Addition 300C
Pros: The engine performance it there when you need it !
Cons: the ride is a little rough as compared to the lincoln I used to drive.I bought it with 15 miles on it (brand new) and I have not been disappointed. The quality of this model has held up. I've only had one small issue the 4 years I've owned it.. ( a fluid leak around the transmission temp sensor) which was repaired promptly. This car (Hemi) has spoiled me and I will have to but another one at some point but so far the one is performing well.
One of the best
Pros: Everything...in one package
Cons: Price...but I'd do it again!After 50 years of driving, and owning over 150 cars, I find the Chrysler 300C to be one of the best overall cars I've owned. It is a combination of sporty, hot rod, luxury and surprisingly good MPG all in one package. I call it a gentleman's hot rod. It is always a pleasure to get into and drive anywhere, provides passenger comfort, and sporty handling. And it still surprises me how many people are constantly commentting on what a beautiful car it is. Say what you want about Chrysler vehicles in general, but, until you've driven a 300C, you don't know what you are missing.
Pros: Too amny to list... Picking one would have to say the seats.
Cons: None. Love the entire car!
Advice: A lot of vehicles out there in this class. This is the best for the price.This vehicle is great. Excellent performance for the price and size/class of the vehicle. Nice smooth ride very comfortable. Very happy with the purchase and would do it again.
Pros: The styling--like nothing else American or foreign short of a Bentley o RR.
Cons: The fact that it is named 300C rather than the appropriate 300N.
Advice: Buy one if you want a big, sylish, powerful car.This is a looker, a cruiser, a hot rod, a family car, a comfortable car, an attention getter all rolled into one. These 300Cs are the cars that were killed off in the early 1970s and are the return of the big Chrysler with all the advantages that 21st Century technology has to offer. It is a joy to drive and ride.
Pros: Ride and smooth application of power.
Cons: Metal trim rather than wood
Advice: Don't hesitate... its worth far more than its competition in the luxury world.Exactly what you'd expect from a Mercedes 'E' model chassis with a 345 hp Hemi strapped to it....WOW!! Incredible ride with the smoothest acceleration I have ever experienced. Others have said, 'If you don't want to spend the money, don't test drive it!' I test drove a dozen Japanese and German luxury cars. I bought this American Beauty. There is a reason it has won Consumer Guide and Car and Driver awards 3 years in a row. Dollar for Dollar, no other car on the market gives you as much. The ability to run on 4 cylinders in overdrive is seemless and flawless.
Pros: bad boy body style........HEMI !!!!
Cons: ?
Advice: not your everyday ho hum sedanMy husband & I have always wanted one of these bad boys and it just happened one weekend that we had the opportunity to test drive one. My advise to anyone who is considering buying one is if you don't want to spend the money.....DON'T TEST DRIVE IT!!! We bought it the next day! We fell in love with this car. It rides like a dream, more power under the hood than we ever imagined! We always loved the design of the car, but after we drove one, it was a done deal! Rather pricey, but worth every penny. Absolutely an awesome automobile!


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- Panel recommended the strict enforcement of sexual assault laws
- Panel recommended police and other officials who fail to act against crimes against women be punished
- Most of India%27s laws%2C including those on rape%2C date back to 1860
NEW DELHI (AP) — On the eve of a trial over a fatal gang rape that horrified Indians, a government panel recommended that India strictly enforce sexual assault laws, commit to holding speedy rape trials and change the antiquated penal code to protect women.
The panel, formed in response to last month's brutal attack on a New Delhi bus, received more than 80,000 suggestions for a complete overhaul in the criminal justice system's treatment of violence against women. The suggestions included banning a traumatic vaginal exam of rape victims and ending political interference in sex crime cases.
The panel issued its findings Wednesday. On Thursday, a trial is set to be begin for five men accused in the case. The case of a sixth suspect who says he is a juvenile is being handled separately.
Police say the victim and a male friend were attacked after boarding the bus Dec. 16. The attackers beat the man and raped the woman, inflicting massive internal injuries with a metal bar, police said. The victims were dumped on the roadside, and the woman died two weeks later in a Singapore hospital.
The government set up the panel a month ago to help quell street protests sparked by the rape.
Women say they feel under siege and are so frightened they have structured their entire lives to protect themselves from harassment and attack. Many travel in groups, go out of their homes only during the day and carry sharp objects to stab men who grope them on public buses.
Those who are raped are often blamed by their families for the attack. If they report the crime, the police often refuse to file a report or try to get the victim and attacker to reach a settlement. If it reaches court, the case can drag on for years in the overburdened justice system.
"Failure of good governance is the obvious root cause for the current unsafe environment, eroding the rule of law and not the want of knee-jerk legislation," said retired Chief Justice J.S. Verma, who headed the three-member panel.
The panel recommended to the government that police and other officials who fail to act against crimes against women be punished. It called for a crackdown on dowry payments to enhance women's status, since families are often forced into massive debt to get their daughters married. It also suggested the government appoint more judges to lessen the backlog of cases and ensure swift justice, and it called for updating the law to include crimes such as voyeurism and stalking.
"We hope the Parliament will take the legislative suggestions given by the committee," and translate these into law, Verma said.
Verma advocated strict punishment to prevent sexual harassment and assaults against women and sought reforms in how police treat rape victims.
He called for speedy justice and the setting of a time frame to deal with cases of crimes against women.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's office had no immediate comment about what it would do with the recommendations.
More than 100 women's rights activists, lawyers and ordinary citizens appeared before the commission during a recent hearing to offer suggestions for removing loopholes in the existing laws and scrapping some of its most offensive provisions.
Activists and lawyers have criticized the existing laws on crimes against women as so archaic and riddled with loopholes that they end up further traumatizing victims and allowing perpetrators to get away lightly.
Women's groups say the most egregious problem is the medical test that a victim has to undergo, which includes a vaginal exam to determine if the woman is sexually active.
In the so-called "two-finger test," doctors probe the vagina to determine if a hymen is present and to try to determine if the vagina is lax, which is taken as evidence the woman routinely has sex and thus consented to intercourse. Often, the doctor is male.
"The two-finger test, which has been found to be not only unscientific and unnecessary but also subjects the complainant to further trauma and humiliation should be immediately stopped," said Kirti Singh, of the All India Democratic Woman's Association.
Indian law only targets three crimes against women, rape, using force to "outrage her modesty," and making rude sounds or gestures aimed at "insulting the modesty of any woman."
Lawyers say those laws needs to be updated to include crimes such as sexual harassment, groping, stalking and acid attacks.
"Groping and stalking should be viewed as sexual assault. Stalking is a psychological terror on the victim. It should be specifically defined," said Mukul Mudgal, a former chief justice of the Delhi High Court.
Rebecca John, a criminal lawyer who spoke with the commission, said the "very lexicon of the law" needs to be changed to remove euphemistic and outdated terms.
"The very definition of crimes against women is faulty. Phrases such as 'outraging the modesty of a woman,' and references to her chastity or honor are irrelevant," John said.
Most of India's laws, including those on rape, were inherited from the country's former British colonial rulers and date to 1860. Public pressure after highly publicized rape cases led to amendments in the rape laws in 1983 and 2003. But loopholes remain. The law, for example, does not recognize marital rape for anyone over the age of 15.
Women's groups have also called for ending political interference in police work that lets accused rapists persuade police to quash their cases by forcing women to reach settlements with their attackers.
"Those having clout are not held accountable even for blatant violations of laws," said a joint appeal by 10 women's groups made to the commission.
Human rights groups welcomed the panel's recommendations to widen the scope of sexual rape to include assaults on homosexual, transgender and transsexual rape.
The commission has also recommended a uniform national protocol for the treatment and medical examination of rape survivors.
"This is something that women's and rights groups have been asking for for a long time," said Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia director, Human Rights Watch.


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From the Toronto Star by Tim Alamenciak an update on cell phone technology's impact on the developing world
In Nigeria, a young girl can ask questions about sex discretely through SMS and get accurate information.
After the earthquake in Haiti, survivors in remote towns could receive money for food straight to their cellphone.
In Senegal, election monitors sent updates on polling stations through their mobile phones, revising an online map in real time with details about late openings or worse.
Projects like Learning about Living in Nigeria, MercyCorps in Haiti and Senevote2012 in Senegal are just a few examples of how the rapid spread of mobile technology has changed life in the global south.
Many places are jumping straight from paper records to mobile information because they are getting cellphone towers before Internet connections or even traditional phone lines. This means that for the first time it's possible for a doctor in Guatemala City to monitor a newborn baby in a rural part of the country.
"People who never had access to information can get to a telecentre or a computer at their church or they have a mobile phone even if they share that mobile phone with their whole family and everyone just has their own SIM card," said Revi Sterling, director of Information and Communication Technologies and Development (ICTD) graduate studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
"If that's your data collection tool instead of papers that get blown away and eaten by goats, that's valuable," said Sterling.
Sterling founded the master's program in 2010 to help produce students who could capitalize on the boom of connectivity in the developing world. It focuses on building connections between the world of technology and the world of development — something many see as a lucrative opportunity.
In 2001, just eight out of 100 people in the developing world had a mobile phone subscription. Now, nearly 80 out of 100 do.
In India, more people have access to cellphones than toilets, according to a 2010 report from the United Nations University.
"I have lots of students who come from an engineering and science background who say, 'But you can't eat (network) cable and you can't drink YouTube,'" said Sterling. "The idea that you could ride the development wave on an emerging trend like technology certainly makes the technology a really indispensable tool."
This software allows anyone to set up their own communications hub to send mass messages, manage automated SMS systems and collect data from the field. FrontlineSMS allows users to connect their mobile phone to a computer, transforming communication into something more powerful and manageable.
"If you go to the developing world and you look at how cellphones are being used you can really see that people are already doing this kind of organizational management, communicating with stakeholders, communicating with people they're working with and for," said spokesperson Laura Hudson.
The system enables easier management of SMS messages and also allows users to set up mailing lists, collect data and code automated reply systems. Traditional procedures involved checking in over the phone with remotely dispersed members of, for example, an aid team.
"Instead of that they can send an SMS. It's cheaper for them, it saves time and the data can go straight into their report," said Hudson.
FrontlineSMS was used to coordinate aid response after the 2011 floods in Pakistan and to manage reconstruction in Haiti. It has also been used to remind HIV patients of best practices and nutritional information.
This project came as a result of post-election violence in Kenya in 2008, when high mobile penetration met a need to know where trouble spots were located. The original idea was to produce a map of violent areas based on reports sent in by citizens via SMS or email. The system has evolved into an open-source platform to be deployed anywhere. Ushahidi has been used to map everything from earthquake damage in Haiti to blizzards in New York. A site called Crowdmap runs the Ushahidi software and allows anyone to sign up and create their own crowd-sourced map without the hassle of using their own server.
Refugees United
This project is designed to help refugees reunite with their friends and family. It replaces traditional forms of reconnection, allowing anyone to create a free profile with as much or as little information as they're comfortable releasing. The profiles allow friends and family members to search under certain criteria, including given name, nickname, village or city of origin. The software works from both computers and internet-enabled phones.
One of the challenges with water delivery is predicting when the pipes are going to be opened. In many places this means lineups at the wells, often lasting hours or even days. Being tested in rural India, NextDrop alerts people via SMS 30-60 minutes before the water is turned on.
In Haiti, where 85 per cent of the population has a cellphone but only half has a bank account, MercyCorps deployed a new way to stimulate the economy after the earthquake: mobile payments. MercyCorps has dispensed more than $1 million (U.S.) to 6,000 people in rural Haiti — all using their cellphones.
"We pretty early on recognized that mobile was a great tool for (reaching more people) and also a direct channel into the communities where we work," said Cameron Peake of MercyCorps.
Peake's team is now working on a mobile savings system in the Philippines.
"The financial services area is really a promising and strong area to see financial sustainability," said Peake.
This system allows Kenyans to use their cellphones to send and receive money. It is designed for people who don't have bank accounts, enabling them to receive money domestically or from abroad and to pay bills. At its most basic, M-Pesa allows one user to send money to another as simply as sending a text message. The service is wildly popular in Kenya — it processes more transactions domestically than Western Union does globally, according to the International Monetary Fund. Founded by Safaricom and Vodafone, M-Pesa recently introduced M-KESHO, a savings account to complement the service.
This software does one thing — allows for easy money transfer between countries using mobile phones. It costs less than typical wire transfer services. Once the link is established and software registered on both ends, someone in the United States could send money to someone in Mexico with a simple text message. Currently the service works in Mexico and the U.S., with Haiti planned for future rollout.
Using SMS, the app tracks a cow's gestation cycle and gives farmers notifications at key moments in a cow's life. iCow allows farmers to optimize milk production and better monitor calving periods.
"It's a little more unique in that there are lots of price apps but iCow gets down to the nitty-gritty, like the gestation period of a cow," said Sterling.
Based out of Kenya, the app also helps farmers keep accurate and permanent records of milk production and breeding. It offers tips on farming dairy cows.
In a June 2011 pilot, farmers using the iCow app reported a 42 per cent increase in income on average.
The app also features a directory of veterinarians and a call centre that allows farmers to get advice. A recently released feature called iCow Soko allows farmers to trade livestock directly with one another.
Cocoa farmers in Ghana can get a helping hand through CocoaLink, a mobile app that delivers advice and allows rural farmers to have their questions answered without leaving the field. It is a partnership between Hershey's, the World Cocoa Foundation and Ghana's Cocoa Board.In Ghana, two out of three cocoa farmers have access to a mobile phone. The program is in its pilot phase, but there are already plans to extend the service to the Ivory Coast.
mFarm helps farmers in Kenya by relaying market prices through SMS. The software is designed for small-scale farmers who can't make it to the major marketplace and risk being lied to by middlemen. The app retrieves prices from five major markets, allowing farmers to determine the best prices for their goods.
National Farmers Information Services is a service provided by the Kenyan government that gives farmers tips and advice on anything from ostrich farming to beekeeping. The service provides information in both English and Kiswahili through an automated telephone line. NAFIS also maintains a website containing this information as well as commodity price information.
The 2012 Senegal election saw a new kind of monitoring develop — independent, observant and connected through mobile technology. A group of people in Senegal have been monitoring elections since 2000, but this year they were dispatched with a mandate to report their findings immediately.
"It's a very slow process traditionally. What we did was we took their process, we didn't change it at all and we just said what we can do here is put a very simple coding system in," said Jeffrey Allen, program coordinator with Mobile4good.
Since the monitors all had cellphones, it was just a matter of training them to use the system and send updates to the data collection and mapping software.
The map highlights both successes and failures, indicating where polling stations opened early or late, and other violations. It has the benefit of providing immediate accountability, but the data is also more easily assessed than if it were recorded on hundreds of sheets of paper.
"On the one hand, (the observers are) an alert for immediate issues. On the other hand, they're data collection for the bigger picture so that at the end of the day, the civil society team can look at the data in total, look at everything that happened in the election, and make a pronouncement whether everything was free and fair or not," said Allen.
The group is planning on employing the same technology in the upcoming runoff elections March 25.
A system is being piloted in India that allows people to file complaints about their government using SMS. The complaints are logged and filed according to their location and type. Once the complaints are registered, the person receives a tracking number and the local government deals with the complaint. The system is currently being tested in the Sehore district of Madhya Pradesh, outside of Bhopal, and Koraput district in Orissa.
uReport is a polling and citizen journalism organization that runs on SMS. Ugandans can respond to polls or text their stories to uReport. The group gathers this information and passes it along to radio and television stations, also publishing polls on its website. The poll results are available on a map. For example, a Jan. 31 poll asked uReport members if they knew female circumcision was illegal. About 76 per cent responded "yes."
Learning about Living
Youth in Nigeria face strong opposition when it comes to learning about their own sexual health. Mobile4good, the company behind Learning about Living, allows them to discretely seek advice through SMS messaging. The service launched in 2007 and has received more than 400,000 messages.
"We realized there's a serious problem with HIV/AIDS and with adolescent pregnancies and abortions — sort of clandestine abortions. A lot of this came from a lack of awareness among young people of how to protect themselves as they were reaching puberty and coming of age in that way," said Mobile4good's Allen.
Live operators trained in sexual health education answer the text messages.
"It's not that they didn't want to know how to protect themselves, it's that they didn't have any access to information," said Allen.
The project has since been expanded to Senegal and the team is working on deploying it in Morocco.
This project in Guatemala uses technology to help better equip nurses in remote areas in an effort to reduce the infant mortality rate. Its software products allow nurses to track patient data over long periods of time, replacing the need for stacks of charts and forms. The service also offers free phone numbers that practitioners and patients can call to get answers about their health. The project is supported by the Canadian Tula Foundation.
This software allows medical professionals to use their mobile phone to monitor the health of young children and babies. It allows each child to be registered and their data to be tracked electronically, providing valuable insight into their health. The system uses SMS messaging to track specific data about the children and monitor for malnutrition, malaria and other diseases. The software is used at Millennium Villages projects across sub-Saharan Africa.
This simple app can make a profound difference in someone's life, providing reminders when treatment is needed. Anti-retroviral therapy was the original purpose, though the software can be customized to work with any regular treatment or to remind patients of scheduled appointments. The software is free and open source, allowing any medical clinic to use it.


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|Use as directed with a sensible nutrition and exercise program. Read and follow all product label instructions and warnings thoroughly before use. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.
|Mega BCAA - 360 caps
|Serving Size: 4 Capsules
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|Amount Per Serving
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|L-Leucine 1200mg
|L-Isoleucine 600mg
|L-Valine 600mg
|Other Ingredients: Gelatin and microcrystalline cellulose.
Contains: soy.
**Daily Value not established.
*Daily Values are based on a 2,000 Calorie per day diet.


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Lady Gaga pens an open letter to Kelly Osbourne for "breeding negativity" on E!'s Fashion Police. Fashionista
Love is literally good for you. Marrieds live longer than singles. Still, don't be smug about it. Huffington Post
Uh-oh: Are Kris Jenner and Kanye West feuding? Radar Online
More From Cosmopolitan
Evan Rachel Wood is pregnant with Jamie Bell's baby. Us Magazine
Excuse us, we're off to get married at Downton Abbey. People
Follow Michelle on Twitter.


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Jacob Taylor
| First Appearance
| Mass Effect 2
| Race
| Human
| Squadmate
| Yes
| Voiced By
| Adam Lazarre-White
Jacob Taylor is first introduced in Mass Effect 2 as a loyal member of Cerberus. His loyalty mission involves finding his father after being lost at space for 10 years. The player quickly learns that Jacob's father lied to the crew about being stranded and constructed a sort of hierachy on the remote planet. He took all of the power and subjugated his crew to food that was toxic to the mind to ensure his own survival as "king", and it's up to Jacob and Commander Shepherd to deal with what he has done. Jacob begins as a loyal member of Cerberus in Mass Effect 2, but by the end of the game he should be loyal to Shepard.
If Taylor survived Mass Effect 2, he can be encountered in Mass Effect 3 as a mercenery, he is found protecting a group of on-the-run Cerberus scientists and their families. Taylor will not join your squad.
"So much for peace."
"A good deed's like pissing yourself in black pants; warm feelings but no one notices"


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Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion!
Shout, O daughter of Jerusalem!
Behold, your King is coming to you;
He is just and having salvation,
Lowly and riding on a donkey,
A colt, the foal of a donkey.
–Zechariah 9
Jerusalem and The Passover Feast
The ISBE sets the scene:
Pilgrimage was made annually to Jerusalem for the Passover sacrifice…
Passover in NT temple days was a spectacle of excitement and devotion. Pilgrims near and far ascended to the holy city…
Days before Passover began, Jerusalem was a hubbub…Many pilgrims…arrived early to sell or barter their wares…
And numbers? Josephus' assessment of 3 million Jews (including the city residents) is considered an "extreme exaggeration" or symbolic. But the throngs of pilgrims would have swelled to well over one hundred thousand.
Jesus and the Crowds
John tells us that "six days before the Passover, Jesus came to Bethany where Lazarus was…" (John 12:1), and dined with him and his sisters. This event attracted its own crowd of disciples and others.
"Now [on the next day] when they drew near Jerusalem and came to Bethphage, at the Mount of Olives, then Jesus sent two disciples" (Mat. 21), to fetch a donkey.
And then, "a great multitude that had come to the feast, when they heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem, took branches of palm trees and went out to meet Him…" (John 12:12).
So, here is the scene. With crowds of pilgrims converging on Jerusalem from every direction, some pilgrims who have heard of his approach meet Jesus, accompanied by a crowd of disciples, on the road outside of Jerusalem.
[Looking Ahead: As an important side note, let us not overlook the unfounded equating, that we may hear, of the "crowds" accompanying Jesus outside the city, shouting, "Hosanna" with the "crowd" in the city before Pilate's seat, shouting "crucify." Though a popular refrain, it is poor speculation, which pays no attention to the setting and has no foundation in the text itself. See Holy Week, Beware of Idle Conjecture]
Hosanna is a transliteration ["to represent or spell in the characters of another alphabet" a word from a different language in one's own language] of the Hebrew word from Psalm 118:25 which is translated, "Save now, I pray, O LORD;…"
W.F. Albright notes, in Matthew (AB) that it "is a prayer for deliverance ("Save now!"); it is not in any way a cry of praise….The meaning of the vocative ["a grammatical case in certain inflected languages to indicate the person…being addressed."] la was misunderstood quite early, and the Greek translation therefore rendered the vocative O son of David as "to the son of David,"…[italic mine] What we have here, therefore, is an ancient liturgical text, a cry to the anointed king for deliverance".
We see the same picture in the episode immediately preceding the Triumphal Entry, in the plea of the Two Blind Men (Mat. 20:29-34): "Take pity on us, son of David!"
"Sir, let our eyes be opened."


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Where Great Art Transcends Disability
How Judith Scott became the first artist with Down Syndrome to have her work featured in the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art -- and then in permanent collections in New York, London, and Paris
In 1950, Judith Scott, a seven-year old girl with Down's Syndrome, became a ward of the state. She spent the next 35 years in an Ohio state institution. Her twin sister, Joyce Scott, who does not have Down's Syndrome, describes waking up one morning to find Judith simply gone. In her forthcoming book, EnTWINed: Secrets From the Silent World of Judith Scott, she tells a dark story of her mother and father retreating into depression and the aching absence of her twin. "My parents didn't know any better," she told me. "The doctors and the pastor recommended institutionalization in those days." As an adult, Joyce visited the institution when she could, but the aching absence of her twin remained.
Joyce's daughter Ilana remembers visiting Judy in the institution. "I remember cold floors, people yelling. I remember Judy just sobbing the entire time we were there," she says. The clinical records tell of how Judy "does not seem to be in good contact with her environment. She does not get along well with other children, is restless, eats messily, tears her clothing, and beats other children." The institution did not notice that Judy had acquired deafness from a bout with scarlet fever and gave her an IQ of 30.
Across the United States in the 1970s and 80s, institutions like Judy's shut down. Their Hitchcock-esque legacy, the arrival of psychotropic medications, the financial burden of their maintenance, and a new, enlightened philosophy of integration encouraged the shift. The community health centers to which patients were supposed to relocate, however, did not receive enough funding, and many became homeless. While living in Berkeley, Joyce had what she called "an epiphany," and realized that she could become Judy's legal guardian. She managed Judy's release from the institution and brought her home to live with her and her two daughters. Ilana recalled, of living with Judy: "We would just laugh and laugh and stick as many bananas as we could into our mouths."
To occupy the days while she worked as a pediatric nurse, Joyce enrolled Judy at Creative Growth Art Center in Oakland. When Judy first arrived at Creative Growth, says Joyce, "they couldn't get her to do much of anything." Judy did not like painting, sewing or sculpture class. Then she found her medium in a fiber arts class taught by textile artist Sylvia Seventy. She started wrapping. Yarn disappeared. Magazines disappeared. Even chairs and bike wheels disappeared. All of it would emerge later in colorfully woven sculptures. She even created pieces that looked like twins reaching towards one another.
"As she became more confident about her art, she became more confident about her place in the world," says Ilana. "She became more extravagant, wearing scarves, head wraps, jangly things, necklaces." With intense concentration, Judith worked five days a week for eighteen years, producing over 200 cocoon-like sculptures. "If you came to visit her while she worked," says Ilana, "she would shoo you away." Judith became the first artist with Down's Syndrome to be featured in the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Her work is in permanent museum collections in New York City, Paris, and London. Her story has inspired five books and three documentaries.
Many other artists like Judith find their voice at Creative Growth Art Center. At the holiday party this year, the place felt electric with artists, community members, food, drink, videos, excerpts from a fashion show, and colorful art covering the gallery walls. During the day, it has the feel of an artist's studio humming with people hard at work. It's hard not to be in awe not only of their focus, but also with the quality of the art.
Tom Di Maria, the center's executive director, explains, "I believe that when you ask people to tell you their story phenomenal things happen. And when paths are blocked other paths become stronger. In our people their artistic voice becomes stronger." Judith Scott's social and verbal communication was blocked for most of her life. Once she found textiles, it became her communication pathway.
Creative Growth differs from a lot of art therapy in that artists, not psychologists, run the show. Of the 26 staff members, there is only one clinical position for a nurse's aide. Professional artists teach there. The artwork is professionally curated, exhibited, and sold. "Art therapy is a specific practice, like going to a therapist and analyzing it," Di Maria explains. "Here we use art as a way to give voice to our people, many of whom have not been asked to communicate with the world most of their lives. They have been evaluated by what they cannot do and suddenly at Creative Growth they have the power of having a dialogue with society and the world." The art, unlike most of what's created in art therapy, is also just really, really good.
Creative Growth first started in 1974 in the Oakland garage of Elias Katz, a clinical psychologist, and Florence Ludins-Katz, an artist and educator. During this time, people with developmental disabilities in California were first being deinstitutionalized. The founders felt art would help integrate patients back into society after being in an institution for so long. Creative Growth is the first and largest art center for artists with disabilities in the world. Prior to its creation, any artistic activity happened in an art room in a hospital. There had never been an art center whose mission was dedicated to art for and by people with developmental, mental, and physical disabilities.
Over time, the center grew. "We are noticing a generational shift," says Di Maria. "The older artists, having led an institutional life, want to be told where to have lunch and have more institutional behaviors. The younger artists come with modern expectations, seeing art as a career and wanting to see their work in a commercial gallery." Today, Creative Growth serves 162 artists, who regularly exhibit locally and internationally. The artists receive fifty percent of any money made off their work and the non-profit receives the other half -- the same cut as a commercial gallery. There's also a cooperative agreement: some money goes into a pot so that even if an artist does not sell anything, he or she still receives a monthly check. Everyone there is a working artist.
Art made by people with disabilities has been called "brut art," "raw art," "naïve art" and "outsider art." The term "outsider" art became the most popular term to refer to art made outside of an academic setting and outside of any relationship to art history. Entire galleries devote themselves to showcasing outsider art. But Creative Growth uses none of these terms.
"Discussing someone's diagnosis in relationship to their art is a delicate balance," says Di Maria. "You shouldn't like it just because it is made by someone with Cerebral Palsy or Down's Syndrome. You should love it and then find out who the artist is and their story." Most of the artist's biographies do not mention any disabilities.
"I don't call them 'outsider' because they have lived outside of society their whole lives," Di Maria adds. His tone always communicates immense respect for the artists he works with. "We don't like to reinforce them as being different, so we say 'contemporary artists.' They exhibit a unique voice and a unique vision not seen by other makers. This is what makes the work particularly interesting."
In terms of the future of Creative Growth, Di Maria says that the staff continues to consult on creating similar centers around the country and around the world. In fact, he has just returned from South Korea, having been invited by the government to assist with their transition from deinstitutionalization. "What they have in South Korea is like what we had in the 1950's," he says. "They have never done anything like Creative Growth before." In January, three Korean artists will be featured by Creative Growth at the Outsider Art Fair in New York City.
They also have plans to turn the entire center over to the artists themselves. "We want to empower them to own and operate their own facility," says Di Maria. Already some of the long-time artists with disabilities work as teaching assistants, at public events, and as curators and philanthropists.
In 2005, Judy passed away while asleep in Joyce's arms. Creative Growth and her art live on. Like all the artists at Creative Growth, and other similar centers in Baltimore, Chicago, New York, London, Paris , Switzerland, and elsewhere, Judy communicated her insider experiences through her art. Perhaps she is not so much an outsider but an insider, inviting the rest of us in.


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They call him the GOAT – The Greatest Of All Time, a worthy title that`s used by fellow riders as much as his millions of fans. An all-time hero and absolute legend of MotoGP (and Motorsport as a whole) Valentino Rossi has received honours from racing legends past and present for not only his abilities on the bike, but the colour and sheer entertainment he brings to the sport.
It doesn`t take much to see why he`s dominated headlines for all these years: The Doctor manages to combine raw racing talent with a knack of adding humour and theatre to his repertoire. In good times and bad, he`s had an incredible bond with his fans, often played out in front of heaving grandstands but also in the paddock where the back of his garage often resembles a siege in progress.
On track, Valentino`s capabilities on a bike have defied logic and understanding on many an occasion. Toying with the bike he`s invented techniques that have baffled and then tortured his opponents who've tried to follow his lead but it`s been the grandstand finishes that have had millions on their feet. Rossi has produced sheer mastery when you thought there was nothing else to give. And he`s done it in style.
Away from the 2-wheel circus Valentino`s made no secret of his passion for 4 wheel racing. Having tested for Ferrari in F1 with massively credible times, he's taken his abilities to WRC and lately become the star of Monza Rally Show which he's won on multiple occasions.


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According to the Tax Policy Center, a Washington, D.C., research organization, nearly half of U.S. households will pay no federal income taxes for 2009. That's up from the Tax Foundation's 2006 estimate that 41 percent of the American population, or 121 million Americans, were completely outside the federal income tax system. These Americans pay no federal income tax either because their incomes are too low or they have higher income but credits, deductions and exemptions that relieve them of tax liability. This lack of income tax liability stands in stark contrast to the top 10 percent of earners, those households earning an average of $366,400 in 2006, who paid about 73 percent of federal income taxes. The top 25 percent paid 86 percent. The bottom 50 percent of taxpayers paid less than 4 percent of federal income taxes collected.
Let's not dwell on the fairness of such an arrangement for financing the activities of the federal government. Instead, let's ask what kind of incentives and results such an arrangement produces and ask ourselves whether these results are good for our country. That's a question to be asked whether or not one has federal income tax liabilities.
Having 121 million Americans completely outside the federal income tax system, it's like throwing chum to political sharks. These Americans become a natural spending constituency for big-spending politicians. After all, if you have no income tax liability, how much do you care about deficits, how much Congress spends and the level of taxation? Political calls for tax cuts and spending restraints have little appeal. Survey polls revealed this. According to The Harris Poll taken in June 2003, 51 percent of Democrats thought the tax cuts enacted by Congress were a bad thing while 16 percent of Republicans thought so. Among Democrats, 67 percent thought the tax cuts were unfair while 32 percent of Republicans thought so. When asked whether the $350-billion tax cut package will help your family finances, 59 percent of those surveyed said no and 35 percent said yes. Tax cuts to many Americans mean just one thing: They pose a threat to the federal handouts they receive.
Here's my perhaps politically incorrect question: If one has no financial stake in our country, how much of a say-so should he have in its management? Let's put it another way: I do not own stock, and hence have no financial stake, in Ford Motor Company. Do you think I should have voting rights or any say-so in the management of the company? I'm guessing that the average sane person's answer is no. You say, "Williams, just where are you heading with this?" I'm not proposing that we take voting rights away from those who do not pay taxes. What I'm suggesting is that every American gets one vote in every federal election, plus another vote for each $20,000 he pays in federal taxes. With such a system, there'd be a modicum of linkage between one's financial stake in our country and his decision-making right. Of course, unequal voting power could be reduced by legislating lower taxes.
This is not a far-out idea. The founders worried about it. James Madison's concern about class warfare between the rich and the poor led him to favor the House of Representatives being elected by the people at large and the Senate elected by property owners. He said, "It is nevertheless certain, that there are various ways in which the rich may oppress the poor; in which property may oppress liberty; and that the world is filled with examples. It is necessary that the poor should have a defense against the danger. On the other hand, the danger to the holders of property cannot be disguised, if they be undefended against a majority without property."


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Happy Earth Day! Welcome to the Anthropocene
The list of human impacts on the planet is a long one. We move more earth and stone than all the world's rivers. We are changing the chemical composition of the atmosphere largely by burning fossil fuels and cutting down forests. And we now consume at least a quarter of all the sun's energy that plants have turned to food.
That's why geologists have come up with a new name for this new era in the planet's 4.5 billion year history: the Anthropocene, or the "age of man." Future rocks will record a shift from the preceding era, the Holocene, meaning "entirely recent." Our new era may be a scant 250 years old, dating to James Watt's steam engine. Or it could stretch back to the dawn of agriculture. Either way, it's indisputable that it's here, now.
Photosynthetic microbes filled the atmosphere with oxygen billions of years ago but they renovated the planet without awareness. We are thus the only life form that both created a geological era and became conscious of doing it. Hence our creation of events like Earth Day. In the hope that the Anthropocene doesn't end too soon.
—David Biello
[The above text is a transcript of this podcast.]


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The table below lists all of the single family detached and single family attached homes currently on the market in Northlake, IL The data lists available homes by price range with average time on market in each range.
Included in this list are many Foreclosures and Short Sale properties. Contact us for information on how we may assist you in seeing these properties.
|Active Listings
|Active Listings Summary