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What is an Outside Scholar
NOTE: The following is 1st draft of a chapter which I wrote for a book I am currently working on. I decided to cut the chapter as being outside the scope of the book but it seemed a shame to waste it, so I decided to post it here, particularly since parts of it relate so various of my Great Books posts.
So far in this book I have used the term outside scholar fairly casually to refer to Victor Sharrow and those like him. Before proceeding, I think it is time to expand on what I mean when I use this label. First, though, I think it is appropriate that we review a bit of history about scholarship in general.
A scholar is a person who creates knowledge by a process called research and transmits it to others, usually through writing. In contemporary usage the term often connotes a profession. In the truest and most historic sense, however, scholarship is a vocation; scholars are driven by intellectual curiosity, love of knowledge, and a desire to create a permanent legacy for other scholars who will come later. A person with the true scholarly vocation will usually find a way to pursue their interests regardless of what formal profession they follow to make a living. In fact, the idea of a professional scholar who is paid for their studies is largely an invention of the modern age.
In our western tradition this conception of scholarship has its roots, like much else in our society, in the Golden Age of classical Greece when literate men began to research science, philosophy, and history and record their conclusions on scrolls which they allowed other scholars to borrow and copy, birthing the concept of scholarly publication. Typical of these men were the historians Herodotus, Thucydides, and Xenophon. The first of these was a merchant, while the other two were career military men but all three were fascinated by recent history and the causes and effects of war. After collecting and comparing oral histories and visiting the some of the locations where important events had occurred, they wrote books which not only chronicle history, but also analyzed it. There works are still read and studied today1.
Thucydides, at least, was fully cognizant of his drive to leave a permanent intellectual legacy, writing,
"It will be enough for me…if these words of mine are judged useful by those who want to understand clearly the events which happened in the past and which (human nature being what it is) will, at some time or other and in much the same ways, be repeated in the future. My work is not a piece of writing designed to meet the taste of an immediate public, but was done to last forever."
Thucydides knew Herodotus personally and was influenced by his book. Xenophon would have been acquainted with the work of both and seems to have written the Hellenica as a direct sequel to Thucydides' work. Nevertheless, it never occurred to these men, or their contemporary colleagues whose work is now lost, to think of themselves as a community or school of historic scholars. They merely shared a common interest. It was the philosophers of Greece who originated the idea of an academy. The original academy was a grove of trees outside Athens where teachers met with their students. The academy became an actual institution when Plato joined with other local philosophers to create a school, holding classes in his home or the nearby gymnasium. Aristotle, the son of the Macedonian Royal Physician, studied there for several years before returning to Macedon to found his own academy, the Lyceum. Philosophers in Greece had always supplemented their incomes by teaching the sons of the local aristocracy. Formal academies were a way of persuading the students to come to them, rather than wandering the country in search of students. Academies in the pattern of Plato's came and went in the Hellenic until the very end of the ancient period. From the first century of onward the Christianity began to dominate the intellectual life of the West, gradually replacing the more secular philosophy of classical antiquity. By the time the Western Roman empire collapsed, most learning was concentrated in the Church. Literacy rates dropped throughout Europe and the secular members of the upper classes found they were too busy fighting for survival to devote time to scholarship. The Eastern empire survived and was spared the worst effects of the Dark Ages, but the Byzantine mind was increasingly inclined towards mysticism and away from rational scholarship. In 529 the emperor Justinian ordered the closure of the last incarnation of the Athenian Academy, an event which some historians consider to be the official end of the ancient era and the beginning of the medieval period.
For nearly 1000 years, the church, particularly the monasteries, had a virtual monopoly on scholarship. Nearly everyone who learned to read and write was taught by clerics and most of what books still survived were the property of the church. The first universities were an outgrowth of earlier monastic schools and existed mainly to train priests and church officials2. Even those rare lay scholars who did not accept ordination pursued their studies with and within the church organization, or not at all.
All of this began to change around the end of the 15th century. The invention of the printing press and availability of paper drastically lowered the cost of books. Rising economic prosperity allowed more lay people in the upper class and the emerging bourgeoisie the luxury of an extended education. Since the 13th century, classical works which had long been lost in Europe but had survived in the Islamic world had begun to make their way back into the libraries of the West. Now they could be purchased and read by the laity. A new kind of intellectual, began to emerge throughout Europe to help build the modern age .
These renaissance men had more in common with the scholars of classical Athens than with monks of the Middle Ages. Typical of them was Niccolò Machiavelli. Machiavelli was a Florentine politician. After finding himself on the wrong side of a coup, he found himself unemployed and was forced to retire to the countryside. His best known work, The Prince was an unsuccessful attempt to showcase his knowledge of political science and recent history in the hopes that a powerful noble would notice and offer him a position. Permanently shut out of politics, he consoled himself by reading the classics and writing a scholarly commentary on the works of Livy. Machiavelli might be the first successful outside scholar of the modern age. In fact, at least some historians feel that the publication of his works mark the start of the modern age3. Machiavelli was a layman and out of favor with the establishment. His major works were not published until after his death and were officially banned by the Church. Even today The Prince, while widely read, remains controversial. Despite this, Machiavelli's eventual influence on western thought is incontestable .
Perhaps the greatest of all the Enlightenment outsiders, though, was Spinoza. Born in 1632 to a family of Portuguese Jews who had fled to Amsterdam to escape the Inquisition, he showed a scholarly turn and was initially expected to become a rabbi. His curiosity soon drove him beyond the Torah, Talmud, and orthodox judaica into the Cabala and other esoteric studies. Then, after taking Latin lessons from a gentile freethinker, he proceeded to devour every philosophical text he could find, from Aristotle to Descartes. By then the young philosopher was beginning to harbor theories that made the elders of the synagogue extremely nervous .
Intellectual life among the Dutch Jews of the 17th century was closely circumscribed. Holland was one of the only places in Europe that was not closed to them in that period, and they remained only at the sufferance of their Protestant Christian hosts. Driven by the dual imperatives to maintain their cultural unity and to avoid giving offense to the Christians, they focused their studies on the Torah and avoided dangerous speculation. Young Spinoza, who had now begun saying things like "Angels are probably only hallucinations" and "The Bible uses figurative language and isn't meant to be taken literally," was not just a destabilizing influence, but was all too likely to bring down the wrath of the Christian majority on the Jewish community .
At the age of 24 Spinoza given a choice: he could either accept an annuity of 1,000 florins in return for keeping his unorthodox theories to himself, or he could be excommunicated from the Jewish faith. He chose excommunication. Europe had recently concluded a series of brutal wars of religion between Catholics and Protestants which raged intermittently for 126 years. Religious affiliation was still the single most important factor in the personal identity of most people and to not belong to an organized religion was unthinkable. Yet Spinoza never converted to another faith. Changing his first name from Baruch to Benedict, he moved into an attic apartment and spent the rest of his life writing books on philosophy while he supported himself by grinding lenses. Later, when his reputation began to grow, he turned down financial support from Lois XIV of France and even a prestigious university professorship on the grounds that accepting money from the government would irrevocably compromise his freedom to philosophize.
Of his five works (one unfinished) only two could be safely published during his life: a commentary on the philosophy of Decarte and the Theologico-Political Treatise, which was immediately placed on the index of banned books and had to be sold with a false cover and only the author's initials on the title page. Among the inflammatory ideas contained in the book is the idea that the Bible is written in figurative language. The key to understanding it is to study the historical, biographical, and cultural context in which the authors lived,
The universal rule, then, in interpreting Scripture is to accept nothing as an authoritative Scriptural statement which we do not perceive very clearly when we examine it in the light of its history.
… such a history should relate the environment of all the prophetic books extant; that is, the life, the conduct, and the studies of the author of each book, who he was, what was the occasion, and the epoch of his writing, whom did he write for, and in what language. Further, it should inquire into the fate of each book: how it was first received, into whose hands it fell, how many different versions there were of it, by whose advice was it received into the Bible, and, lastly, how all the books now universally accepted as sacred, were united into a single whole.
All such information should, as I have said, be contained in the 'history' of Scripture. For, in order to know what statements are set forth as laws, and what as moral precepts, it is important to be acquainted with the life, the conduct, and the pursuits of their author: moreover, it becomes easier to explain a man's writings in proportion as we have more intimate knowledge of his genius and temperament.
Further, that we may not confound precepts which are eternal with those which served only a temporary purpose, or were only meant for a few, we should know what was the occasion, the time, the age, in which each book was written, and to what nation it was addressed. Lastly, we should have knowledge on the other points I have mentioned, in order to be sure, in addition to the authenticity of the work, that it has not been tampered with by sacrilegious hands, or whether errors can have crept in, and, if so, whether they have been corrected by men sufficiently skilled and worthy of credence. All these things should be known, that we may not be led away by blind impulse to accept whatever is thrust on our notice, instead of only that which is sure and indisputable.
Today, this viewpoint is at the core of all but the most fundamentalist bible Judeo-Christian bible study, but it was revolutionary in 1670. In fact, the Theologico-Political Treatise is barely studied or quoted today, except by historians, because most of its arguments are now taken for granted in mainstream western thought.
Spinoza's greatest work is his Ethics which solidified his reputation, along with Descartes and Leibniz, as one of the three greatest rationalist philosophers. It would be hard to exaggerate the extent of Spinoza's influence on the next 500 years of modern philosophy. His impact on Judaism, once his people were ready to reclaim him, was equally pervasive. He has been called "The "first modern secular Jew" and credited with originating many of the core ideas of Reform Judaism .
Even as Machiavelli, Spinoza, and numerous other freethinkers were revolutionizing Western thought from outside any organized intellectual establishment, new forces were making themselves felt throughout Western Civilization4. Universities, which had first appeared in the medieval period, multiplied through the modern period, first in Europe and then in the New World5. Meanwhile scholars and learned professionals, seeing the value of communication and collaboration, began to organize themselves into societies. Typical of these was the Royal Society, founded in 1660, of which Henry Oldenburg, one of Spinoza's best friends, was the first secretary. The, often overlapping, influence of the universities and societies on the growth of knowledge was overwhelmingly positive. However, as time went on a divide began to appear between the "elite" scholars who attended and taught at universities and/or belonged to scholarly societies and the "amateur" scholars who did not. A new Academy was forming which had the power to give or withhold approval and legitimacy to scholarly efforts.
The implicit narrative began to be that outside scholars were undisciplined and underprivileged. By the end of the Enlightenment, efforts were made to bring the most brilliant of them into the fold, which many accepted joyfully. Spinoza was exceptional in turning down a university position when it was offered. More typical was Samuel Johnson, that brilliant titan of English letters, who was given an honorary doctorate and referred to as "Dr Johnson" by academics forever more. Benjamin Franklin, a self-educated man who spent his early career as the archetypal outside scholar, happily accepted his own honorary doctorate and membership in the Royal Society in later life, glorying in his hard-won academic legitimacy.
As time went on, it became harder even for exceptional outsiders to gain admission to the ivory tower of academia. The Academy had emerged as a new international priesthood, with a hold over scholarship almost as strong as the church had enjoyed in the previous age. Only those who had served their novitiate and displayed appropriately orthodox dogmas could be ordained.
Rise of the Modern University
While universities first appeared in the middle ages and can, in at least in theory, be placed into the tradition of higher education which began with the Athenian academy, most of the traits which we associate with the modern university first appeared in the 19th century. It was in this period when two major schools of thought emerged which still shape thinking about the role of the university. One of these viewpoints was articulated by Cardinal John Henry Newman, in a series of lectures given in Dublin in the 1850s. Newman's view was shaped by his own experiences at Oxford which, like the other "ancient universities" of the British Islands was then in the process of transitioning from training aristocrats to providing a liberal education for the new class of skilled bourgeoisie. He argued that the primary role of a university was to provide a generalized education. Research was a less important mission than teaching. Indeed, research could be more efficiently conducted outside the university,
The view taken of a University in these Discourses is the following:—That it is a place of teaching universal knowledge. This implies that its object is, on the one hand, intellectual, not moral; and, on the other, that it is the diffusion and extension of knowledge rather than the advancement. If its object were scientific and philosophical discovery, I do not see why a University should have students; if religious training, I do not see how it can be the seat of literature and science. … …there are other institutions far more suited to act as instruments of stimulating philosophical inquiry, and extending the boundaries of our knowledge, than a University. Such, for instance, are the literary and scientific "Academies,"… … To discover and to teach are distinct functions; they are also distinct gifts, and are not commonly found united in the same person. He, too, who spends his day in dispensing his existing knowledge to all comers is unlikely to have either leisure or energy to acquire new .
The Newman model of the university's mission was highly influential in the United Kingdom and, to a lesser extent, on liberal arts colleges in America .
Meanwhile, in Germany, another model was emerging based on the University of Berlin, founded by Wilhelm von Humboldt in 1810. In the Humboldt type university teaching and research were inseparable. The university was a sort of knowledge factory. Students learned by being involved, albeit at a very low level, in the critical investigation of truth. The overall prestige of a university was based on the quality of research it generated. The Humboldt model became wildly popular on the continent because Humboldt type research systems were seen as a major factor in Germany's economic growth. When the US began building its state university system with the passage of the Morrill Acts in 1862 and 1890, the Humboldt model was taken as a template for the ideal public university .
Until World War II most new universities in Europe and the Americas were based on the Humboldt paradigm. After the war, however, pressures to provide mass education to all citizens, combined with population pressures from the baby boom and the passage of the GI Bill in the US, which allowed returning soldiers to finance higher education, created demand for a third type of university. Neither Newman nor Humboldt type schools were physically capable of absorbing the influx of new students, which pushed student-to-faculty ratios to an historic high. nor were the new–primarily first generation–students particularly interested either in gaining a generalized liberal education or engaging in research. They came to school to learn technical skills and gain specialized diplomas which would increase their incomes. In response to this demand, the second half of the twentieth century saw a wave of new polytechnic schools, vocational schools that reinvented themselves as "technical universities", and, finally, for profit "universities". At these new schools basic research, if conducted at all, was a distinctly secondary pursuit. The need for faculty in these institutions paved the way a type of second-class academic whose primary job was lecturing to students who would never themselves become scholars .
Older universities, forced to compete with the new technical schools for funding, faculty, and students, began to adopt some of their traits. Student-to-faculty ratios rose, universities began doing more applied research, and an increasing number of specialized professional degree programs appeared in catalogs. Many older universities added professional schools, which allowed them to attract talented students who might otherwise go to a technical university while charging them tuition at a much higher rate than that for "research" graduate degrees. In 1908 Harvard began offering a new graduate degree, the Master of Business Administration (MBA), which was essentially a vocati9onal diploma for corporate executives. Other major research universities rapidly followed. Today the MBA is the most awarded graduate degree world-wide. Some MBA students are involved with research and a few go on to PhD programs, but the degree is not seen as preparation for a research career. In most business schools that offer PhD programs, MBA and PhD candidates are admitted based on different criteria and are almost completely segregated from each other throughout their studies. An MBA, even if they are a talented researcher, has almost no chance of landing a tenure-track academic job after graduation. There are around 800,000 of them graduating every year and every one of them, if they choose to do research, is, by definition, an outside scholar6.
The result of these four decades of competitive convergence, the typical state university of today has a case of institutional schizophrenia. One side of the split personality is a Humboltian research university in which research teams, led by tenured professors assisted by a chosen few students, spend their time competing for grant money and cranking out papers. The other side is a career school in which lecturers and graduate teaching assistants cater to legions of undergraduates' and professional students' need to diplomas which will allow them to take their places among the ranks of the bourgeoisies.
The same period over which the university attained its final form has seen the stratification of the scholarly community into four rigid castes, with relatively little mobility between them. The two upper castes make up the Academy, while the two lower castes are outsiders. At the top are the professional researchers. Most often they are tenured professors at a research university, or hold an analogous position at a public or private research facility. This caste not only has little trouble getting their research published and accepted, but because they control the peer review process, conference agendas, and PhD committees, are able to give or withhold the stamp of legitimacy to scholars of the lower castes. Below them are the lecturers, scholars who have either failed to reach the upper class, or whose main interest is education. Their main function is undergraduate and professional education but if they can somehow find the time and money for research they can often get it published. Below them are the professionals who hold specialized doctoral or masters degrees in law, business, medicine, engineering, education or other fields. They they generally are generally able to publish applied research in their own field, generally under the auspices of a professional association, but are discouraged from pure or theoretical research. At the lowest level are the autodidacts. These scholars, no matter what their level of interest, ability, and knowledge, have not managed to obtain the graduate degree which is the minimum requirement for scholarly legitimacy. In general, they have no access to journals, conferences, or "respectable" academic presses and are totally ignored by the academy. The avenues open to them to communicate their work–"popular" nonfiction, Internet blogs and predatory, for-profit journals, have little reach even among their own caste.
One of the most universal traits of all four castes in specialization. Despite a certain amount of lip service to multidisciplinary or interdisciplinary scholarship, 21st century scholars tend to confine their work to incredibly narrow disciplines. The typical modern scholar is thus defined by their place in a rigid system which labels and circumscribes them according to type of (or lack of) institution, rank, and specialty. There is no place in such a system for a Benjamin Franklin, a Francis Bacon, or even an Aristotle or Spinoza.
Historian John Lukacs explains this phenomenon as part of a process of bureaucratization which has continued in all aspects of Western Civilization throughout the modern age, reaching new heights in the twentieth century, "In this increasingly bureaucratized world, little more than the possession of various diplomas mattered. Since admission to certain schools–rather than the consequently almost automatic acquisition of degrees–depended on increasingly competitive examinations, the word 'meritocracy' was coined…In reality the term 'meritocracy' was misleading. As in so many other spheres of life the rules that governed the practices and functions of schools and universities were bureaucratic rather than meritocratic." Securing admission to a program and earning a degree is only the first step for someone seeking an academic career. In the US it takes around ten years for the average PhD student to earn their degree, counting from the receipt of their bachelor's . Once they take the examinations and submit to copious paperwork to gain admission to a program, they are presented with a list of required courses, further exams, and residency requirements to gain the degree. The only requirement that is designed purely to test the student's skill as a writer and researcher is the dissertation. Even in this area following the correct format and submitting the appropriate paperwork often becomes nearly as important as the actual scholarship. In many fields, particularly the physical sciences, the PhD program is not even seen as adequate preparation for independent research and students are expected to spend further years in one or more "post-doc" research appointments to gain further experience.
Newly made PhDs as next subjected to yet another "meritocratic" sorting process. The lucky and well-connected are placed in "tenure track" positions as assistant professors. The second tier secure positions as lecturers–second class faculty who have no prospect of tenure and are expected to teach heavy course loads to free up the professors for research. The rest, an increasing percentage of the total, eke out a living as part time adjunct instructors, often commuting to three or more schools in a week in order to earn a living income. These "gypsies", as they are referred to by their more fortunate colleagues, live in hope that a full time position will materialize, but the odds are stacked against them. It is hardly surprising that so many PhD students either fail to complete their degree or, having obtained it, give up and leave academia forever. Some of them have no choice: a gap in employment of more than a few months, or two much time spent as an adjunct, is often seen as a black mark in an academic's career, permanently excluding them from consideration for full time positions7.
As for those lucky few, the small percentage of scholars who make it onto the tenure track, they are privileged to spend the next six or seven years working sixty hour weeks while they accumulate the requisite ticket punches for promotion. If all goes well they gain tenure around year seven, finally making it into full membership in the academy. If something goes wrong, or the university simply decides that it doesn't need any more associate professors at the moment, they are thanked and excused and leave to start over from the beginning .
An associate professor working towards tenure has no incentive to take risks. A large volume of acceptable publications is always less risky than a few brilliant ones. Research that is two controversial, or steps on the toes of a member of the tenure committee, can easily wreck their career. Some of them tell themselves that they will play it safe until they get tenure, then work on the projects that they really want to do. A few follow through on this, but it is hard to radically change the direction of one's research after seven years of escalating commitment. Many of them, after spending two decades of their research career playing it safe, have no idea how to take risks even if they wanted to.
Everything in the career path of an academic selects for risk avoiding individuals who know how to play the system. Successful professors have all the same character traits of a career bureaucrat. Worse, by the time they achieve tenure they have been thoroughly socialized to look down on any scholar who has not managed to survive the same process. At the same time, they have spent years acquiring narrowly specialized knowledge, working mostly with people in the same discipline, and being warned by their mentors not to have opinions or do work outside their field8
American research universities are incredibly good at their main function, which is rigorous, deep research in narrowly defined areas. They focus on training the kind of scholars that they need for this mission. Unfortunately, these specialized professors are much less effective at some of the other functions which have traditionally been associated with scholars. Teaching, particularly at the undergraduate level, is generally fobbed off on lecturers and graduate students. Practical applications, particularly those involving interdisciplinary knowledge, tend to be the province or corporate R&D organizations, where researchers are expected to pursue projects that will make a profit for the company and which only share their findings with competitors when it is in their interest. The task of advising policymakers is carried out by staff intellectuals at government agencies–which are, more or less by definition–even more bureaucratic and conservative than the universities.
But what of those scholars who follow the more traditional model, more like the great thinkers of the ancient world and the enlightenment? What about those who left the academy after earning a graduate degree–PhD, masters or professional, but still have an interest in doing real scholarly research and creating knowledge or affecting public policy? What about autodidacts who never had a formal education at all but, after a lifetime of reading are now ready to write serious nonfiction works? Is it even possible for these outside scholars to make a contribution in the modern era?
So far in this book, I have deliberately avoided writing any autobiographical details because I felt it would distract from the purpose of the work. Now, however, in the interests of full disclosure, I must mention that I too am one of these outsiders, and the answers to these questions affect me personally. I attended professional school at a major research university, earning an MBA. While there I did original research and completed a thesis which was later published as my first book. Several professors strongly urged my to continue on and finish a PhD. Upon examining what would actually be required, and the personal and family sacrifices that I would need to make, I decided that it wasn't worth it. I am still doing primary research in my specialty, but I am finding every aspect of it more difficult now that I am now affiliated with an institution: it is much harder to obtain grant funding, I have trouble getting the journals and database access I need, and I no longer have a departmental fund to pay my way to conferences. When I go to publish in journals I find that the burden of proving my credibility is on me; without the name of an institution under my byline, the assumption is that I don't have the qualifications to publish. I am far from the only one in this situation, though. Later, I will talk about some of the changes which are making life easier for us.
- Read together Books V-XII of Herodotus' Histories, Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War, and Xenophon's Hellenica form a continuous trilogy of the history of Greece and her neighbors from just before the Greco-Persian wars up to the aftermath of the Peloponnesian War, a period of approximately 136 years.↩
- Note the modern similarity between academic regalia and monastic habits.↩
- Alan Bloom argues that Machiavelli was the philosopher who began the Enlightenment. According to Bloom, it was Machiavelli who first suggested that the philosophers of western civilization, who had formerly been dependent on the patronage of the aristocracy, should "change camps" and espouse democracy, reason, and the theory of rights–some of the most characteristic concepts of the modern age–as these would create a society that offered them greater protection and scope for their talents.↩
- My discussion has necessarily been limited in scope to the history of Western Civilization. Other societies have their own scholarly traditions and institutions, some of which predate Western civilization itself. Likewise, they have had their own outside scholars who toiled outside the scholarly establishment and gained legitimacy and influence only late in life or even centuries after their deaths. Confucius is but one example. As the modern age continued, however, the ruling and intellectual classes of the East were increasingly educated by the Academy of the West. By the 20th century the Academy was completely international, and organized on the Western Model. See Eberhard.↩
- Even the destruction and upheavals of the Wars of Religion did little to slow the spread of universities. In fact, some of the most famous universities were founded as gambits in the struggle between Protestants and Catholics. For example, Trinity College in Dublin was established on the orders of Elizabeth I to educate the sons of her protestant subjects in Ireland without subjecting them to the corruptive influences of Catholicism.↩
- During orientation on my first day of business school I raised my hand and asked an associate dean about research opportunities for MBA students. He laughed and said "If you want to do research, what are you doing in the MBA program? You should have applied as a PhD."↩
- For purposes of discussion I have focused on the career path of scholars at a research university. Many PhDs also work for government agencies or for-profit research organizations which have their own bureaucratic hurdles.↩
- At American universities and schools in other countries that are based on the American model, the basic unit of organization is the department, which consists of all of the university's specialists in a particular discipline. At English universities, on the other hand, the basic unit is the college, which will typically include one professor from each discipline. English professors, and European academics in general, also tend to be more involved with teaching and administration than their American colleagues. See Eagleton for a delightful overview of some of the differences.↩
Anderson, Robert. "The 'Idea of a University' today." History and
Politics (2010). http://www.historyandpolicy.org/hp/research/papers/policy-paper-98.html.
Bloom, Allan David. The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today's Students. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1987.
Copulsky, Jerome E. "The Last Prophet: Spinoza and the Political Theology of Moses Hess." University of Chicago Divinity School, 2008. https://divinity.uchicago.edu/sites/default/files/imce/pdfs/webforum/032008/copulsky_last_prophet.pdf.
Durant, Will. The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World's Greatest Philosophers. Kindle Ed. Aristeus, 2014.
Eagleton, Terry. Across the pond: an Englishman's view of America. 2013
Eberhard, Wolfram. A History of China. 3rd ed. [org. pub. 1969]. Project Gutenberg, 2006. http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/17695.
Herodotus. The Persian War. Translated by William Shepherd. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982.
Hoffer, Thomas B., and Vincent Welch. Time to degree of U.S. Research doctorate Recipients. National Science Foundation Directorate for Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences, March 2006. http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/infbrief/nsf06312/.
Lukacs, John. At the end of an Age. New Haven: Yale University
Press, 2002.
Machiavelli, Niccoló. The Prince. Translated by George Bull. LondoEagleton, Terry. Across the pond: an Englishman's view of America.
2013n; New York: Penguin Books, 2003.
Newman, John Henry. The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated In Nine Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin. Project Gutenberg, 2008. http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/24526
Newman, John Henry. The University: Its Rise and Progress. Edited by Kevin A. Straight. Montrose, CA: Creative Minority Productions, 2015.
O'Brien, Keith. "The Ronin Insitute for wayward academics: a bold new idea to solve the PhD crises." Boston Globe (May 27, 2012). https://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2012/05/26/new-idea-for-unemployed-academics/UUZOGe1KNWvUXDl7Yae1IL/story.html.
Spinoza, Benedictus de. The ethics of Spinoza: the road to inner freedom. Secaucus, N.J.: Citadel Press, 1976.
Spinoza, Benedictus de. Theologico-Political Treatise. Translated by R.H.M. Elwes. Project Gutenberg, 1997. http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/990.
Spinoza, Benedictus de, and Joseph Ratner. "The Life of Spinoza." in The philosophy of Spinoza, [org. pub. 1926]. Project Gutenberg, 2010. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/31205.
Thucydides. Thucydides: History of the Peloponnesian War. Translated by Rex Warner. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin, 1954.
Xenophon. Hellenica. Translated by Henry Graham Dakyns. Champaign, Ill.: Project Gutenberg, 2008. http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1174
Apology of Plato
Two posts ago I wrote about the difficulty we encounter, when reading Plato's dialogs, distinguishing his teachings from those of Socrates. Because the Apology is an early dialog and the subject matter is Socrates himself, it may give the most accurate portrait of him of all the dialogs. The apology is a "transcript" of Socrates' defense while on trial for his life. In the decade following his execution (in 399 BCE) a number of authors wrote their own accounts of the trial, and Plato probably wanted to create a definitive version to defend the memory of his teacher. Of course no record of the trial is completely accurate, if only because the Greeks had not yet invented the concept of a court reporter and thus had to rely on their memories of what was said.One of the most important things to remember when reading the Apology, is that Socrates really didn't care whether he won or lost the trial. He was 70 years old and had already reached a place in his philosophy in which he no longer feared death,
For let me tell you, gentlemen, that to be afraid of death is only another form of thinking that one is wise when one is not; it is to think that one knows when one does not know. No one knows with regard to death whether it is not really the greatest blessing that can happen to a man; but people dread it as though they are certain that it is the greatest evil; and this ignorance, which thinks that it knows what it does not, must surely be ignorance most culpable. (29a-b)
Transcending fear, particularly the fear of death, is one of the great benefits of studying philosophy. Unmotivated by fear, Socrates was free to follow his own convictions–and possibly the urgings of his daemon–and seize on the trial as one more chance to educate the Athenians and set an example for his students by demonstrating his dialectic.
Thus Socrates, whose disclaimer that he doesn't know how to speak in court sounds weak from a man who has already put the greatest sophists of the day in their place, spends most of the trial bringing up edgy theological ideas, such as when he calls on the god Apollo as a witness or when, in passing, he asserts that the Gods cannot lie. Both of these points required a number of unorthodox assumptions and would have made most of the jurors uncomfortable. Socrates then goes on to demonstrate his teaching method by cross examining Meletus which, to most of the jurors, would have been more a demonstration of how annoying he could be. Towards the end of his defense he declines to beg for the court's mercy (a standard section in Athenian court practice) and explains away his lack of political service by saying that he just would have been gotten himself killed by the other Athenians had he involved himself,
The true champion of justice, if he intends to survive even a short time, must necessarily confine himself to private life and leave politics alone. (32a)
No one, least of all Socrates, is surprised when the court returns a "guilty" verdict. The prosecution recommends the death penalty. Athenian law allows the defendant to propose his own penalty, and everyone expects him to suggest exile, which the jury will probably accept. Instead, he proposes a trivially small fine, saying its the most he can afford. He then raises the number, after Crito and others offer to pay. Obviously, though, if Socrates' friends are paying it won't really be a punishment.
Socrates is sentenced to die and soon becomes the most famous martyr to philosophy in Western history (or perhaps the second most famous, depending how one classifies Jesus).At this point, let's pause to contrast the careers of Socrates and Plato. Socrates "The Gadfly" was an outsider who was always as odds with, and ultimately executed by, the system. Plato was a respected citizen who died in his sleep at a party. Socrates' teachings were primarily dialectical–dealing with ways to change and improve society. Plato's were primarily metaphysical and idealistic and implied that one might as well accept society because the physical world wasn't the real world anyway as well as advocating a world view that was ultimately static. Socrates discarded his (probably lower-middle) social class and became something else. Plato remained close to his aristocratic roots. Socrates conversed in the streets and at dinner parties. Plato taught at an a academy.
If we think of "philosopher" as a role in society then, in many ways, these two men are the original archetypes of the two kinds of philosopher that have historically been found in Western Civilization. For want of better terminology, I call them Outsiders and Academics, and I am currently writing a book about the Outsiders. While I would of course love it if you were to buy my book, when it comes out, everything you really need to know about the two can be found by studying Socrates and Plato. Outsiders like Socrates are the initiators: they force society to examine new ideas. Since societies don't really like new ideas, the Outsiders usually suffer for it, financially and/or physically. The Academics, on the other hand, safe within legitimized social organizations such as universities, are the developers and guardians of the new ideas which were first introduced by outsiders. Occasionally, an academic is able to conceive and promulgate a truly original idea, but this is rare because the process they go through to earn their positions selects against innovators and because they have too much to loose to buck the system. Our civilization seems to need both types of philosopher to function.
First Preview of my Upcoming Book
Last week I placed a new academic working paper on Academia.edu that roughly parallels Chapter 11 of my upcoming book. The version in the book will be written at a different reading level and without the math equations, but this is still a pretty good taste of what is coming.
Scholars like to post these preliminary drafts for several reasons. The most important one for an independent researcher like myself is to receive feedback and suggestions prior to submission. Another reason is to make findings available to the community sooner. The average turn-around time to publish a journal article is two or three years and the field may have moved on by the time the paper hits the presses.
I probably don't need to worry about obsolescence with this particular article, since the events with which it deals happened back in the 1950's and 1960's. My book will be a study of the role of outside scholars in our society and, in particular, their ability to shape public policy. Outside Scholars, in my usage, are people who engage in research and knowledge creation without being formally affiliated with the dominant academic community. This particular article/chapter deals with an outside scholar named Victor Sharrow who devoted his life to arguing for what he saw as the "correct" interpretation on the Fourteenth Amendment. He was ultimately unsuccessful, but I feel his career provides several intriguing insights as a characteristic outside scholar narrative.
Sharrow saw the Fourteenth Amendment as the key to dismantling the Jim Crow system in the South. In the months prior to the 1958 election he mounted an intense one-man lobbying campaign to sway Dwight Eisenhower and other politicians to his views. In my article I examine several of his arguments from a standpoint of modern data science.
Those of you who read my posts on data science and Python programming might be interested in the simulation models I describe in the paper. I would be happy to send my spreadsheet and code to anyone who is interested. Just e-mail me or message my Facebook page.
If all goes well, the book should be released in late 2016 or early 2017.


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California Wine, Sonoma County
About Kenwood Vineyard and Winery
Kenwood Winery was founded in 1970 when wine enthusiasts from the San Francisco Bay Area refurbished and modernized the former Pagani Brothers Winery, originally established in 1906. Ideally located in the heart of Sonoma Valley, Kenwood Winery, named after the town of Kenwood, is committed to producing premium wines that reflect Sonoma County's finest vineyards and define the region's grape varieties in their true character and style. The winery produces classic varietal wines: Cabernet Sauvignon, Chardonnay, Zinfandel, Sauvignon Blanc, Pinot Noir, Gewürztraminer and Merlot. Kenwood Winery has earned the reputation for crafting wines that offer consistent high quality and outstanding value at every price level.
Kenwood Winery sits on a beautiful twenty-two acre producing estate. Kenwood's wines are produced from both these grapes grown on site, as well as from fruit sourced from some of Sonoma County's finest vineyards. Using the "cuvée" winemaking method, the harvest from each vineyard is handled separately to preserve its individuality and true character. Such "small lot" winemaking allows veteran Winemaker Mike Lee to bring each lot of wine to its fullest potential as shown in the blending of Kenwood Vineyard's Reserve, Jack London, and Single Vineyard Series' Wines. The ultimate expression, Kenwood's winemaking philosophy is embodied in its highly acclaimed Artist Series, a blend of the finest barrels of Cabernet that reveal the evident rewards of this dedication to excellence.
True to its history, Kenwood is housed in the original winery buildings. Inside, the winery has been redesigned with winemaking versatility in mind. More than 125 stainless steel fermenting and upright oak tanks are used in a combination with 14,000 French and American Oak barrels giving the winemaker flexibility and diversity in production.
Kenwood Winery 2001 Reserve Sauvignon Blanc
The wine is pleasantly fruity with delicious peach, citrus, and melon flavors, a hint of vanilla and hazelnut, and a touch of grass complementing the wine's smooth, creamy finish.
Kenwood Winery 2001 Chardonnay
Fruit tiers of pear and apple flavors are well-balanced with toasted-vanilla oak notes that leave a smooth and creamy finish on the pallet. This refreshing Chardonnay is enjoyable as an aperitif and as an accompaniment to salads, chicken and seafood dishes.
Kenwood Winery 2001 Russian River Pinot Noir
This medium-bodied Pinot Noir wine serves up an array of plum and cherry flavors with an enticing floral bouquet. Enticing flavors of cherry and plum blend with floral aromas to create a smooth, delicious, medium-bodied pinot noir.
Kenwood Winery 2001 Reserve Chardonnay
Ripe, rich and harmonious; revealing tiers of pear and vanilla flavors, tropical and floral notes and an elegantly smooth finish. The grapes for the Kenwood Reserve Chardonnay come from some of the finest vineyards in the Russian River Valley. Enjoy the Kenwood Reserve Chardonnay as an aperitif or paired with poultry, creamy pastas and seafood dishes.
Kenwood Winery 1998 Artist Series Cabernet Sauvignon
An elegant, intensely concentrated wine with vibrant blackberry and black cherry fruit flavors. This wine exhibits rich, deep color, and hints of mint, spice and cassis.
Kenwood Winery 2000 Mazonni Ranch Reserve Zinfindel
Brimming with ripe plum and black cherry fruit flavors. A richly layered, full-bodied wine with toasty nuances on the finish.
Kenwood Winery 2001 Sauvignon Blanc
Bright and vibrant, fresh and crisp, boasting tropical fruit, pear and citrus flavors; hints of spice and grassiness; fresh and lively through the finish. The wine is pleasantly fruity with delicious peach, citrus, and melon flavors, a hint of vanilla and hazelnut, and a touch of grass that complement the wines smooth, creamy finish. Best served chilled, this Sauvignon Blanc makes an excellent aperitif and will accentuate higher-acid, herbal dishes: salads, garden herbs and vegetables. Excellent with light sauced poultry, shellfish and seafood dishes.
Kenwood Winery 2000 Sonoma Zinfandel
Medium-bodied with black cherry, spice and vanilla oak flavors that finish with classic peppery Zinfandel notes.

subset: commoncrawl


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AMC Springfield 11 with IMAX
3200 East Montclair Street,
5 people favorited this theater
Opened November 22, 1991 by Dickinson Theatres seating 2,200 in its eight screens. Goodrich took over operation of the theatre in 1996. The box office was located in the outer lobby with two ticket windows. Once in the theatre lobby it is shaped in a V, with the concession stand in the middle. A hallway goes down each side of the of the V to the auditoriums. All the auditoriums are decorated in a bright red with plush red velver seats. Dolby stereo in each auditorium. It was taken back by Dickinson Theatres on August 16, 2008.
In 2010 it was taken over by Showplex Cinemas, and in 2011 they enlarged to 11 screens and a total capacity of 2,400 seats. It was taken over by Starplex Cinemas in 2014. Taken over by AMC December 16, 2015.
Recent comments (view all 28 comments)
The theatre is now owned by Showplex Cinemas.
Read today that they intend to build the IMAX and two additional audtoriums by next summer. Assume the IMAX will be a digital setup.
Construction is currently underway. Article at the following url:http://www.boxofficemagazine.com/news/2011-04-08-showplex-cinemas-to-bring-the-imax-experience-to-springfield-missouri Also pictures of construction are at Showplex facebook site, and if you keyword in "Springfield 8" doing a google search and then click on images you will see an drawing of the conversion.
Correction to the above post. Go to facebook and keyword Showplex Cinemas and then click on photo, the picture of the future theatre is on their profile album. Sorry for the mistake! —jw
The theatre will officially be renamed the Springfield 11 on November 18th. Happy Feet Two is the premiere IMAX engagement with Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol (in a one week exclusive) and The Adventures of Tintin planned as future engagements.
I really wish that the old photos, before the remodel, were still on here. This is a great theater.
Aerial before the 2011 renovention is in the photo section for this cinema.
The Springfield architectural firm Butler Rosenbury & Partners designed the 2011 renovation and expansion project for this theater. A thumbnail link to six photos of the Springfield 11 Cinemas can be found on the entertainment projects page of the firm's web site.
This opened on November 22nd, 1991 as the Dickinson 8 theatre. Grand opening ad in the photo section.
Springfield 8 cinemas bought back by Dickinson theatres on August 16th, 2008
Found on Newspapers.com
Just login to your account and subscribe to this theater


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Another Asian-influenced dish from Around My French Table; pork curry-stew. Turmeric, curry powder, cardomom seeds, coriander seeds, lemongrass and coconut milk are used in this curry. This recipe says to braise the stew in the oven but I cooked it the way I cook curry – entirely on the stove. It was too hot to have the oven on anyway! I cooked the potatoes and carrots separately as Dorie said but cooked the onions with the pork to add extra sweetness to the stew. I also poured all but 1/4 of the can of coconut milk into the Dutch oven and added the remaining milk only at the end as the flavour of the coconut milk will be cooked away when cooked too long. I omitted the honey too as I didn't think the stew needs it, preferring it savoury than sweet.
It was a pleasant and mild curry. I found the strongest flavours were the lemongrass and cardomom. My kids could eat it and they think it's quite nice. After all, only 1 heaped teaspoon of curry powder was used. I found a drizzle of soy sauce to chicken curry enhances its flavour and it worked on this dish as well. We had it two days in a row and it did taste better the next day. The first night I served it over white rice and garlic fried rice the second. (The second night's dinner was better!)
That's all from me on this recipe. I'm curious how other French Fridays with Dorie members found it. Click here for their links.
(I'll update this post with the link when it's up. The FFwD website appears to be down at this moment.)


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Classy Gift Sets
2-pc set includes: 1 Slim, 1 Style
7-pc set includes: 1 Mate, 1 Slim, 1 Sport, 1 Style, 1 Zip Strap, 1 Mate Adhesive, 1 Iron-on pocket
9-pc set includes: 2 Mate, 2 Slim, 1 Sport, 1 Style, 1 Zip Strap, 1 Mate Adhesive, 1 Iron-on pocket
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To find anything you put a Tile on, just open the app. Ring it if it's nearby. Check the map for its last known location. Or ask the Tile community to help you find it.
No maintenance ever
We engineered each and every Tile to run an entire year without an ounce of upkeep. No charging. No replacing batteries. No nothing. And when it's time for a new Tile, our replacement program lets you upgrade yours at a discount, so you'll always have the best finding technology at your fingertips.
Find your phone
Phones are easy to misplace. Tile makes them easy to find. Just press your Tile twice to make your phone ring even when it's on silent. You can even log into our website to find it on a map or make it ring.
Mate: 6.1 g
Slim: 9.3 g
Sport: 15 g
Style: 11 g
Mate: 34 x 34 x 4.65mm
Slim: 54 x 54 x 2.4mm
Sport: 40 x 40 x 5.9 mm
Style: 37.5 x 37.5 x 5.9 mm
Mate: 88 decibel melody
Slim: 82 decibel melody
Sport: 98 decibel melody
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5 star guest house
The Inspection Process And Our Awards
Not all guest houses or bed & breakfast establishments are members of a Quality Scheme and it is the owner's personal choice.
The Bays Guest House joined the Visit Britain programme of assessment in 2006, the year that we opened. Our intention was always to become a 5 Star Gold Award establishment. Our personal belief is to be the best we can be and to offer our guests value for money, a place where they can relax, feel at home and of course to have a little luxury whilst on holiday.
Our first inspection took place after only 4 weeks of opening, wow were we petrified, however we survived and were awarded 4 stars, but in addition to that we listened to what the inspector had to say about how we could improve our service and work towards the 5 star. In the first year of trading we also listened to our guests, they were an invaluable source of information on how their stay could be made more comfortable.
The average star rating in Hunstanton is 4 stars with some guest houses holding a Silver or Gold award. However the difference between 4 and 5 star is quite significant, for example the quality and conditions of the bedrooms may read for 4 stars "Very good standard of decoration with use of high quality pictures and prints" and for 5 star "Excellent interior design, with high attention to detail and thoughtful co-ordination of patterns, colours and textures"
One of the most significant differences is "Choice", choice of bedding, choice of menus, teas, coffees, choice of how food is cooked and how you meet the needs of different guests, for example vegetarian, vegan or gluten free.
Now after four years and having achieved the 5 stars at the end of the first year, our guests say they can't think of anything which could improve on what we have. However we are always coming up with little things that make a difference and of course so do the inspectors, so our promise to our current and future guests is that we will not stand still and vegetate; we will maintain and improve on our services to you for as long as we are here.
What is a quality assessment?
"Quality Assessment seeks to inform consumers before they book accommodation, to recognise quality and to differentiate levels of facilities and services, which as potential guests they can expect".
Most of the schemes recognise increasing levels of quality using 1 – 5 stars. Some schemes further recognise excellence with the use of Silver and Gold awards. "
Enjoy England, Quality in Tourism 2009
What is a 5 star award and what does it mean for our guests?
The inspections process is an annual event. An anonymous assessor books in just like anyone else and we are being assessed from the minute they make the phone call. The criteria used to assess us are based on quality, good practice and many other things. There is a minimum standard which should be met in all cases with things such as statutory obligations:
- Fire precautions
- Health & safety
- Food safety and hygiene
and then criteria such as
- Cleanliness
- Bookings and pre-arrival
- Arrival and departure
- Beds and bedding
- Furniture and furnishings
- Size of bedrooms
- Lighting and ventilation
- Fixtures and fittings
- Food and beverages
The list covers every area of the guest house.
Following the minimum standards, each area is assessed for quality and is marked against criteria levels from 1-5. For example Cleanliness could be
"All surfaces clean and free from dust"- 1 star
to "Clearly a pristine finish" – 5 stars.
Hospitality and Friendliness could be
"Limited guest contact and interaction" – 1 star
to "Excellent first and last impression" – 5 stars.
So what do the 5 stars actually mean?
The higher the rating the better the quality, it is simple as that. The assessor ransacks the room looking for dust in corners, under mattresses etc. They look at all labels on sheets, bedding and towels, they look on top of wardrobes and in the drawers. In the morning they eat breakfast, always assessing the quality of the food and service and in the evening, where applicable they assess the quality of the food and again the service, hospitality and so on.
It is, we can tell you, a very harrowing experience but also a useful one for those that want to continuously improve their services. After all, where else can you get a free consultant?
What is a Gold Award and what does it mean for our guests?
In addition to the stars there is also recognition of excellence in the way of Silver or Gold Awards. These accolades are there to inform the prospective guests the level of excellence they should expect from a guest house. Gold being the highest award so, for example, you could come across a 4 Star guest house with a Gold Award; this guest house would give you the best a 4 Star can give and of course the same for a 5 Star, it means the guest house is at the top of the standard within their rating.
We have recently achieved the above Breakfast Award; this award is new (November 2009) and has only been allocated to 7% of guest houses in the whole of the UK. This award speaks for itself and simply means that those guest houses which have achieved it will give their guests a very high standard of breakfast. Again the award will have been given because the Guest House has met the standards required; it does not mean that those who have not achieved it would not give an adequate breakfast.
All ratings and awards can be taken away at the annual assessment visit should the service slip and therefore all guest house owners should be, at a minimum, working towards maintaining the standard outlined in their award and if they wish to do so, continuously improve to a higher standard.


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There are 7 item(s) tagged with the keyword "local economies".
Recent events in Northamptonshire have hammered home the message that local government has reached a tipping point in terms of its finances. Anyone who thinks that the problems faced at the County Council are unique is in for a rude awakening. In this context is it time for a new municipalism?
With policy pressures piling up and budgets diminishing rapidly for many services it is time for local authorities to take back control of their areas by reclaiming entrepreneurship, rather than the outdated thinking that someone else should do this for them. This is not about acting commercially in the blind pursuit of income generation but to identify the major policy puzzles facing communities and thinking creatively and innovatively about how to solve these policy conundrums. Where markets have failed to deliver the outcomes that local communities need then it's time for local councils to step up to the plate.
From the eighties up until the late-noughties a fairly stable orthodoxy existed amongst many senior policymakers that the transfer of large swathes of local government services to national outsourcing companies was a good thing, would bring much needed investment, transformation of approach and efficiency in delivery. Anyone who dared question the reality of what outcomes would actually be achieved was ostracised and branded as a dinosaur by the industry that built up around the sector.
In APSE, we always try to look for tangible evidence and think through the long-term outcomes in any suggested approach to delivering local government services and it's therefore fair to say that we held a fairly healthy scepticism of much of the claims of risk transfer, widespread additional employment benefits and pots of gold at the end of the rainbow. From around 2005 onwards we also started to see many contracts which harked back to the CCT days or which were early strategic partnerships start to run out of steam and councils start to insource them.
It's the infrastructure and facilities, it's the look and the feel, it's the local environment and how safe and secure the area is. At a time when we are trying to attract people to our localities and communities, are we cutting back on the very things that make places habitable, those very highly visible and publically recognised neighbourhood services?
We know that local authority expenditure in the UK will be 30% less by 2020, than it was in 2010, we also know that in England local government finance will have moved to a much more local financing model by that point. Under current Government plans most councils will be almost fully dependant on a mixture of council tax and business rates revenue, alongside a small amount of other grants and income generated through commercial activity.
Former speaker of the US House of Representatives, Tip O'Neill, is credited with the quote 'All politics is local' and I think that adage has never been more apt than at present.
Having spoken at and attended a number of packed fringes at all of the main party conferences recently I couldn't help but reflect on the fact that there is a reawakening by the political parties that many of the most pressing policy issues are best resolved at a local government level.
It's time to show central government the key role councils can play in helping achieve an economic recovery.
A huge debate is taking place at present about which are the best models available to divest public services through. I have got to say I remain to be convinced. Whatever service options local authorities decide to pursue in future the benchmark against which to appraise the options is the existing in-house service. Does any alternative form of provision meet or surpass the benefits that managing services directly yourself brings.
Spoke today at the Supply Conference North West on how the public and private sectors can work together better. It was mainly a private sector audience of suppliers to local government.
After putting the economic context facing public services at present I went on to talk about the interdependency of the public and private sectors upon each other in local economies. I have explained our economic footprint research and the £1.64 concept on this blog many times before.


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Now through June 21, 2013, Walmart stores throughout central Ohio are raising needed charitable funds for Nationwide Children's Hospital, a member of Children's Miracle Network (CMN) Hospitals. Walmart customers and Sam's Club members can quickly add a "Miracle Balloon" donation of $1 or more during their checkout, with 100 percent of the proceeds going to Nationwide Children's.
Since 1987, Walmart stores and Sam's Club warehouses have raised funds for 170 children's hospitals in communities throughout the U.S. and Canada, with more than $64 million raised for all CMN Hospitals and $550,000 raised for Nationwide Children's in 2012 alone.
Children's Miracle Network Hospitals raises funds for 170 children's hospitals across the United States and Canada, which, in turn, use the money where it's needed the most. When a donation is given it stays in the community, helping local kids. Since 1983, Children's Miracle Network Hospitals has raised more than $4.7 billion, most of it $1 at a time. These donations have gone to support research and training, purchase equipment, and pay for uncompensated care, all in support of the mission to save and improve the lives of as many children as possible. Learn more at www.CMNHospitals.org


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The sheer size of legacy mailboxes at the Environmental Protection Agency — some of them with more than a million messages in them — threatened the agency's transition to Office 365, Microsoft's cloud-based collaboration and communication service.
EPA officials discovered that hitch as they worked with Lockheed Martin and Microsoft to move 25,000 employee mailboxes to Microsoft Office 365 for Government, a multitenant service that stores U.S. government data in a segregated community cloud and includes e-mail, calendars, scheduling and collaboration tools for internal and external use.
"EPA wanted an extremely aggressive migration schedule," said Lynn Singleton, director of environment services for Lockheed Martin. "I don't know if they understood what they were really asking for when it came to the amount of work that had to occur over the relatively short amount of time," Singleton said.
EPA officials brought in Lockheed Martin in September 2012 and wanted the primary migration to be completed by early 2013. Migration work was completed over the Presidents' Day holiday weekend in February, Singleton said. The move to Office 365 is expected to save the EPA approximately $12 million over the four-year contract period.
EPA managers had done a lot of preliminary work to prepare for the migration, performing outreach and communication efforts to make the employees aware of the transition and dealing with governance issues. But an unexpected hurdle was the size of many of the mailboxes that needed to be transitioned, which forced EPA and Lockheed to rethink how to approach the migration midway through the project.
For 15 years, EPA employees had used IBM Lotus Notes as an enterprise e-mail system. The agency didn't have a size limit on mailboxes to trigger purging or archiving of information. Some of the larger mailboxes had over a million objects in them. In all, the mailboxes contained a very large universe of information, representing about 90 terabytes of data, Singleton said.
Initially, EPA wanted to transition all of the mailboxes along with their information to the cloud. "But the throughput requirements of that, just the physical constraints, were such that we could not do it," Singleton said. If the team proceeded as planned there would have been network latency problems. Plus, the team determined that they could not handle the quantity of information with the migration tool they had selected. "So we did a number of things to try to get our arms around the magnitude of the migration," Singleton said.
The Lockheed team broke up the mailboxes into size categories — small, medium, large and enormous — and began to clean them out and archive material. There were about 700 to 1,200 "enormous" mailboxes, and some mailboxes could not be migrated because they were corrupted due to large attachments or other issues. So the team weeded out mailboxes with large attachments and archived legacy information that was older than a year.
In addition to e-mail, the migration involved other mail-related components such as the movement of calendars, rooms and resources, groups, mail and databases as well as about 4,500 BlackBerry cell phones. Each of these components had to be treated as a separate entity by the migration tool, Singleton said. The team used a migration tool from Quest Software, which is now a part of Dell.
"You want to be sure that your calendar is up to date, so calendaring is another big issue." Moving e-mail groups adds more complexity to the equation because of "nesting," or groups within groups. "So we had 16,800 groups to migrate," Singleton said. "We did a lot of piloting," he said. EPA's Office of Environmental Information agreed to serve as a test case, giving Lockheed the opportunity to move small groups of users in a test environment.
The testing prepared Lockheed to begin what Singleton calls "differential migration," in which the IT team took a large number of mailboxes — initially around 12,000 — and migrated them into the multitenant cloud with 15 days of mail. The team then moved the remaining mailboxes with 15 days of e-mail without turning the service on. This allowed the team to check the mailboxes for problems before the big migration over the Presidents' Day weekend.
This approach cut down on the quantity of mail that had to be migrated and the "pre-touching of things made the main migration more predictable," Singleton said. "That was responsible in large part for our success."
For agencies with aggressive schedules to transition e-mail to the cloud, Singleton advises managers to be aware that the actual migration might be far more complex than originally envisioned. Do not view the move to cloud computing as just a commodity bid, he said. Take into account that there are related business practices, engineering and technical work and processes that must be addressed for a successful migration. Often, agency managers don't realize the amount of work involved in getting ready for the transition to the cloud, he noted.
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Rutrell Yasin is is a freelance technology writer for GCN.
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1 Gallon Wildflower (12lbs of liquid gold) Honey
Wildflower honey is exactly what it sounds like. Derived from a variety of wildflowers and plants which are blooming during the spring, summer and fall months. It's a thicker honey and the taste varies from month to month and year to year based on what's in bloom. This honey has a delightful taste and is darker in color than, say, linden. Darker honey has more vitamins, minerals, and antioxidant properties compared to lighter honey. You can just call it delicious. The overwhelming majority of our honey is wildflower. Our Wildflower Honey is sourced exclusively from our hives located in Westchester, New York and Fairfield County, Connecticut.
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Spam is no longer the enemy; we've all but licked that one. When it comes to managing the email onslaught, we have met the enemy, and he is us.
Let's consider the simple example of communications around the potluck holiday party for an office staff of 20, where someone coordinates who is bringing what. In the old days, the party organizer would post a signup sheet in a break area. Today, the organizer shoots out an email to all 20 people, and then everyone replies to all. The one communication in the break room has now turned into 20-plus communications.
Even if folks are disciplined enough to not reply to all, there still will be, "Awesome, thanks for doing that!" types of emails, or "Please, Wanda, bring your wonderful fruit salad!" Some of these emails, inevitably, will be directed to the whole list. This case on a larger scale creates a funnel effect. The more indirect reports you have, especially in today's open, collaborative workplaces where there isn't as much chain of command as there used to be, the more "friendly fire" email you'll get. Our most highly compensated employees are those whose time we waste the most.
[ Read How To Keep Email From Driving You Crazy . ]
IT professionals, once serial under-communicators, might be overcompensating. Does everyone in the organization really need to know about the change that's going to affect only one floor or one system? And miming Twitter's "your Tweet was retweeted!" email notification, some enterprise apps now let you know, in email, about something that might or might not require your attention. If you have a social platform such as Jive, prepare for your email volume to double as every frivolous comment on the platform gets spoon fed to you in email alerts.
You can't blame the enterprise app people. IT tries to get people to regularly check their invoice approvals. They don't, but they do check email. So, hello email!
There's also a sense among end users that if they poke a document or a status update into a non-email system -- whether it's a project management system or a contract management system -- it's not good enough. They want everyone to know what their edits to the contract were. So they push them to email.
Three main things are going on here. One, people are generating ever-more noise emails. Two, even the apps that we thought loved us are generating time-wasting emails. Three, we don't have the intestinal fortitude or executive mandate to wean ourselves off email.
The solutions all boil down to willpower.
First, and perhaps hardest, we must stop writing so many darned emails and stop ccing people who don't need to be copied. For many things, a two-minute phone conversation or personal chat will save five or more email exchanges. I'm not saying don't write emails or don't cc people, but as the yoga people would say, at least be mindful and purposeful about it.
Second, we must help fellow employees find comfort in using all of those other tools that we've provided. For instance, people need to know that project conversations should be had in the project management system, not in email. This reconditioning requires both training and an executive mandate.
Third, we must take the time to learn and use the management tools built into our email clients. For example, I have a rule in my email software that redirects any "notification" type of email to a separate folder. I also have rules that separate my email into classifications of "those who report to me," "those who I report to," and everyone else. IT organizations should consider reaching out to executives and their assistants with pointers or training.
Willpower doesn't yield returns in the short run. When we avoid eating just one more Christmas cookie, and then another one, the pounds don't evaporate. But the choices we make on a continual and disciplined basis have big aggregate consequences in the long run.


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Government and Public Services Interpreting Services
Professional Interpreters for Government and Public Services
Government policy discussions often involve extensive research, and can involve the compilation of comparative studies or trend data collected from several countries across the EU or even the world. In the UK public sector, there has been an increasing need for central and local government to translate and incorporate multilingual content into documentation.
Our interpreters at TJC can assist in these processes by providing accurate translations of policy documents (for example, EU directives) in many source languages, and providing interpreters to provide verbal translation at government meetings between speakers of different languages.
In some cases we participate at an early stage of a project, such as email correspondences regarding appointments with governmental institutions or the public sector for our clients. We also provide interpreting services for meetings, conferences and briefings.
We have experts in relevant sectors such as law, politics, economics and education for your specific project. We understand that for political documents, there are layers of complexity, particularly on issues of security and privacy. Our interpreters and translators employ specific glossaries of terminology to give a consistent and solid translation and many hold DPSI and equivalent qualifications in public service interpreting.
Our government and public services interpreting service covers areas such as:
|District, county and city councils
|Housing solutions
|Financial, HM Treasury
|Local and central government
|Public service
|Law, court and legal (CPS)
|Cultural and language diversity
|Linguistic analysis
|Immigration, borders and immigration agency
|National Health Service (NHS)
|National Probation Service
|Asylum seekers and refugees
Related services:
EU Matters
Government, Policy and Public Administration
Local Council
Political Services
For a FREE quote, please use our quotes system on the right hand side of the page
At TJC Global we have over twenty-five years of experience, and consequently have established a large network of highly skilled and professional interpreters. We are able to provide interpreters who are specialists in the governmental public services sectors, with a knowledge of the procedures and technical language of the profession. This ensures that your interpreting will be accurate, efficient and reliable. All of our interpreters and translators are native speakers of the languages required, providing closer interpreting and guaranteeing that no meaning is lost.
We can offer translation and interpreting services at any time of the year, in many locations: London, England, UK (Scotland, Ireland, Wales), Europe, USA, Asia, Africa, the Middle East and other global locations. Please contact us for more information.
Return to Translation services
If you require translation rather than interpreting then please see our Interpreting services
To return to the Government and Public Services homepage
Doing business abroad? Please visit our Doing Business Worldwide page, where you can find links to facts and advice for more than 30 countries worldwide.
Some of the 180 languages for which we provide interpreters:
|Arabic Interpreting
|Italian Interpreting
|French Interpreting
|German Interpreting
|Spanish Interpreting
|Korean Interpreting
|Chinese Interpreting
|Japanese Interpreting
For other languages, please visit our Multiple Language Services Interpreting page.
Some of the 180 languages for which we provide translators;
|Arabic Translation
|Italian Translation
|Chinese Translation
|Japanese Translation
|French Translation
|Korean Translation
|German Translation
|Spanish Translation
For other languages, please visit our Multiple Language Services Translation page.
Please contact us for further information
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Europe, USA, Asia, Africa, Middle East, South America, North America, Oceania, London, UK
© TJC Global Ltd Professional Translation and Interpreting Company All Rights Reserved


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DivX Technology Powers Complete Video Ecosystem
20 Million DivX Certified DVD Players to Ship in 2004.
DivXNetworks, Inc., the company that created the revolutionary, patent-pending DivX(R) video compression technology, today announced that over 20 million DivX Certified DVD players from a wide variety of consumer electronics manufacturers are expected to ship worldwide by the end of 2004.
In Europe alone, DivX powered DVD players represented 25% of the total market as of July 2004, according to GFK research. For a list of DivX Certified DVD players currently available at retail outlets all over world visit www.divx.com/hardware.
"The DVD player has become such a popular platform because it offers consumers a vastly improved video and audio experience," said Parks Associates' Vice President and Principal Analyst, Kurt Scherf. "DivX compatibility will grow increasingly important in continuing to expand consumers' entertainment experiences in the home as they want to watch all their digital content over their 'living room system' of TV, DVD player and surround sound system."
Additionally, all DivX Certified devices can securely playback DivX video-on-demand (VOD) titles downloaded from DivX content providers websites https://vod.divx.com. Over 15,000 DivX VOD titles are currently online from over 75 content providers. Select DivX VOD titles can be downloaded, burned to a regular CD, and securely played back on any DivX Certified DVD player with no compromise in security or visual quality.
"DivX technology is breaking down barriers in the connected home, making it easy for consumers to move secure, high-quality content throughout the digital media ecosystem," said Jordan Greenhall, CEO and co-founder of DivXNetworks, Inc. "The DivX Certification program extends the promise of information technology to the media universe, while enabling dynamic new markets for content providers, consumer electronics companies and retailers."
The momentum of DivX video in the consumer electronics market is projected to continue throughout 2005 with the release of a wide variety of DivX Certified devices, including High Definition DVD players, portable media players, digital cameras, set-top boxes, network-connected devices, DVD-Recorders, DVRs, and more. DivX is among the world's most popular video technologies with over 120 million global users accessing over 1.9 billion estimated DivX encoded files currently online. The superior compression and visual quality of DivX video enables users to store and distribute DVD-quality videos at 1/10th the size of MPEG-2, the DVD standard. By ensuring interoperability between products, the DivX(R) Certified Program enables consumers to play movies from the Internet and their computers on their televisions and transfer these movies across a range of DivX Certified devices and platforms. For more information visit www.divxnetworks.com/solutions/certification/index.php.


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Conventional Mortgages
Conventional mortgages are available in either adjustable rate (ARM) or fixed rate terms. The option you choose should be based on your homeownership goals and life situation. If you plan to live in the home for only a few to several years, an adjustable rate mortgage may be best for you. Introductory rates typically start lower than fixed rate mortgages, which can help you save money. If you plan to live in the home long-term, a fixed rate mortgage can provide you with consistent monthly payments and an interest rate that won't change. And if rates decrease, you may be able to refinance to obtain a better rate and a lower monthly payment.
FHA Home Loans
FHA home loans are the ideal solution for first-time homebuyers. FHA loans are insured by the Federal Housing Administration (FHA). Because the FHA insures the loan, CrossCountry Mortgage can offer financing with the following advantages: flexible credit requirements, a down payment as low as 3.5%, up to 96.5% financing, and the ability to have a parent or relative co-sign your loan as a non-occupant.
FHA 203(h) Home Loan
If your home was destroyed or damaged beyond repair during a natural disaster, the FHA 203(h) loan through CrossCountry Mortgage can help you buy a new home with key advantages. No down payment is required, and our credit requirements are flexible. We can even exclude your current mortgage payment on the lost property from your liabilities to help you qualify. The property that was lost must have been in a Presidentially designated disaster area, and you have up to one year to submit your application for a 203(h) loan.
FHA 203(k) Rehabilitation Loans
An FHA203(k) is a loan that can help you purchase or refinance a home that is in need of repair or modernization. In addition to the cost of the home, the loan also covers the cost of qualified repairs. There are two types of FHA203(k) loans. With the Streamline 203(k), you can make less extensive repairs and improvements. No minimum repair cost is required, and the maximum repair amount is $35,000. The Standard 203(k) requires a minimum of $5,000 in repairs but there is not a maximum. A variety of repairs and replacements can be financed with these programs, including: a roof, gutters, existing HVAC systems, plumbing, electrical systems, flooring, minor remodeling, interior and exterior painting, and weatherization (insulation, windows, storm doors and weather stripping.)
HARP Refinance Loans
The Home Affordable Refinance Program (HARP) is a federal program that can help you refinance your home with the goal of making your mortgage more stable and affordable. A HARP loan can help you refinance, even if you have a lack of equity or if your home has declined in value. It can also help if your home is underwater, meaning you own more on your home than it's currently worth. If your mortgage is owned by Freddie Mac or Fannie Mae, a HARP refinance loan may help you reduce your monthly payments; convert your ARM into a stable fixed rate mortgage; shorten or lengthen the term of your mortgage; obtain a new loan without PMI; or refinance a primary residence, secondary home or investment property.
A home equity line of credit (HELOC) offers a flexible way to borrow funds. With a HELOC from CrossCountry Mortgage, you can draw money as need to set up emergency access to credit; buy a new car; pay for college tuition; renovate your home; or consolidate your bills. Note: HELOCs and home equity loans are secured by your home. Failure to pay could damage your credit standing and result in foreclosure.
A home equity loan can provide you with a lump sum of cash when you need it. Similar to a HELOC, a loan lets you borrow against the equity in your home. This loan type may be ideal for single project, such as a kitchen remodel. A fixed interest rate that doesn't change will allow you to budget for your monthly payment, and this can be a solution for those with imperfect credit to gain access to additional funds. Interest paid may be tax deductible, depending on your situation and the state in which you reside. Note: Not all states may permit this deduction. Consult a tax advisor to verify eligibility. HELOCs and home equity loans are secured by your home. Failure to pay could damage your credit standing and result in foreclosure.
Jumbo Mortgages
CrossCountry Mortgage offers fixed rate and adjustable rate jumbo mortgages for luxury or high-cost homes with values greater than $417,000 — the maximum amount permissible under conventional lending limits (may be higher in some areas).
Refinance Programs
Want a mortgage with more favorable conditions? Refinancing may allow you to lower your interest rate, lengthen or shorten your term, consolidate multiple debts into one, convert from an ARM into a fixed rate mortgage, combine two or three mortgages into one, or free up cash for other expenses and purchases via a cash-out option.
Reverse Mortgages (Home Equity Conversion Mortgage – HECM)
A reverse mortgage allows older homeowners to access a portion of the equity in their homes for use in retirement. With a reverse mortgage, you can stay in your home — you don't need to sell it for access to funds. The equity in your home becomes a source of income when you need it and can help you pay bills and other expenses. The credit line is revolving, which means any payments you make replenish the credit available to you. You can receive your funds as a monthly income stream, in a lump sum payout or as a combination of the two. After years of paying on your mortgage and building equity, you can finally make that equity work for you — all while maintaining or establishing financial self-reliance. Before you apply for a reverse mortgage, you must first consult a HUD housing counselor. This will help you determine whether a reverse mortgage is right for your situation.
USDA Home Loans
A USDA home loan is great way for rural homebuyers to get up to 100% financing on a home! Whether you're looking to buy, build, repair, renovate or even relocate a home, a USDA home loan can help you make your homeownership dreams come true. This program provides homebuyers with valuable advantages, including: no down payment, a fixed interest rate, closing costs payable by the seller, and no maximum purchase price. Income restrictions and other qualifying ratios will determine eligibility. In addition to personal eligibility requirements, the home you're looking to finance must be located in a designated USDA rural area and be one of the following: an existing home, new construction, a modular home, an eligible condominium or a new manufactured home.
VA Home Loans*
Guaranteed by the US Department of Veterans Affairs, a VA home loan is just one of the many reusable benefits offered to those who've served our country. This program can help you purchase a home at a competitive interest rate and often without a down payment or private mortgage insurance. Other benefits include up to 100% cash-out refinancing, VA-limited closing costs that can be paid by the seller, and no early payoff fees.
CrossCountry Mortgage, LLC is an FHA Approved Lending Institution and is not acting on behalf of or at the direction of HUD/FHA or the Federal government. All loans subject to underwriting approval. Certain restrictions apply. Call for details. *Certificate of Eligibility required.


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The California Department of Motor Vehicles is warning its customers to closely monitor their credit card statements after officials opened an investigation into a possible security breach within its online credit processing services.
The DMV said there is no evidence of a direct breach in its computer system at this time, but they are working with state and federal law enforcement to see if California drivers' sensitive information has been taken.
The department will be performing a forensic review of its systems and checking the external vender that processes the DMV's credit card transactions, as well as the credit card companies themselves.
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"Protecting the identity and security of our customers is our highest priority and we fully understand the potential impact any breach of security can have," said DMV Public Information Officer Armando Botello.
DMV officials say they will notify affected customers as quickly as possible if they find any problems.
In the meantime, Botello recommends customers check for fraudulent or unusual activity on their credit card statements and report it immediately.
According to KrebsOnSecurity.com -- which was the first to report the possible breach -- the online payments that could be affected were between Aug. 2, 2013 and Jan. 31, 2014.
Seth Eisen, a spokesman from MasterCard, said the company is investigating the reports as well, but the breach is not within MasterCard's systems.
The company sent out alerts to member banks.
If you need to make a payment to the DMV, you can still pay in cash, check or money order in person at your local office, officials say.
To learn more about protecting yourself from identity theft and fraud, read the DMV's Identity Fraud factsheet.