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READ about Piers Morgan's long career in journalism here.
Nearly 16 months since their last interview, and roughly a year since seeing her husband finish runner-up in the 2012 general election, this evening Piers Morgan again welcomes Ann Romney for a primetime interview.
The wife of former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, the 64-year-old admits that doubt had begun to creep into her mind shortly before voters hit the polls:
"Two weeks before ... things started to gnaw at me a little bit. Obviously, we had the hurricane, Hurricane Sandy, that was taking all the attention off the election onto, you know, the president performing," the mother of five tells the "Piers Morgan Live" host. "I'm like, oh, boy, this isn't good."
Despite any perceived political harm that may have come from Chris Christie's bromance relationship with Barack Obama, Romney notes that the governor of New Jersey was simply looking out for the best interests of his constituents:
"He was doing what he knew it was right for his state at the moment," she says. "There's no feelings of animosity towards Chris."
As tonight's conversation shifts to current events, Romney offers her thoughts on Obamacare, specifically the level or truthfulness the president has shown since the inception of his healthcare plan:
"He's put himself in a very sticky place because you - you either have to think that he was not telling the truth or he's grossly incompetent," says the guest. "Either one of those choices is not a good choice."
Morgan presses Romney for specifics:
"Do you think he lied," he asks.
Her reply may call for a double-take:
"I don't think he was telling the truth," she reveals.
Watch the clip for more of Morgan's interview with Ann Romney, then tune in for the entire "Piers Morgan Live" episode at 9 p.m.
» Follow "Piers Morgan Live" on Twitter
» Follow "Piers Morgan Live" on Instagram
What is the reason for Ann Romney to be on Piers Morgan or any tv show? All she is doing is going around bad mouthing the President. She has no interest in the people. Her husband is a dishonest man and she has the nerve to go around making insults of the President. Mitt Romney is the liar.
what lie did Mitt tell? that he killed a man wife or was it when the lady asking the question help Obama and was wrong. that is like saying Fox lie but no one can say what they lie about. By the way Zimmerman get away from your girl friend she is no friend at all.
in response to Max "what lie did Mitt tell?"
Mitt lied throughout his campaign.
"Regulations have quadrupled. The rate of regulations quadrupled under this president." – the most up-to-date figures show about 8.5 percent fewer regulations in Obama's first 46 months than in the same time frame for Bush.
"Obama "is the only president to ever cut $500 billion from Medicare." – Health care law doesn't 'cut' Medicare
"Only one president has ever cut Medicare for seniors in this country" – he never did while Reagan & Bush did.
"President Barack Obama has opened up no new trade relationships with other nations" – except for South Korea, Colombia, and Panama
"President Obama has "doubled" the deficit." – actually the deficit is actually down slightly from what Obama inherited
When Mitt Romney was governor of Massachusetts, "we didn't just slow the rate of growth of our government, we actually cut it." – Spending increased by about 5 percent a year on his watch
"I don't have lobbyists running my campaign." – his campaign was ankle-deep in lobbyists
many many more I could list. Romney did nothing but lie. he was a joke and his wife is just as bad. they lie while smiling.
Why at this time do we have to listen to. Ann Romney.? She is no more of an influential guest than I would be.
Please secure better guests for Pierce Morgan who is a resident of the Uk
CNN is overstepping all the time. Get Real, Find an American!!
Gee, Max, in case you haven't heard, Romney was governor of a state called Massachusetts, and he had a completely different platform when he campaigned in the blue state. Oh, and he refused to provide his TAX RETURNS. And he and the wife are so far removed from the reality of most people they still don't realize that blaming a hurricane that devastated regular folks for their White House loss is pretty reprehensible.
Obama won. Get over it.
U usually like the Piers Morgan shows but why did he have Anne Romney on.She is irrelevant.They lost.It does not matter what she thinks.I don't care if he was a governor.He only did it to run for president. They have no way in hell that they could understand the problems of the middle class. Stop covering these people like Romney, Palin and others.What's the point. Cover people who matter and who think other people besides themselves matter. Stop.
Oh, America. What a terrible choice you made. This elegant lady could have been your First Lady, with her intelligent and economically literate husband as President. Now you are stuck with Obama 2.0 for the next 3 years, watching him lurch from crisis to self-inflicted crisis.
Bring on 2016!
she an angry old bat who didn't get what she wanted so rather than show class, she continually bad mouths the president who was elected in a landslide. What is she saying to those who voted for him?
Oh she would be a great person to represent our morals and values. she a loser and a whiner.
Mj, why the hatred and vile accusations? There is no need to show such a lack of class. It does little credit to your particular political stripe, and adds nothing to the conversation. If you could perhaps be more specific about the qualities and qualifications you think that the current President had that marked him as a better candidate than Gov. Romney.
She's a fine woman and her husband is a good and decent man... even the Democrats acknowledge that.
America would be much better off with them in the White House.
Mitt Romney – etch a sketch, remember?
As for Ann Romney, she came off SO BADLY they had to stuff her back in the box before she caused the campaign more damage. If she had class she would show some instead of tastelessly moping around and complaining like the sore loser she is. That isn't elegance. You can't buy it, and she doesn't have it.
Yeah we could have Dressage ... oh, sorry THERAPY horses at the White House, which get $77,000 TAX CREDITS while our kids get $1,000.
This kind of class is something out of a bad novel.
This woman proves that money does not equal class. Bitter much Ann? You and your husband lost, pick a house and go there. Just shut up
Such a shame, we could have had such an intelligent, genuine, and classy person as our first lady. And Mitt! I don't think a more qualified accomplished and principled candidate has ever ran for office. And to think we said no to him. And for what? We turned him down for the absolute sham and embarrassment we have in the oval office now? And don;t even get me started on Michelle Obama. I truly hope Mitt runs again in 2016. Can you imagine that election? Romney against Hillary... the Butcher of Benghazi? It will be a landslide and hopefully he'll be able to get this country moving in the right direction.
RE: obamacare and young people not signing up. I am surprised that I haven't heard the following points: 1) we are a community–sometimes we have to think beyond our interests and help others. Seniors help financially support young people via taxes in schools. 2) Young people will become old people sooner than they think. Will they want help then?
This woman should know better; her husband lied all through his fledgling campaign, George W. Bush lied when he sent troops to Iraq and all through his Presidency. Who is she to say in public that President Obama had lied? If she is referring to the unfortunate blodge in the website, then I need to tell her that the Obamacare has still not taken off, and it's in its infancy. I am waiting to see what she would say in the next month or two when Obama Care takes off to a great start? I am waiting. Has she forgotten that it took more than a year for her husband to make his Healthcare program work in Massachusetts?
Anne Romney is pure class. Only a good woman could raise five rough and tumble boys into fine young men.
Named after the government program to build the atomic bomb, the Manhattan Project was designed to turn a perceived weakness — Romney's much-anticipated matchup with Obama in the fall debates — into the campaign's greatest strength. Then, just as Romney seemed ready, the campaign received news that a video had been leaked in which the candidate characterized 47 percent of Americans as "victims'' who wanted government benefits and would never vote for him.
erectile band
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May 14, 2004
Solace on the Site of Disaster
By DAVID W. DUNLAP
St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church was crushed by the fall of the south tower on Sept. 11.
Among the items that were salvaged from St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church were, from top, a book and a bell from the altar, and a gong from the bell that was atop the church. The most precious of the old church's possessions were never recovered.
It is the smallest building planned at ground zero. But the architects who will compete to design the new St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church may face the biggest challenge.
They will be asked by Archbishop Demetrios, the primate of the Greek Orthodox Church in America, for a design at once unmistakably ecclesiastical yet in harmony with the bold secular architecture around it, one that captures unearthly mystery in tangible dimensions and conveys a sense of something outside human experience.
"Within this area, which experienced the horror of total catastrophe, which was the ultimate in human ugliness, you have this type of place which is not a house, not a business, not a museum, not a symphony hall," the archbishop said.
"It's a religious place, which opens the realm of holiness: this total other, the transcendent."
And all of this on a parcel of 5,200 square feet, set in a park across Liberty Street from the main World Trade Center site, roughly the spot where the little St. Nicholas Church stood until the morning of Sept. 11, 2001.
The new St. Nicholas will not be a simple parish church, Archbishop Demetrios said, but a combination church and multiuse, interdenominational center "that offers itself to people of all faiths or even without faith." It would include an exhibition of the few remnants of the old church, which was crushed by the fall of the south tower.
These include icons of St. Dionysios of Zakynthos and the Zoodochos Pege, or life-giving fountain; a small bell that once hung next to the altar; a hand-embroidered velvet Bible covering; and wax candles fused into a serpentine tangle.
St. Nicholas Church was founded in 1916 and soon moved into a modest three-story structure at 155 Cedar Street, on a 22-by-55-foot lot, that had been built as a private dwelling in the 1830's and later turned into a tavern. The church added a fourth floor and a bell cote but still fell 106 stories shy of its giant neighbors to the north.
The congregation, about 70 people from Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, Westchester County and New Jersey, now worships at SS. Constantine and Helen Cathedral in Brooklyn. "It is the same faces, different building," said Peter Drakoulias, a board member of the church. "Same people. Same hearts. Same hopes."
Mr. Drakoulias said church members supported the idea of rebuilding St. Nicholas as a place of solace and remembrance in which anyone would feel comfortable. "It's an essential part of the mission, as far as the congregation is concerned," he said.
More than $2 million in contributions have been made to the rebuilding effort. In January, the mayor of Bari, Italy, site of the 11th-century San Nicola Basilica, donated 258,000 euros (about $307,000).
The lot on which St. Nicholas stood will most likely be condemned by the state; that is, taken under eminent domain. In return, the church will receive a larger parcel - 65 by 80 feet - on the same block but closer to Liberty Street.
The details are not yet set, said Kevin M. Rampe, president of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation.
"The historic nature of the church and the fact that it's been there so long has convinced everyone that trying to provide space for it would be important to the future, in terms of telling the story of what happened Sept. 11," Mr. Rampe said.
Daniel Libeskind, the master planner of the trade center project, said the church was "part of the spiritual legacy of the site."
"St. Nicholas, as small as it was, was an incredibly moving piece of Lower Manhattan," he said. "It glowed with diversity and the beauty of meditation."
Archbishop Demetrios envisions an international design contest, once the specifics of the site are fixed. Widely published renderings of the trade center memorial showed St. Nicholas with a gable roof and belfry, but this was a kind of visual space holder.
The question is whether the new St. Nicholas needs traditional features to assert its ecclesiastical identity. "You don't expect a pure Byzantine-style church," the archbishop said. "On the other hand, if you depart too radically as a totally modern structure, then that is not perhaps the best way."
Negotiating this line will be difficult, allowed Nicholas P. Koutsomitis, an architect on the board of the Archdiocesan Cathedral of the Holy Trinity in Manhattan who is developing the master plan for the new St. Nicholas.
"Traditionally, a Byzantine dome has been strongly identified with the Greek Orthodox church," Mr. Koutsomitis said. "The trick, in my opinion, will be to produce something that somehow has a visible element of that, yet is more of a modern architectural piece of sculpture."
One of the younger Greek Orthodox churches in Manhattan, St. Spyridon in Washington Heights, was built in the early 50's, when the glass-and-steel International style was on the rise.
Yet its interior is extravagantly, exuberantly traditional; every square inch is ornamented with Byzantine artwork under a high dome depicting Christ.
"The traditionalist in me says that the interior should follow a Byzantine motif," said Steve Hantzarides, president of the board of St. Spyridon.
But Constantine L. Tsomides, a Massachusetts architect who has followed the redevelopment of St. Nicholas, cautioned the archdiocese in 2002 that too literal a Byzantine plan "will result in a building resembling an artificial theme park."
The mixture of the historic and the contemporary at ground zero runs deeper than most New Yorkers know. The most precious of the old church's possessions - relics, or tiny bone fragments, of St. Nicholas, St. Catherine and St. Sava - were never recovered.
To Archbishop Demetrios, the notion that the saints' relics were intermingled in the dust with the remains of the attack victims only serves to sanctify the site further. "Imagine," he said, "a cemetery that somehow has been a burial place for many centuries."
Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

subset: commoncrawl


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This past weekend's UFC 129 event earned a spot in the record books as the most-attended mixed martial arts card on North American history.
The UFC's first-ever event in Toronto earned high praise from fans both in attendance and watching on TV, but UFC champions Georges St-Pierre and Jose Aldo each received some criticism for their performances in successful title defenses.
With that in mind, we asked the readers of MMAjunkie.com to decide who is the top pound-for-pound fighter in the world. The answer was stunningly one-sided.
Thousands voted, and 56 percent of the respondents selected UFC middleweight champion Anderson Silva (28-4 MMA, 13-0 UFC).
It's easy to understand why the Brazilian scored the majority of the response. Boasting a UFC-record 13-consecutive octagon wins, Silva has held the UFC's 185-pound title since October 2006.
The Brazilian hasn't gone without his share of criticism during his title reign. Questionable performances in wins over Demian Maia and Thales Leites left some MMA pundits questioning Silva's desire to be the world's best, and a five-round struggle against Chael Sonnen left some wondering if the champ was beginning to show signs of weakness. However, a front-kick knockout of Vitor Belfort at February's UFC 126 event restored many fans' belief in "The Spider."
On the heels of his unanimous-decision win over Jake Shields, St-Pierre ranked second in the poll but scored just 25 percent of the vote.
With nine-straight wins in the UFC's deep welterweight division, it's difficult to question St-Pierre's greatness. But with four-consecutive decision wins to his credit, some fans have begun to question the French-Canadian's killer instinct – not to mention his entertainment value. Still, St-Pierre hasn't been in trouble in the cage since a shocking April 2007 loss to Matt Serra.
In third place in the poll with 10 percent of the vote is UFC light heavyweight champion Jon Jones (13-1 MMA, 7-1 UFC).
The flashy 23-year-old skyrocketed up the rankings in the 12-month span between March 2010 and March 2011 by racking up four stoppage wins over Mauricio "Shogun" Rua, Ryan Bader, Vladimir Matyushenko and Brandon Vera – fighters with a combined 68 career wins.
UFC featherweight champion Aldo scored just four percent of the response.
Rounding out the poll were UFC champions Cain Velasquez (two percent), Dominick Cruz (one percent) and Frankie Edgar (one percent). An additional one percent of voters chose the "other" option.
What do you think? Are the grades an accurate representation of this season's action? What can be done to improve the long-running series?
State your case and suggestions in the comments section below.
Also, don't forget in this week's new poll on the MMAjunkie.com homepage.
For the latest on this season, stay tuned to "The Ultimate Fighter 13" section of MMAjunkie.com.
HDNet's "Inside MMA" and MMAjunkie.com (www.mmajunkie.com) run a weekly poll thanks to a partnership between the two news outlet. Catch new episodes of "Inside MMA" on Fridays at 9 p.m. ET. For more information on "Inside MMA" and HDNet Fights,
visit www.hdnetfights.com. For more information on HDNet and how to subscribe, visit www.hd.net.


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Tim Groser Speech: Trans-Pacific Partnership: State of Play
Hon Tim Groser Minister of Trade Speech
The Trans-Pacific Partnership: State of Play
Hon Tim Groser,
Minister of Trade
New Zealand Institute of International Affairs, 14 June 2011.
Good afternoon and thank you for this opportunity to do a stock take of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP. I am not going to do a technical appraisal. For one thing, I deeply believe it is not in New Zealand's interests ever to negotiate any trade agreement through the media and this is a public speech.
Rather, I will give you a political evaluation of the strategy. And the first question I wish to address is: how does this fit into a New Zealand agenda of economic reform?
TPP is, by definition, a trade negotiation. But let me emphasise the importance of not seeing this negotiation in a hermetically sealed zone labelled 'trade policy' - somehow divorced from the broader, and for New Zealanders, frankly more important, internal economic agenda. These are not parallel universes. The linkages are explicit and important.
Trade Policy and the Growth Strategy
Start with the broader challenge facing New Zealand. You know the main lines of the narrative. New Zealand must lift its long-run growth rate. It is not viable for us to stay in the bottom income quartile of developed countries, flat-lining our way to mediocrity.
We can have a legitimate political debate about what we do with the wealth a higher long-run growth rate would create - there are a dozen different ways to cut the cake. But leaving aside a few outliers on the political fringes who have radically different views on how we should organise our society, it is pretty well understood that all choices become easier if we achieve this goal.
The key to this is higher productivity. We must lift the long-run rate of labour and total factor productivity to higher levels. We had more than respectable productivity growth rates from 1997 to 2000 - labour productivity averaged 3.5 percent annually. It has tanked in the decade since then.
To achieve this requires a number of structural shifts. This is what the phrase 'rebalancing' means. 'Rebalancing' has a number of facets to it. First and foremost, it is about moving away from debt fuelled consumption growth As Bill English has pointed out on many occasions, the recovery now clearly underway is fundamentally different to previous recoveries in New Zealand.
It is not built around consumption, or increased structural Government spending. It is built around lifting national savings rates and reducing debt, including the Government's debt. Yes, the triple whammy of the world's worst recession in 70 years in 2009, two major earthquakes, and now some terrible aftershocks, affecting our second largest city have forced us to go onto capital markets to soften the edges of what would otherwise have required a far more brutal adjustment by New Zealand firms, Government and households. However, we are on track towards a surplus in about three years, thanks to some tough, but not unreasonable, decisions we have taken.
This will shift resources back towards sectors where we have a competitive advantage and activities we are good at - allowing us to earn our way in the world. This is what we mean when we emphasise the need to rebalance resources to the 'traded sector' of our economy.
That is the essential background to everything we are trying to do in the trade portfolio. Even the best results for New Zealand on trade will not cut the mustard if they are not backed by complementary policies to reinforce the competitiveness of our export companies.
So, in a sense, the work that, say, Steven Joyce is doing on infrastructure, the work Nick Smith, David Carter and others are doing on regulatory reform and irrigation storage facilities, the work Phil Heatley is doing on ending the stalemate that had befallen our aquaculture sector - their work programmes, and the work programmes of several other Ministers, are as much part of the trade agenda as anything Murray McCully or I are doing on the external front.
I have said on numerous occasions that a successful trade negotiation for New Zealand does not in itself add a dollar to New Zealand's wealth. It only creates an opportunity. Our country's ability to exploit that opportunity in the wider world out there depends on our ability to be match-fit. New Zealand is not, at least in my view, yet in that space. But I am extremely confident we are making progress. The elements needed for a superior performance are slowly and surely being put in place.
Trade Policy and New Zealand's Future
I am not trying to talk my way out of a job as Trade Minister. Trade policy is very important to this enhanced future. Historically, New Zealand has suffered more than any developed country from distortions in international trade. There are numerous empirical studies that were done by independent international institutions and researchers in the 1980s, and which I stopped quoting ten years ago, that made that very clear.
This deeply negative external trade environment simply arose from the conjunction of the world's worst subsidy and market access barriers sitting alongside our traditional primary export industries. We were very strong in dairy, horticulture, and other pastoral industries but the strongest swimmer can't swim against a rip tide.
As a result of various highly successful trade negotiations over the last 25 years - CER, the Uruguay Round which put agriculture into the system, a whole series of FTAs, New Zealand is in a fundamentally better place. Crushed for lack of opportunities in the past, we now have abundant opportunities Trade policy has played a vital and positive part in creating the basis of a far better outlook.
It can only get better. I say that conscious of the fact that every trade negotiation is difficult to begin - and a political nightmare to end. The torture of the never-ending saga of the Doha Round is simply the most recent and brutal example.
For the first time in thirty years, we have choices. The India-New Zealand FTA is now well underway. In a couple of weeks' time, the Prime Minister will lead the most important business delegation ever to leave our shores for India, including a fair number of New Zealanders of Indian ethnic descent. Raising the political profile of the FTA is a central part of that trip - although it is also seeking to build direct commercial links. This is the second emerging developing country super-power. We need a new vision for that relationship, similar to the huge success of NZ Inc in developing our China relationship over the last 30 years.
The FTA with Russia - it is the first FTA that Russia has embarked on - is also moving along nicely, having been announced by President Medvedev and the Prime Minister at APEC in Japan last November. We have other negotiations also in play.
But the one negotiation which attracts the most public debate is, of course, TPP.
TPP: The Negotiating History
Let's quickly review the negotiating history. I am a deep believer in the old saying that if you don't understand where you have come from, you won't understand where you are going.
The real roots of TPP lie two election cycles ago - the New Zealand/Singapore FTA, started in the late 1990s by the then National Government and brought to a successful conclusion by the previous Government. As I said - I was the chief negotiator at the time - the point of this negotiation was almost purely 'strategic'. It was only a small overstatement to say there were no trade barriers to negotiate. Any econometrician trying to model the 'gains from trade' using traditional general equilibrium modelling, would have been left scratching their head, no matter what assumptions they fed into the mathematical sausage machine.
At the time, I deliberately and provocatively called the FTA a 'Trojan Horse', designed to gain entry to trade fortresses elsewhere in the Asia Pacific region. It infuriated the extreme left, opposed as they are fundamentally to trade liberalisation. Unfortunately, there are people in this country, as there are in all countries, who have never seen a trade agreement they liked. They never will.
The strategy - quite explicit in various background papers both published and unpublished - was to provide a strategic bridge between two small open economies and two big strategic ideas.
The first big idea was to merge the two geographically contiguous FTAs to which our small economies belonged - the CER for New Zealand and the ASEAN FTA (AFTA) for Singapore. That led, ten years down the track to exactly the result - the AANZFTA. Job done. Signed, sealed and delivered. The collective good work of many people and different Governments. Trade policy is not a field for those who are into instant gratification. Consistency of policy across the electoral cycle is vital since these initiatives frequently take more than a decade to accomplish.
The second big strategic idea was for the deal to act as a bridge to what we then called 'P5', or 'Pacific Five'. The countries we had in mind were New Zealand, Singapore, Chile, Australia. The fifth economy was the real target: the United States. At that stage (late 1990s) none of the original Asia Pacific economies had an FTA with the United States.
It has taken another ten years - and two intermediate negotiations, one called P3 (New Zealand, Singapore, Chile) and another called 'P4' (Brunei wanted to join) - but finally we are there. TPP is P5, just a bigger and brighter version of it, with nine, not five, APEC economies.
The strategic concept is exactly the same: to expand the opportunities for all our economies by wider and wider concentric rings of freer trade and investment. Freer trade, by the way, is not one and the same thing as absence of regulation. I would say exactly the same with respect to the investment side of the equation. We still need effective regulation of markets - and that is a moving target as markets develop and new technologies emerge.
That is why there is still a legitimate basis for ensuring that such trade agreements allow 'policy space'. It comes down to a balance between allowing flexibility on one side and certainty of the regulatory framework so as to encourage trade and investments on the other. There is no precision or set of inflexible rules here; it is a matter finally of political judgement where the balance should lie.
For example, I remember very well the political conversation around putting the first 'Treaty of Waitangi' clause in a Trade Agreement. We put it into our first set of services agreements in the Uruguay Round in 1994. Why? Because it was clear politically that New Zealand needed policy space in that domain. The domestic debate then - and probably now - was not sufficiently mature or settled to wrap the Treaty unequivocally in the Korowai, or coat, of international economic law.
Variants of the 'Treaty Clause' have been, in my view quite appropriately, a feature of every trade agreement we have signed up to since. I do not, by the way, believe it has caused a dollar's worth of trade loss for any of our trading partners. Those who would oppose it would be taking a purely ideological position.
The history of TPP is worth bearing in mind because it reminds everyone that this is a moving game. Ten years ago it was ludicrous to look at the Singapore/New Zealand FTA as if we were getting off the plane at Changi airport and had no intention of getting on another flight to another trade destination. Similarly, if TPP is successful, it will not stop with the current membership of nine APEC economies.
The vision for TPP is far more ambitious than that: it is to make TPP one of the essential building blocks behind a concept that APEC Leaders have endorsed as a long term goal - a Free Trade Area for the Asia Pacific. This is not unattainable over a decade or more.
Let me put down a marker: I 'look forward' with a certain weary sense to the inevitable attempts to 'model' the gains from TPP in some econometric model. I am a deep sceptic here.
The original IAC (the forerunner of the Australian Productivity Commission) estimates done in 1979 of the gains from trade from establishing free trade between Australia and NZ suggested we were wasting our time with the CER on which negotiations were just beginning. Early estimates in the late 1960s of the costs of the UK staying outside the process of economic integration on the European Continent suggested there was 'nothing in it'.
I am delighted that my Australian counterpart, Dr Craig Emerson, who has a PhD in economics from the ANU and is thus extremely well placed professionally to make this judgement, has exactly the same sceptical view of modelling the gains from trade negotiations.
Many years ago, when I was working for a couple of years in the New Zealand Treasury with Roger Kerr - I can set off a whole new conspiracy theory here with this observation - Roger once made a point to me that if you input almost any policy change into such models, while holding all other variables constant (the ceteris paribus standard methodological approach) the economy- wide gains are always some small fraction of GDP which could lead you to wonder why you should change anything.
Of course, Dr Emerson and I are just humble Trade Ministers, so we are not going to stop the aficionados in our respective research institutions from rolling out their modelling. We will think of something nice to say at the time, I'm sure.
Personally, I put far more importance on one of the most powerful observations in economics: societies advance by specialisation. Trade - first barter within the village economy, now the deeply sophisticated process of the global supply chain - drives specialisation. Grab it when you can if you want to move forward. TPP is one of those opportunities.
The Negotiations: A Political Evaluation
I am not going to give you a blow by blow technical account of the negotiations. The saying 'stop me before I kill again!' comes to mind. A full and accurate account of the issues being discussed in the Rules of Origin negotiations, even if it did not lead to a charge levelled against me of mass murder, could cause mass euthanasia. And with respect to the controversial issues, well, I stick with my standard line: I am not negotiating this in public.
So let me stick to the bigger political messaging.
The first thing I want to say is that the negotiations are making progress. We are not going to complete this negotiation by the time President Obama hosts APEC Leaders in Honolulu later this year. But I think we can make solid progress.
I hesitate to put a political label now on what might be deliverable - an upbeat political declaration? That is at the very low end of possibilities. I think we can do better than that. A Framework Agreement? Getting warmer to the potential landing zone. But the crucial question will be what might be contained therein.
A lot depends on the progress made inside the Beltway on the existing trade agenda. I was in Washington a couple of weeks ago, following the APEC Trade Ministers Meeting in Montana. I met with US Trade Minister Ron Kirk, his most senior advisers and some of the most influential Congressional leaders on Trade. There is a sense - somewhat nervously shared between centrist Republicans and centrist Democrats - that they must move the trade agenda forward. The United States, still the indispensable superpower, must have a trade policy that is more than purely defensive.
The issue is remarkably specific. There are three FTAs - Korea, Panama and Colombia - that are waiting for Congressional approval. The political oil to facilitate their passing is Trade Adjustment Assistance. No TAA, no deal. At the same time, the TAA is part of a wider political debate about fiscal prudence that even someone as cavalier as me in commenting about sensitive matters would hesitate to comment on.
But there is a good chance - let me call it a 60:40 chance - of Washington moving this linked agenda forward. If they do, then my estimate of what is possible on TPP by the APEC Leaders' Meeting moves forward.
If they don't? Well, a smaller step forward will be taken by the end of the year. This is not fatal to where we want to go long term. This is the nature of trade negotiations.
My third point is that we are not at the point of confronting difficult political choices.
But there are unquestionably one or two sensitive issues for New Zealand here. Finally, they come down to a simple question: what is on the negotiation table? Professional negotiators call this - what is the scope of the negotiation? Please recall, if you will, my earlier comments on the Treaty of Waitangi. Our judgements were and remain - the Treaty is part of our Constitution. We don't negotiate our Constitution with foreign Governments. There are limits to sovereignty that even people like me who have spent a lifetime negotiating the boundaries of globalisation respect.
I cannot yet answer that broad question - what is on the negotiating table - in highly specific terms. The public debate over Pharmac is a classic example. Is this a legitimate issue to be negotiated in an international trade negotiation?
On its fundamentals - no. Let me be unequivocal on this. We are not about to negotiate our public health system in any trade negotiation. The two major political parties which have shared political responsibility for governing New Zealand decided this some 70 years ago, in the usual messy democratic way.
We have, for the most part, a public health system that allocates scarce resources - they are always scarce - by a mixture of the price mechanism supplemented in part by private insurance, and sophisticated queuing systems that operate in the public sector, of which Pharmac is one - and a very good one. It may not be perfect, and we are always open to suggestions of change, but we are not about to adopt a health system, via a trade negotiation, that allocates resources according to capacity to pay.
But I am not 'taking Pharmac off the table'. No professional negotiator of any quality 'takes issues off the table' at an early stage. I have great respect for the United States - one would be a fool not to. It is the pre-eminent country in the world and a great friend of New Zealand. We will sit with US negotiators and listen to their concerns. All I am prepared to say in public is that we will listen and respond accordingly. I make no apology for keeping this at this level of generality.
Another big challenge is intellectual property. Intellectual property rights are built on the recognition that governments can help ensure that people who create and innovate have the opportunity to get a return for their efforts.
It goes without saying that Governments looking for stronger economic performance see innovation as one of the key planks. This Government is firmly in that camp. And we know that the people who are making or funding movies and music or investing in cutting-edge industrial innovation will want to know that we have in place modern intellectual property rights backed by effective enforcement.
So I make no apology for belonging to a Government that believes in intellectual property rights, as part of a commitment to innovation, and is committed to keeping the rules current and to enforcing them. We have seen estimates that pirate DVDs cost our brilliant NZ film industry as much as $100 million a year.
I understand the political appeal of 'freedom in the digital universe'. But the idea that any enforcement of intellectual property rights is, by definition, antithetical to human freedom is naïve and absurd. As one commentator put it recently, we are not operating in a "parallel universe where legal and moral rules, and all the basic principles that govern societies, do not apply". Digital natives over the mental age of 13 take note. All below 13 are excused.
With respect to our 'offensive interests' - a wonderfully misleading term used by trade negotiators - we have much ground to cover in the TPP negotiations. 'Offensive' in this context means those areas of the negotiations where we see the possibility of major gains for New Zealand.
As always in trade negotiations, for New Zealand the most difficult issues come down largely to dairy. Dairy is, after all, about a quarter of our total merchandise exports.
One prominent American official - a great and deep thinker who has moved in and out of academia and Administrations over decades - has a great joke about New Zealand. He calls New Zealand 'The Saudi Arabia of Milk'. It's a great line and an affectionate line. But it is also profoundly wrong. We are nowhere close to the Saudi Arabia metaphor. We are the "Algeria of milk" - Algeria has about 2.5% of world oil production which is about what New Zealand has of world dairy production.
We have no capacity to 'flood the American market' with our milk. We can't even keep up with the opportunities in China. I am a great believer in metrics. Let me put some numbers around this.
New Zealand currently produces some 17 million tonnes of WME (wholemilk equivalent). Think - take out the water and you have 17 million tonnes of product left.
We are extremely confident that we can increase our domestic dairy production by 2-3% per annum. Go and visit our wonderful agricultural scientists in Hamilton at the LIC, if you have any doubts. And I have no doubt that the drive to improve environmental outcomes, and reduce the carbon intensity of this output, will continue.
So by 2020 we might have another 4-7 million tonnes of dairy products available for export. This, ladies and gentlemen, is equivalent to about 18 months of the likely growth of dairy consumption in India alone - forget China, Indonesia, the Middle East, Latin America.
In quantitative terms the New Zealand dairy industry is a small player. It is the United States dairy industry, not New Zealand, that is poised to take the major share of this growth. In the three year period 2005 to 2008 US dairy farmers captured some 60% of the international growth of dairy commodity that this vast and positive paradigm shift produced.
The US dairy industry is - let me be blunt - looking in the rear vision mirror. They need to look at where they are going, not where they have been. This is not easy, I understand that political perceptions lag way behind reality. But this will change in time, just as the US Meat Industry, which hidden behind the old US Meat Import Law, used to be a very inward-looking industry until it discovered exports. Since the vision of TPP is that it will be a building block into these giant growing markets, I could say, only a little mischievously, that the United States has a greater interest in including a quality deal on dairy than New Zealand. We already have FTAs with most of these markets, they don't.
So, we are a long way off in TPP in dealing with the really tough political questions. What I hope you will have drawn from this analysis is a simple point: this is a big strategic game. We, and I mean New Zealanders, are the original architects of TPP. We have little power in international relations by any conventional measure. However, as I have said in the context of the Global Research Alliance on Agricultural Greenhouse Gases, which New Zealand leads, 'you don't need to be a big country to have a big idea'.
Thank you


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If you need information on visas go to en http://www.iberia.com/il/fly-with-iberia/documents/ .
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Relax with Romantic Piano
by Schott
Sold out
Established in 1998, this local institution has been providing the Camden community with music services from Instruments, Sheet Music, Accessories and Repairs for twenty years.
Current Opening Hours:
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These hours may change so please check back.
Telephone: 020 7482 5424
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Good point.Simon E. wrote:" That remains somewhat unclear "Is what the present Dalai Lama actually said .
I suspect no one was consciously lying, and there are no indications of hallucination.
There are though extremely good reasons for any given group to see what it wants to see and hear what it wants to hear.
I have no premise. I have no opinion. I dont actually even think its a very serious question.
But I realise that it represents an emotional stance for some.
If Reincarnation could be shown to be true or false with no doubts at all, it would make no difference at all to my Dzogchen practice.
What is perhaps more difficult to sieve out is whether statements made by Zen practitioners are always from the perspective of Zen, or contain elements of Shinto etc. I may bow and clap to the Kamiza before my Zazen. LOL
In the case of a Buddhist who practices Dzogchen, we must be careful to establish, as you clarified, whether they are speaking or writing from a Buddhist perspective or a Dzogchen perspective.
What may be deemed necessary for one may not be deemed necessary for the other. This would also hold true, of course, for Christians practising Dzogchen. If you only practise Dzogchen and do not feel that you are also a Buddhist then there is only the one perspective.
There is a good argument for stating that if you are a practitioner of Dzogchen then there is only the Dzogchen perspective; whatever else you may practise is done within that context. Would you agree?
The question whcih I fear will remain unanswered, is whether Dogen was giving exclusively a Zen perpective .


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By Staff Writer | September 1, 2012
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Joseph Ackerman
Bezhalel (Butzi) Machlis
Joseph Ackerman, president and CEO of Elbit Systems, has announced plans to retire at the end of March 2013. Bezhalel (Butzi) Machlis will succeed Ackerman in the position. Ackerman started at Elbit in 1982 and served as president for the last 16 years. Machlis is currently the executive vice president at Elbit and has worked at the company since 1991.
Timothy Gowen has succeeded retiring Navy Capt. John Slaughter as head of the Naval Aviation Center for Rotorcraft Advancement for the U.S. Naval Air Systems Command. Gowen previously served as the deputy director of the Airworthiness Office for NAVAIR and recently received Senate confirmation as Director of the Joint Staff of the Maryland National Guard. Gowen is a former Bell OH-58 Kiowa and Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk pilot with the U.S. Army.
Bell Helicopter has added Raymond Leduc as vice president of value streams at its Mirabel, Canada location. He will oversee the manufacturing at Mirabel and take charge of the value stream activities. Leduc was previously the site leader at IBM Bromont, a position he held for the past nine years.
Russian Helicopters has named a new chairman and board of directors during its board meeting in July. Andrei Reus, a board member since 2010, was selected chairman of the board of directors. Rues is the general director of Oboronprom. New board of directors' members include Aleksei Alyoshin who replaces Dmitry Kolodyazhny, as well as Jean-Paul Béchat, Shiv Vikram Khemka, Dmitry Lelikov, Alexander Mikheev, Pavel Osin, Dmitry Petrov and Jean-Loup Picard.
StandardAero has announced that Tom Roche will fill the position of vice president of customer support for the maintenance provider. Roche previously served as the company's vice president of turboprops and fleets, and prior to that led the helicopter business unit for almost 10 years.


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Four groups pitch plan for Nassau Coliseum redevelopment
Four developers submitted proposals Thursday to transform the 40-year-old Nassau Coliseum into an arena capable of attracting top concert acts and sporting events while generating millions of dollars in new revenue for Nassau County.
The bidders were: Barclays Center developer Bruce Ratner, the Madison Square Garden Company, Syosset developer Edward Blumenfeld and Bayville-based New York Sports LLC. The Dolan family holds controlling interest in MSG, and owns Cablevision, Newsday's parent company.
The developers unveiled their plans at a meeting of the Nassau Business Advisory Council. The panel is comprised of 17 local business leaders who will advise County Executive Edward Mangano in selecting a developer.
Mangano, who issued a request for proposals to redevelop the arena in Uniondale earlier this year and who attended the session, is expected to make a decision by July 15. The county legislature would have to approve the contract with the winning bidder.
The RFP comes after past Coliseum projects failed to come to fruition. They included the $3.8-billion Lighthouse Project proposed by New York Islanders owner Charles Wang, and a 2011 referendum to borrow $400 million to build an arena, which residents voted down.
In October, Wang announced that the team would leave the Coliseum at the end of its lease in 2015 to play at Barclays in Brooklyn.
Mangano asked Ratner to conduct an analysis of the long-term uses of the Coliseum. Ratner recommended a smaller arena capable of hosting family shows, minor league sports and concerts.
The proposals made public Thursday include entertainment venues, convention center space, restaurants, sports bars, retail, bowling and an outdoor amphitheater.
Each of the bidders said they would finance the work without using public funds, with costs ranging from $60 million to $250 million.
Developers would have to give the county a percentage of the gross revenue from arena events. Nassau officials asked the firms not to publicly discuss those figures but a source with knowledge of Blumenfeld's offer said he has promised Nassau 20 percent of his net revenue.
The proposals in the order they were presented are:
Ratner, executive chairman of the development company Forest City Ratner, proposed a $229 million project to transform the Coliseum site into a sports-and-entertainment complex.
He proposed a 13,000-seat arena that could be downsized to 4,000 seats for smaller family shows. Alongside the arena he would build a 2,000-seat club and concert venue modeled after Live Nation's Fillmore theater complexes; a 2,500-seat outdoor amphitheater, as many as six restaurants, a movie theater and 50,000 square feet of retail space.
The complex could be as meaningful to Nassau as the Eiffel Tower is to Paris, he said.
"We must reinvent and reimagine brand Nassau," said Brett Yormark, chief executive of the Barclays Center.
Ratner would work with Wang, who also owns the Long Island Marriott adjacent to the Coliseum, to transform the exhibition hall below the arena into a convention center. A monument to Long Island veterans also would be constructed on the southeastern section of the property.
The project calls for 309 events per year at the Coliseum, including six Islanders regular-season games, one Brooklyn Nets preseason game and 83 outdoor events. A minor league American Hockey League team would relocate to the arena although Ratner declined to identify the team.
"We want a place for everybody," Ratner said.
Jay-Z joined Ratner for the presentation but didn't speak. The hip-hop superstar's Roc Nation entertainment company is associated with the project and will help attract acts, Ratner said.
The project would generate $10.9 billion in economic activity over 30 years and create 1,331 construction jobs and more than 2,500 full-time, part-time and seasonal positions, said Ratner spokeswoman Ashley Cotton.
The plan includes roughly 5,000 parking spots, compared to the current 6,800, and keeps 10 acres of development open for Donald Monti, who was selected by Mangano as the project's master developer.
Shereck's Bayville-based New York Sports Llc would spend $60 million to $90 million to refurbish the Coliseum's interior. The exterior would remain the same, and no other development was proposed.
Shereck would downsize the arena to 8,000-10,000 seats and reduce parking to 3,600 spots, from the current 6,800. His group would bring in a minor league hockey team and is in talks with the Manhattan-based National Lacrosse League to get a team to play at the arena.
"This process has piqued the interest of our investors," said Jim Johnson, a former sales manager for the New York Islanders who is working with Shereck on the project.
The project would employ 1,500 construction workers and create up to 150 full-time and 500 part-time jobs.
Johnson said the project would generate between $10 million and $20 million annually in tax revenue for the county.
Company officials drew on their local roots in making their pitch. Shereck is the former operator of the Long Beach Ice Arena.
"We're all Long Islanders," Johnson said. "Bernie's our biggest celebrity. We look at our community and we look at resources that are untapped."
Commenting on the star power of Ratner's presentation, Johnson said: "We're clearly the underdogs. Someone said the '27 Yankees just presented and we're the Hicksville Little League."
Blumenfeld would spend $180 million to tear down the Coliseum and build a new 9,000-12,000 seat arena.
Partnering with SMG, the current operator of the Coliseum, Blumenfeld also would build a 100,000-square-foot convention center at the site of the existing exhibition center below the arena. The project also calls for retail, restaurants, office space and apartments.
"We have a vision for Long Island that Long Island should not be a secondary place but a primary place and this should be a primary venue," he said.
The plan calls for 150-175 events annually at the Coliseum, featuring an AHL minor league hockey team. Robert Cavalieri, SMG senior vice president of business development, said the group would purchase an AHL team if it can't get one to relocate to Uniondale.
"This will be an economic driver for the county," Cavalieri said.
Cavalieri said the group also would recruit Big 10 college basketball and hockey teams to play at the arena, including the Ohio State University, Penn State, Michigan and Michigan State.
The plan, which would generate $10 million to $20 million in annual sales tax revenue for the county, calls for 3,000 surface parking spots and a 2,500- to 3,000-space parking deck, said Raffaela Petrasek, a development associate with Blumenfeld Development Group.
MSG would spend $250 million for a renovated 14,500-seat arena. A mixed-use entertainment complex, similar to the "Power Plant Live!" development in Baltimore's Inner Harbor, would be constructed adjacent to the Coliseum and operate year-round.
Company officials said an arena of fewer than 14,500 seats could not attract top-flight concert acts. A flexible seating design would allow different sections of the arena to be cordoned off to reduce capacity to 1,700 seats.
Hank Ratner, MSG's president and CEO, said the company's plan was "realistic" and would transform the region. "We believe we can bring a heroic ending to this story as well as usher in a historic new beginning of sports and entertainment on Long Island," Ratner said.
MSG said at least one of its sports franchises -- the WNBA's New York Liberty; the Connecticut Whale, the Rangers' minor league affiliate; or the Erie Bayhawks, the Knicks' D-League team -- would play at the Coliseum.
The Knicks and Rangers would hold open practices at the Coliseum and players would make guest appearances at the complex. The arena also could host college basketball, professional tennis, wrestling, figure skating and track and field.
The proposal calls for the replacement of all arena seats and suites, modernizing the concourse and bathrooms, creating a lower-level VIP section, and renovating the exterior. Parking would be reduced to about 5,000 spots.
MSG and the Baltimore-based Cordish Companies would build "Long Island Live!" a 150,000- square-foot entertainment complex, on the site of the exhibition hall. It would feature restaurants, sports bars, bowling and billiards. An "MSG Zone" would have additional bars and restaurants with Garden memorabilia and a studio for live telecasts.
Company officials said the arena would host up to 180 events annually. There also would be 150 free events, concerts and festivals as part of Long Island Live!
The complex, officials said, would generate $11 billion in economic activity over 30 years and more than $300 million in sales and entertainment tax. According to the company's presentation the project would create 1,200 construction jobs and 2,500 full-time, part-time and seasonal positions.


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Supplier News
Dscoop has named Carolyn Dolezal as its acting director following the departure of Eric Hawkinson. The organization is also launching two new efforts to enhance membership value and business growth worldwide: Dscoop University and the Dscoop Print Directory.
QuadTech has appointed Chuck Irons as international sales manager, responsible for overseeing the company's sales efforts worldwide, with the exception of the Americas. He previously held positions at Contiweb, Heidelberg and Goss International.
Trish Maulson has joined GPA, Specialty Substrate Solutions as territory sales manager, serving the substrate needs of Wisconsin, as well as parts of the Chicagoland area. She previously worked at Reis Graphics, London Litho and Fujifilm USA.
Pitney Bowes has installed its 1,000th Mailstream Productivity Series inserting system. The system is now being used by more than 400 print and mail operations around the world. It can process up to 26,000 mailpieces per hour.
KBA North America has selected David Wright to serve as an electrician in the web offset service department catering to the newspaper industry. He comes to KBA from the Rockford (IL)Register Star, where he was production maintenance supervisor.
Two new PaperPlus wholesale locations—the stores division of Unisource Worldwide—have been opened. Tim Kingery is now operating the new store at 2835 Jeff Adams Dr. in Charlotte, NC; and Landon Olson is now managing the new PaperPlus store located at 9219 Quivira Rd. in Overland Park, KS.
Two appointments have been made at INX International Ink. Craig Reid has joined as director of global strategy for the digital division. Rick Westrom, a 25-year INX veteran, has been promoted to senior vice president and R&D director.


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Limited Edition GP-178 PE
You only turn 25 once. Boston is taking its quarter-century anniversary as an occasion to create a grand piano with extraordinary elegance and quality: the Boston 25th Anniversary Edition, limited to 125 units worldwide.
The edition is based on the Boston GP-178 and stands out with its glossy, chromium-plated fittings, clasps, pedals and casters. A ll of the felts are black instead of red, the cast plate shines with silver finish and the interior of the rim is made of lustrous Kewazinga Bubinga veneer. Special technical features lend impressive tonal clarity to the elegant visual design. Visit your Steinway dealer to make one of these specially crafted pianos your own.
Kiitos! Viestisi on lähetetty. Kuulet meiltä pian.


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NICC Membership
NICC is a social and artistic organisation founded by professional visual artists in order to advocate their rights. NICC functions as a mediator between the artists and the government, art organisations and other actors in the cultural field. By becoming a member you help give a voice to artists.
Membership costs only 12 euros. Transfer this amount to BE79 7350 4576 9133 with the message 'membership 2020'.
On showing your membership card you receive a variety of advantages and discounts at museums, shops and on subscriptions to <H>Art Magazine. Your card is valid for one year.
NICC develops an artistic and social program of artists talks, exhibitions and debates. By sending your contact details to NICC you will be invited to all projects and events.
Fill in the form below to become a member.
Become a NICC member.


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Cleveland police chief says 3 women were restrained with ropes, chains
CLEVELAND -- Cleveland's police chief says the three women held captive in a house for nearly a decade were restrained with ropes and chains and allowed out into the backyard occasionally.
Chief Michael McGrath said in an interview on NBC's "Today" show Wednesday that the physical condition of the three women rescued Monday was "very good considering the circumstances."
McGrath says he was "absolutely" sure police did everything they could to find the women over the years. He disputed claims by neighbors that officers had been called to the house before for suspicious circumstances.
McGrath says the three men who have been arrested in the case "are talking" but he wouldn't say if they have confessed. He says a charging decision could come later Wednesday.


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2009 is a new year for Motorola. The firm's sales are tracking down, the RAZR might be dead – hopefully – but these four upcoming phones look uncharacteristically good. Little is known beside about the mobiles besides what can be gathered from the pics. The branding indicates that they are Verizon-bound and at least three of the four are touchscreens. And none of the phones have the dumb RAZR-ish names. Each one, including the Flash above, has a normal, fully-spelled product name. Hopefully these devices will breath new life into the dying mobile phone maker. We only have one question, though? Any of these powered by Google's Android?
More pics after the jump.
Rush 2


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Camera: Panasonic GF1
Lens: Canon 50mm 1:1.8 with 3x extension tube
Flash Vivitar 285HV
My sister HATES moths, so I continually try to find ways to pester her with this nugget of information. Therefore, this challenge presented itself in another way to irritate her phobia of cute harmless and fluffy insects. In the process of playing with macro photography, which I do very little of, I had to play around with many shots and often got frustrated. I tested on a local tree frog that sat on top of the porch light munching on the light-homing critters, and soon found some settings that worked. I balanced on a lawn chair over my parent's front door snapping shots into the night. I got one that I was somewhat pleased with, but I realize I have much room for improvement in this field.
- Aaron Hinckley
Camera: Canon 40D
Lens: Old Tamron 90/2,8
F-Number: 7,1
Exposure Time: 1/250
ISO Speed: 250
Flash: Canon 430 EX II with home made diffuser
I took this picture at 4:24 in Poznań near the river. The humidity was very high so on the damselfly there are a lot of drops. Picture is a stack of 20 single shots, so the depth of field is high.
- Adam Tomasewski
Camera: Sony a77, raw mode, ISO 100, f/2.8, 1/500 second exposure.
Lens: LensBaby Edge80 optic + ComposerPro + 8mm and 16mm macro extension adapters.
The final agglomeration of lens parts looks both weird and awesome on the camera— might I suggest a contest for obscure lens assemblies?
I used this contest as an excuse to experiment with the Edge80 and macro adapters. The a77's focus peaking feature makes the manual nature of this lens much easier. I had the ComposerPro tilted slightly, my thought was that by skewing the focal plane I could deepen the DOF exactly in the direction I needed. Focusing is still pretty hit or miss regardless of the clever tools built into the camera, so I took advantage of the burst mode to fill my memory card with blurry shots, hoping to mine a gem later. Of almost 400 photos only 10 had acceptable sharpness :)
The photo was imported into Lightroom 4.1 and exported as jpegs from there. I bumped the contrast just a little, but otherwise this is what the camera captured.
I'm no taxonomist (and even less of an entomologist), but I am pretty sure this is an odonatoptera. I can't be sure if it is a dragonfly or a mayfly.
- Alec Berry
This picture was taken with my iPhone on Sunday, July 30, in Livingston NJ around 11:47 PM
We had thunderstorms on and off all weekend and for some reason all bugs in our area disappeared.
I went to the local brook with pieces of fruits and honey and spread them around the leaves and rocks, but after waiting and looking for
over 30 mins I still didn't find anything. I figured that at night I'll spread blanket over the flashlight against the wall to attract insects and take some cool shots but even that didn't work. We always have a lot of bugs in our backyard but this weekend there was nothing.
Finally I managed to find beautiful web next to stairs to my deck with a cool spider in the middle. I took a few shots of him thinking that he will have a hard time finding any snack here tonight.
- Alex Fisher
Tools ans materials:
Camera Sony DSC-W230 (point-and-shoot. Yes, I'm ashamed but give enthusiasts on budget a chance, please.),
Generic tripod,
$5 Ikea lamp with warm peachy bulb,
pile of sand and whatever was around for scenery,
LEGO human,
hornet nest,
Photoshop Elements 8
Camera settings and retouching:
auto ISO, focus on nearest object, no flash, default scenario,
image cropped. Then minimal retouching to give more cartoonish looks: levels changed for more refined edges, semitransparent emerald coloured adjustment layer added and saturation slightly decreased. Hairpin blurred away where was visible.
Photo story:
Hornets are giant and scary but look almost as any other wasp. That's why to demonstrate insect's scale I introduced LEGO person into shot.
After some brainstorming it was decided to recreate look and feel of anime "Kaze no tani no Naushika". Particularly part when she wanders in toxic jungle. More on subject: http://www.animecrazy.net/nausicaa-of-the-valley-of-wind-images/481/Image/3727
Scenery for shot was built of dry sand, brushwood, fern and flowers. It also includes part of hornet nest and hornet on hairpin. Picture taken at night with single light source from left below. Whole instalment can be seen here:
Note for green people: nest was abandoned by family, I found it empty. Hornet whose stinging might be deadly was threatening humans so its death was inevitable.
- Aliona Vorobieva
Camera: Canon Powershot SD1000 with CHDK installed
f/2.8 (automatic)
1/60 sec exposure
ISO - 200 (automatic)
I'd taken a ton of pictures of bugs in my parents' garden and gotten a lot of practice at it with my trusty old Canon P&S, so I figured I'd try it out once more and see if I get anything good enough for this contest. Luckily, it had been storming and it was incredibly humid here in northern West Virginia, so there was no shortage of bugs to photograph. After snapping a couple hundred (mostly out-of-focus) pictures, I was headed back in when I noticed a small mossy and plant-covered strip of wall right at eye level. Two centipedes caught my eye, as one was crawling around with the other one firmly attached to its back (I decided not to dwell on what they might be doing). After a bit of crawling around and having a few pictures taken of them, they ran across another centipede, and then I snapped this photo, with the third centipede crawling into the foreground and the two attached centipedes in the background about to follow him. I especially love how you can see the centipede's legs crawling over the tiny plants.
- Amaro Tuninetti
Equipment: Canon T2i with a 18-55mm Kit lens with a 10x macro attachment
Story: I love taking photos of bugs, its by far one of my favorite subjects. Most people don't stop to look at a tiny little bug, but us photographers do. I was walking around and i found a passion flower that had this small little bug on it. When i looked closer it was pretty neat it had an orange head that looked like a water drop with a black body. It had recently rained so it made the photo look even cooler.
- Andrew Smith
This picture was shot in RAW format at ISO800 in 1/640th of a second on 03/11/12 at 3:20pm in my backyard and developed in Adobe Lightroom 3.
Shot with a Nikkor 50mm F1.4 lens mounted in reverse to Canon T2i via an adapter. While shooting the Bees that gather around a particular shrub this massive Horsefly showed up so I captured a few shots of it too.
- Andy Allman
Shot with a Canon 30d and a Sigma 17-70 lens.
Out the door on my way to work, found this Florida Wheel Bug Nymph on the headlight of my car. I went and grabbed my camera and it posed nicely for me even with my camera a few inches away.
- Andy Graber
D40 180mm f/5.6 @ 1/125
- Andy Holton
My kit is a Canon Digital Rebel XT and an old EF 28-80mm f/3.5-5.6 II; both of which I bought off a buddy a year ago for $100. My wife and I were out in the garden and I was shooting pics of the bees, but then I remembered the hundreds of ants that I would see crawling on the trumpet vine growing along our fence. The vine is actually pretty invasive, but the flowers are so cool that I just can't bring myself to rip it out of the yard. I liked this shot because it shows the rightmost ant almost leaping from a bud to a flower. There was a slight breeze, so I'm pleased with the clarity given my level of skill (pretty low) and the limitations of my tools.
ISO: 100 (I prefer slower "film" on this rig)
f: 5.6
Focal length: 80mm
Aperture priority
Auto-focus: off
Shutter speed: 1/50s
- Andy Robinson
Tech Specs: Nikon D7000, 200mm, 1/400 sec at f / 6.3, ISO 640
I went hiking with my husband this weekend not thinking I would be shooting for this challenge and I almost ran into this guy's web. Only having a zoom lens and a wide angle, I tried to get as close as I could stomach then zoomed in. A little sharpening was used because I had to shoot in manual (and was shaking because I was a little freaked out), but I think the composition came out pretty cool. Even looking at this on screen I get the heebe geebees!
- Ashley Carter
Camera: Canon 60D
Lens: Sigma 24mm f/1.8
Shutter: 1/4000
I was walking to the door of my home after getting off work (in my steel-toed boots), when I saw a butterfly flutter past me and land on a bush. I stopped and thought to myself "I should go grab my camera!" So I ran inside to do so, when I got back outside the butterfly was still on the bush. I crouched down to get a close shot and it flew to the next bush, naturally I got up and followed it. This happened two more times until it finally rested on the last bush in my yard. I snapped several photos with the lens only centimeters away from the bug. It just sat there flapping it's wings and enjoying the shoot. I was so eager to take the photos that I didn't realize my ISO was so high and so a good chunk of the photos are a little grainy.
- Austin Thomas
Thirsty Bee: Here's a thirsty honeybee drinking out of my birdbathtub after a rainstorm. It was almost sunset so the low ambient light made the camera set itself to 200 ISO. This makes the photo a little noisy, but I sort of like that. I didn't post process the image in any way.
Casio EX-FH20 in Super Macro mode, automatic exposure and focus. 10.1 mm, f 3.4, 1/80 exposure with anti-shake on. I shoot in widescreen mode to help me compose images that fill my computer monitor.
- Barbara Tomlinson
Handheld Canon 60D with Sigma 150mm F/2.8 Macro-lens, ISO200 at F/6.3
and using the built-in flash.
On holiday in Drake Bay, Costa Rica, we were eating our supper and
this massive 4" long Praying Mantis was sitting on the ceiling
(restaurants in the lowlands in Costa Rica don't have windows, and at
supper it's already dark so the lights attract many, many bugs). While
eating, suddenly we heard a loud buzzing sound which suddenly
sputtered and then stopped. Turns out the Mantis caught a Cicada *in
flight* and was consuming it with gusto. In the morning we found the
empty shell of the Cicada on the ground, the Mantis had disappeared
into the night.
- Bart Declercq
Focus stack of 10 seperate shots, taken using a Canon EOS 1000D, f7.1, ISO 100, 1/5, using an 18-55 mm lens with 2 macro filters stacked (+10 and +4 diopter)
The challenge made me recall an earlier one I didn't participate in, the one about focus stacking. I figured a macro shot would be perfect to have a go at it.
My idea for this shot was to make a tiny little spider look as terrifying as I could. I tried to get the little sucker to stay still, but he wouldn't have it, so I ended up jamming a pin into his abdomen. The pose is a little less natural for it, but the stack of focus would've been impossible otherwise.
- Bart Tieman
I was in the process of trying to shoo this guy out of the window he was sitting on when I saw my tripod propping the window open remembered the shooting challenge and grabbed my camera. He remained very well behaved throughout and didn't seem too bothered about having a massive lens stuck right in his face and flashes going off. I don't know what people walking past in the road must have though as I was baring down on them with a 300mm bright flashes. Nevertheless I was pretty happy with the result!
Taken using Nikon D7000, Sigma 70-300mm f4-5.6 Macro DG, +4 Close Up filter (cheapo eBay one), Jessop's own-brand Flashgun.
1/30s, ISO 800, f29, Flash at 1/8 power (on camera). This picture is made up of 4 pictures using focus stacking in Photoshop.
- Ben Deavin
Was at a neighbours for a BBQ and the sun was starting to go down.. which meant that the bugs were starting to come out... which reminded me of your shooting challenge. I Was originally think of a blood sucking mosquito shot when I say this little cobalt blue dragon fly land on the end of the grass.. Tried to get as close as I could but had some focusing issues.. This was the cleanest of the bunch.
Camera Info: Canon T3i w/ 18-55mm kit lens set on Apature priority of 5.6 (shutter was 1/125 iso 400)
- Bob Ivan
Shooting Details:
Canon Rebel XSi
EF-S55-250mm f/4-5.6 IS, ISO 200, f/5.6, 1/250
I was travelling in India at a site called Hampi in northern Karnataka exploring some temple ruins. I happened to notice dozens of dragonflies circling around a steam and was lucky enough to catch one resting on a branch. I was trying to avoid startling it and inched closer and closer until I finally was able to get the shot, unfortunately, that meant my knees going into the stream as well.
- Brandon Lindblad
Equipment: Canon EOS Rebel T3i with a 55-250mm kit lens.
Just a few weeks ago, my fiancee and I went location scouting for a place to take some pictures for our wedding website. We picked a random park, and walked down a trail to find a pond with a small dock. It was the perfect vantage point for capturing all the wildlife there (of which there was plenty, including frogs, turtles, fish, and lots of BUGS!). Of course we weren't there to take pictures of wildlife at the time, but I thought of this location immediately when this challenge was posted. We went back at dusk on Saturday, and took tons of pictures of dragon flies. I think it turned out great considering our lack of a macro lens (we were just zooming in from pretty close distances).
- Brian Potocki
Shooting Summery:
Camera: Samsung Galaxy S3
Lense: Macro
Aperture: 2.6
Iso: 80
After walking my brother's dog, I was putting away the leash when I saw this little guy taking in some morning sun.
- Rudy Castillo
So, my buddy was late to Dralo (Drunk Halo Night) and when I showed up at the agreed upon apartment, I walked into to have a statement come flying at me: "Sorry, we've currently got a fly problem." . . . (-.-). . . I had time, so I immediately went to work trying to resolve the fly problem, and half way through realized that my chance at getting my bug shot was right in front of me! And then I realized I had a problem: Dead batteries in my D300, I didn't bring my AA battery pack, and a SB-800 flash can't sync with an iPhone. So I resorted to using my Olloclip Macro attachment for the iPhone, and my buddies old HTC Android phone for a light source. I got numerous good shots (The 2nd place was a Rorschach Fly), and finally decided upon this one, for all of the movement it's got in it. Also, it's gross.
iPhone 4 + Olloclip Macro Attachment
Edited in Camera+
- Chad Whitaker
I had returned home to Tucson from a vacation to the Pacific Northwest
disappointed having expected to have had dozens of opportunities to
get the perfect bug shot, but with none panning out.
When I went out to empty the recycle, this Cicada was sitting on a
flower in our garden. He seemed dazed since I was able to get quite a
few shots. This shot was clearly the best since it really showcases
the "bug-eyes" and his tiny Dali mustache.
I was shooting with the kit 18-55 on my Nikon D5100. I ran inside to
grab my 35 MM F1.8 prime to really do it up, but he was gone upon my
return; off to continue his special breed of noise pollution I
I shot F8 - 1/250 - ISO 100.
- Charles Pifer
The Waitress messed up this guys order....
He'd ordered the Pooding...
Didn't leave a tip.
Was shot with a Canon 60D, a Canon 100 mm Macro Lens - f 5:6 at a 400 th Sec.
The ISO, was 100.
- Charlie Carroll
Camera: Canon 5d Markiii
Lens: Sigma 50mm 1.4 (with extension tubes)
Shutter: 1/100
Manual Focus
Date: 7/26/2012
Location: Brooklyn, NY
Photographer: Chase Voorhees
This is a spider that has lived outside of my window in an old flower box for the past couple of months. The storm that past through Brooklyn on 7/26 destroyed its' web so it was hiding under some of the dried weeds that have grown up over the summer.
- Chase Voorhees
This guy was buzzing around my back yard — I'm definitely not a bug guy so getting this close was a bit spooky. I dropped the diet Sunkist can to give a sense of scale and this guy hopped right on it. I shot with a Canon T1i, with the stock 18-55 lens (at 18mm) with a cheap Opteka macro lens attached, ISO 800 and the camera picked everything else out: 1/125 sec. at f/6.3. I decided not to crop the ring out because I actually like how it frames the curve of the can, but also it makes me feel like I was farther away than I actually was, which is comforting.
- Chip Lynch
Canon 50D
Canon 100mm f/2.8 Macro
Canon 430EX flash
5 image focus stack in photoshop
Put the fly in the fridge for 10 mins to slow him down a little. Put him on a leaf and he sat there for about 5 mins before flying off.
- Chris Andrews
I took this photo from my brother and sister-in-law's dining room. We were standing around, and I saw the bug and I only had my iPhone 4S. While it's not the best camera to take a photo for a contest, it's the one I had.
- Chris Owens
There's a small cemetery near my office dedicated to Ken Pratt who's lineage owns most of the land around there. His grave site is adorned with a lot of granite slabs about him and flowers and trees. One of them, this purple flower bush (not sure the kind) is swarming with these little bees, so since I knew this challenge was running and I wanted to participate I figured I'd give it a shot.
I'm not too happy at the full 20Mpixel resolution, is looks especially blocky/quantized so I shrunk it by 50% before cropping.
Aside from focus, I actually mostly left the camera on Auto, since it still has better judgement about the scene than I do at this point. Besides that, here are the settings it chose:
Sony DSC-RX100 20Mpixel
- Chris Simpson
This was shot with my iPhone 4s outside my office this morning. There has been tons of web's all over the outside and today some lucky spider caught this huge bug as you can see from all the lines of webbing wrapped around it's wings. It's amazing that 5-6 web strands are holding this giant bug from getting away. I have no idea what it is, but it was still struggling a bit when I found it. It will probably feed a family of spiders for a long long time. 1/125 sec f/2.4 ISO 50
- Colin Brown
- Cory Kaufman
This submission was one of my last attempts at capturing some bugs late Sunday afternoon. My wife and I spent the afternoon in Youngstown,OH visiting family and decided to go to the gardens at a local park where I ended up getting some really great shots of bugs. When we returned to my in-laws house I walked around the back yard and noticed some cicada's attached to a tree. This particular bug (or remainder of one) had amazing eyes that seemed to magnify the light. This is my favorite of the many I took.
Shooting Summary:
Canon EOS 7D
Sigma 30mm 1.4
OPTEKA ND 4x Filter
OPTEKA 10x Macro Lens Filter
f /3.2
- Damien Campbell
I know this is a point and shoot camera, but figured I would try... Shot with no flash, in macro this past June 2012. June bugs caught my eye getting busy, so I grabbed the camera.
Camera Maker: Sony
Camera Model: DSC-TX10
F-Stop: f/4.5
Exposure Time: 1/400 sec.
ISO Speed: ISO-125
Exposure Bias: 0 Step
Focal Length: 16 mm
Max Aperture: 3.625
Brightness: 8.8140625
- Dan Allums
I was walking around a pasteur looking for the bugs that will bring me glory in the Gizmodo contest. I finds a large spider that tried to bite me. I finds a nest of fire ants which also tried to kill me. It was a bad day so far. Then, like my brother and sister on National Rabbit Day, I finds these bugs making the bang boom. I took many photos of the lovers in different positions and then I noticed that we were not alone. There was another bug very close by watching the entire scene. I look closely at the voyeur and I see on him the face I make when watching my brother and sister on Rabbit Day. Sadness, jealousy, and loneliness. I didn't even know bugs can make the bang boom and yet here before me was an episode of my favorite soap opera. I take the photo.
Nikon d5100
55-200 Nikkor @ 145mm
- Dan Durakovich


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Snow Pudding
(Karyagdi Tatlisi)
3 cups 3.25% milk
2/3 cup sugar
1/4 cup coco powder
1/2 cup + 1 tbs all purpose flour
1 tbsp unsalted butter
12 round shape chocolate thins cookies
Sweetened flaked coconut
Place all the ingredients (except butter) in a large pot. Stir constantly at medium heat. Add the butter. Cook until it gets enough thickness, stir occasionally. Take it off the stove. Pour into the blender. Blend for about 5 minutes over medium speed. Put 2 cookies at the bottom of each bowl. Pour in the bowls equally.
After letting them cool, place the bowls in the fridge for 12 hours. Sprinkle flaked coconuts all over the tops.
6 bowls Snow Pudding.


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About Lyle
With large, squashy cushions and curved arms that soften its angular lines, the Lyle natural textured fabric 2 seater sofa is a relaxed, contemporary design.
Perched on chromed ski legs, the inviting 2 seater sofa's narrow frame allows a generous seat for its size; its cushions have a neat tucked detail on their corners and are removable for regular plumping.
The 2 seater sofa is hand made to order and is part of the Lyle range, available in various sizes with fabric or leather upholstery in a choice of colours.
Will it fit?
We want you to love your sofa and enjoy it for years to come, so before you make your purchase, please check that it will fit perfectly into your home.Measuring Guide Buying Guide
Check out all of our buying guides here
- Assembled dimensions: W170 x H79 x D87cm
- Seat height: 40cm
- Seat depth: 64cm
- Width of seating area between arms: 140cm
- Width of armrest: 15cm
- Height of armrest: 55cm
- Packaged dimensions: Pack 1: W174 x H59 x D92cm.
- Seat back height: 72cm
Please note that this is just a guide - due to their handmade nature, our sofas may vary slightly in size.
Product Details
- Product Code: 294851
- Legs require assembly.
- Cover: 100% polyester.
- Seat cushion: foam with a fibre topping.
- Back cushion: fibre fill.
- Feet: metal.
Care Instructions
To keep your sofa looking fabulous, give its cushions a good squeeze regularly to restore their shape and rotate double-sided cushions so that they wear evenly. If your sofa is feather filed we recommend you plump and rotate once a week.
Professional clean only.
Covers (both removable and fixed) should only be cleaned professionally by an upholstery cleaning specialist.
Colour variation may occur between cleaned and un-cleaned sections. When cleaning, please ensure all components are cleaned at the same time to avoid colour variation.
Vacuum or brush your upholstery weekly as accumulated dirt will accelerate wear and dull colours.
Avoid exposing your furniture to direct and prolonged periods of sunlight and heat sources as fading may occur.
Avoid sharp objects.
Spots and Spills; DO NOT RUB! Carefully soak up any spillage by gently blotting with a clean, dry absorbent cloth. Do not use a wet cloth.
Delivery & Returns
Home Delivery to UK Mainland:
Orders under £500£15
Orders over £500£25


text:
Neiman Marcus Sells For $6 Billion
And we reported yesterday that Neiman Marcus was in the final stages of closing a big deal. Now the deal is done. The upscale retailer has just made its biggest sale ever - itself. The price: $6 billion. The buyers - the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and a U.S. private equity group.
NPR's Wendy Kaufman reports.
WENDY KAUFMAN, BYLINE: Neiman Marcus is perhaps the fanciest name in U.S. retailing. Designer handbags can cost more than $1,000, men's casual jackets more than twice that and the prices in its opulent Christmas catalog are beyond compare. Still, the $6 billion price paid for the retailer is a sizeable sum.
BARBARA KAHN: One ponders whether or $6 billion is the right price and that's hard to tell.
KAUFMAN: But Barbara Kahn, a retail expert at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School says Neiman is a unique retailer with a big name in the small, but very attractive high end, high margin part of the retail market.
KAHN: And there aren't that many that hold that position and cater to that segment as well as Neiman does.
KAUFMAN: The company's 41 namesake stores along with its other retail businesses produced revenues of $4.5 in a recent 12 month period.
The sale of luxury goods cooled during the recession; but sales are coming back and Neiman's new buyers see promise in the U.S. market. Retail and turnaround consultant Michael Appel sees it, too.
MICHAEL APPEL: It's a growth opportunity both in the United States and perhaps internationally. Those customers continue to have money and spend money.
KAUFMAN: But Pam Danziger - whose Unity Marketing company tracks the buying habits of the affluent and very affluent - isn't as sanguine.
PAM DANZIGER: There's a lot of noise about growth in the market; but, I don't really see it playing out, otherwise we would see these huge revenue increases from brands like Neiman Marcus and Saks Fifth Avenue and so on, and we just aren't seeing that.
KAUFMAN: Saks - by the way - was sold to Canada's Hudson Bay Company for $2.4 billion earlier this summer. And Danziger says a key driver of growth for both retailers has been their lower priced outlets - Neiman's is known as Last Call.
Wendy Kaufman, NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.


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Little Entomologist Art Print
$22.00 – $150.00
Little Entomologist Art Print.
Printed on eco-friendly matte bamboo fiber with archival inks to meet the highest industry standards for lasting color and quality.
Custom sizing is available upon request.
Shipping + Returns
All prints are shipped with great care via wither USPS or UPS (depending on size). Your print will arrive flat, packaged in a protective sleeve and sturdy mailer. Rush shipping options available upon request.
If necessary, additional shipping costs for international orders may be invoiced after sale.
For art prints, I honor a 30-day return policy, if you have any concerns about your order please constant me as quickly as possible.


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In real life, [t]here are different reactions, depending on how much of a friendship you have and... sometimes you're in a situation where you must maintain your demeanor, despite the other guy's antagonism. For example, in a job interview or a discussion with your boss or maybe when you were a kid and your father was exerting his authority. The VP debate is also, obviously, one of those situations. Imagine if Ryan had given Biden the finger? Ryan is a young man, he had to have been thinking of the various reactions that you'd use in an ordinary social situation, even as he rejected each one and told himself that he had to keep acting as if Biden were not behaving inappropriately.A discussion with your boss.... It's like on "The Office." The employees are continually repressing their reaction to the boss — Steve Carrel's character Michael Scott. Example:
The boss is having a grand time, and he thinks he's a great guy, and socially, it's utterly dysfunctional, because he gets no proper feedback, because he's the boss. "The Office" has been so extraordinarily popular, I think, because viewers identify so strongly with the employees. Personally, I have difficulty watching the show. I understand the humor, but the identification with the oppressed employees is so strong that it's painful, and since it's the situation of this situation comedy, the pain is chronic.
Here's another "Office" clip:
Key line: "Have you ever been to Scranton Jan?" Scranton! Scranton is Joe Biden's home town!
"My name is Joe Biden and as strange as it sounds, everything important in my life that I've learned here in Scranton, I'm serious.... You are the grit, the sinew and the soul of what freedom is all about, sounds corny, but you really are, you are a special group of people, this is a special place and this soul is thick with pride and loyalty."Picture Michael Scott pestering his employees with a morale-building speech when they just want to get back to work. Back to work... in Scranton... where unemployment is 10%.


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Planning and Starting a New Project
Experienced teachers will advise that you and your classroom start by getting involved in an existing project online, rather than trying to start a project of your own. Participating in other projects is a great way to meet other potential partners, and learn about the many different projects initiated by teachers and students throughout the world. It can be a great way to develop ideas for how to integrate collaborative projects into your classroom, without having to take on the role of facilitating the involvement of other classes your first time participating. As you begin participating in other projects, you will soon find that you have global colleagues and peers to turn to should you wish to coordinate a project of your own in the future. In this way, your classroom truly becomes a global community member that can draw on the breadth of a network as your classroom develops throughout the year. And, you will certainly develop ideas about how you would want to structure a project as a facilitator after experiencing at least one yourself.
Once you do feel in a good position to start a new project, a basic model developed early on by Margaret Riel, when she was at the AT&T Learning Network, and now used by many of the projects in iEARN, is that of "Learning Circles." The Learning Circle model may offer a helpful structure for starting a new project. A general overview is provided below, with more detail available in an online Learning Circle Teacher's Guide available at http://www.iearn.org/circles/lcguide/.
A Learning Circle is created by a team of teachers and their classes joined in the virtual space of an electronic classroom. The groups remains together over a period of months working on projects drawn from the curriculum of each of the classrooms organized around a selected theme. At the end of the term the group collects and publishes its work.
Learning Circles promote theme-based project work integrated with the classroom curriculum. Learning Circles also encourage interactions among teachers providing a very different model of professional development.
The Learning Circle Teacher's Guide is organized around the six phases of Circle interaction:
- Getting Ready for Learning Circles
- Opening the Learning Circle
- Planning the Learning Circle Projects
- Exchanging Student Work on Learning Circle Projects
- Organizing the Circle Publication
- Closing the Learning Circle
Additional Resources for Planning and Starting a New Project
Online professional development courses
IEARN-USA offers online teacher professional development courses on integrating collaborative project-based learning into classroom teaching using Internet and technology. The courses bring together K-12 teachers from the U.S. with their peers in other countries who wish to integrate technology into their teaching, using online collaborative projects that meet their local/state/national educational standards. Participants who successfully complete course requirements receive certifications from iEARN and, in some cases, professional development credits from their states' educational bodies.
iEARN Mulimedia Guide provides teachers with a step-by-step
assistance in integrating online collaborative projects into their curricula,
designing new projects, finding partners, and sharing the project outcomes.
Project Planning and Direction.
Includes resources through a list of steps in designing and carrying out a project. Step 1: Choose the curriculum-related goals. Step 2: Choose the activity's structure(s) Step 3: Explore examples of other online projects. Step 4: Determine the details of your project. Step 5: Invite telecollaborators. Step 6: Form the telecollaborative group. Step 7: Communicate! Step 8: Create closure.
Making Networked Projects. An introduction to planning and
conducting your own simple, networked, collaborative-learning projects.
Finding Partners. In general, if you have a project to announce, GSN Project Registry http://www.gsn.org/ is a resource for getting the word out. If you are looking for a classroom on your own then Global Gateway http://www.globalgateway.org.uk/ or ePALS http://www.epals.com are perhaps better places to turn. If you are interested in bringing your new project idea to an existing network of online educators or in joining existing curriculum-based projects, iEARN http://www.iearn.org, http://us.iearn.org is a network of over 20,000 schools in more than 110 countries.
Some Practical Suggestions
Learning to use new tools of technology (email, website publishing, videotaping, and videoconferencing) for local to global curricular collaborative projects requires professional development support and technical support. Teachers who have been successful in doing International collaborations have found that building a support community is essential. No one person can learn to be an active participant in this environment alone.
Start by building collaborative support at your local school level. For professional development, partner with several other teachers in your building who are also interested in International collaborations. Start by getting familiar with using email amongst your classes within your building where you can get together face-to-face to reflect on how your uses and skills at using the Internet are developing, to ask each other questions, and to give each other support. Together you can look to resources for International collaborations to enhance your curricular goals.
As teachers are collaborating online to build International projects, a good starting point is to introduce yourselves to one another through email. As you share your teaching and learning goals, work towards identifying common curricular topics that your students are doing and that they can then share with one another.
It isn't always necessary to generate a new curricular topic in order to do online International collaboration. There are many common topics among elementary age classrooms around the world that can be the focus of local to global collaborations. A valuable place to start is to have your students begin by communicating with global peers on topics they already know well so that the content is something they are familiar with and are eager to share. Children can write best when they are writing about that which they know well. Provide plenty of in-class learning experiences around the curricular topic your class has chosen to share online so that all your students can inclusively be participants in the global conversations. Your students will be better able to contribute meaningful content in their online collaborations if they are communicating from classroom learning that is rich in content and experience.
When communicating online, have your students include not only the topic content they are sharing but also questions of inquiry to their global peers that invite ongoing dialogues. It is important to mentor students in appropriate content for global communication that generates positive interactions. Likewise, as they receive communication from global peers, it is important to respond with an affirmative appreciation for what they are learning from one another. The purpose of local to global communication is to build dialogues of understanding.
Include your school or district support personnel in your collaborative effort so that they can provide technical expertise. Many parents are developing Internet skills at their places of work and can also become valued mentors for you and your teaching colleagues. University Schools of Education are increasingly offering professional development courses online which can help you get started. When starting to connect internationally, it helps tremendously to join an already active network with projects you can join that are lead by experienced teachers.
As you are mentored and become familiar with using the Internet for collaborative curricular projects, you can begin to generate and design projects. Many teachers have found that as they build a community of teachers with whom they can collaborate, they continue to do projects with these same teachers. You and your global teaching peers can develop an ongoing collaborative community of teaching and learning together. As you gain new students each year, you and your online colleagues can repeat the projects you have doing together in previous years and continue to build your local to global collaborative curricular teaching and learning expertise! As we build communities of teachers and students who collaborate globally to learn within real world contexts and issues of importance, we have the greatest hope of making this world a better and more positively sustainable place now and in the future.
By Kristi Rennebohm Franz
Seattle, Washington