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Next Article in E-Commerce
AOL Tears Down Garden Walls
By Jeff Meisner
September 10, 2008 11:38 AM PT
AOL is getting a major facelift.
Having fallen far behind competitors such as Google, Yahoo and, to a lesser extent, Microsoft's MSN, AOL — a division of media giant Time Warner — has launched a host of new services and content initiatives in a bid to close the gap in the online advertising game.
The first new feature allows users to access multiple e-mail services, including Google's Gmail, Yahoo mail and MSN's Hotmail, all without leaving AOL.com. The hoped-for effect is that the number of users coming to AOL will both increase and stay at the portal longer, ultimately driving up both Web traffic and online advertising revenue.
More Content, More Users, More Ad Dollars
"The general aim that Time Warner has for AOL is for it to be as broadly attractive to consumers as possible," David Joyce, an equity analyst with Miller Tabak & Co., told the E-Commerce Times. "They're trying to sell advertising now, not dial-up subscriptions. The more they can latch onto other areas where consumers go online, the better chance they have for click-throughs and unique user metrics they can sell advertising around."
The move to revamp the AOL Web site is the latest in a series of initiatives taken by the company to separate its content and online ad business from its flagging dial-up Internet access business, Joyce said.
"The two businesses are pretty much fully separated at this point, operationally and financially," he noted. "It's the hope of investors that Time Warner sells off the access business or merges it with EarthLink's."
Though AOL dominated the Internet in terms of Web traffic and subscribers earlier this decade, it was late to the broadband access segment. Many of its current challenges are a result of missing the broadband opportunity, Joyce said.
AOL isn't limiting its new look to e-mail aggregation.
The portal debuted a new navigation bar that offers quicker access to popular content sites, such as entertainment and celebrity gossip site TMZ, StyleList, ParentDish, WalletPop and Asylum.Over the next eight weeks, AOL will also introduce new features that enable users to personalize their AOL pages by allowing them to access content from popular third-party social networking sites such as Facebook.
Users will be able to get a bird's-eye view of status updates from their friends on sites like Facebook through a new "keyhole" box on AOL.
Lost Promise
"AOL is trying to make itself more relevant to its users by integrating into the most popular social networking sites and e-mail services," Laura Martin, senior media analyst at Soleil Securities, told the E-Commerce Times. "This is an example of AOL trying to regain its lost promise of market dominance. It was first to the market and had a huge presence back in the early 2000s. But all these sites have started since then and become much more popular."
Although the new moves represent a step in the right direction for AOL, the portal's execution track record is not as good as some of its competitors, according to Martin.
"They squandered a lot of opportunities," she said. "Take e-mail, for example. AOL did not provide as much [storage] as Google and Yahoo, and it wasn't as easy to access as Yahoo or Gmail."
Miller Tabak's Joyce thinks AOL could be successful in its latest bid to reinvent itself.
"They have the potential to be successful," he said. "They're late to the game, but they've got a big parent company in Time Warner behind them, so they've got the incentive to get the business turned around."
More by Jeff Meisner
Google Expects to Take a Loss on AOL Stake
FOSS, the Recession and the Lower-TCO Promise
AT&T Launches Netbook-With-Service Experiment
Microsoft Offers Small-Biz Server Value Meal
New Google VC Fund on the Prowl for Great Ideas
Google Music Service Could Take Wind Out of Chinese Pirates' Sails
Can Twitter Keep It Real as It Searches for Dollars?
Blockbuster, TiVo Join to Deliver the Video Goods
Sony Ericsson May Be Headed for Splitsville
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Grocery Home Delivery May Ride on Cold Chain Technology
VR Platforms Deliver Metaverse-Style Experiences to Online Shopping
Amazon Lawsuit Fingers Facebook Groups Recruiting Fake Reviewers
Cryptocurrency Custody Concerns: Who Holds the Digital Storage Keys?
Sports Betting Platforms Gambling With Substandard CX


More and more parents are choosing homeschooling as the educational choice for their children. These families are, in fact, growing at rate of 7-12% per year. Some do it to uphold their religious beliefs. Others choose to homeschool for the academic possibilities or to protect their children from potentially harmful atmospheres in public schools, and still others are left little choice because their children have special needs that can't be addressed in traditional schools. Regardless of the reasons, understanding how to homeschool is a necessary step toward deciding if it is a viable option for you. And while homeschooling is very personal and can be tailored based on needs, learning styles and time constraints, knowing how to homeschool—the basic steps of getting started—is vital. Let's look at the first steps that every family who wants to know how to homeschool successfully should take.
Homeschooling is a wonderful opportunity for you, as a parent, to invest in your children, but it is a big responsibility. In addition to the typical responsibilities that come with parenting, you will have the added pressure of educating your children. This requires time and patience. It means that your children will be with you most of the time, leaving you less time to devote to your other obligations or work. And as your child's primary teacher, you will need to create lesson plans and present material. As rewarding as it is—and yes, it truly is an amazing journey—deciding to homeschool your children should not be made lightly. Accepting that it is a calling, and not merely a vocation, can carry you through many a trying time.
If your child is of a reasonable age, include them in this decision. They have the most to gain from your new relationship as teacher and student. They should be on board with your decision in order to make your homeschooling experience successful.
Homeschooling is legal in all 50 states, but each state has its own laws. Some states require you to formally withdraw your child from school or register your child as a homeschooler. Others dictate mandatory testing. Become familiar with your state's requirements to make your transition easier. The Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) offers a state chart on their website to help you.
Once you decide to make the leap, begin educating yourself on homeschooling. Read books on homeschooling—its philosophy and how to adjust it to best meet your family's needs. Cathy Duffy's book 100 Top Picks for Homeschool Curriculum is a good place to start for identifying your homeschooling goals and narrowing down the overwhelming amount of curriculum that's available.
Of course, books are great, but nothing compares to talking to other homeschool parents. Visit a workshop or contact a homeschooling support group in your area. Many offer mentorships for new families. You'll not only gain insider's tips but also encouragement that you really can do teach your children.
After reading the books, visiting a workshop and talking to veteran homeschoolers, you'll already be narrowing down your curriculum choices or at least the type of curriculum that interests you. To make your final decision, visit a local homeschool curriculum store or conference. Curriculum publishers are on-hand during conferences to educate you about their products. However, it's a good idea to have a general idea of which curriculum or curriculum style you like before attending as conferences are often large and overwhelming to newbies.
It's important to point out that not all homeschoolers use a formal curriculum. Many choose, instead, to use the resources of their local libraries to educate their children. While this approach doesn't require you to purchase curriculum, you'll still need to develop your education plan based on your resources, educational goals and children's age.
Now that you have your curriculum, begin planning your school year. Be sure to plan for any holidays, breaks or field trips. Remember to keep your expectations realistic. Again, veteran homeschoolers can help keep you grounded in this area. Once you have your plans, curriculum and materials, you'll be ready to begin the amazing, family-transforming journey called homeschooling. Happy Educating!


The Internal Revenue Code is unkind to winners -- and it doesn't much like losers, either. The federal government taxes gambling winnings at the highest rates allowed. So do the many states and even cities that impose income taxes on their residents. If you make enough money in a high-tax state like California or New York, the top tax bracket is about 50 percent. Out of every additional dollar you take in, through work or play, governments take 50 cents.
Of course, the tax-collector first has to find out that you have won. Congress and the Internal Revenue Service know gambling is an all-cash business and few winners indeed would voluntarily report their good luck. So, statutes and regulations turn the gambling businesses, casinos, state lotteries, race tracks and even bingo halls, into agents for the IRS.
Big winners are reported to the IRS on a special Form W-2G. If winnings are to be split, as with a lottery pool, winners are reported on a Form 5754.
Pooling money to buy lottery tickets is common among employees and friends. But whether there are two or 200 in the pool, there is going to be only one winning ticket, and somebody has to turn it in. If you are that someone, make sure you fill out a Form 5754. If your share of a $5 million prize is $1 million, you do not want to be stuck with paying income tax on the entire $5 million.
Gambling has become such big business that the IRS receives nearly four million Forms W-2G and 5754 each year. This tells the tax-collectors that nearly four million big winners are out there, waiting to be taxed.
But the IRS does not always wait. The government wants to make sure it gets paid. What good does a W-2G do if the winner is a foreigner who is going to be in his own foreign country when April 15th rolls around?
So, the IRS not only wants reports filed, but often requires that a part of the winnings be withheld. As anyone who has a salary knows, withholding also allows the government to use taxpayers' money for many months, without having to pay interest.
The withholding rate for nonresident aliens is 30%. Not coincidentally, the tax rate for nonresident aliens is also 30%. So, if a citizen of a foreign country wins $1 million cash at a slot machine in Las Vegas, he will find he is paid only $700,000. The remaining $300,000 is sent to the IRS. The foreign citizen is unlikely to ever file an income tax return, but the IRS gets paid in full anyway.
Citizens of foreign countries are also, of course, usually taxed by their own governments. So some countries have treaties with the U.S. that protects those foreigners from having to pay the 30% withholding to the IRS.
U.S. citizens and resident aliens have it both better and worse than nonresident aliens. The withholding rate for gamblers living in American is only 28% (it was 20%, up to 1992). Having the IRS take $28,000 out of a jackpot of $100,000 is painful. But, it can hurt even more when tax forms are filled out. There is no 30% maximum tax for people living in the U.S., and really big winners often end up paying a lot more than 28% or 30%.
The one good news is Nevada casinos were also able to convince the IRS that they could not keep track of players at table games. They said that when a player cashes out for $7,000, they do not know whether he started with $25 or $25,000. So it is actually written into the law that there is no withholding or even reporting of big winnings to the IRS for blackjack, baccarat, craps, roulette or the big-6 wheel.
There is another general IRS rule that says anyone paying anyone else $600 in one year is supposed to file a report. The IRS has been going after casinos and cardrooms that run tournaments, forcing them to file tax reporting forms on grand prize winners. Here the IRS has the very good argument that the operator knows exactly how much a player has paid to enter the tournament and how much the finalists are given.
Is there anything a winning player can do to lower the bite of the income tax? And what about those who gamble and lose? Which is everybody, occasionally. The law does allow players to take gambling losses off their taxes, but only up to the amounts of their winnings.
Of course, if you win, say $135,000, you can take off all gambling losses, up to that amount. If you gambled away, say $65,000, you would only have to pay taxes on the remaining: $135,000 minus $65,000 equals $70,000. The tax on $70,000 is a lot less than the tax on $135,000.
Of course, you have the small problem of proving that you actually lost $65,000. Large winnings may be required to be reported to the IRS; large losses are not.
One former IRS Revenue Officer, who quit government to open his own small tax preparation firm, thought he found the answer. One of his clients won a share in a state lottery: $2.7 million, paid out over 20 years in installments of about $135,000, before taxes. The winnings were reported, but the tax return claimed gambling losses of $65,000. The IRS decided that $65,000 was a lot to lose, and it sent an agent to conduct an audit.
The tax preparer found a man with an extremely large collection of losing lottery tickets and made a deal: he would borrow 200,000 losing tickets for a month for $500. The losing tickets were bound in stacks of 100 and shown to the IRS auditor: 45,000 instant scratch tickets, 5,000 other Massachusetts lottery tickets, and 16,000 losing tickets from racetracks throughout New England. So many losing tickets, that it would have been physically impossible for one man to have made these bets. The New York Times called it "one of the more visibly inept efforts at tax fraud." They pleaded guilty eight days after being indicted.
By the way, the man who rented the tickets was not charged. It's not a crime to collect losing lottery tickets, only to use them to try and cheat the IRS.
Slot machines and bingo: Payouts of $1,200 or more are reported to the IRS, but there is no withholding taken out.
Keno: Similar to slot machines, but the amount won must be at least $1,500.
State lotteries and sweepstakes: Withholding is taken out of all winnings of more than $5,000.
Parimutuel pools, including horse and dog races: Subject to withholding, but only if the winnings are both more than $5,000 and at least 300 times as large as the amount bet.


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El suimanga carmelità (Chalcomitra fuliginosa) és un ocell de la família dels nectarínids (Nectariniidae).

Hàbitat i distribució
Habita zones forestal costaneres de Sierra Leone, Libèria, Costa d'Ivori, Ghana, Togo, Benín, Nigèria, Camerun, Guinea Equatorial, sud-oest de Gabon, República del Congo, sud-oest de la República Democràtica del Congo i nord-oest d'Angola.

Referències

carmelità

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


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Q: Magnetism problem I encountered a magnetism problem requiring me to find out the minimum velocity (along $\hat{\mathbf{i}}$) given to a charged particle so that it passes through the centre of a circular region of radius $r$ (on XY plane) where magnetic field is present along -$\hat{\mathbf{k}}$. Electric field is absent and all required quantities are known. Note that $\theta$ is the angle made by initial velocity vector of the particle before entering the region and the radius vector.
So the basic equation that I'll need here is $R=\frac{mv}{qB}$ (not deriving it) where $R$ is the radius of the circle along which the particle will move while other quantities have their usual meaning.
My problem is with calculating the value of $R$ in terms of $r$ and $\theta$.
I tried converting the given situation to a cartesian system and getting three points to find the equation of the circle of radius $R$ but couldn't get the third point. I also tried a trigonometric approach which didn't yield anything either.
Any help is appreciated.

A: Draw two intersecting circles (A and B), ( of different sizes r and R), with B passing through the center of  A. Construct an isosceles triangle, center of A to center of B, and radii from each center to the point intersection. Remember that an arc of B is perpendicular to its radius at that point. After splitting your triangle into two right triangles, you can show that the sine of your given angle is r/(2R).

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


played their cards right – gained tremendous success, while others well, not so much.
For us immigrants we know that the road to a better life – whatever that means – is not paved with gold. Some of us are still searching for that dream, some of us have found it, others of us have relinquished it. Many have not seen their families back home in ages, still trying tomake that "bread".
The journey – whether pleasant or poignant – are endless and deserves to be told.
We would love to hear your reasons for emigrating, tell us how you fared or are faring in a foreign land. We promise anonymity should you wish.


This is also the first step of the Liebig process for the manufacture of potassium chlorate.
In theory, electrolysis of hot calcium chloride solution will give chlorate, analogous to the process used for the manufacture of sodium chlorate. In practice, electrolysis is complicated by calcium hydroxide depositing on the cathode, preventing the flow of current.
This is the second step of the Liebig process for the manufacture of potassium chlorate.
Contact with strong sulfuric acid can result in explosions due to the instability of concentrated chloric acid. Contact with ammonium compounds can also cause violent decomposition due to the formation of unstable ammonium chlorate.
Calcium chlorate has been used as an herbicide, like sodium chlorate.
Calcium chlorate is occasionally used in pyrotechnics, as an oxidizer and pink flame colorant. Its hygroscopic nature and incompatibility with other common pyrotechnic materials (such as sulfur) limit its utility in these applications.
1 2 Samuel P. Sadtler, Virgil Coblentz and Jeannot Hostmann (1918). A textbook of chemistry, intended for the use of pharmaceutical and medical students. p. 329.
1 2 3 4 Ropp, Richard C. (2012). Encyclopedia of the Alkaline Earth Compounds. p. 80.
1 2 Mellor, Joseph William (1917). Modern Inorganic Chemistry. p. 287.


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RA's Daily Russia News Blast – April 18, 2017
By Citizen M | Published: April 18, 2017
TODAY: Russia hopes US will not act unilaterally against North Korea; Kiselyov says Trump more dangerous than Kim Jong-Un; Russia unveils striking Arctic military base; Google antitrust case settled at $7.8m; Chechnya investigating reports of gay persecution as paper that broke the story receives threats and criticism; Khodorkovsky calls for people to back Navalny next year; Putin calls for measures to increase invesment.
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov says he hopes that the US will not take any unilateral actions against North Korea for its "reckless nuclear actions". State-run media has changed its position on US President Donald Trump, with Channel One anchor Dmitry Kiselyov alleging that he is more dangerous, more impulsive, and more unpredictable than Kim Jong-Un. Official spokesman Dmitry Peskov made sure to distance the Kremlin from Kiselyov following the comment, saying that he is often but not always in alignment with the Kremlin's official position. Russia has unveiled a flashy new military base in the Arctic, a triangular building which "resembles a space colony" and is decorated in the colors of the flag. The New York Times evaluates the likelihood of Russian involvement in the French presidential elections. "Russia often does not so much intrude as amplify existing voices with which it agrees." The Federal Antimonopoly Service has reached a $7.8 million settlement with Google in the case brought by Yandex in 2015 regarding Google's pre-installation requirements, which had previously forced manufacturers to use Google applications as the default services on Android devices.
Chechnya has apparently opened an official investigation into reports that local authorities are carrying out mass arrests and torture of gay men, following Novaya Gazeta's breaking of the story. The Chechen Press Minister wants Novaya Gazeta to apologise for its reporting, saying that it used "imaginary sources" and behaved like "mammoths in a china shop". Investigators are looking into threats that were allegedly made against the paper for its reporting of the story. An organic farm shop in St Petersburg is banning gay customers from its premises. Former Yukos head Mikhail Khodorkovsky is calling for supporters to back the presidential bid of anti-corruption campaigner Alexei Navalny next year. "Replacing Putin with another Putin can't possibly work for us," he said. How can Russia's economy grow outside of its restrictive neopatrimonialist system, asks Boris Grozovsky. President Vladimir Putin is calling for measures to boost investment activity that will support the creation of a modern, high-tech economy.
The Investigative Committee wants Russia's mass media to devote less coverage to child rape victims, saying that the fascination they generate is creating more problems. Fines for football hooligans have been doubled in Russia in advance of the 2018 World Cup.
PHOTO: President Vladimir Putin (Reuters / Sergei Karpukhin)
Tags: Mikhail Khodorkovsky

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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Diseases of Affluence
Everywhere Western ideas touch down, people get fatter. Urbanization is literally making us sick.
By Kevin Patterson Nov. 15, 2010
In Defense of the Taliban
The Incredible True Story of Mr. Markarian
13 Aphorisms
Why Don't We Hunt Anymore?
RECENTLY I WORKED as an internist-intensivist at the Canadian Combat Surgical Hospital in Kandahar. Most of our casualties were Afghans: National Army soldiers, National Police and civilians caught in crossfire. They were diminutive men, almost always less than a hundred and forty pounds. I cannot comment on the body masses of the Taliban—they were never brought to us. But they are not likely larger than those of the soldiers and the police. And because, in war, soldiers are fed first—prospering right up to the moment they are pierced—the civilians were even thinner.
For someone used to the life and the pathologies of the rich and settled, much about practicing medicine in Afghanistan felt unfamiliar. One of the striking differences was the way gunshot victims' abdomens looked in CT scans. Back home, I was used to seeing organs stand out with some prominence from the abdominal fat. In fact, in Canadians, the state of the kidneys can be partly assessed by the degree of inflammation in the perinephric fat that envelops them. It's the same with the pancreas, and the liver often looks like it belonged to a French goose fattened for foie gras. Indeed, the idea of "normal" in a Canadian body proceeds from the assumption that it might be normal to spend one's days tied to a grain spout, beak pried open, being filled with cracked corn.
Not the Afghans. The surgeons, in fact, often commented on how the abdominal contents spilled out once the abdominal wall was opened; every loop of bowel immediately visible, unobscured by mesenteric fat, which, in Canadians, would cling to every organ like yellow oily cake. Excessive fattiness is precisely why, when caring for the critically ill in North America, glucose levels are tightly controlled with insulin—a procedure necessary even for those not thought to be diabetic. Stressed by the infection, or the operation that has brought us to the intensive care unit, our sugar levels rise, paralyzing our white blood cells and nourishing the bacteria chewing upon them. But it was never necessary to give the Afghans insulin, no matter how shattered they were.
Among North American adults, 40 percent of us maintain normal glucose levels only by secreting larger than normal quantities of insulin from our pancreas. So we wander in and out of our family doctors' offices and, if some blood work is done, we are reassured that our glucose levels are normal, that we don't have diabetes. Mostly, they are and mostly, we don't. But our bodies are not normal. The Afghans' bodies are normal. We are so commonly ill we take it to be normal.
Here is our normal: 40 percent of North American adults have metabolic syndrome. The syndrome is caused by being fat, even at levels North Americans would not recognize as abnormal. Obesity prompts the receptors that insulin acts upon to become numb to its effects. As we grow fatter, and insulin resistance proceeds, higher and higher levels of insulin are necessary to get the sugar out of the blood. Eventually, overt diabetes may supervene, as it has for 8 percent of North American adults, a tenfold increase since the turn of the last century. But even prior to the development of diabetes, metabolic syndrome insidiously eats away at the bodies of those it affects.
Metabolic syndrome's elevated insulin level is why we order a second Whopper; getting fatter, cruelly, stimulates our appetite. It is also why high blood pressure is more common among Westerners, too, and why our cholesterol panels are more alarming. Ultimately and especially, it is why heart attacks are almost unknown among traditional peoples like the Pashtun, while half of us will spend our last minutes with the impression that a large kitchen appliance is sitting on our chests.
Afghans die through causes that are widely considered avoidable—war being chief among those, but also tuberculosis, complications of childbirth, measles, meningococcus and polio. This fact is revealed conclusively by the life expectancy in Afghanistan, the lowest in the world: thirty-nine. Westerners are made ill by diseases the Afghans avoid—even among the very elderly, traditional peoples do not suffer cardiovascular disease—while the Afghans perish from diseases we are too rich to tolerate.
It might satisfy certain notions about comeuppance, but there is as yet no scientific reason behind wealth's relationship with obesity and cardiovascular disease. To start with, it is the poorest Westerners—indigenous peoples, African-Americans, Hispanics—who are the most overweight and most likely to be diabetic. Within any population, the poor always bear the brunt of that population's most characteristic and lethal pathologies. Much in epidemiology is mysterious, but this is constant.
Around the world, as traditional peoples and societies have been absorbed into the global monoculture, the prevalence of diabetes has exploded. Since 2001, premature death from obesity has exceeded death from malnutrition. The milestone was reached at almost the same time as another: for the first time in history, the number of urbanites exceeds the number of rural dwellers. Canada is an example. For all its magnificent and extensive wilderness, 87 percent of the population lives in a community with at least ten thousand neighbours. Afghans are at the other end: less than 12 percent live in cities. No lattes, no internet, no phone, no pool. And no XXXL elastic stretch pants. After wealth and death rates, the biggest difference between Afghanistan and Canada—and the hallmark of the world's creeping homogeneity—is urbanization.
A THOUSAND MILES WEST of the Galapagos, the Marquesan islands of Hiva Oa and Tahuata can be said to demonstrate, albeit on a smaller scale, the Canada-Afghanistan spectrum. The six hundred residents of Tahuata pursue a life strikingly similar to that of the traditional Marquesans, who warred with the French ferociously in the late nineteenth century until, cut down by disease—their number reduced from a hundred thousand to a little over a thousand—they were conquered and colonized. Today the Tahuatians grow taro and sweet potato. They fish the cool Eastern Pacific for tuna and mahi mahi. They consider the urbanized Hiva Oa, looming on the northern horizon, a kind of co-opted culture. On Tahuata, the chief remains the principal civil authority; on Hiva Oa, the gendarmes settle disputes and enforce civility. Indeed, the kepi of the French Foreign Legion is ever-present in the thatched-roof watering holes of Hiva Oa's Atuona beach.
Tahuatians regard themselves as different from the people of Hiva Oa and thus they appear. The boys are elaborately tattooed in the age-old manner (the Marquesan word is tatu—which, with tabu, is one of its few loanwords to English). The young are lean and supple from hours spent working on the sea, or from tending the taro. Hiva Oa's bodies resemble those of North Americans as much as you might suppose from the similarity in diet. Fried cornmeal snacks and canned luncheon meat line the shelves of the Épicerie Gaugin. In the aforementioned thatched roof bars, grilled hotdogs are consumed by the plateful by young Frenchmen far from Bordeaux and Avignon. And they are joined in their bingeing by the jiggly young men and women of Hiva Oa, all of whom, it seems, own a motorcycle for the two mile commute from one end of town to the other.
During my last visit, I docked my sailboat in Atuona, finished my inclearance at the gendarmerie, and went to a bar with my friend. Drinking beside the French soldiers were men and women from the other sailboats anchored in the harbour. The sailors were pink, obnoxious and puffed up, impressed with their own resilience and seamanship. These small vessel voyagers espouse a single idea: self-sufficiency. Open ocean voyaging provides the purest test of that quality. Eric, a fiftysomething single-hander—a term with more than strictly nautical implications—told a story about a woman he met in Ecuador. He tried to talk her into joining him. "Thank God she didn't," he concluded. "I was becalmed for three weeks between the Galapagos and here. She would have gone cra-zee."
Although the men in the grassy bar were no compelling advertisement for self-sufficiency, the ideal possesses a potent allure for urbanites. We all want to be steadfast, uncomplaining, resourceful. But five thousand years ago, cities were founded on the principle of specialization: I'll grow the barley, you beat the bronze. Everything about the pull of the city proceeds from this idea. The fewer practical skills one needs to cultivate, the more one can experiment with pursuits one holds dear. You can already see the effects of this thinking taking hold among the people of Hiva Oa, who can devote themselves to their internet access thanks to food-laden freighters from Papeete.
But limiting our competence to our profession, and perhaps a consuming hobby or two, renders a large part of the world bewildering—and few things incline someone more powerfully to immobility. Immobile bewilderment, accompanied by a beer fridge and the phone number of Pizza Pizza, is the picture of emasculated despair. So men like Eric put to sea. Or subscribe to survivalist magazines. Or learn to bow hunt. Or install photovoltaic panels on their roofs. It sounds preposterous—because it is. You might even call it another disease of affluence.
I left the bar and walked back to the harbour, where I telephoned my parents to tell them I had arrived safely. As I have at the beginning of nearly every ocean passage I've made, I invited my father to join me. I explained how my friend, Kevin, was flying home and told them I would single-hand to Raiatea, near Bora-Bora, where there is a boatyard I could store the Sea Mouse over cyclone season. I told my dad how the stembolt anchoring the bowplate and forestays had broken, again. "We were lucky," I added. "Just like eight years ago, it broke the day after a big blow."
"I thought you were going to reinforce it," he said.
"That's the first thing I'm going to get your advice on, when you come down here," I told him.
"Okay," he laughed. "Well, one of these times I just might."
My father is a study in real self-sufficiency. A farm boy from outside Grand Prairie, he has worked as a mechanical engineer designing swathers and combine headers most of his life. He can do anything: weld, work a metal lathe, build a house or a canoe, lay concrete and bricks, cut tile and fell trees. The first time I got back from the sea, I showed him the fitting around the troublesome bolt and he rolled his eyes. "Anyone could tell just by looking at it that it would concentrate the load…"
To my delight, my father actually flew to Hiva Oa. I picked him up at the airport and, on our drive back to Atuona harbor, we talked about diabetes among the Pacific Islanders. I told him that the world's highest prevalence was in Nauru, west of Samoa. Essentially one huge guano deposit, the island has been strip-mined until every vestige of the traditional fishing and taro economy vanished beneath seacans full of Spam, pornography, beer and television sets. Fifty percent of adults have frank diabetes. Among the oldest, an incredible 78 percent. This in a people who, prior to World War II, were lithe fishermen and farmers among whom the disease was unknown. Rule number one: don't sell your island out from underneath your own feet.
The same process is underway across the Pacific, where the most acculturated islands have the highest rates of obesity, metabolic syndrome and diabetes. In 2001 I worked in Saipan, which is American soil in the Northern Marianas. The indigenous Chamorro, numbering just over sixty-two thousand, were in an awful state. The dialysis population, all of whose kidneys had failed due to diabetes, was growing at 18 percent per year—doubling every three and half years. The miracle of compound interest would have half the population on dialysis within a generation or two. (The other half, presumably, would find thriving careers as nephrologists.) These are the same people Spaniards described as swimming through the ocean like seals to meet their ships, climbing aboard glistening and smiling. Here, and in narratives by other European Pacific explorers, we see a people defined by their incredible capacity for movement—in this instance, through the sea.
The Polynesians were the first to explore this ocean, using great sailing canoes in an explosion of discovery beginning about fifteen hundred years ago. After settling in Fiji for several millennia, the Polynesians' eastward expansion through the Pacific happened over the course of a few long lifetimes—and unknowable numbers of failed attempts. They settled the Marquesas, Hawaii, Tahiti, the Cooks, Easter Island and New Zealand. There was a regular trade route, as well, between the Marquesas and Hawaii, a three-thousand-mile distance—this was five hundred years before the Europeans would attempt the 1,700-mile passage to America. Finding Hawaii in the first place was a task many magnitudes more difficult than sailing from Europe and running into something hard. Collectively, it was the greatest feat of ocean exploration ever undertaken, and was done without compasses, paper charts or metal fastenings. All to windward.
The only boats here now are long Korean and Japanese liners, all after tuna. Streaked with rust, and searching incessantly for the dwindling stocks of marketable fish, these vessels avoid encounters with anyone else, and for the most part we only glimpse them on the horizon, headed away.
My father and I rowed out to the Sea Mouse in the stillness off Atuona Bay. I watched him survey my thirty-five-year-old vessel, and I winced a little at the various amateurish wiring jobs and repairs he noted. Together we examined the chart of French Polynesia. Eight days, we figured. The next morning at dawn we awoke, started her engine and pulled up the anchors. We found more wind than we had expected and soon we were surging forward on a broad reach, closing with the Tuomotos to port. Low pressure systems rolled through, dragging squalls with them.
CHURCHILL, MANITOBA sits as a boundary point between three cultures: the Cree of the boreal forest, the Dene of the taiga along the tree line, and the Inuit. The Northern Medical Unit of the University of Manitoba serves each of these communities. Of the three, the Cree are the most acculturated. Norway House, a Cree reserve, sits at the top of Lake Winnipeg, population ten thousand. Forty percent of adults have type two diabetes. Kids as young as nine have "adult onset"—obesity-related, type two diabetes. Twenty-two-year-olds are on dialysis. It is like nothing a southern Canadian could imagine. Urban liberals think that residential schools, smallpox and tuberculosis are shameful matters of history, but the worst of the disasters to befall the Cree is unfolding right now.
In Norway House, traditional food makes up a tiny part of the diet. There used to be a commercial fishery in Lake Winnipeg. It has collapsed. A few of the families still hunt moose in the autumn, but ten thousand people require much more food than the forest possesses, and mostly what the people here eat are Cheez Doodles and Pepsi. They are among the least expensive foodstuffs available. Milk is three dollars a litre. Bread, two dollars a loaf. Anything perishable is flown in and carries its air freight in the price. The pop and the chips are trucked in over the ice on winter roads and last all year. It is precisely the same circumstance that prevails on Hiva Oa, Nauru and Saipan.
The Dene, who acculturated after the Cree and before the Inuit, are a little less severely affected, but the numbers are still terrible. Lac Brochet sees diabetes rates of 15 percent, still three times that in the south, and climbing steadily. The Inuit, until recently, seemed immune to this process. In 1995, a population prevalence study showed only 0.3 percent of Inuit adults to have type two diabetes. But now, predictably, that number is rising precipitously.
One animal in particular helped slow the process for the Inuit: caribou. In the winter of 1994, I went to watch Eric Anautalik on a caribou hunt near Baker Lake, in what is now Nunavut. In the extreme cold, I rode in the qomatik behind the snowmobile. We were among the tuktu before I knew they were even close. When Eric shut off his engine, the caribou calmed visibly. The herd, which had parted to allow our entry, began to coalesce again, the animals nearest to us lifting their heads from the snow briefly before resuming their foraging. Eric unwrapped his rifle, a .222 Remington, and fed shells into its magazine. A very fat doe approached us. When she was fifty yards away, Eric worked the bolt and inserted a round into the chamber. He lifted the rifle to his shoulder and fired.
With the report of the rifle, the whole herd rippled in a succession of stutter steps, drawing away from the snowmobile ten, even twenty feet, before stopping to resume grazing. It seemed astonishing that they hadn't all scattered into the early afternoon twilight. For a moment, it appeared that Eric had missed. Then it became clear he had not.
The doe began hopping. She jumped back and forth between her forelegs and hind legs like a rodeo pony. She began coughing, hacking out a red plume that settled on the snow around her. Her forelegs buckled first and she lay down on the snow and then stopped moving.
Erik ran over to her. It is not possible to eviscerate a frozen carcass, so he moved very quickly, shedding his mittens as he cut her open from the throat to her hindquarters. When he pulled out the offal, a cloud of steam arose from the abdominal cavity. He tore the hide away from the body and breathed heavily as he stood and turned the body over. Erik cut away the legs beneath the knees and quartered the doe. As he was finishing, the crystals of frozen blood on the meat extended. The rind of ice surrounding each quarter made a grinding sound as his knife cut through. He stood panting over the meat, and then he tied it down on the qomatik.
Caribou are plentiful. This time of year, they provide the only colour and relief on the tundra: small dots of brown moving slowly against an otherwise relentlessly white background. Were the Inuit to turn their backs on these animals, they would be left with only the distractions of the Kablunauks: satellite televisions, movies, WWE wrestling, committees and professional sports teams. Diabetes is not the problem it is further south—yet—but everyone understands the direction things are going.
The children, in particular, are fatter every year. There is a school bus in Rankin Inlet now, for this community a mile across with no roads in or out. In December and January, when the days are so short and weather particularly severe, hardly anyone hunts. And though the caribou and char remain favoured foods, people are losing their taste for the more challenging flavours of seal and walrus and whale. The old men are appalled. The women, when they want to be particularly biting about their men, complain that "he doesn't even own a gun anymore."
The Thule Inuit culture burst out of Northern Alaska about the same time the Polynesians began their great voyages, around 900 CE, when the Medieval Warm Period began. With the warming, sea mammal populations in the Arctic exploded and the Thule, who had developed a sophisticated technology for hunting them, including the kayak and the toggle-headed harpoon, prospered. They spread eastward, displacing and absorbing the Dorset people who preceded them.
The Inuit arrived in Greenland about the same time as the Norse. When the Little Ice Age began, around 1350, and the Greenland Norse perished, the Inuit endured. The whale populations fell, and the Inuit retreated from the most northerly coasts of Greenland and Ellesmere Island, but they survived. The Norse needed summer to pasture their cattle, and every day they lost to the longer winter was catastrophic. For the Inuit, however, it just meant more days out on the floe edge, waiting for seals to surface to their air holes. Imagine a self-sufficiency like that.
THE POLYNESIANS, and especially the most acculturated among them—the Hawaiians—are attempting to recapture the most magnificent part of what they have lost: their voyaging tradition. In 1986, oceangoing canoes were built for the first time in one and a half centuries by a community of neotraditionalists in Hawaii. The effort extended beyond merely attempting to fashion sailing canoes that resembled those in the lithographs; the whole art of Polynesian navigation, which was the real miracle of those voyages, is being resuscitated.
The Polynesians did not have lodestones with which to make compasses, and their navigation system does not emphasize the stars, but the sea itself. The different wave patterns are studied and observed, as many, improbably, as fourteen simultaneously. The sophistication of the navigation is best appreciated in the bathtub. Set up a small wave train at one end of the tub by wiggling your finger. Now wiggle your finger at another end of the tub. Observe the interaction between the two sets of waves. Add a third system with another finger and try to discern each of the three wave patterns. This is already becoming formidably complex. Add a fourth, and a fifth. Keep going.
Navigating by wave train alone, the waves were best felt with the testicles; the navigator on each canoe had a special cabin he hunkered in. The idea, however, of making sense out of an interference pattern involving more than three or four wave systems is mind-boggling. The mathematical complexity of a fourteen-source interference pattern would appear more than can be held by any human brain. Or scrotum. And yet the historical record is clear about the existence of trading routes between Hiva Oa and Hawaii.
Thirteen years ago, in the course of my first South Pacific passage, I was in Rarotonga when the voyaging vakas arrived from Tahiti, a thousand miles to the east. After making landfall the Rarotongans seemed as energized as they were proud. The sailors off the canoes strutted around the island like Stanley Cup winners come home to rural Saskatchewan. Extensively and traditionally tattooed, they bulged and rippled as they sat in the cafes and told stories of their month at sea.
I couldn't take my eyes off them. My own acquaintance with the ocean presupposed the possession of a GPS and an engine. I could not even understand how they had gotten their unpowered craft through the pass in the reef. Were I to find myself engineless, through lack of fuel or maintenance proficiency, my response would be to head for a harbour without a fringing reef. Be that Vancouver Island or Hiva Oa, it would mean a pretty long hike.
ONE OF THE COMMON PITFALLS for clinicians who treat type two diabetes occurs when they prescribe metformin to young women. Metformin decreases insulin resistance, which helps reduce blood sugar. Insulin resistance is also what causes infertility in women with polycystic ovary syndrome, as well as type two diabetes. Often, women thought to be infertile become pregnant after taking metformin. Sometimes, of course, this delights them, but sometimes it does not. Contraception does not normally seem like one of the things diabetes doctors need to emphasize. But obesity commonly underlies infertility in women, just as it also causes the growth of facial hair. And, in men, the growth of breast tissue. Adipose tissue secretes estrogens and insulin resistance increases levels of androgens. Diabetes is overwhelmingly the most common cause of male impotence in the developed world. Men and women are designed to move, and when we do not, our immobility reduces us in every respect.
THE OLDEST of the bowhead whales in the Arctic Ocean have lived for two hundred years. We know this because when they are killed and examined today, we find ivory harpoon heads lodged in their skin. The implication is that they were large enough to be hunted prior to the arrival of the Hudson Bay Company and its steel harpoon heads in the 1830s. Isotopic analysis of the whales' eyes confirms the point: these whales were calves during the Napoleonic Wars. They are certainly the longest-lived mammals on the planet. Indeed, they may be the longest-lived complex animals of any sort.
The Canadian Inuit, with motives similar to those prompting the revival of the Polynesian voyaging tradition, have resurrected the Bowhead whale fishery. In 1998, the Inuit took a whale in Repulse Bay. That hunt was a catastrophe. A magnificent cow was killed, shot a hundred times by men with deer rifles, who ignored the plan to use a whaling gun. She sunk and was lost. Three days later she floated to the surface. She was pulled ashore, and part of her was cut up for muktuk, but mostly she just rotted. The shame in the community afterwards was thick.
In 2006, there was another hunt. This time the Inuit used a large calibre Norwegian exploding bullet to kill the whale. They pulled it back to town efficiently and distributed its muktuk throughout the Canadian Arctic. Everyone was very proud. In 1807, when the whale might have been a calf, the Ottoman Empire had another 111 years to live—that is, half this animal's lifespan.
In Inuit mythos, the Thule people were preceded by men of enormous strength, the Tuniit, who built rock houses, stacking enormous boulders one upon the other. These stories might evoke a historical memory of the Dorset people, who were supplanted by the Thule Inuit in the course of their expansion, and who lived in cold stone homes and skin tents instead of the igloo. The descriptions in these tales emphasize the power and endurance of the vanished Tuniit, and there is a melancholy to the tales, grief for these legendary, better people. Every generation sees itself as a decadent, diminished version of its predecessors. What is different is the extent to which we actually are.
See the rest of Issue 35 (Spring 2010).
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Farm equipment covers an extensive range of equipment engaged at several stages of agriculture such as land development, sowing, planting, cultivation, harvesting, and threshing. The range varies from simplest tools such as hand trowel to fertilizers, plow, harrow, fertilizer spreader, seeder and high-end engineered tractors. The World Bank has estimated that the demand for food will upsurge by 70% by 2050 and $80 billion annual investment will be required to meet the objectives. Such alarming ultimatum calls for efficient farming techniques and hence advanced farm equipment are the catch and have the potential to divert mandatory investments into its own pocket.
As per the market outlook foreseen by a recent IndustryARC business intelligence report, the farm equipment market size ranges from $170 billion to $175 billion and is forecast to grow at a global CAGR of around 6% going through 2025. Farm equipment are a global phenomenon but APAC is the fastest growing regional market with a global CAGR of 40% - 45% which is mainly attributed to the impeccable agricultural lands and market of India and China. FICCI (Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry) stated that Indian agriculture sector contributes approximately 14% to India's GDP. And Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development revealed that China has 21% of global population in its territory along with 9% of universal arable land.
Farm equipment market in this report has been segmented into different phases accumulating the over-all agricultural production from land development to harvesting and threshing. The agricultural equipment involved at different stages are tractors, fertilizing, plant protection equipment, harvesting equipment, irrigation equipment, hay and forage equipment, crop processing equipment, seeding equipment, grain handling equipment, cutters, shredders and sprayers. As of 2018, irrigation machinery leads the application segment covering nearly 10% of the entire global farm equipment marketplace owing to harsh topography and weather conditions prevailing in majority of developing countries constituting a major chunk of global population dependent on agriculture. Efficient irrigation facilities empower the agro-economy by contravention of constraints such as deficient water supply. Drip irrigation systems save water and nutrients by enabling water to drip slowly to the roots of the plants and minimize evaporation. A classic example can be derived from a World Bank data which states that the Peru Sierra Irrigation Subsector Project made a substantial impact in increasing agricultural production and productivity ranging between 118 percent and 170 percent in targeted areas of the Peruvian Sierra.
Farm Equipment market is not solely dependent on the agricultural industry. Some of the other factors indirectly but positively influencing the market are financing equipment such as agriculture finance and agriculture insurance initiated by governmental and non-governmental organizations. The World Bank Group is a leading global financier of agriculture, with $6.8 billion in new IBRD/IDA commitments in 2018.
In the recent years, the world has witnessed unprecedented demand from the robustly growing F&B sector owing to rapidly increasing world population. Traditional farming techniques are time consuming and less economical in terms of labor costs, and global reduction in farming lands further adds to the dilemma. To combat and deliver under such crucial circumstances, employment of farm equipment by agricultural sector is inevitable. For example- The World Bank preceding statistics reveals that an outstanding 25,054,140 tractors were already globally employed as of January 2019 and with the advent of machineries practices in agro sector along with improved financial aids, the deployment is going to be at a more dynamic scale affecting the global farm equipment market.
Two of the major challenges surfacing this flourishing and imperative domain are financial aspects such as capital and rate of interest and unskilled agronomic man force. But it is also to be noted that the financial aspects are being slowly countered by various organizations and bodies providing low-interest loans, zero to low-interest credits, and grants to developing countries for agricultural operations. To skill the agronomic man force for utility of farm equipment which will automatically consequence in efficient production, various countries has come up with machineries institutes and e-farming portals. A sheer example from the often recalled as land of agriculture, India, is the Central Farm Machinery Training & Testing Institute, Budni (M.P.).
Some of the key players mentioned in the report are AGCO, John Deere, CLAAS, Massey Ferguson, Argo Group, Mahindra and Mahindra, Hunter Industries, Toro Corp., Jain Irrigation, Bucher Industries, CNH Industrial, Kvernerland Group, SDF Group, Kubota, Lindsay Corp.
John Deere, an American giant commemorated the production of its 5,000th Forestry Swing Machine, a 2656G Log Loader in January 2019. The company was among the first to introduce electric drive technology in off-highway equipment and their 644K and 944K Hybrid Wheel Loaders have collectively logged more than 1 million operating hours in the field.
The Irish Farm Tractor & Machinery Trade Association hosted the biggest ever 'The FTMTA Farm Machinery Show,' on February 7th, 8th and 9th 2019. 160 national and international machineries manufacturers and distributors were stationed to meet their potential customers and take the farm equipment market ahead of the curve.
AGCO, which comprises Massey Ferguson, Fendt, Valtra and other farm machinery brand-names, accounted for revenues approaching $10 billion in 2018. AGCO merging with Fendt, has embarked upon several milestones. A recent example is towed plant protection sprayer, Fendt Rogator 300, and the self-driving Fendt Rogator 600 marking their sale of 100 units. AGCO Corporation received seven AE50 Awards from the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers (ASABE) in 2019 and AGCO/Fendt wins the AE50 Award in US for best new Fendt IDEAL large combine.
The base year of the study is 2018, with forecast done up to 2025. The study presents a thorough analysis of the competitive landscape, taking into account the market shares of the leading companies. It also provides information on unit shipments. These provide the key market participants with the necessary business intelligence and help them understand the future of the farm equipment market. The assessment includes the forecast, an overview of the competitive structure, the market shares of the competitors, as well as the market trends, market demands, market drivers, market challenges, and product analysis. The market drivers and restraints have been assessed to fathom their impact over the forecast period. This report further identifies the key opportunities for growth while also detailing the key challenges and possible threats. The key areas of focus include the types of equipment in the farm equipment market, and their specific applications in different phases of agricultural production.
By Application- Agri Equipment, Construction Equipment, Chemical Applications, Financing Equipment, Material Handling Equipment, Snow Removal Equipment, Property Maintenance Equipment.
By Agricultural Phase- Land Development, Sowing, Planting, Cultivation, Harvesting, and Threshing.
15.9. Daedong Industrial Company Ltd.


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Flight of the Conchords star Bret McKenzie returns home to guest curate New Zealand Festival
National treasure Bret McKenzie is back on our shores to guest curate the New Zealand Festival.
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It's just been announced he'll co-curate the New Zealand Festival in Wellington. Source: Seven Sharp
The Flight of the Conchords star told TVNZ1's Seven Sharp today that he would be looking to get people out in Wellington.
"I'm choosing shows for next year's arts festival," he said. "I want to get some shows that get people outdoors, get families out and about in Wellington, a couple of shows that connect New Zealand artists with overseas artists.
"That's the idea, but we're actually figuring out the programme."
The former Black Seeds member also revealed that the Oscar he won in 2012 for the song Man or Muppet is stored on his piano, which he acknowledged is maybe a little intimidating for his kids as they learn the instrument.
Jemaine and Bret had invited themselves to the PM's place for dinner, but she went one better. Source: 1 NEWS
"The Oscar lives on the piano at the moment, it's quite good, if I'm writing a song, I can look up and think is it [the song] good enough?
"And then keep working on the song, I have another piano I work on when I don't want the pressure.
Flight of the Conchords star Bret McKenzie will be performing alongside Big Bird and his friends in Wellington. Source: Seven Sharp
"I hadn't really thought about it but the kids practise on that piano with an Oscar above them, maybe I should move it," a laughing McKenzie said.
"My son asked me the other day if I'd sell it [the Oscar]. I was like, 'Yeah, I probably won't sell it, I don't think'."
Crusaders flag positional switch for Jack Goodhue for Super Rugby Round 1
Listen: Pearl Jam release first single off first album in seven years
Wellington's Kerr sisters ready to shine for White Ferns
Will Smith surprises passengers by posing as a Lyft driver in Miami
Original Yellow Wiggle Greg Page discharged from hospital after on-stage cardiac arrest
© TVNZ Thu Jan 23 04:25:16 NZDT 2020


The number of antisemitic hate incidents reported in the UK have reached a record high, new figures show.
Data gathered by the Community Security Trust (CST) shows Jewish people, organisations or property were targeted at a rate of more than four times a day in 2018.
In total, 1,652 antisemitic incidents were reported by the monitoring body, an increase of 16 per cent compared with 2017, with around 100 antisemitic incidents taking place every month in 2018.
The 2018 figures are the highest logged in a single calendar year by the CST, which has been recording the data since 1984.
The CST defines an antisemitic incident as any malicious act aimed at Jewish people, organisations or property, which shows evidence of antisemitic motivation, language or targeting.
Examples include verbal abuse, hate mail, anti-Semitic graffiti on non-Jewish property and antisemitic content on social media.
The most common single type of incident involved verbal abuse randomly directed at Jewish people in public, according to the report.
Home Secretary Sajid Javid has said that acts of antisemitism are "utterly despicable".
He added: "The Jewish community should not have to tolerate these attacks and we are doing all we can to rid society of these poisonous views."


She should be in the kitchen. She should know how to cook. She should be a little more ladylike and not so much like a tomboy. She should have long nails that show her femininity. She should be graceful in the way she sits. She should walk and not run. She should have long hair. She should be quiet in her demeanor and not too loud. She shouldn't be playing those rough sports. She should be cleaning the house and not reading a book. She should have shoes on and not walk around with bare feet. She should wear dresses and not pants. She should… She should… She should….
These are just some of the comments I heard growing up.
Comments from people who thought they had the right to tell my mom what I should do and how I should behave.
People who also tried to make me believe that because I was a girl I had gender traits to follow.
People who allowed gender specific social norms to influence their beliefs and behavior and hence wanted to impose those beliefs on me.
People who didn't have it together yet went out of their way to make sure I did but on their terms.
As I look back, yes, there were moments I did follow some of those opinions and I wish I hadn't because there was always a part of me that knew I was not created to be confined by comments, opinions and assumptions of who others think I should be but who God envisions me to be.
I should be loving and compassionate. I should be kind. I should treat people with respect, the same way I want to be treated. I should value people. I should spend time getting to know people and listen to their story. I should stand up against discrimination. I should speak up against injustice. I should protect the defenseless. I should be positive and encouraging. I should do what Jesus would do not what someone else thinks I should do based on their beliefs my gender is supposed to do.
What matters is who you are as a person not what society or culture thinks you should do or be based on your gender.
You only have one life. Live your life based on Jesus' example and ignore the naysayers, by being the most loving and kind person you can be.


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BV school board meets with state audit panel
By Samantha Jones, ccnnews@cox-internet.com
The Berryville School Board met with the Arkansas Legislative Joint Auditing Committee's Subcommittee on Educational Institutions on Thursday, Sept. 17 in Little Rock.
Superintendent Phil Clark said the meeting went well, saying it lasted only 15 minutes.
"I had a handout and gave it to all the members as to what we are doing and what we still have planned to do, and there was very little discussion," Clark said.
The handout lists ways the district plans to address financial accounting needs. These needs, Clark said, came about because of accounting errors.
"I'm trying to fix our accounting procedures. It's not anything about money or loss of funds or anything. It's a process needing to be fixed," Clark said.
To fix this process, Clark said he has asked assistant superintendent Teresa Ragsdale for help. The handout explains that Ragsdale has already established protocol for the use of district credit cards and purchasing by concessions, athletics and family and consumer science. No credit card payment will be issued if an invoice can be sent and paid with a check, the handout says.
The handout adds that Ragsdale has begun training building administrators in coding and the use of federal categorical funds, saying Clark now requires monthly bank statements to be submitted to the upper administration.
The district's to-do list, the handout continues, includes conducting random checks on revenue and expenditure entries, monitoring the district budget and requiring each member of the finance department to set goals for the year.
Clark said the school board has been open to the changes after his meeting with the subcommittee on May 7.
At that meeting, Clark appeared before the subcommittee after an independent audit of the school district's finances for the 2013-2014 school year resulted in a finding of problems with the district's internal financial controls. These findings revealed that the district did not properly record accounts payable in the operating fund, special revenue fund, building fund and fiduciary fund amounting to $151,000.
"I've got a good board. They've listened. They've done well. I think they have a better understanding now of what I've tried to do and what I'm still trying to do," Clark said.


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» Wednesday, May 19, 2004
Prime Minister/US Relations
« Iraq | Back to most recent briefing | Iraq »
Asked if he was aware of comments made by the Deputy Prime Minister in his interview with the Times on Saturday reportedly criticising the Prime Minister for his closeness to President Bush, which had then been removed after appearing in the first edition, the PMOS said that he was not aware of anything other than what had appeared in the paper. The Deputy Prime Minister had dealt with these matters at the weekend. He had nothing further to add. Asked why the comments had not made it into the second edition of the paper, the PMOS said that he was not an executive of the Times newspaper. Asked if there was a danger of the Government being condemned in the long term for its relationship with the US Administration, the PMOS said that the Prime Minister's position vis-\xE0-vis President Bush had been oft stated. Nothing had changed. Asked if the Prime Minister was embarrassed that his deputy had reportedly been casting aspersions on his relationship with President Bush, the PMOS said that he had no intention of commenting on reported remarks which the Times itself had appeared not to follow through. Asked if he was suggesting that the quotes had never been uttered in the first place, the PMOS said that he would leave it to the Deputy Prime Minister's Office to respond to issues relating to the Deputy Prime Minister.
Asked if the Prime Minister had been given advance notice of the comments the Chancellor had made in a speech to the Social Market Foundation last night, the PMOS said that the Prime Minister and the Chancellor spoke on a daily basis, as you would expect. It wasn't our policy to brief on private conversations.
Briefing took place at 11:00 | Search for related news
Shree Hindu Community Centre
Incorporating
Shree Laxmi Narayan Mandir
541a Warwick Road, Tyseley, Birmingham, B11 2JP
email: admin@shcc.org.uk
Representing the Hindu Community in South Birmingham
Shree Hindu Community Centre is appalled to see the terrorist attacks yesterday on the London transport system and condemn, in the strictest terms, the ghastly and inhuman attack on the innocent public and human dignity.
We commend the quick and planned rescue and safety operations undertaken by the Police and all the emergency services, and the general public for showing the restraint and resilience and resuming normal life.
We extend our most profound condolences to the relatives of the deceased and heartfelt sympathies to the injured and wish them speedy recovery.
In our daily service, we will dedicate special prayers for the deceased and for courage for their family to bear the sad and unnecessary loss of life.
Hindus, being a peaceful society, urges all communities to work together to heal the wounds and scars of horrible atrocity, and we strongly urge all to support authorities in their steadfast pursue of perpetrators.
Mahendra Dabh, MSc, FRSA
541a Warwick Road,
Tyseley,
B11 2JP
Comment by Mahendra Dabhi — 8 Jul 2005 on 3:33 pm | Link


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