The melting ice acts as a slow, continuous flush.
Ice cools the air around the urinal. Cool air sinks, which serves to contain the smell.
Cold discourages drain flies.
Fun to melt, helps users aim better, compensates for poor male sanitary habits.
In 2005, former Assistant Secretary of Education Diane Ravitch wrote, "We should thank President George W. Bush and Congress for passing the No Child Left Behind Act ... All this attention and focus is paying off for younger students, who are reading and solving mathematics problems better than their parents' generation."
Four years later, Ravitch has changed her mind.
"I was known as a conservative advocate of many of these policies," Ravitch says. "But I've looked at the evidence and I've concluded they're wrong. They've put us on the wrong track. I feel passionately about the improvement of public education and I don't think any of this is going to improve public education."
She says one of her biggest concerns is the way the law requires school districts to use standardized testing.
Emphasis On Test Scores Led To Cheating, Dishonesty
"The basic strategy is measuring and punishing," Ravitch says of No Child Left Behind. "And it turns out as a result of putting so much emphasis on the test scores, there's a lot of cheating going on, there's a lot of gaming the system. Instead of raising standards it's actually lowered standards because many states have 'dumbed down' their tests or changed the scoring of their tests to say that more kids are passing than actually are."
Some states contend that 80 to 90 percent of their children are proficient readers and have math proficiency as well, Ravitch notes. But in the same states, only 25 to 30 of the children test at a proficient level on national tests such as the National Assessment of Educational Progress.
'There Should Not Be An Education Marketplace'
Part of the reason schools were so intent on achieving high tests scores was because they were competing with other schools for resources, which were often doled out on that basis alone.
Ravitch is critical of the impact this had on schools.
"There should not be an education marketplace, there should not be competition," Ravitch says. "Schools operate fundamentally — or should operate — like families. The fundamental principle by which education proceeds is collaboration. Teachers are supposed to share what works; schools are supposed to get together and talk about what's [been successful] for them. They're not supposed to hide their trade secrets and have a survival of the fittest competition with the school down the block."
SprintCam v3 NAB 2009 showreel from David Coiffier on Vimeo.
I'm not much of a photo geek, but I would like to figure out how I can see my golf swing slowed down and analyzed with such a tool.
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Tiger Woods was my boyfriend for a year and a half while we were both undergraduates at Stanford. I've never spoken to the press about him; I'm not coming forward now for money or to advance any pathetic showbiz aspirations, but merely to stick up for a friend....He was so human and cared so much about other people and the world around him. This may surprise some people, but Tiger was a great boyfriend.
Our relationship ended when Tiger turned pro after his sophomore year. Becoming the first person in my family to earn a college degree was so important to me that I wasn’t willing to give up my studies to follow him. Like everyone else, I was shocked by the revelations about his infidelities. The Tiger I knew was loyal, devoted and self-?controlled. I’m not naive, but I can say with certainty that he was faithful during the time we dated. The speculation that he's being treated for sex addiction is surprising because we enjoyed a normal sexual relationship.
We were born to run, but maybe not with shoes.
New research led by Harvard scientists shows that people who run barefoot or with minimal shoes -- as people have done for millions of years -- often land on their feet in a way that avoids a jarring impact.
Bare feet slamming down on all kinds of terrain without cushioned soles or arch support may seem like it would be hard on the body. But the new work, published online today in the scientific journal Nature, finds that the way the majority of people run in shoes -- striking heel first -- is not gentle at all.
"It's as if every time you land on the ground, someone hits you on the heel with a hammer," said Daniel E. Lieberman, a professor of human evolutionary biology at Harvard University, who studies the biomechanics of running in the lab -- and himself runs with minimal or no shoes. "It's an amazing thing. Running barefoot can be less impactful."
Instead of striking heel-first, barefoot runners tend to land on the ball or middle of their foot. Researchers need to do followup studies to test whether less impact translates into fewer injuries, but the new finding may become yet another example of the way in which evolution has made humans ill-equipped to handle some of the luxuries of modern life. Millions of years of evolution created humans best adapted to an environment lacking recent inventions such as desk jobs, video games, abundant processed foods, and -- perhaps -- the modern running shoe.
"Today's mobile phones are as powerful as many desktop PCs - more so, if you consider that they're also location-aware and have a built-in billing and payment system," said Lisa Allen, a board director of Mobile Monday Mid-Atlantic, the local chapter of a global group that aims to foster education and networking among the mobile-development crowd.
"We're seeing people run their entire lives, even their entire businesses, from their mobile phones," she said.
The installation of cell phone antennas in church steeples is not unusual. Next door in Hingham, three churches in the downtown area have installed cell antennas in their steeples in recent years: First Baptist Church, Hingham Congregational Church and New North Church.
The gentleman seated next to me greeted me with a blunt warning that he was an atheist. I looked at him for a moment - graying temples, a wise expression, handsomely attired - the very image of a community leader. I told him I was glad to sit next to him because "I've never really met an atheist."
As his eyebrows arched, I explained, "An atheist believes the existence of God can be disproved. So please, tell me how you've done that."
He looked momentarily uncomfortable. "Well, perhaps I should say I'm an agnostic."
"When did you give up studying about God?" I asked.
Now his neck began to redden. He admitted he'd really never tried.
"But an agnostic is one who says he doesn't think God can be known, and you can only be an agnostic if you've tried to know Him and exhausted the search." I'm not sure even now what made me so bold, but I added, "So I would say that while you appear to be a very educated person, you've made and unsupportable statement."
Not surprisingly, he was offended and rather quiet for the rest of the evening.
Some weeks later I received a copy of the editorial page of the state's largest newspaper. It turned out my dinner companion was the publisher. His lead editorial was an explanation of how my visit had affected his view of life, how religion was indeed an important element of all our lives and something we needed to pursue. What struck the publisher was that his own point of view proved unsupportable. (p36-37)
My boyhood friends turn detractors. They try to take me down with logic borrowed from their church of success. "What are you going to do when you're old and your knees are shot? Are you saving for retirement?" I laugh at them, the laugh of the cornered villain who knows his escape. I will succeed because I must. Their slings and arrows are excuses for their failure to commit to an unmapped future.
Their born-again indoctrination makes them blind to the benefits of process. I trade stock in the future for cash in hand. I equal their fervor in my admonitions that their notions of success are meaningless. I charge that they are motivated by expectations that are not their own; busy with empty dramas that belong only to them. (p63)
We return to camp and that night I prepare a last supper; rotelli pasta heavy with reindeer sausage and dehydrated tomatoes. For dessert I want to provide something bitter to go with the sweet mugs of cocoa. So I read out loud from Yukio Mishima's 'Sun and Steel':
"Pain, I came to feel, might well prove to the be the sole proof of the persistence of consciousness within the flesh, the sole physical expression of consciousness. As my body acquired muscle, and in turn strength, there was gradually born within me the tendency towards positive acceptance of pain, and my interest in physical suffering deepened."
Mishima committed seppuku, ritual suicide, the same year he wrote that. In two sentences he had described our need to climb without knowing the context. We were here to prove the existence of our consciousness.
At 25, when I wed Anne on a rainy November day, I believed true love to be self-sustaining. I don't understand why my thesis failed, but staring at 4,000 feet of black limestone reminds me that these mountains may be my solace and my curse. Purpose has its price, but it wasn't just the time apart; I've always needed that. In the last six months, I realized that with Anne I am no longer capable of the intimacy I seek. Our failure to communicate our needs to one another buried us under years of resentment and judgment. I know from climbing, that a deep connection between people is possible and that is what I want in a relationship. (p 196)
An hour before sunset, two exhausted men descend from the summit of Nanga Parbat. It should be deeply frightening to gaze over the Rupal Face at dusk - and it is. Perhaps nowhere on earth are you so far away from life. In the dark, fear and pain seem more appropriate. Home and love are just flickers of my imagination in the hollow darkness.
In that moment, I understand that on the outer edge of infinity lies nothingness, that in the instant I achieve my objective, and discover my true self, both are lost. (p 244)
I crave evidence of existence. Yukio Mishima wrote that although the core of the apple exists, you cannot see it from the outside. The only way to prove the core's existence is to cut the apple open. When the apple, or the body, bleeds, and dies the existence of the core is confirmed. I have cut open this metaphorical apple on a thousand climbs. I have seen beauty, have wept with joy; I have been astonished, and been horrified to the core.
Climbing is not an attempt to transcend gravity or death for it is these intractable forces that actually create the endeavors. Without gravity, climbing would not exist; without death, what matters life?
I take the lead as clouds rise from the valley. The rock climbing is over. We sprint for the top, simulclimbing ice until eventually we emerge from the north face onto the northeast ridge. I belay Vince in hovering cloud. We're in heaven: a land of mountains and ridges, sculpted by wind and snow, a paradise devoid of any souls but our own.
We lift ourselves on the heights, sometimes leaving bereft families in the wake. For what? They did not, cannot, live this indescribable experience.
Witnessing death is horrific. Does my panic stem from the loss of a friend or from the foreshadowing of my own demise? Or is my terror derived of Mishima's apple; his proof of existence? Facing mortality my actions carry weight, my words heft, my life meaning. (p 263)
Jeanne and I have been together for three years and we've had many ups and downs. I am willing, even driven, to take all the time and energy necessary to climb, but an unable, or unwilling, to dedicate the same to a partner or wife. It's convenient to cast aside love before a trip; I climb lighter without the tether of commitment. (p 264)
These stories are not fairy tales. They are the thoughts and actions of a fallible person and my very human partners. Do not mistakenly assume that these exalt courage, bravery, skill, or intelligence. Though these qualities bear some part, so do fear, inadequacy, and compromise. Within alpinism's narrow framework we seek transcendence and relentlessly pursue what remains hidden from us on flat ground: our true selves.
We should not be blamed for thinking our undertakings beautiful and grand, for they are. Meaning is born from struggle, and each of us has our own unique battle. My truths are not universal, which is one reason why they are so difficult to express. My ice axe may be your paint brush.
Here's what's going on. People who are underwater are getting contacted by *investors* who tell the homeowners that they can get a bid on their home for them within a month. What homeowner wouldn't be interested in that? A month later, they come up with a bid that's *significantly below market value*.
Then, they take that bid to the bank and the lender mysteriously approves the sale.
