SURREY (UK) ? A Zimbabwean born nurse is on the run after being caught on CCTV beating up his girlfriend. Malvern Kurehwa (38) is being sought by Surrey Police for a separate matter and it is believed he has fled to Zimbabwe.
Police make an arrest in the UK
Kurehwa, from Rosehill, had pleaded guilty to battery of his girlfriend at Sutton Magistrates Court on October 20, 2009 and was ordered to pay a fine of ?230. As a result of the sentence, Kurehwa was told by the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) his fitness to practice as a mental health nurse was compromised.
He was due to face the NMC on December 14 to hear the panel determine his future, but he failed to show up. He informed the panel in October this year that he was raising funds for a flight in order to attend the hearing. A panel decided in his absence that he should be struck off the nursing register.
The panel concluded that ?there is a real, current need for public protection in this case?. At the hearing at the International Dispute Resolutions Centre on Fleet Street, Central London, the panel heard about the incident which gave rise to his conviction.
On October 18, 2009, Kurehwa had called police from a phonebox in Rosehill claiming he was being attacked by his girlfriend.
However, CCTV footage in fact showed him punching his girlfriend in the head at least four times whilst holding her around her neck before dragging her to the floor and pushing her across the road.
A report of the NMC hearing said: ?In considering Kurehwa?s fitness to practise, the panel reminded itself of its duty to protect patients and its wider duty to protect the public interest which includes the declaring and upholding of proper standards of conduct and behaviour.
?The panel considered that Kurehwa?s actions are fundamentally incompatible with remaining on the register.?
Meanwhile, a Zimbabwean woman has admitted having false documentation, which allowed her to work as a nurse with Scotland?s largest health board. Asylum seeker Doreen Mutasa (31), was refused leave to stay in the United Kingdom in 2004 but was granted a temporary stay in 2010 on condition that she did not work.
The UK Border Agency later discovered that the Zimbabwean national had been using a false UK residence permit. Mustasa worked with NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde from 2008 until 2012.?Surrey Comet/BBC
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FILE - In this March 7, 2008 file photo an ultra-orthodox Jewish youth peers through a bullet-riddled glass door before the funeral of eight yeshiva students killed in a shooting attack at the Mercaz Harav Yeshiva in Jerusalem. America's top gun lobbyist has his facts wrong when he holds up Israel's stationing of armed guards at all schools as a model of how to avoid another massacre like the Dec. 14, 2012 slaughter of 20 first-graders and six adults at a Connecticut elementary school. What's more, the gun laws in Israel, a country where most people serve in the military, are far more onerous than those in the U.S., containing restrictions that would be anathema to the National Rifle Association and its members. (AP Photo/Kevin Frayer, File)
FILE - In this March 7, 2008 file photo an ultra-orthodox Jewish youth peers through a bullet-riddled glass door before the funeral of eight yeshiva students killed in a shooting attack at the Mercaz Harav Yeshiva in Jerusalem. America's top gun lobbyist has his facts wrong when he holds up Israel's stationing of armed guards at all schools as a model of how to avoid another massacre like the Dec. 14, 2012 slaughter of 20 first-graders and six adults at a Connecticut elementary school. What's more, the gun laws in Israel, a country where most people serve in the military, are far more onerous than those in the U.S., containing restrictions that would be anathema to the National Rifle Association and its members. (AP Photo/Kevin Frayer, File)
JERUSALEM (AP) ? Israel's policy on issuing guns is restrictive, and armed guards at its schools are meant to stop terrorists, not crazed or disgruntled gunmen, experts said Monday, rejecting claims by America's top gun lobby that Israel serves as proof for its philosophy that the U.S. needs more weapons, not fewer.
Far from the image of a heavily armed population where ordinary people have their own arsenals to repel attackers, Israel allows its people to acquire firearms only if they can prove their professions or places of residence put them in danger. The country relies on its security services, not armed citizens, to prevent terror attacks.
Though military service in Israel is compulsory, routine familiarity with weapons does not carry over into civilian life. Israel has far fewer private weapons per capita than the U.S., and while there have been gangster shootouts on the streets from time to time, gun rampages outside the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are unheard of.
The National Rifle Association responded to the Dec. 14 killing of 20 first-graders and six adults at a Connecticut elementary school by resisting calls for tighter gun control and calling for armed guards and police at schools. On Sunday, the lobby's chief executive, Wayne LaPierre, invoked his perception of the Israeli school security system to back his proposal.
"Israel had a whole lot of school shootings until they did one thing: They said, 'We're going to stop it,' and they put armed security in every school and they have not had a problem since then," LaPierre said on the NBC News show "Meet the Press."
Israel never had "a whole lot of school shootings." Authorities could only recall two in the past four decades.
In 1974, 22 children and three adults were killed in a Palestinian attack on an elementary school in Maalot, near the border with Lebanon. The attackers' goal was to take the children hostage and trade them for imprisoned militants.
In 2008, another Palestinian assailant killed eight young people, most of them teens, at a nighttime study session at a Jewish religious seminary in Jerusalem. An off-duty soldier who happened to be in the area killed the attacker with his personal firearm.
Israel didn't mandate armed guards at the entrances to all schools until 1995, the Education Ministry said ? more than two decades after the Maalot attack and two years after a Palestinian militant wounded five pupils and their principal in a knifing at a Jerusalem school.
Israel's lightly armed school guards are not the first or the last line of defense. They are backed up by special police forces on motorcycles that can be on the scene within minutes ? again bringing out the main, but not the only, difference between the two systems.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor spelled it out.
"We're fighting terrorism, which comes under very specific geopolitical and military circumstances. This is not something that compares with the situation in the U.S," Palmor said.
Because it is aimed at preventing terror attacks, Israel's school security system is part of a multi-layered defense strategy that focuses on prevention and doesn't depend on a guy at a gate with a gun.
Intelligence gathering inside Palestinian territories, a large military force inside the West Bank and a barrier of towering concrete slabs and electronic fencing along and inside the West Bank provide the first line of defense.
Guards are stationed not just at schools, but at many other public facilities, including bus and train stations, parking lots, malls and restaurants.
"There are other measures of prevention of an attack taking place, which are carried out 24 hours a day, seven days a week, all over the country," police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said. Many are not for public knowledge.
Gun lobbyists who might think Israel hands out guns freely to keep its citizens safe might be less enamored of Israel's actual gun laws, which are much stricter than those in the U.S. For one thing, notes Yakov Amit, head of the firearms licensing department at the Ministry of Public Security, Israeli law does not guarantee the right to bear arms as the U.S. Constitution does.
"The policy in Israel is restrictive," he said.
Gun licensing to private citizens is limited largely to people who are deemed to need a firearm because they work or live in dangerous areas, Amit said. West Bank settlers, for instance, can apply for weapons licenses, as can residents of communities on the borders with Lebanon and the Gaza Strip. Licensing requires multiple levels of screening, and permits must be renewed every three years. Renewal is not automatic.
The policy is designed "to strike a balance between needs and risks," Amit said. "We know that weapons are a dangerous thing, and in the hands of someone who isn't trained or isn't reliable, it causes problems."
The gap between Israeli gun ownership and U.S. gun ownership is consequently staggering. A total of 170,000 guns are licensed for private use in Israel, or about one gun for every 30 adults.
In addition to the privately held weapons, 130,000 guns are licensed to Israeli security companies, firing ranges, government ministries and companies that operate in areas deemed dangerous. Soldiers who carry assault rifles off base during their regular or reserves service turn them in when they complete their tours of duty.
By contrast, U.S. authorities estimate that at least one-third of all American households have firearms ? and in many cases, not only one.
Americans are also much freer to choose what type of guns they buy. Automatic weapons of the type Lanza used to gun down his victims are banned for private ownership in Israel. It is also rare for a person to be authorized to own more than one firearm, Amit said.
Eighty percent of the 10,000 people who apply yearly for licenses are turned down, he said. In the U.S., people can purchase firearms from private dealers without a background check or a license of any kind.
In Israel, applicants must undergo police screening and medical exams, in part to determine their mental state, Amit said.
Many Israelis receive weapons training in the military. But to be licensed to receive a weapon outside the military, they must undergo at least two hours of additional training, then repeat the training and medical exams every three years before they can renew their licenses.
Anybody who possesses a legally acquired gun waives the right to confidentiality, and authorities cross-reference for new information about the gunholder every three months.
"The point is not to complicate, but to make sure the system makes things safer," Amit said.
Former Vatican butler Paolo Gabriele meets Pope Benedict XVI at the Vatican City prison Saturday, as seen in this handout photo released by the Osservatore Romano.
By Reuters
VATICAN CITY - Pope Benedict made a surprise pre-Christmas visit to the jail holding his former butler on Saturday and pardoned him for stealing and leaking documents that alleged corruption in the Holy See.
The pope and Paolo Gabriele spent about 15 minutes together before Gabriele was freed and allowed to return to his family in their Vatican apartment, a Vatican spokesman said.
Gabriele was convicted of aggravated theft on Oct. 6 in a case that shone unwelcome publicity on the Vatican and had been serving an 18-month sentence in a jail cell in the city state's police headquarters.
"This was a paternal gesture towards a person with whom the pope shared his daily life for several years," Father Federico Lombardi, a spokesman, said.
"This is a happy ending in this Christmas season," he said.
Pope Benedict: 'Sadness in my heart' over butler leak scandal
Gabriele was arrested in May after Vatican police found many documents in his possession that had been stolen from the pope's office.
The former butler gave them to the media in what mushroomed into an embarrassing scandal for Benedict's pontificate that became known as "Vatileaks."
The pope's once-trusted butler, Paulo Gabriele, was sentenced to 18 months in prison for his part in leaking private Vatican documents. NBC's Duncan Golestani reports.
Pope's ex-butler Paolo Gabriele gets 18-month sentence in 'Vatileaks' case
Gabriele told investigators he had leaked the documents because he saw "evil and corruption everywhere in the Church" and that information was being hidden from the pope.
The Vatican said the pope had also pardoned a second Vatican employee, Claudio Sciarpelletti, who was convicted in a separate trial of helping Gabriele and given a two month suspended sentence.
Gabriele will no longer be able to work in the Vatican but will be helped to find a job and start a new life outside its walls together with his family, the Vatican said.
Pope's ex-butler says eyesight was damaged by 24-hour light in Vatican cell
Gabriele, 46, told the court that convicted him at the trial - one of the most sensational in the recent history of the Holy See - that he did not consider himself a thief and that he had done what he did out of "visceral" love for the Church.
In one of the most dramatic betrayals of trust in Vatican history, Gabriele, who served the pope his meals and helped him dress, photocopied sensitive documents under the nose of his immediate superiors in a small office adjacent to the papal living quarters in the Apostolic Palace.
He then hid more than 1,000 copies and original documents, including some the pope had marked "to be destroyed," among many thousands of other papers and old newspaper clippings in a huge armoire in the family apartment inside the Vatican walls.
A former member of the small, select group known as "the papal family", Gabriele was one of fewer than 10 people who had a key to an elevator leading directly to the pope's apartments.?
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Dec. 23, 2012 ? In the perilous hours immediately after birth, a newborn mammal must survive the sudden loss of food supply from its mother. Under normal circumstances, newborns mount a metabolic response to ward off starvation until feeding occurs. This survival response involves a process of controlled breakdown of internal energetic sources known as autophagy. Although autophagy has been well documented, the key mechanistic regulators of autophagy in vivo have remained poorly understood.
Whitehead Institute researchers have discovered that a family of nutrient-sensing enzymes, dubbed Rag GTPases, modulates the activity of the mTORC1 protein complex, whose inhibition is essential for autophagy and survival in newborns. The finding, reported this week in the journal Nature, emerges from the lab of Whitehead Member David Sabatini, whose earlier in vitro studies showed that mTORC1 (for "mechanistic target of rapamycin complex 1") senses the presence of vital amino acids via interactions with Rag GTPases.
To assess the impact of this Rag GTPase-mTORC1 relationship in mammals, the lab generated mice genetically altered to continually express an active form of the GTPase RagA and compared them with wild-type mice. In normal mice, RagA is activated in the presence of nutrients, and turns on the mTORC1 pathway, which regulates organismal growth in response to nutrient availability. If the mice are deprived of nutrients, RagA is switched off, deactivating mTORC1 and initiating autophagy to tide the animal over until the next feeding. However, in the altered mice, RagA's continuous activity keeps mTORC1 active, despite a dearth of available nutrients. Instead of mTORC1 triggering autophagy, the animals' metabolisms remain unchanged, resulting in nutritional crisis and death.
"What happens to a newborn animal with the RagA enzyme always on is pretty shocking," says Sabatini, who is also a professor of biology at MIT and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) investigator. "A normal neonate animal within an hour after birth responds to that condition, but one with its RagA stuck 'on' doesn't, and it dies. It basically has a huge energetic and nutritional crisis because it can't make the adaption."
These striking results stunned Alejo Efeyan, a postdoctoral researcher in the Sabatini lab, and first author of the Nature that describes this work.
"We were surprised that there was no inhibition of this pathway independent of RagA -- that there is no backup system," says Efeyan. "And that RagA is a more global nutrient sensor that goes beyond its known function as an amino acid sensor."
RagA's role as an amino acid sensor had been established in cultured cells by the Sabatini lab. Yet when Efeyan compared nutrient levels in fasting newborn RagA-active mice with those of fasting pups with normal RagA, not only amino acids were reduced in RagA-active animals, also glucose levels were dangerously low. The animals were unable to "sense" either of these reductions, so autophagy failed to initiate in the RagA-active pups, which all died within hours of birth.
This newly identified function for RagA suggests much remains unknown about the cell biology of nutrient sensing, an area of research that Sabatini and his lab continue to investigate.
This work was supported by National Institutes of Health (R01CA129105, R01 CA103866 and R37 AI047389), the American Federation for Aging, Starr Foundation, Koch Institute Frontier Research Program, the Ellison Medical Foundation, the Human Frontiers Science Program, the Jane Coffin Childs Memorial Fund for Medical Research, and the LAM Foundation.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research. The original article was written by Nicole Giese Rura.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
Journal Reference:
Alejo Efeyan, Roberto Zoncu, Steven Chang, Iwona Gumper, Harriet Snitkin, Rachel L. Wolfson, Oktay Kirak, David D. Sabatini, David M. Sabatini. Regulation of mTORC1 by the Rag GTPases is necessary for neonatal autophagy and survival. Nature, 2012; DOI: 10.1038/nature11745
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
Washington Redskins quarterback Robert Griffin III, left, passes under pressure from Philadelphia Eagles' Brandon Graham, center, and Colt Anderson in the first half of an NFL football game, Sunday, Dec. 23, 2012, in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Mel Evans)
Washington Redskins quarterback Robert Griffin III, left, passes under pressure from Philadelphia Eagles' Brandon Graham, center, and Colt Anderson in the first half of an NFL football game, Sunday, Dec. 23, 2012, in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Mel Evans)
Philadelphia Eagles' Nick Foles (9) passes in the first half of an NFL football game against the Washington Redskins, Sunday, Dec. 23, 2012, in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Michael Perez)
Philadelphia Eagles' Jeremy Maclin, left, and Nick Foles celebrate after a touchdown pass in the first half of an NFL football game against the Washington Redskins, Sunday, Dec. 23, 2012, in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Michael Perez)
Philadelphia Eagles' Jeremy Maclin, left, pulls in a touchdown pass against Washington Redskins' D.J. Johnson in the first half of an NFL football game on Sunday, Dec. 23, 2012, in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Michael Perez)
Philadelphia Eagles' Nick Foles, left, scrambles from Washington Redskins' Ryan Kerrigan in the first half of an NFL football game, Sunday, Dec. 23, 2012, in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Mel Evans)
PHILADELPHIA (AP) ? Counted out by their own coach six weeks ago, the Washington Redskins and Robert Griffin III are on the brink of their first division title in 13 years.
Griffin threw a pair of touchdown passes in his first game back from a knee injury, Kai Forbath set the NFL record for consecutive field goals to begin a career, and the Redskins held on to beat the Philadelphia Eagles 27-20 on Sunday for their sixth straight win.
Nick Foles drove the Eagles to the Washington 5 before his intentional grounding penalty ended the game.
The Redskins (9-6) can clinch the NFC East with a victory over Dallas at home next Sunday. They haven't won it since 1999 and last reached the playoffs in 2007.
Trying to play spoiler, the Eagles (4-11) fell short in what could've been Andy Reid's last game coaching the team at home. Reid is unlikely to return to Philadelphia for his 15th season next year. The Eagles, who are missing the playoffs for the second straight year after coming in with huge expectations, finish at the New York Giants.
A sprained right knee forced Griffin to miss last week's win at Cleveland. The rookie had a season-low 4 yards rushing but made several big throws to lead Washington.
Griffin did throw the first interception made by the Eagles in nine games. They hadn't picked off one since Week 6 against Detroit before Colt Anderson intercepted Griffin's tipped pass in the fourth quarter.
That set up a 17-yard TD run by Dion Lewis that cut Washington's lead to 27-20 midway through the fourth.
The Eagles held on defense, forced a punt and started their last drive at their 15. They were at the Washington 17 when Foles bounced a pass to Jeremy Maclin, who was open in the right corner of the end zone on third down. Foles then hit LeSean McCoy for a 12-yard gain on fourth-and-2 to the 5 with 11 seconds left. After an incomplete pass, Foles was called for grounding and the last second was automatically run off the clock.
While the Redskins celebrated, the Eagles ran off the field to a chorus of boos.
There was talk in Philadelphia leading up to the game whether fans would give Reid a cheerful send-off. But the crowd didn't acknowledge him when he took the field before the pre-game introductions.
Griffin sprained his right knee late in the fourth quarter of an overtime win against Baltimore two weeks ago. Fellow rookie Kirk Cousins stepped in and led the Redskins to the tying and winning scores in that game and then a victory at Cleveland.
The Redskins and Eagles were both 3-6 when they met last month. Before that game, Washington coach Mike Shanahan suggested the playoffs were out of reach and it was time to play out the string.
It may have motivated his players. The Redskins haven't lost since, beating the Cowboys, Giants and Ravens in the process.
Perhaps slowed by the injury, Griffin didn't make any dazzling plays with his legs. Then again, he didn't have to.
Griffin was 16 of 24 for 198 yards. Alfred Morris ran for 96 yards and a score.
After allowing the Eagles to score a touchdown on the opening drive, the Redskins outscored them 27-6 until the fourth.
The Redskins extended the lead to 20-10 on the opening drive of the third quarter. Griffin threw a 29-yard pass to Pierre Garcon to get it started and Morris ran in from the 10 for his 10th TD.
Griffin's perfectly thrown 22-yard TD pass to Santana Moss in the left corner of the end zone put the Redskins ahead 27-13 late in the third.
McCoy was back in the lineup after missing the last four games with a concussion. He had 45 yards rushing. Michael Vick was inactive, though he was cleared to play after missing five games with a concussion.
Forbath hit field goals of 45 and 42 yards in the second quarter. The second was his 17th straight, breaking Garrett Hartley's record for consecutive field goals made to start a career.
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President Obama?s plan to allow donors to deduct up to 35 percent of their charitable donations may look like an early Christmas gift to nonprofits that have been aggressively lobbying to protect the tax break from any limits.
But to many charity leaders, that proposal, part of the president?s overall $1.2-trillion budget plan presented to Republicans this week, appears to be the same lump of coal as the 28 percent limit he has supported for years.
While the president?s latest budget offer died on arrival in the Republican-controlled House, the sudden emergence of a third option for limiting the charitable deduction proved both promising and troubling to nonprofits.
?For the first time the president has changed his position,? said Diana Aviv, chief executive of Independent Sector, a coalition of some 600 nonprofits. ?There is a reason to be hopeful that there is flexibility in a position where there hasn?t been before.?
But the 35 percent rate cap, like the 28 percent cap, is not the result Independent Sector and other associations have been demanding.
They want the maximum deduction to continue to remain tied to the top income-tax rate, which is set to increase to 39.6 percent for the wealthiest taxpayers once Bush-era tax cuts expire this month. President Obama wants to sever that link and place a cap on the percentage of a donation that could be deducted.
?A cap on the charitable deduction is a pretty big deviation from current policy,? said Alexander Reid, a Washington tax lawyer who previously worked for Congress?s Joint Committee on Taxation. ?One way of looking at it is if there?s a difference between the 39.6 percent top marginal rate and 35 percent, that?s a 4.6 percent tax on those charitable gifts. That?s a substantial change in policy.?
Most nonprofit leaders agree that limits on deductions of 35 percent and 28 percent are better than the Republican calls to place a ceiling of up to $50,000 on all tax deductions. Nonprofits fear that taxpayers would max out that dollar cap on the deductions they take for mortgage-interest payments, state and local taxes, and medical care, leaving little tax incentive for giving to charities.
William Daroff, vice president for public policy at the Jewish Federations of North America, said the White House?s new proposal indicates that nonprofits are succeeding in convincing the president that the charitable deduction differs from other tax breaks such as for mortgage interest. The proposal floated by the White House called for a cap on those other deductions of 28 percent.
Several nonprofit leaders such as Mr. Daroff and Ms. Aviv said they appreciated the president?s recognition that the charitable deduction should be treated differently. But severing the deduction from the tax rate would leave it vulnerable to being lowered again in the future.
?By decoupling it you create a dangerous precedent,? Ms. Aviv said.
Nonprofits have said changes to the deduction could reduce charitable giving by as much as $7-billion annually.
The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has said the impact would not be as dire as charities have stated.
?Our view was that even the original Obama proposal of 28 percent was not nearly as bad as the charities were contending,? said Paul Van de Water, a senior fellow for the center. ?This [35 percent] would have an even smaller effect.?
?Going up to 35 percent does seem like a reasonable compromise on the part of the Obama administration if they can get it through,? said Lester Salamon, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Civil Society Studies. ?But it depends on what else is done on the other tax battles, if they can get more out of the tax side in the budget than the other side is willing to concede.?
Tim Delaney, chief executive for the National Council of Nonprofits, said that the inability of Congress and President Obama to forge an agreement to avoid the fiscal cliff so far indicates that the two sides could eventually land on a deal that is worse than any of the three limits on the charitable deduction that have been publicly debated.
?It?s not one or the other,? Mr. Delaney said of the debate over whether to place a cap on the percentage of donations that could be written off or a dollar maximum on all deductions. ?There?s a huge trap door that we all see beneath us. We?re just hoping no one pulls the lever and we all drop through it.?
You might say the day is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workday, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Daily Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past 24 hours -- all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.
Image courtesy of Kevin Oberhauser, Creative Commons license
I love looking back on the year in nonprofit technology and thinking about what it has brought us, and what we can learn from it.
I feel like 2012 was the year when nonprofits working with social media began to realize in large number these ways of thinking and working:
Broad acceptance of social media as a required communication tool
The need to begin measuring something in social media communication practice
The realization that personal and professional boundaries are blurring, have blurred, and in some cases, are best when blurred
The necessity to work ?In the Cloud? for organizational efficiency, collaboration, and results
Experimentation with social media: it?s not just a tool, but a tool to have fun with!
The role of social media for amplifying fundraising efforts
I?m sure there are a lot more, and I?d love to hear your additions in the comments.
There were some fabulous reports produced in 2012 as well, that inform and offer data for some of the social media and fundraising activities nonprofits are engaging in, such as those listed above. Here are some of the best reports I read from 2012:
The Nonprofit Social Media Policy Workbook, by Idealware and Balance Interactive and its companion workbook, The Social Media Policy Workbook for Jewish Organizations by Darim Online. I reviewed the Social Media Policy Workbook earlier this year.
The 2012 Field Guide to Software for Nonprofits, by Idealware. From their website: ?The new edition covers nearly 70 types of software, from association management to wikis and everything in between. We tell you what?s available, what it can do for you, how you might use it, who the most common vendors are, and what you can expect to pay.?
The 2012 eNonprofit Benchmarks Study, by M & R Research Labs and NTEN. ?This annual study is packed with the latest survey data from nonprofits around how they are using online messaging, fundraising, advocacy, mobile communications, and social media. The 2012 eNonprofit Benchmarks Study Extra: Facebook is also jam-packed with Facebook trends, benchmarks and uses, which I highlighted in my summary of the report.
Why Facebook Users Get More Than They Give, by Pew Internet and American Life Project. This analysis of Facebook power users and their role on Facebook was one of the more fascinating studies I read this year.
The 2012 Nonprofit Social Networking Benchmarks Report by NTEN benchmarks the size of commercial and in-house social networks, the cost of acquiring a Facebook fan, the types of social networks nonprofits are active in, their perception of effectiveness and ROI. A definite ?must read.?
The Online Life in Pictures by the Pew Internet and American Life Project is a first look at the activities of video and photo creators and curators on social networks. I summarized the study and offered my analysis about the explosion of video and photo earlier this year.
Real Time Charitable Giving by the Pew Internet and American Life Project is the first-ever study on mobile donors, with heavy analysis of the ?Text to Haiti? campaign.
The 2012 Nonprofit Communications Trends Report, by Kivi Leroux Miller, looks at the big six communications tools nonprofits are using, how they are using it, and how they proactively plan for use.
The 2012 Nonprofit Donor Engagement Study, by NTEN and Charity Dynamics. This study offers data about donors? preferences regarding traditional and digital media for donating, volunteering, and engaging with nonprofits.
The 2012 Social Media Marketing Industry Report, by Michael Stelzner and Social Media Examiner, looks at how marketers and small-to-medium-sized businesses are using social media. The report includes data on weekly time commitment by size of business, how social media is used, which channels, budget, and more.
And finally, what end-of-year blog post wouldn?t be complete without a few prognostications for 2013, based on some of these reports and my experience working with nonprofit organizations in 2012.
In 2013, I think we?ll see a lot more of the following activities and thinking around nonprofit social media:
Widespread adoption and integration of social media policies in the workplace
Use of graphic images everywhere. If 2012 was the year of the infographic, 2013 will be the year graphics with text are used to move people to action.
Using social media personally on behalf of your organizations. Executive Directors, development officers, and staff will get out from behind their logos.
Testing social media ads. Buying Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and other advertising to move people to action.
Engagement overtaking broadcasting activities. I?ve said it for years now: it?s all about engagement. I?m finally seeing more and more examples of nonprofit organizations trying this out, and experimenting with bringing stakeholders into the convesrations online.
Development of organizational social media strategies. 2013 is the year that social media moves from experimentation to planning.
This new verb song entitled Succeed Anyway, is a song I just finished last week. I got started on it Thursday night. And I put the finishing touches on it a few days ago.
There are some important goals that I really want to reach. And I?ve realized over time, that if one really wants to succeed? it has to happen ANYWAY!
Success is something that has to happen in spite of _____________ (fill in the blank).
Is it your upbringing? Is it your past? Is it your age? your health?
Is is the fact that you?ve tried repeatedly but have kept coming up short?
Perhaps it isn?t even external. Perhaps your challenge is an internal one.
Whatever it is, we definitely put the odds in our favor if we decide to succeed anyway. In fact, if you?ve got some things working against you? succeeding anyway is the ONLY way you?ll succeed. Period!
So I hope the words of this song resonate with your own determination to succeed anyway. In this verb song, you?ll hear a true story of one of nature?s examples that prove that success is possible even in the most unyielding circumstances.
Enjoy!
-Heard
P.S. Be sure to look out for the SWORL version coming soon.
P.P.S. At the time this article was written, you should be able to download this song for free, along with the instrumental, by simply joining the VerbMusic Newsletter. Just put your information in the box at the upper right of this page. And the download link for this song should be sent to you immediately.
President Barack Obama looks to the media as he walks to the Oval Office of the White House as he returns from greeting members of the staff, Tuesday, Dec. 18, 2012, in Washington. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
President Barack Obama looks to the media as he walks to the Oval Office of the White House as he returns from greeting members of the staff, Tuesday, Dec. 18, 2012, in Washington. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
WASHINGTON (AP) ? President Barack Obama is launching an administration-wide effort to curb gun violence, underscoring the growing political consensus over tightening gun restrictions following the horrific massacre at a Connecticut elementary school.
Obama is tasking Vice President Joe Biden, a longtime gun control advocate, with spearheading the effort. In remarks from the White House on Wednesday, Obama will outline a process for pursuing policy changes following the school shooting, though he is not expected to call for specific measures.
The president has vowed to use "whatever power this office holds" to safeguard the nation's children after Friday's shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn. Twenty children and six adults were killed at the school by a gunman carrying an arsenal of ammunition and a high-powered, military-style rifle.
The White House sees some urgency in formulating a policy response to the shooting, even as Obama and his top aides are consumed with averting the "fiscal cliff" before tax hikes and spending cuts take effect in January. The incident has prompted several congressional gun rights supporters to consider new legislation to control firearms, and there is some fear that their willingness to engage could fade as the shock and sorrow over the Newtown shooting eases.
Biden's prominent role in the process could be an asset for the White House in getting gun legislation through Congress. The vice president spent decades in the Senate and has been called on by Obama before to use his long-standing relationships with lawmakers to build support for White House measures.
Many pro-gun lawmakers also have called for a greater focus on mental health issues and the impact of violent entertainment. White House aides say stricter gun laws alone are not the answer.
"It's a complex problem that requires more than one solution," White House spokesman Jay Carney said Tuesday. "It calls for not only re-examining our gun laws and how well we enforce them, but also for engaging mental health professionals, law enforcement officials, educators, parents and communities to find those solutions."
Still, much of the immediate focus after the shooting is on gun control, an issue that has been dormant in Washington for years. Obama expended little political capital on gun issues during his first term, despite several mass shootings, including a movie theater attack in Aurora, Colo., in the midst of this year's presidential campaign.
The White House has begun to signal that Obama may be more proactive on gun issues following the murders of the elementary school youngsters, ages 6 and 7.
Carney said Obama was "actively supportive" of legislation to reinstate a ban on assault-style weapons that expired in 2004. The president long has supported a ban, but exerted little effort to get it passed during his first term. Obama also would support closing a gun show loophole allowing people to buy arms from private dealers without background checks and would be interested in legislation limiting high-capacity ammunition magazines, Carney said.
The policy process Obama was announcing Wednesday was expected to include input from the departments of Justice, Education, and Health and Human Services. The heads of those agencies met with Obama at the White House on Monday.
The Department of Homeland Security is also expected to play a key role in the effort the president will announce.
Stars reveal the secrets of looking youngPublic release date: 19-Dec-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Richard Hook rhook@eso.org 49-893-200-6655 ESO
Globular clusters are spherical collections of stars, tightly bound to each other by their mutual gravity. Relics of the early years of the Universe, with ages of typically 12-13 billion years (the Big Bang took place 13.7 billion years ago), there are roughly 150 globular clusters in the Milky Way and they contain many of our galaxy's oldest stars.
But while the stars are old and the clusters formed in the distant past, astronomers using the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope and the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have found that some of these clusters are still young at heart. The research is presented in the 20 December 2012 issue of the journal Nature.
"Although these clusters all formed billions of years ago," says Francesco Ferraro (University of Bologna, Italy), the leader of the team that made the discovery, "we wondered whether some might be aging faster or slower than others. By studying the distribution of a type of blue star that exists in the clusters, we found that some clusters had indeed evolved much faster over their lifetimes, and we developed a way to measure the rate of aging."
Star clusters form in a short period of time, meaning that all the stars within them tend to have roughly the same age. Because bright, high-mass stars burn up their fuel quite quickly, and globular clusters are very old, there should only be low-mass stars still shining within them.
This, however, turns out not to be the case: in certain circumstances, stars can be given a new burst of life, receiving extra fuel that bulks them up and substantially brightens them. This can happen if one star pulls matter off a close neighbour, or if they collide. The re-invigorated stars are called blue stragglers [1], and their high mass and brightness are properties that lie at the heart of this study.
Heavier stars sink towards the centre of a cluster as the cluster ages, in a process similar to sedimentation. Blue stragglers' high masses mean they are strongly affected by this process, while their brightness makes them relatively easy to observe [2].
To better understand cluster aging, the team mapped the location of blue straggler stars in 21 globular clusters, as seen in images from the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope and Hubble, among other observatories [3]. Hubble provided high resolution imagery of the crowded centres of 20 of the clusters, while the ground-based imagery gave a wider view of their less busy outer regions.
Analysing the observational data, the team found that a few clusters appeared young, with blue straggler stars distributed throughout, while a larger group appeared old, with the blue stragglers clumped in the centre. A third group was in the process of aging, with the stars closest to the core migrating inwards first, then stars ever further out progressively sinking towards the centre.
"Since these clusters all formed at roughly the same time, this reveals big differences in the speed of evolution from cluster to cluster," said Barbara Lanzoni (University of Bologna, Italy), a co-author of the study. "In the case of fast-aging clusters, we think that the sedimentation process can be complete within a few hundred million years, while for the slowest it would take several times the current age of the Universe."
As a cluster's heaviest stars sink towards the centre, the cluster eventually experiences a phenomenon called core collapse, where the centre of the cluster bunches together extremely densely. The processes leading towards core collapse are quite well understood, and revolve around the number, density and speed of movement of the stars. However, the rate at which they happened was not known until now [4]. This study provides the first empirical evidence of how quickly different globular clusters age.
###
Notes
[1] Blue stragglers are so called because of their blue colour, and the fact that their evolution lags behind that of their neighbours.
[2] Blue stragglers combine being relatively bright and high mass by the standards of globular cluster stars, but they are not the only stars within these clusters that are either bright or massive.
Red giant stars are brighter, but they have a much lower mass, and therefore are not affected by the sedimentation process in the same way. (It is easy to distinguish these from blue stragglers because their colour is very different.)
Neutron stars, the extremely dense cores of stars much bigger than the Sun that exploded billions of years ago in the early history of globular clusters, have a similar mass to blue stragglers, and are affected by the sedimentation process, but they are incredibly difficult to observe and therefore do not make a useful subject for this study.
Blue stragglers are the only stars within clusters that combine high mass and high brightness.
[3] Of the 21 clusters covered by this research, 20 were studied with Hubble, 12 with the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope, eight with the Canada-France-Hawaii telescope and one with NAOJ's Subaru Telescope.
[4] Such a rate depends in a complex manner on the number of stars, their density and their velocity within a cluster. While the first two quantities are relatively easy to measure, velocity is not. For these reasons, previous estimates of the rate of globular cluster dynamical aging were based only on theoretical arguments, while the new method allows a totally empirical measurement.
More information
This research was presented in a paper, "Dynamical age differences amongst coeval star clusters as revealed by blue stragglers", by F. R. Ferraro et al., to appear in the journal Nature on 20 December 2012.
The team is composed of F. R. Ferraro (University of Bologna, Italy), B. Lanzoni (University of Bologna), E. Dalessandro (University of Bologna), G. Beccari (ESO, Garching, Germany), M. Pasquato (University of Bologna), P. Miocchi (University of Bologna), R. T. Rood (University of Virginia, Charlottesville, USA), S. Sigurdsson (Pennsylvania State University, USA), A. Sills (McMaster University, Hamilton, Canada), E. Vesperini (Indiana University, Bloomington, USA), M. Mapelli (INAF-Osservatorio Astronomico di Padova, Italy), R. Contreras (University of Bologna), N. Sanna (University of Bologna), A. Mucciarelli (University of Bologna).
This research is part of the Cosmic-Lab project (www.cosmic-lab.eu) funded by the ERC (European Research Council) for a total amount of 1.8 million for 5 years. Set up in 2007 by the European Union, the ERC aims to stimulate scientific excellence in Europe by encouraging competition for funding between the very best, creative researchers of any nationality and age. Since its launch, the ERC has funded over 2 500 researchers and their frontier research projects across Europe. The ERC operates according to an "investigator-driven", or "bottom-up", approach, allowing researchers to identify new opportunities in all fields of research (Physical Sciences and Engineering, Life Sciences, and Social Sciences and Humanities). It has also become a benchmark of the competitiveness of national research systems and complements existing funding schemes at national and European levels. The ERC, which is the newest component of the EU's Seventh Research Framework Programme, has a total budget of 7.5 billion from 2007 to 2013. Last year, the European Commission proposed a substantial increase in the ERC's budget for 2014 to 2020 under the new framework programme ('Horizon 2020'). The ERC is composed of an Executive Agency and a Scientific Council. The Scientific Council is made up of 22 top researchers and sets the ERC's scientific strategy. The ERC is led by President Prof. Helga Nowotny and the Scientific Council is represented in Brussels by Secretary General Prof. Donald Dingwell. The ERC Executive Agency implements the "Ideas" Specific Programme and is led by Director (ad int.) Pablo Amor.
The year 2012 marks the 50th anniversary of the founding of the European Southern Observatory (ESO). ESO is the foremost intergovernmental astronomy organisation in Europe and the world's most productive ground-based astronomical observatory by far. It is supported by 15 countries: Austria, Belgium, Brazil, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Finland, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. ESO carries out an ambitious programme focused on the design, construction and operation of powerful ground-based observing facilities enabling astronomers to make important scientific discoveries. ESO also plays a leading role in promoting and organising cooperation in astronomical research. ESO operates three unique world-class observing sites in Chile: La Silla, Paranal and Chajnantor. At Paranal, ESO operates the Very Large Telescope, the world's most advanced visible-light astronomical observatory and two survey telescopes. VISTA works in the infrared and is the world's largest survey telescope and the VLT Survey Telescope is the largest telescope designed to exclusively survey the skies in visible light. ESO is the European partner of a revolutionary astronomical telescope ALMA, the largest astronomical project in existence. ESO is currently planning the 39-metre European Extremely Large optical/near-infrared Telescope, the E-ELT, which will become "the world's biggest eye on the sky".
Links
* Photos of the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope: http://www.eso.org/public/images/archive/search/?adv=&subject_name=mpg
* Other photos taken with the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope: http://www.eso.org/public/images/archive/search/?adv=&facility=15
* Photos of La Silla: http://www.eso.org/public/images/archive/category/lasilla/
Contacts
Francesco Ferraro
University of BolognaItaly
Tel: +39 051 209 5774
Email: francesco.ferraro3@unibo.it
Barbara Lanzoni
University of BolognaItaly
Tel: +39 051 209 5792
Email: barbara.lanzoni3@unibo.it
Richard Hook
ESO, La Silla, Paranal, E-ELT & Survey Telescopes Press Officer
Garching bei Mnchen, Germany
Tel: +49 89 3200 6655
Cell: +49 151 1537 3591
Email: rhook@eso.org
Oli Usher
Hubble/ESA
Garching bei Mnchen, Germany
Tel: +49 89 3200 6855
Email: ousher@eso.org
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Stars reveal the secrets of looking youngPublic release date: 19-Dec-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Richard Hook rhook@eso.org 49-893-200-6655 ESO
Globular clusters are spherical collections of stars, tightly bound to each other by their mutual gravity. Relics of the early years of the Universe, with ages of typically 12-13 billion years (the Big Bang took place 13.7 billion years ago), there are roughly 150 globular clusters in the Milky Way and they contain many of our galaxy's oldest stars.
But while the stars are old and the clusters formed in the distant past, astronomers using the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope and the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have found that some of these clusters are still young at heart. The research is presented in the 20 December 2012 issue of the journal Nature.
"Although these clusters all formed billions of years ago," says Francesco Ferraro (University of Bologna, Italy), the leader of the team that made the discovery, "we wondered whether some might be aging faster or slower than others. By studying the distribution of a type of blue star that exists in the clusters, we found that some clusters had indeed evolved much faster over their lifetimes, and we developed a way to measure the rate of aging."
Star clusters form in a short period of time, meaning that all the stars within them tend to have roughly the same age. Because bright, high-mass stars burn up their fuel quite quickly, and globular clusters are very old, there should only be low-mass stars still shining within them.
This, however, turns out not to be the case: in certain circumstances, stars can be given a new burst of life, receiving extra fuel that bulks them up and substantially brightens them. This can happen if one star pulls matter off a close neighbour, or if they collide. The re-invigorated stars are called blue stragglers [1], and their high mass and brightness are properties that lie at the heart of this study.
Heavier stars sink towards the centre of a cluster as the cluster ages, in a process similar to sedimentation. Blue stragglers' high masses mean they are strongly affected by this process, while their brightness makes them relatively easy to observe [2].
To better understand cluster aging, the team mapped the location of blue straggler stars in 21 globular clusters, as seen in images from the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope and Hubble, among other observatories [3]. Hubble provided high resolution imagery of the crowded centres of 20 of the clusters, while the ground-based imagery gave a wider view of their less busy outer regions.
Analysing the observational data, the team found that a few clusters appeared young, with blue straggler stars distributed throughout, while a larger group appeared old, with the blue stragglers clumped in the centre. A third group was in the process of aging, with the stars closest to the core migrating inwards first, then stars ever further out progressively sinking towards the centre.
"Since these clusters all formed at roughly the same time, this reveals big differences in the speed of evolution from cluster to cluster," said Barbara Lanzoni (University of Bologna, Italy), a co-author of the study. "In the case of fast-aging clusters, we think that the sedimentation process can be complete within a few hundred million years, while for the slowest it would take several times the current age of the Universe."
As a cluster's heaviest stars sink towards the centre, the cluster eventually experiences a phenomenon called core collapse, where the centre of the cluster bunches together extremely densely. The processes leading towards core collapse are quite well understood, and revolve around the number, density and speed of movement of the stars. However, the rate at which they happened was not known until now [4]. This study provides the first empirical evidence of how quickly different globular clusters age.
###
Notes
[1] Blue stragglers are so called because of their blue colour, and the fact that their evolution lags behind that of their neighbours.
[2] Blue stragglers combine being relatively bright and high mass by the standards of globular cluster stars, but they are not the only stars within these clusters that are either bright or massive.
Red giant stars are brighter, but they have a much lower mass, and therefore are not affected by the sedimentation process in the same way. (It is easy to distinguish these from blue stragglers because their colour is very different.)
Neutron stars, the extremely dense cores of stars much bigger than the Sun that exploded billions of years ago in the early history of globular clusters, have a similar mass to blue stragglers, and are affected by the sedimentation process, but they are incredibly difficult to observe and therefore do not make a useful subject for this study.
Blue stragglers are the only stars within clusters that combine high mass and high brightness.
[3] Of the 21 clusters covered by this research, 20 were studied with Hubble, 12 with the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope, eight with the Canada-France-Hawaii telescope and one with NAOJ's Subaru Telescope.
[4] Such a rate depends in a complex manner on the number of stars, their density and their velocity within a cluster. While the first two quantities are relatively easy to measure, velocity is not. For these reasons, previous estimates of the rate of globular cluster dynamical aging were based only on theoretical arguments, while the new method allows a totally empirical measurement.
More information
This research was presented in a paper, "Dynamical age differences amongst coeval star clusters as revealed by blue stragglers", by F. R. Ferraro et al., to appear in the journal Nature on 20 December 2012.
The team is composed of F. R. Ferraro (University of Bologna, Italy), B. Lanzoni (University of Bologna), E. Dalessandro (University of Bologna), G. Beccari (ESO, Garching, Germany), M. Pasquato (University of Bologna), P. Miocchi (University of Bologna), R. T. Rood (University of Virginia, Charlottesville, USA), S. Sigurdsson (Pennsylvania State University, USA), A. Sills (McMaster University, Hamilton, Canada), E. Vesperini (Indiana University, Bloomington, USA), M. Mapelli (INAF-Osservatorio Astronomico di Padova, Italy), R. Contreras (University of Bologna), N. Sanna (University of Bologna), A. Mucciarelli (University of Bologna).
This research is part of the Cosmic-Lab project (www.cosmic-lab.eu) funded by the ERC (European Research Council) for a total amount of 1.8 million for 5 years. Set up in 2007 by the European Union, the ERC aims to stimulate scientific excellence in Europe by encouraging competition for funding between the very best, creative researchers of any nationality and age. Since its launch, the ERC has funded over 2 500 researchers and their frontier research projects across Europe. The ERC operates according to an "investigator-driven", or "bottom-up", approach, allowing researchers to identify new opportunities in all fields of research (Physical Sciences and Engineering, Life Sciences, and Social Sciences and Humanities). It has also become a benchmark of the competitiveness of national research systems and complements existing funding schemes at national and European levels. The ERC, which is the newest component of the EU's Seventh Research Framework Programme, has a total budget of 7.5 billion from 2007 to 2013. Last year, the European Commission proposed a substantial increase in the ERC's budget for 2014 to 2020 under the new framework programme ('Horizon 2020'). The ERC is composed of an Executive Agency and a Scientific Council. The Scientific Council is made up of 22 top researchers and sets the ERC's scientific strategy. The ERC is led by President Prof. Helga Nowotny and the Scientific Council is represented in Brussels by Secretary General Prof. Donald Dingwell. The ERC Executive Agency implements the "Ideas" Specific Programme and is led by Director (ad int.) Pablo Amor.
The year 2012 marks the 50th anniversary of the founding of the European Southern Observatory (ESO). ESO is the foremost intergovernmental astronomy organisation in Europe and the world's most productive ground-based astronomical observatory by far. It is supported by 15 countries: Austria, Belgium, Brazil, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Finland, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. ESO carries out an ambitious programme focused on the design, construction and operation of powerful ground-based observing facilities enabling astronomers to make important scientific discoveries. ESO also plays a leading role in promoting and organising cooperation in astronomical research. ESO operates three unique world-class observing sites in Chile: La Silla, Paranal and Chajnantor. At Paranal, ESO operates the Very Large Telescope, the world's most advanced visible-light astronomical observatory and two survey telescopes. VISTA works in the infrared and is the world's largest survey telescope and the VLT Survey Telescope is the largest telescope designed to exclusively survey the skies in visible light. ESO is the European partner of a revolutionary astronomical telescope ALMA, the largest astronomical project in existence. ESO is currently planning the 39-metre European Extremely Large optical/near-infrared Telescope, the E-ELT, which will become "the world's biggest eye on the sky".
Links
* Photos of the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope: http://www.eso.org/public/images/archive/search/?adv=&subject_name=mpg
* Other photos taken with the MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope: http://www.eso.org/public/images/archive/search/?adv=&facility=15
* Photos of La Silla: http://www.eso.org/public/images/archive/category/lasilla/
Contacts
Francesco Ferraro
University of BolognaItaly
Tel: +39 051 209 5774
Email: francesco.ferraro3@unibo.it
Barbara Lanzoni
University of BolognaItaly
Tel: +39 051 209 5792
Email: barbara.lanzoni3@unibo.it
Richard Hook
ESO, La Silla, Paranal, E-ELT & Survey Telescopes Press Officer
Garching bei Mnchen, Germany
Tel: +49 89 3200 6655
Cell: +49 151 1537 3591
Email: rhook@eso.org
Oli Usher
Hubble/ESA
Garching bei Mnchen, Germany
Tel: +49 89 3200 6855
Email: ousher@eso.org
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
(Yeesh. The people who are doing the most harm to the Republican Party are usually Republicans - promoted by Colorado Pols)
Reporters covering the local fallout of the Newtown tragedy should dig into statements percolating through the media, and exmplified by comments like state Sen. Greg Brophy's below, that Democrats are using the tragedy simply to bring down Republicans.
"And there's a lot of--and this is going to sound terrible, but it's the truth--there's a lot of politicians and leftist activists who see this as an opportunity to permanently injure the Republican Party and make it more likely that Democrats will win elections," Brophy told KFTM radio's John Waters this morning. "And I think there's a lot of people pushing it, especially their media allies that are pushing this notion from that perspective."
It's not the kind of comment that should be thrown in the pile of political-discourse-as-usual. What would Brophy have Democrats do? Be mute? Blame the media, as he does? Talk about mental health issues, as if guns had no role? Why does mentioning the word "guns" equal an attack on the GOP?
Brophy thinks the focus should be on the mentally ill, with no discussion of guns:
"And I've got to tell you, if the leftist activists and their allies in the media concentrate only on beating up Republicans over our principled stand on the Second Amendment, then we may not have the discussion that we need to have over all of these other issues [like treatment for mental illnesses]," he told Waters.
Brophy's unsubstantiated accusation of Democratic politicking contrasts with another strand of thinking by local politicians, like Colorado Senate Minority Leader Bill Cadman quoted below, who argue that politicians can do nothing at all.
"The real bottom line here, is there is 300 million people in this country. ?Someone, somewhere is planning to do harm to somebody at any given day, and all the laws in the world aren't going to stop it," Cadman said at a Denver-Press-Club forum, as reported by Rocky Mountain Community Radio's Bente Berkeland. "Criminals will still do criminal acts."
So, if he really thinks nothing can be done, does Cadman also think the Dems are all about politics too, like Brophy does?
Five years ago I stopped sending out snail mail Christmas cards. So now I send out an email update with the good, the bad, and the ugly. Literally. I attach a few highlights of the worst pics of my family and then direct them to this blog to see the rest. Probably my most popular post. Apparently, people like seeing the real deal. The ugly. The wrinkles. The bad hair days. It's like a free self-esteem boost without having to actually watch a reality TV show. "I love your ugly pictures post. Makes me feel so good about myself... because you can look real ugly." Okay, they don't say that last part, but I can read between the lines, people. And it hurts. No it doesn't. Enjoy.?
Merry Christmas - from my family to yours.
Starting with 4 1/2 year old Jordis . . .
What are you talking about Mom? I did brush my hair.
Okay, gotta be honest. Today I did not brush my hair.?
Today I didn't brush my hair, but I did do my makeup and ate my hand. So take that.
If you won't paint my face, I have a sister who's a professional.
Are you really my parents or do I belong to Gary Busey and Courtney Love? Tell me the truth Mom. I can handle it.
Sometimes it's easier to just cover up my hair, even at the expense of smashing my face and jacking up my ears.?
And now for Lydia (6 1/2) . . .
Mom, do we really have to do this again? I am sick of modeling for fashion magazines.?
That laughing gas was some pretty good stuff. Wait, who are you?
Give it up for almost 9-year-old Elijah even though his contribution was weak this year . . .
I don't care about clothes. I don't do make up. So I gotta compensate somehow.
If you can't stand the heat, then don't play catch with my mom,
And now for my main main Shiloh . . .
Because that's how I role when people in my house are sick.?
Did somebody say egg nog? I love egg nog.?
Alright, this pic is from 2011, but can be moved and scaled to fit any time period.
When I chose this pic Shiloh said "What? What's wrong with this picture?" This post is a lesson in self-awareness.?
Sometimes I dress up all fancy just to turn on my wife.
Celebrating 15 years of marriage in May.?
And now for?my?pageant photos . . .?
Good morning. Go ahead and read my face as if it were a palm. Many lines to choose from.?
You guys, the boxtox on my neck IS NOT WORKING! When did my neck turn into a leather handbag?
Wrinkle, wrinkle, little star . . . and zit on your chin.
Man, that is some strong iced tea.
Makeup by Lydia. Wrinkles by the natural aging process, genetics and sun exposure. Lip wrinkles could be enhanced by drinking with a straw. Worth it though. I like straws.
I certainly wouldn't mess with this woman. She kind of looks like a mad Pug.
Elijah: I have to go the bathroom. And it's poop.
Lydia: Is this guy for real?
Jordis: Yes he is. Hold me. I think I might puke.
When I sneeze, my nostrils go ballistic and my sister gets sleepy.
I did not just rip one.
That's it folks. Hope this year did not disappoint. May you leave feeling prettier. If have not yet gotten the boost you were looking for ... 2011. 2010. 2009. 2008.?
I use OmniPlan for both the Mac and iPad, and am having trouble figuring out the Omnisync Server workflow. Here is what I have been doing:
1. Create a new document in OmniPlan on the Mac.
2. Save locally and then publish to the server.
3. Open the file on the iPad from the sync server.
4. Edit the file on the iPad.
5. Try to publish the file. Here is where the issue lies. I get an error indicating that it cannot publish with conflicts. I accept all changes in the conflict tracking pane, but it still says there are conflicts (even though they don't appear in the pane). Because of this, I cannot republish my changes.
Am I doing something incorrectly, or have a wonky setting?
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Public release date: 19-Dec-2012
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