Commas

http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/commas.htm

http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/607/02/

Michigan - Childrens Hospital of Michigan

http://www.childrensdmc.org/PoisonControl

American Association of Poison Control Centers

http://www.aapcc.org/

Find Your Local Poison Control Center

http://www.safekids.org/safety-basics/safety-guide/medication-safety-guide/find-a-poison-control-center.html

American Association of Poison Control Centers (AAPCC)

http://www.medicinenet.com/poison_control_centers/article.htm

World Health Oganization

http://www.who.int/diseasecontrol_emergencies/en/

NCHS

http://www.cdc.gov/

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/

http://www.usa.gov/directory/federal/centers-for-disease-control-and-prevention.shtml

Parent Organization (HHS):

http://www.usa.gov/directory/federal/department-of-health-and-human-services.shtml

North Dakoda (One of the 50 states of USA)

http://www.ndhealth.gov/disease/

Riverside, California (An area in one of the 50 states in USA)

http://www.rivco-diseasecontrol.org/Home.aspx

START

I got a message from an long standing friend of mine.  She is educating some youngsters in her home country, China, and trying to make sense of English in order to pass it along in a correct fashion.

Anne(Luly)  Hi, Roger. I　have two questions to ask you, OK? 

Author, historian and political commentator Noam Chomsky. (photo: Ben Rusk/flickr)

From Reader Supported News (RSN)

An Excerpt

By Noam Chomsky, Laray Polk, Seven Stories Press

19 April 13

A powerful excerpt from the new book, "Nuclear War and Environmental Catastrophe."

aray Polk: What immediate tensions do you perceive that could lead to nuclear war? How close are we?

Noam Chomsky: Actually, nuclear war has come unpleasantly close many times since 1945. There are literally dozens of occasions in which there was a significant threat of nuclear war. There was one time in 1962 when it was very close, and furthermore, it's not just the United States. India and Pakistan have come close to nuclear war several times, and the issues remain. Both India and Pakistan are expanding their nuclear arsenals with US support. There are serious possibilities involved with Iran - not Iranian nuclear weapons, but just attacking Iran - and other things can just go wrong. It's a very tense system, always has been. There are plenty of times when automated systems in the United States - and in Russia,it's probably worse - have warned of a nuclear attack which would set off an automatic response except that human intervention happened to take place in time, and sometimes in a matter of minutes. That's playing with fire. That's a low-probability event, but with low-probability events over a long period, the probability is not low.

HUFFINGTON POST

By GILLIAN WONG

4/20/13 11:47 PM ET EDT AP

Surfrider Foundation info@surfrider.org

The EPA is proposing to eliminate their Beach Grants Program that funds water testing to protect swimmer safety at beaches across the country. 

Don't let the federal government drown the beach program.   You have the right to know if a day at the beach is going to make you sick!

From

Scientists were able to decipher the genome of the fossil fish coelacanth

April 18, 16:09 | Ivan Ukhov

From CHINA DAILY   One Chinese dead in US marathon blasts

Updated: 2013-04-17 08:03

An official at the consulate's press section, who was not authorized to give

his name, said thatone Chinese student was injured and another died in the

blast.

The official said a work group from the consulate was in Boston to investigate the situation andassist relatives of the victims.

The official Chinese news agency Xinhua reported that relatives have

requested that thedeceased not be identified.

Zhou Danling, the Chinese student injured in the Boston Marathon blasts,

is out of danger.Zhou was injured in the stomach and was sent to a local

hospital.

She is now in stable condition. The Chinese Consulate General in New York

went into emergency mode after the blasts, sending staffers to Boston and getting casualty informationabout Chinese nationals

From: 

David Suzuki Foundation <subscribers@davidsuzuki.org>

Science Matters : Fri, Apr 12, 2013 at 9:02 AM

Access to information is a basic foundation of democracy. Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms also gives us "freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication."

Culture of the United States

Press to see the entire article

American culture is a Western culture, largely based on British culture with influences from other parts of Europe, the Native American peoples, African Americans and to a lesser extent Asian Americans and other young groups of immigrants. Due to the extent of American culture there are many integrated but unique subcultures within the U.S. 

HOW JON STEWART BLEW UP IN CHINA

POSTED BY EVAN OSNOS

To Original NEW YORKER Article

Jon Stewart has decided, as he put it this week, that he might be working the wrong continent. In a segment called “Big Ratings in Giant China,” Stewart expounded on his recent discovery that he is racking up millions of hits, and thousands of favorable comments, from Chinese viewers, who see the show in scattered subtitled clips posted on Chinese sites.

March 21, 2013

Today, more than 65 per cent of the Peace region has felt the impact of industrial development, leaving little intact habitat for sensitive, endangered species such as caribou to feed, breed or roam. (Credit: Gerry via Flickr)

Summary of a lecture by 

Zoran Josipovic, Ph.D.

Director, Contemplative Science Lab, Psychology Dept, NYU

Human experiences can be broadly divided into those that are external and related to interaction with the environment, and experiences that are internal and self-related. The cerebral cortex likewise appears to be divided into two corresponding systems: an "extrinsic" system composed of brain areas that respond more to external stimuli and tasks and an "intrinsic" system composed of brain areas that respond less to external stimuli and tasks. These two broad brain systems seem to compete with each other, such that their activity levels over time is usually anti-correlated, even when subjects are "at rest" and not performing any task.

Asian contemplative philosophies, going back to at least fourth century CE, and perhaps much earlier, have described the structuring of human experience along the subject- object dichotomy, accompanied by a competition between internally and externally related mental processes. According to this idea, it might be possible to use meditation to voluntarily alter this fragmentation. Our results suggest that practicing different forms of meditation can alter the anti-correlation between these networks and that their relationship can be modulated in either direction through the choice of a cognitive strategy. The results support the intuitive, but speculative, idea that the typical anti- correlation between the extrinsic and intrinsic systems might reflect the duality of external and internal experiences, and that nondual awareness meditation enables an atypical state of mind in which extrinsic and intrinsic experiences are increasingly synergistic rather than competing.

From:  Washington Post

President's 2014 Budget

2013/04/10

Read the full text of Obama's 2014 budget proposal

President Obama unveiled a 10-year budget blueprint Wednesday that calls for nearly $250 billion in new spending on jobs, public works and expanded pre-school education and nearly $800 billion in new taxes, including an extra 94 cents a pack on cigarettes. But the president’s spending plan would also cut more than $1 trillion from programs across the federal government — for the first time targeting Social Security benefits — in an effort to persuade congressional Republicans to join him in finishing the job of debt reduction they started two years ago.

From the New YorkTimes

OP-ED GUEST COLUMNIST

In China, Feudal Answers for Modern Problems

By YU HUA

Published: April 10, 2013

BEIJING

From Goldenline (a Polish publication)

IS AMERICA A CLASSLESS SOCIETY? DESCRIBE THE SOCIAL STRATIFICATION IN THE US.

From Goldenline (a Polish publication)

WHAT ARE THE BASIC AMERICAN VALUES AND BELIEFS?

Sociologist Robin Williams attempted to offer a list of basic values in the United States:

 
Achievement, efficiency, material comfort, nationalism, equality and the supremacy of science and reason, over faith. 

There are certain ideals and values, rooted in the country’s history, which many Americans share. These are: FREEDOM, INDIVIDUALISM, PRAGMATISM, VOLUNTEERISM, MOBILITY, PATRIOTISM, PROGRESS, AMERICAN DREAM.

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The New York TImes

By EDWARD WONG

Published: April 1, 2013 

Shanghai in January. Researchers said the toll from China’s pollution meant the loss of 25 million healthy years in 2010.

BEIJING — Outdoor air pollution contributed to 1.2 million premature deaths in China in 2010, nearly 40 percent of the global total, according to a new summary of data from a scientific study on leading causes of death worldwide.

Figured another way, the researchers said, China’s toll from pollution was the loss of 25 million healthy years of life from the population.

For more on this story

A team of scientists from Russia is preparing for an expedition to track down a rare all-white killer whale that hasn't been seen since it was spotted 18 months ago.

From UN WIRE

Some 3.3 billion people are at risk of contracting malaria, a preventable disease that killed 655,000 and afflicted 216 million in 2010, primarily in the developing world. On World Malaria Day, the world is at a critical juncture in its massive effort to halt and reverse malaria in what former British Prime Minister Tony Blair calls the "most achievable" of the Millennium Development Goals.

For more see Voice of America (4/24), The Huffington Post (4/24)

Washington Post Opinions

by Carl Levin and Lamar Alexander

The U.S. Senate — one-half of one branch of our government and an institution crucial to resolving serious issues before our country — is routinely described as dysfunctional, gridlocked and broken. We feel obligated to do something about it.

That’s why we went to the Senate floor last week to encourage our colleagues to embrace a classic virtue: self-restraint.

A very instructive series of examples of various borders:

 http://www.quackit.com/html/codes/html_borders.cfm

Truthout Saturday, 21 April 2012 11:49 By Dahr Jamail, Al Jazeera English

Gulf Coast residents and clean up workers have found chemicals present in BP's oil in their own bloodstreams.  For the full story press here

From BBC News

Bo Xilai ran a wire-tapping system that extended as far as China's president, the New York Times has reported.

From Stop Bad Ware

Badware takes advantage of technical vulnerabilities and human behavior to find its way onto personal computers. While nothing can guarantee absolute security, the following steps can reduce your computer’s exposure to badware. At the bottom of this page, you will see links to websites with additional information.

****

Check to see if you have a malicious virus on your computer

 ****

For an article about the virus, seeing if you have it and fixing it if you do.

More directly - a list of URLs to test if you have the virus

Immediate - the first URL in that list

A Listing of several upcoming Occupy meetings as well as a few which have just transpired.  

A listing of many occupy streams.

Video streaming by Ustream

Eyeless shrimp and fish with lesions are becoming common, with BP oil pollution believed to be the likely cause.

By Dahr Jamail, Al Jazeera English |

New Orleans, Louisiana - "The fishermen have never seen anything like this," Dr Jim Cowan told Al Jazeera. "And in my 20 years working on red snapper, looking at somewhere between 20 and 30,000 fish, I've never seen anything like this either."

Rajs introduced Learning Paradise to the country of India by quoting the following:

From HubPages.com By JYOTI KOTHARI

India is a big country with diverse topography and climate that allows variety of wild life to grow. Indian province Rajasthan has multi-variety wild life because of its typical geographical conditions. There is Thar desert in Rajasthan at one side and Vindhyan track at another. Aravali, the oldest mountains in the world passes through Rajasthan. There are many sanctuaries, bird sanctuaries and National parks in Rajasthan including Ghana, Ranathambore, Sariska etc.

The New York Times

By JEFFREY D. SACHS

Published: April 19, 2012

President Bingu wa Mutharika of Malawi died on April 5 of a heart attack at the age of 78. His countrymen, suffering a massive economic and political crisis, seem to have declared good riddance. Some of his rogue allies apparently tried to hold on to power after his death, but democracy prevailed with the installation of the vice president, Joyce Banda, to the presidency. President Banda inherits an acute crisis much of which was Mutharika’s making.

Levin, McCain: GAO report shows China is failing to crack down on bogus electronic parts Monday,

March 26, 2012

WASHINGTON – A government investigative report released today provides further evidence that China is failing to crack down on the flood of bogus electronic parts making their way into U.S. military systems and endangering the safety of U.S. troops and U.S. national security.

Use correct url and then the name you want here; adjust font and color here

Eleanor Roosevelt, First Lady, USA

October 11, 1884 – November 7, 1962

An astute politician, dedicated feminist,

and champion of the rights of minorities

Remember always that you not only have the right to be an individual,you have an obligation to be one.

Franklin D. Roosevelt 

 January 30, 1882 – April 12, 1945

President of the USA 1933-1945 

 We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals; we now know that it is bad economics

-  -  -  -

The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the
abundance of those who have much it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.

-  -  -  -

No business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country.

-  -  -  -

There is a mysterious cycle in human events. To some generations much is given. Of other generations much is expected. This generation of Americans has a rendezvous with destiny.

-  -  -  -

The country needs and, unless I mistake its temper, the country demands bold, persistent experimentation.

-  -  -  -

It is common sense to take a method and try it: If it fails, admit it frankly and try another.  But above all, try something.

-  -  -  -

When you see a rattlesnake poised to strike, you do not wait until he has struck before you crush him.

-  -  -  -

When you get to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on.

Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie

June 19, 1947 - 

British Indian novelist and essayist

   The real adventure in 'Moby Dick' is the one that happens inside Captain Ahab. The rest is a fishing tripBertrand Russell

Bertrand Russell

18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970

 British philosopher, logician,

mathematician, historian, and social critic

 and Nobel Laureate

To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.

-  -  -  -

And if there were a God, I think it very unlikely that He would have such an uneasy vanity as to be offended by those who doubt His existence.

Nathaniel Hawthorne 

July 4, 1804 – May 19, 1864

American Novelist and Short Story Writer

Happiness is as a butterfly which, when pursued, is always beyond our grasp, but which if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.

 Evelyn Hines

Middle School Teacher 

Often, when reading assigned text, students ask me what they should be "looking for. 

My reply is always the same:

If you already know what you're looking for, then that is all you will find.

Hippocrates

460-377 BCE

Father of Medicine

Walking is man's best medicine.

  Eric Hoffer
July 25, 1902-May 21, 1983 

 American writer on social issues

The search for happiness is one of the chief sources of        unhappiness.

Billie Holiday

   1915-1959

 American Jazz singer and Songwriter

You've got to have something to eat and a little love in your life before you can hold still for any damn body's sermon on how to behave.

Henry Maudsley
1835-1918

American Psychiatrist,

Philosopher and Entrepreneur

The sorrow which has no vent in tears may make other organs weep.

H.L. Mencken

 1880-1956

 American Journalist, Essayist,

Magazine editor, Satirist,

Critic of American Life and Culture,

And A Scholar Of American English

Known as the Sage of Baltimore

Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority. The more uncivilized the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely what is right and what is wrong. All human progress, even in morals, has been the work of men who have doubted the current moral values, not of men who have whooped them up and tried to enforce them. The truly civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant, in this field as in all others. His culture is based on "I am not too sure."

Michel de Montaigne

1533-1592

 
French Essayist

Was one of the most influential

Writers of the French Resistance

No matter that we may mount on stilts, we still must walk on our own legs. And on the highest throne in the world, we still sit only on our own bottom.

John Muir

1838-1914

 Scottish-born

American Naturalist and Explorer, Author,

and Early Advocate of

Preservation of Wilderness

in the United States

The world, we are told, was made especially for man -- a presumption not supported by all the facts... Why should man value himself as more than a small part of the one great unit of creation?

 Ogden Nash

1902-1971

 American poet well known for his light verse

 I dreamt that my hair was kempt. Then I dreamt that my true love unkempt it.

Reinhold Niebuhr

 1892-1971
American theologian

and commentator on public affairs

Man's capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man's inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.

John F. Kennedy

 1917–1963

 35th President of the

 United States (1961–1963)  

Too often we enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.

Soren Kierkegaard

1813-1855

Danish Philosopher, Theologian and Religious Author 

There are many people who reach their conclusions about life like schoolboys; they cheat their master by copying the answer out of a book without having worked out the sum for themselves. 

Martin Luther King, Jr. 

January 15, 1929 - April 04, 1968

American Civil Rights Activist, Minister

Cowardice asks the question, 'Is it safe?' 

Expediency asks the question, 'Is it politic?' 

Vanity asks the question, 'Is it popular?'

 But, conscience asks the question, 'Is it right?'

And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular but one must take it because one's conscience tells one that it is right.

-  -  -  -

Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.

-  -  -  -

True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice that produces beggars needs restructuring. 

From          The Washington Press News Alert

Famed TV producer Dick Clark dies at 82

Dick Clark, the television host and entrepreneur who sold rock-and-roll to Middle America on the dance show "American Bandstand" and counted down the new year with millions of TV viewers as emcee of an annual celebration in New York's Times Square, has died after a heart attack. He was 82.
Read more at:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/dick-clark-host-of-american-bandstand-dies-at-82/2012/04/18/gIQAvJIKRT_story.html

Anatole Francois Thibault
Wrote (AKA) as Anatole France
Born in Paris:  April 16, 1844

Of all the ways of defining man, the worst is the one which makes him out to be a rational animal.
- - - -

If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing.

Henry David Thoreau

on the Mexican War

If a thousand [people] were not to pay their tax bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them and enable the state to commit violence and shed innocent blood.

  Calvin Trillin
Writer
b. 1935

As far as I'm concerned, 'whom' is a word that was invented to make everyone sound like a butler.

Barbara W. Tuchman
BD: 1-30-1912 

 Nothing sickens me more than the closed door of a library.

Mark Twain
author and humorist
1835-1910

I believe I have no prejudices whatsoever. All I need to know is that a man is a member of the human race. That's bad enough for me.

Chuang Tzu

Perfect happiness is the absence of striving for happiness.

Lao-tzu

Failure is the foundation of success . . .

Success is the lurking place of failure.

Every human being's essential nature is perfect and faultless, but after years of immersion in the world we easily forget our roots and take on a counterfeit nature.

Edith Wharton 

If only we'd stop trying to be happy we'd have a pretty good time.

"The Chinese eat everything with four legs, except tables, and everything that flies - except airplanes".

 Kurt Vonnegut

Nov. 11, 1922 - April 11, 2007

USA Novelist

Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance.

In today's excerpt - each decision we make, however rational we believe it to be, is an emotional, neurochemical tug-of-war inside our brain:

"Consider this clever experiment designed by Brian Knutson and George Loewenstein. The scientists wanted to investigate what happens inside the brain when a person makes typical consumer choices, such as buying an item in a retail store or choosing a cereal. A few dozen lucky undergraduates were recruited as experimental subjects and given a generous amount of spending money. Each subject was then offered the chance to buy dozens of different objects, from a digital voice recorder to gourmet chocolates to the latest Harry Potter book. After the student stared at each object for a few seconds, he was shown the price tag. If he chose to buy the item, its cost was deducted from the original pile of cash. The experiment was designed to realistically simulate the experience of a shopper.

 

HTML for BIOGRAPHY

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<p style="background-color: #ffa3a3; font-size: 18px; text-align: center;"> <strong>&nbsp;

<span style="font-size: 18px;">NAME <br />Did what <br />Born when</span></strong> </p>

<p>&nbsp;</p>

<p style="background-color: #ffa3a3; font-size: 18px; text-align: left;">

<span style="color: #000000;">NOTES</span></p>
<hr />

<!--          end   -->

 Lin Yutang

1895-1976

 Chinese Writer, Translator, and Inventor

When small men begin to cast big shadows, it means that the sun is about to set.

Howard Zinn

August 24, 1922 – January 27, 2010

Historian , Academic, Author,

Playwright, and Social Activist

What matters most is not who is sitting in the White House, but 'who is sitting in' - and who is marching outside the White House, pushing for change.

  William Saroyan

The greatest happiness you can have is knowing that you do not necessarily require happiness.

  John Ralston Saul
Writer
b. 1947

Dictionary: Opinion presented as truth in alphabetical order.

  Albert Schweitzer
Philosopher, Physician, Musician, Nobel Laureate
1875-1965

In everyone's life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit

  John R. Searle
Philosophy Professor
b. 1932

Because we don't understand the brain very well, we're constantly tempted to use the latest technology as a model for trying to understand it.

In my childhood we were always assured that the brain was a telephone switchboard. (What else could it be?)

And I was amused to see that Sherrington, the great British neuroscientist, thought that the brain worked like a telegraph system.

Freud often compared the brain to hydraulic and electromagnetic systems.

Leibniz compared it to a mill,

and now, obviously,the metaphor is the digital computer.

  George Bernard Shaw
Writer, Nobel Laureate
1856-1950

Forgive him, for he believes that the customs of his tribe are the laws of nature.

  John Kenneth Galbraith

Economist

October 15, 1908 – April 29, 2006

The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.

  Galileo Galilei

Physicist and Astronomer

February 15, 1564 - January 08,1642

Civilization is the encouragement of differences.

 William Henry Gates III 

Entrepreneur - Built Microsoft

October 28, 1955

Be nice to nerds. Chances are you'll end up working for one.

Mohandas Karamchand Ghandi 

October 2, 1869 - January 30, 1948

‘Father of the Nation'

was one of the charismatic Indian leaders

who fought for the freedom of India

In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.

-   -   -   -   -          

Poverty is the worst form of violence.

-   -   -   -   -

Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony

  Sir Edward Gibbon

1737-1794
Author: 

The Rise And Fall Of The Roman Empire

"In the end, more than they wanted freedom, they wanted security. They wanted a comfortable life, and they lost it all -- security, comfort, and freedom. When ... the freedom they wished for was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free."

  Barry Goldwater

Businessman and

Five-term United States Sentator 

from Arizona (1953–1965, 1969–1987) and

Republican Party's nominee for President

 in the 1964 election. 

January 2, 1909 – May 29, 1998

Thomas Edison

1847-1931

Inventor

We are like tenant farmers chopping down the fence around our house for fuel when we should be using Nature's inexhaustible sources of energy -- sun, wind and tide. ... I'd put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don't have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that.

Albert Einstein

1879 - 1955 

  Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity,and I'm not sure about the former.

-   -   -   -   -          

   I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.

-   -   -   -   -          

   Whoever undertakes to set himself up as judge in the field of truth and knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.

-   -   -   -   -          

 I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own a God, in short, who is but a reflection. of human frailty.

-   -   -   -   -          

Albert Einstein urged militant pacifism and the creation of an international war resistance fund.

Einstein stated in New York that if two percent of those called for military service were to refuse to fight, and were to urge peaceful means of settling international conflicts, then governments would become powerless since they could not imprison that many people.

 He struggled against compulsory military service and urged international protection of conscientious objectors. He concluded that peace, freedom for individuals, and security for societies depended on disarmament; otherwise, "slavery of the individual and the annihilation of civilization threaten us."

He concluded that peace, freedom for individuals, and security for societies depended on disarmament; otherwise, "slavery of the individual and the annihilation of civilization threaten us."

We should take care not to make the intellect our god; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality.

-   -   -   -   -         

A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.

Desiderius Erasmus 

1466-1536 

If you keep thinking about what you want to do or what you hope will happen, you don't do it, and it won't happen.

Dalai Lama (Brief History and Quotations)

 Leonardo da Vinci

April 15, 1452 – May 2, 1519

Scientist, Mathematician, Engineer, Inventor, Anatomist, Painter, Sculptor, Architect, Botanist, Musician and Writer.

 Beyond a doubt truth bears the same relation to falsehood as light to darkness.

Eugene V. Debs

1855-1926

 Socialist, pacifist, and labor leader

He was imprisoned for opposing U.S. entry intohe World War I.  While in prison,he received nearly one million votes for President in the 1920 election (as he had in 1912). 

 I'd rather vote for something I want and not get it then vote for something I don't want and get it

Charlie Chaplin

1889-1977

Actor, Director, Composer

Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long-shot.

John Ciardi  

1916–1986

Poet

A university is what a college becomes when the faculty loses interest in students. 

Marcus Tullius Cicero

Statesman, Orator, Writer

106-43 BCE  

Extreme justice is extreme injustice. 

Confucius 

551 BC - 479 BC

Politician, Teacher,

Editor, and Social Philosopher

If language be not in accordance with the truth of     things, affairs cannot be carried on to success.

 - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

A superior man is modest in his speech, but exceeds in his actions.

Francis Bacon

Essayist, Philosopher, Statesman

1561-1626

The best armor is to keep out of gunshot.

Cesare Beccaria
1738—1794
Italian Jurist, Philosopher and Politician

best known for his treatise

On Crimes and Punishments (1764)

It is better to prevent crimes than to punish them.

Daniel J. Boorstin

Historian, Professor, Attorney, and Writer

1914-2004

The greatest obstacle to discovering the shape of the earth, the continents, and the oceans was not ignorance but the illusion of knowledge.

 Kenneth Ewart Boulding

Economist

1910-1993

Nothing fails like success because we don't learn from it.We learn only from failure.

Douglas Adams

Writer and Dramatist

1952-2001

Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.

Fred Allen

(Born:   John Florence Sullivan)

May 31, 1894 – March 17, 1956

American comedian

(radio show: 1932–1949)

Imitation is the sincerest form of television.

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California is a fine place to live--if you happen to be an orange.

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An advertising agency is 85 percent confusion and 15 percent commission.

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 I like long walks, especially when they are taken by people who annoy me.

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To a newspaperman, a human being is an item with the skin wrapped         around it.                                                                                             

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An associate producer is the only guy in Hollywood who will associate with a producer.                                                                                             

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A celebrity is a person who works hard all his life to become well known       then wears dark glasses to avoid being recognized.                                  

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Committee--A group of men who individually can do nothing but as a group decide that nothing can be done.                                                  

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Television is called a new medium, and I have discovered why they call it a Medium--because it is neither Rare nor Well Done.                                  

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You can take all the sincerity in Hollywood, place it in the navel of a fruit fly, and still have room enough for three caraway seeds and a producer's         heart.

 Isaac Asimov

Scientist and Writer

1920-1992

Jokes of the proper kind, properly told, can do more to enlighten questions of politics, philosophy, and literature than any number of dull arguments.

 Marcus Aurelius

Philosopher and Writer

121-180

If there are gods and they are just, 

they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by.  

If there are gods, but unjust,

then you should not want to worship them.

If there are no gods,

 then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones.

Quoted from Hosted News 

By Yana Marull (AFP) 

BRASILIA, Brazil —

The upcoming Rio conference on sustainable development must yield a commitment to manage the world economy in a way that respects the environment and fights poverty, a Brazilian official says.

"I believe that Rio+20 will deliver the instruments to make sustainable development a paradigm for the economy, not just for the environment," Andre Correa do Lago, the host country's pointman for the June 20-22 summit, said in an interview with AFP.

This article is quoted from Bloomberg.

The toilet is a magnificent thing. Invented at the turn of the 19th century, the flush version has vastly improved human life. The toilet has been credited with adding a decade to our longevity. The sanitation system to which it is attached was voted the greatest medical advance in 150 years by readers of the British Medical Journal.

For more of a story on AOL, press here

What follows is quoted from a discussion of basic language structure.    

A second way of classifying languages is based on the word order they use:

SOV (subject-object-verb) is preferred by the greatest number of languages.  Included are the Indoeuropean languages of India, such as Hindi and Bengali, the Dravidian languages of southern India, Armenian, Hungarian, Turkish and its relatives, Korean, Japanese, Burmese, Basque, and most Australian aboriginal languages.  

Almost all SOV languages use postpositions ("therein lies a tale"), with a notable exception in Farsi (Persian).  Most have the adjective preceding the noun.  Exceptions include Burmese, Basque and the Australian aboriginal languages, which have the adjective follow the noun.SVO (subject-verb-object) is the second largest group, but has the largest number of speakers.  They are split between languages that use prepositions ("I go to school") and ones that use postpositions ("therein lies a tale").

Among the prepositional languages are the Romance languages, Albanian, Greek, the Bantu languages, languages of southeast Asia, including Khmer, Vietnamese, Thai, and Malay, and the Germanic languages.  Most of these have the adjective following the noun ("un enfant terrible)", except for the Germanic languages, which put the adjective before the noun ("ein schreckliches Kind").

The second group use postpositions.  These include Chinese, Finnish and Estonian, many non-Bantu languages of Africa such as Mandingo, and the South American indian language, Guarani.  The first three have adjectives before the noun, the others have adjectives after the noun.  Some linguists believe that Chinese is moving towards becoming an SOV language.
Next, we have the VSO (verb-subject-object) languages.  In Irish, they say Cheannaich mi blobhsa -- “Bought I blouse” -- for I bought a blouse.  

These always use prepositions.  Although a relatively small group, it does include most Semitic languages, including Arabic and Hebrew, Celtic languages such as Gaelic and Welsh, the Polynesian languages, and a  number of American indian languages such as Kwakiutl (British Columbia) and Nahuatl (Aztec).  Most have the adjective after the noun.  Kwakiutl and Nahuatl have the adjective before the noun.

Only a handful of languages put the subject after the object.  Several northwest US and Canadian indian languages use VOS, including Coeur d’Alene, Siuslaw, and Coos.  But the first uses prepositions and adjectives after noun, while the other two use postpositions and adjective before the noun!

There are also languages that use more than one of the standard systems.  Notable of these is Tagalog and English.  Strongly inflexional languages, such as Russian and Latin, often permit varied word order as well.

ENVIRONMENT 360

China has undertaken ambitious reforestation initiatives that have increased its forest cover dramatically in the last decade. But scientists are now raising questions about just how effective these grand projects will turn out to be.

by JON R. LUOMA

From: delanceyplace <daily@delanceyplace.com>
Date: Thu, Apr 5, 2012 at 3:35 AM

In today's encore excerpt - in the late 1970s, comedian Steve Martin, who had labored for years in obscurity, reached a level of success with his stand-up act that was unprecedented in comedy. But he was unprepared for the crush of this success, and left stand-up at the peak of his popularity:

Truthout

Saturday, 07 April 2012 13:03

By Emily Apple, New Deal 2.0 

March 20th marked the third anniversary of the planting of the White House vegetable garden, the first functioning garden since Eleanor Roosevelt’s Victory Garden. The garden is an essential part of Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move! initiative that aims to help raise a generation of healthy, active kids. But while it provides an excellent jumping off point for discussing the importance of nutrition, it does not get to the root cause of the lack of nutrition across the country. Not everyone can have an organic garden in his backyard or, on an even more basic level, a supermarket that sells quality fruits and vegetables. According to the United States Department of Agriculture, more than 23 million Americans live in “food deserts”: areas with limited access to affordable and nutritious food, particularly ones composed of predominantly lower income neighborhoods and communities. Before we begin to talk about the problem of nutrition in our country, we must first improve access to food for millions of Americans. And Michelle Obama is on the right path — community gardens can be a powerful tool for improving access to produce for people across the country.

FROM THE WASHINGTON POST

CBS newsman Mike Wallace, famed for his tough interviews on "60 Minutes," has died, a spokesman says. 

Spokesman Kevin Tedesco said Wallace, 93, died Saturday night.

Wallace was on the staff of “60 Minutes” when it began in 1968, and was one of its mainstays from then on. Though he retired as a regular correspondent in 2006, he continued to contribute occasional reports.

To read more

Saturday, 07 April 2012 10:35

 By Bill Moyers, Moyers & Co. 

Social activism has always been a popular subject for documentarians because it presents stories of both cause and characters. The 10 powerful films below are not a complete list of films about social activists, but certainly proof enough that social change is possible, even under the most challenging conditions. Feel free to suggest your own films in the comments below.

For full The New York Times story

From THE WASHINGTON POST

  Avalanche Buries 130 Pakistani Soldiers On Himalayan glacier Near India

 

ISLAMABAD — An avalanche has buried 130 Pakistani soldiers in a Himalayan region close to India, a Pakistani security official said, the Associated Press reports. The incident happened early Saturday on the Siachen Glacier, where thousands of Pakistani and Indian troops are based.

Excerpt from Kwintessential (at this URL)

Society Culture Family Customs and much more.

From Spartacus - schoolnet

Czechoslovakia was created in 1918 from territory that had previously been part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. As well as the seven million Czechs, two million Slovaks, 700,000 Hungarians and 450,000 Ruthenians there were three and a half million German speaking people living in Czechoslovakia.