Schools must serve needs of jobs market

Colleges and universities in the United States have not made the same commitment of providing marketable skills to their graduates, at least for those in the humanities. Perhaps they should consider going all the way--except in a declining economy, what sort of job opportunities are possible?

CHINA
Schools must serve needs of jobs market
Experts comment on Premier Wen’s pledges for education. Along with an increase in spending, formation in the professions needs to improved, to avoid the creation of an army of unemployed graduates. Unemployment is growing, specific professional capabilities are increasingly important.

Beijing (AsiaNews/Agencies) – Schools are not meeting the professional needs of the jobs market. According to experts participating in the National Peoples Congress in Beijing, increasing government spending on education will not resolve the issue of unemployment, in fact there is a real risk it will only create more unemployed graduates. What is urgently required is a closer link between the subjects being taught and the needs of the jobs market.

CPPCC member Zhang Baoqing, and former vice-minister of education, maintain that “Employment - and the environment - are the two biggest problems China faces. [Employment] has already become a social problem”. “The Ministry of Education must nurture students who satisfy society's needs” and those of the jobs market.

The search for employment has become markedly difficult for a growing number of young graduates, each year they figure in increasing numbers among the unemployed. This is because – observes Zhang –the ministry should provide more career guidance, the government should create more jobs, students should not expect to find the ideal job right after graduation, and graduates should be entrepreneurial.

Zhengzhou University professor Huo Yuping maintains that greater attention must be paid to the vocational secondary schools, which account for the formation of over 17 million students each year.

On March 5th, in his speech inaugurating the NPC, Premier Wen Jiabao, announced an increase in spending for education in rural areas. According to Huo “the funds may not be sufficient, but the system should first be improved”. Huo is satisfied by Wen’s pledge to “put vocational education in a more prominent position, such that education can truly serve society” ", calling the decision a “big reform and historic mission”.

Meanwhile the number of unqualified labourers in search of work in China is on the increase. Wen also pledged that no less than 9 million jobs would be created in cities this year, where the unemployment rate would be kept below 4.6 per cent. But academics at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences project that the number of job seekers in urban areas alone will exceed 25 million this year, meaning there will be a shortfall of at least 15 million jobs. For which specific professional capabilities will be increasingly requested. The problem of finding work, however , does not seem to concern the 5 million new university graduates, which according to official estimates will enter the jobs market in 2007 (1 million more than last year).

IDF to recruit more women soldiers

ISRAEL
IDF to recruit more women soldiers
The Israeli Defence Force wants changes to conscription rules to plug gaps that allow too many exemptions on grounds of religion or the army’s excessively male-oriented environment.

Tel Aviv (AsiaNews) – The Israeli Defence Force (IDF) wants to stem the number of young women who receive exemptions from military service. For this reason, it is working on getting new legislation, a high-ranking female officer told The Jerusalem Post yesterday, ahead of International Women's Day.

Annually, 42 per cent of Israeli women of military age ask for and receive exemptions from the military on the grounds that they are religious or that they cannot serve in a male-oriented military environment.

“We are working on changes to legislation that will put an end to this phenomenon and lower the number,” the high-ranking officer said. “The changes to the law will make it more difficult to get an exemption with the religious claim.”

According to the officer, 30 per cent of the IDF today is made up of female soldiers, but only 1,000-1,500 serve in combat units. Instead, female soldiers are needed in combat units to serve for three years like males, as opposed to women’s standard two years of service.

“We are in the midst of a process to better integrate women into the IDF,” the officer said. “In the end, we hope to see a military with more opportunities for women and more open to a woman's role.”

Most recently, female soldiers enlisted in Field Intelligence Units and over the coming year the IDF hopes to open new opportunities in infantry and artillery units.

Another issue is creating more opportunities for women to climb military ranks. Today, there are three female brigadier generals and some 20 colonels, but that number has remained the same for the past several years.

“It would be a mistake to judge the advancement of women in the IDF by these numbers,” explained the officer. “"Instead, what needs to be evaluated is the number of important positions female officers hold in the IDF. With that, there has been an improvement.”

RPJ interview

Old interview on Breakfast TV, must have been some time before season 5 of Spooks:

China's going down the drain

China's going down the drain
Sun Wukong

China sex mag: They read it for the articles

China sex mag: They read it for the articles
By Sunny Lee

What would Chairman Mao say to all of the changes that have taken place?

Magister on Archbishop Bagnasco

The Bishops of Italy Have a New Leader: Angelo Bagnasco
He has been archbishop of Genoa for a few months, but Benedict XVI also wanted him to be president of the bishops’ conference. He succeeds Ruini, to whom he is extremely loyal. His appointment is the confirmation of a project for a victorious Church

Archdiocese of Genoa
Italian Episcopal Conference

Homily in memory of Cardinal Siri by then Archbishop Bertone

A Brief History of Courtship and Dating in America, part 2

A BRIEF HISTORY OF COURTSHIP AND DATING IN AMERICA, PART 2
by The Rev'd Skip Burzumato

Permaculture links

wiki
New Atlantis article
Introduction to Permaculture

The word "permaculture" was coined in 1978 by Bill Mollison, an Australian ecologist, and one of his students, David Holmgren. It is a contraction of "permanent agriculture" or "permanent culture."

Permaculture is about designing ecological human habitats and food production systems. It is a land use and community building movement which strives for the harmonious integration of human dwellings, microclimate, annual and perennial plants, animals, soils, and water into stable, productive communities. The focus is not on these elements themselves, but rather on the relationships created among them by the way we place them in the landscape. This synergy is further enhanced by mimicking patterns found in nature.

A central theme in permaculture is the design of ecological landscapes that produce food. Emphasis is placed on multi-use plants, cultural practices such as sheet mulching and trellising, and the integration of animals to recycle nutrients and graze weeds.

However, permaculture entails much more than just food production. Energy-efficient buildings, waste water treatment, recycling, and land stewardship in general are other important components of permaculture. More recently, permaculture has expanded its purview to include economic and social structures that support the evolution and development of more permanent communities, such as co-housing projects and eco-villages. As such, permaculture design concepts are applicable to urban as well as rural settings, and are appropriate for single households as well as whole farms and villages.

"Integrated farming" and "ecological engineering" are terms sometimes used to describe perma-culture, with "cultivated ecology" perhaps coming the closest. Though helpful, these terms alone do not capture the holistic nature of permaculture; thus, the following definitions are included here to provide additional insight.

Bill Mollison
What is Permaculture? by Bill Mollison
Permaculture - A Quiet Revolution :: An Interview with Bill Mollison
Bill Mollison at Permaculture Research Institute of Australia; wiki

Right Livelihood Award
The Legend of Permaculture

source

Bill Mollison's set of permaculture principles are laid out in his Magnus opus: Permaculture - A Designer's Manual (p.35 Chapter 2.14, Tagari Publications, 1988, 1st ed.). Further principles are laid out in the entry level Introduction to Permaculture (Tagari Publications, 1988, 1st ed.)

Mollisonian Permaculture Principles

1. Work with nature, rather than against the natural elements, forces, pressures, processes, agencies, and evolutions, so that we assist rather than impede natural developments.
2. The problem is the solution; everything works both ways. It is only how we see things that makes them advantageous or not (if the wind blows cold, let us use its strength and its coolness to advantage). A corollary of this principle is that everything is a positive resource; it is just up to us to work out how we may use it as such.
3. Make the least change for the greatest possible effect.
4. The yield of a system is theoretically unlimited. The only limit on the number of uses of of a resources possible within a system is in the limit of the information and the imagination of the designer.
5. Everything gardens, or has an effect on its environment.

David Holmgren
David Holmgren (wiki)
Energy Descent (more links)
Global Public Media
Retrofitting the Suburbs for Sustainability
Holmgren Design Services
A review of his Permaculture - principles and pathways beyond sustainability

More Links
Permaculture Institute
Permaculture.Net
International Institute for Ecological Agriculture
Permaculture The Earth
Permaculture Activist
Bullock's Permaculture Homestead, Orcas Island, WA, USA
La'akea Permaculture Gardens/Permaculture in Hawaii
UK Permaculture Association
Permaculture Magazine
| Permaculture Research Institute of Australia
Southern Cross Permaculture Institute
Permaculture Institute International

The Relocalization Network
Energy Farms
Global Public Media
Bay Area Peak Oil

Michael Altieri, Biotechnology myths

Biotechnology myths

Miguel Altieri, PhD

Myth One: Biotechnology will benefit farmers

Reality: Biotechnology seeks to ‘industrialise agriculture’ even further, converting agriculture into a branch of industry. Biotechnology is capital intensive and increases concentration of agriculture production in the hands of large corporate farms. As with other labour saving technology, by increasing productivity biotechnology tends to reduce commodity prices and set in motion a technology treadmill that forces out of business a significant number of farmers, especially small scale.

Given that time and labour saving technology have been substituted for farmers and farm workers for over 200 years, the most probable outcome is that farmers will be displaced by biotechnology. Removal of constraints to growing the same crop in the same field every year and eliminating the need for mechanical weed control will enable a given number of people to farm more acres and thereby facilitate a system of bigger and fewer farms.

Biotechnology will further concentrate power in the hands of a few multinational corporations (MNCs), which in turn will enhance farmers’ dependence and force them to pay inflated prices for seed-chemical packages.

Myth Two: Biotechnology will benefit Third World farmers

Reality:
If green revolution technology bypassed small and resource-poor farmers, then biotechnology will exacerbate marginalisation even more as such technologies are under corporate control and protected by patents, are expensive and inappropriate to the needs and circumstances of indigenous people.

Biotechnology products will undermine exports from Third World countries especially from small-scale producers. 70,000 farmers in Madagascar growing vanilla were ruined when a Texas farm produced vanilla in biotech labs. Fructose produced by biotechnology captured over 10% of the world sugar market and caused sugar prices to fall, throwing tens of thousands of sugar workers in the Third World out of work. Nearly 10 million sugar farmers in the Third World may face a loss of livelihood as laboratory-produced sweeteners begin invading world markets. Expansion of Unilever cloned oil palms will substantially increase palm-oil production with dramatic consequences for farmers producing other vegetable oils (groundnut in Senegal and coconut in the Philippines) The Third World should worry that the massive penetration of transgenic crops will not only pose environmental risks and foreclose rural employment opportunities, but will doom traditional agriculture and its native genetic diversity.

Myth Three: Biotechnology production promises will be a blessing for the poor and hungry of the Third World.

Reality:
Biotechnology is profit driven rather than science and need driven. Biotechnology research serves the desires of the rich rather than the needs of humanity, especially the poor. Biotechnology is primarily a commercial activity, a reality that determines priorities of what is investigated, how it is applied and who is to benefit. While the world may lack food and suffer pesticide pollution, the focus of MNCs is profit, not philanthropy.

Investors design GMOs for new marketable quality or for import substitution, rather than for greater food production. Biotechnology companies are emphasising a limited range of crops for which there are large and secure markets, targeted to relatively capital-intensive production systems. It is difficult to conceive how such technology will be introduced in Third World countries to favour masses of poor farmers.

The thrust of the biotech industry is not to solve agricultural problems as much as it is to create profitability. Why are herbicide resistant crops (HRCs) not being developed for parasitic weeds in Africa? Instead HRC corn and cotton are being produced although there are myriad herbicides available to control weeds in these crops. Why isn’t the scientific genius of biotechnology turned to develop varieties of crops more tolerant to weeds rather than herbicides? Why aren’t more promising products of biotechnology, such as nitrogen fixing and tolerant plants being developed?

Myth Four: Biotechnology will not attempt to move against the ecological sovereignty of the Third World

Reality:
The Third World is now witnessing a ‘gene rush’ as governments and multinational corporations aggressively scour forests, crop fields and coasts in search of the new genetic gold. Indigenous people and their biodiversity are viewed as raw material for the MNCs.

Corporations have made billions of dollars on seeds developed in US labs from germplasm that farmers in the Third World had carefully bred over generations. Peasant farmers go unrewarded for their millenary knowledge of what to grow, while MNCs stand to harvest royalties from Third World countries estimated at billions of dollars.

Patenting laws prevent farmers from freely reproducing patented livestock and seeds. Biotech companies offer no concrete provisions to pay Third World farmers for the seeds they take and use. Patenting of plants and animals means that farmers must pay royalties to the patent holder each time they breed their stock (saving seed is not possible with hybrid crops – farmers must buy fresh patented seed each year). Indigenous farmers can lose rights to their own original seeds.

As bans and regulations delay tests and marketing in the North, GMOs will increasingly be tested in the South to bypass public control. The Third World will evolve from chemical and nuclear waste disposal to genetic dumpsite.

Myth Five: Biotechnology will lead to biodiversity conservation

Reality:
Although biotechnology has the capacity to create a greater variety of commercial plants and thus contribute to biodiversity, this is unlikely to happen. MNCs’ strategy is to create broad international markets for a single product. The tendency is towards uniform international seed markets.

The agricultural systems developed with transgenic crops will favour monocultures characterised by dangerously high levels of genetic homogeneity leading to higher vulnerability of agriculture to biotic and abiotic stresses.

As the new bioengineered seeds replace the old traditional varieties and their wild relatives, genetic erosion will accelerate in the Third World.

The push for uniformity will not only destroy the diversity of genetic resources, but will also disrupt the biological complexity that underlies the sustainability of traditional farming systems.

Myth Six: Biotechnology is ecologically safe, offering softer technologies and will launch a period of chemical-free agriculture

Reality:
We can be more sure of the economic outcomes of biotechnology (especially for MNCs) than we can about its health or environmental outcomes.

There are many unanswered ecological questions regarding the impact of the release of transgenic plants and microbes into the environment. Approaches must be developed and employed for assessing and monitoring future predictable risks. Biotechnology will exacerbate the problems of conventional agriculture and will also undermine ecological methods of farming such as rotation and polycultures.

Transgenic crops are likely to increase the use of pesticides and to accelerate the evolution of ‘superweeds’ and resistant insect/pest strains. Major environmental risks associated with genetically engineered plants are the unintended transfer to plant relatives of the ‘transgenes’ and the unpredictable ecological effects.

Myth Seven: Biotechnology will enhance the use of molecular biology for the benefit of all society

Reality:
The demand for the new biotechnology has emerged out of the change in plant laws and the profit interests of chemical companies in linking seeds and pesticides. The supply emerged out of breakthroughs in molecular biology and the availability of venture capital as a result of favourable tax laws. Plant breeding research is shifting from the public to the private sector. As more universities enter into partnerships with corporations, serious ethical questions emerge about who owns the results of research and which research gets done.

A great deal of the basic knowledge underlying biotechnology was developed using public funding. The trend to secrecy by publicly funded scientists in government and universities is not in the public interest. A professor’s ability to attract private investments is often more important than academic qualifications. Applied and alternative agricultural sciences such as biological pest control which do not attract corporate sponsorship are being phased out. The economic and political domination of the agricultural development agenda has thrived at the expense of the interest of consumers, farm workers, small family farms, wildlife and the environment. Citizens should have earlier entry points and broader participation in technological decisions.

The domination of scientific research by corporate interest must be dealt with more stringent public control. It is not biotechnological science that needs scrutiny; it is its exploitation by narrow business interests. Mechanisms should be in place to reverse the privatisation of biotechnology and challenge the direction of current privately led research.

Myth Eight: Biotechnology is a more environmentally sound approach to pest management and sustainable agriculture

Reality:
Biotechnology emerges in an area where there is widespread concern about the long-term sustainability of our food production systems. Many scientists raise questions about the growing dependence of farming on non-renewable resources, the depletion of soils through erosion and the heavy reliance on chemicals which are costly but also raise questions about food and environmental quality.

Agroindustry’s model reliance on monoculture and inputs such as pesticides and fertilisers impacts the environment and society: topsoil has been lost, biodiversity has eroded, and toxics have damaged wildlife, soil and water. As biotechnology requires reliance on monocultures these negative trends will become exacerbated. Worldwide, 2.5 million tons of pesticides are applied each year with a purchase price of $20 billion. In the US, 500,000 tons of 600 different types of pesticides are used annually at a cost of $4.1 billion.

The cost to Latin America of chemical pest control is expected to reach US$5.2 billion by the year 2006. An investment of $4 billion in pesticide control saves approximately $16 billion in US crops. But indirect environmental and public health costs of pesticide use (reaching $8 billion each year) need to be balanced against these benefits. By weight of active ingredients, herbicides now constitute 85% of all pesticides applied to field crops. Biotechnology treats agricultural problems as genetic deficiencies of organisms, and treats nature as a commodity.

Biotechnology is being used to patch up problems that have been caused by previous technologies (pest resistance, cost of pesticides, pollution, etc.) which were promoted by the same companies now leading the bio-revolution.

Transgenic crops for pest control follow closely the pesticide paradigm of using a single control mechanism which has proven to fail with insects, pathogens and weeds. As such, they do not fit into the broad ideals of sustainable agriculture.

The ‘one gene-one pest’ resistance approach is rather easy to be overcome by pests which are continuously adapting to new situations and evolving detoxification mechanisms. As with pesticides, biotechnology companies will feel the impact of environmental, farm labour, animal rights and consumers lobbies.

Miguel A. Altieri, PhD from the University of California, Berkeley, is a world traveller, spending six months of the year helping small farmers abroad, mostly in Latin America, the other six teaching at Berkeley. He has travelled to England to speak about sustainable agriculture at a conference organised by Prince Charles; to the Vatican for a meeting on the food needs of the developing world where he met with the Pope; and to Italy as a resident scholar at the Bellagio Institute, where he worked on the third edition of his pioneering text, Agroecology: The Science of Sustainable Agriculture. See website.

source

Challenges, threats, and opportunities for sustainable agriculture

Challenges, threats, and opportunities for sustainable agriculture
Miguel A Altieri, Speaking Truth To Power

via EB

his faculty page: sustainable agriculture miguel altieri
Personnel Profile: Altieri, Miguel
Miguel A. Altieri

Cal Alumni Association interview
The Ecological Impacts of Agricultural Biotechnology by Miguel A ...
Miguel Altieri on industrial agriculture and agroecology - Global ...
Miguel Altieri describes the human world : humanworld : Article ...
GM soybean: Latin America’s new colonizer
The Case Against Agricultural Biotechnology
Perseus Books

Agroecology

The Washington Dodgers

by William S. Lind

The kabuki script currently goes like this. Congressional Democrats huff and puff about ending the war; the White House and Congressional Republicans accuse them of "not supporting the troops;" and the Democrats pretend to be stopped cold, plaintively mewing that "Well, we all agree we have to support the troops, don't we?"

"Supporting the troops" is just another dodge. The only way to support the troops when a war is lost is to end the war and bring them home. Nor is it a challenge to design legislative language that both ends the war and supports the troops. All the Democratic majorities in Congress have to do is condition the funding for the Iraq war with the words, "No funds may be obligated or expended except for the withdrawal of all American forces from Iraq, and for such force protection actions as may be necessary during that withdrawal." If Bush vetoes the bill, he vetoes continued funding for the war. If he signs the bill, ignores the legislative language and keeps fighting the war in the same old way, he sets himself up for impeachment.
What's not to like?

For the Democrats, what's not to like is anything that might actually end the war before the 2008 elections. The Republicans have 21 Senate seats up in 2008, and if the Iraq war is still going on, they can count on losing most of them, along with the Presidency and maybe 100 more seats in the House. 2008 could be the new 1932, leaving the Republican Party a permanent minority for twenty years. From the standpoint of the Democratic Party's leadership, a few thousand more dead American troops is a small price to pay for so glowing a political victory.

Ironically, the people who should be most desperate to end the war are Congressional Republicans. Their heads are on the chopping block. But they remain so paralyzed by the White House that they cannot act even to save themselves.

Habermas Writes to Ratzinger, and Ruini Responds

Habermas Writes to Ratzinger, and Ruini Responds. Allies against the "Defeatism" of Modern Reason
The famous atheist philosopher invokes a new alliance between faith and reason, but in a form different from the one Benedict XVI proposed in Regensburg. Cardinal Ruini highlights the points of agreement and disagreement. And he insists on “the best hypothesis”: to live as if God exists

by Sandro Magister

Angie Chiu videos, pt 2

!!! wow.

Dai Nui Fa MV


Another MV


Another MV


The opening... so who wants to learn how to sing this song? hahaha


ep 13 opening

Qian Long MV


Closing


Taan Qing Shuo Ai


Zhi You Meng Li Lai Chi


3 songs


The Bund MV (with the actual opening song)


Jia Cuo Ma MV


Some video set to O Mio Babbino Caro


Short interview


A commercial


Some tribute


Some photos


With Jackie Chan

undergarment commercial (already posted)

Fansite -- don't know if it is still up.

wiki
Miss HK Beauties

Mmm... I think Misses Hong Kong from the 70s and 80s are generally prettier than the ones from the 90s and 2000s...

MV for a more recent series (I don't think she's in this)

Saints Perpetua and Felicity, March 7

I thought there are some mosaics of them in the crypt of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, but I was wrong.
EWTN
another
Catholic Encyclopedia
The Passion of the Holy Martyrs Perpetua and Felicity

Amy Welborn's post. Their martyrdom.
Giclee print of Saint Perpetua

If I ever have daughters some day... I will be naming them after the early martyrs of the Church, including Saints Felicity and Perpetua.

Gorgias Press: The Passion of Saint Perpetua

CE on Amen. My niece's favorite word? I wish!

More of Peter Hitchens on Punishment

from Marriage a la Mode:

'Prison works' is the idea that prison at least removes bad people from the streets while they are doing time. This is blindingly obvious, but also rather useless. The moment they are released, they start being bad again. A lot of people do wicked things and are never caught. So, unless you can lock all bad people up, all the time, you are achieving nothing of lasting value. Either you have to admit that you can only deal with a tiny proportion of crime, or you will have to carpet the remaining green spaces of Britain with enormous, expensive prison camps to house tens of thousands of unrepentant, unashamed, unafraid thieves and brutes until they are too old and weak to be a threat.

The idea appeals to fake right-wingers because it sounds good in a two-minute TV debate on 'law and order', in which the liberal case, involving pious hopes of 'rehabilitation' which are never fulfilled, is even more lame. It also appeals to them because they haven't thought about it for more than a few seconds. Also because they shy at the mention of hard old copybook words such as 'punishment' and ‘retribution’.

These things, properly used, do actually alter people's behaviour (whereas there is no evidence of 'rehabilitation' ever happening, so far as I know). But 'modern' right-wingers imagine themselves to be so civilised that they think it is wrong to use fear or shame to get people to behave better. They forget - as we all tend to do - that our gentle civilisation was bought by centuries of hard and often brutal conflict, in which the good side generally won.

Well, I think fear and shame are powerful weapons in the hands of a just ruler, and that since we abandoned them, we have gone seriously wrong. And this also affects the argument about marriage. I think we should not be embarrassed about being hard-faced on some issues which concern our survival as a nation and a people. I'm lucky enough to have travelled in the regions of the world where they produce more history than they can consume locally, and to know that the soft green safety of the British Isles is utterly untypical of the fate of the human race in general.

We may think of civil war, invasion, subjugation, mass exile and enslavement as things which happened in the Bible, or far away, or are buried in the remote history of these islands (a view you could only take if you knew little about Ireland, by the way).

But cross a short stretch of water to the East and you will find people with living memories of barbarities that would have made Tamerlane and Genghis blush. We all know (or think we know - the reality is often too horrible for us to bear, so we stop listening after a while) about the massacre of Europe's Jews and the mass-slavery and serfdom imposed by the Nazis on the peoples they conquered. . But far too few know of the Russian civil wars and purges, the mass deportations of the Baltic peoples to Siberia. These are the things that happened to societies which either broke down through internal disease, or failed to defend themselves against easily predictable threats. These were modern countries, with middle class people living in nice houses and going to comfy offices in motor cars one day, and crammed into cattle cars the next, with death waiting at the end of the line.

And that is just Europe. Go a little further and it becomes even worse.

Michael Gurian, Boys and Girls Learn Differently

page for the book

The Gurian Institute
Michael Gurian's homepage

On the declining enrollment of men in colleges: Disappearing Act

CNN interview from 1999
AnnOnline
Hug the Monkey interview

HUG: Girls have a more intense need for connection at a time in their lives when they naturally start to become more independent from the family, and a time when parents often begin to look outward from the family. How does this affect teen-aged girls?

GURIAN: The intimacy imperative is so very strong, due to the estrogen, progesterone, oxytocin and serotonin interactions, that it creates such a strong need for intimacy and to develop the self through intimate relationship. Simultaneously, the psychology of human development is that children must separate from their parents.

Both males and females hormonally need each other and want connection. Teenage males in general tend to want more sex and less intimacy, and females tend to need more social intimacy. As she's trying to separate from mom and still has a deep need for intimacy, she will project a lot of it onto friends and males.

With boys, there will be romance and sexuality mixed in, which further complicates things. She's trying to bond with the boy and at same time trying to understand how to have a self. The malleability of her hormonal, social and emotional base often leads to her to nearly give up herself just to get intimacy. Often we will see a girl during the teen years fighting the urge to obtain intimacy at the expense of self. Part of her internal destiny is to see how to give a self without giving up a self. And she fights that fight with the male.

The males are smart. They'll say, "I love you, I love you," get the sex from her and never call her again. When a male has sex and orgasms, he gets that hit of oxytocin that takes him to a level similar to hers, so he will exacerbate the problem by saying, "I love you you're the best." His oxytocin goes down in a couple of hours, as testosterone floods in and mitigates the oxytocin level.

But she has this oxytocin that rages for days and days, and she thinks he's in love with her. I think that's why we have so much depression after these romantic and sexual breakups.

MIT puts entire curriculum at disposal of e-learners

From Lew Rockwell: MIT puts entire curriculum at disposal of e-learners

Other Trainers

Chuck Taylor
Jeff Gonzales
Larry Vickers
Massad Ayoob
Louis Awerbuck
Pat Rodgers
Pat Goodale
Clint Smith
Randy Cain
Bill Jeans
Scott Reitz

Paul Howe article

ASP Baton

ASP; baton page
Baton Defense
LA Police Gear
UWS

G.I. Joe live action movie planned

First, Transformers, now G.I. Joe...

Devil's Due now publishes the comic book, taking it over from Marvel (wiki history).

Movies IGN article

A Question of Scale

A question of scale (originally published at Resource Insights)

by Kurt Cobb

The global scale of industrial operations and logistics is heavily dependent of finite fossil fuels. And, the current system has become an engine for successively destroying the sustainability of each locale as that system draws needed resources--water, food, fuel, minerals--from places that still have them to places that have depleted them or have more need of them than they can supply locally or even nationally.

So it follows that the way back to sustainability is to break the stranglehold of the globalized economy on our local economies. Herein lies the problem of scale for organizations seeking to act as midwives in this process. In the United States and probably many other countries serious regulatory and legal obstacles can get in the way of any relocalization project. State and federal rules may frustrate and even prevent wise sustainability practices and rules.

Tin Cheung Dei Gau cf

with Chow Yun Fat and Jacqueline Ng Sin Lin, a fan favorite:


Another cf:


A Taiwanese cf that's been dubbed:


Other cfs, in Taiwanese:

PLA prepared to invade Taiwan

CHINA – TAIWAN
PLA prepared to invade Taiwan

In response to Taiwanese President Chen’s statements on independence, General Guo, who ranks second to President Hu in military chain of command, says mainland would attack. Foreign Minister Li yesterday branded anyone who wants to split Taipei from Beijing a “criminal.”

Beijing (AsiaNews/Agencies) – China’s armed forces would invade Taiwan should the island proclaim its independence, this according to General Guo Boxiong, State news agency Xinhua reported. General Guo, who ranks second only to President and Armed Forces Chairman Hu Jintao, made these comments during a discussion with military delegates to the National People’s Congress (NPC) currently underway in Beijing.

The People's Liberation Army (PLA) would respond to a declaration of independence and “"effectively perform our glorious mission of safeguarding national sovereignty and territorial integrity in accordance with the will of the motherland and the wishes of the people,” the general said. He urged PLA soldiers and officers to “heighten [their] sense of responsibility and sense of urgency” and make an all-out effort to “get well-prepared for military struggle.”

The general’s comments came in the wake of statements made by Taiwan's President Chen Shui-bian who last Sunday said that “Taiwan should be independent” and that it was “a country whose sovereignty lies outside the People's Republic of China.”

China's Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing also responded to President Chen saying that anyone trying to split Taiwan from the mainland was a “criminal” and that China was ready to enforce its “anti-secession law” (which calls for military action in case of Taiwan’s independence).

Similarly, in a speech before the NPC, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao reiterated his government’s policy vis-à-vis Taiwan.

“We are resolutely opposed to Taiwan seeking de jure independence” and “all acts seeking independence,” he said. As in the case of Hong Kong, unification will be achieved on the basis of the “policy of ‘one country, two systems’.”

China on Sunday also announced a 17.8 per cent rise in military spending this year to 350 billion yuan but the United States believes the figure to be much higher.

Still, Washington said the mainland represents no military threat to others and has several times reminded Taiwan not to alter the status quo.

“Rhetoric that could raise doubts about these commitments [to the status quo] is unhelpful," State department spokesman Sean McCormack said.

Taiwan’s vice president running to be island’s first female president

Taiwan’s vice president running to be island’s first female president

Called “insane” and “scum of the nation” in mainland China, Annette Lu announces her intention to run for president in 2008 but few believe she can win her party’s primaries.

Taipei (AsiaNews) – Taiwan's Vice President Annette Lu, whom the mainland has called "insane" and the “scum of the nation,” said on Tuesday that she was going to run for the presidency in 2008 and become the island's first female president.

Ms Lu, who belongs to President Chen’s Democratic Progressive Party, has however few chances of winning next year's elections. Many doubt she has even enough support to win her party's primary elections—which already includes three other solid candidates.

Moreover, she has repeatedly angered the Beijing government with her support for Taiwanese independence, and tensions with the mainland would probably rise if she were elected. For her “Taiwan is a Pacific country, not an affiliate of China.”

In China she has been called the “scum of the nation” but she has shrugged off the criticism, calling it "silly" and saying it only helps draw more global attention and sympathy to her cause.

Taiwan has been ruled separately from China after the Nationalists lost the civil war and fled the mainland before the victorious Communists in 1949. Beijing has insisted ever since that Taiwan must be reunified to the motherland “by any means.”

Anson Chan’s plans for full democracy

HONG KONG
Anson Chan’s plans for full democracy
Hong Kong’s popular former chief secretary wants to abolish uninominal functional constituencies and regroup them so that they represent broader interests and have a wider electoral base.

Hong Kong (AsiaNews/SCMP) – Anson Chan Fang On-sang, former chief secretary in the last British colonial administration and the first post-reunification government, is proposing that functional constituencies representing business interests and professions, which elect half the legislature, be broadened to make them more representative before their final abolition in 2016. If adopted this would be a first step towards full democracy in the Territory.

In her proposal, functional constituencies would be regrouped ahead of next year’s Legislative Council elections into multi-member constituencies in which legislators elected would represent the interests of not just one, but several, trade and professional groups. This would bridge narrow sectoral interests and make elected representatives accountable to the public rather than to a particular constituency.

She said preparations for change should start immediately.

“If we thought that it was not possible in 2008, then of course we would not put forth this proposal. I do not feel that the chances are low for its implementation because if everybody thought we should start taking a step forward, 2008 is the start,” she is quoted as saying in the South China Morning Post.

Under existing rules, 27 functional constituencies return one member to the Legislative Council—only the labour sector is multi-member, electing three representatives.

Under the proposals, constituencies would be regrouped into 10 multi-member constituencies next year, according to the nature of the groups' business. For example, the current insurance, finance, financial services, and information technology constituencies would become a four-member constituency.

Each voter within any of the sectors could cast one vote, and the four candidates with the most votes would be elected to the Council to represent all four groups.

The danger of any group with a large number of voters dominating those with fewer voters would be offset by broadening of the franchise.

If functional constituency seats cannot be scrapped by 2012, the 10 seats created in 2008 should be grouped into three five-member constituencies—industrial, commercial and financial; the professional sector; and labour, social services and other sectors. The other 15 functional constituency members elected in 2008 would be directly elected.

As an alternative, the current constituencies could be retained but return only 15 members in 2012 and be phased out by 2016.

However, Ma Lik, chairman of the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong, said that the issue of electoral change in 2007 and 2008 was effectively closed.

“It's impractical to talk about changes in 2008,” he said.