The Sony Electronic Viewfinder for Cyber-shot RX1 ($449.99 direct) is an add-on viewfinder for Sony's full-frame compact camera, the Cyber-shot DSC-RX1. It slides into the camera's multi-accessory hot shoe and gives you an eye-level look at what would typically be fed to the RX1's rear LCD.
The finder is identical in size and design to the similar FDAEV1S Electronic Viewfinder for select Sony NEX cameras. It shares the same 2.4-megapixel OLED design with that finder as well as the EVFs that are built into Sony's top-end interchangeable lens cameras like the Alpha 99 and NEX-6. The EVF is hinged, so it can tilt straight up to 90 degrees, but it isn't possible to lock it at any position.
Photographers who prefer to put their eyes up to the camera, and those who expect to use the RX1 on the brightest of days, will appreciate the clarity the EVF provides. It's smaller and comprises more pixels than the camera's rear LCD. This results in an image that is fantastically clear, which is especially helpful when focusing manually. You can set the camera to manually switch between the LCD and EVF via the Finder/LCD button on the left side of the eyepiece, or set the change occur automatically via an eye-sensor. Sony includes two eyepieces?one with a larger flexible rubber eyecup and one with a smaller ridged plastic eyecup.
The Electronic Viewfinder is one of two external finder options that Sony offers for the RX1. The other, a fixed optical finder, doesn't show you what your focus or depth of field will be?it simply provides approximate framing. The optical finder is priced even higher, at $600, but you can get away with using any shoe-mount optical finder that matches the field of view of a 35mm lens. Many of these are available used for very little money, as they were a popular accessory with vintage rangefinder cameras.
The OLED EVF is a more modern take on this concept, offering completely accurate framing, real-time preview of your depth of field and exposure, and the automatic magnification as a focus aid when manual focus is enabled. It's expensive, but so is the RX1?if you're going to spend $2,800 on the camera, you should budget the extra $450 for the EVF as it greatly enhances the shooting experience. Being able to bring up the camera to your eye is a welcome feeling for experienced photographers, and if you're shooting on a bright day it will eliminate the glare that sometimes makes using a rear LCD a difficult proposition. It would be nice if you were able to lock it in the 0, 45-, and 90-degree positions, and it would be nice if it was less expensive; but you can't argue with the clarity that the high-resolution OLED display provides.
More Digital Camera Reviews: ??? Sony Electronic Viewfinder for Cyber-shot RX1 (FDA-EV1MK) ??? Sony Cyber-shot DSC-RX1 ??? Nikon 1 J3 ??? Samsung DV150F ??? Nikon AF-S Nikkor 50mm f/1.4G ?? more
In a previous life as a London-based ?global strategist? (I was never sure what that was) I was known as someone who was worried by QE and more generally, about the willingness of our central bankers to play games with something which I didn?t think they fully understand: money. This may be a strange, even presumptuous thing to say. Surely of all people, one thing central bankers understand is money?
They certainly should understand money. They print it, lend it, borrow it, conjure it. They control the price of it? But so what? What should be true is not necessarily what is true, and in the topsy-turvy world of finance and economics, it rarely is. So file the following under ?strange but true?: our best and brightest economists have very little understanding of economics. Take the current malaise as prima facie evidence.
Let me illustrate. Of the many elemental flaws in macroeconomic practice is the true observation that the economic variables in which we might be most interested happen to be those which lend themselves least to measurement. Thus, the statistics which we take for granted and band around freely with each other measuring such ostensibly simple concepts as inflation, wealth, capital and debt, in fact involve all sorts of hidden assumptions, short-cuts and qualifications. So many, indeed, as to render reliance on them without respect for their limitations a very dangerous thing to do. As an example, consider the damage caused by banks to themselves and others by mistaking price volatility (measurable) with risk (unmeasurable). Yet faith in false precision seems to us to be one of the many imperfections our species is cursed with.
One such ?unmeasurable? increasingly occupying us here at Edelweiss is that upon which all economic activity is based: trust. Trust between individuals, between strangers, between organisations? trust in what people read, and even people?s trust in themselves. Let?s spend a few moments elaborating on this.
First, we must understand the profound importance of exchange. To do this, simply look around you. You might see a computer monitor, a coffee mug, a telephone, a radio, an iPad, a magazine, whatever it is. Now ask yourself how much of that stuff you?d be able to make for yourself. The answer is almost certainly none. So where did it all come from? Strangers, basically. You don?t know them and they don?t know you. In fact virtually none of us know each other. Nevertheless, strangers somehow pooled their skills, their experience and their expertise so as to conceive, design, manufacture and distribute whatever you are looking at right now so that it could be right there right now. And what makes it possible for you to have it? Exchange. To be able to consume the skills of these strangers, you must sell yours. Everyone enters into the same bargain on some level and in fact, the whole economy is nothing more than an anonymous labor exchange. Beholding the rich tapestry this exchange weaves and its bounty of accumulated capital, prosperity and civilization is a marvelous thing.
But we must also understand that exchange is only possible to the extent that people trust each other: when eating in a restaurant we trust the chef not to put things in our food; when hiring a builder we trust him to build a wall which won?t fall down; when we book a flight we entrust our lives and the lives of our families to complete strangers. Trust is social bonding and societies without it are stalked by social unrest, upheaval or even war. Distrust is a brake on prosperity, because distrust is a brake on exchange.
But now let?s get back to thinking about money, and let?s note also that distrust isn?t the only possible brake on exchange. Money is required for exchange too. Without money we?d be restricted to barter one way or another. So money and trust are intimately connected. Indeed, the English word credit derives from the Latin word credere, which means to trust. Since money facilitates exchange, it facilitates trust and cooperation. So when central banks play the games with money of which they are so fond, we wonder if they realize that they are also playing games with social bonding. Do they realize that by devaluing money they are devaluing society?
To see the how, first understand how monetary policy works. Think about what happens in the very simple example of a central bank?s? expanding the monetary base by printing money to buy government bonds.
That by this transaction the government has raised revenue for the government is obvious. The government now has a greater command over the nation?s resources. But it is equally obvious that no one can raise revenue without someone else bearing the cost. To deny it would imply revenues could be raised for free, which would imply that wealth could be created by printing more money. True, some economists, it seems, would have the world believe there to be some validity to such thinking. But for those of us more concerned with correct logical practice, it begs a serious question. Who pays? We know that this monetary policy has redistributed money into the government?s coffers. But from whom has the redistribution been?
The simple answer is that we don?t and can?t know, at least not on an amount per person basis. This is unfortunate and unsatisfactory, but it also happens to be true. Had the extra money come from taxation, everyone would at least know where the burden had fallen and who had decreed it to fall there. True, the upper-rate tax payers might not like having a portion of their wealth redirected towards poorer members of society and they might not agree with it. Some might even feel robbed. But at least they know who the robber is.
When the government raises revenue by selling bonds to the central bank, which has financed its purchases with printed money, no one? knows who ultimately pays. In the abstract, we know that current holders of money pay since their cash holdings have been diluted. But the effects are more subtle. To see just how subtle, consider Cantillon?s 18th century analysis of the effects of a sudden increase in gold production:
If the increase of actual money comes from mines of gold or silver? the owner of these mines, the adventurers, the smelters, refiners, and all the other workers will increase their expenditures in proportion to their gains. ? All this increase of expenditures in meat, wine, wool, etc. diminishes of necessity the share of the other inhabitants of the state who do not participate at first in the wealth of the mines in question. The altercations of the market, or the demand for meat, wine, wool, etc. being more intense than usual, will not fail to raise their prices. ? Those then who will suffer from this dearness? will be first of all the landowners, during the term of their leases, then their domestic servants and all the workmen or fixed wage-earners ... All these must diminish their expenditure in proportion to the new consumption.
In Cantillon?s example, the gold mine owners, mine employees, manufacturers of the stuff miners buy and the merchants who trade in it all benefit handsomely. They are closest to the new money and they get to see their real purchasing powers rise.
But as they go out and spend, they bid up the prices of the stuff they purchase to a level which is higher than it would otherwise have been, making that stuff more expensive. For anyone not connected to the mining business (and especially those on fixed incomes: ?the landowners, during the term of their leases?), real incomes haven?t risen to keep up with the higher prices. So the increase in the gold supply redistributes money towards those closest to the new money, and away from those furthest away.
Another way to think about this might be to think about Milton Friedman?s idea of dropping new money from a helicopter. He used this example to demonstrate how easy it would theoretically be for a government to create inflation. What he didn?t say was that such a drop would redistribute income in the same way more gold from Cantillon?s mines did, towards those standing underneath the helicopter and away from everyone else.
So now we know we have a slightly better understanding of who pays: whoever is furthest away from the newly created money. And we have a better understanding of how they pay: through a reduction in their own spending power. The problem is that while they will be acutely aware of the reduction in their own spending power, they will be less aware of why their spending power has declined. So if they find groceries becoming more expensive they blame the retailers for raising prices; if they find petrol unaffordable, they blame the oil companies; if they find rents too expensive they blame landlords, and so on. So now we see the mechanism by which debasing money debases trust. The unaware victims of this accidental redistribution don?t know who the enemy is, so they create an enemy.
Keynes was well aware of this insidious dynamic and articulated it beautifully in a 1919 essay:
By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. By this method they not only confiscate, but they confiscate arbitrarily; and, while the process impoverishes many, it actually enriches some. ? Those to whom the system brings windfalls? become ?profiteers? who are the object of the hatred?. the process of wealth-getting degenerates into a gamble and a lottery.
?
Lenin was certainly right. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose.
Deliberately impoverishing one group in society is a bad thing to do. But impoverishing a group in such an opaque, clandestine and underhanded way is worse. It is not only unjust but dangerous and potentially destructive. A clear and transparent fiscal policy which openly redistributes from the rich to the poor can at least be argued on some level to be consistent with ?social justice.?
Governments can at least claim to be playing Robin Hood. There is no such defense for a monetary driven redistribution towards recipients of the new money and away from everyone else because if the well-off are closest to the money, well, it will have the perverse effect of benefitting them at the expense of the poor.
Take the past few decades. Prior to the 2008 crash, central banks set interest rates according to what their crystal ball told them the future would be like. They were supposed to raise them when they thought the economy was growing too fast and cut them when they thought it was growing too slow.
They were supposed to be clever enough to banish the boom-bust cycle, and this was a nice idea. The problem was that it didn?t work. One reason was because central bankers weren?t as clever as they thought. Another was because they had a bias to lower rates during the bad times but not raise them adequately during the good times. On average therefore, credit tended to be too cheap and so the demand for debt was artificially high. Since that new debt was used to buy assets, the prices of assets rose in a series of asset bubbles around the world. And this unprecedented, secular and largely global credit inflation created an illusion of prosperity which was fun for most people while it lasted.
But beneath the surface, the redistributive mechanism upon which monetary policy relies was at work. Like Cantillon?s gold miners, those closest to the new credit (financial institutions and anyone working in finance industry) were the prime beneficiaries. In 2012 the top 50 names on the Forbes list of richest Americans included the fortunes of eleven investors, financiers or hedge fund managers. In 1982 the list had none.
Besides this redistribution of wealth towards the financial sector was a redistribution to those who were already asset-rich. Asset prices were inflated by cheap credit and the assets themselves could be used as collateral for it. The following chart suggests the size of this transfer from poor to rich might have been quite meaningful, with the top 1% of earners taking the biggest a share of the pie since the last great credit inflation, that of the 1920s.
Who paid? Those with no access to credit, those with no assets, or those who bought assets late in the asset inflations and which now nurse the problem balance sheets. They all paid. Worse still, future generations were victims too, since one way or another they?re on the hook for it. ?
So with their crackpot monetary ideas, central banks have been robbing Peter to pay Paul without knowing which one was which. And a problem here is this thing behavioral psychologists call self-attribution bias. It describes how when good things happen to people they think it?s because of something they did, but when bad things happen to them they think it?s because of something someone else did. So although Peter doesn?t know why he?s suddenly poor, he knows it must be someone else?s fault. He also sees that Paul seems to be doing OK. So being human, he makes the obvious connection: it?s all Paul and people like Paul?s fault.
But Paul has a different way of looking at it. Also being human, he assumes he?s doing OK because he?s doing something right. He doesn?t? know what the problem is other than Peter?s bad attitude. Needless to say, he resents Peter for his bad attitude. So now Peter and Paul don?t trust each other. And this what happens when you play games with society?s bonding.
When we look around we can?t help feeling something similar is happening. The 99% blame the 1%; the 1% blame the 47%. In the aftermath of the Eurozone?s own credit bubbles, the Germans blame the Greeks. The Greeks round on the foreigners. The Catalans blame the Castilians. And as 25% of the Italian electorate vote for a professional comedian whose party slogan ?vaff a? means roughly ?f**k off ? (to everything it seems, including the common currency), the Germans are repatriating their gold from New York and Paris. Meanwhile in China, that centrally planned mother of all credit inflations, popular anger is being directed at Japan, and this is before its own credit bubble chapter has fully? played out. (The rising risk of war is something we are increasingly worried about?) Of course, everyone blames the bankers (?those to whom the system brings windfalls? become ?profiteers? who are the object of the hatred?).
But what does it mean for the owner of capital? If our thinking is correct, the solution would be less monetary experimentation. Yet we are likely to see more. Bernanke has monetized about a half of the federally guaranteed debt issued since 2009 (see chart below). The incoming Bank of England governor thinks the UK?s problem hasn?t been too much monetary experimentation but too little, and likes the idea of actively targeting nominal GDP. The PM in Tokyo thinks his country?s every ill is a lack of inflation, and his new guy at the Bank of Japan is revving up its printing presses to buy government bonds, corporate bonds and ETFs. China?s shadow banking credit bubble meanwhile continues to inflate?
For all we know there might be another round of illusory prosperity before our worst fears are realised. With any luck, our worst fears never will be. But if the overdose of monetary medicine made us ill, we don?t understand how more of the same medicine will make us better.
We do know that the financial market analogue to trust is yield. The less trustful lenders are of borrowers, the higher the yield they demand to compensate. But interest rates, or what?s left of them, are at historic lows. In other words, there is a glaring disconnect between the distrust central banks are fostering in the real world and the unprecedented trust lenders are signaling to borrowers in the financial world. Of course, there is no such thing as ?risk-free? in the real world. Holders of UK cash have seen a cumulative real loss of around 10% since the crash of 2008. Holders of US cash haven?t done much better.
If we were to hope to find safety by lending to what many consider to be an excellent credit, Microsoft, by buying its bonds, we?d have to lend to them until 2021 to earn a gross return roughly the same as the current rate of US inflation. But then we?d have to pay taxes on the coupons. And we?d have to worry about whether or not the rate of inflation was going to rise meaningfully from here, because the 2021 maturity date is eight years away and eight years is a long time. And then we?d have to worry about where our bonds were held, and whether or not they were being lent out by our custodian. And of course, this would all be before we?d worried about whether Microsoft?s business was likely to remain safe over an eight year horizon.
We are happy to watch others play that game. There are some outstanding businesses and individuals with whom we are happy to invest. In an ideal world we would have neither Peters nor Pauls. In the imperfect one in which we live, we have to settle for trying hard to avoid the Pauls, who we fear mistake entrepreneurial competence for proximity to the money well. But when we find the real thing, the timeless ingenuity of the honest entrepreneurs, the modest craftsmen and craftswomen who humbly seek to improve the lot of their customers through their own enterprise, we find inspiration too, for as investors we try to model our own practice on theirs. It is no secret that our quest is to find scarcity.
But the scarce substance we prize above all else is trustworthiness. Aware that we worry too much in a world growing more wary and? distrustful, it is here we place an increasing premium, here that we seek refuge from financial folly and here that we expect the next bull market.
Our most recent item regarding the Darrelle Revis situation springs from the apparent report by Rich Cimini of ESPNNewYork.com that Revis wants to be traded by the Jets as soon as possible.
Per a source close to Revis, that?s not the case.
(Given that Cimini has since added the words ?I think? at the outset of his article, Cimini apparently has gotten that same message.)
The source insists Revis doesn?t wanted to be traded, hasn?t asked to be traded, and has never at any time during his career in New York intimated directly or indirectly a desire to be sent to a new team.
This doesn?t change the fact that the Jets are trying to move him.? So if Revis doesn?t want to be traded, the question becomes why do the Jets want to trade him?
Multiple schools of thought currently are making their way through the NFL grapevine on this point.? First, the Jets have grown tired of the Revis routine, and they have chosen to not even try to negotiate a new deal with him.? Second, they prefer trading him to seeing him sign in 2014 with the Patriots, Giants, Dolphins, or Bills.? Third, they don?t want to pay him quarterback money.? Fourth, owner Woody Johnson doesn?t want to pay Revis or anyone significant money, quarterback or otherwise.
The second and third options are undermined by the reality that, per the source, there have been no negotiations on a new contract for Revis ? at any time.? Last year, when Revis was contemplating another holdout, there were no talks.? Before that, there we no talks.? Since then, there have been no talks.
While the two sides disagree on whether Johnson and the Jets agreed to give Revis a long-term deal two or three seasons after Revis signed his four-year deal in 2010, the fact remains that there have been no discussions aimed at making Revis the NFL equivalent of Derek Jeter in New York.? Per the source, that?s something Johnson specifically promised to Revis.
With no attempt to negotiate Darrelle?s Derek Jeter deal, it can?t be that the player?s demands scared Johnson away.? Sure, there?s a chance that Johnson assumes Revis will want too much.? But how can anyone know that without asking?
Thus, if the Jets ultimately trade Revis without negotiating with him, the reasonable interpretation will be that Johnson decided that he no longer wanted Revis on the team, or that Johnson doesn?t want to pay significant money to any player.
Either of those explanations aren?t likely to make the Personal Seat License holders happy, or to persuade others to buy any of the remaining unsold PSLs.
AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) - Cory Booker, the constantly tweeting mayor of Newark, New Jersey, who intends to run for the U.S. Senate, said on Sunday that the federal government needs to reinvent the often overly formal way it uses social media.
"It's just using it as an announcement system, like you used to listen to in class: ?The cafeteria will be serving roast beef, and I will be at this place or that place'," Booker told Reuters after an appearance at the South by Southwest Interactive Festival in Austin, Texas. "But that's not interaction, that's not collaboration."
Booker, 43, a rising star in the Democratic Party who has more than 1.3 million followers on Twitter, told the Austin audience that he can't be a mayor who sits behind a desk and waits for the world to come to him.
Last year, the Newark mayor was hailed as a hero for inviting into his home neighbors who, he learned on Twitter, lost power because of Superstorm Sandy.
He also uses Twitter to give city phone numbers to constituents, share inspirational quotes, declare his love for the TV series Star Trek and answer questions from local students while admonishing them not to tweet in class.
"On it," he replied to a resident who complained recently of a broken street light.
Booker, who made a failed run for Newark mayor in 2002 before winning the job in 2006, said he's been hooked on Twitter since actor Ashton Kutcher called and told him why he should dive into the micro-blogging site.
'TELLING YOUR TRUTH'
Booker said it was important to be himself on social media - and that this would still be true if he were in the Senate.
"Life is about telling your truth and being who you are, 100 percent," he said. "This world desperately needs authenticity, people who have the courage to tell their truth every single day, and I would not stop being who I am just because of the title that's before my name."
One of his Twitter followers, Shuronda Robinson of Austin, said she took her 12- and 13-year-old sons to his appearance at South by Southwest and made sure he shook the boys' hands.
"I was so inspired," she said after Booker's remarks to an audience that didn't fill a large auditorium. "I wanted my boys to see someone living with purpose."
Newark, eight miles from Manhattan and New Jersey's largest city, was once a thriving manufacturing center but for the last half century has battled political corruption, urban blight and high crime.
Booker, a former Rhodes Scholar, has made reducing crime a major priority. In March 2010, Newark experienced its first murder-free month since 1944.
While Booker's national profile is rising, some Newark residents have criticized him for being absent from the city as he travels around the country, appears on TV programs and meets business leaders.
Booker said that traveling has helped him secure benefits to Newark, such as a $100 million gift to its schools from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.
"He didn't come to Newark to say, ?Hey, I want to give you $100 million,'" Booker said. "We were at a conference together."
Booker has filed papers to run for the Senate in 2014. Senator Frank Lautenberg, 89, a long-serving New Jersey Democrat, has said he will not seek re-election. Booker has been leading in New Jersey polls for the seat.
"It is even my intention to run, but I'm not going to come to any conclusions until after November," Booker told Reuters.
(Reporting by Corrie MacLaggan; Editing by Cynthia Johnston and Philip; Barbara)
houston garden centers heights Provide here we are at your own houston garden centers growing used to their own different problems. Once you find expansion start employing or even drying the houston garden centers. Snip and employ the houston garden centers regularly to be able to motivate them to increase huge along with hairy.In terms of lighting, just about all houston garden centers should get at the very least 4 to 6 hrs associated with natural light every day on the window sill. Should your eye-port does not offer a whole lot of sunshine then obtain yard develop lights and set all of them about three in . above the houston garden centers. garden centers nj
Related Articles:
landscape garden centers
local garden centers
houston garden centers main office
Collected here are some ideas regarding natural herb garden centers inside your home that can recreate the conditions of the outdoor garden. With regard to Herb garden centers at your residence the actual expanding weather has to be very much the same as the conditions within your outside backyard.Be sure you have a very vivid, sun-drenched windowsill that your houston garden centers may love. Use a vessel that are at the very least 6 - 12 ins serious.
Earth may be the top essential aspect regarding botanical herb garden centers in your house. Only use perfect quality planting medium with an natural garden centers worked well inside. In the event you feeling it's too okay any garden soil, use a scant volume pf perlite. Feed although planting the particular houston garden centers and they also needs to be pleasing right up until early spring. If you personal an herb that's not popping up strenuously include a minor natural and organic fluid garden centers into it any time watering.
houston garden centers fanatic Eunice Fisher first established the National houston garden centers Culture, which in turn currently features above 350,1000 members throughout 1969. Eunice Fisher can be accountable for submitting from the first hosta publication pertaining to backyard gardeners and also hobbyists, houston garden centers: The particular Aristocratic Plant regarding Sketchy Garden inside 1969. 2 a lot more updates on this seminal e-book on houston garden centers were posted 1973, 1979.
Below are great tips regarding botanical herb garden centers indoors which will imitate the circumstances in a exterior yard. Pertaining to Natural herb garden centers inside your home the increasing environments should be basically the same as the conditions exterior. Be sure you possess a sun-drenched windowsill that your particular houston garden centers will like. Utilize a box that is certainly at the very least 6-12 ins strong.
In case with no treatment, thatch will certainly progressively jammed the grass. Any key aerator equipment quickly eradicates thatch along with makes it possible for your current yard for you to slowly restore by itself.Another option would be to opt for a utilised core aerator equipment. Typically you will notice adverts within the cardstock or online wherever someone is actually relocating from a you will find a condo as well as apartment and no lengthier need their particular garden equipment. You are able to grab several great discounts in the event you be on the lookout.
Today houston garden centers continue being the particular #1 perennial in the us. You will find these virtually everywhere. Through large Home Improvement stores in your Mother and also Crop up Garden Center. Within the last few years a lot of plant centers decided to offer houston garden centers online. Auction web sites, Daves Garden and numerous houston garden centers Company sites now offer lovely houston garden centers for the open public!
If you are you looking for more information regarding lowes garden center look at www.ideafromtheweb.com/55549/significant-aspects-inside-garden-centers/
Chef Lars Kronmark (R) helps veteran James McQuoid prepare a chicken. McQuoid is one of 12 injured veterans taking part in a healthy cooking ?boot camp? at Napa?s Culinary Institute of America. (Photo: Mina Kim/KQED)
Listen to The California Report: Veterans Find Comfort, Hope in Cooking Class Original Broadcast: Friday, Mar 8, 2013 ? 10:00 AM
Play audio: Audio player needs Flash9+ (download) and JavaScript.
Among other issues, veterans face a challenge shared by many Americans: obesity. Federal officials say more than 70 percent of veterans receiving VA care have weight problems. The California Report visits an elite culinary school in Napa Valley (Culinary Institute of America at Greystone), which runs a healthy cooking program for wounded veterans. Its students include vets from the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars ? and it?s helping them to eat better, and to ease the difficult transition back to civilian life. Reporter: Mina Kim
Related posts
Tags: Afganistan, cooking class, Iraq, Mina Kim, obesity, State of Health, the california report, VA care, veterans, war
Category: bay area, culinary education and classes, health and nutrition, KQED, politics, activism, food safety
The Business Services Representative is responsible for a wide range of administrative and account management activities. Specific duties include following up with insurance companies to verify patient medical plan benefits and interacting with physician office personnel and patients regarding financial issues. This individual should possess solid computer and communication skills. Will assist clients in making online applications for Medicaid assistance and other community and social services as needed. Will participate as part of front office staff. This position will adhere to all policies, procedures and regulations to ensure patient safety and compliance.
DENVER (AP) ? The Los Angeles Clippers managed to slow down the Denver Nuggets.
For a half.
"We still had momentum on our side, even though it wasn't with the fast tempo and the fast pace that we normally play at," Nuggets coach George Karl said after Denver raced to a 107-92 win over the surging Clippers on Thursday night.
The Nuggets rode 21 points from Ty Lawson and 20 from Danilo Gallinari to their 12th straight home win.
Seven Nuggets scored in double figures as Denver won its seventh straight overall and improved to 27-3 at home, tied with the Miami Heat for best in the NBA.
This win wasn't like all the others, though.
The Clippers kept them in check, heading into the locker room knotted at 49 at halftime, and the Nuggets were getting their points on mid-range jumpers and unlikely 3-pointers instead of the alley-oop dunks and fast-break layups they normally get.
In the end, their youth and fresh legs won out as they ran away with another win and snapped the Clippers' five-game road winning streak.
"They're a veteran deep team and we're a young deep team," Karl said. "At halftime I said, 'Don't get crazy. This is the first team in a while that's kind of slowed us down and confused us. You're not as bad as you think.'
"And fortunately, the 3-ball bailed us out. I know the film will show us some things that we're probably going to have to work on, but in the same sense, we still get 107 points and I think by creating a lot of our offense off good defensive plays."
The Clippers got 19 points from Matt Barnes and 17 from Blake Griffin, but L.A. was outscored by 10 in the third quarter and five more in the fourth.
"We just ran out of gas tonight," Barnes said.
The Nuggets won the season series 2-1, a tiebreaker that could come into play if Denver can catch the Clippers for the third seed in the Western Conference playoffs. Right now, the Nuggets are in fifth, behind Memphis.
"We're extremely dangerous, especially if we get home-court advantage," JaVale McGee said. "We're a great team. We work hard, we play hard. And the way we're playing right now, when we get to the playoffs, it's going to be amazing."
Before tip-off, Karl was asked about facing one of his favorite players, Chauncey Billups, his former point guard who was dragged into the Carmelo Anthony trade a couple years ago.
"I hope he has a good game," Karl said, "and I hope we win."
The Nuggets, who last won a dozen straight at home in 2005, got the best of Billups in his latest homecoming. He scored eight points.
Karl also said his goal was three-fold: to get fewer turnovers, keep Paul from going off and match the Clippers' 3-pointers.
Both teams had 11 turnovers, Denver outscored Los Angeles by a dozen points from long range and Paul had 16 points and 10 assists, one fewer than Lawson had.
"They made some shots. Obviously their penetration at times hurt but their 3-point shooting was the difference," Clippers coach Vinny Del Negro said of Denver's uncharacteristic 11 3-pointers.
"Yeah, our 3-point defense has been terrible and part of it tonight, we know how many points they score in transition and in the paint. But tonight, they were in transition some but all their 3s were wide open," Paul said. "It's not a great 3-point shooting team but tonight they were lights out and they were making free throws. They just beat us."
Paul scored 10 straight points as the Clippers pulled to 88-80 early in the fourth quarter, but he was shut out over the final 9:44.
"Chris Paul had the stretch at the end of the third quarter, he was scaring me a little bit," Karl said. "And I thought he was going to try to take over the game, but fortunately, he never got back into rhythm."
A bucket by Griffin, who was coming off his third career triple-double, gave the Clippers a 60-59 lead before the Nuggets scored 20 of the next 24 points.
The Clippers pulled to 85-75 heading into the fourth quarter but never got closer than eight as the Nuggets turned up the heat, outscoring them 13-2 on the fast break in the second half and stretching their lead to 18.
The Clippers sorely missed Jamal Crawford, who sat out with a sore left ankle that he injured in Wednesday night's 117-101 win over Milwaukee in which he scored 25 points.
Without him, they couldn't match the suddenly sharp-shooting Nuggets from long range.
"This team is traditionally known for scoring a lot of points in the paint but tonight they shot the ball well from the outside, as well," Barnes said. "We've got to pick our poison. It's tough they play to their crowd here and they bring a lot of energy and when you're down they step on your throat."
NOTES: Lawson didn't have a single turnover. ... Griffin was held to just two rebounds, tying the low for his career set March 20, 2011, against Phoenix. This was also the first time in his career that he'd been held to two boards and zero blocks. ... With their 41st win, the Nuggets guaranteed Karl his 21st straight non-losing season, tied with Phil Jackson for the longest streak in NBA history.
___
Follow Arnie Melendrez Stapleton on Twitter: http://twitter.com/arniestapleton
Tens of thousands of grieving Venezuelans line up, for miles, in the streets of Caracas to pay their respects to the open coffin of Hugo Chavez. ?ITV's Matt Frei reports.?
By Becky Bratu, Staff Writer, NBC News
Hugo Chavez's body will be permanently displayed in a special tomb, Venezuelan Vice President Nicolas Maduro announced Thursday on state television.
Maduro said the official state funeral will begin Friday at 10:30 a.m. ET. Some 30 heads of state along with delegations from 50 countries are expected to attend. Following the ceremony, Chavez's body will lie in state for seven additional days, so that more people can see it.
People have been waiting up to 12 hours to pay their respects in a line that snakes for more than a mile.
Maduro also announced that Chavez's body will be preserved in the same manner as that of Russia's Vladimir Lenin or China's Mao Zedong, so "he will always be with the people."
Visitors will be able to view Chavez's body in a special tomb now under construction in a Caracas museum devoted to his populist revolution. The site is called el Museo Hist?rico Militar de Caracas or Cuartel 4 de Febrero.
Maduro again called for peace and calm and thanked the public for respecting the solemnity of this occasion.
Friday afternoon, the parliament will hold a special session to swear in Maduro as acting president. Elections are expected to take place within 30 days.
Chavez, the socialist leader who ran Venezuela for 14 years, lost his two-year battle with cancer Tuesday. His illness was first detected in his pelvic region in 2011. He was 58.
NBC News' Mary Murray, Mark Potter and Roxanne Garcia contributed to this report.
The New York Post caused a scare Thursday with a report that Kanye West?s girlfriend was ?rushed? to a doctor Tuesday night and ?feared she was having a miscarriage.? But, a source close to the mom-to-be tells E! News that while Kim did visit a doctor, things are ?all fine? now.
?She?s been working a lot and with the divorce, moving, etc., [she] just needs to take a little rest,? adds the source, noting that Kim is on ?doctor-ordered rest? for the time being.
Kim?s rep had no comment. But?Bible?from us to you, Kim and baby Kimye are both resting happily and healthily.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg speaks at Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif., Thursday, March 7, 2013. Zuckerberg on Thursday unveiled a new look for the social network's News Feed, the place where its 1 billion users congregate to see what's happening with their friends, family and favorite businesses.(AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg speaks at Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif., Thursday, March 7, 2013. Zuckerberg on Thursday unveiled a new look for the social network's News Feed, the place where its 1 billion users congregate to see what's happening with their friends, family and favorite businesses.(AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg speaks at Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif., Thursday, March 7, 2013. Zuckerberg on Thursday unveiled a new look for the social network's News Feed, the place where its 1 billion users congregate to see what's happening with their friends, family and favorite businesses.(AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg speaks at Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif., Thursday, March 7, 2013. Zuckerberg on Thursday unveiled a new look for the social network's News Feed, the place where its 1 billion users congregate to see what's happening with their friends, family and favorite businesses.(AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg speaks at Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif., Thursday, March 7, 2013. Zuckerberg on Thursday unveiled a new look for the social network's News Feed, the place where its 1 billion users congregate to see what's happening with their friends, family and favorite businesses. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg speaks at Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif., Thursday, March 7, 2013. Zuckerberg on Thursday unveiled a new look for the social network's News Feed, the place where its 1 billion users congregate to see what's happening with their friends, family and favorite businesses.(AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)
MENLO PARK, Calif. (AP) ? Facebook doesn't want to be dismissed as an Internet has-been before its social network even enters its adolescence.
In an effort to remain hip, it is infusing the focal point of its website with a more dynamic look and additional controls designed to empower its 1 billion users to sort streams of photos and other material into more organized sections that appeal to their personal interests.
The changes unveiled Thursday are an attempt to address complaints that Facebook's hub ? the News Feed ? is degenerating into a jumble of monotonous musings and disjointed pictures. This has come as users' social circles have widened from a few dozen people to an unwieldy assortment of friends, family, businesses, celebrities, co-workers and fleeting acquaintances.
That evolution requires a more nuanced approach than the computer-generated algorithms that Facebook has been relying on to pick out the most relevant content to display in each user's News Feed. The growing popularity of smartphones and tablet computers equipped with high-quality cameras also is turning the News Feed into a more visual gallery, another shift that Facebook is tackling by carving out more space to display photos and video.
Facebook Inc. CEO Mark Zuckerberg hopes the makeover turns the News Feed into something like a newspaper tailored to fit the particular interests of each user on every visit to the website.
"This gives people more power to dig deeper into the topics they care about," Zuckerberg said while discussing the makeover at Facebook's Menlo Park, Calif., headquarters.
By keeping Facebook relevant, Zuckerberg hopes to avoid the fate of his company's social networking forerunners, Friendster and MySpace. Those once-trendy sites quickly flamed out, largely because they didn't say attuned to the changing interest of fickle audience. Making that mistake is even more costly in an age of increasingly short attention spans and technological tools that make it easy to find some other diversion with a quick click of the computer mouse or the swipe of a finger on a smartphone.
"They needed to freshen things up," said Brian Blau, research director of consumer technologies for Gartner Inc. "This should bring a lot of cooler things" into the News Feed.
Although Zuckerberg didn't say it, the overhaul also appears to be aimed at carving out more space to show larger and more compelling ads within the News Feed as Facebook seeks to boost its revenue and stock price.
Previous tweaks to the News Feed have triggered howls of protest among Facebook's users. Hoping to minimize the grousing this time around, Facebook intends to roll out the changes in phases. It will probably be at least six months before everyone who accesses Facebook on a personal computer sees the revamped News Feed, the company said. New mobile applications featuring the changes should be released within that time frame too.
The transition is likely to be completed before Facebook celebrates its 10th birthday next February.
The facelift is likely to be more jarring for those who only visit Facebook on a PC because it incorporates some features already deployed in the social network's mobile applications for smartphones and tablet computers.
The new features will enable users to choose to see streams of content that may feature nothing but photos or posts from their closest friends, family members or favorite businesses. Or they can just peruse content about music, or sports, as if they were grabbing a section of a newspaper. Other newspaper-like changes will include lists of events that users' social circles have flagged for the upcoming weekend and other summaries meant to resemble a table of contents.
Facebook still intends to rely on algorithms to select some material to feature on the main part of the News Feed, much like newspaper editors determine what goes on the front page.
The additional space being devoted to photos and video is an acknowledgement how dramatically the composition of Facebook's content has changed during the past 16 months. About 50 percent of the posts on News Feed now include a photo or video now, up from 25 percent in November 2011, according to Facebook's data.
Bigger pictures also will give advertisers a larger canvass to make their marketing pitches. Facebook is hoping marketers will seize the opportunity to develop more creative ways to entice and intrigue customers so advertising can become a more acceptable fixture on the social network.
More than anything else, the changes are meant to make Facebook a more fun place to hang out.
"This is all about keeping people engaged," Blau said.
Although Facebook's website remains one of the Internet's top destinations, there have been early signs that the social network is losing some of its pizazz, particularly among younger Web surfers who are starting to spend more time on other fraternizing hubs such as Tumblr, Pinterest and Instagram, a photo-sharing site that Facebook bought for $521 million last summer.
A phenomenon, known as "Facebook Fatigue," was recently documented in a report from Pew Research Center's Internet and American Life Project. The study found that about 61 percent of Facebook users had taken a hiatus for reasons that range from boredom to too much irrelevant information to Lent.
That's a worrisome trend for Facebook because the company needs to ensure that its audience keeps coming back so it can learn more about their interests and, ultimately, sell more of the advertising that brings in most of the company's revenue.
"I don't think it had turned into a crisis, but Facebook was probably seeing some internal data that was telling them they needed to do something," said Greg Sterling, a senior analyst for Opus Research.
Facebook has been struggling to find the right balance between keeping its fun-loving audience happy and selling enough ads to please investors who want the company to accelerate its revenue growth.
Wall Street seems to think the redesigned News Feed might be a step in the right direction. Facebook's stock gained $1.13, or 4.1 percent, to close Thursday at $28.58. The shares still remain 25 percent below the $38 that they fetched in Facebook's initial public offering last May.
The mobile-friendly redesign of News Feed underscores the company's intensifying focus on smartphones and tablet computers as more of its users rely on those devices to interact on the social network.
About 23 percent, or $306 million, of Facebook's advertising revenue came from the mobile market during the final three months of last year. Zuckerberg thinks more than half of Facebook's revenue will be coming more mobile devices within the next few years ? a goal that should be easier to reach if the redesigned News Feed turns out to be as compelling as he envisions.
Nicholas D. Kristof, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner and opinion columnist for The New York Times, will deliver the 2013 Commencement address at the joint ceremony for Syracuse University and the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry (SUNY-ESF) on Sunday, May 12, in the Carrier Dome.
Syracuse, NY (PRWEB) March 05, 2013
Nicholas D. Kristof, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner and opinion columnist for The New York Times, will deliver the 2013 Commencement address at the joint ceremony for Syracuse University and the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry (SUNY-ESF) on Sunday, May 12, in the Carrier Dome.
?Nicholas Kristof personifies so many of our aspirations for our graduating students,? says SU Chancellor and President Nancy Cantor. ?He dives right into the great challenges of the world, using his incredible talents as a journalist and profound empathy as a humanitarian to draw us all closer to people courageously confronting injustice, whether in cities and towns across America, or in Sudan, Japan, India or China. As our graduating students prepare to go out and make a difference in the world, they could not hear words of wisdom from anyone more experienced at doing just that.?
Kristof says he?s thrilled to have the opportunity to speak to SU graduates. ?I hope to give them something to think about as they work out the next chapters of their lives,? he says.
Kristof grew up on a sheep and cherry farm near Yamhill, Ore. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard College and then studied law at Oxford University on a Rhodes Scholarship, graduating with first class honors. He later studied Arabic in Cairo and Chinese in Taipei. While working in France after high school, he caught the travel bug and began backpacking around Africa and Asia during his student years, writing articles to cover his expenses. Kristof has lived on four continents, reported on six, and traveled to more than 150 countries, plus all 50 states, every Chinese province and every main Japanese island. He?s also one of the very few Americans to be at least a two-time visitor to every member of the Axis of Evil?Iran, Iraq and North Korea. During his travels, he has had unpleasant experiences with malaria, mobs and an African airplane crash.
After joining The New York Times in 1984, initially covering economics, he served as a Times correspondent in Los Angeles, Hong Kong, Beijing and Tokyo. He also covered presidential politics and is the author of the chapter on President George W. Bush in the reference book "The Presidents". He later was associate managing editor of the Times, responsible for Sunday editions.
In 1990, Kristof and his wife Sheryl WuDunn, then also a Times journalist, won a Pulitzer Prize for their coverage of China's Tiananmen Square democracy movement. They were the first married couple to win a Pulitzer for journalism. Kristof won a second Pulitzer in 2006 for commentary for what the judges called "his graphic, deeply reported columns that, at personal risk, focused attention on genocide in Darfur and that gave voice to the voiceless in other parts of the world". He has also won other prizes, including the George Polk Award, the Overseas Press Club award, the Michael Kelly award, the Online News Association award and the American Society of Newspaper Editors award. Kristof has taken a special interest in Web journalism and was the first blogger on The New York Times Web site. He maintains an active twitter presence, a Facebook page and a channel on YouTube. A documentary about him, "Reporter," premiered at Sundance Film Festival in 2009 and was first broadcast on HBO in February 2010.
In his column, Kristof was an early opponent of the Iraq war and among the first to warn that the U.S. was losing ground to the Taliban in southern Afghanistan. His columns have often focused on global health, poverty and gender issues in the developing world. In particular, since 2004 he has written dozens of columns about Darfur and visited the area 10 times.
Kristof and WuDunn are authors of "China Wakes: The Struggle for the Soul of a Rising Power" and "Thunder from the East: Portrait of a Rising Asia". Their most recent book, "Half the Sky: From Oppression to Opportunity for Women Worldwide," was published by Knopf in September 2009 and broadcast as a four-hour documentary on PBS in 2012. Kristof is currently on leave from The New York Times while he and WuDunn work on their next book project.
The Commencement speaker is chosen through an annual selection process that gives students, staff, faculty, alumni and others in the University community the opportunity to offer speaker suggestions via website. The process begins more than one year in advance of Commencement. All names submitted through the website are compiled in an alphabetical, unranked list and sent to the official speaker selection committee, which is comprised of senior class marshals, student marshals from each of the University?s schools and colleges and student representatives to the University?s Board of Trustees.
This all-student committee reviews the list of names. Following a thoughtful deliberation process, the committee presents a final, unranked list of proposed speakers to the Chancellor, who then reviews the list and makes a final choice on the basis of relevance to the SU community and availability. Kristof was among those on the student selection committee?s final list and has agreed to address the Class of 2013 graduates.
The announcement on the complete list of 2013 honorary degree candidates will be made later this semester. For full information on Commencement 2013, visit commencement.syr.edu.
Erin Martin Kane Syracuse University News 315-443-3784 Email Information
Another university union has reached a labor contract before the state's right-to-work law goes into effect.
The University of Michigan and the Lecturers' Employee Organization (LEO) reached a tentative five-year contract, officials announced Wednesday.
The union, which represents 1,500 non-tenure track instructors on U-M's three campuses in Ann Arbor, Flint and Dearborn, has been bargaining with the university since November to replace the contract that expires April 20.
The deal comes as Wayne State University's faculty union will be voting Wednesday to ratify an eight-year contract that was reached last week, and WSU officials will be testifying next week before a legislative committee on how it reached it's longest agreement ever.
U-M spokesman Rick Fitzgerald said the lecturers had the only expiring contract out of eight bargaining units at the university, and began working to reach a new agreement before the state's right to work law was passed.
"It was a natural negotiation of a new contract," he said.
The lecturers union ratifies the contract by mail, with a March 21 deadline, which is a week before the March 28 effective date of Michigan's right-to-work law. That law bans unions from requiring employees to pay union dies or fees as a condition of employment. LEO's contract has always included language that allows lecturers to join the union or pay a service fee not to join the union.
In a joint statement, both sides said the agreement was reached in good faith.
"We're delighted to have reached this agreement and to continue U-M's leadership in providing high-quality education to our students," said Sheryl Edwards, LEO lead negotiator and a lecturer in political science at UM-Dearborn. "Both parties collaborated to improve the process of lecturer evaluation, which is great for us and for everyone we teach."
Alexandra Matish, chief negotiator for the university, said, "We are pleased to have reached an agreement that provides a fair salary and much needed flexibility in benefits, as well as continuing stability for lecturers."
?TOKYO?March 6, 2013?Apple? today announced the launch of the iBookstore? in Japan featuring titles from major and independent publishers, including a great selection of books from Kodansha, KADOKAWA, Bungeishunju, Gakken and Gentosha. The iBookstore has a wide selection of emerging and established authors including Shyotaro Ikenami, Jiro Akagawa, Atsuko Asano and Ryu Murakami. The iBookstore in Japan is the best way for book lovers to browse, buy and read books on iPhone?, iPad? and iPod touch?.
?We?re excited to launch the iBookstore in Japan with a wide selection of Japanese publishers and authors,? said Eddy Cue, Apple?s senior vice president of Internet Software and Services. ?We think customers are going to love how engaging and interactive the books are to read, and how beautiful they look on iPad.?
?We?re thrilled to have our books on the iBookstore,? said Tsuguhiko Kadokawa, Chairman of KADOKAWA Group Holdings. ?More than anything, I think it?s great the iBookstore lets us offer our readers a wide variety of reading experiences that they can?t have anywhere else and that they can only have on their iOS device.?
iBookstore customers can choose from a wide selection of enhanced books that look incredible on iPad, as well as digitally exclusive titles including Ryu Murakami?s fiction novels ?At the Airport,? ?Exodus of Middle-School Students? and ?I?ll Always Be With You, Always,? which has interactive emails in each chapter to bring you even deeper into the story.
?I?m excited to offer three of my works exclusively on the iBookstore, and hope that readers love them as much as I do,? said author, novelist and filmmaker Ryu Murakami. ?As an author and Apple user for 20 years, the arrival of the iBookstore allows me to tell stories in a way you simply can?t in a physical book.?
Beloved children?s books including ?Piyo-chan: A Letter for Piyo? come to life with interactivity, transitions and audio, while new favorites including ?Toy Story 3: So Long Partner? let readers easily read aloud at their own pace.
?We couldn?t be more excited about how incredible ?Piyo-chan: A Letter for Piyo? looks on the iBookstore,? said Hiroaki Miyahara, President and Representative Director of Gakken Holdings. ?We?ve taken this beloved Japanese children?s book and made it more engaging with gorgeous animations and interactivity that makes learning more fun.?
Cookbooks are even more useful on the iBookstore with titles such as ?I Love Cheesecakes!? from culinary specialist Kiyomi Ishizawa that allows cooks to easily search recipes and ingredients. Additionally, the iBookstore offers best-selling fiction novels including ?Sora-Tobu Kouhoushitsu? by Hiro Arikawa, ?Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuutsu? by Nagaru Tanigawa, and ?Tenchi Meisatsu? by Tow Ubukata. Also available for purchase and download on the iBookstore are world-renowned Manga titles including Eiichiro Oda?s ?ONE PIECE,? Mari Yamazaki?s ?THERMAE ROMAE? and Hirohiko Araki?s full color version of ?JOJO?S BIZARRE ADVENTURE? Part 4, which is digitally exclusive on the iBookstore.
The iBookstore is available in 51 countries and offers hundreds of categories including cookbooks, history books, biographies, picture books and children?s books with free books available in 155 countries. The iBooks? app for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch has been downloaded 130 million times worldwide.
Apple designs Macs, the best personal computers in the world, along with OS X, iLife, iWork and professional software. Apple leads the digital music revolution with its iPods and iTunes online store. Apple has reinvented the mobile phone with its revolutionary iPhone and App Store, and is defining the future of mobile media and computing devices with iPad.
Press Contacts: Christine Monaghan Apple cmonaghan@apple.com (408) 974-8850
Tom Neumayr Apple tneumayr@apple.com (408) 974-1972
Apple, the Apple logo, Mac, Mac OS, Macintosh, iBookstore, iPhone, iPad and iPod touch are trademarks of Apple. Other company and product names may be trademarks of their respective owners.
Click here to read an original op-ed from the TED speaker who inspired this post and watch the TEDTalk below.
Professor Sugata Mitra didn't invent student-driven learning.?But?he is championing field research and a compelling case that there has never been a time in history when the SOLE (self-organized learning environment) model is so vital to children's learning. Self-organized learning complements traditional education systems.?In fact, self-guided learning is already gaining traction in pockets around the world, including in Armenia where teenagers are leading their own structured learning projects and field studies thanks to Internet-connected after-school programs, and a slightly younger generation of mentors playing the role of Professor Mitra's "granny network." The program in Armenia and other places around the world prioritizes curiosity and skills acquisition, not assessment. ? I deeply admire Dr. Sugata's work, his structured approach to SOLE, and his willingness to turn research into results with the support of?TED. We have enough academic dissertations about the future of learning when action is what is most needed. Hopefully now child-driven, self-guided learning will gain serious attention from the general public?and resources to begin the learning system revolution in earnest -- one that will prepare a new generation of minds to collaborate, problem-solve and succeed in the fast moving New Machine age. ? China's leader Chairman Mao once said "a single spark can combust into a mighty flame (?????????)." Sugata's talk lit a flame at TED '13, perhaps creating a wild fire that leads to the reinvention of the world's education system.?With the right attention from government policy makers, business leaders, and most importantly, parents, the dawn of student-driven learning may be upon us. ? You see, the flaw in our education system is not only limited to learning among children, but in fact, extends to across age groups, from young professionals to retirees. The fundamental questions we must ask ourselves are these:?When is the student a better teacher, and the teacher a better student? What is important to learn and why? How do we learn and who should take responsibility for setting up these systems? ? ? For example, we assume adults should educate children, but perhaps it's time to give children some authority, and even official recognition to teach adults, particularly in areas of the Internet, science, arts and other subjects. ? And retirees could be brought into a new kind of education system to mentor children to teach themselves, modeling optimism, endurance, and patience. From a technology standpoint, I see a future where new learning formats leverage gaming and cloud-based competition to help children create their own experiential learning journeys, connected to their peers around the world. ? ? Professor Mitra's SOLE model is not the ultimate solution to our children's learning needs, but it sets a clear direction for us to rethink our education system and redefine the concept of education itself.? n Chinese, education is????which directly translated means "Teach and Foster"; however, learning is????which directly translated is "learn and repeat practicing." ?I appreciate the ancient wisdom here. ? Our school systems have been focused on teaching knowledge and skills, but not on fostering important behavioral qualities that allow learning such as attitude, mindset, receptivity to new ideas and persistence.?Who should be responsible for this part of education?? Ideally this should be the parent's responsibility.?The question is: Who is giving parents that knowledge?
The SOLE model might not be the best way to equip our children with mindset qualities that allow "repeat practicing" which requires patience and focus. This is particularly important today with kids' attention spans becoming shorter (due to a variety of factors in our modern, highly stimulated society). ? If we see a learned person as the result of our education system,?children become the "customer" and teachers become the "providers" of this business we call education.?Logically, the process is then structured to maximize the ability of the customer to acquire new skills, which naturally would then embrace self-organized learning concepts.?We need tomorrow's education system to become an ecosystem where the role of student and teacher is continually redefined depending on the situation and learning need. This too is a mindset change. Are we ready? ? With the 2013 TED Prize going toward igniting a student-directed learning movement, I believe impact extends from existing school systems, especially in poor regions where access to high-quality learning is in short supply, to online learning environments where the cloud is the classroom. We should consider SOLE an addition to existing education, at least in the short term, as we reinvent the best learning experiences and observe results. ? For SOLE to work, an unprecedented level of collaboration is required from educational content publishers, technology companies, teachers, parents, governments, and business. We need to ready ourselves for the baton to be passed from Professor Mitra to leaders in learning everywhere who have the influence and experience to architect education for the New Machine age. The question is who will lead this revolution??Perhaps our children will!?
TED and The Huffington Post invite you to take the SOLE Challenge, a unique contest in which we're asking teachers and parents to create child-centered learning labs in their homes and schools. Write an 800 to 1,000 word blog post on your experiences and send it to tedweekends@huffingtonpost.com. Three winning submissions will get to attend TED Youth 2013.
Ideas are not set in stone. When exposed to thoughtful people, they morph and adapt into their most potent form. TEDWeekends will highlight some of today's most intriguing ideas and allow them to develop in real time through your voice! Tweet #TEDWeekends to share your perspective or email tedweekends@huf?ngtonpost.com to learn about future weekend's ideas to contribute as a writer.
?
More in ted prize 2013: a wish to inspire the world
'Dateline NBC,' the signature broadcast for NBC News in primetime, premiered in 1992. Since then, it has been pioneering a new approach to primetime news programming. The multi-night franchise, supplemented by frequent specials, allows NBC to consistently and comprehensively present the highest-quality reporting, investigative features, breaking news coverage and newsmaker profiles.
The Keystone XL oil pipeline, pictured under construction Jan. 18, 2012, in North Dakota.
By M. Alex Johnson, staff writer, NBC News
Construction of the controversial Keystone XL pipeline would create "numerous" and "substantial" impacts on the environment, the State Department said Friday in a draft environmental impact statement. But the project is a better bet than any of the alternatives, it said in essentially clearing the project to go ahead.
The report concluded that the Canadian synthetic crude oil the pipeline is slated to transport into the U.S. produces 17 percent more greenhouse gases than natural crude oil already refined here. In addition, it said the construction phase of the project would result in carbon dioxide emissions equiavalent to about 626,000 passenger vehicles operating for a full year.
Without directly saying so, the report signaled the State Department's belief that the pipeline should go ahead, concluding that other modes of transportation would have the same impacts and that proposed alternatives ? including an above-ground route and a smaller-diameter pipe ? "were not reasonable."
And on a central issue of discussion, it concluded that blocking the pipeline wouldn't make any difference in the U.S.'s high consumption of oil.
Reaction from environmental groups was swift.
"The Sierra Club is outraged by the State Department's deeply flawed analysis today on Keystone XL," the Sierra Club tweeted.
Gene Karpinski, president of the League of Conservation Voters, said the report failed to appreciate the pipeline's potential effect on climate change.
"People who think our climate wouldn't be negatively impacted by Keystone XL have their heads in the (tar) sands," he said in a statement. "... LCV will work to ensure that the millions of Americans opposed to this dangerous pipeline have their voices heard during the comment period and that Keystone XL is rejected once and for all."
But House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, welcomed the report, which he said "makes clear there is no reason for this critical pipeline to be blocked one more day."
"After four years of needless delays, it is time for President Obama to stand up for middle-class jobs and energy security and approve the Keystone pipeline," Boehner said.
The environmental statement is only a draft, not a final decision whether to greenlight the project. A public comment period of 45 days is next.
A final decision on the $5.3 billion pipeline, a project of TransCanada Corp., has been pending for more than four years as environmental activists battle to kill it, contending that it contributes to the U.S.'s dependence on "dirty fuel" that generates higher emissions than crude oil refined in the U.S.
The pipeline would transport synthetic crude oil from oil sands in northeastern Alberta to refineries running along the spine of the U.S. all the way down to Texas. Along the way, the 2,000-page report said, it could also:
Disturb highly erodible soil along nearly half of the 875-mile U.S. segment ? including 4,715 acres of "prime farmland soil."
Degrade streams and other surface water.
Encroach on the habitats of 13 federally protected species or species being considered for that designation, including the whooping crane and the greater sage grouse.
Be susceptible to potentially disastrous leaks and spill.
On the other side of the balance, the report noted the potential for economic development and growth in impoverished communities along the pipeline's pathway, saying it could produce as many as 42,000 new construction jobs.
President Barack Obama will have the final say on the project, which is being reviewed by the State Department, not the Environmental Protection Agency, because the pipeline would cross national borders. Obama signaled his support for the southern section of the line last year, but he gave environmentalists a measure of hope in January, when he promised to do more to fight climate change in his inaugural address.?
Tens of thousands of protesters jammed the National Mall in Washington on Feb. 17 to urge Obama to reject pipeline. They adopted the slogan "Forward" ? cribbing Obama's own campaign slogan.
The final decision will be a crucial one for Canada, which may need to look elsewhere for new energy markets if the pipeline is rejected.
Tom Capra, Catherine Chomiak and Frank Thorp of NBC News contributed to this report. Follow M. Alex Johnson on Twitter and Facebook.
Watch US News videos on NBCNews.com
This story was originally published on Fri Mar 1, 2013 5:50 PM EST
