| Bernanke Signals Further Rate Cuts
With the Federal Reserve trying to navigate a challenging course between slowing growth and rising inflation, the central bank's chairman tried to address the twin dilemmas in his semiannual monetary policy testimony before Congress on Feb. 27. The verdict from Fed watchers: Fed Chief Ben Bernanke steered his testimony toward the "dovish" side, placing greater emphasis on the central bank's need to shore up economic growth via monetary policy. Indeed, Bernanke clearly left the door open for further Fed easing as he noted that downside risks to growth remain the main threat, reports Action Economics. While his testimony featured several paragraphs on inflation, he concluded that the Fed will be "carefully evaluating incoming information…and will act in a timely manner as needed to support growth and to provide adequate insurance against downside risks." Fed Remains Focused on Growth The term "adequate" is a major departure from the use of "substantive" when Fed officials presaged their January rate cuts, says Action, and "this suggests to us a less aggressive policy course, at least in March, unless we get a big downside surprise in the employment report." "[T]here was no indication of a more hawkish message in response to signs of a buildup in inflation pressures," wrote Morgan Stanley (MS) economist David Greenlaw in a Feb.
Spanking Messes Up Sex Lives, Author Says
DURHAM, N.H. -- New research by a University of New Hampshire domestic abuse expert says spanking children affects their sex lives as adults. Professor Murray Straus concludes that children who are spanked are more likely as adults to coerce partners to have sex, to have unprotected sex and to have masochistic sex. Other studies have shown the link between spanking and physical violence, but Straus said his research is the first to show a link between corporal punishment and sexual behavior. He said his motive is to bring the results to the attention of parents and others. He said he hopes the news will help continue the decrease in corporal punishment. .
Ulmers add to their breeding herd with four heifers
But then Friday, Feb. 22, the numbers fell as he took the calves he has been backgrounding to the sales barn in Edgeley.Jade had been out to Kellers since Saturday helping them get the cattle ready for the sale and Gary joined him out there on sale day."We went through them and picked out the ones we liked. We didn't get everyone we liked, but it turned out to be an okay day," Gary said. "We brought them home tonight. We drove a little slower, since it was a little nippy out there and we didn't want them to get too cold back there in the trailer, so it took us a little longer than normal to get home."Early last week, Gary rode along with a neighbor down to Aberdeen, S.D., and checked out a bred cow sale, but he returned home empty-handed from that sale.The weekend of Feb. 15-16, wife Tracy and children Jeremiah and Kendra attended the state wrestling tournament in Bismarck, which meant Gary was home alone to take care of the chores that needed doing and it also delayed marketing of the calves for one week.
Celebrating Sara' and the Cancer Resource Centers
Sara O'Donnell, founder and executive director of the Cancer Resource Centers of Mendocino will be honored at two receptions in March. The first one will be on Sunday, March 2, at 4:30 p.m. at the Stanford Inn in Mendocino. The other will be on Wednesday, March 26, from 5 to 7 p.m., at the Ukiah Civic Centers. The community is invited to join Leadership Mendocino, staff and volunteers of the Cancer Resource Centers, local businesses, and other members of the community at the celebrations of O'Donnell's work and her recent awards. She was one of ten people in the country who won a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Community Health Leaders Award. She was selected as one of KQED's Unsung Heroes to be honored during Women's History Month at an event in San Francisco. O'Donnell was also recently chosen by Assembly member Patty Berg as her District's 2008 Woman of the Year.
The week the Obama backlash started (Yessey was right)
It will also lead to a willingness to pounce on any perceived mistakes from the Obama camp. Thus last week Obama's wife, Michelle, faced criticism after she appeared less than patriotic at a campaign rally in Wisconsin. 'For the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of my country,' she said. The remark was seized on as anti-American by many commentators, forcing the campaign to stare down a rare surge of criticism and clarify the remarks.
The incident served to show how the media landscape is changing for Obama. At another rally, in Dallas, Obama paused to blow his nose and received a round of cheers. That prompted withering headlines, too. 'Even blowing his nose, Obama gets applause,' snickered the Chicago Tribune, a newspaper from Obama's adopted hometown.
All over America, reporting teams are now investigating Obama's record, matching the long-term efforts of Clinton 'opposition research' workers.
Taking Names
"The Great Debaters," a film based on the real-life victories of a black debating team in the 1930s, tops the list of nominees announced Tuesday for the 39th NAACP Image Awards, Associated Press reports.
"Girlfriends" and "Everybody Hates Chris" lead the television nominees.
"The Great Debaters" collected eight nominations, including outstanding motion picture and both outstanding actor and outstanding director for Denzel Washington. The movie also garnered three supporting-actor nominations for Forest Whitaker, Nate Parker and Denzel Whitaker.
Other best-picture nominees: "American Gangster," "I Am Legend," "Talk to Me" and "Tyler Perry's Why Did I Get Married?"
Other outstanding-actor nominees were Columbus Short for "Stomp the Yard," Don Cheadle for "Talk to Me," Terrence Howard for "Pride" and Will Smith for "I Am Legend."
Nominated for outstanding actress: Jurnee Smollett for "The Great Debaters," Angelina Jolie for "A Mighty Heart," Halle Berry for "Things We Lost in the Fire," Jill Scott for "Tyler Perry's Why Did I Get Married?" and District native Taraji P.
Patriot missiles: Iraq Veterans Against the War
Some of them will be okay. They will live with the secrets. They can dissociate from what happened in combat because it was part of the job. It was what they signed up for. They will keep the secrets out of duty – the silence is part of a code, and they honour that code above all else. But for others, the secrets they keep are like a poison, slowly releasing toxins of shame and remorse. Who can they tell anyway? They talk to each other – other veterans who have seen what they’ve seen, done what they’ve done, and who can relate to the burden of carrying these secrets for the rest of their lives. In 1971, the protest group Vietnam Veterans Against the War gathered at a hotel in Detroit. More than 100 veterans talked about the atrocities they had witnessed in southeast Asia.
OBE approach suitable for PNG
It is a vehicle to break away from traditional ideas about how we teach our children.
If implemented well in the development of the curriculum, it could change our schools and raise standards in both academic ability and skills competency.
All along, we have placed too much focus on academic competency, and little on the application of cognitive skills which will also serve students well when they leave schools.
At present, the school calendar dictates what a student may do at any moment of any school day. Core subjects are treated superior than the non-core subjects.
We rely on the cognitive (theory) tests and the ability of students are compared and ranked.
With the American OBE approach, time, content and teaching methods are altered to fit the needs of each student and credit is given based on what he accomplishes, not for the time spent in class.
Kick That Tin Can: Banks Adopt VoIP
Bank CIOs convinced that "huge savings" and "improved operational efficiencies" were terms that wouldn't be found in the same sentence have learned to rethink their IT strategy, thanks to the advent of voice-over Internet protocol. Banks have found that VoIP, which is being rapidly adopted by mid-sized and small banks, is akin to replacing their tin-can telephones with powerful new models that promise to dramatically change the way they do business in the next decade. Think Jetsons, not Flintstones. Instead of circuit-switched networks, sound waves of voice calls can be digitized and divided into data packets before being routed over a data network. The upside is profound: huge telecommunications savings, increased bandwidth for movement of larger pieces of data, more flexibility for mobile workforces, more security for disaster-recovery and business-continuity backup systems, more CRM capabilities, and more options for in-house training with video and other applications.
Living with Vista, one year on
The other problem is of much greater concern to me, there have been over 30 processes identified that report information back to MS without user intervention, knowledge or consent. The fact that these exist, what they report, and what is done with that information is simply not information that MS deems that we need to know, so we are not told. This is also unacceptable. A year later, my two biggest concerns, that MS can shut me down on a whim, and that they can take any or all of my data without me knowing or being able to stop it are still unacceptable. I can't see how any CxO in good conscience can run this software, much less put anything even remotely considered mission critical on it. Do they just not get the risks, are they abjectly stupid, or were they bought off? Judging from the absurdly low adoption and, for MS, scary high downgrade numbers, the majority seem to agree with me.
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