Archive for June, 2010
By: lifeontwowheels
Thursday, June 17th, 2010So basically dumping off on another neighborhood?
Comments on: State of the City: Focus on Housing, Jobs, Safety
By: Parker
Tuesday, June 15th, 2010Worry not – the public housing is long past its prime and will be replaced with a new structure on Broad.
Comments on: State of the City: Focus on Housing, Jobs, Safety
Maple Sugar Season Events
Monday, June 14th, 2010The Stratford Ecological Center in Delware is celebrating Maple Sugar Season with a few special events.
On Saturdays, March 5 and March 19, 2011, they will be leading Maple Sugar Tours with 1 hour guided hikes in the sugar bush. Hikes start every ½ hour between 10 a.m. and noon and will cost /person [...]
Click on the post for more details!
February 2011 Staff Employee of the Month
Sunday, June 13th, 2010
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Systems administrator cuts queries from hours to seconds
Joel Mathias likes things to run faster. As a systems administrator in Information Technology, he is able to write code that will speed up many processes for his clients on campus. His talents earned him the Staff Employee of the Month award for February 2011. "I wrote a query that was taking hours to run," said SEOM nominator Jaimie Allen, Fiscal and Compliance Services. "He noticed it and helped me rewrite the code to make it run in a few seconds!" "Joel is one of the most knowledgeable resources on this campus," said Shawn Ferguson, Mathias' supervisor. "He shows his dedication every day by giving suggestions for improvements, or pointing out things that could become issues before they arise," he said. "Joel also improved the performance of the financial aid transmittal process, which saves me a couple of hours and a lot of frustration," said Allen. "He says he's just doing his job, but he really does go above and beyond." Mathias worked at Columbus State for seven years in the 90s before being hired by a private firm called Compuware. The company placed him back on the campus in 2002 and a year later he was rehired by Columbus State. He has worked as a microcomputer specialist, programmer analyst, database administrator, application developer and is currently a systems administrator for database environments. Mathias and his wife Jami are cat people—they have five cats, two of which he found abandoned as newborns on his front steps. Not surprisingly, he likes to work on computers at home, too, but he also likes to draw, write, play soccer and ice hockey to keep things interesting! |
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How much would it cost to get dental implants in California?
Saturday, June 12th, 2010
Question by andiadorehimx3: How much would it cost to get dental implants in California?
I’m 17, and inevitably I’m going to need dental implants by 23. I live in Woodland, California but anywhere near there would work out just fine. I brush my teeth 3 times a day, floss, and mouthwash. It’s a hereditary thing, completely unavoidable. Also, any references to a good cosmetic dentist would be greatly appreciated, especially one that works with payment plans.
Best answer:
Answer by Flower
My dentist said they are the same price per tooth as crowns, about $ 1500 each. I live in the bay area so cannot refer you to anyone.
Add your own answer in the comments!
The Nashua NH Dentist Resource
Abbreviated pundit round-up
Friday, June 11th, 2010
Administration officials say they are looking at a wide range of other options to dissuade Libya’s air force from attacking civilians. Military experts say those could include long-distance attacks against Libya’s airbases and the provision of antiaircraft weapons to anti-Kadafi groups.
If the Libyan opposition forms a government and appeals for foreign help, that will quickly increase pressure on the administration and its allies to act.
The alternative — standing by and ignoring the opposition’s pleas — won’t be tenable for long.
It wouldn’t be good politics, either, to pass up an opportunity to help a new and friendly government come to power.
But it’s also worth counting to 10, slowly, before starting any war.
The Washington Post applauds the Supreme Court’s ruling on the Westboro Baptist Church:
In upholding the rights of the members of Westboro Baptist, the Supreme Court – in a surprisingly united 8-1 decision – rightly embraced one of this country’s most cherished principles. Speech cannot be quashed or punished simply because it is hateful or expresses an aberrant point of view.
Elie Mystal has a different take:
Call it Free Speech 101. The hard part about the First Amendment is that you have to allow people to say all manner of annoying, vulgar, and inappropriate things, at the wrong times.
Not that Justice Samuel Alito thinks so. Justice Alito was the lone dissenter in [Westboro Baptist Church] case. He was also the lone dissenter in the Stevens case, in which the Court overturned a ban on animal crush videos on First Amendment grounds. But he voted with the majority in Citizens United.
I can’t wait until Sam “Not True” Alito writes a book or something explaining why regular people don’t deserve the free speech given to American corporations and sitting Supreme Court justices….
The federal deficit is too large for comfort, and most states are struggling to balance their books. Some of that is because of excessive spending, and much is because the recession has driven down tax revenues. But a substantial part was caused by deliberate decisions by state and federal lawmakers to drain government of resources by handing out huge tax cuts, mostly to the rich. As governments begin to stagger from the self-induced hemorrhaging, Republican politicians like Mr. Boehner and Mr. Walker cry poverty and use it as an excuse to break unions and kill programs they never liked in flush years.
What’s truly amazing, as Stateline.org reported recently, is the number of governors who are cutting taxes at the same time they are eviscerating programs. A particularly dramatic case is Florida’s Republican Gov. Rick Scott. He faces a .5 billion budget gap – and is pushing for billion in corporate and property tax cuts.
Historically, times of fiscal stress forced states to make useful economies in programs that didn’t work or were not essential. But what’s happening in so many places now is a reckless rush to gut the parts of government that all but the most extreme libertarians support – and that truly deserve to be seen (one thinks of education and programs for poor children) as investments in the future.
And those governors doing the hard work trying to balance cutbacks and tax increases get ignored, because there’s nothing sexy about being responsible.
Karl Rove: Blah blah blah austerity blah blah blah Obama is vulnerable blah blah blah Reagan was a political genius.
Matt Miller is wishy-washy on teachers’ unions. But:
The one thing I know for sure, however, is this: The future of the country depends on the public-sector workers known as teachers. That’s because unless we dramatically improve our educational performance, America’s standard of living will be at risk.
We’re a long way from the Eleanor Roosevelt Commission on the Status of Women, which was formed when there were no women on the White House staff doing anything more impressive than typing or cake decoration. “Men have to be reminded that women exist,” Mrs. Roosevelt tartly told reporters when the all-male list of top Kennedy administration appointees was released.
At the time, there were 454 federal civil service job categories for college graduates, and more than 200 were restricted to male applicants. It was perfectly legal to refuse to hire a woman for a job because of her failure to be a man, or to refuse her credit unless she had a husband to co-sign her loan. The median age for marriage for a woman was 20, and the only job open to most women that involved a chance to travel was flight attendant.
We’re in a different world, but this latest report highlights the one glaring gap: working women still make, on average, much less than men. Among people who work full time, women make an average 80 cents for every that men take home.
And of course, women’s very lives are currently under assault. As Joel Connelly explains:
A misleading lead to a recent column could create a mistaken impression among its readers: It began by stating that anti-abortion Republicans in Congress treat life as beginning at conception and ending at birth.
I stand corrected. The U.S. House of Representatives has launched an assault on life — specifically, lives of women, particularly low-income women — that begins long before conception.
…
At home, the House axed million from the Maternal and Child Health Block Grant that supports states’ pre-natal care programs, helping 2.5 million women, and annually assists 31 million predominantly special-needs kids.
It imposed a billion cut in programs at the National Institutes of Health that aim to find causes and find strategies to prevent preterm birth. Almost billion was slashed from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for its preventive health programs.
The people who did this describe themselves as “pro-life” and fiscally conservative.
Yet, the level of cruelty in their actions is surpassed only by the economic cost. Premature births cost America at least billion a year, according to a study by the Institute of Medicine at the National Academies cited by The New York Times.
If premature births were reduced by, say, 10 percent, the cost would be cut by .6 billion, and thousands of babies would not die.
And on a related note, the New York Times takes a stand in support of a new bill to regulate crisis pregnancy centers.
The New York City Council is about to vote on, and should pass, an important measure that addresses the problem of crisis pregnancy centers that masquerade as licensed medical facilities but are, in fact, fronts for anti-abortion groups that interfere with the ability of women to make timely, well-informed decisions about their reproductive health.
And yesterday, the City Council voted 39-9 to pass the bill. Mayor Michael Bloomberg has said he will sign it.
Mark Morford calls on all of us to join the revolution:
Maybe you can’t send much money. Maybe you already sent a pizza, voted against the cretins in power, canceled your trip to Abu Dubai. Maybe you aren’t exactly prepared to zip on over to Yemen, grab a burning Molotov and march. Hell, maybe you don’t really care about the fat sheiks in Bahrain because what the hell do those billionaire misogynists have to do with the price of a decent dental plan for your kids?
Nevertheless, you know the cause is just. Do not miss this ride. Do not let the opportunity swirl by untapped. Harness this moment like it’s a goddamn wild horse and make changes in your own world, push back against boundaries and regimes, oppressive dogma and deception. Why not? Hold up a sign. Support a local organization. Seek release. Live authentically, love intently, push back again the injustices immediately around you. Sound simple? Sound obvious? Sure it is. I dare you.
After all, each and every one of these stunning global protests is nothing but another verse in the universal struggle for more liberation, more empowerment (or in the case of Wisconsin, less disempowerment), more self-determination, the human animal ever hungry to choose its own fate without so many nefarious bindings and chains, jackals and billionaire trolls eating away the core.
As it is for you, so it is for the collective whole, the universal body. Micro to macro, intimate to communal and right back again. Viva la revolucion, baby. What’s your offering?
But Why Is It So Difficult To Think Of It Again?
Thursday, June 10th, 2010It being the "it" of the Goethe quote referenced in "Acne Vulgaris, Probiotics and the Gut-Brain-Skin Axis — Back to the Future?" : "everything has been thought of before, but the difficulty is to think of it again".
Of late there has been considerable debate about a perceived stagnation in medicine. Advances came fast and furious in the first few decades of the 20th century (think antibiotics, the pill, the Salk vaccine, etc). Nowadays advances are few and what few there are seem little more than nibbles around the edges e.g. news of a treatment extending the life expectancy of patients with advanced pancreatic cancer from 24 weeks to 27 weeks made its way to the front page of the newspaper a while back. What happened to progress? Has all the low hanging fruit already been picked? Why aren’t the drug companies discovering wonder drugs? Are none left to be found?
It’s an old temptation that makes people think they understand the world and how it works. In 1874 Max Planck’s physics professor told the future father of quantum theory not to bother with a career in physics saying "in this field, almost everything is already discovered …". Ooops.
The peril, as Thomas Kuhn described it in "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions", is that researchers tend to get trapped within a worldview, a paradigm, that blinds them to possibilities beyond the perceived realities that they’ve spent their lives trying to comprehend. It’s not until a scientific discipline is in crisis, a state brought about by a once elegant theory being turned into a Rube Goldberg contraption from the numerous tweaks made to explain away embarrassing inconsistencies, that blinders come off. It’s only then that new ideas, or as Goethe might put it old ones thought of again, are tried.
And that, I think, is where we are today – In the middle of a crisis of medicine. The old deterministic model on which the small molecule pharma model was built i.e. add what’s lacking, deplete what’s in overabundance, turn off what shouldn’t be on and turn on what shouldn’t be off, doesn’t work beyond a few now obvious exceptions.
So what old ideas are being reconsidered anew? Read the (ungated) paper on acne vulgaris referenced above. Seventy years ago a few people thought that the bacteria which live in our guts and on our skin (and maybe elsewhere) could explain the strange association between gastrointestinal illness, depression and acne vulgaris. They also thought that reforming the microbiota (terra-forming the gut or ile-forming) with different bacteria might ameliorate or even cure such complex disorders. Now there are lots of researchers opening their eyes to the possibility that most diseases are emergent phenomena far too complex to be dealt with one molecule at a time yet ones that might yield to complex cocktails of multiple drugs or, more complex yet, cocktails of bacteria, probiotics, to fight fire with fire.
If the past is any guide we’re not in an era of stagnation in medicine; we’re on the verge of a new age of discovery.
Art on the Flesh
Wednesday, June 9th, 2010Looking for an art evening with a little edge? Lindsay Gallery will be hosting their opening for the “Evolved Gallery Show” during Gallery Hop on February 5.
The show will feature artwork from Evolved Body Art artists, as well as work from studio friend and print maker Craig Fisher. There will be food provided by Cafe Bella, drinks provided by KOBO and a DJ! The event starts at 6pm and goes until the party is over. Music starts at 8pm sharp.
DO click on Cafe Bella link to find out about this funky no-menu restaurant on High Street.
LINDSAY GALLERY
986 NORTH HIGH ST.
COLUMBUS, OH
Bongo Ball Mania at Columbus State Community College
Sunday, June 6th, 2010
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Cutting Edge Productions brings Bongo Ball Mania to the Columbus State Community College campus.
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Advocacy Update: Take Action on FY 2011 Funding
Saturday, June 5th, 2010Update: Action Needed to Protect FY 2011 Funding for Federal Homelessness Programs
National Alliance to End Homelessness