Archive for June, 2011
i-love i-house
Saturday, June 25th, 2011Sigh. You know my affection for modular green construction. Finding a realistic and affordable modular design is difficult–going green is not inexpensive. Clayton Homes has the “i” series, and, I gotta say, it has appeal.
Currently available are two options: the i-house I and i-house II that can be combined with a “flex” module. The flex module is a separate bedroom/studio/office or whatever your needs are space, with a bathroom–roof deck above. Lots of outdoor space involved here, which is awesome, and highly customizable interior space in both i-house models (clayton homes assures).
When i was poking around “building” my i-house II, the proposed cost with shipping and add-ons, including solar panels, was 8,000 and change. Would the cost likely be more when it is all said and done? Of course. But realistically, and this does not include land or site prep, which is site specific, the home cost should be well under 0,000. If you have any familiarity with modular contemporary construction–that is a pretty good number. Make sure when you click on the link below that you check out the i-house 2.0 video. The 2.0 version is more style-defined and incorporates some changes requested by consumers interested in the i-house concept. Really awesome.
Check it out! http://www.claytonihouse.com/
BikeColumbus Festival 2011
Friday, June 24th, 2011[ July 15, 2011 to July 17, 2011. ] Join bike riders from across the city to celebrate at the 4th Annual BikeColumbus Festival from July 15 – 17, 2011. This multi-day festival will have events for everyone in the family, as well as recreational or serious riders. The weekend kicks of with the Mayor’s Twilight Ride, led by Mayor Michael Coleman, on Friday, July 15, [...] [...]
Click on the post for more details!
Rivertown Dental Associates Launch New Dental Website
Thursday, June 23rd, 2011
Grand Rapids, Mich. (PRWEB) November 18, 2009
Loved ones and cosmetic Grand Rapids dental office Rivertown Dental Associates is excited to announce the launch of their new dental website available at http://www.rivertowndental.com.
Dr. Michael J. Crete and Rivertown Dental Associates have the latest and most up-to-date dental facility in West Michigan and the launch of the new internet site brings this top quality on the web. The new site allows patients to submit appointment requests and get in touch with the Rivertown Dental staff with their questions and comments. The web site will also include a detailed explanation of the services offered at Rivertown Dental Associates, patient testimonials, and a dental weblog that will be regularly updated with key info on the most recent dental topics and study.
?The new website not only gives data on the many services we provide, but also is a resource for studying about oral hygiene, dental procedures, and the hot topics in dentistry right now? said Michael J. Crete, DDS of Rivertown Dental. ?Whether or not you are a patient in our practice, we hope the new site will be a great tool for enhancing how you care for your oral wellness.?
Dr. Michael J. Crete and Rivertown Dental Associates are a nicely-established dental practice that focuses on treating patients of all ages in Grand Rapids, Grandville, Jenison, and all of West Michigan. They offer a wide range of services from children?s initial dental visits to veneers, tooth whitening, and dental implants.
The Nashua NH Dentist Resource
Spring 2011 Graduation
Thursday, June 23rd, 2011
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The Texas Supreme Court Issues an Unsettling Opinion on Causation
Wednesday, June 22nd, 2011BIC Pen Corp. v. Carter has been decided, again, and seemingly for the last time. The court previously disposed of the design defect claims and this time the tragic case of a little girl severely burned as a consequence of her five-year-old brother playing with a lighter was before the court on the issues of manufacturing defect and causation.
Given that BIC’s own tests of the lighter involved in the accident showed that a flame was produced more readily (because less force was required) than designed the court steamrolled over BIC’s manufacturing defect arguments. It gave especially short shrift to the manufacturing variance argument (which actually has a lot of merit). Thus, by the time the opinion gets to causation, a defect for which liability may be imposed having just been found, to the reader things look pretty grim for BIC.
The court focused immediately on the issue that decides causation. Since lighters are designed to be child-resistant and not child-proof (as otherwise lots of adults could not operate them) how do we know that Carter’s brother wouldn’t have been able to light it anyway? Which is to ask how do we know that but for the defect Carter’s brother would not have started the fire? Clearly Carter has to produce some evidence that her brother was enabled by the defect since even if a lighter meets the CPSC standard for lighters it may still be usable by 15% of children his age.
First the court looks at evidence that the brother was developing more slowly than a typical boy his age. The idea is that if the boy was cognitively more like a four-year-old than like a five-year-old then it’s more likely that he was indeed enabled by the defect. The court quite rightly decided that it was an apples to oranges assertion because the defect was in a feature meant to physically deter children whereas there was no defect found in the mechanism meant to confound them. Next the court turned to Carter’s contention that she could prove her brother was enabled by the defect using the reasoning of Havner.
Carter points to data indicating that low-force-to-operate levels in lighters such as the one in question quadruple the likelihood of a child being able to produce a flame. If Havner requires a doubling of the risk isn’t a quadrupling more than enough? Before we get to how the court decided this issue let’s run the numbers. As best we can tell there is at least one good test showing that the number of children able to active the lighter goes from 4% to 16% when the physical deterrent to ignition (force) is reduced. Now, assuming that the lighter in question produced a reduction in force necessary to produce a flame similar to the one used in the test then we can calculate how likely it was that Carter’s brother was enabled by the defect. Using Bayes’ Rule, the likelihoods of ignition for as-designed lighters and reduced force lighters and our knowledge that the lighter in question was in fact defective we can calculated that the likelihood that Carter’s brother would not have been able to start the fire (i.e. was enabled by the defect) but for the defect is 75% – a result easily clearing the "more likely than not" hurdle.
Now, the court could have decided that the quadrupling of risk of ignition involved a different level of force (which, in fact, it did) and that plaintiff had zip, zero, nada evidence that the reduction in force at issue (a very tiny one) has ever been shown to double, much less quadruple, risk (which, apparently, it has not). That would have preserved and extended to manufacturing defect cases the rational decision-making approach to uncertain cases established by the court in Havner. Instead, the court decided that probabilistic reasoning can’t be used in manufacturing defect cases and gave an extraordinarily weak rationale for doing so.
The court held that "[t]he nature of the injury-causing activities and testing that would have to be done to show causation in this case are not similar to, nor do they pose the practical difficulties posed by, those we considered in Havner. In this case, testing of J-26 lighters posed no unreasonable risk of injury to the test subjects as would have been the case if testing of the drug on humans had been performed under the facts of Havner … In such instances, tests are done with surrogate lighters that do not pose a risk of harm to the participating children. And testing was also performed on the Subject Lighter itself that posed no risk of injury. Thus we decline to adopt a Havner-type analysis as to causation in this case where manufacturing defects are the basis for the liability claim."
So, because the test subjects tested lighters that didn’t contain butane and because the lighter in question posed no risk of burning children when it was tested in a lab post accident, modern techniques for inferring causation aren’t appropriate? With all due deference that makes no sense whatsoever.
Maybe the court was worried about permitting Havner-esque analysis in manufacturing defect cases because eventually it would be deployed in a case where the allegedly defective product had been lost or destroyed. If so, a defendant’s product could indeed be found to have been more likely than not the cause of the accident even though the product was lost or destroyed. But for that to happen one of two things would have to hold true. Either the defect was responsible for a huge percentage of all such accidents or a huge percentage of the product had been manufactured defectively. In this case, for example, had the lighter been destroyed in the fire plaintiff could not show "more likely than not" (even assuming a quadrupling of the risk) unless she could also show that at least two-thirds of all lighters had the reduced-force defect. Either way, imposing liability when a defect is almost always the cause of an accident or when almost all of the product involved has been defectively manufactured hardly seems an injustice.
Case by case for more than a decade the Texas Supreme Court has worked to produce a coherent and just approach to causation by demanding sound science and utilizing modern decision theory approaches when reasoning out the cases before it. Hopefully, given our fondness for Havner, the true meaning of BIC Pen Corp. v. Carter is exceptio probat regulam in casibus non exceptis.
Alumni, President Griffith Gather in Asia
Wednesday, June 22nd, 2011
Starting in back left corner: Jeong Woong Lee, Eunji Paek, Sun Young Park, President Griffith and wife Beth, Christopher Maslon, Jeong Hoon Tony Lee, Mose Jeung, Seo Yeon Hur, Kyung Rim Vicky Kim, Gaeul Oh, Jonathon Neeley, Seon Mi Bae, Min Young Alice Lee, and Eun Hae Bae.
During a recent trip to Asia, President Denny Griffith met with two decades of CCAD alumni in Seoul, Korea to catch up on life and remind the graduates of the pride CCAD has in them.
In attendance were student Jeong Woong Lee; Fashion Design alumnae Seo Yeon Hur (CCAD 2010) and Kyung Rim Vicky Kim (CCAD 2009); Illustration alumni Eun Hae Bae (CCAD 2004) and Eunji Paek (CCAD 2008); Interior Design alumni Sun Young Park (CCAD 2010), Yong Ah Shin (CCAD 2008), and Jeong Hoon Tony Lee (CCAD 2005); Media Studies alumna Min Young Alice Lee (CCAD 2005); Fine Arts alumnus Christopher Maslon (CCAD 1996); and Advertising and Graphic Design alumni Seon Mi Bae (CCAD 1997), Gaeul Oh (CCAD 2008) and Mose Jeung (CCAD 2004).
“It was great to find that most of the alumni with whom we met were working in their fields,” said International Admissions Officer Jonathon Neeley who joined President Griffith on his trip. “Hur and Kim both work in the fashion industry. Eun Hae Bae is currently pursuing her Ph.D. and teaches art to undergraduate students. Paek is a freelance illustrator and designer.
“Park, Shin, and Jeong Hoon Tony Lee are working interior designers. Seon Mi Bae teaches children’s art classes at the Korean Church of Columbus. Oh and Jeung both work at advertising firms, and Jeung received his Master’s degree from Hongik University.
“Maslon is the first foreign elected official appointed to Daejeon Health and Sciences College board for the Executive Committee of Liberal Arts (ECLA). He has also published two books to assist Korean students with English language issues and study abroad advice.”
View more pictures from the gathering here.
Columbus College of Art & Design Blog
Curbside Columbus, real estate info on your phone
Tuesday, June 21st, 2011
It’s not just Real Living HER listings, it is virtually all listings. Coldwell Banker King Thompson, Keller Williams, Century 21, Re/Max and everyone else….
Or would you rather use QR codes to find price, square footage, etc.?
Related posts:
Debunking the 7 Most Common Misconceptions about Safe Sedation Dentistry
Tuesday, June 21st, 2011
Seattle, WA (Vocus) March 16, 2010
Adults who fear going to go to the dentist should know the facts, and then relax.
?Myth Busting? is the theme of Day Two of Sedation Dentistry Safety Week, the second annual event developed to support make certain that dentists and their staffs are offering the safest, most-comfortable, state-of-the-art sedation care to their patients.
In marking the start off of Dental Safety Time (DST), which coincides each and every year with the beginning of Daylight Savings Time, specially trained dentists throughout the country this week are highlighting the availability of pain-free of charge, anxiety-free of charge dentistry designed to put even the most fearful dental patients at ideal ease.
?The facts trump the fears,? says Dr. Michael Silverman, 2010 National Chairman of Sedation Dentistry Safety Week and 1 of the world?s leading sedation dentistry educators. ?We are really proud of the truth that an estimated two million when-fearful adults in the United States have overcome their anxiety and misconceptions to turn into healthier, satisfied, sedation dentistry recipients.?
Dr. Silverman is a co-founder of DOCS Education, the world?s leading educator of sedation dentists and the host of Sedation Dentistry Safety Week. Far more than 20,000 dentists and their dedicated oral wellness teams have taken DOCS Education courses, which emphasize patient safety, comfort and excellence in dentistry.
Over the years, the nation?s best, most-respected sedation dentists collectively have answered tens of millions of patient questions about sedation dentistry and the misunderstandings that surround this increasingly common treatment technique. In response, DOCS Education has compiled a list of the seven most common myths and the facts that debunk them.
Myth One: Sedation dentistry works for other individuals, but I?m so stressed out at the thought of even going to a dentist that I could by no means be comfortable.
Reality 1: Sedation dentists have noticed and helped all varieties of dental ?chickens? and if fear is your main obstacle to receiving secure dental care, fear not! Correctly trained sedation dentists and their staffs have extensive experience calming their patients? anxieties and making every single go to a pleasant encounter.
Myth Two: I like to be in control and with sedation dentistry I?ll be asleep.
Reality Two: DOCS Education?s sedation dentistry training is designed to maintain you awake and responsive the entire time you are in the dental chair. For a lot more than a decade, effectively trained sedation dentists have provided secure, comfortable, anxiety-no cost care even though their patients stay awake.
Myth Three: The pills that are utilised in sedation dentistry can be harmful and I don?t want to take the danger.
Reality 3: The sedation medication your specially trained dentist utilizes will depend upon your individual wants and medical history. All of the sedatives recommended by DOCS Education are among the most-used and best-tolerated sedatives in all of medicine. Tens of millions of Americans have been prescribed the quite identical medicines for safe, unsupervised use at house.
Myth 4: I hate everything about visiting the dentist, such as the waiting room, making the appointment and recalling the go to afterwards. Sedation dentistry can?t aid me when I?m not but even in the dentist?s chair.
Reality 4: Sedation dentists and their staff members work to ease your anxiety from the time you make the really 1st inquiry by means of properly after your dental treatment is total. Team members are particularly trained to be patient, understanding, and reassuring. The hardest part of the whole process is working up the courage to make the first call. That?s when the sedation dentistry team goes to function helping you relax.
Myth 5: Sedation dentistry is only for actually significant dental work. I just require my teeth cleaned and checked.
Reality Five: Since sedation dentistry is so secure and time-tested, it is often utilised for routine dentistry, such as check ups and cleanings. A lot of patients stop severe oral health troubles by generating and keeping typical, anxiety-totally free sedation dentistry visits.
Myth Six: Sedation dentistry is still a ?fringe? method. Mainstream dentists don?t give it.
Reality Six: Sedation dentistry is completely a mainstream technique, meeting standards advised by the American Dental Association and approved by individual state dental boards. DOCS Education estimates that the quantity of adults who have safely and successfully taken benefit of sedation dentistry to calm their fears and bolster their oral wellness numbers more than two million.
Myth Seven: Sedation dentistry is actually pricey and I can?t afford it.
Reality Seven: Due to the fact patients who visit sedation dentists are much more relaxed, their dentists can generally total remedies in a single visit that otherwise require two, three or even more visits. That saves patients both time and cash. A lot of dental insurance programs do cover sedation dentistry remedies and patients are encouraged to discuss reasonably priced payment options with their dentists.
All dentists who offer oral conscious sedation services to their patients, no matter whether or not they had been trained by DOCS Education, are encouraged to actively participate in this year?s annual Sedation Dentistry Safety Week, which runs March 15-19.
Dentists who would like any additional data on sedation dentistry safety and training courses, are invited to call (877) 325-3627 or visit the specialists? website at http://www.DOCSeducation.com.
Shoppers with questions about fear-free of charge, anxiety-totally free sedation dentistry ought to call (888) 858-7972 or go to the patients? site at http://www.SedationCare.com.
The theme for tomorrow, Day Three of Dental Safety Time (DST), is ?Reality Bites: How Reality Show Contestants and their Fans Can Elevate their ?Star Appeal? with a Safe, Sedation Dentistry Makeover.?
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The Nashua NH Dentist Resource
First Place for Youth – Oakland, California
Monday, June 20th, 2011First Place for Youth is a nonprofit organization that serves youth who are preparing to age out of foster care or who have recently aged out of care and are experiencing a housing crisis.
National Alliance to End Homelessness
Infinite Flux: Senior Fine Arts Majors 2009
Monday, June 20th, 2011
Well, the Senior Fine Arts Majors exhibit opened successfully Saturday, April 18th. It was a lovely affair, with the seniors hosting their friends and family to celebrate their achievements.
You can see all their work now through May 10th!
