With the opening of the Erie Canal in 1825, New York vaulted past Philadelphia as the largest city and busiest port in America. The economic importance of canals had been amply demonstrated in England in such projects as the Bridgewater Canal in 1761, and numerous major canals had been proposed in the U.S. However the scale of a canal from the Hudson to Lake Erie was unprecedented

WHEN the Nobel prizewinning physicist Richard Feynman died in 1988, his blackboard carried the inscription, "What I cannot create, I do not understand." By that measure, biologists still have a lot to learn, because no one has yet succeeded in turning a chemical soup into a living, reproducing, evolving life form...... but - well read on

Numbers can have interesting patterns.

Here we list the most common patterns and how they are made.

This is a different sort of entry into the discusssion blog.  It is a somewhat personal note.  However, it charts the course Martha and I sometimes follow to enjoy our world more.

It's a story you've likely never heard. It is a story told through the faces of Albanian Muslims who risked their own lives to live by a code of faith and honor called Besa.

By Leisa Zigman

from:   http://www.ksdk.com/news/local/story.aspx?storyid=222601&catid=3

A video is present on this URL which is very much worth looking at.

Someone sent me a set of pictures in QQ E-Mail.  The defining characteristics of the mail are Chinese, a language with which I am not familiar.  So I use Google's Translator.  It does a poor job.

The gist of the message before the pictures appears to reflect my feelings well, and the pictures are so good, that I wanted to preserve them on my blog.

Photostream: September in Full

Check out behind the scenes photos from September 2010.

President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama walk along the Colonnade of the White House, Sept. 21, 2010. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

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A chronology of key events

The government operates the main broadcasters. The first private radio station launched in 2007.

The use of satellite receivers is permitted, and stations from Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Yemen may be picked up. The BBC broadcasts on FM in Salalah, in the south.

From Delanceyplace.com. E-Mail received 09/17/10 in USA.

This is a passage from Teach Like a Champion by Doug Lemov. 

In today's excerpt - error is normal, and making mistakes is a necessary part of learning.

It might seem odd to think of pre-kindergarten toddlers as students in need of teachers, but the latest research suggests that some form of instruction may help children to better prepare for school.

Times of Oman

Reuters 01 September 2010 09:46:56 Oman Time

WASHINGTON: As U.S. companies shed millions of workers during the recession, the CEOs who laid off the most people brought home pay that was significantly higher than that of their peers, a study released on Thursday found.

I have had some experience with the new Jimdo / Bright Lights discussion area, and have some comments about it.  Because we have no pressure on response we have no way of evaluating whether this group is worthwhile or not.

Do you believe it?----Meeting a beautiful woman can be bad for your health, scientists have found! Let's see!

This is a wonderful poem to all the young by Rudyard Kipling.

TIME:  News Feed by Allie Townsend, September 9, 2010

The Chinese government is beginning to rethink its famed one-child limit as it begins to lift the restriction in five provinces with low birth rates.

Time Magazine  By Adam Cohen Wednesday, Sep. 08, 2010

Mike asked me to post this (Roger).

Daniel Millis, a volunteer with the faith-based organization No More Deaths, was arrested in 2008 for littering. His crime: leaving bottles of drinking water on trails near the Arizona-Mexico border so immigrants walking through the desert would not die of thirst.

September 7, 2010

By DWIGHT GARNER

Katie Drummond

Contributor

AOL News Surge Desk

(Aug. 11) -- A new, drug-resistant superbug has spread from India to the U.K., and health experts are warning that it could become a worldwide health hazard.

An enzyme called New Delhi metallo-beta-lactamase, or NDM-1, is the culprit in question. NDM-1 is found inside bacteria, like E. coli, and makes them extremely virulent and resistant to most antibiotics.

But how is the bacteria transmitted, and are Americans at risk? Surge Desk checks it out.

The Huffington Post 9/7/10

TOKYO — Japan has confirmed the nation's first case of a new gene in bacteria that allows the microorganisms to become drug-resistant superbugs, detected in a man who had medical treatment in India, a Health Ministry official said Tuesday.

The gene, known as NDM-1, was found in a Japanese man in his 50s, Kensuke Nakajima said.

Researchers say the gene – which appears to be circulating widely in India – alters bacteria, making them resistant to nearly all known antibiotics.

Drug-resistant bacteria are not new. Many bacteria are resistant to the world's first antibiotic, penicillin, as well as successive generations of drugs. Excessive use and improper use of antibiotics have exacerbated the problem and led to the emergence of superbugs.

by Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow. 

Why is there something instead of nothing?

Why does this particular set of laws govern our universe and not some other set?

PART I:  CARVING

THURSDAY Sep 02, 2010 08:12 ET India widens security crackdown to Google,Skype By ERIKA KINETZ, Associated Press AP

     We moved office at the end of August with loads of office supplies including lockfast,office seatings and so on. We hired a moving company to move and transport. As soon as the porters reached our apartment, they were astonished to see lots of heavy things. Things were so many that may not be contained in a wagon whose capacitance were 1.5 Litre though.

Q: What does "Third World America" mean?

From The Huffington Post.  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/08/24/what-is-third-world-ameri_n_693444.html

A third world country is one characterized by poverty, political instability and low standards of living. In a third world country there is no middle class, only an elite upper class living off the fat of a predominant lower class.

Copiapo, Chile (CNN) -- The 33 miners trapped inside a Chilean mine since August 5 have been told for the first time that they could be stuck underground for as long as four months, the head of the rescue operation said Friday.

The China Beat               

Blogging How the East Is Read

Two PKU Professors on China’s Youth

http://www.accuweather.com/blogs/news/story/35925/severe-flooding-hits-china-and.asp Aug 22, 2010; 11:40 AM ET

China’s Ivy League Is No Place For Peasants.

As China tries to graduate from the world’s factory to a nation with a strong middle class, its peasants still aren’t ready to make the leap.

http://www.accuweather.com/blogs/news/story/35585/russia-to-see-relief-from-dead.asp

The deadly spell of heat and smog will finally come to an end this week across western Russia.

Thanks to Frontier we have many wonderful shots of the floods in Pakistan showing the misery and desparation of the people there.

Thank you Frontier.

NEW YORK TIMES

August 15, 2010

China Passes Japan as Second-Largest Economy

By DAVID BARBOZA

 August 15, 2010

Workers Let Go by China’s Banks Putting Up Fight

By ANDREW JACOBS

BEIJING — These are heady days for China’s state-controlled banks. Last month, the Agricultural Bank of China made its stock market debut, bringing in $22 billion for the largest public offering ever. A sister government-run bank, the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, now has the highest stock market value of any bank in the world.

Tags work well for sorting topics.  FAQ is a tag that "pulls" all FAQs together in the FAQ topic area.  But I have a couple of questions. 

The first:  If one makes a mistake and enters a tag that will never be used, is there a way to delete it from the "master" group?

The second:  What are the rules of combination for tags? Is there a <>  (not equal) symbol to use with tags?  For example:  FAQ EXCEPT USA?

Editorial

August 13, 2010

The Google/Verizon Payment Plan

For months, the Federal Communications Commission’s efforts to guarantee nondiscriminatory access to broadband Internet have met opposition from the companies that provide broadband service and from their allies in Congress. On Monday, Verizon and Google created a stir by jointly proposing an alternative set of rules as the basis for new legislation governing the Internet.

A county is a political area which is much smaller than a state but larger than a city.

Floods in Pakistan – the worst in living memory – continue to decimate the countryside. Sadly, more rains this weekend threaten to make things worse.

14 million people – more than those impacted by the 2004 tsunami and the Haiti earthquake combined – face immediate risks from water-borne disease and dehydration. News reports say that up to one-fifth of the entire country is under water.

As flood waters head south, a trail of livestock corpses remain in their wake. 288,000 homes and 700 schools have already been destroyed. The Pakistan government warned more floods will come as monsoon rains show no signs of letting up.

The scale of this disaster is unprecedented in terms of people affected and the long term implications on people's livelihoods, not to mention potential rise in conflict and threat to the stability of the whole country. This situation has the making of a protracted disaster where natural catastrophe and conflict intersect.

24 more die in China's flood-hit northwest

By DAVID WIVELL
The Associated Press
Friday, August 13, 2010; 8:05 AM

ZHOUQU, China -- New landslides killed 24 people and left 24 missing in China's remote northwest as downpours threatened more devastation and made rescue work nearly impossible Friday in a region where more than 1,100 people have died.

FROM:    http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/

Dated: August 10, 2010, 5:29 pm  

Scientists See Links From Asian Floods to Russian Heat

ANDREW C. REVKIN  

 

Pakistan flooding  

James Hill for The New York Times Russian fires: The Ministry of Emergency Situations says the 10,000 firefighters it has deployed are overwhelmed.

Two climatologists, Peter Stott at the British Met Office and Kevin Trenberth of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, have separately described atmospheric dynamics that appear to link the extreme rains and flooding in Asia with Russia’s unrelenting, extraordinary heat and resulting conflagrations.

One of the first two movie tapes that Martha and I bought after we were married was It's a Wonderful LIfe.  Both have to do with a philosophy of life, but are approached quite differently.  Lost Horizon, the other one, is written up separately. Jimmy Stewart, Donna Reed and Lionel Barrymore are in this picture.  Most of Stewart's movies are excellent. When you combine Stewart's acting with Hitchcock's plots and directing (like Vertigo or Rear Window) you are sure to have a great movie.

One of the first two movie tapes that Martha and I bought after we were married was Lost Horizon.  The version we like is a black and white film from 1937. It is non-musical, black & white staring Ronald Colman, Jane Wyatt.  Each of these are excellent actors.  The director is Frank Capra who made many excellent movies.

People frequently ask me which movies I like.  It is hard to form an answer to that question, because I like a lot of movies, but most of them are older ones (to me, older ones means 50 or more years ago).  But there are some specific movies that I like and some "blocks" of movies I like.  For example there are a lot of Hitchcock that I like, or a lot of Jimmy Stewart or Tracey-Hepburn movies that I like.  These are blocks.  And there are some individual movies that I like.

August 8, 2010

Landslides Kill 127 in China

By MICHAEL WINES

I suppose this is the type of question that has been asked about many subjects.  As the media begins to be more actively carrying news from every corner of the world, we are more and more aware of floods.  But several questions come to mind in connection with floods, and I thought I would ask them here to see what people here think.

1. Many countries have built dams, and done other things which influence the natural flow of water.  Have we altered the course of nature's water flow so significantly that we have increased both the occurrence of flooding and the severity of it?

2. Has mankind built too close to and too extensively on the shores of  rivers without proper safeguards, so flooding is inevitably more severe?

3. Much has been reported about global warming.  Does global warming cause more extensive flooding?

I can't get Music to work.  Any suggestions.  Ponyo 

I want to raise two questions for consideration by the group.

      I have been thinking a lot on what topic should I post here, but due to some recent and very affective events I decided to post about money.

       Money is dirt. Yeah I could say it and be over but... my anger does not allow it. Money is dirt in every possible way. Some of you may already know this, but there are many people out there who get happy, smiling and greedy of course over this thing called money. It disgusts me how much it is necessary to SURVIVE in our planet. If you have no money you will eventually die. Don't get me wrong I know it is absolutely necessary to have money, I need it to eat, to go to my work, to call my friends, to talk to my boyfriend, but the point is, why did our ancestors had to make this form of exchanging goods to live? I wish we could all go back to when you could trade a bag of rice for a bag of apples or something.

    Back then no one was out to get money, no one was greedy to the point of killing and no one was judged by having expensive or cheap clothes. Everyone was the same humble kind of human. Money makes people sick, makes people pumpous, makes people cynical and ugly outside not matter what they do to their outsides.

    I am always shocked to see what kind of things require money, and big amounts too. Maybe I am particularly  annoyed to see how much of this disgusting money thing I am required to give to have the person I love, the person I am willing and wanting to spend the rest of my live with, here with me in my country. It is...disgusting.

Everything that falls apart anywhere in the world is due with money. Directly or not. And I may be talking on a heavy heart, hot mind and something else, but I would prefer any day to reverse this life and it's advances in order to have a peaceful life, mind and heart.

     I apologise if I made no sense at all.

Thanks for reading. Ana

Something on the BP Oil Spill, if you are following it at all.

I found this news article interesting - but it is a little long.  Maybe you would just want to skim it and see what you think.

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — The Kemp’s ridley sea turtle lay belly-up on the metal autopsy table, as pallid as split-pea soup but for the bright orange X spray-painted on its shell, proof that it had been counted as part of the Gulf of Mexico’s continuing “unusual mortality event.”

Roger and I find this very funny, and we wondered whether people of another culture also would think so.  The piece itself is a classic of Twentieth Century American humor.  James Thurber wrote primarily for the magazine "The New Yorker," which is still published weekly.

China Fears Consumer Impact on Global Warming

By KEITH BRADSHER

Who can help me to solve this problem?

When you completed your comments , then you want to change some words. It seems you can't re-edit it?

Thanks.

I sent this note to some of the members of the group, but not to all. So I thought perhaps I should post it.

So far I know all the partners who are in this group. Therefore I was surprised but glad that Mike (Everest on English Share) came up with an idea of our introducing ourselves to each other.

This blog is a good way to do that because the introductions will remain available for new members, and because we can gather them in one place.

I hope that everyone who is currently a member will add a comment which contains their introduction to the group.  And I hope everyone in the future will add a comment with their introduction.

The New York Times  

July 4, 2010

Punishing the Jobless

By PAUL KRUGMAN  

There was a time when everyone took it for granted that unemployment insurance, which normally terminates after 26 weeks, would be extended in times of persistent joblessness. It was, most people agreed, the decent thing to do.

This is an introduction to Jimdo and the use of the blog.  Some may already know how to use use this feature.  If so okay.  But if not, this is a good topic to discuss - or at least ask questions about.