Source: http://www.tvrlive.com/fitness-boot-camp-kick-boxing/
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Wednesday, August 31, 2011
Fitness Boot Camp: Kick Boxing | tvrlive.com
[unable to retrieve full-text content]However, at fitness boot camp you can forget about the head butts, take downs, and throws against one another: those moves are exclusively for the martial art contact sport. Some of the modern stars of kickboxing in ... art for warriors (Rousseau, 2009). Over time, the sport transitioned into being used for physical fitness, recreation, and self defense under the leadership of the peaceful ruler, King Rama V who became ruler of Thailand in 1868 A.D. (Rousseau, 2009). ...
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
The Development of Hookup Online websites: Will They Overtake ...
[unable to retrieve full-text content]Have online dating internet websites shed their stigma as being a place for only the lonely, just to have traded it in to get a hookup image? ... surely are sites and expert services on hand for people today to fulfill dates for hookups by yourself, there are also ample other kinds of relationships that might, and also have been formed, by means of on the web dating services, from friendships, to e-mail correspondence, hookups, casual dates, and in many cases marriage. ...
Monday, August 29, 2011
Sunday, August 28, 2011
Home Improvement and Appliance ? Find and Solve Possible ...
You will find many possible obstacles on home improvement. They can be anything and many things. Sometimes, you do not even know that it will be a problem for you. However, you shall not be worried about that. What you should do is find the problem and have the solution for those problem and you can live your house happily ever after just like Disney princess and their prince charming.
First, you should know about the dry or wet rot. You should aware about this. The dry rot is a kind of fungi that will damage the timber. Or the wet rot is the one problem when you let the timer wet too long. If find this one, you should be aware because it is not good for your timber during your project upgrading your houses. Second, leaking roof of your house may cause another new problem. This is one of some possible obstacles on home improvement. After finishing your project, you find that your roof is leaking. Well, it may look like a simple problem, but you have to make it as soon as possible. You can leave it to the professional or do by yourself. If you think you can do it by yourself, you should know how to do and what you should not do then.
Three, some cracking appear on the wall or the beautiful wallpaper gets curl because of the damp. Or the worst is that the construction workers make fatal mistakes when they make your rooms. Don?t be panic! Consult your problem to the construction consultant and solve the possible obstacles n home improvement as soon as possible.
Source: http://mistyforestii.com/?p=899
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Saturday, August 27, 2011
The tip of the iceberg and ?spiritual? strategy | Astrology Blog ...
Nona Willis Aronowitz, posting on truthout.org, makes some good points about this interview with Texas governor and Republican presidential contender. In part, her commentary states:
There?s something that frustrates me even more than Perry?s skewed logic, though: the reporter?s missed opportunity. He fails to point out that teaching safer sex and abstinence are not mutually exclusive. He doesn?t remind Perry that while, yes, abstinence itself works, abstinence-only education does not. And he doesn?t even really explain why teen pregnancy rates would be affected by keeping information away from students; he just cites the two facts side-by-side.
Exchanges like these, where the two sides do nothing but talk past each other, spotlight a serious disconnect in the way we talk about teen sexuality.
It?s just the tip of the iceberg, but an especially chilly one, if you consider a story that aired on NPR yesterday about the rapturist right-wing movement that is gaining momentum in claiming political power. Eric called this one out the Aug. 12 subscriber issue, writing:
[...] a slate of Republican candidates are vying for the presidential nomination, each one more driven by apocalyptic religious values than the next.
The probable Republican nominee, Rick Perry of Texas, held a revival meeting at Reliant Stadium in Houston last weekend wherein he prayed for guidance about things like fixing the federal deficit. This might be meaningful ? prayer often is ? but it?s worth noting how many of his guests that day were rapture Christians (properly called dispensationalists) obsessed not with the God of love but rather with the end of the world. This segment from The Rachel Maddow Show [link expired/broken - Amanda] explains that they are all part of one religious movement, which has vowed to take over the United States government for the purposes of hastening the end of the world. I know this sounds like science fiction, but it is neither scientific nor fictional.
The NPR story fills in a few more details, including just how pervasive this movement is. Rachel Tabachnick, who researches the political impact of the religious right, told Fresh Air host Terri Gross that a group called the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) is campaigning to take back what it calls the ?seven mountains of culture? from ?demonic influence.? Apparently the ?mountains? are arts and entertainment; business; family; government; media; religion; and education.
They teach quite literally that these ?mountains? have fallen under the control of demonic influences in society. And therefore, they must reclaim them for God in order to bring about the kingdom of God on Earth. ? The apostles teach what?s called ?strategic level spiritual warfare? [because they believe that the] reason why there is sin and corruption and poverty on the Earth is because the Earth is controlled by a hierarchy of demons under the authority of Satan. So they teach not just evangelizing souls one by one, as we?re accustomed to hearing about. They teach that they will go into a geographic region or a people group and conduct spiritual-warfare activities in order to remove the demons from the entire population. This is what they?re doing that?s quite fundamentally different than other evangelical groups.
?Strategic level spiritual warfare.? It has a rather awful ring to it, and I am not in favor of using martial metaphors when it comes to spiritual work, healing, education and awareness. But the ?strategic? part may be something lightworkers of the world need to pay attention to. There is a lot of strategy on one side of this cultural divide in humanity right now, and the ground that side seems to be gaining is unnerving at best; more like terrifying.
If you listened to yesterday?s podcast, wherein Eric interviewed a remarkable young friend of mine named Porter, you have a sense of the amazing potential for growth and evolution carried by many twenty-somethings and teens right now. There are a lot of distractions ? not to mention actual, intentional threats ? to the development of their consciousness right now. And if we don?t start at the ground level in lending a hand to young people who sense there?s more out there than Facebook games, we?re doing them a disservice.
I haven?t figured out the strategy myself, and I?m sure there are many working on this question. But if sex education ? as in, programs that are comprehensive about the emotional, spiritual and social intricacies of sex and sexuality, in addition to pregnancy and STI prevention ? isn?t a critical starting point, I?m not sure what is.
Source: http://planetwaves.net/pagetwo/daily-astrology/the-tip-of-the-iceberg-and-spiritual-strategy/
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Effective Email Deliverability Suggestions for Your Online Business
Article by Joe Langdon
Even though Facebook and Twitter have grown in popularity as communication tools, online marketers still regard email marketing to be an important tool. The effectiveness of email can be contributed to the fact that almost everyone uses it daily, so finding ways to leverage it properly can mean huge increases in your conversion rates, your sales and your profits. You also have the opportunity to create a relationship with the people on your mailing list. However, all your email marketing efforts can prove to be fruitless if your emails aren?t getting delivered, which is why it?s important to focus on this one factor. In the following article we shall be looking into three effective tips on how to increase your email deliverability rates.
Don?t make the mistake of writing your emails the same way as a spammer. Spammers write their emails using a specific style that aims at attracting attention. They know they have to do this because they are sending emails out randomly to strangers. So try to avoid using a lot of CAPS or exclamation points. Spam filters are getting smarter each day, which means you?ll need to get smarter and take enough precautions to make sure your emails are safely delivered without much problem. Normally, if you?re sending out a regular email, it shouldn?t get blocked. But if it?s a promotional email containing a message that looks like spam then you might get blocked.
HTML emails are known to get a higher response rate but at the same time they can be mistaken for spam, which is why you should focus on sending out both versions of email, text and HTML. This ensures that subscribers get what they really want and that your emails aren?t blackballed. Another way for subscribers to access your HTML emails is to have them follow a link to a site where the email is actually located from a text email you send out. When dealing with the problem, this method is safer and more effective.
In order to check if your emails are safe against a spam counter, use a tool like SpamAssassin. This free tool can check through your emails to see if anything needs to be amended or altered. It tells you what words or phrases are likely to be picked up by spam filters before you send your message out so you can change it first. In conclusion, this article shows us how to be good email marketers and how to avoid spam traps. It is not difficult, but common sense to use these suggestions when starting an email marketing campaign. Once your subscribers start to regularly receive your emails without being blocked, your response rate will increase. You will be able to get a whole lot more out of your emails campaign then.
Source: http://www.crawley.biz/effective-email-deliverability-suggestions-for-your-online-business
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Friday, August 26, 2011
Video: Kansas City Fed on Recession Chances
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Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/44275005#44275005
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How Culturally Diverse Preschool Programs Benefit Young Children ...
How Culturally Diverse Preschool Programs Benefit Young Children
By admin - Last updated: ???, 8? 23, 2011 - Save & Share - Leave a CommentMany parents seeking a Brookline preschool or Brookline childcare program prefer one that includes the same cultural diversity found in the community, among other reasons. The presence of diversity in the setting and curriculum used by Brookline preschool or even Brookline childcare centers carries many benefits for the families as well as the children.
For many families, the neighborhood in which they live is more culturally diverse and they want their child to attend a preschool in Brookline or Brookline childcare center that reflects the same. Others may simply prefer their children attend a preschool in Brookline that reflects their diverse cultural heritage.
Generally, by the time children reach the age 4 they are becoming aware of differences between themselves and other children in their neighborhood or in their Brookline preschool. This can include differences in skin color, religion, or spoken language. Therefore, when a child attends either a preschool in Brookline or daycare in Brookline it provides the perfect opportunity for them to learn cultural diversity.
Programs rich in cultural diversity benefit youngsters by helping them develop broader language skills, increased cultural awareness, and instill a feeling of cultural pride. In addition, programs of diversity helps build a sense of connection with the surrounding community.
Because language and culture are intertwined, preschools in Brookline and programs for children in daycare in Brookline that promote diversity offer bi-lingual programs. Typically, programs are in English and Spanish or English and another language. These programs are of obvious benefit to children who speak another language, but they?re also beneficial to children who don?t because they provide all children a richer opportunity to develop language skills including sentence structure, vocabulary, and grammar.
A culturally diverse Brookline preschool program is not just about language however, it?s also about celebrating similarities as well as differences. The focus of culturally diverse programs includes languages that are spoken, foods that are eaten, toys that are played with, and holidays and unique cultural celebrations.
Activities such as singing songs in other languages, playing musical instruments, eating foods, or reading fairy tales from another country or culture make daycare in Brookline, or a preschool in Brookline lively and interesting places to learn for students. Exposure to different cultures through attending a preschool in Brookline that offers programs and the diversity of the students themselves serve children well in the long run, giving them the skills to flourish in the increasingly culturally diverse world around them.
Related Cultural Diversity Articles
Thursday, August 25, 2011
Nickel nanoparticles may contribute to lung cancer
 |
| Now you see it, now you don?t When human lung epithelial cells are exposed to equivalent doses of nano-sized (left) or micro-sized (right) metallic nickel particles, activated HIF-1 alpha pathways (stained green) appear mostly with the nanoparticles. |
Abstract:
Lab experiments find that nickel particles with diameters billionths of a meter wide can trigger a cellular pathway that promotes cancer growth.
All the excitement about nanotechnology comes down to this: Structures of materials at the scale of billionths of a meter take on unusual properties. Technologists often focus on the happier among these newfound capabilities, but new research by an interdisciplinary team of scientists at Brown University finds that nanoparticles of nickel activate a cellular pathway that contributes to cancer in human lung cells.
"Nanotechnology has tremendous potential and promise for many applications," said Agnes Kane, chair of the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine in The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University. "But the lesson is that we have to learn to be able to design them more intelligently and, if we recognize the potential hazards, to take adequate precautions."
Kane is the senior author of the study published in advance online this month in the journal Toxicological Sciences.
Nickel nanoparticles had already been shown to be harmful, but not in terms of cancer. Kane and her team of pathologists, engineers and chemists found evidence that ions on the surface of the particles are released inside human epithelial lung cells to jumpstart a pathway called HIF-1 alpha. Normally the pathway helps trigger genes that support a cell in times of low oxygen supply, a problem called hypoxia, but it is also known to encourage tumor cell growth.
"Nickel exploits this pathway, in that it tricks the cell into thinking there's hypoxia but it's really a nickel ion that activates this pathway," said Kane, whose work is supported by a National Institues of Health Superfund Research Program Grant. "By activating this pathway it may give premalignant tumor cells a head start."
Size matters
The research team, led by postdoctoral research associate and first author Jodie Pietruska, exposed human lung cells to nanoscale particles of metallic nickel and nickel oxide, and larger microscale particles of metallic nickel. A key finding is that while the smaller particles set off the HIF-1 alpha pathway, the larger metallic nickel particles proved much less problematic.
In other words, getting down to the nanoscale made the metallic nickel particles more harmful and potentially cancer-causing. Kane said the reason might be that for the same amount of metal by mass, nanoscale particles expose much more surface area and that makes them much more chemically reactive than microscale particles.
Another important result from the work is data showing a big difference in how nickel nanoparticles and nickel oxide nanoparticles react with cells, Pietruska said. The nickel oxide particles are so lethal that the cells exposed to them died quickly, leaving no opportunity for cancer to develop. Metallic nickel particles, on the other hand, were less likely to kill the cells. That could allow the hypoxia pathway to lead to the cell becoming cancerous.
"What is concerning is the metallic nickel nanoparticles caused sustained activation but they were less cytotoxic," Pietruska said. "Obviously a dead cell can't be transformed."
Although Kane said the findings should raise clear concerns about handling nickel nanoparticles, for instance to prevent airborne exposure to them in manufacturing, they are not all that's needed to cause cancer. Cancer typically depends on a number of unfortunate changes, Kane said. Also, she said, the study looked at the short-term effects of nickel nanoparticle exposure in cells in a lab, rather than over the long term in a whole organism.
Still, in her lab Kane employs significant safeguards to keep researchers safe.
"We handle all these materials under biosafety level 2 containment conditions," she said. "I don't want anyone exposed. We're handling them as though they were an airborne carcinogen."
In addition to Kane and Pietruska, other authors on the paper are Xinyuan Liu, chemist; Ashley Smith, doctoral student in pathobiology; Kevin McNeil, pathology lab technician; Paula Weston, histotechnician; Anatoly Zhitkovich, toxicologist; and Robert Hurt, engineer. Kane, Hurt, and Zhitkovich are associated with Brown's Institute for Molecular and Nanoscale Innovation.
Editors: Brown University has a fiber link television studio available for domestic and international live and taped interviews, and maintains an ISDN line for radio interviews. For more information, call (401) 863-2476.
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Nano bundles pack a powerful punch: Solid-state energy storage takes a leap forward at Rice University August 22nd, 2011
Announcements
Unexpected adhesion properties of graphene may lead to new nanotechnology devices August 23rd, 2011
Center of Innovation for Nanobiotechnology Installs Leader: Griffith Kundahl Named Executive Director August 23rd, 2011
Selective CVD growth of GeSn: a new approach for implementing stress in Ge based MOSFETs August 23rd, 2011
Photonex 2011 - The Conference Programme is growing and online registration is now open: High power diode lasers & systems August 23rd, 2011
Safety-Nanoparticles/Risk management
Iranian Scientists Investigate Dermal Effects of Nanosilver, Silver Nitrate August 18th, 2011
Consumers' close encounters with nanoparticles August 10th, 2011
Method Could Resolve Nanosilver's Cloudy Toxicity Picture - Nanomaterials: Cloud point extraction could help distinguish between silver nanoparticles and silver ions August 8th, 2011
The Netherlands MicroNanoConference '11, Ede, 15-16 November 2011: Joint Conference by NanoNextNL and MinacNed will take place at Conference Centre De ReeHorst, Ede, The Netherlands August 3rd, 2011
Source: http://www.nanotech-now.com/news.cgi?story_id=43238
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Family helps Glen Campbell fight the darkness (AP)
BILOXI, Mississippi ? Singer Glen Campbell is having a great time.
Make no mistake, it is tragic that Alzheimer's disease is slowly stripping away the memories and abilities that define one of music's greats. But day-to-day, surrounded by his family and friends, encouraged to play his guitar and sing and golf and joke, the 75-year-old Campbell is often smiling.
"I'm really not worried about anything," Campbell said. "You know those people who say, `Oh, geez, I wonder what's going to happen tomorrow?' Tomorrow's cool. Just don't mess it up. It's just wonderful. I think where I am at right now in this universe, I wouldn't want to be anything else than what I am."
Call it The Zen of Glen, and it has been reached through the hard work of his wife, Kim, his children and his business associates who often are as close as family. They have created a carefully engineered environment meant to shelter and encourage Campbell at every turn, whether he is at home or on the road.
The Campbell family allowed The Associated Press a glance at the Country Music Hall of Fame member's life during a recent visit to Biloxi, Mississippi, where Campbell played his first show last month since announcing he has Alzheimer's, a degenerative brain disease that so far has proven incurable.
That show was a dry run in preparation for a string of dates overseas this year, and for a goodbye tour next year in support of his last studio album, "Ghost on the Canvas," out next Tuesday.
"What's really fun is it's not like work now because I've got my kids here, and my wife here, and they're all playing," Campbell said.
There are indeed moments of confusion, memories that refuse to coalesce and words for simple things that remain just out of reach. But for the most part, Campbell does not realize he has Alzheimer's. He is untroubled by the gravity of it all.
Gently reminded of the diagnosis he says, "It hasn't come by yet."
"You get a little forgetful," Kim says.
"Well, it may look like that, but I don't want to hear it sometimes. That's an old trick."
And everyone laughs. Out of sadness, a smile.
"We call it part-timers," Kim said. "You just never know. Some days are great, and some days he maybe repeats himself a little. On stage a couple of times he might forget what key a song is in, which 20 years ago might never happen."
It started with simple forgetfulness about 10 years ago. Early on, doctors gave less dire diagnoses. As it advanced, there was confusion and anxiety: The family wonders if the disease contributed to a short return to drinking that resulted in a drunken driving arrest in 2003.
Recently California took away his driver's license. Kim avoided telling him as long as possible, finding excuses to drive them everywhere they went.
She is afraid he's slipping from the early stage to the middle stage of the disease, and there is no predicting how long he will be able to perform. The album and tour dates are the family's way of helping him stay anchored in the present.
"I do get nervous about his ability to stay on track and read his teleprompter and remember his chords," Kim said. "So far everything's been pretty good. Eventually I expect if this progresses as it normally does, we'll start to have problems. So we're preparing to get him off the road and retire, but we wanted to go out with a bang. He wants to do it as long as he can, but the scary thing is you don't know when the shoe's going to drop. We're all worried that if we stop, he'll get worse more quickly."
The power music has to preserve what Campbell has left is on display any time he picks up a guitar. His fingers appear to have forgotten nothing and still float over the strings.
"I can't imagine what that guy must've been like at 25 because at 75 and in this condition he's frightening," said Julian Raymond, producer of "Ghost." "He's really very good. He's blessed in that sense."
Always has been. What Campbell lacked in formal training, or perhaps because of what he lacked, he made up for with feeling and his ear and a preternatural sense of what fit where.
As a young man coming west out of Arkansas, he was enchanted by the sounds of jazz and country and rock and the true melting pot that American music was in the 1950s and 1960s. At 16, he took an uncle's invitation to join his band in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and play on a radio show. He eventually migrated to Los Angeles.
"I didn't go to Nashville because Nashville at that time seemed one-dimensional to me," Campbell said. "I'm a jazzer. I just love to get the guitar and play the hell out of it if I can."
Despite being unable to read music, he joined a crack team of session players known as The Wrecking Crew. They recorded iconic songs like The Byrds' "Mr. Tambourine Man," and Simon and Garfunkel's "Bridge Over Troubled Water," "The Monkees" and "The Age of Aquarius" while helping Phil Spector develop his game-changing wall of sound approach.
"We'd get the rock 'n' roll guys and play all that, then we'd get (Frank) Sinatra and Dean Martin," Campbell said. "That was a kick. I really enjoyed that. I didn't want to go nowhere. I was making more money than I ever made just doing studio work."
He was a member of The Beach Boys for a time during this period and never knew who might show up in the studio during his day job. One of those sessions was with The Smothers Brothers, which landed him on television. He was overseas when his first episode aired and was amazed to find everyone seemed to know who he was when he returned stateside.
"The whole lid just blew off," Campbell said. "I had never had anything like that happen to me. I got more phone calls. It was awesome. For the first couple of days I was like how do they know me? I didn't realize the power of television."
Not long after that Campbell launched one of music's most successful runs. He was a true crossover star whose music appealed to both pop and country fans. He employed the ear and opinions he had honed over the years in the studio to put his own spin on instant classics like "Wichita Lineman," "Rhinestone Cowboy," "Gentle on My Mind," "Galveston," "By the Time I Get to Phoenix" and "Southern Nights."
Raymond said many of the hallmarks that made Campbell such a great performer then remain today. He first met Campbell in 2007 when they worked on "Meet Glen Campbell" together. The two became friends and Raymond began keeping notes, writing down snatches of conversations he had with Campbell as he discussed his feelings and his family.
Raymond crafted those fragments into deeply personal songs that address both his health and his feelings for his wife and family. The album also features songs from singer-songwriters as diverse as Paul Westerberg, Jakob Dylan and Robert Pollard, but with the Campbell touch foremost in mind.
"We'd compare notes and talk about what he wanted to say and what he didn't want to say," Raymond said. "And then he'd do this classic Glen Campbell stuff where he wants the tempo sped up a bit and to find the right keys. It was a collaborative affair as far as that goes. He's always been very, very good in the studio, and that didn't change in the last few years of doing this."
What emerges is an ultimately optimistic album, full of love and a sense of peace. Campbell is learning to play the songs for his live shows, actively battling Alzheimer's by making and retaining new memories, forcing his brain not only to remember but also to help him excel.
It is a dramatic change for Campbell. He was ready to give up life on the road a few years ago, said Bill Maclay, Campbell's tour manager for 33 years.
"Glen was not a happy camper out on the road," Maclay said. "He told everybody, `I'm going to quit. I don't want to do this.' I asked Kim to come out on the road and that really helped. And once we brought his family out, the road is his home now. He sees his family here more than at home."
There is something of a circus atmosphere around Campbell's entourage, constant jokes and banter, the sounds of lives being lived. Fans invited to a meet and greet find Campbell in 100-watt mode, cracking jokes and showing few signs he's anything but the Glen of old. But there are little reminders that occasionally catch up with everyone.
"We were watching one of his videos from `The Goodtime Hour' and some live shows in the `70s and he was so on top of things," said Ashley, 24. "And it's sad to know that he could still be that good if he didn't have Alzheimer's. It's stealing his powers away."
But those sad moments are quickly chased away, said her 26-year-old brother Shannon. Everyone chooses to follow The Zen of Glen.
"There are a lot of new treatments he's trying out," he said. "Nobody's ever been cured before, but people are pretty hopeful about these treatments he's been trying. We're just keeping our fingers crossed."
___
Online:
http://www.glencampbellshow.com
___
Chris Talbott covers entertainment for The Associated Press. Follow him at http://www.twitter.com/chris_talbott
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Wednesday, August 24, 2011
Flamboyant Gadhafi no stranger to bloodshed
LONDON?? Moammar Gadhafi's penchant for extravagant uniforms, gold regalia and Bedouin tents provided a theatrical backdrop for four decades of harsh repression at home and a foreign policy that made him a bete noire of the West.
On Tuesday night, those props were smashed, pilfered and paraded in mockery when rebels stormed his fortified compound. One man wore the familiar braided hat he said he found in his house. The tent where he received foreign dignitaries was set ablaze. The decapitated golden head of his statue was trampled.
Gadhafi, who has been fighting a rebellion for six months, was nowhere to be seen.
In tandem with his eccentricity, Gadhafi had a charisma which won him support among many ordinary Libyans. His readiness to take on Western powers and Israel, both with rhetoric and action, earned him a certain cachet with some in other Arab states who felt their own leaders were too supine.
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While leaders of neighboring Arab states folded quickly in the face of popular uprisings, Gadhafi had put up a bloody six-month fight, taking on NATO as well as local insurgents who quickly seized half the country.
For most of his 42-year rule, he held a prominent position in the West's gallery of international rogues, while maintaining tight control at home by eliminating dissidents and refusing to anoint a successor.
Gadhafi effected a successful rapprochement with the West by renouncing his weapons of mass destruction program in return for an end to sanctions. But he could not avoid the tide of popular revolution sweeping through the Arab world.
Story: Libyan-Americans pitch in to support rebels' causeThe Libyan leader, his son and his spy chief are wanted for crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court in The Hague for planning the violent suppression of the uprising.
As his oil-producing North African desert country descended into civil war, Gadhafi's military responded with the deadly force that he had never been afraid to use, despite the showman image that captivated many.
When the insurgency began in mid-February, protesters were gunned down in their hundreds. As his troops advanced on Benghazi he famously warned rebels there would be "no mercy, no pity." They would be hunted down "alley by alley, house by house, room by room."
Those words may have been his undoing. Days later the United Nations passed a resolution clearing the way for a NATO air campaign that knocked out his air force, tanks and heavy guns.
'Mad dog'
Raids also targeted his own headquarters in Tripoli. One raid killed his youngest son and three grandchildren. It was not the first time that the West had killed a Gadhafi family member.
President Ronald Reagan called Gadhafi a "mad dog" and sent warplanes to bomb his Bab al-Aziziyah compound in 1986, after the bombing of a West Berlin discotheque he blamed on Libyan agents. One of the 60 people killed was Gadhafi's adopted daughter.
Gadhafi used the Tripoli building bombed in the raid, left unprepared for 25 years, to deliver one of his first defiant speeches of the war, standing beside a memorial in the shape of a giant metal fist crushing an American warplane.
On Tuesday night, some men climbed atop the fist amid celebratory gunshots and hacked at it.
In televised addresses in response to the rebellion in the east, Gadhafi blamed the unrest on rats and mercenaries and said they were brainwashed by Osama bin Laden and under the influence of hallucinogenic drugs used to spike their coffee.
There was repeated speculation that Gadhafi has either been killed or wounded in NATO air raids, but he made carefully choreographed television appearances in response to the rumors.
In May, Gadhafi taunted NATO, saying its bombers could not find him.
"I am telling the coward crusaders that I am at a place you cannot reach and kill me," he said in a broadcast audio recording. His later speeches were also delivered as audio recordings, presumably to conceal his whereabouts.
'I will die here'
"I am not going to leave this land, I will die here as a martyr ... I shall remain here defiant," he said in one broadcast.
One of the world's longest serving national leaders, Gadhafi had no official government function and was known as the "Brother Leader and Guide of the Revolution."
His love of grand gestures was on display on foreign visits when he slept in a Bedouin tent guarded by dozens of female bodyguards.
In Italy last year, Gadhafi's invitation to hundreds of young women to convert to Islam overshadowed the visit, which was intended to cement growing ties between Tripoli and Rome.
Slideshow: Conflict in Libya (on this page)U.S. diplomatic cables released by the WikiLeaks website shed further light on the Libyan leader's tastes.
One cable posted by The New York Times describes Gadhafi's insistence on staying on the ground floor when he visited New York for a 2009 meeting at the United Nations and his reported refusal or inability to climb more than 35 steps.
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Gadhafi was also said to rely heavily on his staff of four Ukrainian nurses, including one woman described as a "voluptuous blonde." The cable speculated about a romantic relationship, but the nurse, Galyna Kolonytska, 38, fled Libya after the fighting started.
Gadhafi was born in 1942, the son of a Bedouin herdsman, in a tent near Sirte on the Mediterranean coast. He abandoned a geography course at university for a military career that included a short spell at a British army signals school.
Colonel Gadhafi took power in a bloodless military coup in 1969 when he toppled King Idriss, and in the 1970s he formulated his "Third Universal Theory," a middle road between communism and capitalism, as laid out in his "Green Book."
Oil wells and desert
Gadhafi oversaw the rapid development of Libya, which was previously known for little more than oil wells and deserts where huge tank battles took place in World War Two. The economy is now paying the price of war and sanctions.
One of his first tasks on taking power was to build up the armed forces, but he also spent billions of dollars of oil income on improving living standards, making him popular with the low-paid.
Gadhafi poured money into giant projects such as a steel plant in the town of Misrata -- the scene of bitter fighting -- and the Great Man-Made River, a scheme to pipe water from desert wells to coastal communities.
Gadhafi embraced the pan-Arabism of the late Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser and tried without success to merge Libya, Egypt and Syria into a federation. A similar attempt to join Libya and Tunisia ended in acrimony.
In 1977 he changed the country's name to the Great Socialist Popular Libyan Arab Jamahiriyah (State of the Masses) and allowed people to air their views at people's congresses.
However, for much of his rule he has been shunned by the West, which accused him of links to terrorism and revolutionary movements.
He was particularly reviled after the 1988 Pan Am airliner bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland, by Libyan agents in which 270 people were killed.
U.N. sanctions imposed in 1992 to pressure Tripoli to hand over two Libyan suspects, crippled the economy, dampened Gadhafi's revolutionary spirit and took the sting out of his anti-capitalist, anti-Western rhetoric.
Gadhafi abandoned his program of prohibited weapons in 2003 to return Libya to international mainstream politics.
Copyright 2011 Thomson Reuters. Click for restrictions.
Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44247444/ns/world_news-mideast_n_africa/
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Tuesday, August 23, 2011
Surfing the Web at Work Can Actually Make You More Productive [Productivity]
Perhaps you've always suspected that browsing the web at work was good for you (at least for your sanity). If so, your suspicions have been confirmed. The Wall Street Journal reports that new studies show web surfing increases workers' productivity.
The studies were conducted by National University of Singapore researchers Don J.Q. Chen and Vivien K.G Lim. They gave students a task of highlighting the letter "e" in sample text for twenty minutes, then in the next ten minutes a control group of students were given a different simple task. Meanwhile, another group was allowed to do everything except surf the web during that break, and a third group could surf the web. Then all three groups went back to highlighting the letters.
The result, as you've guessed by now, is that the web surfers:
were significantly more productive and effective at the tasks than those in the other two groups and reported lower levels of mental exhaustion, boredom and higher levels of engagement.
Web surfing serves as a kind of rest and restorative activity, "like going for a coffee or snack break," Dr. Lim said.
So don't feel guilty if you do browse the web at work (in moderation, of course). It may be part of the reason why you're effective at your job. Photo remixed from an original by lululemon athletica.
Web Surfing Helps at Work, Study Says | The Wall Street Journal
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