Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/politics/top-stories/213593048?client_source=feed&format=rss
Wednesday, March 21, 2012
Tornado-hit Ind. school wins Lady Antebellum show
FILE - In this Nov. 20, 2011, file photo Lady Antebellum musical group members from left, Charles Kelley, Hillary Scott and Dave Haywood, accept the award for country band, duo or group at the 39th Annual American Music Awards on in Los Angeles. Students from the wrecked school awaited word Tuesday, March 20, 2012, about whether on online campaign supported by other schools in their state and beyond will land them a prom-night performance by Grammy-winning country trio Lady Antebellum. (AP Photo/Matt Sayles, File)
FILE - In this Nov. 20, 2011, file photo Lady Antebellum musical group members from left, Charles Kelley, Hillary Scott and Dave Haywood, accept the award for country band, duo or group at the 39th Annual American Music Awards on in Los Angeles. Students from the wrecked school awaited word Tuesday, March 20, 2012, about whether on online campaign supported by other schools in their state and beyond will land them a prom-night performance by Grammy-winning country trio Lady Antebellum. (AP Photo/Matt Sayles, File)
FILE - In this March 3, 2012, file photos vehicles damaged by a tornado lie in the parking lot of the Henryville Jr./Sr. High School in Henryville, Ind. Students from the wrecked school awaited word Tuesday, March 20, 2012, about whether on online campaign supported by other schools in their state and beyond will land them a prom-night performance by Grammy-winning country trio Lady Antebellum. (AP Photo/Michael Conroy, File)
FILE - In this March 3, 2012, file photo, is the Henryville Jr./Sr. High School in Henryville, Ind., after a tornado swept through town. Students from the wrecked school awaited word Tuesday, March 20, 2012, about whether on online campaign supported by other schools in their state and beyond will land them a prom-night performance by Grammy-winning country trio Lady Antebellum. (AP Photo/Al Behrman, File)
INDIANAPOLIS (AP) ? A southern Indiana high school wrecked by tornadoes won a free concert by country music stars Lady Antebellum on Tuesday thanks to a rival school that, along with students in other states, advocated on the battered school's behalf in an online contest.
Schools from as far away as northern Wisconsin submitted YouTube videos urging the Grammy-winning group to choose Henryville High School in the band's "Own the Night" contest offering the winning school a concert at its prom. Henryville's schools were heavily damaged when powerful tornadoes ripped through the region earlier this month, killing 13 people.
The winning video was entered by students at longtime sports rival Silver Creek High School in nearby Sellersburg, Ind. Henryville also got video support from a southern Illinois community hit by a fatal tornado in February.
"It meant a lot to us and made a lot of people cry. Knowing there's that many people out there that cared to give it to us instead of their own prom," said 17-year-old Henryville junior Daniele Kats.
She said word spread quickly on Facebook about Lady Antebellum's choosing her school for the concert, adding: "It's gonna be awesome."
Lady Antebellum said the band was touched by Henryville's "story, resilience and unity following devastating tornadoes." Because of a scheduling conflict, the trio won't be able to perform at Henryville's prom on April 27, so a concert will be held for juniors and seniors in nearby Louisville, Ky., on May 16, followed by a benefit for the community.
Lady Antebellum singer Charles Kelley said Henryville students shouldn't be disappointed that the band won't be able to visit their community.
"Trust me, we have something even bigger in store," Kelley said in the band's video announcing the win. Fellow singer Hillary Scott added: "See you soon, Henryville!"
The trio, rounded out by Dave Haywood, won best country album at this year's Grammy Awards for "Own the Night," and took home several Grammys last year, including record and song of the year for "Need You Now." Details about its Louisville concert will be released soon.
The winning video from Silver Creek High School included footage of the devastation in Henryville and interviews with residents. It ends with a student standing in a field before dozens of classmates, saying: "Lady A, even if we don't win the contest, we're still going to own the night anyway" before they begin chanting "HHS! HHS!"
Other video entries supporting Henryville came from D.C. Everest Senior High School in Weston, Wis., and from Harrisburg, Ill., where a tornado that struck Feb. 29 killed seven people. Harrisburg students said that despite their community's loss, they decided to back Henryville's prom bid.
Henryville art teacher Amy Fischmer, the prom committee's co-chairwoman, said her students were "grateful and happy" about the outpouring of support on the school's behalf following the devastating storms on March 2.
"That day was a tragedy, but they're just rallying and making the most of it and just enjoying life," she said. "For the winning video to be one that was entered on their behalf from another school makes it mean so much more. It kind of reaffirms your hope in humanity."
Classes for Henryville high school students will resume on April 2 in a nearby community. The prom, which is expecting about 200 students, also will be held at another site.
Mary Beth Coffman, Silver Creek's mass media teacher, recruited three of her students to be the video's stars and spent two days filming in Henryville for the video.
"I've been jumping up and down and screaming by myself," Coffman said. "I'm so excited to be part of something that's going to be so special."
__
Associated Press writers Carrie Schedler and Caitlin King in Nashville, Tenn., contributed to this report.
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Tuesday, March 20, 2012
Goldman Sachs cuts staff in annual review process
(Reuters) Goldman Sachs Group Inc
The job cuts follow 2,400 positions Goldman eliminated last year, and further reductions are possible as the company continues to reduce costs to raise profitability, the sources said.
The latest round of cuts is part of Goldman's annual culling process in which the company fires employees who miss performance targets or can be replaced with technology or less expensive staff.
It's unclear how many people will be affected by the job eliminations, which began two weeks ago, because different divisions have received different targets, the sources said. While management has formulated an overall plan for cost-cutting, all of the job cuts may not be completed for months, said a source familiar with the matter.
Recent staff reductions have been less drastic than the culling Goldman performed in March 2011, when 5 percent of its trading staff was let go, said the sources, who have either worked at the company or recruited for it, and spoke under condition of anonymity.
Goldman spokesman Michael DuVally declined to comment on the job cuts.
In late 2011, Goldman management targeted $1.4 billion in annual cost savings that would be achieved largely through staff and bonus cuts. When asked on a conference call in January whether the bank might have to do more such trimming this year to meet the goal, Chief Financial Officer David Viniar said "there is a small amount left to go."
The new job cuts are taking place in all of Goldman's four main divisions, including sales and trading, investment banking, wealth management and investing and lending, according to one source familiar with the matter.
Many of the cuts are aimed at traders who can be replaced with new technology, or back-office, technology and operations staff who can be replaced with less expensive employees, the source said. The bank has been pushing aggressively to replace staff in high-cost areas like New York and New Jersey with less costly workers in Salt Lake City, where the company is building a sizable workforce.
Goldman has also been cutting some staff from divisions likely to be affected by new trading restrictions, such as merchant banking.
"In general the whole paradigm of the business is changing," said one source familiar with Goldman's recent job cuts. "As the business is consolidating and the volumes are going down and there's still this regulatory pressure, management is really looking at the new paradigm and seeing how many bodies are absolutely required for the business."
Many Wall Street banks weed out underperformers or costly employees, who are placed on what's known as a "RIF," or reduction-in-force, list. Morgan Stanley
Goldman is known to create such lists early in the year and send at-risk employees a signal through low bonuses that are handed out in February. Those who do not get the hint are let go in mid-to-late March.
While Goldman's cuts are part of an annual Wall Street ritual, sources familiar with Goldman's trading business say. Bank management has been issuing aggressive revenue targets that have been difficult to meet, particularly with fewer traders, weak trading volumes and low morale.
One equities trading division at Goldman met revenue targets last year but was still required to cut 10 percent of its staff and reduce bonuses by 25 percent to meet cost targets, according to a source familiar with the desk. The business was required to do even more cutting in recent weeks amid weak trading volumes, even as performance targets have risen.
At a conference last month, Viniar said investors have been complaining that the bank has nearly 11,000 more staffers than it did six years ago, but only generates slightly more revenue.
Goldman's 33,300 employees generated $28.8 billion in revenue and $2.5 billion in profit last year, which amounts to $865,195 in revenue per employee and $75,375 in profit per employee. That represents a 25 percent decline in revenue per worker and a 71 percent decline in profit per worker compared with 2005.
(Reporting By Lauren Tara LaCapra; Editing by Alwyn Scott and Steve Orlofsky)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/goldman-sachs-cuts-staff-annual-review-process-205207802.html
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How do you adopt from foster care? | How to Become a Foster Parent
Question by : How do you adopt from foster care?
Specifically a child around 3?
I?m confused on the process. Explain it like you would to someone who knows NOTHING about this, as I pretty much don?t.
Thank you!(:
Best answer:
Answer by Vasara
Are you the foster parent? Im not sure but Ill give it my best shot. I would contact the case worker for the child and say you want to adopt them. Even if they cant help you directly, they will be able to point you in the direction of the people who can. Im pretty sure you need an attorney though.
Know better? Leave your own answer in the comments!
This entry was posted in Uncategorized and tagged Adopt, Care, Foster, from. Bookmark the permalink.Source: http://howtobecomeafosterparent.net/?p=8106
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Monday, March 19, 2012
Romney Wins Puerto Rico, Headed For 'Blowout' in Illinois
[ [ [['The public radio show This American Life has', 2]], 'http://yhoo.it/AaEZ6u', '[Related: Mike Daisey Says Technology Is New Religion]', ' ', '630', ' ', ' ', ], [ [['Apple fanboy Mike Daisey that aired in early January', 6]], 'http://yhoo.it/zAwXWV ', '[Related: The Darker Side of Apple]', ' ', '630', ' ', ' ', ], [ [['I think that these guys are getting mercilessly picked apart', 3]], 'http://yhoo.it/FOlkib', '[Related: Invisible Children defends Kony 2012 film in new video]', ' ', '630', ' ', ' ', ], [ [['With U.S.-Afghanistan relations in crisis', 11]], 'http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/no-afghanistan-obama-campaign-video-021313177.html', '[Related: No ?Afghanistan? in new Obama campaign video]', ' ', '630', ' ', ' ', ], [ [['Jon Stewart weighed in on the Rush Limbaugh', 2]], 'http://news.yahoo.com/rush-limbaughs-slut-controversy-proves-staying-power-100110062--abc-news.html', '[Related: Rush Limbaugh comment controversy proves it has staying power]', ' ', '630', ' ', ' ', ], [ [['Mammadyarov said democratisation', 11]], 'http://news.yahoo.com/russian-grannies-win-bid-sing-eurovision-095946819.html', '[Related: Russian grannies win bid to sing at Eurovision]', ' ', '630', ' ', ' ', ], [ [['With U.S.-Afghanistan relations in crisis', 1]], 'http://news.yahoo.com/photos/civilians-killed-in-afghanistan-attack-slideshow/', 'Click image to see more photos', 'http://l.yimg.com/a/p/us/news/editorial/7/82/782db3234689df989a5b05a09e71511c.jpeg', '630', ' ', 'Reuters/Naseer Ahmed', ], [ [['Rutgers', 7]], 'http://news.yahoo.com/photos/tyler-clementi-cyberbullying-trial-begins-1329842758-slideshow/', 'Click image to see more photos', 'http://l.yimg.com/cv/ip/ap/default/120316/ravi.jpg', '630', ' ', 'Reuters', ], [ [['xxxxxxxxxxxx', 11]], 'http://news.yahoo.com/photos/russian-grannies-win-bid-to-sing-at-eurovision-1331223625-slideshow/', 'Click image to see more photos', 'http://l.yimg.com/a/p/us/news/editorial/1/56/156d92f2760dcd3e75bcd649a8b85fcf.jpeg', '500', ' ', 'AP', ] ]
[ [ [['Karzai will get a chance soon to express', 8]], '28630306', '0' ], [ [ [['powerful storms stretching', 8]], '28493546', '0' ], [ [ [['basic norm that death is private', 6]], '28413590', '0' ], [ [['songwriter also saw a surge in sales for her debut album', 6]], '28413590', '1', 'Watch music videos from Whitney Houston ', 'on Yahoo! Music', 'http://music.yahoo.com' ], [ [['keyword', 9999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999]], 'videoID', '1', 'overwrite-pre-description', 'overwrite-link-string', 'overwrite-link-url' ] ]
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/romney-wins-puerto-rico-headed-blowout-illinois-092326118.html
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Sunday, March 18, 2012
Massage Table Folding Wooden Stool by ... - Fitness Health And Life
Gorilla Winches OneTouch Folding Massage Stool 1 Year Warranty We accept PayPal, Visa, MasterCard, Discover and American Express (through PayPal). Payment must be received in 7 business days or the item will be re-listed and you could receive a ?non-paying bidder? hit on your eBay account. We cannot change the table color for the item you purchase. This auction is for the color specified in the listing only. Minnesota residents please add 6.5% sales tax A phone number is required for shipping this item. WE SHIP TO THE CONTIGUOUS CONTINENTAL US ONLY! We are open Monday-Friday 9a.m. to 5p.m. (CST). Your purchase will be shipped the next business day after payment confirmation Monday-Friday (excluding holidays) via GROUND, which takes 3-5 business days for delivery to US street addresses. WE CAN NOT SHIP TO A PO BOX! No local pick up. All of our products pass a rigorous inspection before shipment to insure that they are completely functional and free of any damage. We warrant the product to be new and free of manufacturer defects. If the product is damaged in shipment or is not in working order for some reason upon delivery, we will make it right. The customer is responsible for all warranty shipment costs. The warranty covers the wood legs, seat deck and hardware only. This limited warranty is valid for 1 year from the purchase date and applies to the original purchaser only. Replacement parts will be sent as remedy whenever possible. The Warranty does not include vinyl coverings, foam pads or any costs incurred for installation of replacement parts or losses resulting from any inability to use the stool. Warranty covers standard use of massage stool. Any modification of product will void the warranty in its entirety. ***Your payment receipt and eBay item number will be your proof of warranty. Please print and keep these for your records. Damage and Return Policy Damage Policy ? If you receive a product that is damaged in shipment please contact us immediately. We can file a damage report with the shipping company and make arrangements to resolve the damage. Any and all damage must be documented with photos of the damage (this is required to file a claim with the shipping company) and emailed to us within 3 days of delivery. We accept authorized returns on unused products for 30 days after you receive your product. Unused means that the product has not be assembled or used in any way. All returns are subject to a 30% restocking fee. Please allow up to 7 business days after we receive the returned item to process your refund. You are responsible for returning the product in new, resalable condition. It must arrive unused in its original packaging, complete with all accessories and user manuals. If any original parts, accessories, documentation or packaging are used, damaged or missing, you will be charged a 50% restocking fee. You are responsible for paying all costs for return shipping and insurance. The original cost of shipping will not be refunded. We purchase directly from factories and inspect the quality of the factory and products ourselves and then negotiate the best pricing available. No one other than us manages the process. That?s what we do. We sell quality products, from trusted manufacturers at pricing that shows our pricing advantage! Everything we sell is shipped out of our warehouse in Plymouth, Minnesota. IMPORTANT INFORMATION! PLEASE READ BEFORE YOU BUY! There are inherent risks involved in using any product, including but not limited to: serious physical injury, and possibly death. This product is intended for experienced adults over 18 years of age. The Seller will not be held liable under any circumstance for incidental or consequential loss or damage or injury, due directly or indirectly to the use of this product, including any malfunction from negligence or defect. The seller makes no claims as to the suitability of this product for any specific purpose or use. Buyer understands that the use of the product can cause injury or death to themselves or others. The Buyer holds our company and its agents and affiliates harmless from any liability arising out of or relating to the use or ownership of any product. Buyer fully accepts responsibility & releases the seller for all & any personal injuries, fatal injuries, any losses, costs, and damages incurred as a res ult of Buyer or anyone else operation of this item. Once buyer submits payment this will serve as purchaser agreement to releasing seller of any and all responsibilities of item such as stated above. By placing a bid, you acknowledge that you have read and understood, and you agree, to the terms and conditions of this Agreement, and you represent that you are of legal age (age 18 or older) to enter this Agreement and become bound by its terms. All images, descriptions, and text are protected/copyrighted OneTouch Massage?
Price $ 19.99
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An Arthritis Diagnosis Doesn't Mean The End Of Your Fun ...
You have a general idea of what arthritis is, but you cannot imagine how it impacts people as greatly as it does. It seems hard to imagine that so many people miss work because of it. Use this article to shed some light on how difficult it can be to live with arthritis.
Find out if there are any support groups in your community, and if not, think about creating one. Living with arthritis can be hard, and you will need all the support you can get. Find a group in your community or join an online forum or community about arthritis to contact people who share your concerns.
There is nothing wrong with getting a little sympathy from your family and friends to help you through the rough patches with arthritis. They can be a shoulder to cry on, bring meals or do your shopping for you, and a helping hand into the bathtub adwords ppc for a warm shower never hurt.
Purchase an ergonomic knife that is designed to help you cut and slice with ease without putting a strain on your joints. These knives give you better leverage so that you can use your body weight to do your cutting instead of using your joints in a repetitive fashion.
Let your family and friends know what it?s like to live with arthritis. They may not understand that it hurts you to stand up, or that you can?t bend over to get cans out of the bottom cabinet. If you tell them what works and what doesn?t they?ll better be able to assist you in your everyday activities.
Take your calcium. A diet rich in calcium will help to decrease your risk of osteoporosis and straighten your bones as inflammatory arthritis can accelerate bone loss. An adult under 50 should get 1000 mg of calcium a day and an adult over 50 needs 1200 mg a day. Try to consume more milk products.
Make sure to eat plenty of fruits and seo vegetables if you want to help ease the effects of arthritis. Fruits and vegetables are healthy for all people, but for people with arthritis, they are especially helpful because they have vitamins and nutrients that help to build healthy joints and reduce joint inflammation.
For those that have arthritis in their knees, Hyaluronic acid injections are a great option. Because people who have arthritis in their knees are lacking lubrication to keep their joints in top condition, these injections are a great way to give knees lubrication. Speak with your doctor before taking these injections.
Through exercise, you can improve your arthritis symptoms as well as improve your overall health and fitness. Exercise helps keep your joints moving and it strengthens the muscles around your joints. It also promotes the health of your bones and keeps them strong. By participating in daily exercise, you pagerank will be able to complete basic daily activities more easily.
To summarize, you know a bit about arthritis just from commercials that you see on the television, but you just do not understand how it can be such a big deal. Hopefully, this article explained the reasons why it can be such a burden to complete everyday tasks with this condition.
Source: http://sarcoidosis.us/an-arthritis-diagnosis-doesnt-mean-the-end-of-your-fun/
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South Carolina mom admits killing her two toddlers
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Source: http://news.yahoo.com/south-carolina-mom-admits-killing-her-two-toddlers-171836257.html
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Saturday, March 17, 2012
PlayBook tablet to get BlackBerry 10 OS
[ [ [['I think that these guys are getting mercilessly picked apart', 3]], 'http://yhoo.it/FOlkib', '[Related: Invisible Children defends Kony 2012 film in new video]', ' ', '630', ' ', ' ', ], [ [['With U.S.-Afghanistan relations in crisis', 11]], 'http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/no-afghanistan-obama-campaign-video-021313177.html', '[Related: No ?Afghanistan? in new Obama campaign video]', ' ', '630', ' ', ' ', ], [ [['Jon Stewart weighed in on the Rush Limbaugh', 2]], 'http://news.yahoo.com/rush-limbaughs-slut-controversy-proves-staying-power-100110062--abc-news.html', '[Related: Rush Limbaugh comment controversy proves it has staying power]', ' ', '630', ' ', ' ', ], [ [['Mammadyarov said democratisation', 11]], 'http://news.yahoo.com/russian-grannies-win-bid-sing-eurovision-095946819.html', '[Related: Russian grannies win bid to sing at Eurovision]', ' ', '630', ' ', ' ', ], [ [['With U.S.-Afghanistan relations in crisis', 1]], 'http://news.yahoo.com/photos/civilians-killed-in-afghanistan-attack-slideshow/', 'Click image to see more photos', 'http://l.yimg.com/a/p/us/news/editorial/7/82/782db3234689df989a5b05a09e71511c.jpeg', '630', ' ', 'Reuters/Naseer Ahmed', ], [ [['Rutgers', 7]], 'http://news.yahoo.com/photos/tyler-clementi-cyberbullying-trial-begins-1329842758-slideshow/', 'Click image to see more photos', 'http://l.yimg.com/cv/ip/ap/default/120316/ravi.jpg', '630', ' ', 'Reuters', ], [ [['xxxxxxxxxxxx', 11]], 'http://news.yahoo.com/photos/russian-grannies-win-bid-to-sing-at-eurovision-1331223625-slideshow/', 'Click image to see more photos', 'http://l.yimg.com/a/p/us/news/editorial/1/56/156d92f2760dcd3e75bcd649a8b85fcf.jpeg', '500', ' ', 'AP', ] ]
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Source: http://news.yahoo.com/playbook-tablet-blackberry-10-os-160418618.html
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Kashmir scientists clone rare cashmere goat
SRINAGAR, India (AP) ? Scientists said Thursday they have cloned a rare Himalayan goat in Indian-controlled Kashmir, hoping to help increase the number of animals famed for their silky soft undercoats used to make pashmina wool, or cashmere.
The March 9 birth of female kid "Noori," which means "light" in Arabic, could spark breeding programs across the region and mass production of the high-priced wool, said lead project scientist Dr. Riaz Ahmad Shah, a veterinarian in the animal biotechnology center of Sher-i-Kashmir University.
Cashmere wool, particularly made into shawls, is a major source of income for Kashmir, generating about $80 million a year for the Indian-controlled portion of the disputed mountain state. A shawl can cost $200 in Kashmir and much more when sold abroad ? a boon given the average salary of $800 a year for Kashmir's 10.2 million people.
Cashmere goats ? which take their name from the Kashmir region but include a number of breeds that produce the soft wool ? are traditionally herded in small numbers across the Himalayas and the Tibetan plateau in cold and remote mountain areas.
They must live in harsh, windy climates to generate the soft undercoat, for which demand has always exceeded supply. Kashmir's goats are found in small populations in remote areas of the northwest border region of Ladakh.
Experts say their numbers are dwindling. In recent years, Kashmir has started importing cashmere from neighboring China to keep up with orders for the region's hand-woven shawls.
Shah and six other scientists took two years to clone Noori, using the relatively new "handmade" cloning technique involving only a microscope and a steady hand.
"We've standardized the procedure. Now it will take us half a year to produce another," said Dr. Maajid Hassan, another veterinarian who worked on the project, which was partly funded by the World Bank.
The team already has started work on more clones among the university's herd of goats.
"This is the cheapest, easier and less time-consuming" method of cloning, compared with conventional methods that use high-tech machinery and sometimes chemicals, Shah said. Noori is the first cashmere goat cloned by this method, though Shah earlier cloned a buffalo.
They plan to spread the goat-cloning knowledge across the Indian Himalayas so others can grow their own goats.
Eventually, Shah hopes to clone threatened species such as the critically endangered Kashmir stag, or hangul, the only surviving species of Asian red deer.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/kashmir-scientists-clone-rare-cashmere-goat-123026531.html
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Friday, March 16, 2012
Philanthropy Front and Center-Atlanta: Network for Good Updates ...
The online giving platform Network for Good recently released their 2011 Digital Giving Index.?In just over 10 years of operation, Network for Good has?processed more than $625 million in funds for more than 83,000 charities. Such a wealth of information gives?Network for Good a unique perspective on the experience and behaviors of?charitable giving across multiple online channels, and their 2011 study examines giving on individual?charity websites, charity portals, and social giving (peer-to-peer)?websites and applications. The 2011 study?includes?trends and analysis on $138 million in donations to more than 40,000?charities through the Network for Good platform in 2011.
Online giving continues to rise across all the channels studied, and total online giving rose 17%. From the report:
- Charity Websites saw growth across?both generic (doesn't look like the nonprofit's website) and branded donation pages by 5% and 11%?respectively from 2010 to 2011
- Portal Giving grew 9%, excluding disaster relief?donations. If you factoring in donations for disasters, portal giving grew?15%: "Disaster giving for Japan tsunami relief in March 2011?accounted for a quarter of total 2011 portal giving."
- Social Giving increased by 29%, which makes sense, given that peer-to-peer fundraising is becoming much more common on social networks.
The majority of online donations still happen through charity websites. In 2011, 65% of online donations happened via websites, down 2% from 67% in 2010. This is largely due to an increase in peer-to-peer fundraising, which made up 15% of all online giving in 2010 and 2011. Portal giving still sees a bigger percentage of online giving at 17% for both years, but Network for Good reports that the gap is narrowing. It will be interesting to see how things change for 2012.
Donation pages that look like the rest of your website see more and larger donations than a generic giving page.??Dollars donated through charity websites?increased 10% over 2010, but growth was higher for branded donation pages: "In 2011, Network for Good saw a 4%?increase in average gift size for charities with a branded donation?page, versus a 2% increase for those with a generic donate page." Here's the real kicker: "Further, an average charity with a branded donation page received 5?times more donations and raised an average of almost $15,000 more?than an average charity with a generic donate page raised in 2011.?The impact of a branded donation page can increase to 6 or 7 times?during year-end peak fundraising season."
End-of-year fundraising is huge, both in terms of gift size and total percentage of donations. Your giving website becomes even more important during this time. In the fourth quarter of 2011, average gift sizes on charity websites grew from a little over $100 for the year to $174 for generic giving pages and $203 for branded giving pages. Giving through websites also increases: 71% of online donations happened through nonprofits' website (as opposed to 65% for the whole year), up from 67% in 2010. December is an especially key month: "Roughly one-third of annual giving through the?Network for Good giving system ?occurs in the?month of December alone; and in 2011, over?10% of donation dollars came in on the last?three days of the year." 13% more dollars were donated in December 2011 over December 2010.
Since these are just a few highlights, be sure to check out the full report from Network for Good for all the charts and numbers.?Download the report?
Elyse Klova, Program Associate, Foundation Center-Atlanta
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Chapman Heating & Air Conditioning Offers Tips on Conserving ...
Chapman Heating & Air Conditioning, Inc., one of the leading providers of air conditioning service Indianapolis residents have always relied on, offers tips on how to keep heating ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems at maximum efficiency Send Feedback to Mechteld Abelli
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Indianapolis, IN (March 9, 2012) -- Chapman Heating & Air Conditioning, Inc., one of the leading providers of air conditioning service Indianapolis residents have always relied on, offers tips on how to keep heating ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems at maximum efficiency all throughout the year. With oil prices again on the rise, even reportedly hitting a 43-month high, end consumers are sure to bear the brunt of the inevitable increase in power generation costs.
Getting the kind of heating and air conditioning service Indianapolis residents require add up and eventually become major expenses. Chapman Heating & Air Conditioning, Inc., providers of the kind of air conditioner repair Indianapolis homeowners can count on, recommends ways by which people may reduce their year-round energy bills.
One tip involves adjusting the home hot water thermostat to around 120 ?F. Most manufacturers recommend a setting between 130 to 150 ?F. In addition being an excellent measure to avoid a scalding hazard, lowering the thermostat temperature is ideal for household cleaning and for bathing.
Another tip is to make sure that the duct work is properly sealed and insulated. Leaks compromise the integrity of a system. Having the duct work checked regularly is recommended since leaks eventually overwork the entire system and require the air conditioning repair Indianapolis homeowners call for.
To find the full list of energy-saving tips from Chapman Heating & Air Conditioning, Inc., simply visit their website at www.chapmanheating.com and click on the HOME ENERGY TIPS link.
Chapman Heating & Air Conditioning, Inc. is located at 9230 Crowfordsville Rd., Indianapolis, Indiana. For inquiries on the kind of air conditioner repair Indianapolis can trust and other services, interested parties may call (317)291-4909 or send an e-mail to jcarrico@chapmanheating.com.
About the Submitter
About Chapman Heating & Air Conditioning, Inc.
Chapman Heating & Air Conditioning, Inc. is an HVAC equipment supplier and installer. They have been offering the kind of air conditioning repair Indianapolis residents can depend on and have provided their quick and professional services to Central Indiana and nearby areas for more than a quarter of a century. Chapman Heating & Air Conditioning, Inc. is also the largest independent distributor of Bryant Heating & Cooling Systems in the area of Indianapolis.
Contact:Mechteld Abelli
mechteldabelli@gmail.com
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Thursday, March 15, 2012
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Wednesday, March 14, 2012
Dugard to remain in hiding to protect daughters
In this photo taken Friday March 9, 2012, Oprah Winfrey presents Jaycee Dugard with a DVF Award at The Third Annual DVF Awards held at the United Nations in New York. Dugard, who survived being kidnapped and held captive for 18 years, recently left her undisclosed California home to travel to New York City to make her first public appearance at an awards ceremony with Winfrey and give an interview with ABC News. She told ABC News that she plans to live in hiding until her two daughters, who were conceived in rapes by Dugard?s kidnapper, are older and can better understand the circumstances in which they were born. (AP Photo/Charles Sykes)
In this photo taken Friday March 9, 2012, Oprah Winfrey presents Jaycee Dugard with a DVF Award at The Third Annual DVF Awards held at the United Nations in New York. Dugard, who survived being kidnapped and held captive for 18 years, recently left her undisclosed California home to travel to New York City to make her first public appearance at an awards ceremony with Winfrey and give an interview with ABC News. She told ABC News that she plans to live in hiding until her two daughters, who were conceived in rapes by Dugard?s kidnapper, are older and can better understand the circumstances in which they were born. (AP Photo/Charles Sykes)
NEW YORK (AP) ? Kidnapping survivor Jaycee Dugard, who first made national headlines three years ago, said in a TV interview that she plans to live in seclusion with her daughters until they are mature enough to understand what happened to them.
Dugard, 31, and her two girls, ages 14 and 17, have been living at an undisclosed California location since being found by authorities in 2009 ? 18 years after Dugard was abducted from a South Lake Tahoe bus stop.
She was held by Phillip and Nancy Garrido in their Antioch backyard, where she gave birth to the two children conceived by rape.
In an interview that aired Tuesday night, Dugard told ABC News (http://abcn.ws/z3D51W ) she's spent the past three years healing and experiencing life with her family.
"I want my girls to have a normal life as much as possible," she told ABC News' Diane Sawyer. "I feel like on some things I have to do it a little bit differently ... not be recognized ... for their sake.
"I think in time as they get older, they'll know how to deal with it better, and that would be the time that we would come out," she said.
Dugard has been working to build the JAYC Foundation, which aims to support families dealing with abduction and other tragedies. She wrote a best-selling memoir last year, "A Stolen Life," which recounts her years in captivity.
Dugard also made her first public appearance last weekend at a star-studded New York awards ceremony held by fashion designer and humanitarian Diane von Furstenberg.
She was introduced at the Friday ceremony by Oprah Winfrey, another honoree of the night.
"Jaycee Dugard, I am so proud of you, your courage, your ability to press onward toward the future and toward a more victorious life for yourself and for using your courage, your strength, and your power to show the world that you care," Winfrey said.
Phillip Garrido is serving a 431-year prison sentence, and Nancy Garrido is serving 36 years to life, after both struck plea deals on kidnapping and rape charges. The state of California paid Dugard a $20 million settlement under which officials acknowledged repeated mistakes were made by parole agents responsible for monitoring Phillip Garrido, who was a convicted rapist.
During the TV interview, Sawyer asked Dugard if either of the Garridos had tried to contact her.
"No, not at all, which is fine with me," Dugard said.
Sawyer then asked Dugard if she has days when she doesn't think about what happened to her.
Dugard replied, "Oh, sure. It's not with me every day."
Asked if anyone has caught her eye romantically, Dugard said, "No, no, I just, I can't go there yet. It's too soon."
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Tuesday, March 13, 2012
This Week In Business Travel History ? 11 March 2012 | Frequent ...
One of the most famous business trips in world history concluded this week in 1493, 
when Christopher Columbus returned to Spain after discovering the New World.
Standard Time, the synchronization of clocks within a time zone, was first adopted in the United States in 1884, thanks to a decision by the railroad industry to adopt five standard time zones.
The first main line electric train in the United Kingdom started service in 1904, with a trip from Liverpool to Southport.
In 1927, Pan Am (Pan American Airways) was founded as an air mail and passenger carrier that operated between Key West and Havana.? Its innovations, which ranged from computerized reservations systems to jet aircraft to jumbo jets, shaped the airline industry for many decades.? Pan Am served as the unofficial flag carrier of the United States until it ceased operations in 1991.
In 1932, Newark Airport completed the installation of landing aid equipment to support additional night landings. Newark Airport still handles over 30 million passengers each year- many of whom arrive at night.
The Convair Liner, the first twin-engine pressurized airplane in the U.S., was tested this week in 1947.
Ten years later, in 1957, a Boeing 707 prototype aircraft flew from Seattle, Washington to Baltimore, Maryland (a distance of 2,350 miles or 3,782 km) in 3 hours 48 minutes, averaging 611 mph (983 km/h)
KLM inaugurated its first intercontinental jet service in 1960, flying a Douglas DC-8 from Amsterdam to New York. KLM has since merged with Air France (in 2004), but still operates under its original name, and is the oldest airline in the world to do so.
Herb Kelleher (pictured) and Rollin King incorporated Air Southwest in 1967. Four years later, the company evolved into Southwest Airlines, which today operates over 3,300 low-cost flights each day.? Kelleher is also celebrating his 81st birthday this week on the same day that Southwest CEO Gary Kelly turns 57. Happy Birthday Herb and Gary!
In 1983, a Boeing 767 finally landed after a nonstop flight of 5,499 miles from Lisbon, Portugal to Seattle, Washington. This set the distance record for a twinjet airliner in commercial service.
The Blizzard of 1993 (also known as the ?Storm of the Century?) began its two days of ruining travel plans as it moved across the North American east coast. Nearly every airport from Nova Scotia to Georgia was closed at some point during the 30-hour storm, inconveniencing countless business travelers.
The Canadian low-cost airline Jetsgo ceased operations and filed for bankruptcy in 2005. At one point, Jetsgo was the third-largest Canadian Airline, and served 29 destinations in North America.
Finally, in 2005, China?s first privately owned carrier, Okay Airways, began operations with a flight from Tianjin to Changsha. The airline is headquartered in Bejing, and operates both passenger and cargo flights.
(Photo: Courtesy of Southwest Airlines)
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Source: http://www.frequentbusinesstraveler.com/2012/03/this-week-in-business-travel-history-11-march-2012/
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Ann Arbor Rec & Ed Department basketball and volleyball standings
Adult Winter Basketball Leagues
Sunday Leagues
Men?s B Standings: Bates Fundamentals 9-0, Quality Handy Man 7-2, City?s Pizza & Subs 6-3, Cattletrackers 6-3, B Young B Fit 6-3, TBA/Gatson 4-5, All Blacks 3-6, More Options 2-7, WCC 2-7, Absolute Allstars 0-9.
Men?s CC Standings: Cubs AC 4-5, Shock & Ball 4-5, Alma Machinery 4-5, The Brown Jug 3-6.
Men?s C Standings: Lockridge Agency Allstate 5-0, Arena 4-1, TBA/Shinska 3-2, Team EC 2-3, JNS Cleaning 1-4, Bristol Bombers 0-5.
Men?s D Standings: Grandpapppies 8-1, Pumped Up Kicks 6-3, WR Star Properties 6-2, Mr. Big Shot 3-5, Rub Ann Arbor 1-6, Free Agents 1-8.
Monday Leagues
Men?s C Final Standings: Buffalo Wild Wings 10-0, Titans 6-4, Manimals 5-5, Wet Bandits 3-7, Coming From Behind 3-7, Cottage Inn Pepperonis 2-8.
Men?s D Grey Standings: Hook Logic 7-2, Bruxomaniacs 6-2, The Nasty Boys 5-4, Outsiders 5-4, Dcs 4-4, No Free Chili 2-7, T.S. Dawg Pound 1-7.
Men?s D Gold Final Standings: WCC 10-0, More Than A Game 7-3, Toyota Tech Center 6-4, Thomson Reuters 6-4, Campus Management 5-5, The FAAC Five 3-7, Swingline 3-7, Woodruff?s 0-10.
Thursday League
Women?s Standings: WCC 8-1, Tom Holzer Ford 6-1, Banfield?s Westside 5-2, Dexter?s Pub 3-4, Perfect Strangers 3-5, The Brown Jug 3-6, The Arena 0-9.
Winter Adult Volleyball Leagues
Thursday League
Co-Rec Recreation Standings: Terumo 2 16-2, NSF 12-6, A2T2 10-8, Team Fun! 10-8, Full Of Hits 7-11, A2 Adventure Club 7-11, Hitters 6-12, Serviam 4-14.
Sunday Leagues
Co-Rec AA Quads Standings: Random 28-2, Fire Breathing Rubber Duckies 20-10, Ball Crushers 15-15, Team Makaha 13-17, Chaos 10-20, Last Minute 3-27.
Co-Rec A Quads Standings: Not It! 21-9, Glorious Days 20-10, Wild Sets 19-11, Pancake Power 16-14, Blowfish 13-17, Bumping Uglies 1-29.
Co-Rec B Quads Standings: Sets & Serve Us 27-3, Four Aces 24-6, Fishheads 16-14, Upsetups 9-21, Ace To The Finish 9-21, V Force 5-25.
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Monday, March 12, 2012
Bahrain says to start talks, drop charges for some medics
DUBAI (Reuters) - An adviser to Bahrain's King Hamad said the Gulf Arab state would hold a "comprehensive dialogue" soon to end a year-long political crisis and the government said it was dropping charges against most medics in a controversial trial.
The U.S. ally, home to Washington's Fifth Fleet, has been in turmoil since democracy protests erupted last year only to be crushed by force one month later. Manama has faced international pressure to redress abuse suffered by majority Shi'ite Muslims during its crackdown and start political reforms.
The comments by Nabeel Al-Hamer, the king's media adviser, were published by the state news agency late on Friday, after a prominent Shi'ite cleric led the biggest pro-democracy demonstration since the uprising took off in February 2011.
"Al-Hamer said there would soon be a comprehensive dialogue including all elements of Bahraini society and affirmed that everyone wants to end the crisis the country is in," BNA said.
However, a senior figure from the leading Shi'ite opposition party Wefaq said the group was not aware any new talks were planned. "We haven't heard officially from them yet," said Abduljalil Khalil.
In an incident that may complicate efforts to find a compromise, a 22-year-old Shi'ite man, Fadhel Mirza, died on Friday after being struck by a tear gas canister during clashes with police, the opposition Wefaq party said on Saturday. A police statement confirmed his head was struck by a hard object.
After his funeral on Saturday, riot police fired tear gas to clear protesters. Youths responded by throwing petrol bombs in clashes that lasted into the evening.
Shi'ites complain of political marginalization by the ruling Sunni Muslim Al Khalifa family, something the government denies.
The country's legal opposition parties say they want electoral reform and full legislative powers for the elected parliament and elected government - changes that worry Bahrain's powerful Sunni neighbor Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states.
MEDICS' CASE REDUCED
A statement from the public prosecutor said the authorities would pursue criminal charges against only five of 20 medics on trial in a case that has drawn international criticism.
In late September, a military court sentenced the 20 doctors and other medical staff to jail terms of up to 15 years on charges including incitement to overthrow the government and attempting to occupy a hospital, in what critics said was a reprisal for treating mostly Shi'ite protesters during the uprising.
The medics are not in detention and their case was transferred to a civilian court for retrial in October.
"The Public Prosecutor ... has stated he will only be presenting evidence for a small number of accused involved in the most serious criminal violations," a statement said.
"Of the criminal cases involving medical professionals, only five have been accused of serious criminal charges."
It did not name the five medics or say what the charges were. Defending lawyer Mohsen Al-Alawi said the most serious charge still standing is of attempting to occupy a hospital.
The statement said the 15 others would face disciplinary hearings for acts including breaching patient confidentiality by allowing cameras into a hospital, leading political protests inside the hospital, and discriminating against patients based on their sect. The doctors deny these charges.
The statement linked the alleged crimes for which the five medics would face trial to the findings of a commission of international legal experts, whose report in November revealed confessions obtained under torture by detainees and military trial defendants.
The report said rallies inside the Salmaniya medical complex had been disruptive to operations.
Nada Dhaif, who was originally sentenced to 15 years for helping organize a medical tent for protesters, said the government wanted to rid itself of an embarrassing case but keep some "scapegoats".
"There is international pressure since the case is widely seen as nonsense, but local media were saying horrible things about us day and night. Government loyalists have more hate for us than anyone else over the protests," she said.
Figures on state television accused the doctors of such crimes as deliberately worsening patients' injuries before television cameras or causing the deaths of protesters in order to discredit security forces. The accusations were never pressed in court.
Bahrain will be under the spotlight during a Formula One Grand Prix race in late April. U.S. Assistant Secretary Of State Michael Posner said last month the authorities should seek alternatives to criminal prosecution in the case.
HARDLINERS OPPOSE TALKS
Youth activists and dissident groups opposed to the monarchy do not want Wefaq to enter talks with the government.
Pro-government Sunni groups, who accuse the opposition of loyalty to Iran, have also called on the government not to enter into talks. Shi'ites say talk of Iranian links is a familiar charge with no basis that shows a misunderstanding of Shi'ism.
Royal court minister Sheikh Khaled bin Ahmed met with figures from Wefaq and separately with other opposition parties in January and February to sound them out about negotiations.
Activists at Friday's march outside Manama, which drew an estimated 100,000 people, carried banners saying "No dialogue with killers".
They say at least 28 people have died due to heavy policing since martial law ended in June, many from the effects of tear gas. The government has queried the causes of death.
Clashes occur daily between riot police and youths in Shi'ite districts. The government describes the youths, who throw petrol bombs at police, as vandals and says Wefaq should do more to rein them in.
(Writing by Andrew Hammond; Editing by Andrew Roche)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/bahrain-says-hold-dialogue-end-crisis-soon-183256989.html
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Benefits Of Social Media For Internet Promotions | Internet Marketing ...
Written By: Greg Marshall?on?March 10, 2012 One Comment
Benefits Of Social Media For Internet Promotions
Internet is becoming popular round the globe resulting in rise in its usage. As a result of which the social networking sites are more in the limelight for the business organisation to do digital marketing. The ever increasing want for being in front has given a push to many people a chance of finding innovative opportunities in digital marketing through social networking sites.
Most of the internet marketers are crazy to promote their website on social networking sites like orkut and facebook is because these sites have been gaining high popularity with each passing day..This popularity has turned many people?s attention towards these social networking sites inducing many online marketers to join the run.This podium has an entrance for all the level of business organisation; also there are high level advanced tests that are conducted in the method of marketing. Due to the rising competition in the SEO and the link exchanges, these methods of internet promotions are becoming an obstacle. But when it comes to social media marketing internet marketers experience less competition.http://www.robselaney.com/unique-article-wizard-review
Secondly, the continuous user logins and the high rate of visits on these sites, they tend to have a very high page rank as well, leaving a link on such sites also helps a site to become popular with the search engines. It is obvious that more the number of links from the prominent sites higher will the number of visitors be and this will ultimately help in having a profitable business online which is the major aim of all marketers.
The other advantage that you can get from promoting your products through is you could easily retain your customers. To drag consumers towards site and build brand there are many ways through which it can be done. Out of which some techniques are the forums and groups made on the social networking sites. By adopting these techniques in internet marketing you will be able to drag more customers along with developing brand loyalty. Recently it has been identified that larger brands build there own online forums on different social media sites.commission vantage review
The amalgamation of internet marketing with social networking sites has proved beneficial in time and money management. You need not to go personally to visit each and every customer; rather it can be easily done with the help of computers. Getting returns on investment is the main goal of promotion and this can be achieved with social media marketing.
Though this type of media has just entered the market it has spread its use and there is much more about it that has to be still discovered. Approaching new plans and strategies can definitely prove the social media marketing to be a successful one.
For more information check out the Traffic With Anik page.
Tags: Internet marketing
Source: http://articles.buildabetterbusinessonline.com/benefits-of-social-media-for-internet-promotions/
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Sunday, March 11, 2012
Social media affects online marketing | new-york-times.tk
Call it what you like: SEO, E-Marketing, Internet Marketing, Social Media Marketing, online marketing, etc? it?s essentially the same thing. Companies, like GoLeads, use keywords, keyword phrases, content, distribution and placement to improve clients? visibility on the Web. However, not all companies provide the same Internet marketing service, SEO work or quality content. It?s vital, if you do outsource Social media marketing or SEO work that you choose your company carefully. Here?s some stuf
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Saturday, March 10, 2012
Italian debt and the survival of the euro (954515)
In late 2011 as risk spreads on Italian government bonds surged to levels that had been associated with debt crises in Greece, Ireland, and Portugal, some leading economists called for a restructuring of Italy?s debt.1?With the recent easing in borrowing rates, such proposals look at best highly premature and at worst reckless. A pre-emptive move to restructure debt for the world?s seventh largest economy, especially in a manner imposing debt reduction, would likely trigger bank runs, a severe new round of financial instability, and perhaps the breakup of the euro.
The calls for debt forgiveness tend to leap from a simple combination of the 120% ratio of debt to GDP with an interest rate of 7% to reach a diagnosis of insolvency. In contrast, my calculations indicate that Italy could manage even such high interest rates for some considerable time, for two central reasons.
- First, Italy has reasonable prospects of achieving a relatively high primary surplus (fiscal surplus excluding interest payments) that can pay for most of the interest bill rather requiring ever more net borrowing.
- Second, the relatively long maturity structure of debt means that only about 10% of long-term debt needs to be refinanced each year. This profile delays the effective arrival of higher interest rates and provides time for demonstration of good policies (including especially growth-oriented reforms) to restore market confidence and reduce interest rates once again before the bulk of the long-term debt needs to be refinanced.
I have recently applied my European Debt Simulation Model (EDSM) to examine the sustainability of Italian debt (Cline 2012). I conclude that Italy is not on the precipice of insolvency, and could avoid an explosion in the debt-to-GDP ratio even if its risk spreads were to persist at the late-December levels for an entire decade ? so long as the government meets reasonable fiscal targets.2?However, the risk of a liquidity crisis in the event of a return to such rates strongly recommends the speedy construction of a more credible lender of last resort than currently exists.
The interest rate shock in the second half of 2011 was severe (Figure 1). From 200 basis points in early July, spreads on ten-year Italian public debt above German bunds rose to 300?400% after the 21 July package for Greece with its requirement of private sector involvement (PSI), and then rose to 400?500 basis points after the 27 October package that escalated PSI to a 50% haircut. Domestic political uncertainty about commitment of the Berlusconi government to fiscal adjustment compounded the problem, but similar shocks for Spain suggest that much of the impetus was from contagion from Greece. By December interest rates peaked at about 7.5%. Interest rates then moderated substantially in January and February, however. The new Monti government enacted additional fiscal cuts designed to bring the fiscal deficit to zero by 2013, and adopted a set of structural reform measures opening up competition in numerous domestic professional and service sectors. The ?489 billion in three-year ECB lending to Eurozone banks launched in late December provided a powerful boost to the easing in interest rates. By 23 February, the ten-year sovereign spread was down to 365 basis points, and the interest rate was at 5.55%. The improvement has come despite the calendar for refinancing, which rose from ?15 billion in December to ?53 billion in February (including short-term debt).
Figure 1. Italy 10-year bond: interest rate and spread over German bund (basis points)
The late-February rates are thus back to the levels assumed by the IMF in its September 2011 World Economic Outlook (IMF 2011). Applying these rates and the WEO assumptions on growth (recovering gradually to 1.2% by 2016) and the primary surplus (2.6% of GDP in 2012, rising to 4.5% in 2014?16), in the EDSM projections Italy?s public debt to GDP ratio would decline from 122% in 2012 to 113% by 2016 (virtually the same as projected in the September WEO). Extending the horizon, even with a more modest primary surplus of 3.5% of GDP in 2017?20 and more modest growth of 0.8%, by 2020 the debt ratio would be down to 110% (Figure 2).
Figure 2. Public Debt as% of GDP under Alternative Scenarios
Notes: HIR: high interest rate LPS: low primary surplus HIRLPS: high interest rate and low primary surplus
But what if interest rates return to their 7.5% peak? If they were to do so and remain at that level through 2020, the model projects that nonetheless the debt-to-GDP ratio would not rise above the 2012 level. However, the debt ratio would remain as high as 118% in 2020, sacrificing most of the improvement otherwise achieved in the baseline. A simulation in which interest rates are as in the benign baseline but fiscal performance falters and the primary surplus does not exceed 2.5% shows a worse outcome: the debt ratio edges up to 123% by 2020. In the adverse combination of 7.5% interest rates and a ceiling of 2.5% of GDP on the primary surplus, the debt ratio escalates to 132% of GDP by 2020, an outcome that would look much more like the path to insolvency.
The good news in these simulations is that even if the high interest rates of late 2011 returned and lasted for a full decade, Italy?s debt ratio would not spiral out of control. The sobering news is that achieving the domestic fiscal adjustment targets will be crucial to assuring solvency. The average primary surplus in 1990?2008 was 2.4% of GDP, so the IMF baseline of 4.5% and the Monti government?s new programme targeting 5.5% represent a significant and sustained step-up in fiscal performance.
Although Italy does not stand on the brink of insolvency even if recent peak interest rates were to return and persist, there is a considerable chance of a severe liquidity squeeze under these circumstances. The classic remedy for sovereign debt difficulty given a diagnosis of solvency is that a liquidity problem should be resolved with temporary lending from a lender of last resort. It is thus the duty of the official sector in Europe and internationally to move quickly to provide some credible lender-of-last-resort vehicle in the immediate future.
ECB bond purchases under its Securities Markets Program are highly unlikely to be sufficient for this purpose, especially given the ECB?s statements that even last year?s purchases are strictly temporary. So far the 26 October pledge of leveraging the financing capacity of the EFSF and alternative proposals of launching Eurozone bonds jointly or with partial guarantees have become bogged down. The 9 December EU commitment to lend ?200 billion to the IMF, to be supplemented by lending from other countries (especially emerging market economies with large reserves), was a useful first step toward building a firewall. Similarly, the ECB?s large package of three-year lending to the banks at end-2011 has helped ease sovereign borrowing conditions. Nonetheless, further steps to expand the EFSF (and its successor, the European Stability Mechanism) or launch Eurobonds should be pursued promptly, without lengthy procedural delay for institutional change.
Bank of Italy (2011), Financial Stability Report No. 2, Banca d?Italia, November.
Boone, Peter, and Simon Johnson (2012), The European Crisis Deepens, Policy Brief PB12-4.
Cline, William R (2012), Interest Rate Shock and Sustainability of Italy?s Sovereign Debt, Policy Brief PB12-5, Peterson Institute for International Economics, February.
IMF (2011), World Economic Outlook Database, September 2011, September.
Roubini, Nouriel (2011), ?Time to Act ? Italy Must Restructure Debt?, Financial Times, 29 November.
1 Roubini (2011) has called for a reduction of at least 25% in Italy?s public debt, from 120% of GDP to no more than 90%. Boone and Johnson (2012) argue that ?? the GIIPS will need to restructure their debts by extending maturities and reducing coupons to levels that they can afford ?Italian debt writedowns might be close to 50%? (pp. 9?10).
2 The Bank of Italy (2011) has made calculations reaching the same conclusion, for the period through 2014.
This article may be reproduced with appropriate attribution. See Copyright (below).
Source: http://www.voxeu.org/index.php?q=node/7705
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C Spire restarts LTE rollout, aims for September launch in Mississippi
Continue reading C Spire restarts LTE rollout, aims for September launch in Mississippi
C Spire restarts LTE rollout, aims for September launch in Mississippi originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 08 Mar 2012 14:29:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Friday, March 9, 2012
The Imaginative Conservative: Labor, Leisure, and Liberal Education
by Mortimer Adler
Although the title of this essay is "Labor, Leisure, and Liberal Education" and although it begins and ends with a consideration of liberal education, its main concern is with the distinction between labor and leisure. This is so because I have found it almost impossible, in my own thinking about the subject, to understand liberal education except in terms of what its end is. And the end of liberal education, it seems to me, lies in the use we make of our leisure, in the activities with which we occupy our leisure time.
In support of this thesis, that liberal education is to be understood in terms of leisure, I should like to proceed in the following order: first, to make some approximations to a definition of liberal education in terms of leisure; second, to try to reach a deeper understanding of the significance of this definition by examining more closely the distinctions between work or labor, on the one hand (I shall use the words "work" and "labor" interchangeably), and leisure, on the other; and, third, to draw from this analysis some implications or consequences for the place of liberal education in an industrial democracy like ours.
Let me begin where anyone has to begin?with a tentative definition of education. Education is a practical activity. It is concerned with means to be employed or devised for the achievement of an end. The broadest definition with which no one, I think, can disagree is that education is a process which aims at the improvement or the betterment of men, in themselves and in relation to society. Few will quarrel with this definition because most people are willing to say that education is good; and its being good requires it to do something that is good for men. The definition says precisely this: that education improves men or makes them better.
All the quarrels that exist in educational philosophy exist because men have different conceptions of what the good life is, of what is good for man, of the conditions under which man is improved or bettered. Within that large area of controversy about education, there is one fundamental distinction to which I should like to call to your attention.
There seem to be two ways in which men can be bettered or improved: first, with respect to special functions or talents and, second, with respect to the capacities and functions that are common to all men. Let me explain. In civilized societies, and even in primitive societies, there is always a rudimentary, and often a very complex, division of labor. Society exists through a diversity of occupations, through different groups of men performing different functions. In addition to the division of labor and the consequent diversity of functions, there is the simple natural fact of individual differences. So one view of education is that which takes these individual and functional differences into consideration and says that men are made better by adjusting them to their occupations, by making them better carpenters or better dentists or better bricklayers, by improving them, in other words, in the direction of their own special talents.
The other view differs from this, in that it makes the primary aim of education the betterment of men not with respect to their differences but with respect to thesimilarities which all men have. According to this theory, if there are certain things that all men can do, or certain things that all men must do, it is with these that education is chiefly concerned.
This simple distinction leads us to differentiate between specialized education and general education. There is some ground for identifying specialized education with vocational education, largely because specialization has some reference to the division of labor and the diversity of occupations, and for identifying general education with liberal education because the efforts of general education are directed toward the liberal training of man as man.
There is still another way of differentiating education in terms of its ends. Aristotle often talks about the difference between the useful and the honorable. What he means by the "useful" and the "honorable" can sometimes be translated into extrinisic and intrinsic ends. An educational process has an intrinsic end if its result lies entirely within the person being educated, an excellence or perfection of his person, an improvement built right into his nature as a good habit is part of the nature of the person in whom a power is habituated. Anextrinisic end of education, on the other hand, lies in the goodness of an operation, not as reflecting the goodness of the operator but rather the perfection of something else as a result of the operation being performed well.
Thus, for example, there can be two reasons for learning carpentry. One might wish to learn carpentry simply to acquire the skill or art of using tools to fabricate things out of wood, an art or skill that anyone is better for having. Or one might wish to learn carpentry in order to make good tables and chairs, not as works of art which reflect the excellence of the artist, but as commodities to sell. This distinction between the two reasons for learning carpentry is connected in my mind with the difference or distinction between liberal and vocational education. This carpentry is the same in both cases, but the first reason for learning carpentry is liberal, the second vocational.
All of this, I think, leads directly to the heart of the matter: that vocational training is training for work or labor; it is specialized rather than general; it is for an extrinsic end; and ultimately it is the education of slaves or workers. And from my point of view it makes no difference whether you say slaves or workers, for you mean that the worker is a man who does nothing but work?a state of affairs which has obtained by the way, during the whole industrial period, from its beginningalmost to our day.
Liberal education is education for leisure; it is general in character; it is for an intrinsic and not an extrinsic end; and, as compared with vocational training, which is the education of slaves or workers, liberal education is the education of free men.
I would like, however, to add one basic qualification at this point. According to this definition or conception of liberal education, it is not restricted in any way to training in the liberal arts. We often too narrowly identify liberal education with those arts which are genuinely the liberal arts?grammar, rhetoric, and logic and the mathematical disciplines?because that is one of the traditional meanings of liberal education. But, as I am using the term "liberal" here, in contradistinction to "vocational," I am not confining liberal education to intellectual education or to the cultivation of the mind. On the contrary, as I am using the phrase, liberal education has three large departments, according to the division of human excellences or modes of perfection. Physical training, or gymnastics in the Platonic sense, if its aim is to produce a good coordination of the body, is liberal education. So also is moral training, if its aim is to produce moral perfections, good moral habits or virtues; and so also is intellectual training, if its aim is the production of good intellectual habits or virtues. All three are liberal as distinguished from vocational. This is not, in a sense, a deviation from the conception of liberal education as being only concerned only with the mind, for in all three of these the mind plays a role. All bodily skills are arts; all moral habits involve prudence; so the mind is not left out of the picture even when one is talking about moral and physical training.
After this purely preliminary statement, I should like to discuss the problem of what labor is, and what leisure is, and how these two things are related. For as understanding of these two terms becomes clearer, I think understanding of liberal education and of the problem of liberal education in our society will become clearer.
Let me begin by considering the parts of a human life?and by "the parts of a human life" I mean the division of the twenty-four hours of each day in the succession of days that make up the weeks, months, and years of our lives. The lives of all of us today are divided roughly into thirds. This was not always the case. The lives of the slaves of antiquity and, until recently, the wage slaves of our modern industrial society were divided into two parts, not three. We are, however, accustomed to think of our lives as having three parts.
One-third is sleep. I include with sleep?because they belong to the same category, and I shall use "sleep" as a symbol for all such things?eating (in so far as it is not liberal, in so far as it is quite apart from conversation, eating just to sustain the body); the acts of washing and cleansing the body; and even exercise, in so far as it is indispensable for physical fitness. These things are like sleep because they maintain the body as a biological mechanism.
Sleep, then, is one-third; work or labor, one-third; and one-third is free time or spare time. I am defining the latter negatively now, as time not spent in sleep or work, time free from work or biological necessities. Now I say this threefold division of the parts of a day (and, therefore, of a human life) into sleep and the adjuncts of sleep, work or labor, and free or spare time is not entirely satisfactory. A further division is required. Free time, it is clear, may be used in two ways when it is not used, as some people use it, for sleep and other biological necessities. One of the two ways in which free time can be used is play?and by "play" I mean recreation, amusement, diversion, pastime, and, roughly, all ways of killing time. The other use of free or spare time I should like to denominate roughly for the moment?I will analyze it more carefully later?engagement in leisure activities. If you say, "What do you mean by leisure activities?" I answer, "Such things as thinking or learning, reading or writing, conversation or correspondence, love and acts of friendship, political activity, domestic activity, artistic and esthetic activity." Just think of those list of things. They are not work, and they are not, or they seem not to be, play. Here is a group of activities which occupy time free from sleep and work and which are distinct from recreation or amusement. But the line of distinction is not clear, nor is the definition of the class of activities.
Before I push the analysis further, let me ask another question. Do these four things?sleep, work or labor, play, and leisure activities?exhaust the parts of a human life? I have two answers to the question. If you look at a human life on the purely natural plane, I think these consume all its time. But I think there is a fifth part of life not reducible to any of these four, though I cannot fully account for it on the purely natural plane. That fifth part I call "rest". Now you might think that rest is identical with sleep, or with recreation by which one is "rested" from fatigue. But I do not mean that when I use the word. I mean by "rest" something that is quite distinct from sleep, an activity that is specifically human. No animal could possibly rest in the sense which I intend when I use the word. An animal sleeps. I mean rest in a sense quite distinct from play or recreation or refreshment, for all these things are for the sake of work, and rest is not for the sake of work at all.
The only way I can begin to convey what I mean by "rest" is to say the most obvious thing: that it is to be understood philosophically, as the opposite of motion. The easiest way to understand the connotation of the term "rest" is to consider the phrase "heavenly rest" and to ask whether there is any rest on earth. I think there is none because by "rest" I mean not merely a terminal activity, one which is done for its own sake, but also a nonrepetitive or an exhaustive activity, one that does not require repetition because it in itself exhausts the need for activity. But I must then add immediately that, as I understand rest, its meaning is supernatural. It is the sense in which God rested on the seventh day, the sense in which the commandments of God bid us observe the Sabbath day and keep it holy as a day of rest. It is in terms of this conception of rest that I distinguish between contemplation and thinking. Thinking, it seems to me, is a leisure activity; contemplation, an activity of rest. Accordingly, if rest exists at all in this earthly life, it exists only, I think, in religious activity, only in prayer and worship and in the contemplation practiced by religious orders. From this point of view, all human life is either work or rest. Everything I have subdivided into sleep, play, work, and leisure becomes work, as compared with rest, though there are distinctions on the natural plane that make work just one of four parts.
Leaving rest aside for a moment, let me see if I can explain the differences of work, play, and leisure activity. Certain criteria, which are often used to distinguish work, play, and leisure, fail, I think, to define these three things. For example, persons often use the criterion of pleasure and pain, somehow thinking of work as painful and play or leisure as pleasant. It is immediately apparent, I think, that this is incorrect. Play can be quite painful. What does one mean by speaking of a "grueling" match of tennis, if one does not mean that there is often physical pain in playing a long, fast tennis match? Work certainly can be pleasant. There is actual pleasure in a skilled performance, even if the performance is part of a laborious activity. And leisure activities, if I am right in thinking that learning is a typical leisure activity, certainly can be quite painful. Note, moreover, a very common phrase, one used in school, namely school work or home work. Though schoolwork and homework are study and are therefore a part of learning and belong to leisure activity, we call them "work." Why? Because there is some pain involved? I think not. I think we call them "work," as I shall try to show you subsequently, not because pain is involved in them but because we do them under some obligation, under some compulsion. This is the first indication that the meaning of "work" somehow involves the compulsory.
Fatigue is a second criterion that is often used to distinguish work, play, and leisure. All forms of activity which involve both the mind and the body call for sleep to wash away fatigue. Nor is it true to say that work is difficult and play and leisure are easy, for play and leisure activities can be difficult, too. Nor do I think that the Thomistic division of the good into the useful, the pleasant, and the virtuous will by itself (although I think it comes near to it) perfectly distinguish between work as the useful, play as the pleasant, and leisure as the virtuous. Unless those terms are more sharply restricted, I think one could regard work as pleasant or even virtuous in a sense; play as useful in so far it is recreative and performs a biological function; and leisure activities, although they may be intrinsically virtuous, as useful and pleasant. Let me therefore offer a criterion which I think will succeed in drawing the line between labor and leisure and will take care of play as well.
Though it may not perfectly account for play, I would like to propose that the distinction between labor or work, on the one hand, and leisure activities, on the other, is to be made in terms of what is biologically necessary or compulsory and what is rationally or humanly desirable or free. Let me see if I can explain this criterion by applying it. Labor, I say, is an economically necessary activity. It is something you do to produce the means of subsistence. It makes no difference at all whether the worker gets consumable goods immediately by his laboring activity or wages wherewith to buy consumable goods. Let us think of this for a moment in the following way. Let consumable goods?either direct consumables or money?be the compensation of the laborer; and, further, let us assume for the moment that no man gets his subsistence, in the form of either consumable goods or money, without labor. Then the definition of work or labor is: that activity which is required, is compulsory, for all men in order for them to live or subsist and which therefore must be extrinsically compensated, that is, the laborer must earn by his labor the means of his subsistence.
Let us test this. Men who have ample and secure means of subsistence have no need to labor. This is the historical meaning of the leisure class. Provide any man or group of men with ample and secure means of subsistence, and they will not work. I do not mean that they will not be active, that they will not be productive, that they will not be creative. But they will not work. They will not labor in the sense in which I tried to define that term sharply. Anything they will do will have to have for them some intrinsic compensation. Strictly, the word "compensation" is here wrongly used. The activities in which they engage will have to beintrinsically rewarding. What they do will somehow be done for its own sake, since they are provided with the means of subsistence.
Let us consider what I regard as the great experimental station for all thinking about man, namely, the Garden of Eden, peopled by men who have not sinned. Suppose the race of man had continued to live in the Garden of Eden. Not having sinned, man would not have inherited labor, disease, and death as punishments of sin. Man would have had no need to labor; he could have lived on the fruits of the trees and the grains of the earth. He would not have played, and neither would he have slept. In other words, life in the Garden of Eden would have consisted entirely of leisure activities. Because the body of sinless man would have been quite different from the human body as it is in the world, there would have been none of the peculiar divisions of life that exist in the world.
Leisure activities, in sharp distinction from labor or work, consist of those things that men do because they are desirable for their own sake. They are self-rewarding, not externally compensated, and they are freely engaged in. They may be morally necessary, but they are not biologically compulsory. You can see the trouble with this definition as soon as you say it. You may ask at once, What is play? Is not play self-rewarding? Is not play distinguished from labor by the negative distinction that it is something you do not have to do? Something that you freely choose to do?
I think we can get some light on how to sharpen the definition of leisure, and keep it distinct from play, by etymological considerations. I must confess to being genuinely fascinated by the background of the word "leisure." The word which in Greek means "leisure" isscole. Notice that our English word "school" comes from scole.
Now the Greek word scole has two meanings, just as the English word "pasttime" has two meanings. In the dictionary the first meaning of "pasttime" refers to the time itself, to spare time. The second meaning of "pasttime" refers to what is done with such time, namely, play. It is this second meaning that we usually intend by our use of the word. So the first meaning ofscole refers to the time; the second, to the content or use of the time. The first is leisure in the merely negative sense of the time free from labor, or spare time; but the second meaning, which appears very early in Greek literature, refers to what men should do with this time, namely, learn and discuss. It is the second meaning?what one does with time free from labor?which permits scole to become the root of the word "school." This, it seems to me, throws a fascinating light on a phrase that was used frequently in my youth when boys of sixteen faced, with their parents, the question, "Shall I go to work or shall I go to school?" Making this a choice of opposites is quite right, because work is one thing and school is another. It is the difference between labor and leisure.
When we look for the Latin equivalent of the Greek word scole, more light is thrown on the subject. The first meaning, time free from work or labor, appears in the Latin word otium. Otium is the root of the wordnegotium, which means "negotiation" or "business."Otium is the very opposite of negotium or "business"; it simply means time free from work. What is wonderful here is that the English word "otiose" is not a very complimentary word?it means "unemployed, idle, sterile, futile, useless." The second meaning of scole is translated by the Latin schola. This again is a source of "school." Finally, the first meaning of otium has a synonym in Latin, vacatio, from which we get the word "vacation" and also, interestingly enough, "vacancy."
The English word "leisure" comes down a totally different line. It comes from the French loisir, and from the Latin licere; it has the root meaning of the permissible and the free. The Latin licere is also the root of "liberty" and "license," in addition to "leisure." I think it is extraordinary to see these three words related in that one Latin root.
In the light of this etymology, I think we can distinguish leisure from play as two quite different uses of free or spare time, that is not-working time. Play may be one of two things. It may be biologically useful like sleep, just as vacations and recreational activities are biologically useful. Just as sleep is a way of washing away fatigue, so a certain amount of play or vacation or recreation has the same kind of biological utility in the recuperation of the body. Play may be, however, something beyond this. Obviously, children do not play just to refresh themselves. And I often wonder whether this does not have a bearing on the role of play in adult life, that is, whether or not the role of play in adult life is not always a temporary regression to childhood.
One can admit, I think, that life involves two kinds of play: play for the sake of work, when it serves the same purpose as sleep, and play for its own sake. Sensual pleasure is admittedly a part of human life, but only in a limited quantity. Beyond that you have licentiousness; so, too, licentious play is a misuse of leisure.
Certainly, no quality attaches to useless play other than pleasure. I, for one, can see no perfection, no improvement, resulting from it. But leisure consists of those intrinsically good activities which are both self-rewarding and meaningful beyond themselves. They need not be confined to themselves. They can be both good things to do and good in their results, as, for example, political activities, the activities of a citizen, are both good in themselves and good in their results. This does not mean that leisure activities are never terminal, never without ends beyond themselves; it means only that they must be good in themselves, things worth doing even if there were no need for them to be done.
The results of leisure activity are two sorts of human excellence or perfection: those private excellences by which a man perfects his own nature and those public excellences which can be translated into the performance of his moral or political duty?the excellence of a man in relation to other men and to society. Hence I would define leisure activities as those activities desirable for their own sake (and so uncompensated and not compulsory) and also for the sake of the excellencies, private and public, to which they give rise.
Suppose I try now to do a little of what I have just suggested. Suppose we draw a line between economically or biologically useful activities and those which are morally or humanly good, what Aristotle calls the "honorable" or "noble" activities. What results from making this separation? We get a threefold division: from the biologically necessary, we get sleep, work, and play (in so far as these serve to recuperate the body or to remove fatigue); from the humanly, morally good, the noble or honorable, we get all leisure activities; and from the superfluous, the otiose, we again get play, but here we mean play as it consists entirely in killing or wasting time, however pleasant that may be.
We see, furthermore, that the very same activities can be either labor or leisure, according to the conditions under which they are performed. Let us take manual work again?for instance, carpentry. Manual work can be leisure if it is work done for the sake of the art that is involved and for the cultivation of an artist. It is labor if it is done for compensation. That example may be too obvious, but we can see the same thing in teaching or painting, composing music, or political action of any sort. Any one of these can be labor as well as leisure, if a person does it in order to earn his subsistence. For if, to begin with, one accepts the proposition that no man shall get food or clothing or shelter, no man shall get the means of subsistence, without earning them, then some activities which would otherwise be leisure must be done by some persons for compensation. This makes them no less intrinsically rewarding but gives them an additional character. This double character causes certain activities to be labor, looked at one way, and leisure, looked at another.
This accounts for the fact that in professors' lives or statesmen's lives the line between labor and leisure is almost impossible to draw. In the Protagoras, the Meno, and the Apology Socrates was horrified at the notion that anyone would take pay for teaching. That the Sophists took pay for teaching aroused a moral repugnance in Socrates. This is not a minor matter. It was the first time anyone had done so, and it raised a very serious moral problem. For the first time an essentially leisure activity, like teaching, was compensated.
Not only can the same activity be both leisure and work; but even play, or things that I would call play, can be work for some people. Professional football is work to those who play it. Think also of all the persons whose working lives are spent in the amusement business.
This leads to further interesting points about the kinds of work. I would like to abstract this discussion from the distinction between manual and mental work, and particularly mental work as preparatory for, or directed toward, manual work. Taking both manual and mental work into consideration together, I would like to make the distinction between productive and nonproductive labor. I would say that work or labor is productive when it is economically useful, that is, when it produces means of subsistence in one form or another.
Here it is proper for the mode of compensation to consist of wages (or, as they are called more politely, "salaries"), with some basis for what we call a fair wage in a relation of equivalence between the amount of labor and the product of labor. Nonproductive labors, on the other hand, are activities which may be called work only in the sense that they are compensated?such things as teaching, artistic creation, the professional work of medicine and law, and the activities of statesmen. Here it is wrong to use the words "wages" or "salary"; and it is interesting to note that the language contains other words. We speak of an "honorarium" or "fee"; but the word I like best is the word "living" in the sense in which a priest gets, not wages or a salary, but a living. He is given his subsistence. He has not earned it by production. He has done something which it is good to do, but he also has to live; and there is a sense in which he can be said to have "earned his living." Here there can be no calculations of fair compensation. When one talks about fees or honoraria, the only thing one can talk about is the amount of time spent. Lawyers very often set their fees entirely in terms of time.
I would like to make a second distinction?between servile and liberal work. I think it is difficult to draw the line between these two, except in extreme cases, because many kinds of labor or work are partly servileand partly liberal. But the extreme cases are quite clear; and it is important at least to recognize the mixed cases or the shadowy ones that lie between. By "servile work" I mean work done only because it is econonically necessary and done only for compensation?work that no one would do if the means of subsistence were otherwise provided. "Liberal work" is work or activity which, though sometimes done for compensation, would be done even if no compensation were involved, because the work itself is self-rewarding. In other words, liberal work contains, at its very heart, activities that are essentially leisure activities, things that would be done for their own sake, even though subsistence were otherwise secured. The consequence of this is that the man who is a liberal worker?a teacher, lawyer, statesman, or creative artist?may, and usually does, work many more hours than are required for his compensation. He does more than is necessary to do a fair job for the person who is compensating him, because he cannot determine the point at which his activity passes into strictly leisure activity, though some part of it earns his compensation. I think examples of the research scientist, the teacher, or the statesman make this perfectly clear.
Finally, in terms of these distinctions, there is at least the beginning of an order for the parts of life. It would seem to me that, by the very nature of the terms themselves, sleep and its adjunct activities and play as recreation must be for the sake of work; and work must be for the sake of leisure. Earning a living, in short, and keeping alive must be for the sake of living well. Many of the obvious disorders of human life result from improper understanding of the order of these parts?for example, sleeping for its own sake, which is at least neurotic and at worst suicidal; working as an end in itself, which is a complete perversion of human life; working for the sake of play, which is certainly a misconception of leisure; or free time as time to kill in pleasure seeking. Play for its own sake, in order to kill time or escape boredom, is as neurotic as sleep for its own sake. And perhaps I should add the error, which many of us make, of confusing leisure with rest. Among those who share this confusion are persons who think that Sunday is a day to be spent in aesthetic, speculative, or liberal activity or that going to the theater or a concert or indulging in some form of sport is the proper observance of the day. I am not trying to preach the doctrines of a strict Sabbatarian?that is not the purpose of this lecture?but, nevertheless, I keep asking myself, "What can be the meaning of the admonition 'Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy'?" A day of rest cannot be identified with a day of play; and a day of rest, just as clearly, I think, cannot be identified with a day of leisure, for leisure activities are not rest.
In terms of this very brief and sketchy analysis of the parts of life, and of these distinctions between work, play, and leisure activities, we now can see clearly the difference between vocational training and liberal education. Vocational training is learning for the sake of earning. I hope I step on nobody's toes too hard when I say, as I must say, that therefore it is an absolute misuse of school to include any vocational training at all. School is a place of learning for the sake of learning, not for the sake of earning. It is as simple as that. Please understand that I do not mean vocational training can be totally dispensed with; I mean only that it should be done on the job. It should be done as preparatory to work; and as preparatory to work, it should be compensated. No one should have to take vocational training without compensation, because it is not self-rewarding. To include vocational training in school without compensation is to suppose that it is education, which it is not at all. In contrast to vocational training, liberal education is learning for its own sake or for the sake of further education. It is learning for the sake of all those self-rewarding activities which include the political, aesthetic, and speculative.
There are three further comments I should like to make on this distinction. First, professional education can be both vocational and liberal, because the kind of work for which it is the preliminary training is essentially liberal work. The work of a lawyer is liberal, not servile, work. In Greece free men who were citizens were all lawyers; there education for legal practice was liberal education. Professional education is vocational only in so far as this kind of leisure activity happens to be a way that some men, in our division of labor, earn their compensation.
Second, liberal education can involve work simply because we find it necessary to compel children to begin, and for some years to continue, their educations. Whenever you find an adult, a chronological adult, who thinks that learning or study is work, let me say that you have met a child. One sign that you are grown up, that you are no longer a child, is that you never regard any part of study or learning as work. As long as learning or study has anything compulsory about it, you are still in the condition of childhood. The mark of truly adult learning is that it is done with no thought of labor or work at all, with no sense of the compulsory. It is entirely voluntary. Liberal education at the adult level can, therefore, be superior to liberal education in school, where learning is identified with work.
Third, if schooling is equivalent to the proper use of leisure time in youth, then the proper use of leisure time in adult life should obviously include the continuation of schooling?without teachers, without compulsion, without assignments?the kind of learning that adults do outside school, the kind they do in conversations and discussions, in reading and study.
Finally, we may ask the place of liberal education in an industrial democracy. We can do this quickly by considering two basic errors or fallacies peculiar to our society: the first I would call the aristocratic error; the second, the industrial fallacy.
The aristocratic error is simply the error of dividing men into free men and slaves or workers, into a leisure class and a working class, instead of dividing the time of each human life into working time and leisure time. Karl Marx's Capital and, quite apart from the theory of surplus value?Marx's special notion of capitalist production?is filled with the horrible facts about the life of the laboring classes until almost our own day. We must face the fact that, until very recently, the working classes did nothing but sleep and work. When we realize that children started to work at the age of seven; that whole families worked?men, women, and children; that the hours of working time were often twelve and fourteen hours a day, sometimes seven days a week, then we realize that the distinction between the leisure class and the working class is something you and I can no longer appreciate because it has disappeared from our society. It does not exist in the world today, at least not in the United States. But, if we consider the past, in which workers were like slaves, the aristocratic error consisted in the division of mankind into two classes, a leisure class and a working class.
To correct this error, we must say not only that all men are free but also that all men must work for their subsistence (which is nothing but a democratic or socialist variant on the biblical admonition that man must eat by the sweat of his brow). You will see the educational consequences of this fallacy when you stop to think how little point there would have been in talking about liberal education for all men in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when much more than half the population had no time for education. It would have been just as meaningless for them to have been given a liberal education, doomed as they were to lead lives of work and sleep.
The second fallacy arises from the fact that industrial production has created an abundance of leisure time for all. I do not mean that the working classes today have as much leisure time as the leisure classes of other centuries. I mean simply that more leisure exists today, per capita, than ever existed before. Though industrial production has produced this abundance of leisure, industrialism as such has made all men servants of productivity; and, when productivity itself is regarded as the highest good, leisure is debased to the level of play or idleness, which can be justified only as recreation. The man of leisure is regarded by industrialists, interested soley in productivity, as either a playboy or a dilettante. Leisure loses its meaning when industrial society reduces it to an incidental by-product of productivity.
If these two fallacies are corrected, we reach, I think, the obvious conclusion that in a rightly conceived industrial democracy, liberal education should be andcan be for all men. It should be because they are all equal as persons, as citizens, from a democratic point of view. It can be because industrialism can emancipate all men from slavery and because workers in our day need not spend their entire lives earning their livings. Liberal education in the future of democracy should be and should do for all men what it once was and did for the few in the aristocracies of the past. It should be part of the lives of all men.
But I must be asked whether I have forgotten about individual differences. Even if all men are citizens, even if they are emancipated from the complete drudgery of labor, it still is not true that all men are equally endowed with talent or have an equal capacity to lead the good life. Let me give you an un-Aristotelian answer to this objection, because I cannot help feeling that Aristotle's opinions on such matters were affected, to some extent at least, by the fact that he lived in a slave society.
The good or happy life is a life lived in the cultivation of virtue. Another way of saying this is that the good life or the happy life is concerned with leisure. The good lifedepends on labor, but it consists of leisure. Labor and all conditions that go with labor are the antecedent means of happiness. They are external goods, that is,wealth. Leisure activities are the ends for which wealth is the means. Leisure activities constitute not mere living but living well. They are what Aristotle calls "virtuous activities" or the "goods of the soul."
Happiness so conceived is open to all men, when all men are both workers and free men. As regards both work and leisure, each man should do the best work and participate in the best sort of leisure activities of which he is capable, the highest for which his talents equip him. So conceived, happiness is the same for all men, though it differs in actual content, in degree of intensity, according to the individual differences of men.
It is clear, I think, that liberal education is absolutely necessary for human happiness, for living a good human life. The most prevalent of all human ills are these two: a man's discontent with the work he does and the necessity of having to kill time. Both these ills can be, in part, cured by liberal education. Liberal schooling prepares for a life of learning and for the leisure activities of a whole lifetime. Adult liberal education is an indispensable part of the life of leisure, which is a life of learning.
As a final word, let me tell you the most infallible sign of the liberally educated man. Aristotle said that the mark of a happy man is also the sure sign that he is liberally educated, namely, that you never find him trying to kill time.
From The Journal of General Education (October, 1951).
Source: http://www.imaginativeconservative.org/2012/03/labor-leisure-and-liberal-education.html
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