Although most collectors share the same love and intrigue of old things, we all seem to approach collecting withdifferent motivations and goals.? For someone it might be an old piece of pottery, just the right color to accent the kitchen, for another, an example to fill in a hole in a burgeoning collection. Some are intrigued by historical context, and still others collect with an eye toward investment. Having been at it for 25 years, I have accumulated objects that fit into each of these categories. And I long ago, learned that there is no "right" way, or reason to?? collect. Each collector finds his own way.
As the years have past, our house seems to have become engorged with things we thought we just had to have. Shelves and cupboards house collections of things that caught our fancy at one time or another, becoming?roommates of objects strewn throughout the house for decorative purposes. But, on a couple of shelves, in one small cabinet, lives a small menagerie of things that distinguish themselves from the others, and which for me, characterize the most essential part of collecting.?You might call them our "memories shelves".? Residing there are Lyn's grandmothers watch, my fathers baby bowl; the sole survivor of a fire that took the family home in 1930. A cherished chalkware cow, which was a favorite childhood plaything, left to me by my grandmother, another grandmothers beaded bag, a collection of miniature hat boxes gifted to my ever bald grandfather by his haberdashers, and a 1950's rocket ship bank which ate coins as we amused ourselves around the kitchen table.? The house is full of things that we've acquired,? but these are the shelves that contain the things we value.Much like old photographs, journals and other documents, personal possessions left behind can help? preserve our family memories.?
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I never saw my grandfather outside of his home, that he was not sporting a stylish chapeau.? Nothing could remind me more of him than the little collection of miniature hat boxes which I found in his bedroom dresser after his death. And don't forget, memories come in big packages as well. That dresser, along with it's matching dressing table, now reside in my bedroom, keeping my grandparents a constant presence in our lives.? And if you're lucky, your affinity for old family objects will become?trans-generational.? My grandson Alec keeps me?? constantly aware of my promise to pass along that rocket ship bank.? He'll share a few memories too, we still take it out of the cabinet once in a while, and amuse ourselves as we sit around the kitchen table and feed it coins.
Friends and relatives of Chinese passengers onboard the South Korean-owned passenger jet that crashed at San Francisco airport killing two and injuring 182 were anxiously waiting Sunday for news of their loved ones.
Chinese nationals made up 140 of the 290 people aboard the Asiana Airlines Boeing 777 which burst into flames after it landed short of the runway.
Among them were around 60 students and several teachers, with only one slightly injured and two unaccounted for, the Xinhua state news agency said.
The friend of one student told AFP she was waiting at San Francisco airport, frantically phoning people in China to find out details.
"My best friend is on the plane. I've been at the airport all day, trying to contact my friends in China to get updates on the accident," she told AFP over Sina Weibo, China's version of Twitter.
"I was really scared and am still trying to recover," she said. "You just never know when planes will have a problem."
Xu Da, a Chinese passenger on board, described the dramatic incident on CCTV.
"I noticed the plane was flying quite low when landing, and as it was just about to land the plane suddenly accelerated and the nose started to rise," he said. "But at the time the plane was flying extremely low already."
He added: "I felt a shock. The oxygen masks fell down and a bad smell began to spread throughout the plane. I could also see sparks in the front part of the plane."
Once the plane landed the cabin was a "mess", the back of the plane had a large hole and the kitchen there had disappeared, he described on Sina Weibo.
Xu and his wife collected their luggage and rushed out the makeshift exit at the back.
He posted photos showing people waiting outside while thick black smoke billowed from the plane, and then later from inside the airport, though the images could not be verified.
"I feel very fortunate," he wrote a little later, before posting another photo from a car leaving the scene.
Other travellers were left waiting for their flights as the airport shut down immediately after the incident before reopening a few runways.
A Chinese pilot surnamed Wang who was waiting to fly to Hong Kong told the official China News Service he was still trying to reach his friend on board.
"I haven't got in touch with him yet," he was quoted as saying.
When the plane crash-landed, he said, "the slide was released very quickly and the plane caught fire. The fire got bigger and bigger. First there was white smoke, then black smoke."
CCTV urged survivors and their loved ones to post information on the online messaging system We Chat so they could find one another.
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July 06, 2013
Glass Effect ? Day #2 of 4:01 a.m. Google+/Glass-related posts
This slot, focused on what's happening on my Google+,?is kind of a virtuous ? yeah, virtual too, as I think about it ? circle re: my getting in tune with Google Glass.
The more I use it the more I like it and the more things I realize I can do with it.
So having to create new material every day in the form of pictures and/or videos that appear in time for this post (as of right now ? 2:30 pm. Friday ? I've put up a total of eight new ones since yesterday's maiden voyage) not only provides a bit of diversion from your insomniac misery but also moves me along toward a better understanding of the power of the tool I've been given.
It appears that every picture and video I take with Glass is uploaded automatically (when I'm connected to the Internet via WiFi or cellphone network) to my Google+ page, where I can choose to delete them, make them public, or just let them rest there incognito till I decide what to do with them.
I wonder how long till the J.D. Salinger estate files suit to prevent Google from using Glass.
heh
Above, a few shots of Gray Cat's hard knock life, taken over a 15 minute period yesterday afternoon.
That's my treadmill workspace in this photo:
Unless I note otherwise, assume that all photos and videos appearing on bookofjoe in this 4:01 a.m. slot were taken with Google Glass.
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The Labor Department reported unemployment stayed steady at 7.6 percent as 195,000 jobs were added, an improvement from the slow but steady growth that's become the norm since the last recession.
All eyes are on the Labor Department's employment report and the labor market since the Federal Reserve has tied the tapering of its bond purchase program in part to the unemployment rate.
Robert G. Murphy, economics professor at Boston College, expected a gain of about 165,000 jobs in June.
"This morning's employment report showing a jobs gain of 195,000 is good news that the recovery may now be on a sustained path," he said. "Combined with revisions to the two previous months gains totaling 70,000 additional jobs, the latest number certainly is reassuring. But the job gain merely kept pace with the rise in the labor force, so that the number of unemployed, at 11.8 million, was essentially unchanged. Greater gains in jobs will be needed to push unemployment down significantly over the next year."
Some negative news in June's report is that part-time work -- because of "slack work or business conditions" -- is up over 350,000 from May to June. In addition, the number of discouraged workers now tops 1 million, up 247,000 from May to June.
As expected, the average workweek stayed steady at 34.5 hours. Average hourly earnings increased by 5 cents to $20.14 after being unchanged in May.
Last month, the Labor Department reported an unemployment rate of 7.6 percent with the addition of 175,000 jobs in May, which was revised to 195,000. Job additions for April were revised to 199,000 from 149,000.
"Despite the healthy growth from private companies (many are growing sales by double digits), looking at today's report, the unemployment rate is still not where we'd expect it to be at this point in the recovery. Despite strong balance sheet and income statement performance, many companies remain very resistant to increasing their overhead by hiring and taking on debt," said Brian Hamilton, chairman of Sageworks.
Recent comments by Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke, which clarified the Fed's asset purchase policy without a change in policy, have set markets on edge, so that Friday's report likely is receiving much greater attention than it probably warrants, Murphy said.
After this report, Murphy said the Federal Reserve is "unlikely to begin removing stimulus at its July meeting."
Murphy said the report needs to be placed in the context of "a recovery that continues to be very sluggish." Last week, the Commerce Department reported a downward revision for first quarter GDP growth of 1.8 percent and a consensus growth forecast of 2.5 to 2.8 percent over the rest of this year. Murphy said those figures are not high enough to sustain job gains consistent with a decline in the unemployment rate toward the 7 percent marker that Bernanke has indicated for ending the asset purchase program, provided inflation doesn't spike.
Read More About the Fed's $85 Billion a Month Bond Purchasing Program
Murphy cautioned that the monthly job gains are subject to statistical error of around 90,000, which may be amplified for June when students and others take seasonal jobs.
"Hence, a strong gain this month would need to be sustained for several months to reflect a meaningful upshift in labor market performance," he said, adding that the average monthly gain of 178,000 in jobs for March to May represents a slowdown from the average gain of 233,000 for December to February.
"So even if the report shows strong employment growth, the Fed is unlikely to decide to begin tapering its asset purchases when it meets later this month," Murphy said. "The Fed will want to wait until its September meeting when it will have employment numbers for July and August in hand."
Stephen Bronars, senior economist with Welch Consulting, said the pattern in the jobs reports of the last year will likely to continue.
"The primary concern that economists have is that this is the new normal for the economy: slow, steady, but unspectacular growth in both GDP and employment," Bronars said.
This "new normal" Bronars refers to employment growth just keeping pace with population growth over the past year as the economy created 175,000 to 180,000 jobs per month. Bronars adds that the unemployment rate has fallen to 7.6 percent from 8.2 percent over the past year largely because people have given up looking for work and are no longer counted as unemployed. Meanwhile, the fraction of adults who are employed has not changed in the past three years because of relatively slow growth and the aging of the U.S. workforce, he said.
Job additions in the leisure and hospitality sector were the strongest at 75,000, about 2.5 times the growth in leisure and hospitality in 2012. Employers in professional and business services added 53,000 jobs.
Employment in June for the construction sector showed little change. Recovery in the construction sector has been "painfully slow," Bronars said.
Although construction employment is up 3.5 percent in the past year -- more than twice as fast as the rest of the workforce -- the sector has regained only about 13 percent of the 2.2 million construction jobs lost in the recession.
"There needs to be much stronger growth in construction employment to signal that economic growth has accelerated," Bronars said.
On Wednesday, two reports showed signs of optimism for the labor market.
Private payroll provider ADP said companies added 188,000 jobs in June, the largest gain since February and up from 134,000 in May. Construction employers added 21,000 jobs, a possible indication that a housing recovery is boosting job growth.
Also on Wednesday, the Labor Department reported the number of Americans filing unemployment claims fell 5,000 to a seasonally adjusted 343,000.
Last week, the S&P/Case-Shiller survey of 20 major metro areas reported a strong increase in average home prices with prices rising in all the cities it tracks; and the Commerce Department reported new home sales rose in May to the fastest pace in five years
Joe "JJ" Kinahan, chief strategist with TD Ameritrade, said the overall headline number in June's report was "fantastic".
"The market has held its tremendous overnight gains and all in all it looks to be very positive for equities," he said, while "the bond market has taken it on the chin" as ten-year yields have pushed to almost 2.65 percent.
His concern, he said, is "that we keep this great momentum going forward and that we have a better quality of jobs created."
Teens' self-consciousness linked with specific brain, physiological responsesPublic release date: 2-Jul-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Scott Sleek ssleek@psychologicalscience.org 202-293-9300 Association for Psychological Science
Teenagers are famously self-conscious, acutely aware and concerned about what their peers think of them. A new study reveals that this self-consciousness is linked with specific physiological and brain responses that seem to emerge and peak in adolescence.
"Our study identifies adolescence as a unique period of the lifespan in which self-conscious emotion, physiological reactivity, and activity in specific brain areas converge and peak in response to being evaluated by others," says psychological scientist and lead researcher Leah Somerville of Harvard University.
The findings, published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, suggest that teens' sensitivity to social evaluation might be explained by shifts in physiological and brain function during adolescence, in addition to the numerous sociocultural changes that take place during the teen years.
Somerville and colleagues wanted to investigate whether just being looked at a minimal social-evaluation situation might register with greater importance, arousal, and intensity for adolescents than for either children or adults. The researchers hypothesized that late-developing regions of the brain, such as the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC), could play a unique role in the way teens monitor these types of social evaluative contexts.
The researchers had 69 participants, ranging in age from 8 to almost 23 years old, come to the lab and complete measures that gauged emotional, physiological, and neural responses to social evaluation.
They told the participants that they would be testing a new video camera embedded in the head coil of a functional MRI scanner. The participants watched a screen indicating whether the camera was "off," "warming up," or "on", and were told that a same-sex peer of about the same age would be watching the video feed and would be able to see them when the camera was on. In reality, there was no camera in the MRI machine.
The consistency and strength of the resulting data took the researchers by surprise:
"We were concerned about whether simply being looked at was a strong enough 'social evaluation' to evoke emotional, physiological and neural responses," says Somerville. "Our findings suggest that being watched, and to some extent anticipating being watched, were sufficient to elicit self-conscious emotional responses at each level of measurement."
Specifically, participants' self-reported embarrassment, physiological arousal, and MPFC activation showed reactivity to social evaluation that seemed to converge and peak during adolescence.
Adolescent participants also showed increased functional connectivity between the MPFC and striatum, an area of the brain that mediates motivated behaviors and actions. Somerville and colleagues speculate that the MPFC-striatum pathway may be a route by which social evaluative contexts influence behavior. The link may provide an initial clue as to why teens often engage in riskier behaviors when they're with their peers.
###
Co-authors on the study include B.J. Casey, Rebecca M. Jones, Erika J. Ruberry, and Jonathan P. Dyke of Weill Cornell Medical College and Gary Glover of Stanford University.
This work was supported by K99 MH078713 and the Mortimer D. Sackler family.
For more information about this study, please contact: Leah H. Somerville at somerville@fas.harvard.edu.
The APS journal Psychological Science is the highest ranked empirical journal in psychology. For a copy of the article "The Medial Prefrontal Cortex and the Emergence of Self-Conscious Emotion in Adolescence" and access to other Psychological Science research findings, please contact Scott Sleek at 202-293-9300 or ssleek@psychologicalscience.org.
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Teens' self-consciousness linked with specific brain, physiological responsesPublic release date: 2-Jul-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Scott Sleek ssleek@psychologicalscience.org 202-293-9300 Association for Psychological Science
Teenagers are famously self-conscious, acutely aware and concerned about what their peers think of them. A new study reveals that this self-consciousness is linked with specific physiological and brain responses that seem to emerge and peak in adolescence.
"Our study identifies adolescence as a unique period of the lifespan in which self-conscious emotion, physiological reactivity, and activity in specific brain areas converge and peak in response to being evaluated by others," says psychological scientist and lead researcher Leah Somerville of Harvard University.
The findings, published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, suggest that teens' sensitivity to social evaluation might be explained by shifts in physiological and brain function during adolescence, in addition to the numerous sociocultural changes that take place during the teen years.
Somerville and colleagues wanted to investigate whether just being looked at a minimal social-evaluation situation might register with greater importance, arousal, and intensity for adolescents than for either children or adults. The researchers hypothesized that late-developing regions of the brain, such as the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC), could play a unique role in the way teens monitor these types of social evaluative contexts.
The researchers had 69 participants, ranging in age from 8 to almost 23 years old, come to the lab and complete measures that gauged emotional, physiological, and neural responses to social evaluation.
They told the participants that they would be testing a new video camera embedded in the head coil of a functional MRI scanner. The participants watched a screen indicating whether the camera was "off," "warming up," or "on", and were told that a same-sex peer of about the same age would be watching the video feed and would be able to see them when the camera was on. In reality, there was no camera in the MRI machine.
The consistency and strength of the resulting data took the researchers by surprise:
"We were concerned about whether simply being looked at was a strong enough 'social evaluation' to evoke emotional, physiological and neural responses," says Somerville. "Our findings suggest that being watched, and to some extent anticipating being watched, were sufficient to elicit self-conscious emotional responses at each level of measurement."
Specifically, participants' self-reported embarrassment, physiological arousal, and MPFC activation showed reactivity to social evaluation that seemed to converge and peak during adolescence.
Adolescent participants also showed increased functional connectivity between the MPFC and striatum, an area of the brain that mediates motivated behaviors and actions. Somerville and colleagues speculate that the MPFC-striatum pathway may be a route by which social evaluative contexts influence behavior. The link may provide an initial clue as to why teens often engage in riskier behaviors when they're with their peers.
###
Co-authors on the study include B.J. Casey, Rebecca M. Jones, Erika J. Ruberry, and Jonathan P. Dyke of Weill Cornell Medical College and Gary Glover of Stanford University.
This work was supported by K99 MH078713 and the Mortimer D. Sackler family.
For more information about this study, please contact: Leah H. Somerville at somerville@fas.harvard.edu.
The APS journal Psychological Science is the highest ranked empirical journal in psychology. For a copy of the article "The Medial Prefrontal Cortex and the Emergence of Self-Conscious Emotion in Adolescence" and access to other Psychological Science research findings, please contact Scott Sleek at 202-293-9300 or ssleek@psychologicalscience.org.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) ? Taliban suicide attackers blew up a truck bomb early Tuesday at the gates of a NATO supplier's compound in Kabul and sprayed gunfire at security personnel, killing five guards and two civilians, Afghan officials said.
The morning attack was the latest in a series targeting high-profile locations in the Afghan capital. The attacks have made clear the Taliban have no intention of ending the violence, even as they say they are willing to enter peace negotiations.
The U.N. deputy chief, Jan Eliasson, who was in Kabul wrapping up a five-day trip to Afghanistan when the attack took place, said continued violence could only harm the Taliban's own cause.
"I would hope that there would be steps taken by the leadership of the Taliban to realize that the tool of violence in any case cannot instill confidence in the population," he said. "There's been too much suffering there and there are too many widows, too many father-and-motherless children in Afghanistan and I think we need to instill a sense of calm."
But the Taliban showed no signs of backing off, telling The Associated Press by phone that Tuesday's attack was part of its offensive started in the spring to target military and diplomatic sites with suicide bombers.
"This has no link to the peace process," the militants' spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said. "It will continue all over the country occupied by the foreigners."
The attack started before dawn, when a suicide bomber drove a small truck to the outer gate of the logistics center used to supply NATO troops and detonated it. The explosion made a massive crater in the ground and damaged a guard tower, said Kabul provincial police chief Mohammad Ayuob Salangi.
Two truck drivers waiting nearby to enter the compound were also killed in the blast, along with the bomber.
Four gunmen then stormed into the breach and battled with security guards, and an Afghan police special response team that was called in, for about an hour before being killed, the Interior Ministry said in a statement. One Afghan and four Nepalese guards were also killed, the ministry said.
Mujahid quickly claimed responsibility for the assault, saying it was "a very effective attack that embarrassed the enemy."
In a statement on the Taliban website, Mujahid said only three militants were involved in the "attack on a big foreign base important for NATO logistics," and listed them by name.
The Taliban last month opened a new political office in the Gulf nation of Qatar, and indicated that they were prepared to enter into Afghan peace talks, but at the same time did not renounce violence.
The following week, Taliban suicide attackers were able to get past preliminary security checks and open fire on guards at a gate to the presidential palace in a bold attack at the heart of the Afghan government.
Earlier in June, heavily armed fighters launched a failed assault on NATO's operational headquarters at Kabul's international airport and blew up a car bomb outside Afghanistan's Supreme Court.
Eliasson said if U.N. support was needed to help start the peace process, he was glad to provide it ? but only if requested by the Afghan government.
"The reconciliation process must be, if it is to be successful, Afghan-led," he said. "What I hope will take place is, of course, contacts between the two parties ... and as long as those contacts continue, there's no specific need for the United Nations to be involved."
Also Tuesday, in the eastern province of Paktika, local police commander Azizullah Karwan said six Taliban militants were killed in a clash with one of his patrols.
He said no police were killed or injured.
In Ghazni, the neighboring province to the west, three local police were killed and three wounded in a gunbattle with the Taliban around midday, said district police chief Kasim Desiwal. Four Taliban fighters were killed, he said.
___
Associated Press writer David Rising contributed to this report from Kabul.
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