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tuber on Reddit: Let's organize a massive, nationwide protest against the policies of the current administration. We want to end the war, we want the whole truth about 9/11, and we want the executive branch to be held accountable to the law. It's time to
This is a formidable challenge, but I agree that we must take action to preserve our liberty and strengthen our future.There is a groundswell of support, here on reddit and elsewhere, for meaningful change to our political system. Channeling this support and applying our efforts effectively may be the greatest challenge here.It is one thing to read about change, or to think about change, or write about change. It is another thing entirely to effect this change: to persuade our public servants to hold themselves and their colleagues accountable, and to effectively use the legislature and the courts to cement and uphold our reform as law.
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EUNIS 2007, Grenoble - Days 2&3
Thursday 28 June 2007. Due to a misunderstanding, actually a change of the timetable, I have missed half of Richard Katz's keynote (he is the Vice President of Educause, USA). The part I did attend provided us with a glimpse into a possible future, with both challenging opportunities and fearful threats. The next speaker was Mark Clark from Manchester University, whom I have met and heard on several earlier occasions. I always Mark a pleasant and amiable man and speaker. His talk was entitled"Lessons for the future of IT/IS: people and governance', which I think taps well into the alerts that the Gartner Group (Michael Zastrocky) has been issuing for a couple of years about the difficulties in the area of IT management and governance that are before us. As the baby boomers will be soon be massively retiring, a young generation will have to cope with an increasingly rapidly developing and changing world. The third speaker was Ken Klingenstein Director (Internet2, USA), who talked aboutThe Golden Age of Middleware.He used plumbing as a metaphor for middleware. The bottomline of his presentation was that middleware is both crucial and complex, so a lot of work and money (for staff) is needed to make all systems communicate well. My own presentation in the track IT as a support for the Bologna process was scheduled just after the coffee break. Luckily, I turned out to be the first of six (!) speakers in a row. I was also lucky, I suppose, because my presentation was to be held in the large lecture theatre Amphi Weil. I did quite nicely for time, I think. I finished my talk right on time without having to speed up or slow down at any time. No questions were asked other than by the chair, so either everything was crystal clear or everyone was bored stiff. I prefer the former option,naturally. My presentation was yet another one in a series op presentation I have given on the EC supported projects EUREA and e-LERU. The latter, seehttp://www.eleru.org, has resulted in the skeleton of a virtual campus, which students can access through a portal designed just for the job. Currently, only a small number of course modules is available, but we hope that this number will grow over time. By the way, by finishing my presentation with a particular slide and suitable message with it I have eraned a bottle of wine. Yesterday evening, we had a disussion on a Dutchman called Jongkind. In Grenoble there is a street named after Jongkind. To make a long story short, I was challenged to mention Jongkind in my presentation. No one believed I would have the guts to do that. But then they really do not know me. I was smart enough to look this Jongkind up using a Google search command. The particular Jongkind that is remembered in Grenoble turned out to be a different Jongkind than the person we discussed over dinner. The Grenoble Jongkind is a ninetheenth century impressionistic painter, who has painted the banks of the river Isère. Since I had no problem finding several of Jongkinds Isère paintings using Google images, I had copied one of them in my last slide in no more than a couple of minutes. All I had to do now was think of the story that would have to accompany the slide and justify the inclusion of the painting. That was really simple. The painting could play an appropriate part in a brief remark on the pace at which innovation takes place. Just compare the banks of the Isère as they were perceived by Jongkind with how they look now. It took them an awful long time to go from the view in the picture to what they are today. Well, in a European project innovation is likewise possible, but likewise slow.The next presentation was a nice talk on a university system developed in Brno. However, I missed the relevance of the presentation for the theme of the track, being Bologna and what has come of it so far. The third speaker in Thursday morning´s parallel session was Nicole Mrose from the K.U.Leuven, whom I met earlier. She reported on two Europace projects, Victorious and the more recent VM-Base. Nicole is an employer of AV-Net, which was also involved in EUREA and e-LERU. Of the last three presentations the first one addressed social software and the second one a nationally implemented system in Sweden. I find it both interesting and peculiar that some countries manage to implement systems on a national scale. After lunch I skip a few presentations because I need to write my blog on Wednesday and there is a selection of emails that I think need to be dealt with before I return home. The second conference day ends with a dinner at the castle restaurant. We have to get there by cable car from the city centre. However, when we arrived at the entrance to the cable cars, my worst fears became true. There was a large group of delegates and other people queueing up for the ride, while the people in the queue advanced really slowly. We therefore decided to go to plan B and ended up in a nice restaurant downtown. Friday 29 June 2007. The last day of a conference often gives you a hard time. Some people leave early as they have to catch their plane back home. Other people enter the morning session late after the party night before. Today there is one particular French speaker who I think ought not to have been allowed to give a presentation. His English is so bad that it was actually impossible for him to convey his message to the audience. The problem with the French (the same is to some extent true for the Spanish) is that their native language is syllable timed. That is, most spoken syllables last equally long. Languages such as English, on the other hand, are stress timed. The French have no feeling for stress as it is actually absent in their language at the phonological level. This results in many stress errors. I don´t recall ever having heard a native speaker of French correctly pronounce words like `develop´. Frequent wrong word stress is something that hinders communication and so forces one to listen very attentively. But even when you do your best to understand the French speaking English, sometimes you simple don´t. It is a fact of life. Surely, no one can be blamed for this..... So far I have not attended any presentations by Dutch colleagues, but today I decide to join the moral backup for Eky and Jan from Avans, who give a presentation part of which is unfortunately hindered by technical problems. I certainly do not want to miss Michael Zastrocky´s (Gartner) annual update. His message is not mucg different from last year´s update. Do I need to take that as proof that nothing much happened since then? I do not know. In the course of the afternoon I decide to do what I would nornally have done yesterday. That is, make a trip to the castle. As I have a rental car, I drive up the hill. The view from the castle is really magnificent. Grenoble is a nice town, beautifully surrounded by mountains. What a pity we have nothing even remotely similar in the Netherlands!
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Mechanical&Electrical Project Manager, Edinburgh
Description:Our client is a nationally successful and rapidly expanding construction company who are currently working on many multi-million pound projects and are now looking to recruit an experienced Mechanical&Electrical Project Manager to w.....
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BMW 3 Series, 3000cc, SILVER,
Two Door, 2003, 67100 miles, finished in silver with full m sport interior and extras. 6 disc cd player, auto lights and rain sensors,electric seats, 18in MV wheels, fsh . excellent condition recent service etc. £14995,...
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MTV targets online poker players for show
PokerListings Nov 23 2007 8:53AM GMT