The department, working with city health officials, federal
authorities and other agencies, has been preparing for a possible
attack with unconventional weapons.
New York PHP: New Two-Day Training Announced04/18/2005 02:04 PM For those of you PHPers up in the New York area, your local PHP group,
NYPHP.org is putting on their
latest round of PHP training classes for the Spring of 2005.
U.S. General: Iraq Police Training a Flop (AP)06/09/2004 05:34 PM AP - Misguided U.S. training of Iraqi police contributed to the
country's instability and has delayed getting enough qualified Iraqis
on the streets to ease the burden on American forces, the head of
armed forces training said Wednesday.
Mercer Brings HR Professionals up to Speed on M&A Fundamentals - Training Sessions Set for Chicago, New York, Dallas, and San Francisco
Mercer Brings HR Professionals up to Speed on M&A Fundamentals - Training Sessions Set for Chicago, New York, Dallas, and San Francisco04/13/2005 02:02 AM Merger and acquisition (M&A) activity has accelerated significantly
over the past six months. Mindful of the high number of
well-documented and sometimes very public failed transactions,
organizations are looking to improve their chances for success. Given
that mishandling of people issues is often cited as the reason for
failure, many companies are demanding that those individuals involved
in the M&A deals be better trained to plan and execute due diligence
and integration efforts. In response to this demand, Mercer Human
Resource Consulting will offer its highly regarded two-day M&A Ready
intensive training program in Chicago (May 3-4); New York (May 12-13);
Dallas (May 17-18); and San Francisco (June 7-8). [PRWEB Apr 13, 2005]
Training Classes - The Training Directory Launches UK Training Portal
Training Classes - The Training Directory Launches UK Training Portal06/05/2005 11:37 PM Connecting people who want to learn with people who love to teach -
Training-Classes.com expands coverage to the United Kingdom -
launching http://www.training-classes.co.uk/ specifically for Training
in the U.K. The UK training portal provides all the features of
http://www.training-classes.com/ but focuses on training providers and
training courses in England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales.
[PRWEB Jun 5, 2005]
"FBI agent Kenneth Williams sent the below memo to bureau brass in Washington and New York warning that a cadre of Osama bin Laden disciples might be training at U.S. flight schools"
New York Police Take Broad Steps in Facing Terror02/15/2004 02:23 AM The department, working with city health officials, federal
authorities and other agencies, has been preparing for a possible
attack with unconventional weapons.
Catastrophic
Catastrophic01/03/2005 02:17 PM
Nagapattinam, India
January 3, 2005
Reuters
It seems, sometimes, that ultimately all problems are entropic
problems.
We can improve this... then this... then this... then-? Brick wall.
Entropy. Not improving that.
And yet humanity is a marvel at diminishing entropic risk. We peel
back the skins of sub-atomic secrets. The universe has seemingly from
nothing (or from a ...
New York Daily News - Politics - Police bust up bike protests
Total Training supports Adobe with training videos for Creative Suite 2
Total Training supports Adobe with training videos for Creative Suite 204/05/2005 12:14 PM Total
Training today announced a new series of DVD-ROM videos for
mastering the new Adobe Creative Suite 2 Premium Edition. Sample video
tutorials will be included with Adobe Photoshop CS2, Adobe InDesign
CS2, Adobe Illustrator CS2, and Adobe GoLive CS2 product boxes. In
addition to the sample tutorials, Creative Suite 2 users can get Total
Training's video training for each full-version of Adobe's design
software, including: Total Training for Photoshop CS2, Total Training
for InDesign CS2, Total Training for Illustrator CS2, and Total
Training for GoLive CS2. Also available is Total Training Presents
Creative Suite 2: from Design to Delivery, which focuses on ways to
master the entire product line workflow.
The DVD-based series are hosted by Steve Holmes and Deke McClelland,
industry-recognized Adobe experts. They follow Total Training's
interactive teaching method proven to be effective for thousands of
users. Users watch videos and practice tutorials based on real-world
scenarios to effectively sharpen design, print, and web publishing
skills.
Majorium™ Challenges the Theory Corporate Training Must be Expensive to Produce Results with Its New Training Technology
Majorium™ Challenges the Theory Corporate Training Must be Expensive to Produce Results with Its New Training Technology06/24/2004 02:55 AM Majorium™, pioneer in the development of Integrated Multicast
Learning™ technology, challenges the theory that corporate training
must be expensive to produce results with the introduction of its
innovative long-distance blended learning technology. Majorium™ has
learned to harness cheap technology to profitably deliver corporate
training for less than $100 per participant. It is able to do this
without sacrificing the overall quality and the results it produces.
The technology pioneered by Majorium™ is called Integrated Multicast
Learning™. It provides companies with dramatic increases in overall
quality and results. This favorably compares with more costly
competitive corporate training. [PRWEB Jun 24, 2004]
Majorium's "Train Your Way" Corporate Training Giveaway Presents Companies with an Opportunity to Sample its New and Innovative Training Technology
First Lady of SEO Training, Robin Nobles, Celebrates 6 Years of Online Search Engine Web Training on June 29, 2004
First Lady of SEO Training, Robin Nobles, Celebrates 6 Years of Online Search Engine Web Training on June 29, 200406/28/2004 03:21 AM Celebrating 6 Years Tomorrow: Robin Nobles was the very first person
to develop a structured series of comprehensive courses and lessons
which are recognized and approved by the US educational system for
training people in search engine marketing skills. Robin Nobles
celebrates her 6th year in the online Web search engine training
business. [PRWEB Jun 28, 2004]
Majorium™ Bridges "Training Gap" for Small Business Providing Inexpensive Training Programs That Do Not Sacrifice Quality, Results or Sophistication
Majorium™ Bridges "Training Gap" for Small Business Providing Inexpensive Training Programs That Do Not Sacrifice Quality, Results or Sophistication06/17/2004 02:15 AM Majorium™ delivers inexpensive training programs that do not sacrifice
either quality or sophistication. Each program costs less than $
100.00 per employee for three months of training using the innovative
Integrated Multicast Learning™ technology as compared to thousands of
dollars for one or two days worth of ineffective training. Majorium™
has documented training retention in excess of over ninety percent
through monthly testing as compared to the generally accepted ten
percent retention for seminar training. [PRWEB Jun 17, 2004]
Total Training offers video training for GoLive CS
Total Training offers video training for GoLive CS12/03/2003 08:41 AM Total Training Inc. has
announced a new CD-ROM with video instruction aimed at users of
Adobe's new GoLive CS software. Total Training Presents: The
Essentials of Adobe GoLive CS includes more than three hours of
training content as well as project files that help users get started
with Web site creation using GoLive CS.
OTA Training, LLC Launches RFID Training and Certification Programs
OTA Training, LLC Launches RFID Training and Certification Programs08/12/2004 02:51 AM RFID technical training now available. Dallas, Texas based OTA
Training is offering RFID technical training to service the growing
demand for RFID expertise. The program is vendor neutral and
"hands-on", exposing students to a wide range of state-of-the-art
technology, and giving them an opportunity to configure and operate
those technologies. Classes are held at local universities with the
hands-on portion being conducted at the Sun Microsystems RFID Test
Center. Classes begin August 24 and discounts are available for IEEE
members. For more information visit: www.otatraining.com [PRWEB Aug
12, 2004]
Majorium’s Quality Content Makes the Difference Through Access to Its Training Library of Over 172 Monthly Curriculums and Accompanying Blended Training Tools
Richard
Manning's book Against the Grain
is a
remarkable work -- succinct, well-researched, solution-oriented and
mind-altering. It's an absolute must-read. Please don't settle for the
synopsis below, and don't assume that because it's about the history
and economy of agriculture it's a dull read. It's riveting. The issues
that Manning describes in the book were first raised in his Harper's Magazine article last
winter called The Oil We
Eat. But the book
goes much further.
In
my earlier root-cause analysis of what 'caused' us to invent
civilization, to abandon our joyful hunter-gatherer cultures, the
cause-and-effect went like this:
Ice age OR Overhunting
Scarcity of food. After millennia of easy hunting of big,
slow game, man suddenly had to start really working for a
living...
Scarcity of
foodInvention of agriculture. ...So he invented agriculture; if there
wasn't enough food, he's 'make' his own...
AgricultureCivilization. ...But agriculture required division of
labour, instruction, hierarchies, and constant fighting with
'pests'...
CivilizationEnd of Virtuous Cycle (Fig. 1 above)
and Start of Vicious Cycle
(Fig. 2 below). ...And brought with
it all kinds of unintended consequences.
But Manning has a more intriguing theory of the first two
steps:
Fire, Floods &
IceGrain
monoculture. After natural
catastrophes, hardy grains are often the first plants to reappear
...
Grain
monocultureAgriculture.
...Man
in areas victimized by these natural catastrophes merely 'discovered'
this, and then by creating continuous 'catastrophes' (clearing land
with fire, flooding land through irrigation) exploited nature's own
regeneration mechanism, which we call
'agriculture'...
The third and fourth steps are the same under both theories.
Manning
therefore calls what we now practice 'catastrophic agriculture' to
differentiate it from the simple tending of 'wild' plants and animals
as a secondary source of food by hunter-gatherer cultures without
interference with natural cycles. The irony, he says, is that it
wasn't
scarcity of food that
compelled us to invent agriculture, but rather the discovery of over-abundance of food in areas of
natural catastrophe that seduced us into it. Figure 2
The 'discovery' of grain monoculture in areas of
recurring natural catastrophe (like floodplains) was only possible
where man was already settled, which only occurred in areas where fish
were plentiful, which is where all agricultural cultures began (the
birthplaces of civilization) before they expanded and merged into the
single civilization culture we know today. Sedentary life, and soft
grain gruels, also allowed a higher birth rate, since babies no longer
had to be carried for four years until they were weaned -- and the
population explosion began. The ability to store food also allowed the
provisioning of armies, and the need to keep people from going back to
their instinctive hunter-gatherer ways and abandon the farms required
the use of force, which required hierarchy and government. The
provisioned armies conquered the remaining hunter-gatherers (most
notably in Africa and the Americas) and made them slaves on the farms.
To keep unnatural hierarchy1 from crumbling, the governors
bribed subordinates with extra resources, larger homes, and their own
'private' land, as long as the subordinates kept the slaves and
peasants in line2. Wealth, and its inevitable partner
poverty, were born. Dependence on monoculture, which failed often,
gave
rise to the first famines. Average human heights plummeted due to
disease and poor, unvaried diet, bone deformities from constant
stooping became commonplace, and grain monoculture and crowded
villages
allowed previously rare diseases to flourish: anemia, arthritis,
malaria, syphilis, and tuberculosis, and, finally, plague, all of them
unknown before agriculture. And the high-carb diet of grain
monoculture
also brought with it other new and unnatural phenomena: tooth decay,
obesity, diabetes, lactose tolerance, and alcoholism, which devastated
many hunter-gatherer cultures when they were suddenly exposed to this
deadly and seductive diet. So agriculture was irresistible to man, the
ultimate devil's bargain.
By doing so, man threw in his lot with a host of life forms that
co-evolved with man and grain monoculture: this 'coalition' included
the rat, insect pests, weeds and parasites as well as the
aforementioned diseases and a handful of animals suited to
domestication, all of which thrive with monoculture. In fact much of
the 'conquering' of the hunter-gatherer world by 'civilized' man was
really accomplished by our coalition partners: it was our diseases, to
which hunter-gatherers had no exposure and hence no resistance, that
killed most of them, not our weapons or their years of subsequent
slave labour. The
introduction of our domestic animals likewise altered the New World's
terrain, since these animals had few natural predators and exploded in
population, literally eating the natural flora to extinction. Like us,
these domestic animals paid the price of civilization -- they are
smaller, sicker and poorer than their wild counterparts, but the
ultimate test of evolution is endurance, and our unholy coalition has
passed that test with flying colours. Humans, members of the six
domestic animal groups and the big five monoculture grains, and the
rodents, insects, weeds and disease parasites that come with them have
all flourished, at least in numbers, together, and together they now
constitute a huge and growing proportion of Earth's biomass, while the
millions of non-coalition creatures almost all face extinction.
Although our diseases did most of the dirty work, Manning argues that
our civilization culture committed systematic genocide against every
hunter-gatherer culture on the planet, from the Cro-Magnon man in
Eastern Europe (whose language, intriguingly lives on only in the tiny
Basque community whose culture is still under siege), to the First
Nations of the Americas and Oceania. The result was what
anthropologists have called "remarkable cultural homogeneity" and
"pathological conventionality". Its sustained hallmark has been
ever-increasing famines, the "very badge of civilization". The worst
famine ever, and one of the most recent, in Mao's China, killed 80 million
people. The second worst, in Russia, was also in the past century.
Famine, a sudden and severe shortage of vital resources, breeds
hunger,
and that always breeds imperialism in turn. The alternative, common
and legal in China for millennia until quite recently, is an invention
called "Swapping Children / Making Food" -- in times of famine you
exchange your children for your neighbour's, and then kill them and
eat
them and use their bones for fuel. Modern mythology would have us
believe that famine is a political
problem -- a consequence of bad distribution of food and bad
government
-- and while this is in part true, famine is ultimately an inevitable
consequence of our fragile monoculture and massive overpopulation.
This
quote, describing one such famine in Ireland, where potato blight in
one year eliminated 90% of the monoculture potato crop and hence 90%
of
the food, has given me nightmares:
In the first hovel, six famished
and ghastly skeletons, to all appearances dead, were huddled in a
corner on some filthy straw, their sole covering what seemed a ragged
horsecloth, and their wretched legs hanging about, naked above the
knees. I approached with horror, and found by a low moaning that they
were alive, they were in fever -- four children, a woman, and what had
once been a man. It is impossible to go through the details. Suffice
it
to say that, in a few minutes, I was surrounded by at least 200 of
such
phantoms, such frightful specters as no words can describe.
All of this because we threw ourselves out of the Garden of Eden,
seduced by the lure of uniform plenty. Why and how did we get into
this
mess, and who is to blame? Manning recaps: "A population explosion
generates the need to grow more food, but agriculture is the cause of
that population explosion, and agriculture creates the need for
government. The hierarchical, specialized societies that agriculture
builds are wholly dependent on the smooth operation of their
infrastructure, on transportation, on stability. Dams must be built,
canals must flow, roads must be maintained and government must be
established to order these tasks. Government leaders emerge from the
social hierarchy that agriculture's wealth makes possible. Failures
are
human and inevitable. To hold agriculture blameless and government
responsible for famine is like holding a lion blameless for a child's
death on the grounds that it was the lion's teeth that did the damage.
Poverty, government and famine are co-evolved species, every bit as
integral to catastrophic agriculture as wheat, bluegrass, smallpox and
rats."
Our solution, of course, was not to blame agriculture, but to try to
make it more efficient.
Although we now produce a massively excess amount of monoculture food,
famines, starvation and poverty remain commonplace. So lately we
developed the Green Revolution to increase efficiency of grain
production, to increase yields and edible mass per acre and per plant.
The theory was that these high-yield crops could be grown closer to
the
starving. But fifty years later this has not solved the problem, and
it
has in fact increased the fragility of the system. Plants are now
patented,
and GM now threatens existing plant species and diversity and their
utter homogeneity exposes them to new vulnerabilities as nature
evolves
new pests and diseases to try to bring back into balance this massive,
ecologically unsustainable and undifferentiated surplus. And these
higher yields come with a huge price tag. Whereas a calorie of your
home-grown carrots requires less than a calorie of non-photosynthetic
energy to produce, a
calorie of grain requires ten
calories of energy to produce3,
mostly in the form of Mideast-oil-based, highly processed nitrogen
fertilizers poured onto severely and evermore soil- and
nutrient-depleted land. Ironically, that fertilizer replaces animal
manure, which is no longer economical to truck from the new
concentration-camp factory farms (also developed to improve
'efficiency'). So most of the oil-based fertilizer runs off into the
water supply, along with massive amounts of pesticides, herbicides,
antibiotics and other by-products of 'efficient' agriculture and the
mountains of shit from the factory farms, which no longer has
commercial 'value'. And if the smell of that shit makes living in the
area unbearable, that's fine, too, because Archer Daniels Midland and
the other handful of companies that run this entire system can then
buy
up and concentrate the farms more cheaply. Besides, we don't want nosy
'eco-terrorists' and news media poking around and seeing what really
goes on in those factory farms anyway. The cost of this is so
phenomenally high that government subsidies now exceed the entire
'commercial value' of the food produced. It's a massive corporate
welfare scheme originally designed to keep families on farms and now
accruing primarily to the few corporations that control the industry.
Taxpayers pay for these corporations to produce and process an absurd
excess of bad food and to finance governments who pursue Middle
Eastern
wars to get the oil needed for fertilizer. And in return the taxpayers
get cheap, tasteless, unhealthy, polluted food, monstrous animal
cruelty, massive pollution of the air and water, heart disease,
obesity, diabetes, tooth decay, alcoholism, ruined land, and
unemployment. And still there
is famine.
So what are we to do? Manning starts by pointing out what not
to do -- try to get government to change the system. "The political
system cannot be counted on to reform agriculture because the
political
system is a creation of
agriculture, a co-evolved entity". Of course we should try to end agricultural subsidies,
but Manning says we are unlikely to succeed. Vegetarianism can help,
but not much: As long as the vegetables come from the same commodity
system, they're still causing massive environmental and social damage
and animal cruelty. And we couldn't go back to hunter-gatherer
culture,
at least not in our current numbers, even if we wanted to. But
reducing
human population is a necessary condition: "I do not take human
population as a given; if we accept six billion as inevitable, we are
doomed". Beyond that, Manning's solution is the same one that a rising
chorus of radicals and revolutionaries is calling for: A walking away
from this system and its products, and the creation of a new, healthy
culture and economy. To Manning, focused on the food economy, this
means:
Eating better: Selecting and eating a wide variety of exclusively
organic, fresh, local, delicious, unpolluted, quality, unprocessed,
non-factory foods.
Eating less: Since these good foods are unsubsidized
and
hence more expensive, eating less is economically advantageous, and,
for most of us, it is also healthier.
Preparing and cooking
your own: Not using processed or packaged foods even if they're
organic and/or vegetarian.
Natural gardening: Personally producing your own food
without use of any fertilizers, insecticides, herbicides or other
unnatural products. Nothing more invasive than a fence to keep out the
bunnies. On a larger scale this is called permaculture, and it's
growing in popularity.
Supporting small, local farms: Going to
farmers' markets, and
challenging the vendors and operators to allow only local,
unprocessed4,
organic, small-farm products and free-range, grass-fed
meats.
I am writing a book on Natural
Enterprise,
and its recipe is perfectly suited to small, local, responsible farms.
I think we all know that such foods are better for us, and better for
the environment and the society we live in. We need some pioneers to
start, and teach others to start, Natural Enterprises that can break
our deadly addiction to catastrophic agriculture. And the rest of us
need, in more ways than one, to go back to the (natural) garden.
In nature there are pecking orders and
specialized
roles to organize and reduce conflict in communities, but no hierarchy
that allows the alpha male, the 'queen' bee, or the bull moose to hog
a
disproportionate amount of the resources of the
community.
Manning hypothesizes there is more
reason to believe
the Great Wall of China was built to keep the stooped slaves in the
rice paddies in, than to keep
the hunter-gatherer 'Mongol hordes' out.
A calorie of beef requires
over 100 calories of energy
to produce, despite the 'efficiencies' of factory
farms.
Exception: labour-intensive processed
foods are OK
if they use only local and organic ingredients e.g. artisanal
bakeries,
microbreweries
Grok Description matches for New York Police Training for Catastrophic Terrorism GrokA matches for New York Police Training for Catastrophic Terrorism
New York Police Training for Catastrophic Terrorism
The following phrases have been identified by the grok system as matching this entry:
