New Hampshire’s Bill to Deregulate Bitcoin Effective Next Week – Bitcoin News (press release)

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New Hampshire House Bill 436 is slated to take effect next week on August 1st. The bill exempts bitcoin from regulatory action and prevents New Hampshire bitcoin businesses from having to register as a money transmitter. The bill flies in the face of previous New Hampshire regulation that targeted bitcoin for harsh regulation. The bill was signed by New Hampshire governorJohn Sununu on June 2.

Also read:Suspension Lifted: Japanese Exchanges and Merchants Resume Bitcoin Services

Bitcoin.com wrote about the bill back in June, saying, The bill provides bitcoin with clearprotection from debilitatingand Orwellian regulations. The bill states that anyone who uses a virtual currency is exempt from having to register as a money transmitter. This is important news for a State that vouches for being one of the freest places to live in the U.S.

Previously in New Hampshire, a bill was introduced that added bitcoin to the money transmitter status. As a bill that reduced peoples economic freedom, this piece of legislation came as sort of an embarrassment to local activists. However, it appears the activists and politicians who supported it simply were not prepared. Ian Freeman, writing for Free Keene, expressed this view:

How did this happen in a state with the largest concentration of bitcoin enthusiasts per capita? Honestly, we were caught off-guard, but now thats all changed. In 2016 a state house committee to study cryptocurrency was formed, whose meetings I attended andvideo recordedThis is further proof of the effectiveness of the active, growinglibertarian migration to New Hampshire, many of whom are bitcoin/crypto enthusiasts.

Even though HB436 is now being passed with enthusiasm and joy across most of the State, not everyone in government agreed with the bill. The House of Representatives and Senate in New Hampshire were divided. Their decision was based on a 185 to 170 vote. Allegedly, several bankers and New Hampshire officials spoke against the bill, saying it would impede their jobs, making it more difficult to detect fraud and apprehend criminals.

Is a deregulated Bitcoin a good thing? Do you think other States will follow the exampleset by New Hampshire? Let us know in the comments section below.

Images courtesy of Shutterstock

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New Hampshire's Bill to Deregulate Bitcoin Effective Next Week - Bitcoin News (press release)

Lady Comets aiming for own piece of history at DHS – Daily Ardmoreite

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DICKSON Just a few months ago, Darrell Mays helped the Dickson High School baseball program make history as the first district title in 13 years was achieved.

DICKSON Just a few months ago, Darrell Mays helped the Dickson High School baseball program make history as the first district title in 13 years was achieved.

Fast forward to the present, and the DHS baseball skipper is hoping to have some magic rub off on a different group of Dickson athletes, the Lady Comets softball team.

This season, Mays will be at the helm of the fall program, as he tries to instill a new mindset and atmosphere to another, group of talented athletes.

We have an expectation of if we create a positive culture, then everything will take care of itself, Mays said. That starts with practice and doing things right the first time. We want these girls to buy into the process and have fun out here.

Mays admitted the success from the baseball team this past spring has had a ripple effect on the culture of Dickson athletics, as it has motivated others to achieve the same level.

Whenever anyone sees success happening in a school system, it creates a synergy amongst everyone, he said. Hopefully its going to get the kids excited and let them know they dont have to settle for being second best and that they have potential. We want these girls to keep pushing forward and to just be their best.

Among the players expected to help lead the charge this season for the Lady Comets will be seniors Kelsie Allen, Lauren Bess, Staley Ned, and Ashley Eades.

Other upperclassmen will include juniors Jadyn McKenzie, Shanna McKown, Keely King and Kylea Farmer.

Dickson will also be bringing a combined total of 10 freshmen and sophomore players to the diamond this season.

I really believe some of these younger girls are going to step up for us this season, Mays said. Theyve had success in the junior high ranks and Im going to be looking to them to help build a positive foundation for us. These freshman and sophomores are going to grow each week and its something Im looking forward to seeing weekly. Our upperclassmen are going to be some good leaders as well.

I believe one of our biggest strengths is going to be overall team defense, Mays added. When you have a strong team defense then it helps your pitching out and it leads to more productivity at the plate for the rest of our girls.

Dickson will open the season with a four game homestead beginning August 7 against Kingston, before facing off with Ringling the next day.

August 10 will bring a triangular contest against Marietta and Comanche. August 14 will bring with it the first road game of the season for Dickson as the Lady Comets will travel to Lindsay.

Following another road game against the Sulphur Lady Bulldogs the next day, Dickson will take part in the Tishomingo Tournament which will take place Aug. 17-19.

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Lady Comets aiming for own piece of history at DHS - Daily Ardmoreite

Upperclassmen setting the tone for Lady Comets program in ’17 – Daily Ardmoreite

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DICKSON Anytime there is a coaching change, leaders are looked at to step up.

DICKSON Anytime there is a coaching change, leaders are looked at to step up.

For Dickson Lady Comets players Jadyn McKenzie, Shanna McKown, and Kelsie Allen, their numbers have been called in preparation for this season.

Everyone is giving their all when they hit the field right now, Allen said. Weve been nothing but excited since Coach (Darrell) Mays has come in. He knows what hes talking about, and obviously with the baseball boys we know what he expects from us and we need to step up.

Theres so many young girls on this squad this season, Allen added. But everyone is learning quick so well get better.

For the junior center fielder, McKenzie said she expects the young girls to follow in the example the upperclassmen have set in the preseason.

I believe that were starting to believe in one another, she said. I very much believe that having this much youth on our squad makes us a dangerous team. We feel like we can achieve success and be pretty good because of the younger girls we have. They give their all at practice and thats all we can ask of them.

Having a new coach has changed a lot of things for us, McKenzie said. Its got us believing that we can do some big things this season.

Leading the charge on the mound this season will be McKown, as the junior seeks to shut down opponents and provide a spark for the new look Lady Comets.

The change in having a new coach has been extremely positive for us, McKown said. Weve been realizing that a single outcome isnt as big as the overall process it takes to be a great team. Seeing what the baseball team did in the spring showed everyone that we can achieve wins on the big stage. Its all about believing we can and focusing on the little things this season.

I started pitching when I was a freshman and I was terrified, McKown added. When things arent going well, then you have to stay positive out there. People look to the pitcher and catcher for leadership in tough times. We just cant break down out there, we have to always stay positive and motivated.

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Upperclassmen setting the tone for Lady Comets program in '17 - Daily Ardmoreite

Plenty of effort from Workington Comets ace at British Speedway … – News & Star

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Cumbrian-racer Craig Cook took on the world's best for the fourth time in his career at Cardiffs Principality Stadium when the rode as the wild card in this year's British Speedway Grand Prix.

However, despite battling performances from the Workington Comets skipper in every outing, his final tally of two points did not reflect the effort that he put in both on and off track, and left him disappointed with his nights work in what was a keenly-contested meeting that was eventually won by Polands Maciej Janowski.

Things got off to the worst possible start for Cook when, in his opening ride (heat 3), he charged through the tapes from the inside starting position on an evening where several riders either broke the starting tapes or were officially warned for starting infringements.

His second outing, in heat 6, saw him pick up his first point of the evening when, having been locked in a battle with Polands Piotr Pawlicki for third place, the Pole hit a rut on the fourth bend of the third lap, throwing him off-line and allowing Cook through to secure the third place point.

When Cook next took to the track in heat 12 he faced two riders that would ultimately reach the Grand Final: Polands Bartosz Zmarzlik and Slovenias Matej Zagar.

Cook led out of the second turn before Zmarzlik rounded him as they entered turn three. Then, at the end of lap two, Zagar forced his way under Cook to relegate him to third place as he picked up his second point.

It was heat 15 when Cook next took to the track and he played a major part in one of the best races of the night as he mixed it with Russian star Emil Sayfutdinov and his former Comets team-mate Peter Kildemand for the first three laps. However, on turn two of the final lap, Kildemand cut across Cook, who had to take evasive action, meaning he lost his momentum.

With all chance of qualification for the semi-final stage now gone, Cook lined up for his final ride against Britains two-time world champion Tai Woffinden and joint world championship leaders Jason Doyle and Patryk Dudek.

Doyle won the race from Dudek, with Woffinden third and Cook last.

With no home riders making the semi-finals, Zmarzlik and Doyle qualified for the Grand Final along with Janowski and Zagar.

In the final it was Janowski that led throughout with Doyle pressing him for all four laps, while behind them Zmarzlik looked set for third place before a final lap engine failure handed Zagar the last step on the podium.

With riders taking points from each other all night that second place finish was enough to push Doyle three points clear at the top of the overall championship standings, although with the Cardiff GP only being the half-way point in the 12-round series that slender lead is of no real consequence at this stage.

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Plenty of effort from Workington Comets ace at British Speedway ... - News & Star

World Travel Awards 2017 winners honored by the Seychelles Tourism Board and Ministry – eTurboNews

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Winning accolades across various categories at the World Travel Awards 2017, demonstrates that Seychelles, in spite of being small in size, remains relevant as a tourist destination.

The Chief Executive of the Seychelles Tourism Board (STB) Mrs. Sherin Francis said this on Wednesday last week, while addressing representatives of the award-winning businesses.

STB and the Ministry of Tourism, Civil Aviation, Ports and Marine joined together to honour the national airline, port authority and hotels, who were voted the Indian Ocean best and the best in Seychelles, in their respective categories at this years World Travel Awards. This was also an opportunity for the award winners to be presented to the local media.

Speaking at the event, Mrs Francis said: For the people who did the voting; in spite of being small in size, those people still found us [STB, Air Seychelles, Port Authority and hotels] to be relevant.

The World Travel Awards 2017 were announced in a ceremony held in the Maldives earlier this month, in the presence of tourism and hospitality leaders from the region and international media.

For the third consecutive year, the Seychelles Tourism Board took home the award for the Indian Oceans Leading Tourist Board, while Seychelles was voted the Indian Oceans Leading Cruise Destination for the fourth consecutive year.

In the airline category, the travel awards crowned Air Seychelles as the Indian Oceans Leading Airline for the third consecutive year and also the regions best for Business Class and Cabin Crew service both for the fourth consecutive year. And for the first time, Air Seychelles was named the Indian Oceans Leading Airline Brand.

Port Victoria was voted the Indian Oceans Leading Cruise Port for the fifth consecutive year. Two hotels Constance Ephelia and Raffles Praslin Seychelles were voted the Indian Oceans Leading Green Resort and Leading Villa Resort, respectively.

Mrs Francis noted that what sets Seychelles apart from its Indian Ocean neighbours is the people working in the tourism industry, who are passionately working to sell the destination as a product which they firmly believe in.

Commenting on STBs achievement as the Leading Tourist Board, Mrs Francis emphasized on the hard work and devotion of the organisation overseas and local staff who strive to maintain good relationships with their key partners.

The World Travel Awards was established in 1993 to recognize the very best travel organizations in the world, through a global vote including by travel and tourism professionals.

Awards are presented for excellence in providing services in different categories of the worlds travel and tourism industry. This includes air services, car rental services, spas, travel agencies and tour operators, hotels and resorts, among others.

Air Seychelles bagged four out of five accolades in the airline category. The airlines Chief Executive Mr. Roy Kinnear said winning the Indian Oceans Leading Airline Brand for the first time is one accolade that should not go unrecognized.

It is the first time it had been awarded in the airline category. The word brand is very very important and for Air Seychelles against many competitors in the region and also in a wider spread worldwide geographic form to win the leading airline brand says something about the airline name, it says something about the word Seychelles, it says something about the reputation of the airline, and the awareness of it. And we really should not underestimate the value of being brand recognised, said Kinnear.

In the hotels category, Raffles Praslin Seychelles featuring 86 villa, emerged as the Indian Oceans Leading Villa Resort, for the third consecutive year. The General Manager of the hotel, Mr Joerg Roterberg said with the discerning traveller having a choice nowadays it is important to take note of the competition, which hotels in Seychelles are up against in the Indian Ocean region.

We are comparing ourselves with Mauritius, the Maldives, a lot of high profile luxury destinations. So it makes us especially proud to bring this award to the Seychelles and to our little rock called Praslin, said Roterberg.

For Constance Ephelia, winning the accolade for the Indian Ocean Leading Green Resort ties in well with the United Nations declaration of 2017 as theInternational Year of Sustainable Tourism for Development. This is also the second consecutive year that Constance Ephelia was presented with the same award.

The General Manager of the hotel, Mr. Kai Hoffmeister said its the small gestures they do, including recycling, cleaning up, reducing the use of plastic and educating the staff that have not gone unnoticed.

I think all of us can be more green. Everyone that comes to the Seychelles as a tourist, and even we realize how lush this country is. So the contribution to the environment is definitely at the heart of our prioritiesWe are also green certified, which is quite a lengthy processbut we do believe its something worth investing in. The environment and surroundings where we finds ourselves in are uniqueand we need to do all we can to protect it, said Hoffmeister.

The clear turquoise Ocean of the Seychelles islands which offer great island hopping experience are attributes that attract cruise visitors to the archipelago. The Seychelles Ports Authority is another organisation that has been recognised for the services rendered to the cruise ships that call to the island nations shores.

The Port Authoritys Deputy CEO, Herbert Houareau said: Our ports remains open 24 hours a daywe will work harder to ensure safety and further improvement to the port functions. It is a collective work encompassing everyone from all sectors involved in the tourism industry.

Aside of businesses coming out on top in their respective categories for the Indian Ocean awards, other Seychelles hotels and one car hire business were also voted the best in their respective categories in Seychelles and they were also honoured at last weeks event.

They are:

Seychelles Leading Boutique Hotel 2017 MAIA Luxury Resort & Spa

Seychelles Leading Car Rental Company 2017 Hertz

Seychelles Leading Conference Hotel 2017 Eden Bleu Hotel

Seychelles Leading Family Resort 2017 Constance Ephlia

Seychelles Leading Green Resort 2017 Hilton Seychelles Labriz Resort & Spa

Seychelles Leading Hotel 2017 Constance Lmuria Seychelles

Seychelles Leading Hotel Suite 2017 Two Bedroom Presidential Villa @ Hilton

Seychelles Northolme Resort & Spa

Seychelles Leading Luxury Hotel Villa 2017 MAIA Signature Villa @ MAIA Luxury Resort & Spa

Seychelles Leading Resort 2017 Enchanted Island Resort

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World Travel Awards 2017 winners honored by the Seychelles Tourism Board and Ministry - eTurboNews

World Travel Awards joins AHIF and AviaDev in Kigali – eTurboNews

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Rwanda will welcome World Travel Awards for the first time, with the Africa Gala Ceremony 2017 set to take place in the countrys thriving capital, Kigali, on 10th October.

Spanning several valley and hillsides, Kigali renowned for its cleanliness and warm hospitality is arguably one of the most attractive African capitals. Its ideal location, slap bang in the centre of Rwanda, also makes it an ideal base for exploration.

World Travel Awards President and Founder, Graham Cooke, said: It will be an honour for the World Travel Awards to visit Rwanda for the first time, later this year.

The heart of Africa, Rwanda has become rightfully known for its spectacular scenery think thundering waterfalls, towering mountains and virgin rainforests and rare wildlife. This is a fantastic opportunity for Rwanda to claim its rightful place as Africas rising star.

World Travel Awards Africa Gala Ceremony 2017 will take place at the five star Radisson Blu Hotel & Convention Centre which features the first convention centre in Rwanda with room for up to 5,000 delegates alongside the Africa Hotel Investment Forum (AHIF) and AviaDev Africa (10-12 October).

The leading hotel investment conference that connects business leaders from the international and local markets, driving investment into tourism projects, infrastructure and hotel development across Africa, AHIF(www.africa-conference.com) is attended by the highest calibre international hotel investors of any conference in Africa.

Meanwhile AviaDev Africa (www.aviationdevelop.com) is a unique event bringing together airports, airlines, governments, industry suppliers and tourism authorities to determine the future air connectivity and infrastructure development of Africa. The event provides an opportunity for the aviation and hotel development communities to share intelligence on their future plans, catalysing tourism development on the continent.

Jonathan Worsley, Chairman, Bench Events, said: Im delighted that the World Travel Awards has chosen to hold its Africa ceremony on the main stage at AHIF. The combination of AHIF for hotel investment, AviaDev for aviation route planning and the WTA for excellence in travel, all happening at the same time and in the same place, is bound to focus more attention on the importance of a successful travel and hospitality industry to the economic future of Africa and that has to be a good thing.

Voting for the World Travel Awards Africa Gala Ceremony concludes on the 21st August 2017, with more information here: http://www.worldtravelawards.com/vote

A full list of nominees can be seen here: http://www.worldtravelawards.com/nominees/2017/africa

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World Travel Awards joins AHIF and AviaDev in Kigali - eTurboNews

Families travel the world at the Benton County Historical Museum – Corvallis Gazette Times

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Asha Pantula wore a radiant orange Sari with pants as she danced onstage Saturday in an auditorium at the Benton County Historical Museum in Philomath.

Metallic bells had been tied to Pantulas ankles and jingled each time her feet hit the ground. Jewels adorned the 16-year-olds face as she performed an Indian classical dance called Bharathanatiyam.

Pantula, who is a student at the NATYA Dance Academy, was one of many performers at the museums second annual Family Day. This years theme, tied to the museums current exhibition, was "Around the World from 80 Countries." People from more than 10 local organizations performed cultural dances and played musical instruments.Hundreds of people participated in the festivities.

Outside the museum, a group of women wearing red and yellow skirts with ruffled floraltops danced to the banda style of music from the Mexican state of Sinaloa. The dancers, from the Ballet Folklorico Alma Latina of Corvallis, held their flowing skirts with their fingertips and flapped them as they danced.

In front of the women, Antonio Huerta, a Mexican charro, or cowboy, performed rope tricks. He swung a ranching rope around his body and then jumped through it, eliciting applause from the audience.

Terri Thomas, the museums membership and events coordinator, said she hopes the performances, and many others held that day, helped museum visitors connect the artifacts they saw in the museum to their local community.

How is what we exhibit here in the museum relevant to our county and culture today? Thomas said. It was to show that these cultures are here and contributing to our daily lives in a really rich way.

She hopes the days activities deepened community members engagement with one another.

Some of the performers were children and Thomas said she wanted children who were visiting the museum to see their peers demonstrating their culture and being proud of it.

One of the performing groups was Aloha Hula Northwest, which demonstrated the traditional hula dance and offered lessons on how to dance the hula. The International Ambassadors of Dance performed traditional folk dances from different parts of the world and encouraged the audience to learn the steps.

Children from the 4-H Folklorico Mexicana also performed traditional dance, as did the East Dream Chinese Dance Corporation. A Flamenco guitarist from the Corvallis guitar society also performed. The Corvallis Chinese School provided traditional tea for visitors to taste.

Students from the Corvallis Waldorf School played Japanese taiko drums.

Its really nice to be able to share this with the community, said Chris Highfield, a teacher at the school who was directing the students during the performance. The students are really passionate about it.

The eight students who performed ranged in grade level from fifth through ninth. The kids stood two to a drum and used bachi sticks to create booming rhythmic beats.

Taiko in general, its such a powerful style of music, said 14-year-old Malia Detar Chung. It makes you feel really grounded, like youre part of the ground and the beat. Its an amazing opportunity to get to play and share it with people.

The museum also offered many hands-on activities for kids to do. The Corvallis Multicultural Literacy Center brought eating utensils from around the world for kids to try using. They also provided recycled materials for children to use to make their own musical instrument.

The day also included a labyrinth walk on a floor cloth and kids were invited to draw their own labyrinths. The Chintimini Spinners taught children to do drop spindle spinning.

Representatives from the University of Oregon Natural and Cultural History Museum brought Native American basketry and taught kids to do basket weaving.

I hope (visitors) saw things and learned things about the communities and organizations in Benton County that they didnt know before, Thomas said.

Families were also encouraged to peruse the museums exhibition, which features almost 200 artifacts from all over the globe, including textiles, pottery, clothing, tools and more. The artifacts were formerly part of the Horner Museum collection at Oregon State University, Thomas said.

Much of the Horner collection is in storage in a building behind the museum. Officials hope to display more of it when their downtown Corvallis museum opens, perhaps by the end of next year.

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Families travel the world at the Benton County Historical Museum - Corvallis Gazette Times

You’re 4 Small Steps Away From Quitting Your Job to Travel the World – Entrepreneur

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When my husband and I decided to get married, we made an event out of planning our honeymoon. Nearly six months prior to setting off for the big day, we ordered a large map, map pins and a bottle of bubblesand had a saucy trip-planning date night.

Prior to said date night, we had both been in our respective roles with our employers for several yearsand were feeling a bit stagnant at work. So, it may not surprise you to learn that, at the end of our evening, with 20 or so pins scattered across the globe, we looked at each other and said, Lets do it all.Under the spell of Champagne, we both decided to quit our jobs and take the plunge, traveling to 13 countries over the course of the six months following our wedding.

Making the decision to leave our jobs and travel for a meaningful amount of time was the best decision either of us could have made for ourselves, and it allowed us to fall into the perfect employment (both with marked salary increases) when we returned.Allowing ourselves to reset our perspective made all the difference in the world.

Here are four steps to setting off on your own adventureand to finding the right gig when you return:

Planning to quit your job with no new employment in the wings can only be done with real preparation.You first need to ensure that you have enough money to surviveand to set up a savings plan to pay yourself first.

Start by stripping out every unnecessary expense in your current daily life -- cable and WiFi, expensive meals and extracurriculars.Begin living the abroad life while still at home, and see how small you can get your existing monthly spend (placing the saved cash in your travel savings account).

Beyond rent (which you will not have while traveling) and your car expense (youll want to rent or sell this), your monthly budget at home should mimic what you realistically think you will need while traveling.As a rule of thumb, and if you are comfortable with a budget lifestyle on the road, you should plan to save $1,500-$2,000 per month of travel, which includes room, board and travel expenses.Once youve saved your first $5,000 (and can see the path to saving the full $9,000-$12,000), you are ready for Step 2.

In the age of the millennial, employers are thinking creatively about how to keep their employees engaged, and sabbaticals are becoming more popular.Prior to quitting your job and burning a bridge, bring your employer into your plan. Share with them the detailed budgeting that youve been working on and your reasons for wanting to pursue that lifelong dream.

Employers, more often than not, appreciate being given significant notice prior to losing an employee, and you can bake a value proposition into your exit.Offer to help find and train your replacement and to work for a few hours per week while on the road. A small recurring income stream can go a long way on the road. This also leaves the door open for you should you decide to come back to your company when you return.

Once youve got your money and the good will from your boss, you are ready to take the plunge.

I have been working for the better part of 20 years, so quitting my job and becoming a vagabond was a tough transition for me.I remember, only two weeks into our six-month honeymoon, telling my husband, I think Ill get my PhD.No.I want to start a nonprofit.Maybe I should work for a university . . . only to get rolled eyes in response.

Take time to rediscover who you are when you are not working.Schedule meaningful time to not think about work at all while you are traveling,and hold yourself to that timeline.Set a hard deadline for when you can begin thinking about work again, and be sure that it is at least a month (I took three).

During the period of time when you are not thinking about work, you can keep yourself busy by setting other hopes, dreams and ambitions. Author and coach Matthew Kelly suggests creating a dream list for yourself to help you determine what is most important in life.

"What do you desire? What makes you itch?" Alan Watts

Break your list into categories, i.e. spiritual, family, professional, financial, community, character, physical, travel, intellectual, etc., and spend time filling in dreams for each category (except professional --save that one for last).Your goal is to get to 100 dreams.Once youve maxed out, youll notice themes in the other aspects of your life, and this will help lead you to clear professional goals, which you can fill in after your deadline has passed.

On our honeymoon, my husband and I both completed dream lists, which made it clear that he wanted more authority and autonomy in his next joband that I wanted to be in a teaching role.When we finally began to look for jobs again in month four, we were crystal clear about what we wanted, and we both found it.

Quitting our jobs was the best thing we could have ever done for ourselves, and I believe that anyone can do the same --with the right plan.

Candace Sjogren is the founder and Managing Partner atCXO Solutions, a management consulting firm. Prior to CXO, Candace was the founder and CEO of two fin-tech companies: Bad Girl Ventures (bgv.bz) and SoMoLend (somolend.com),...

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You're 4 Small Steps Away From Quitting Your Job to Travel the World - Entrepreneur

Manoir Hovey Ranks Among Best Hotels in Travel + Leisure Magazine’s 2017 World’s Best Awards – Markets Insider

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NORTH HATLEY, Quebec, July 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Manoir Hovey, a five-star luxury resort in the Quebec countryside, has been ranked among the best hotels in the world by the readers ofTravel + Leisure magazine.

The romantic Relais & Chteaux resort on the shores of Lake Massawippi appears as one of only three Canadian hotels on the list of Top Hotels in the World. The year-round destination also was named the #2 resort in Canada. The winners were recently announced as part of Travel + Leisure's 2017World's Best Awards.

"I'm very proud of our entire team and thankful to our guests and the readers of Travel + Leisure for their support," said Jason Stafford, Manoir Hovey's managing director.

This year has seen a string of honors and new experiences at the picturesque resort. Travelers can enjoy an immersive activity that includes an overnight stay at a local farm and breeder. They can also feast on new flavors in the renovated Tap Room Pub, which introduced a new bistro menu, as well as a seasonal Sugar Shack concept featuring flavors of maple, as well as birch syrup made from tapping Manoir Hovey trees.

Chef Francis Wolf's innovative cuisine continues to earn him accolades. He was named Young Talent of the Year 2017 by Gault & Millau in the organization's first gastronomic guide focusing on Quebec. A part of the Manoir Hovey team since 2002, his bold, terroir-driven cuisine features flavors of the season, from wild mushrooms and other foraged edibles in the summer to free-range poultry and fowl in the fall.

In other news, Manoir Hovey will join the prestigious American Express Fine Resorts & Hotels collection beginning in 2018, which is exclusively for American Express Platinum card holders.

The Manoir Hovey experience includes "snowga" (yoga in the snow) and other unique ways to unwind and make memories in a timeless lakeside setting. An on-site teepee provides a touch of elegant whimsy and is an ideal spot for relaxing with a drink and reliving the adventures of the day. Also offered at Manoir Hovey are kayaking, ice fishing, foraging, tennis and more.

About Manoir Hovey

Located just 90 minutes from Montreal, Manoir Hovey is a five-star Relais & Chteaux property on the shores of Lake Massawippi. One of Canada's most charming and romantic inns, Manoir Hovey has 37 beautifully appointed rooms and suites, year-round activities, and hosts weddings, conferences and special events. Its award winning restaurant, Le Hatley, showcases ambitious terroir-driven Quebec cuisine and an extensive wine list. Overlooking the lake and surrounded by English gardens, the dining room has a tranquil setting with breathtaking views.

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Helen Patrikis 631-553-1370 rel="nofollow">169195@email4pr.com

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Manoir Hovey Ranks Among Best Hotels in Travel + Leisure Magazine's 2017 World's Best Awards - Markets Insider

Why I Visited North Korea – New York Times

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Do you think that outsiders should visit nations like North Korea? I think cracking open borders via average citizen tourism is one of the best forms of soft diplomacy.

Mark C. W. Robinson is an American pilot based in California. He visited North Korea for four days last month with his wife.

What prompted you to go? My father has visited 69 countries, and Ive had a few friends who have been to North Korea. I wanted to do something unique and decided to book a ticket via Beijing. I wanted to see for myself since we no longer know what will happen next politically.

What did you see on your trip that resonated with you? When we went to the DMZ, a soldier was extremely friendly. One political conversation came up, and he said he wished that both nations would talk. I was surprised to fly in a helicopter. Being a pilot myself, this was amazing to see the capital from the air. Its huge!

Do you think that outsiders should visit nations like North Korea? I believe outsiders should visit North Korea and other unusual nations to form their own opinion and see people running their daily lives. Tourism also gives the locals in those areas an opportunity to see Westerners and all the fashion, technology and conversation it creates.

Kelly Whitmer, a history professor at Sewanee: The University of the South, in Tennessee, visited North Korea with her family in April.

What prompted you to go? My mother-in-law, Kathryn Whitmer, who will be 80 this year, was planning a trip to participate in the Pyongyang Marathon and wanted to share the experience with a family member. She asked me if I would join her, and I agreed.

What did you see on your trip that resonated with you? I knew my trip was being carefully curated, that there were many sides of Pyongyang and the country that I simply would not see, or would be prevented from seeing. Yet, I am still glad that I went. It was like stepping into another world. It was the kind of experience that changes the way you look at your own life. Apart from the experience of participating in the Pyongyang Marathon, which was amazing, the most memorable thing I saw were the underground stations with impressive, colorful mosaics and crowds of people coming and going. I will also never forget the morning music played in Pyongyang every day, starting just after dawn. I can still hear the melody in my head.

Do you think that outsiders should visit nations like North Korea? While I understand the argument against traveling there that by going youre supporting the regime I still believe in the power of building and sustaining meaningful connections with people in different parts of the world through travel.

Simon Park visited the country twice in 2011 to teach at North Koreas only private university, Pyongyang University of Science and Technology, or P.U.S.T., which is funded by a Christian group in the West. Two Americans who worked at the university are currently detained. Mr. Park was a missionary who volunteered to teach a course on international finance.

What prompted you to go? I was looking for more meaningful engagement with people than just transactional engagements, like food distribution and financial gifts. I thought P.U.S.T. was an endeavor that had a chance.

What did you see on your trip that resonated with you? What I saw is what the authorities wanted me to see. At P.U.S.T., a sign, attributed to Kim Jong-il, was displayed on a prominent wall in the main building and read, Plant your feet firmly in the motherland and watch the world. This seemingly schizophrenic attitude explained many dissonant beliefs and behaviors. Young students were selected by the state for academic performance and loyalty to the regime. The authorities knew who I was. They held my passport and phone for six weeks, but were willing to allow me to teach their students. Allowing access to its people as long as the regime feels confident that it can control its citizens and the visitors seemed to be the standard for all interactions with outsiders.

Do you think that outsiders should visit nations like North Korea? They should visit, but with realistic expectations and free of personal agenda.

Patrick Leslie, from Texas, traveled to North Korea in June 2012 while he was studying in Seoul, South Korea. He played on a recreational basketball team that traveled to Pyongyang for a friendly match.

What prompted you to go? We wanted to bring our two countries closer through basketball.

What did you see on your trip that resonated with you? The actual basketball game we played was something that had an impact on the kids. That is something I will never forget.

Do you think that outsiders should visit nations like North Korea? It is an amazing experience. You get to see and hear things you would never see on television.

Joseph Vo, a Canadian, visited North Korea last month while traveling throughout Asia.

What prompted you to go? Over the past couple of years, I had become very interested in the regime and the people that come out of it. I found myself digging for defector stories. We often hear stories about the regime, the leaders and their wacky antics. I feel that the people get lost in all of that.

What did you see on your trip that resonated with you? On the bus from the airport to inner-city Pyongyang, we saw these ladies carrying buckets of water around, watering city grass. I asked one of our Korean tour guides about it. She said that these were just citizens of the city, and that they were watering the lawn because of the lack of rain. Children in school uniforms joined in every day. It was strange, because people didnt just do it when they had time, but at the same time every day the entire city would join in, so it felt forced.

Do you think that outsiders should visit nations like North Korea? Before traveling to the country I thought that a trip like this was not meant for everyone. I still feel this way. Especially with recent news, it is going to be a hard sell, but I truthfully did not feel in danger at any point on this trip.

Produced by Megan Specia. Josephine Sedgwick contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on July 25, 2017, on Page A9 of the New York edition with the headline: For These Tourists, a Trip to North Korea Was Worth the Risks.

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India Gearing Up for Big Supercomputing Expansion | TOP500 … – TOP500 News

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A number of news outlets in India are reporting the government is close to deploying six new supercomputers, two of which will deliver a peak performance of two petaflops.

According to a report in the Hindustan Times, the six new systems are part of the initial phase of a three-phase project that eventually result in the deployment of 50 supercomputers across the country. The Indian government has allocated Rs 4,500 crore (close to 700 million USD) for the project, which was approved in March 2016. The effort is being managed by the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), an R&D institution under Indias Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology.

When the project was announced last year, the government expected to have these first systems installed by August 2017. But the most recent reports from India indicate that the Request for Proposal (RFP) for the project is just wrapping up now. According to Ashutosh Sharma, secretary in the Ministry of Science and Technology, their current goal is to have the systems up and running before the end of the year.

The six initial supercomputers will be installed at four technology centers: Banaras Hindu University, Kanpur, Kharagpur and Hyderabad -- Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Pune, and Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru. Of these first machines, two of them will have a peak performance of two petaflops, while the remainder will be the around 500 teraflops.

Currently, Indias most powerful supercomputer is a 1.2-petaflop (peak) Cray XC40, which is housed at the Supercomputer Education and Research Centre (SERC) for the Indian Institute of Science. It currently sits at number 165 on the latest TOP500 list, and is the highest-ranked of the countrys four systems that earned a spot on the list

One of the principle goals of the three-phase project is to develop a domestic capacity to design and manufacture supercomputers part of the countrys Made in India initiative. In the first phase, three of the supercomputers will be imported, while the remaining three will be based on imported parts, but assembled in the country. In the projects second phase, compute nodes, switches and other network componentry will be designed and manufactured domestically. In the final phase of the project, almost the entire system will be built in India.

The project is scheduled to take place over a period of seven years.

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LANL Adds Capacity to Trinity Supercomputer for Stockpile Stewardship – insideHPC

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Los Alamos National Laboratory has boosted the computational capacity of their Trinity supercomputer with a merger of two system partitions.

Now available for production computing in the Labs classified network, the system now usesXeon Haswell and the Xeon Phi Knights Landing (KNL) processors. Trinity has provided service for the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA)s Stockpile Stewardship Program since summer 2016, but it has been dramatically expanded to now provide almost 680,000 advanced technology KNL processors as a key part of NNSAs overall Advanced Simulation and Computing (ASC) Program.

With this merge completed, we have now successfully released one of the most capable supercomputers in the world to the Stockpile Stewardship Program, said Bill Archer, Los Alamos ASC program director. Trinity will enable unprecedented calculations that will directly support the mission of the national nuclear security laboratories, and we are extremely excited to be able to deliver this capability to the complex.

The Trinity project is managed and operated by Los Alamos National Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratories under the New Mexico Alliance for Computing at Extreme Scale (ACES) partnership. The capabilities of Trinity are required for supporting the NNSA Stockpile Stewardship programs certification and assessments to ensure that the nations nuclear stockpile is safe, reliable, and secure.

In June 2017, the ACES team took the classified Trinity-Haswell system down, as planned, and merged the existing Xeon processors (Haswell) partition with the Xeon Phi processors (Knights Landing) partition. The system was back up for production use the first week of July.

The Knights Landing processors were accepted for use in December 2016 and since then they have been used for open science work in the unclassified network, permitting nearly unprecedented large-scale science simulations.

The main benefit of doing open science was to find any remaining issues with the system hardware and software before Trinity is turned over for production computing in the classified environment, said Trinity project director Jim Lujan. In addition, some great science results were realized, he said. Knights Landing is a multicore processor that has 68 compute cores on one piece of silicon, called a die. This allows for improved electrical efficiency that is vital for getting to exascale, the next frontier of supercomputing, and is three times as power-efficient as the Haswell processors, Archer noted.

Trinity now has 301,952 Xeon and 678, 912 Xeon Phi processors all available for classified computing, along with two pebibytes (PiB) of memory. Byte is the standard unit of digital information in a computer, originally the number of bitstypically eightrequired to encode a single text character. A single petabyte would be one quadrillion bytes. (For reference, it has been said that a single petabyte of MP3-encoded music would take 2,000 years to play.) And the binary version, the pebibyte, is 12 percent greater.

Besides blending the well-known Haswell processors with the new, more efficient Knights Landing ones, Trinity benefits from the introduction of solid state storage (burst buffers). This is changing the ratio of disk and tape necessary to satisfy bandwidth and capacity requirements, and it drastically improves the usability of the systems for application input/output. With its new solid-state storage burst buffer and capacity-based campaign storage, Trinity enables users to iterate more frequently, ultimately reducing the amount of time to produce a scientific result.

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Dozens of US clinics sell unproven stem cell therapies for heart failure – Reuters

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(Reuters Health) - Stem cell therapy isnt approved to treat heart failure in the U.S., but dozens of clinics nationwide advertise the treatments anyway, often charging thousands of dollars for procedures that may not be safe or effective, a new study suggests.

Researchers found 61 centers offering stem cell therapies for heart failure as of last year in the U.S. alone, including five that claimed to have performed more than 100 procedures. Only nine centers required copies of patients medical records and just one facility said it had a board certified cardiologist on staff.

We simply do not know anything about the quality of the treatment delivered at these centers, said senior study author Dr. Paul Hauptman director of heart failure at Saint Louis University Hospital.

These centers are not regulated in any way, Hauptman said by email.

Almost 6 million Americans have heart failure, and its one of the most common reasons older adults go to the hospital, according to the American Heart Association.

It happens when the heart muscle is too weak to effectively pump enough blood through the body. Symptoms can include fatigue, weight gain from fluid retention, shortness of breath and coughing or wheezing. Medications can help strengthen the heart and minimize fluid buildup in the body.

While some experimental stem cell therapies for heart failure are currently being tested in late-stage human trials, none have won approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

In theory, after a transplant, stem cells could permanently become part of the diseased heart and either help grow new healthy heart tissue or tell existing cells to work better, said Paul Knoepfler, a cell biology researcher at the University of California Davis School of Medicine in Sacramento who wasnt involved in the study.

Its also possible stem cells could temporarily visit the heart and stimulate a positive response in cells already there, he said.

Even though theres no conclusive proof yet that any stem cell treatments are safe and effective for heart failure, centers contacted for the study charge an average of $7,694 for each treatment using patients own stem cells and $6,038 for each procedure with donor stem cells.

In one instance, though, a clinic staff member said, If you have a million dollars to spend we will set you up with weekly infusions.

Hauptmans team had used a standard script when contacting each center, asking about the stem cell treatment itself, medical exams before and afterward and pricing.

Among the other responses they received from clinic staff were remarks such as, If you know anyone that can start an IV, a neighbor that is a nurse for example, we can send you the stem cells and that person can administer them to you and We hope you don't believe your doctor when they tell you there is nothing they can do, you were smart to call us.

None of the sites in the study discussed what methods they used to isolate or identify stem cells, though most claimed to use patients cells and 24 said they got cells from fat tissue.

Most centers claimed to deliver cells intravenously, researchers report in JAMA Internal Medicine.

This approach has been associated with complications such as stroke, in which infused cells block blood vessels in the brain, said Douglas Sipp, a researcher at RIKEN Center for Developmental Biology in Kobe, Japan, who wasnt involved in the study.

The biggest risk is that patients will waste their money, time and hopes on an unnecessary and useless invasive procedure, Sipp said by email.

If any stem cell treatment did ultimately prove safe and effective enough to win FDA approval, it would likely offer a significant improvement over the limited treatment options currently available, said Leigh Turner, a researcher at the University of Minnesota Center for Bioethics who wasnt involved in the study.

But its impossible to say what patients would get at unregulated clinics offering unapproved stem cell therapies, Turner said by email. In at least two cases unrelated to the current study, patients died after getting stem cell procedures at a clinic in Florida, and in another case at a different Florida clinic, a woman went blind, Turner noted.

Clinics marketing stem cell treatments to patients suffering from heart failure might be administering anything from slurries of mixed cells, some of which might be stem cells, to nothing more than cellular debris, Turner said. Often one can only speculate.

SOURCE: bit.ly/2uQve40 JAMA Internal Medicine, online July 24, 2017.

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Dozens of US clinics sell unproven stem cell therapies for heart failure - Reuters

Is Spirituality Irrational? – Patheos (blog)

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Guest post by Ron Garret

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Spirituality and rationality seem completely opposed. But are they really?

To get at this question, lets start with a little thought experiment. Consider the following two questions:

1. If you were given a choice between reading a physical book (or an e-book) or listening to an audiobook, which would you prefer?

2. If you were given a choice between listening to music, or looking at the grooves of a phonograph record through a microscope, which would you prefer?

But I am more interested in the answer to a third question:

3. For which of the first two questions do you have a stronger preference between the two options?

Most people will have a stronger preference in the second case than the first. But why? Both situations are in some sense the same: there is information being fed into your brain, in one case through your ears and in the other through your eyes. So why should peoples preference for ears be so much stronger in the case of music than books?

There is something in the essence of music that is lost in the translation between an audio and a visual rendering. The same loss happens for words too, but to a much lesser extent. Subtle shades of emphasis and tone of voice can convey essential information in spoken language. This is one of the reasons that email is so notorious for amplifying misunderstandings. But the loss in much greater in the case of music.

The same is true for other senses. Color is one example. A blind person can abstractly understand what light is, and that color is a byproduct of the wavelength of light, and that light is a form of electromagnetic radiation yet there is no way for a blind person to experience subjectively the difference between red and blue and green. But just because some people cant see colors doesnt mean that colors arent real.

The same is true for spiritual experiences.

Now, before I expand that thought, I want to give you my bona fides. I am a committed rationalist, and an atheist (though I dont like to self-identify as an atheist because Id rather focus on what I *do* believe in rather than what I dont). So I am not trying to convince you that God exists. What I want to say is rather that certain kinds of spiritual experiences *might* be more than mere fantasies made up out of whole cloth. If we ignore this possibility we risk shutting ourselves off from a vital part of the human experience.

I grew up in the deep south (Kentucky and Tennessee) in a secular Jewish family. When I was 12 my parents sent me to a Christian summer camp (there were no other kinds in Kentucky back in those days). After a week of being relentlessly proselytized (read: teased and ostracized), I decided I was tired of being the camp punching bag and so I relented and gave my heart to Jesus. I prayed, confessed my sins, and just like that I was a member of the club.

I experienced a euphoria that I cannot render into words, in exactly the same way that one cannot render into words the subjective experience of listening to music or seeing colors or eating chocolate or having sex. If you have not experienced these things for yourself, no amount of description can fill the gap. Of course, you can come to an *intellectual* understanding that feeling the presence of the holy spirit has nothing to do with any holy spirit. You can intellectually grasp that it is an internal mental process resulting from (probably) some kind ofneurotransmitter releasedin response to social and internal mental stimulus. But that wont allow you to understand *what it is like* any more than understanding physics will let you understand what colors look like or what music sounds like.

Happily, there areways to stimulatethe subjective experience that Im describing other than accepting Jesus as your Lord and Savior. Meditation, for example, can produce similar results. It can be avery powerful experience. It can even become addictive, almostlike a drug.

I am not necessarily advocating that you go try to get yourself a hit of religious euphoria (though I wouldnt discourage you either the experience can give you some interesting and useful perspective on life). Instead, I simply want to convince you to entertain the possibility that people might profess to believe in God for reasons other than indoctrination or stupidity. Religious texts and rituals might be attempts to share real subjective experiences that, in the absence of a detailed modern understanding of neuroscience, can appear to originate from mysterious, subtle external sources.

The reason I want to convince you to entertain this notion is that an awful lot of energy gets wasted by arguing against religious beliefs on logical grounds, pointing out contradictions in the Bible and whatnot. Such arguments tend to be ineffective, which can be very frustrating for those who advance them. The antidote for this frustration is to realize that spirituality is not about logic. Its about subjective experiences to which not everyone is privy. Logic is about looking at the grooves. Spirituality is about hearing the music.

The good news is that adopting science and reason doesnt mean you have to give up on spirituality any more than you have to give up on music. There are myriad paths to spiritual experience, to a sense of awe and wonder at the grand tapestry of creation, to the essential existential mysteries of life and consciousness, to what religious people call God. Walking in the woods. Seeing the moons of Jupiter through a telescope. Gathering with friends to listen to music, or to sing, or simply to share the experience of being alive. Meditation. Any of these can be spiritual experiences if you allow them to be. In this sense, God is everywhere.

Things to ponder: Why are spiritual experiences in general so strongly associated with irrationality? Is it possible that spiritual experiences *causes* people to become irrational?

Do you think comparing spiritual experience to music is an apt analogy? What about comparing it to a psychedelic drug?

What are the benefits and drawbacks of seeking spiritual experiences? On balance, is it a worthwhile thing to do?

___________________________________________

Connect with Dr. Gleb TsipurskyonTwitter, onFacebook, and onLinkedIn, and follow hisRSS feedandnewsletter.

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Prufrock: Surfing and Spirituality, Isaac Bashevis Singer’s Religion, and Revisiting the 1918 Spanish Flu Pandemic – The Weekly Standard

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Isaac Bashevis Singers religion: Fiction was where Singers Yiddishkeytwhich he translates as Jewishness and which I would suggest can be understood as Jewish lifefound its fullest expression. It was his way of being Jewish with others.

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Surfing religiously: Though Calvinist missionaries outlawed surfing when they first came to Hawaii in the 1820sthey viewed it as frivolous and wantonthe last 50 years have seen single-fin riding rabbis, short boarding priests, and bodysurfing Buddhist monks. Surf-related yoga and meditation retreats are common, too, led by the likes of the Pipeline master Gerry Lopez. Bethany Hamilton, the professional who lost an arm to a tiger shark when she was 13, looks to her faith in God to compete on the same level as pros with two arms (which she does mind-bendingly well). The big-wave champ Greg Long sits in lotus to prepare for confronting apartment building-sized walls of ocean.

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Push notifications are ruining your life. Turn them all off.

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The spiritualist convictions of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

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Nearly everyone agrees: Dunkirk is the best film of the summer.

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Revisiting the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic: There had been pandemics before, notably the Russian flu of the 1890s, which killed a million people, but nothing on this extraordinary scale. Bloated corpses clogged rivers; bells never ceased tolling for the dead; and smoke blocked out the sunlight for days as the unburied were cremated in huge funeral pyres. When the flu subsided in 1919, nearly 50 million people had died.

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Salvador Dals mustache intact 28 years after the painters death: The mustache kept its classic 10-past-10 position, Llus Peuelas, the secretary general of the foundation that oversees Dals estate, told reporters on Friday, referring to the artists waxed and gravity-defying bristles, which Dal kept pointed upward, like the hands of a clock. Narcs Bardalet, who had embalmed Dals body in 1989, told the Catalan radio station RAC1 that finding the mustache intact was a miracle.

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Can poetry and pop change your life?

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Essay of the Day:

In Aeon, Sam Haselby writes about the 19th-century interest in the beauty of the soul and what it can teach us today:

In a global culture that appears increasingly obsessed with radical individualism, narcissistic presentations of self, and incendiary political rhetoric, it is hard to imagine that society once cared about the beauty of the soul. But, in the late 18th and early 19th centuries in Germany and across Europe, the pursuit of a beautiful soul became a cornerstone of philosophical thought and popular discourse, advanced by some of the most important intellectuals of the time, including Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Friedrich Schiller and Wilhelm von Humboldt. To these thinkers, the pursuit of inner perfectibility responded to the horrors of the French Revolutions irrational mass action culminating in The Terror of the 1790s. Nascent notions of democracy, they believed, could be developed only if each individual achieved liberation from what Immanuel Kant described as the self-incurred tutelage of intellectual immaturity by developing cognitive and emotional faculties through aesthetic experiences.

At the core of the beautiful soul is the idea that the individual possesses an innate cognitive potential. Subject to the right environmental and educational conditions, this latent potential can be developed to reach a more perfect state of intellect, morality, character and conduct. The beautiful soul is an aesthetic concept focused on developing human capacities and advancing knowledge and culture. It entails the pursuit of personal cultivation to create a convergence of the individual aesthetic impulse with a collective ethical ideal. The beautiful soul is a virtuous soul, one that possesses a sense of justice, pursues wisdom, and practises benevolence through an aestheticised proclivity for the good.

Read the rest.

* *

Photo: Jaguar catches a fish

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Poem: Horace, II.10. Translated by Ryan Wilson

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High school students gather for Spirituality and Leadership Institute – Caldwell University News

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Caldwell, N.J. Thinking deeply about how you communicate, text and post might not be the way most teenagers would like to spend a week at summer camp, but 10 high school students found it was the best way they could imagine.

The students gathered on the campus of Caldwell University from July 15 to 21 for the Spirituality and Leadership Institute program.

We probed questions like: What does it look like for us to eat, drink, dress, shop, watch, play and love in ways that help and heal those around us and foster health and happiness in our own lives? explained Dr. Kyle Bennett, Ph.D., director of the institute and a Caldwell University assistant professor of philosophy.

Mr. Bennett made us understand that nothing just is. There is always a further meaning, said Rich Franklin, a rising senior at St. Mary of the Assumption High School in Elizabeth.

Now in its second year, the program is aimed at helping young people look at avenues for promoting public justice and seeking the common good. Mornings consisted of lectures and class; afternoons and evenings included free time and organized events. The students lived in the universitys residence hall.

It was a new experience every day, said Viv Zeballos, a rising senior at Millburn High School.

I felt like I was actually in college, said Franklin, who attended the institute for a second year.

Among the speakers was Meghan Ritchey, an events coordinator and curator in New York City, who gave career advice. She stressed the importance of being mindful of serving others and at the same time providing a quality product. Ritchey said that as a freelancer she must rely on God because there is so much uncertainty. She encouraged the students to choose good mentors and to find ways to work with teams, putting experiences over events and concentrating on relationships more than work. She said they should show God they are willing to take risks. Anything you think you are bad at, you should do.

Ritcheys talk was so motivating and inspiring, said Zeballos, who works at a bakery and now feels empowered to take risks and to share her creative promotion ideas. For Noah Wickenheiser, a rising junior from Notre Dame High School in East Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, Bennetts talk on interacting with others was most valuable. It made me think about how I act around others and how I value others, he said.

Other speakers included: actor Matt Lowe on thinking and creativity, business executive and Caldwell adjunct professor Barbara Davies on journaling and expression, and Assistant Professor of Theology Christopher Cimorelli, Ph.D., on working and the environment.

Getting to know students from different schools and locations was a broadening experience. Im basically a city kid who found a country friend, said Franklin.

Activities included rope courses at the Turtle Back Zoo, a Jackals baseball game, an ice cream social, dodgeball, kickball and mini golf.

The program was well organized, said Wickenheiser. They included everyones ideas.

Id rate it as a really positive experience, said Zeballos.

A 10 out of 10, agreed Wickenheiser.

The institute is made possible through a grant from the Lilly Endowment Inc.

The other students who participated are:

Antonia Ippolito, Pope John XXIII Regional High School

Nasir Jones and Jennifer Lawson from St. Mary of the Assumption High School

Daniel Cwynar from James Caldwell High School

Sophia Feijoo from St. Dominic Academy

Miles Smith from Union Catholic Regional High School

Sidney Lauredant from Oratory Preparatory School

An optional overnight weekend will be held October 6 to 9 at the Spruce Lake Retreat Center in Canadensis, Pennsylvania.

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High school students gather for Spirituality and Leadership Institute - Caldwell University News

Column: The spirituality of remembering the 1967 Detroit Rebellion – Detroit Free Press

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The Rev. Canon Dr. William J. Danaher, Jr. Published 3:35 p.m. ET July 24, 2017

Mike Thompson's animated look at the 50th anniversary of the Detroit uprising. Mike Thompson/Detroit Free Press

Pingree Street in Detroit burns during rioting in 1967.(Photo: Tony Spina/Detroit Free Press)Buy Photo

It is humbling to walk through "Detroit 67: Perspectives," an exhibit at the Detroit Historical Society. At its beginning, visitors stop to create their own headlines. Working with a template, they can describe the events of 1967 as a riot, a revolution, an uprising, a rampage or a rebellion. They can call the people involved individuals, protesters, thugs, freedom fighters or criminals. They can characterize the police response as actions that quelled or assaulted the gathering or gangs on the streets.

This exercises purpose is to help us see how the words we use can reveal our biases and attitudes. In an era of post-truth politics and fake news, the exhibit therefore invites self-reflection about the history we share, or dont share, about what happened in Detroit in 1967.

According to its tag-line the Detroit Historical Society is an organization where the past is present. However, the Detroit 67: Perspectives exhibit shows how this phrase represents a complex reality. It points not only to the power dynamics at work in the process of writing history, but in the memories each of us carries in our bodies whether we personally lived through the events of 1967 or not.

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What binds a community together is the common history and memories its people share. In contexts where there has been longstanding injustice and violence, reconciliation stands or falls on developing a shared sense of what happened, when, and how this past continues to affect the present and future. More than any other accomplishment, the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (1996-1998) did just this in the public hearings it held and in a massive, multi-volume report published from 1998-2003.

By revealing the different histories we have learned and the memories we share, "Detroit 67: Perspectives," shines a light on the work we still need to do. In order for us to find wholeness and healing as a wider community, we need to loosen our grip on our own stories and listen to the stories of others. Because there is the deep connection between history and memory between what is written and learned (history) and the imprint this knowledge makes on our feelings and attitudes (memory).

This is difficult work: Memories divide as much as unite. They traumatize as well as heal. They tell truths that are self-evident but largely unspoken. They remind us that the past is still present within us. Memories haunt us like ghosts or walk alongside us as spiritual companions. They can bind us or set us free.

It is also spiritual work, because what makes a memory bad or good is not its content, but the way we carry it in our minds and bodies. This is why, in the end, we cannot simply revisit the factual history of the 1967 Rebellion if we want a positive outcome from this commemoration. We need collective reflection, interaction, catharsis, conversation, communion, and conversion if we want to revisit this past in a productive way.

We need, in other words, to make from our past a kind of ritual that will help us come together in a new, powerful way. Rituals are critical, because at their best they help our bodies metabolize our memories in new and powerful ways.

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To do this, my collaborator, Oren Goldenberg, and I have worked with the Charles Wright Museum of African American Historyto produce a performance art project, People of the Infinite Fires. Beginning and ending on the same dates of the Rebellion, this project will create space for ritual catharsis and artistic performance around a sacred fire that will burn continuously for five days.

The fire will be kindled at the Museums entrance, on an altar fabricated by Ryan C. Doyle and decorated by Olayami Dabls of Detroits African Bead Museum. Curated performances by local artists will take place alongside other rituals or remembrances provided by participating community members.

Although the histories of the 1967 Rebellion remembers fire as destructive force, fires are also used in many communities to enter sacred space, to purify people, to convey an offering, to hold collective space, and to communicate a divine presence. By ritually keeping a fire, the project will transfigure the way we remember the role fire, and ritual, plays in our lives and memories.

At the end of the five-day period, the fire will be extinguished ceremoniously with water from the Detroit River. The ashes will give nutrients to a seed buried under the fires ashes. As the 50th anniversary of the Rebellion passes, the seed will be a ritual reminder of what has taken place, a hopeful promise for the future.

This project seeks to breathe new life into Detroits motto as we revisit 1967: We hope for better things; it will arise from the ashes (Speramus meliora; resurget cineribus). This motto does not bear the false promise of a world without fire, but rather conveys the hope that fires can be part of a slow and sacred process of social healing and reconciliation. May this hope be fulfilled, God willing.

The Rev. Canon Dr. William J. Danaher, Jr. is rector ofChrist Church Cranbrook and canon for Interfaith and Ecumenical Engagement at theEpiscopal Diocese of Michigan.

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Column: The spirituality of remembering the 1967 Detroit Rebellion - Detroit Free Press

Fasting’s folly: Research shows it’s not more effective than reducing … – Allentown Morning Call

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From ancient Greece to some of the world's main religions, fasting has long been promoted as a path to spiritual enlightenment. In the early 1900s, fasting took on an important role in medicine; it was used by physicians to treat everything from diabetes to epilepsy.

The practice has experienced a recent resurgence in the weight-loss world, thanks to the popularity of diets such as Lean Gains, the 5:2 Diet and Eat Stop Eat. These diets each recommend different types of fasting that can range from not eating anything for a full 24 hours to dramatically limiting calories a couple of days a week.

The promise? Proponents of intermittent fasting say it will help you shed fat, build muscle, lower your risk of cancer and heart disease and even make you live longer. But do these diets really work better than typical weight-loss plans?

We can all agree: Dieting isn't fun. Sticking to a plan day after day makes dieters feel like there's no end in sight, and it's only a matter of time until they cave and go off the rails.

With intermittent fasting, it's almost as though you get to be on a part-time diet. Sure, there will be days of restriction, but they're always interspersed among higher-calorie days where you can eat what you crave (within reason). This seems to be the appeal for many dieters.

The skinny on fasts

Here's what the science reveals so far for the three major types of intermittent fasting diets.

Alternate-day fasting: Don't eat for 24 hours and then eat "normally" the next 24 hours (example: Eat Stop Eat).

There isn't any evidence to show that alternate-day fasting has a benefit over other types of diets. Only three small studies have been done on this type of diet, and none of them had a comparison or control group for benchmarking.

Although one study demonstrated an average weight loss of 2.5 percent over 22 days, the participants reported being very hungry on fasting days, and this didn't get better over time.

Modified fasting: Eat a quarter of the calories you need in a day (about 500) on two nonconsecutive days of the week and eat a normal diet the rest of the week (example: 5:2 Diet).

There are three studies on modified fasting in overweight and obese individuals that have a comparison group (either 1,200-1,500 calories per day or three-quarters of calorie needs). Only one of the studies found that the fasting group lost 4.1 percent more weight than the comparison group.

Blood sugar levels weren't significantly different between the fasting and comparison groups in any of the studies, but insulin levels were lower in the fasting group in two of the studies. (High insulin levels encourage your body to store more fat, especially around your waistline.)

Time-restricted feeding: This diet pattern extends your nighttime fast from 12 to 20 hours so you have less time to eat and eat fewer meals during the day (example: Lean Gains).

There have been two small studies on time-restricted feeding in people. In one study, 29 men with normal body mass index followed a nighttime fast of 11 hours or more for two weeks and also spent two weeks following a regular eating schedule. During the fasting period, the men lost 1.3 percent more than in the control period.

Another study looked at the impact of having only one meal a day in the afternoon for eight weeks in 15 adults with a healthy body mass index and found they lost 2.1 kg of fat compared with losing no weight or fat when they ate the same amount of calories divided over three meals a day. Not surprisingly, when the participants were eating one meal a day, they reported feeling much hungrier in the morning.

No obvious benefits

Overall, intermittent fasting diets don't seem to be any better than daily calorie reduction for promoting weight loss or health. A review of all of the research studies that have compared intermittent fasting to daily calorie reduction found that in the intermittent fasting groups, people lost 3 to 8 percent of their weight over three to 24 weeks while daily calorie reduction led to weight loss of 4 to 14 percent over six to 24 weeks.

Fat loss, insulin and blood sugar levels also weren't any better in the intermittent fasting groups compared to daily calorie reduction.

No harmful effects of intermittent fasting have been reported in studies in healthy adults. Still, these studies are of small groups of people and are short-term. The research has also ignored the impact of intermittent fasting on exercise habits, sleep quality and diet quality. I can guarantee that meeting all of your nutrient needs in one meal a day is impossible, making the longevity of such a diet questionable and even risky.

If you have a medical condition, are taking medications, have diabetes or problems with blood sugar control, are underweight or have a history of disordered eating, speak to your physician and dietitian before trying a fasting diet. If you're pregnant or breast-feeding, intermittent fasting isn't a good diet for you.

As promised, intermittent fasting appears to promote weight loss and improve metabolic parameters, but it doesn't seem to be as effective as the tried and true method of moderate calorie reduction on a day-to-day basis.

Limiting the amount of time you spend eating via intermittent fasting may help you eat fewer calories and result in weight loss over time. It all depends on what type of routine works best for you. Some people find they get hungry frequently or struggle with drops in blood sugar levels during the day, which makes smaller, frequent meals a better option for them.

The common concern with fasting is that people may be prone to overeating on non-fasting days. Surprisingly, the research doesn't suggest that this happens. Whether this type of diet works for you probably depends on your personality, lifestyle and eating preferences.

Brissette, a freelance writer for The Washington Post, also is a dietitian, foodie and president of 80TwentyNutrition.com.

A fasting diet can range from not eating anything for a full 24 hours to dramatically limiting calories a couple of days a week.

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Fasting's folly: Research shows it's not more effective than reducing ... - Allentown Morning Call

Explore the International Space Station with Google Street View – Space.com

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Aspiring astronauts can now pretend to float on the International Space Station (ISS), thanks to Google. The company worked with astronauts on the orbiting complex to provide a Google Street View of the space station, from its science labs to its beautiful Earth-facing Cupola window.

Thomas Pesquet, a European Space Agency astronaut who helped collect the images earlier this year, said in a blog post that the experience of capturing the tour "describes the feeling of being in space" better than words or a picture can. But there were limitations to collecting the data. For one, astronauts float in space, so the imagery of the ISS couldn't be captured the same way as other Google Street View locations.

NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston and Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama worked with Google to create a "gravity-free method of collecting the imagery," Pesquet said in the blog post. These methods included using DSLR cameras and other equipment already available at the space station. An extended video provides an additional look at how the view came together. (Pesquet didn't specify the other equipment in the blog post.) [The International Space Station: Inside and Out (Infographic)]

"I collected still photos in space, that were sent down to Earth where they were stitched together to create panoramic 360 degree imagery of the ISS," Pesquet wrote.

"We did a lot of troubleshooting before collecting the final imagery that you see today in Street View," he added.

"The ISS has technical equipment on all surfaces, with lots of cables and a complicated layout with modules shooting off in all directions left, right, up, down," Pesquet wrote. "And it's a busy place, with six crew members [at the time] carrying out research and maintenance activities 12 hours a day. There are a lot of obstacles up there, and we had limited time to capture the imagery, so we had to be confident that our approach would work."

The International Space Station's U.S. laboratory module as seen through Google Street View.

The tour is the first Google Street View captured in space, and it features annotations that pop up to explain additional information about each module, such as how astronauts stay physically fit or the kinds of food they eat.

You can read the entire blog post here: https://www.blog.google/products/maps/welcome-outer-space-view/ and take a virtual tour of the International Space Station here in Google Street View: https://www.google.com/streetview/#international-space-station/

The International Space Station's Cupola observation module as seen through Google Street View.

The ISS has been occupied continuously since November 2000. It generally houses three to six crewmembers, who split their days between science and maintenance activities. Crewmembers currently "commute" to space on the Russian Soyuz spacecraft, but within the next few years, commercial spacecraft from SpaceX and Boeing will ferry astronauts from U.S. soil for the first time since the space shuttle's retirement in 2011.

Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.

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Space Station to Perform Three Orbit Chase of Solar Eclipse – Avgeekery (blog)

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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. Astronauts aboard the International Space Station may have the best windows for viewing theGreat American Eclipseas they photograph and record Augusts astronomical event during three consecutive orbits.

Soaring 255 miles above, the six person crew of Expedition 52 will have detailed observation objectives in place as they point cameras from the Cupolas windows while they trek across North America once every 91 minutes. They will also be the first humans to witness this solar eclipse thanks to orbital mechanics.

In May 2012, NASA astronaut Don Pettit witnessed a solar eclipse from Earth orbit. It is amazing to see an eclipse from orbit, Pettit recalled. The shadow on Earth looks just like what you see in the physics and astronomy books.

Newly released ground tracks by NASA provided to AvGeekery.com show the space stations three positions as it passes through the Moons penumbra during the midday hours ofAugust 21 the height of solar eclipse across America. Astronauts will attach special solar filters to their 400 mm and 800 mm cameras as they approach their first observations over the Pacific Ocean.

Our flight team is tracking opportunities for the astronauts on board the station to photograph both the eclipse and the Moons shadow on the planet, NASA spokesperson Dan Hout explained to this aerospace journalist from the Johnson Space Center near Houstonon Monday. With the current calculations, the station should have three passes to view the eclipse.

During the first transit across the United States, the space stations crew will experience a partial solar eclipse with only 37% of the Sun covered by the Moon at about12:41 p.m. EDT. Hout noted that as the station crosses the California coastline at this time, the eclipse will not have begun for those on Earth, however, a partial eclipse will be in progress and observed by the crew of six aboard the orbital outpost.

The stations second pass over North America will observe a greater view of a partial solar eclipse. The crew will again train cameras on a totality of 44% of Sun coverage by the Moon at2:24 p.m.

At the closest approach, ISS will be just south of Hudson Bay while the Moons umbra shadow is located in southwestern Kentucky just over 1700 km away, Hout added from his NASA office. While ISS does not pass near the location of the Moons umbra, the Moons umbra should still be easily visible near the horizon.

As the orbital laboratory sails into an orbital sunset during its third orbit of the eclipse timeline, the stations crew will witness their best viewing of the celestial ballet. As the space station passes over the central Atlantic Ocean at4:18 p.m., the crew will observe a partial solar eclipse of 85% for only seconds as their orbital velocity of 17,450 m.p.h. takes them into a golden sunset aboutfive minutes later.

This pass offers the opportunity to see the Sun with horns as it sets into the atmosphere assuming an appropriate filter is used to block the Suns brightness, said Hout poised with an orbital tracking map before him. At sunset, 27% of the Sun will be covered by the Moon.

Photographs taken from the space station will appear on NASA.gov soon after the orbital passes.

Closer to home, NASA will launch two aircraft from Ellington Field near Houston to observe the American eclipse. NASAs twin WB-57 aircraft will fly together at an altitude of 50,000 feet loaded with both visible and infrared telescopes to gather solar eclipse data during an eight minute window. The twin aircraft plan to be over the Carbondale, Illinois region during the short totality window.

The eclipse will provide a unique opportunity to study the sun, Earth, moon and their interaction because of the eclipses long path over land coast to coast, NASA spokesperson Brian Dunbar added. Scientists will be able to take ground-based and airborne observations over a period of an hour and a half to complement the wealth of data and images provided by space assets.

NASA is informing the public who plan to observe the eclipse to check the safety authenticity of glasses labeled for eclipse viewing sold online or in stores. The space agency stated this week that eclipse viewing glasses and solar viewers should have a designated ISO 12312-2 certification, and that the manufacturers name and address is printed somewhere on the product.

The space agency will providelive video streamingof the solar eclipse from earth bound NASA centers based on cloud coverage. The space stations own HD video camera may provide a rare real time view of the moons shadow.

(Charles A. Atkeison reports on aerospace and technology. Follow his updates on social media via @Military_Flight.)

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