Archive for May 2010
New York Green Building Initiative
May 29, 2010 | 
Author As is occurring in many states, New York is trying to promote Green Building practices. The state is doing it by offering tax credits as financial incentives.
New York Green Building Initiative
The concept of green building isn’t particularly old and has arisen as a result of a better understanding of the impact of buildings on people and the environment. Ideally, green buildings are designed to use non-polluting energy, recyclable resources and systems that avoid health impacting elements. These buildings are extremely environmentally friendly, provide healthier environments for workers and decrease the heat and pollutant situations found in tightly packed structure and population areas such as New York City.
While green building is a nice idea, our country is based on capitalist methods. If green building isn’t cost efficient, no developer is going to pursue it because doing so will give their competition a price advantage. This is where the New York Green Building Initiative comes in.
The Initiative addresses the cost impact of green building by creating financial incentives to promote the process. By going green, developers are given breaks through tax credits. The state is one of the first in the nation to provide such an incentive system, which is a major incentive. The advantage of tax credits over other incentives is they are incredibly useful in reducing tax liability. Unlike a tax deduction which comes off of gross revenues, tax credits are used to reduce the actual amount of tax owed. For instance, if is a developer owes $5 million in taxes and gets a $2 million dollar tax credit, it has to pay $3 million in taxes.
MBA and Tertiary Education Programs in China
With China becoming the 6th largest economy in 2004 and likely to rank 4th in 2005, this is likely to fuel further anxieties over the impact of China`s rising economic might for the world economic leaders. But for company executives and aspiring young entrepreneurs, it has become imperative to understand China so as to explore the increasing business opportunities in China.
One of the usual route for this is to study and build social networks at the leading Chinese universities. Latest available figures show that there were about 85,000 foreign students studying in China in 2002. Almost 500 Chinese universities, mainly in Shanghai and Bejing, accept foreign students. The top 5 universities with the largest foreign students are Beijing Language and Culture Center, Fudan, Peking, Tsinghua and Shanghai universities.
If you are planning to do a post-graduate MBA program while working in China, there are many learning organizations to choose from.
The University of Maryland`s Smith School of Business offers a degree, custom and certification programs at learning centers within Beijing and Shanghai. Smith`s first executive MBA program class started in Jan 2003 and graduated in spring 2004.
The University of Wisconsin Milwaukee`s School of Business Administration has recently launched an EMBA program in Beijing in partnership with Motorola for staff of Motorola`s China operations.
Together with the top-ranked Jiao Tong University in Shanghai, the University of British Columbia is also offering an International MBA in China. Besides having the same curriculam as its Canadian MBA, professors from the University of British Columbia teach all of the courses.
Posted in college | 
Tags: Beijing, Bejing, Britain, business, china, chinese, education, foreign, jiao tong university, mba, Ningbo, Nottingham, precision, program, programs, shanghai, shanghai universities, tertiary, tertiary education, Tsinghua, universities, university, university of wisconsin milwaukee | 
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What is Kanji, Hiragana and Katakana
The Japanese language is so fascinating. The tonal qualities of the language is quite unique and the inherent politeness of the Japanese people is translated well into its language which is in turns elegant and stylish and drips with respect.
Japanese writing is also a very elegant script and it has evolved from its original Chinese script beginnings to become something that is intrinsically Japanese. There are actually different types or ways of writing Japanese characters and it has been a source of confusion for people who are not familiar with Japanese culture or for students of Japanese culture who have not yet fully researched the intricacies of the Japanese written language.
The three ways of writing Japanese characters are Kanji, Hiragana, and Katakana, with another version called Romaji being used for special purposed.
<b>Kanji</b>
The word kanji is a Japanese derivative of the Chinese word hanzi, which translates to “Han characters”. The word Han pertains to the Han Dynasty and is also the name that the Chinese use to refer to themselves.
Using Kanji would mean employing between 5000 to 10000 Chinese characters. This meant that writing in this form was very difficult. In 1981, the Japanese government, as a measure to simplify how Japanese is written and read, intrduced the j?y? kanji hy? or List of Chinese Characters for General Use. The list includes 1945 regular characters and 166 special characters that has a use only for writing people’s names. All official documents, as well as newspapers, textbooks as well as other publications only use this form.
<b>Hiragana</b>
Posted in Language | Tags: e-course, elegant script, General Use, Hiragana, hiragana and katakana, Japanese, Japanese language, Katakana, Language, Spanish, syllabic script | No Comments »
Metal Detectors – Pre-Purchase Guidelines
Metal detectors – When people think of Metal Detectors, some people think of combing a beach in search of coins or buried treasure while other people think of security, or the handheld scanners at a concert or sporting event.
Metal detector technology is a huge part of our everyday lives, with a range of uses that span from recreational activities to work and to safety. The metal detectors in airports, office buildings and prisons for example help ensure that no one is bringing a weapon onto the property. Consumer oriented metal detectors provide entertainment to people and give chance in discovering hidden treasures.
There are many different kinds and styles of metal detectors – gold detectors, coin and jewel detectors, beach-hunting detectors, underwater metal detectors, handheld and walk through metal detectors. Buying a metal detector can be complicated. Before deciding on a metal detector, there are a few points you should carefully consider.
Where it will be used?
Who will use it?
How often will it be put to use?
How much do metal detectors cost? Metal detectors range greatly in price… anywhere from $75.00 to all the way into the thousands. It’s advisable to do your research thoroughly and find out which features you should be looking for when purchasing. Another option to consider would be purchasing a used metal detector. It is best to buy used metal detectors from a respected dealer as apposed to advertisements found in newspaper classifieds. Most dealers will not have the manufacturers warranty but will offer a money back guarantee or trade-in options.
By carefully examining your options you will be able to find a metal detector that is suitable for your needs without the need to dig deep unnecessarily.
The Psychology of Torture
There is one place in which one’s privacy, intimacy, integrity and inviolability are guaranteed – one’s body, a unique temple and a familiar territory of sensa and personal history. The torturer invades, defiles and desecrates this shrine. He does so publicly, deliberately, repeatedly and, often, sadistically and sexually, with undisguised pleasure. Hence the all-pervasive, long-lasting, and, frequently, irreversible effects and outcomes of torture.
In a way, the torture victim’s own body is rendered his worse enemy. It is corporeal agony that compels the sufferer to mutate, his identity to fragment, his ideals and principles to crumble. The body becomes an accomplice of the tormentor, an uninterruptible channel of communication, a treasonous, poisoned territory.
It fosters a humiliating dependency of the abused on the perpetrator. Bodily needs denied – sleep, toilet, food, water – are wrongly perceived by the victim as the direct causes of his degradation and dehumanization. As he sees it, he is rendered bestial not by the sadistic bullies around him but by his own flesh.
The concept of “body” can easily be extended to “family”, or “home”. Torture is often applied to kin and kith, compatriots, or colleagues. This intends to disrupt the continuity of “surroundings, habits, appearance, relations with others”, as the CIA put it in one of its manuals. A sense of cohesive self-identity depends crucially on the familiar and the continuous. By attacking both one’s biological body and one’s “social body”, the victim’s psyche is strained to the point of dissociation.
Beatrice Patsalides describes this transmogrification thus in “Ethics of the Unspeakable: Torture Survivors in Psychoanalytic Treatment”:
Posted in Psychology | Tags: capacity, dysfunction, torture survivors, torture victim, unspeakable torture, world | 3 Comments »
A Beginner’s Guide an Lost Relatives and Ancestors
“Collecting Dead Relatives and Sometimes a Live Cousin” and “My Family Tree is Lost in the Forest” are just some of the catchy slogans found printed on the shirts of genealogy enthusiasts. These avid researchers are looking to fill the holes in their family trees. It’s work that most have been at for decades.
My wife and I wanted to get started finding our lost relatives, but we didn’t know where to begin. She had a binder full of information that one of her relatives had put together, but other than that, we were the ones who were lost.
We started by going to the Genealogy library at Brigham Young University’s Harold B. Lee Library, but you can also do this online.
The first step to finding your lost relatives is to download all the information that has already been compiled. We did this by using the Ancestral File database that is indexed at the world’s largest genealogy library, The Family History Center in Salt Lake City, Utah. We remotely accessed the database and first found my wife’s records. We saw on her pedigree chart that some relatives had already compiled information on her mother’s line, but her father’s line was empty. After downloading my wife’s pedigree chart onto a GEDCOM file, we did some research on her father’s line. The family history consultant told us that it’s possible that there has been work done on her father’s line, but it just hasn’t been connected to my wife’s file.
By typing in her paternal grandfather’s name into the search, we were able to find much more information. The consultant told us that we needed to download his pedigree chart, take it home to our computer and merge his file with my wife’s file. That would associate all his information with my wife’s.