“Detroit Preview: 2011 BMW 740 brings six-cylinder power back to the 7 - autoblog” plus 4 more

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• Detroit Preview: 2011 BMW 740 brings six-cylinder power back to the 7 - autoblog
• Sunstone Circuits Remains Committed to Customers 24/7/365, Even During ... - TMCnet
• Open Access Encyclopedias - Inside Higher Ed
• MN Teen Challenge closer to national parent than director acknowledged - Minnesota Independent
• Imaginative philosophy - Richfield Reaper

fivefilters.org featured article: Normalising the crime of the century by John Pilger. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

Detroit Preview: 2011 BMW 740 brings six-cylinder power back to the 7 - autoblog Posted: 16 Dec 2009 11:50 AM PST PRESS RELEASE The 2011 BMW 740i and 740Li Sedans – Six-Cylinder BMW Power Returns to the 7 Series in North America Woodcliff Lake, NJ – December 16, 2009 2:00pm Eastern ... As an exciting example of its EfficientDynamics engineering philosophy, BMW announced the North American debut of the 7 Series with a twin-turbocharged inline-6 engine. Featuring BMW's award-winning inline-6 engine that produces V-8 power on six-cylinder fuel consumption, the new BMW 740i and BMW 740Li achieve a remarkable balance of power, efficiency, and sporty driving dynamics. Both models will go on sale in the United States as 2011 models in Spring 2010. Pricing will be announced closer to the on-sale date. In 1977, the original BMW 7 Series was launched exclusively with inline-6 propulsion. The United States first met the BMW 7 Series in the 1978 model year as the 733i Sedan. The 733i featured a 3.2-liter inline-6 engine rated at 197 horsepower. The 733i remained on sale in America until it was replaced in 1985 by the BMW 735i Sedan. The 735i, which featured an updated inline-6 engine producing 218 horsepower from 3.4 liters, enjoyed a production run that lasted through the end of the 1992 model year. The 735i was joined by the extended-wheelbase 735iL in May of 1988. A keystone of BMW's EfficientDynamics philosophy is "virtual displacement," the notion that BMW's modern engines of smaller displacement can equal or exceed the outputs of traditional engines of larger displacement and more cylinders. This principle is already seen in the BMW 750i model, which features a twin-turbocharged V-8 engine performing at the level of BMW's previous-generation V12 engine. Virtual displacement provides the power of a larger engine with the fuel efficiency and low CO2 emissions signature of a smaller engine. The 2011 BMW 740i and 740Li feature BMW's internationally acclaimed twin-turbocharged inline-6 engine with up-rated output of 315 horsepower at 5800 rpm and 330 lb-ft of torque from 1600-4500 rpm. All-aluminum construction, High Precision direct fuel injection, Double-VANOS variable camshaft technology, and Brake Energy Regeneration are a few of the technologies used under the BMW EfficientDynamics philosophy to place the 740i and 740Li among the most powerful six-cylinder luxury sedans in the world. Delivering power to the rear wheels is BMW's 6-speed automatic transmission, well-known for fast, smooth gearshifts and an ability to intelligently adapt to the driver's style. Both models will be available with the full complement of well-known 7 Series options and packages, including the M Sport Package, Driver Assistance Package, Luxury Seating Packages, Rear Entertainment Package, and even the BMW Individual Composition Package. fivefilters.org featured article: Normalising the crime of the century by John Pilger. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.
Sunstone Circuits Remains Committed to Customers 24/7/365, Even During ... - TMCnet Posted: 16 Dec 2009 01:30 PM PST	MULINO, Ore. --(Business Wire)-- Sunstone Circuits®, the printed circuit board (PCB) prototype solutions provider, will be open throughout the holidays, offering live "extreme" customer support 24/7/365, even on Christmas morning. Often competitors suggest they are available to meet their customers' needs at anytime of the day; but when it comes to legitimate customer service, there's really no comparison to Sunstone Circuits. Following suit, this holiday season when other PCB companies close its doors, Sunstone's doors will remain open. "While other PCB facilities may need to take time off during the holidays, we know that our customers don't always have that luxury. That's why Sunstone is always available to satisfy their circuit board prototype needs anytime, anywhere," said Diane Economaki, director of marketing, Sunstone Circuits. When you pledge to become a leader in your industry, you are making a commitment. You're making a commitment to deliver results and to follow-through with your promise. It's really that simple. Terry Heilman, CEO of Sunstone Circuits stands by this basic yet essential philosophy. "We walk the walk and talk the talk. Our customers are truly our largest asset; consequently, we must be available to meet their needs 24/7/365." Sunstone's "extreme" customer service philosophy ensures that you speak with a live, technical support representative anytime that you call. It could be Christmas morning or New Year's Eve, regardless of the date, you will always have an actual person on the other end of that call. This is how Sunstone does business. In today's economic climate, not only are affordable products and reliable service in high-demand, but they are crucial to survival. Being the easiest PCB company to do business with is not just the company's tagline, it's the entire culture of Sunstone Circuits. To Commemorate the Holidays, Sunstone Is Offering a Refer-A-Friend Program Sunstone's $50 Gift to You and a Friend In the spirit of holiday giving, Sunstone Circuits now offers a "refer-a-friend" program. When a customer encourages a friend or colleague to place their first PCBExpress® or full-feature order on www.sunstone.com, we will gift $25 to the customer and $25 to the referred friend. To learn more about the "Refer-a-Friend" program, please visit: www.SunstoneReferrals.com About Sunstone Circuits Sunstone Circuits® pioneered the online ordering of printed circuit boards (PCBs), and is the leading PCB solutions provider with more than 35 years of experience in delivering quality engineering software along with quick and on-time PCBs for the electronic design industry. Sunstone Circuits is dedicated to improving the PCB prototyping process from quote to delivery (Q2D®) and provides "live" customer support every day of the year (24/7/365). For more information about Sunstone's PCB solutions plus online quote and ordering process, please visit www.Sunstone.com Trademarks: PCBexpress®, ValueProto™, PCB123®, Q2D®, and Sunstone ECOsystem(SM) Design Environment are trademarked by Sunstone Circuits. [ Back To green.tmcnet.com's Homepage ]
Open Access Encyclopedias - Inside Higher Ed Posted: 16 Dec 2009 02:49 PM PST Can an information source that is free also be reliable? Or does the price of content always reflect its value? In higher education, this debate usually takes place in the context of academic publishing, where open access journals have emerged to challenge their pricey print predecessors. This mirrors a wider trend in media, where lean, Web-based, free-content outlets have begun supplanting newspapers, magazines, and other publications that depend on subscription revenue. The same narrative is playing out in the world of scholarly reference works. Encyclopedia Britannica, the genre's sturdiest brand, has been marginalized in the Internet age by Wikipedia and Google — tools it dismisses as untrustworthy. Quality, Britannica says, comes at a price: $69.95 per year for Web access, to be exact ($1,349 if you want the bound volumes). Professors, tending to agree, have debated whether and how their students should be allowed to use Wikipedia while lamenting the lazy research habits Google has enabled. Meanwhile, a number of academic institutions are quietly trying to do what Britannica and others say can't be done: build online encyclopedias that are rigorous, scholarly, and free to access. Journals may have the cachet of being the frontlines of academic discovery, but encyclopedias are hardly trivial, says Shawn Martin, a scholarly communications librarian at the University of Pennsylvania. It is important that well-vetted basic information on scholarly topics be publicly available — not only for undergraduates and curious Googlers, Martin says, but also to graduate assistants and professors teaching outside their specific area of expertise, who might not have time to wade through volumes of granular literature. "There is a need to get good verifiable academic information out there," he says, "whether it's general or specific." The Prestige So how do you do it? Britannica employs 100 editors, about seven or eight of whom review each entry. It also pays its 4,500-odd experts for authoring entries. That infrastructure is expensive to maintain. Britannica found out early on, after a disastrous attempt to make its content free on the Web, that it couldn't support its famously rigorous editorial process without charging for access, Ian Grant, managing director of Britannica's United Kingdom operations, told the e-commerce site Educonsultancy earlier this year. While the 240-year-old reference giant recently added a Wikipedia-like feature that allows readers to recommend edits and new entries, it has repeatedly said it has no plans to ditch its pay wall. The first challenge of building an encyclopedia that is both free and scholarly, therefore, is finding a way to enlist expert contributors and qualified editors cheaply without compromising the rigor of the editorial process. Eugene M. Izhikevich says the answer is to make contributing a privilege. Izhikevich, a former senior fellow at the Neurosciences Institute in San Diego, is editor-in-chief of Scholarpedia — a free, "peer-reviewed" online compendium. But unlike Britannica, Scholarpedia does not pay its experts for writing and overseeing entries. The key to attracting voluntary labor, says Izhikevich, is by persuading experts that their contributions will be lasting, and that by participating they will be peopled with intellectual royalty. In other words, you do it by playing to their egos. "In the future my hope is that the best experts will be fighting for the honor of maintaining articles, and fighting for the honor of writing new articles," says Izhikevich, noting that he has used his connections in the scientific community to arrange for entries on various concepts and objects to be curated by the people who invented them. "To be in this club of original inventors, of people who changed science," he says, "I think this is the biggest motivating factor for those experts — who are very busy people, who don't have time to contribute to Wikipedia or any other source — to still find time to contribute to Scholarpedia." The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, which also does not pay its writers, has managed to work the prestige angle to mobilize a willing corps of more than 1,700 unpaid contributors. Colin Allen, an adjunct professor of philosophy and science at Indiana University who was one of the encyclopedia's first authors when it was launched in 1995, says that writing and maintaining entries — which can run as long as 10,000 words, and require updates as scholarship on the topic evolves — is no small task. "It's not just something you can quickly dash off on a weekend," says Allen, who now serves as an associate editor for the encyclopedia. Persuading professors to write and oversee lengthy encyclopedia entries pro bono at the expense of time that could be spent on other publishing ventures is not always easy — particularly professors who are still vying for tenure, Allen says. While the Stanford project by now has enough cachet in the philosophy world that a tenure committee might appreciate the fact that a candidate has published there, an encyclopedia entry is still considered less impressive than a journal article, he says. In the absence of pay and a traditional clip for the tenure file, Allen has had to emphasize different incentives when coaxing busy professors to volunteer their time to the project. First of all, he points out that an entry in a free, Web-based encyclopedia is likely to be read by more people than an article in an expensive, narrowly tailored journal. And unlike Wikipedia, or more conventional encyclopedias, they'll get a byline. "I think in many encyclopedias, they're somewhat anonymous. And of course in Wikipedia it's completely distributed, so there's no one person taking credit for it," Allen says. "That has all sorts of problems from the academic author's point of view. First, you could write something today and it could be changed tomorrow, and you have no control over that. "Second," he continues, "nobody gives you any credit for having done it. A lot of academic writing is not driven by getting paid for writing… What we do is get credit for the things that we write." Size Matters From a business standpoint, the most attractive aspect of Wikipedia might be the fact that unpaid volunteers create and edit most of the content. But to consumers, the site's greatest draw, aside from being cost-free, is probably its breadth. The site has 14 million entries — 3 million in English — on everything from wave-particle duality to "Jon and Kate Plus 8." Achieving that sort of breadth while being free and expertly fact-checked is a daunting prospect. Most of the free encyclopedia projects that have come out of academe are limited by topic: the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, the UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology and so on. Even Scholarpedia, whose name and tagline ("the peer-reviewed, open-access encyclopedia") implies a broad scope, currently only publishes articles on a few specialized topics in science. Other free, online encyclopedias supported by universities, such as the Encyclopedia Virginia, the Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture, and the New Georgia Encyclopedia, limit themselves to a single state and focus mostly on history. None have immediate plans to expand to anything approaching the breadth of Wikipedia or even traditional encyclopedias like Britannica. "This is tricky," says Izhikevich, of Scholarpedia, "because the bigger the project — you have to find funding to manage editors, who will manage other editors, who will manage authors from all those disciplines… If you spread to more than one area, you spread thin." Citizendium, a free encyclopedia project started by Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger, aims for both comprehensiveness and rigorous editorial oversight; but it has managed to publish only 121 "expert-approved" articles since it went live in early 2007. The approval queue is 12,790 articles long. Another idea would be to combine disparate projects into a one-stop shop where users can look up reliable information on multiple topics. "To me, the long-term goal out of all of this is to create another world on the Web that would have enough synergy among all its linkages to be a kind of alternative to Wikipedia," says Jamil Zainaldin, president of the Georgia Humanities Council, which co-sponsors the New Georgia Encyclopedia. But such a project could face significant technology barriers. The current projects — aside from being too few to challenge Wikipedia, even if combined — use a variety of publishing platforms that are not necessarily compatible with one another. In order to cut-and-paste several narrowly focused encyclopedias together into a one-stop shop, says Allen, they would have to retrofit their content to a common internal data structure, aggregate it, then collaborate to build a common user interface so everything would look the same. All this, of course, would cost money. And with Web publishing technology quickly evolving and most current projects still well short of financial stability, the creation of anything resembling a free, scholarly encyclopedia on the order of Wikipedia, or even Britannica, seems well outside of realm of possibility in the near term. "There's very little money to build a platform that everybody knows in three or four years is going to be outmoded, or the person who built it will have moved on, and you're stuck with something that you don't know how to do a lot with," says Zainaldin. "And that's really, I think, what's keeping people out of the business right now." The Funding Problem Like a lot of free-content sites, most of these encyclopedia projects are still grappling with funding anxieties. Since neither the New Georgia Encyclopedia nor Encyclopedia Virginia earn any revenue, both depend on foundation grants and their state governments. While they consider these sources relatively stable, relying on state funding means entries on contemporary public figures and other hot-button topics run the risk of becoming politicized, says Matthew Gibson, Encyclopedia Virginia's editor. "There's a very tenuous line that we have to walk if we do publish an entry on a living politician, what potential ramifications there might be," Gibson says. The fact that it has not happened yet, he adds, "has really been a lifesaver." The Encyclopedia of Egyptology, based at the University of California at Los Angeles, has to employ salaried editors since "many of the authors are non-native speakers of English, and the texts require often substantial corrections," according to its editor, Willeke Wendrich, an associate professor of Egyptian archaeology at UCLA. The encyclopedia has big plans, including translating all entries into German, French, and Arabic. But the project's National Endowment for the Humanities funding is due to expire soon. It is currently developing a "full version" with "higher functionality" that it hopes to sell to libraries. But, says Wendrich, "It still remains to be seen if libraries, for instance, will take a subscription even though the information is or will become available for free." Wendrich might see the Stanford project as cause for optimism. Of all the free encyclopedia projects identified by Inside Higher Ed, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is the closest to sustainability; Edward N. Zalta, the editor, says it has squirreled away about 75 percent of the $4 million endowment it estimates it needs to be completely self-reliant. To make it that far, Zalta and his collaborators had to get clever. A key fund-raising strategy has been getting libraries to pay "membership dues" even though the whole encyclopedia is available online. The libraries that pay dues get a few cursory benefits — such as the right to periodically archive "versions" of the encyclopedia — but really, the arrangement just allows Zalta to solicit donations from other university libraries without running afoul of laws prohibiting libraries at public institutions from giving away state-allocated funds. Since Stanford guarantees their money back if the project dies, Zalta has been able to sell it as an investment in open access — a cause many libraries, frustrated by the rising prices of academic journals, have been happy to support, he says. They also had to get lucky. Zalta attributes a large portion of the Stanford project's success to favorable circumstances. "You need to do it at a university that has a long and good track record of managing its endowment," he says, noting that the project's nest egg is linked to Stanford's portfolio and returns at the same rate. "You have to have administrators who are going to listen and to see reason to try out these new models. You need to have a publication that's widely supported throughout the profession." And then there's Zalta himself. Building a strong reputation from scratch is no easy task in academe, says Allen, the associate editor. Zalta, like Izhikevich at Scholarpedia, was already a widely published scholar in his field when he took up the project. That instant credibility, Allen says, is a major reason why the encyclopedia was able to round up enough entries in the first few years to win the faith of its early supporters, then wrangle up nearly $2 million in grants over the last decade. "Finding somebody who would be willing to take that risk and would be of the caliber that they certainly could get an ordinary faculty position if they so desired" is rare, Allen says, noting that Zalta's responsibilities to the encyclopedia have prevented him from pursuing a full professorship. "You have to have the person in charge be someone that the profession as a whole respects" he says. "That was one of the keys here." No Definite Blueprint As the literate world adjusts to the disruptions of the Internet revolution, many see the open access movement as an unstoppable tide. But the question of whether free and scholarly reference works can sustain themselves remains unanswered. Zalta, architect of the most successful effort to date, acknowledges that the Stanford project does not imply an "immediately transferable" blueprint for success. For the other projects, it may be too early to tell whether they will survive in the long term. Even Wikipedia is beginning to bend under the burden of the free-content model. It recently started running large banner ads asking users to donate money to curb the massive infrastructure costs that come from being the world's fifth most highly-trafficked Web site. It has imposed increasingly strict submission and editing codes, and the rate at which new articles are added has fallen significantly. Jimmy Wales, co-founder and chairman emeritus of Wikipedia, recently said he is advocating a system that would require a community of "top editors" to approve all edits before they go live. "As it matures," The Wall Street Journal recently noted, "Wikipedia... is becoming less freewheeling and more like the organizations it set out to replace." fivefilters.org featured article: Normalising the crime of the century by John Pilger. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.
MN Teen Challenge closer to national parent than director acknowledged - Minnesota Independent Posted: 16 Dec 2009 11:28 AM PST MNTC HQ in Minneapolis. Photo: Andy Birkey, MnIndy Last December, after the Minnesota Independent ran an article about Minnesota Teen Challenge and the federal earmark the Christian drug treatment center is receiving, the group wrote in to challenge the Independent's characterization of their programs, as well as that of Huffington Post health reporter Maia Szalavitz. But a review of documents obtained by the Minnesota Independent from the Minnesota Department of Human Services and Hennepin County calls into question the merits of MNTC's complaints. MNTC took offense to the link made between the national Teen Challenge program and Minnesota Teen Challenge. In our Dec. 2008 story, we reported on testimony at a 2001 congressional hearing by Teen Challenge Executive Director John Castellani, who said all faiths are welcome to participate in the programs. For instance, some Jews come out of the program "completed Jews," he said, in reference to a conversion to Christianity. Minnesota Teen Challenge distanced itself from that statement — along with the national organization. "Minnesota Teen Challenge is a leading and respected treatment center in Minnesota, part of a large network of Teen Challenge centers across the United States," MNTC's Rich Scherber wrote to the Minnesota Independent and the Huffington Post at the time. "Each program is independently controlled and autonomous in operation and methodology. As such, it is entirely improper to attribute alleged incidents and practices at one center as being common to all." But state documents show — in MNTC's own words — that they aren't so autonomous. The treatment center maintains compliance with the National Teen Challenge, is accredited by the National Teen Challenge, reports monthly to national headquarters and uses the National Teen Challenge curriculum in its programming. According to the documents, the position description for the MNTC's administrative assistant includes "prepare and submit monthly National Teen Challenge reports." Another position description, for the director of programming, says that the director will "ensure MNTC is in compliance with… National Teen Challenge." And a history document submitted to Hennepin County as part of its contract with the county says that MNTC is "certified" by the national headquarters. "Minnesota Teen Challenge was incorporated in 1984 as a nonprofit organization (501(c)(3)) and is part of a network of 400 Teen Challenge centers worldwide, which are certified by National Teen Challenge in Springfield, Missouri. Thus, Minnesota Teen Challenge is engaged in a national and international effort to rehabilitate individuals with drug, alcohol, and other life controlling problems." And in MNTC's Affirmative Action Plan submitted to Hennepin County, the document states that the philosophy and background are based on the National Teen Challenge's founders: "The Teen Challenge program began in 1958 in New York as a result of David Wilkerson, a Pennsylvania minister's work with New York gangs. The program is based on religious and spiritual guidance. For additional information on Philosophy and background, see Philosophy of Teen Challenge by Dave Batty, Teen Challenge Therapeutic Model by Douglas Wever, History and Philosophy of Teen Challenge by Frank Reynolds, and Cross and the Switchblade by David Wilkerson." On the National Teen Challenge website, it lists curriculum that is "taught in every residential center" [emphasis theirs], which is called "Group Studies for New Christians." The Group Studies for New Christians classes are fundamental tools in the process of developing a deeper relationship Jesus Christ. The 14 classes teach Biblical principles and give the tools to apply them to the student's lives. While these courses are designed with new believers in mind, they are a great refresher for those who are more mature in their faith. These classes provide practical hope for living in today's society. Among the topics discussed in the curriculum: How Can I Know I'm a Christian, A Quick Look At the Bible, Successful Christian Living, Christian Practices, Obedience to God, How to Study the Bible, and Spiritual Power and the Supernatural. fivefilters.org featured article: Normalising the crime of the century by John Pilger. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.
Imaginative philosophy - Richfield Reaper Posted: 15 Dec 2009 03:19 PM PST Remember the Bob Dylan song, "The Times They Are a-Changin'"? Dylan was right. The world we experienced as children has long since vanished. When I was a boy, our relatives came to town several times a year to do a little shopping. My mother always seemed to know intuitively when they were coming, though we did not have a telephone. She would say to my dad, "It is about time the relatives showed up. You had better kill one of the old, red hens." My dad would catch one of the hens and cut off her head with an ax at the chopping block. My mother would scald the hen in boiling water to loosen the feathers before plucking, gutting, and popping her in the oven for dinner - noon meal. When the relatives arrived, as predicted, they went uptown and came back with three essential items - chewing tobacco, snuff and a gallon of Red Eye wine. While the women prepared dinner, the men seated themselves under the willow tree where they spat tobacco, passed around the wine, swapped yarns about their dogs treeing mountain lions, and generally bitched about the federal government. Our relatives were not the first or the last to depreciate the federal government. The 19th century doctrine of laissez-faire economics promoted a negative attitude toward government. When much of America was agrarian and rural, the doctrine was workable. But, industrial and urban growth changed the rules of the game. The Great Depression and FDR's New Deal expanded the economic role of government. Reagan's attempt to return to the old doctrine by deregulating business led to the current economic mess. Coolidge's dictum - "the government that governs least governs best" - is as dead as the old, red hen. We can either embrace a more imaginative philosophy of government or be dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century. Stanley D. Ivie Richfield For more local news and information, subscribe to The Richfield Reaper in its entirety. Click here to subscribe. fivefilters.org featured article: Normalising the crime of the century by John Pilger. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

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