FOR ‘Young adults’?
I loved it cover-to-cover
signed,
veteran: Nancy Drew Collection;
Enid Blyton [here in Canada, yes.]
17/18-12/1-1234h Exactly
FEB-26…a d*mn fine yarn!
Enough to make me question prior cautions about James Patterson WITH…@ least where he ‘PRESENTS’ A novel.
LIKE ACTOR ny csi c own theatre co.
Written in a dual-diary format the Ripper’s and the journalist’s pursuing him (Geo. B. Shaw); this was original!
Also somewhat of still value; as I guess the Brits were in AFGHANISTAN (just) prior to the Ripper’s reign of terror; particularly as concerns Afghani WOMEN’S treatment of captives.
PLUS an absolutely fabulous Bibliography!
Finished 18-FEB-25 2355h
Hardcover $USA 27.99; CDN 36.50!;Dollorama 4; Avondale
Niagara’s answer to Mac’s, Becker’s, RabiaS, 7-11s…./$1
I’M fairly certain I picked this up at a shop near the St Lawrence Market [Toronto] what, two decades [!!] ago in Toronto before The Explanade, etc., exploded…
©1847
TORONTONIANS: It was large near the South St. Laurence Market Building; HELP ME OUT HERE, SVP!
An intelligent approach.
From: operations@rideauinstitute.cp20.com [mailto:operations@rideauinstitute.cp20.com]
On Behalf Of Rideau Institute on International Affairs
Sent: October-05-14 3:58 PM
October 5, 2014
Published today by the Ottawa Citizen‘s Defence Watch and featured on National Newswatch.
Harper’s War Plan May Make Matters Worse, Not Better
by former Ambassador Peggy Mason
Prime Minister Stephen Harper will put Canada’s proposed combat military mission in Iraq to a vote on Monday. Recent polls have suggested that Canadians slightly favour the bombing mission to confront the threat posed by the extremist organization, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). It comes as no surprise that Canadians want to help and “do something.”
But Harper’s plan to send Canadian warplanes to join the U.S.-led coalition’s bombing of Iraq may just make matters worse.
Stephen Harper and his allies are underestimating their opponents as a bunch of religious extremists bent on spreading wanton mayhem and terror. Islamic State may be brutally ruthless, but they know exactly what they are doing.
Their core is made up of seasoned, motivated fighters and an extremely experienced leadership that go back to the “dirty war” waged by the American and British Special Forces in Iraq between 2006 and 2009.
ISIL is playing a strategical game of chess with its every move, while the West is playing military tic-tac-toe.
ISIL is not just a military organization, it is a political movement with a well-thought-out ideology, however abhorrent it may be to the West. It governs the huge areas it controls in Iraq and Syria. Ruthless in eliminating any potential opponents, it also provides electricity, food and other vital services for ordinary people in the areas it controls.
That is why American air strikes against ISIL recently targeted not only oil and gas facilities but also grain elevators – a highly problematic course of action in both legal and humanitarian terms, particularly if the conflict is to be a long one.
To date Western military action has been disastrously counterproductive.
Prime Minister Harper says “we” are not responsible for the chaos in Libya. Yet it is absolutely clear that the NATO-led military victory in Libya was a pyrrhic one which paved the way for the civil war that followed.
We have to remember how we got to this point. Time and again in the past, we have chosen war over negotiations.
Look at the lessons of Libya. Had we not exceeded the UN mandate in Libya (which excluded regime change), we could have negotiated a power-sharing deal with Gaddafi that would have promoted incremental democratic reform and not left a power vacuum to be filled by extremists, including ISIL.
Exactly the same lesson can be learned from Syria. Had the West not insisted on Assad’s immediate departure and refused to allow Iran a seat at the table, Kofi Annan’s power-sharing arrangement within a transitional government would have paved the way for incremental democratic reforms in Syria and, once again, would have left much less room for extremists like ISIL to operate.
A UN mandate privileging inclusive governance and democratic reforms in concert with robust military support has been central to recent progress in Somalia and Mali. A UN mandate is also possible for effective intervention in Iraq and Syria if all necessary players, including Russia and Iran, are brought fully into the negotiations, and Turkey, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states are at the core of the political strategy, not just token participants.
A comprehensive, broadly supported and UN-mandated approach is long overdue in the heretofore disastrously counterproductive war on terror. Let this enlightened approach be the basis for Canadian action in Iraq and Syria.
Peggy Mason is Canada’s former UN Ambassador for Disarmament and advisor to then External Affairs Minister Joe Clark. She is now the President of the Rideau Institute on International Affairs.
Rideau Institute and Ceasefire.ca
63 Sparks St, Suite 608
OttawaOntarioK1P 5A6
Canada
While all of our brains get smaller as we get older, a startling new study shows that the amount of sleep we get — or the lack thereof — could affect how fast they shrink, particularly in people over 60 years old.
“We found that sleep difficulties (for example, trouble falling asleep, waking up during the night, or waking up too early) were associated with an increased rate of decline in brain volume over 3 [to] 5 years,” lead researcher Claire Sexton, DPhil, with the University of Oxford, wrote in an email to The Huffington Post. “Many factors have previously been linked with the rate of change in brain volume over time — including physical activity, blood pressure and cholesterol levels. Our study indicates that sleep is also an important factor.”
The study, published Wednesday in the journal Neurology, is an associative one, which means it doesn’t show whether sleep causes rapid brain shrinkage or if a rapidly shrinking brain results in poorer sleep. Still, Sexton said future research based on her findings could encourage people to take their sleep schedule more seriously.
“In [the] future, we would like to investigate whether improving sleep can help slow decline in brain volume,” wrote Sexton. “If so, this could be an important way to improve brain health.”
For the study, Sexton evaluated 147 adults between 20 and 84 years old. They all underwent two MRI brain scans an average of 3.5 years apart. They also answered a survey about their sleep quality.
Among the participants, 35 percent had poor sleep quality (which considers factors like how long it takes to fall asleep at night or sleeping pill use, among other things). Sexton found that their brain scans showed a more rapid decrease in the frontal, temporal and parietal parts of the brain.
The frontal lobe regulates decision-making, emotions and movement, while the parietal lobe is where letters and words combine into thoughts, according to theNational Institutes of Health. Meanwhile, the temporal lobe is associated with memory and learning.
Sexton’s research echoes other recent studies on sleep and the aging brain. A study from a group of scientists from Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School Singapore was published last July that found people who slept fewer hours had brains that aged faster than the controls (in this study, it was demonstrated with brain ventricle enlargement, which is a marker for cognitive decline). Another study, from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in New York, found that the decline of a certain cluster of neurons was associated with higher rates of disrupted sleep in adults over 65. The effect was even more pronounced in study participants with Alzheimer’s disease.
Louis Ptacek, M.D., a neurology professor and sleep expert at UC San Francisco, praised Sexton’s “reasonable” and “sound” study for controlling for factors like BMI and physical activity, which are known to affect sleep habits. But he also said the study’s findings, while interesting, are not surprising.
“We know, for example, that in many neurodegenerative diseases, you get all kinds of sleep problems,” Ptacek told HuffPost. “It’s not 100 percent uniform, but we know that Alzheimer’s patients, dementia patients and Parkinson’s patients all have different kinds of sleep phenotypes.”
It’s not surprising that bad sleep is associated with decreased size or increased atrophy in different parts of the brain — “in fact, I would have predicted that,” Ptacek said. “But of course, these investigators did the study and proved it.”
Ptacek hopes that as more research on the importance of sleep emerges, the public will begin to prioritize sleep seriously as another aspect of health, as opposed to thinking of it as an inconvenience or something to shortchange. We still have a long way to go, both in recognizing how vital sleep is to well-being and in funding more research on the mechanisms of sleep, he said.
“We all spend a third of our lives doing it, and yet, the understanding of the importance of good quality sleep to our health is sort of where tobacco and smoking was 40 years ago,” said Ptacek. ” We know almost nothing about sleep at a basic mechanistic level: What is sleep really, and why do we do it?”
Even in 2014, “no one has any idea about the answers to these questions,” he said.
Thanks to JD
Short accounts. was going to pitch but bookmarked x.
download @ http://www.archive.org/details/TheBrontes
perfectly foot-noted; if only all such novels were so graced
ED. [incl. 2019-APR-3
JANE AUSTEN:
NOVELS:
Pride & Prejudice – new cc/part of set [to do]
WATSONS, THE: A ‘what if” continuation – I enjoyed it!
One can NEVER get enough Austen
On the River 2009+ 