Fall Field Report, August–November 2015

To start, a housekeeping item: in the species accounts that follow, whenever I use the term migrant I am referring to fall migration only. Many species, of course, have differing migration strategies and timing in spring and fall. Much of the data used in this report relating to western and Pine Ridge passerines comes from the outstanding banding efforts by Bird Conservancy of the Rockies (formerly Rocky Mountains Bird Observatory) at Chadron State Park (CSP) and Wildcat Hills Nature Center (WHNC) in Scotts Bluff Co. This year’s operators were Josh Lefever and Holly Garrod. Related to the Chadron State Park station, Andrew Pierson made this interesting observation: “I was closely involved with the CSP banding station for all of the years prior to the fires (and the first year after when it was temporarily moved down to the pond area) and it was never a very successful operation. It was always way behind the Wildcat Hills site in terms of numbers and diversity. Now, it seems there are single days when they catch a former season’s worth of birds. Is this directly attributable to the fires and subsequent regeneration of new habitat type and/or quality?” This fall and the previous two falls have been noteworthy for the large number of final sighting dates for many species that are pushing against those species’ latest expected dates. This phenomenon is across the board, both in waterbirds like Blue-winged Teal, Whooping Crane, Willet, and Common Tern, as well as passerines, such as Yellow-bellied Flycatcher (see species account for further discussion), Plumbeous Vireo, Summer Tanager, at least 5 species of sparrows, Rose-breasted Grosbeak, and Lazuli and Indigo Buntings. Conversely, a few winter visitors showed up early, such as “Oregon” and “Pink-sided” Juncos. Surprisingly large numbers of Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers and Philadelphia Vireos appeared, as in previous fall seasons, but unexpected were influxes of Palm Warblers, usually rare in fall, and Black-throated Green Warblers. Each season has its share of noteworthy happenings; this fall , check out the accounts for Osprey, which bred successfully for the first time in Nebraska, Black Rail, a mystery to hopefully be solved next June, a northeasterly nesting of Barn Owl, double-brooded American Kestrel, a tally of 266 Ruby-throated Hummingbirds passing through a Lincoln yard, and two very tardy Baltimore Orioles in Omaha. Rarities this fall were few, but headed by 4th state records of both Black-headed Gull and Black-chinned Hummingbird, the latter, oddly, in far eastern Nebraska. Reports of Cave Swallow and the western subspecies of Nashville Warbler caused struggles with identification criteria, and the presence in the state of the western form of Orange-crowned Warbler was confirmed by the Pine Ridge banding stations mentioned earlier. An update to my note in last year’s Fall Seasonal Report: at that time I mentioned that 18% of the reports I used came from eBird-only contributors. A recheck for this report shows that figure now to be 52%, obviously a significant increase in only one year. I do believe that at some point eBird will largely supersede state and local online groups like NEBirds as the repository and source for Nebraska records as long as the trend of increasing use of eBird continues. However, I believe there still is a need for analysis and comment on the data available, which is probably best done through a Seasonal Report such as this. Finally, some of you may be wondering what my guideline is for including any given species in these accounts, as some do appear some seasons but not in others. I include ALL species that are regular in occurrence for the season at hand; no Northern Shrikes in the Summer Report, for example. I include these regular species whether reported (eBird, NEBIRDS, or personally) or not, as the absence of a regular species is noteworthy. I also include any casual or accidental species that are reported. I believe it is not noteworthy if an unexpected species does not show, so not all casual/accidental species are included in any given season. Thus a casual species such as Gyrfalcon may be reported in one Winter Report but not the next

Standardization Of Industrial Arts Courses In Texas

A study of the historical development of industrial arts and industrial education is of great importance in leading up to a study of standards in present-day industrial arts courses in Texas. The date of the birth of manual occupation as a feature of school work has not been definitely located by writers of educational history. Probably it will never be determined. Like many other civilizing forces, this one appears to have been at work for generations, if not centuries, before anyone recognized its importance or the direction of its tendency. Egyptian Civilization The civilization of any one of the ancient peoples is marvelously suggestive in this connection. Notice for one example the first people known to have organized themselves into a settled nation, the Egyptians. Very early records, dating nearly 2,000 years before the Christian era, show them to have been a people of versatile power and skill. Their masonry has never been surpassed. They had a decimal system of numbers and a system of well-adjusted weights and measures. In mechanic arts we have evidence of the skill of the carpenter, the book-binder, the potter, and others. In fine arts, their statuary, and painting, their ornaments of gold and silver, their musical instruments, their engraving, their inlaying, all bear witness to a high stage of development in these arts and processes. How had it come about? They were without books or a literature, except in a very narrow sense. How had these people been educated? There appears tub one answer# They had developed their powers through their efforts to manipulate material things as a means of satisfying their felt needs and desires

The lives of the underprivileged people found in Tamil literature

It is an undetermined rule that all beings that have arisen in this world must be respected equally. There is no one who has adhered to such a canon. Inequality between every living being that can live in this world is a fundamental matter of nature. The beginning of inequality is the definition that he should and should not do even the most common activities in the world. We can identify such a preliminary difference in the Tolkappiyam itself. People like errand runner and Panar, who works for the life of others more than their own needs, can be considered grassroots people. The focus of this article is on examining the atrocities faced by these underprivileged people from time to time, the obstacles they faced in their daily way of life, and the rights denied by birth through the literature that has emerged from time to time. Even in the Sangam literature, which can be portrayed as the golden age of the Tamils, there are records of the fact that the people of the lower strata were untouchables and should not be seen. Similarly, moral literature also highlights the sufferings of downtrodden people. Whoever sees inequality in the world, God does not see it. But even in devotional literature, there are caste-based devotees. From Minor Literature to Modern Literature, the life of the downtrodden is seen as a place of suffering and misery. Thus, this article proves that the lives of the lower classes are the same in the literature that reflects the society from the Sangam period to the present day

Archival Research in the History of the Law: A User\u27s Perspective

Legal history and the social history of law have become very active fields of research in Britain, the United States, and Canada in the past ten years. Moreover, they have begun to affect each other, so that social historians are now much more sensitive to doctrinal changes, shifts in legal rules, and legal concepts, while legal historians increasingly appreciate that explaining legal change – or the lack of it – may require extensive research outside the law library. In short, lawyers and historians are beginning to meet not only in law libraries, but also in archives. And, like all users, they are asking the impossible. From law librarians, they want every variant edition of every obscure and outdated procedural manual, every ancient set of reports, and every printed trial extant for earlier centuries. Fortunately, large international microfilming projects are increasingly making it possible for librarians to supply all of these, and seen extensive manuscript collections of legal materials. But historians of law make more outrageous demands on archivists: retain everything, prepare finding aids for everything, manage your collections with us, above all others, in mind. I am told that the professional duties of archivists include measuring such demands by the tests of budgets, conservation imperatives, the interests of other users, the finite dimension of the working year, available shortage space, and a healthy instinct for preservation of self as well as collections. But since I am a user, not an archivist, I shall innocently describe utopia, and say little about how to get there. My only excuse for doing so is that legal records, like all records, present specific problems, problems that are not particularly evident without close familiarity with the recent large research literature, much of it still in dissertation form, on the legal and social history of the law. A review of some of its themes may help archivists, lawyers, and historians to discuss some of the hard decisions about retention. One of my conclusion is that lawyers and historians may in fact have rather different professional imperatives, even conflicting ones, and that the historically and legally informed archivist will necessarily play a critical role in adjudicating between them

Peer Production in Politics: Democracy vs. Governance

As Andrew Chadwick noted in 2006, ???The issue is no longer whether politics is online, but in what forms and with what consequences???? Governments use the Internet for many reasons, including informing the public, facilitating voting, and communicating with constituents. Similarly, citizens engage with political institutions online in a variety of ways. William Dutton, who terms this engagement of citizenry with government the ???Fifth Estate???, delineates two institutional arenas: the use of ???the Internet and related ICTs to enhance existing democratic institutions and processes???and the networking of individuals to enable the public to hold all institutions of government and politics more accountable???. This poster will contrast websites that use the internet to facilitate representation (e.g., the Sunlight Foundation, Wikileaks) with those that focus on governance (e.g., Community Patent Review, SeeClickFix). These organizations differ in their fundamental objectives: the first type uses the Internet to influence democracy itself while the second engages citizens to do work they have already delegated to government. There are many examples of both types of organizations, both in the United States and abroad. Some use crowdsourcing to create or organize information; others present information to users but do not allow them to contribute. This poster will focus on organizations that operate in the US and use peer production; it will highlight their use of online collaboration, as well as their impact on issues of government transparency, democratic representation, and peer production of knowledge. The mission of the Sunlight Foundation is to ???using the revolutionary power of the Internet to make information about Congress and the federal government more meaningfully accessible to citizens.??? As such, it sponsors online tools that allow the public to watch and contribute to knowledge about government spending, the legislative process, and the influence of lobbyists. One project of the Sunlight Foundation, PublicMarkup.org, allows the public to annotate bills before they are passed by Congress. Several 2008 bills were posted on the site, including the act that authorized the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP). The Sunlight Foundation also sponsors projects that do not use peer production, such as MAPLight.org, which allows combines data on campaign contributions and voting records for legislators. Wikileaks.org allows users to upload ???leaks??? -- information about corrupt officials, scandals, and other misbehavior ??? in an anonymous manner. Wikileaks thus crowdsources the whistle-blower role in government (as well as other areas) and also the fact-checking of whistles blown. Wikileaks operates in nearly every country (as it is a wiki, countries can be added very easily), but is represented by Australian Hacker Julian Assange. Situated between journalism and governance, Wikileaks is more difficult to classify, but as an example of whistle-blowing on government corruption, it aims to improve the democratic process. Community Patent Review is a striking example an organization that uses peer production for governance. Community Patent Review is a ???web-based application that allows third parties to comment on patents before they are issued. Large patent holders, including General Electric, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Oracle, and Red Hat, have agreed to be part of the pilot, and the patent office has agreed to waive the usual fee for third party comment submissions and give the patents of pilot participants expedited review.??? This provides a public adjunct to the Constitutionally designated function of the Patent Office; this citizen participation does not follow the chain-of-command of the patent office, but instead involves citizens (and non-citizens) in a new way, as users and collaborators. SeeClickFix operates at the local level. SeeClickFix ???allows anyone to report and track non-emergency issues anywhere in the world via the internet. This empowers citizens, community groups, media organizations and governments to take care of and improve their neighborhoods.??? Users post local maintenance issues (e.g., potholes, vandalism), and others can volunteer to fix them. This enhances the role of existing local government functions (e.g., the parks department, the roads department) by again involving the public directly in a non-democratic capacity. Each of these organizations uses a different method to apply peer production to the task of improving democracy or of improving governance. Sometimes these tasks are mixed: MySociety, a UK organization similar to the Sunlight Foundation, creators of FixMyStreet (which inspired SeeClickFix in the US), hosts an e-petition process, which facilitates, instead of street fixing, the development of petitions that are sent directly to the Prime Minister. Organizations can be difficult to classify by these criteria. Creative Commons, founded in 2001, uses open licensing to bypass the more restrictive features of copyright law. Although it is not technically ???crowdsourced???, it does rely on the network effects of its many users who can build on each others??? creations as long as they are all licensed under Creative Commons. In this aspect, it is an example of the second type of organization. Instead of lobbying to change copyright law, it bypasses the structure chosen by democratically elected representatives and instead uses a ???Fifth Estate???, user-governance model. People decide for themselves what kind of copyright they would like to have and share that with others. Similarly, SeeClickFix does not try to recall local parks officials, but instead points out where citizens can do local maintenance themselves; Community Patent Review does not aim to reform the US Patent Office, but instead facilitates public input. The subject of the first group is representation; the subject of the second is a social issue, such as property rights in innovation or local property damage. Both approaches involve transparency, but the second approach involves further transparency as the citizens are full participants in the entire process. For example, what a government does with Wikileaks information or how the annotations on laws are processed is not necessarily transparent. Whether or not a problem ahs been fixed on SeeClickFix is transparent. In other words, the first category still involves representation, which naturally decreases transparency, while the second does not. These two approaches are in some degree of tension: if, in the extreme case, all government functions were handled directly by citizens, there would be no need for representative democracy. On the other hand, if transparency is all that democracy needs, then perhaps the more communitarian approach would not be necessary. In some ways, these two approaches are, to use an economic term, substitutable goods. Both of these approaches are simply the result of applying peer production to public goods, such as well-maintained public spaces, efficient patent issuance, or well-formulated laws. As these organizations grow, they will necessarily blur these lines and create further emergent forms of online democracy and online governance

Chanted Landscapes

Landscapes within, landscapes without. Contrary to positivist science, the boundary between our body and the world is indefinite and shifting. When I experience space, according to the phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1964: 59), I do not experience it as “an exterior wrap.” Instead, “I see space from within, I am enfolded by it… rather than the world being in front of me, it is around me.” Moreover, in our experience there is a constant interplay between the open and the closed, between the within and the without, between the here and the yonder, between inner space and outer space, writes Gaston Bachelard (1967: 192). These metaphors spring from our experience of space as we move through it, changing positions, and reconfiguring it. What seems external may become part of our inner space, conversely intimately held images are eventually exteriorized. Our consciousness is not a camera that blindly records raw data. Even as the senses relay information to the mind, they are oriented by it; for the mind continually re-organizes sensory data into meaningful wholes. The universal is present in the particular, as Hegel observed. Thus our senses spontaneously highlight certain features of a landscape, flatten others, and ignore the rest. What may be far for others, may be near for us and viceversa. What may seem but a forest may, for a community, be the abode of their spirits. Or a sword may be more than a finely crafted weapon, it could signify a bond between father and son. In this era of relentless change, where commercial interests dominate, many communities all over the world are now trying to protect material objects that give them a sense of continuity and purpose. But what is tangible does not necessarily endure forever. If a forest is merely regarded as a commodity to be bought and sold on the market, it will be laid waste. A sword bought outside its cultural context may well be melted down one day for scrap. Hence even as nations and local communities protect their material heritage, they should also protect the intangible world into which this heritage was born and that subtly nourishes it. Tangible and intangible heritage are woven together like body and spirit

Designing and Maintaining Serials Check-in Systems: Even If You Plan to Automate

Like most libraries, law libraries are anxious to install integrated library systems that, in addition to other functions, will provide effective online serials control. For some, these systems are a reality, for others, their installation is in various stages of planning. For most, however, they are merely something to read, hear and day-dream about. In small and medium size libraries, the daily struggle of maintaining control over growing serials collections will be left to manual systems for some time to come. The information in this paper is intended to suggest ways that may ease the frustration of a manual system. Even for libraries that plan an automated system within the near future, redesigning the current manual system provides an opportunity to do some advance planning, to gather information and to clean up problems before going online. Although this document does not deal with online systems, libraries about to install one might find this helpful in their evaluation of the data elements to be included in their check-in records. Generally, the principles and suggestions here have been tried and proven to create a comprehensive and efficient check-in system. This material was originally presented by Penny Hazelton at the 1979 AALL serials workshop, and revised by Dennis Benamati for presentation at the 1986 AALL program We Are Our Own Best Resource: A Dialogue with the Experts.https://digitalcommons.law.uw.edu/faculty-books/1051/thumbnail.jp

A bibliographic metadata infrastructure for the twenty-first century

The current library bibliographic infrastructure was constructed in the early days of computers – before the Web, XML, and a variety of other technological advances that now offer new opportunities. General requirements of a modern metadata infrastructure for libraries are identified, including such qualities as versatility, extensibility, granularity, and openness. A new kind of metadata infrastructure is then proposed that exhibits at least some of those qualities. Some key challenges that must be overcome to implement a change of this magnitude are identified

French in Culinary and Pastry Arts

The purpose of this project was to find out the impact of the French jargon used in the culinary and pastry industry and its origin. I investigated this topic through reading online articles that were based on the research of others. I found out that after the French Revolution, the French language as well as its culture was influenced many parts of Europe. Prior to that, other cultures influenced Europe, but regarding cooking, French was the one that stuck around to this day. It was shocking to hear those other cultures like Italian and German had a large impact on Europe when today their culture is not as popular in the kitchen like French cooking. French words are used in the kitchen globally and not translated because usually is one word or less words than other languages to describe a certain technique. French words are also used for recipe names which are also typically not translated into other languages for simplicity. It may seem the influence the French had should have been greater as if they are the world leaders of cooking since that’s the way the world seems so see it. However, it is less complicated than expected. The French chefs were the only ones that recorded these techniques and recipes in a way that they could be shared with other parts of Europe. From these records, other countries became exposed to the jargon the French used. They followed it since it seemed easier with fewer words to describe a technique or recipe