Gordon Brown: I can lead Britain through economic crisis
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Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, today spoke at the 2008 Labour Party conference. In his speech he described his determination to lead his party and country, in addition to claiming that the current financial situation meant that this was no time for a novice to claim a country, saying that he is the right man to lead. This speech comes as questions are raised over Brown’s suitability as a leader.
Brown introduced the speech by telling the conference attendees that he wanted to discuss his reasons for leading the country. “I want to talk with you today about who I am, what I believe, what I am determined to lead this party and this great country to achieve,” he said. “I know people have real concerns about the future of the country, the future of the economy and people in this hall have concerns about the future of our party too.”
He then claimed that he “didn’t come into politics to be a celebrity or thinking I’d always be popular.” “Perhaps, that’s just as well,” he continued. “No, 25 years ago I asked the people of Fife to send me to parliament to serve the country I love.”He then said that he “didn’t come to London because I wanted to join the establishment, but because I wanted and want to change it.”
| I want to talk with you today about who I am, what I believe, what I am determined to lead this party and this great country to achieve | ||
“And so I want to give the people of this country an unconditional assurance – no ifs, no buts, no small print – my unwavering focus is taking this country through the challenging economic circumstances we face and building the fair society of the future,” he said, later in the speech. “The British people would not forgive us if at this time we looked inwards to the affairs of just our party when our duty is to the interests of our country.”
Brown then made more in depth comments on the credit crunch. “Each generation believes it is living through changes their parents could never have imagined – but the collapse of banks, the credit crunch, the trebling of oil prices, the speed of technology, and the rise of Asia – nobody now can be in any doubt that we are in a different world and it’s now a global age,” he claimed. “In truth, we haven’t seen anything this big since the industrial revolution. This last week will be studied by our children – as the week the world was spun on its axis – and old certainties were turned on their heads.”
Later in the speech, Brown discussed how he believes his government should deal with climate change. He also said that targets for an 80% cut in greenhouse gas emissions should be considered. “I am asking the climate change committee to report by October on the case for, by 2050 not a 60% reduction in our carbon emissions, but an 80% cut – and I want British companies and British workers to seize the opportunity and lead the world in the transformation to a low carbon economy and I believe that we can create in modern green manufacturing and service one million new jobs.”
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Labour ministers reacted positively to the speech. Jacqui Smith, the current Home Secretary, said that “I think today’s speech showed that he is a great leader and a great prime minister.” Foreign Secretary David Miliband, meanwhile, described the speech as ‘excellent’.
Shadow chancellor George Osborne, however, responded to the speech by saying that “there was nothing really new in the speech – no apology for the mess he’s got the country into and no new ideas that show us how he’s going to get us out of it.”
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byAlma Abell
Tensions have been high for some time now as to which education system is better for our youth today, public, or private. When it comes down to it, the best thing that parents can do is choose the right course for not only their financial situation but their family as well. In other words, you don’t send your child to a private school just because the people down the street are sending their children there. With that being said, if you are still on the fence, here are some reasons that you should consider sending your children to a Private School in Silver Spring.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=POHr5boBreM[/youtube]
You need to know right up front that private schools are not cheap. You are going to have to pay, but the price is well-worth what your child receives from it. There is also a high level of parent involvement in a private school you normally don’t get with a public school education. Public schools usually provide one night a year for parents to meet their children’s teachers, in a private school setting, you will get to know your child’s teachers very well, as they will keep in constant contact with you over the school year.
Another reason to send your child to a Private School in Silver Spring, is that the classroom sizes are much smaller, and the teachers are dedicated to working with students on a more one-on-one basis. This means that the teacher will know right away if your child is struggling with a subject and work to help them correct the problem.
Unlike public schools the Private School in Silver Spring is not funded based on the test results of their students. The school isn’t funded by the state, so the teachers tend to focus more on the subject matter, than the test that comes after. Choosing to put your child in a private school is a personal decision and it shouldn’t be decided lightly. If you are thinking of enrolling your child in the private school system, you will want to look at all of your choices and do your research before making any type of a decision.
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Wolfram Research’s new product Alpha to compete with Google and Wikipedia
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Monday, March 9, 2009
Wolfram Research Inc., makers of Mathematica and A New Kind of Science, have released a limited alpha of their new web service Wolfram Alpha. Wolfram Alpha is described by CEO Stephen Wolfram as a “computational knowledge engine.” Unlike Google, Yahoo! and other traditional web search engines that rely on statistical methods for retrieving online documents, Wolfram Alpha answers factual questions in the way that Wikipedia does, except it relies on analytical methods instead of human-generated documents.
Although the product is still in a limited release some details about its operation and design have been revealed by Wolfram on his blog, and by Nova Spivack who recently interviewed Wolfram about Wolfram Alpha. The product is available on the Web as a single search box reminiscent of Google’s main search page. The search queries can be entered in natural language and the natural language system will parse the query and use models of knowledge (ontologies) and human-curated data to return an answer including graphs and other representations. The ontologies and data are managed by Wolfram employees who must input new ontologies and data by hand or, occasionally, with the assistance of programmatic tools. It is expected that an Application Programming Interface (API) will eventually be available, although it is not known what the API will be used for.
Unlike traditional search engines Wolfram Alpha does not search online documents, and thus does not return answers to “fuzzy” questions, such as opinion or advice. Instead, the scope of answers is limited to the knowledge that has already been modeled and encoded in the ontologies and the associated data. In this way the system can generate knowledge that was previously unknown. It is thought that while Wolfram will concentrate on scientific and technical information the system may eventually be able to answer questions in other domains, such as stock information, geography and history. In theory, any question with a factual answer could be answered by Wolfram Alpha.
