Project Syndicate: Signs of ostentious wealth in Ukraine are a waste [ matches]
Project Syndicate: Signs of ostentious wealth in Ukraine are a waste
When Radosaw Sikorski, Poland’s foreign minister, went to Ukraine for talks last month, his Ukrainian counterparts reportedly laughed at him because he was wearing a Japanese quartz watch that cost only $165. A Ukrainian newspaper reported on the preferences of Ukrainian ministers, several of whom have watches that cost more than $30,000. Even a Communist member of Ukraine’s parliament, the Rada, was shown wearing a watch that retails for more than $6,000.
The laughter should have gone in the opposite direction. Wouldn’t you laugh (maybe in private, to avoid being impolite) at someone who pays more than 200 times as much as you do,2013 Collection germanarmyuniforms 1672 Styles. and ends up with an inferior product?
That is what the Ukrainians have done. They could have bought an accurate, lightweight, maintenance-free quartz watch that can run for five years, keeping virtually perfect time, without ever being moved or wound. Instead, they paid far more for clunkier watches that can lose minutes every month, and that will stop if you forget to wind them for a day or two (if they have an automatic mechanism, they will stop if you don’t move them). In addition, the quartz watches also have integrated alarm, stopwatch, and timer functions that the other watches either lack, or that serve only as a design-spoiling, hard-to-read effort to keep up with the competition.
Why would any wise shopper accept such a bad bargain? Out of nostalgia, perhaps? A full-page ad for Patek Philippe has Thierry Stern, the president of the company,Shop our great womens shoe collection including heels, sandals, boots, athletic shoes, wweetheartnecklinedress and more. saying that he listens to the chime of every watch with a minute repeater that his company makes, as his father and grandfather did before him. That’s all very nice, but since the days of Stern’s grandfather, we have made progress in time-keeping.With the Bari Jay collection you'll be able to wear your monclerjackets again! Why reject the improvements that human ingenuity has provided to us? I have an old fountain pen that belonged to my grandmother; it’s a nice memento of her, but I wouldn’t dream of using it to write this column.
Thorstein Veblen knew the answer. In his classic The Theory of the Leisure Class, published in 1899, he argued that once the basis of social status became wealth itself – rather than,Pages in category "bridalweddingdresses". say,All saxobankcycling and accessories are made with the same authentic materials as the originals. wisdom, knowledge, moral integrity, or skill in battle – the rich needed to find ways of spending money that had no other objective than the display of wealth itself. He termed this “conspicuous consumption.” Veblen wrote as a social scientist, refraining from rendering moral judgments, though he left readers in little doubt about his attitude toward such expenditure in a time when many lived in poverty.
Wearing a ridiculously expensive watch to proclaim that one has achieved an elevated social standing seems especially immoral for a public official in a country where a significant portion of the population still lives in real poverty. These officials are wearing on their wrists the equivalent of four or five years of an average Ukrainian’s salary. That tells Ukrainian taxpayers either that they are paying their public servants too much, or that their public servants have other ways of getting money to buy watches that they would not be able to afford otherwise.
The Chinese government knows what those “other ways” might be. As the International Herald Tribune reports, one aspect of the Chinese government’s campaign against corruption is a clampdown on expensive gifts. As a result, according to Jon Cox, an analyst at Kepler Capital Markets, “it’s no longer acceptable to have a big chunky watch on your wrist.” The Chinese market for expensive watches is in steep decline. Ukrainians, take note.
Wearing a watch that costs 200 times more than one that does a better job of keeping time says something else, even when it is worn by people who are not governing a relatively poor country. Andrew Carnegie, the richest man of Veblen’s era, was blunt in his moral judgments. “The man who dies rich,” he is often quoted as saying, “dies disgraced.”
We can adapt that judgment to the man or woman who wears a $30,000 watch or buys similar luxury goods, like a $12,000 handbag. Essentially, such a person is saying; “I am either extraordinarily ignorant, or just plain selfish. If I were not ignorant, I would know that children are dying from diarrhea or malaria, because they lack safe drinking water, or mosquito nets, and obviously what I have spent on this watch or handbag would have been enough to help several of them survive; but I care so little about them that I would rather spend my money on something that I wear for ostentation alone.”
Of course, we all have our little indulgences. I am not arguing that every luxury is wrong. But to mock someone for having a sensible watch at a modest price puts pressure on others to join the quest for ever-greater extravagance. That pressure should be turned in the opposite direction, and we should celebrate those, like Sikorski, with modest tastes and higher priorities than conspicuous consumption.
Eagan: Where’s the fund for these victims? [ matches]
Eagan: Where’s the fund for these victims?
You could call Tina Chery the surrogate mother to dozens of Boston mothers who’ve buried murdered children since her own son Louis, 15, was gunned down nearly 20 years ago.
Chery, whose Louis D. Brown Peace Institute helps murder victims’ families, does not expect those Boston mothers to get what will soon be given to mothers of the murdered and maimed from the Boston Marathon. But here’s what she would like: “A Homicide Victims’ Burial Fund.” Not to cover funeral costs or medical needs or even to help mothers move from the apartment above the sidewalk where their child bled to death.
No, her dreamed-of fund is practical and desperately needed.Find the perfect rolexshop photos and be inspired for your It would cover upfront costs required by cemeteries before they accept a body. Such costs begin at about $1,000, climb quickly, and amount to far more than most mothers in her neighborhood have or can borrow. So Chery watches mothers scramble, within hours of their child’s murder, to scrape together cash to bury their child. Some are still scrambling the morning of the funeral.
But Chery’s gotten nowhere with her fund. That’s because she insists it help both families of the innocent, like her son, and families of victims who are “gang involved.” Translation in many minds: They deserved what they got.
“But why punish families who didn’t do anything wrong?” she said. “We’re so hypocritical. We give (gang members) free lawyers. In prison we feed and clothe them. We invest in prevention programs, but when shooters wind up dead we tell families, ‘Too bad. Nobody cares about you.’”
As the One Fund Boston nears $30 million, it’s become impossible to miss the disparity between the treatment of those killed and injured by terrorists on Boylston Street and the treatment of those killed and injured by terrorists living among them in Dorchester, Roxbury, and Mattapan. Three have been killed and more than 20 shot in those neighborhoods just since the bombings.
Two weeks ago I asked Kenneth Feinberg, the One Fund Boston’s administrator, how he reconciles such a disparity. He said he couldn’t, though no life should be valued more than another.
But obviously, some lives are. If the life of my child were the one less valued, I don’t think I could bear it. I certainly could not speak with the calm and dignity of Tina Chery, who’s not even asking to make all this right. But she is asking for money to help poor motheso happy with the resurgence of christiandiorreplicahandbags.rs bury their murdered children. And she should get it.
Jeanne Calment, who died in 1997 at age 122, never let her age get in the way of doing whatever she wanted. She took up fencing at 85,The latest trends and best brands in discountskirts, sandals, boots, and more. rode her bike until she was 100, and didn't even quit smoking until she was 117, The New York Times reported. When she turned 121, she reportedly walked all over her hometown of Arles, France, to thank the people who had wished her well. But staying active and lighting up weren't the things she says kept her young; she gives credit to olive oil, which she poured on her food and used on her skin, drinking port wine, and eating about two pounds of chocolate every week. "I've never had but one wrinkle," she used to tell her friends, "and I'm sitting on it."
Helen Reichert, 109,Charming but sophisticated, this long soft popularjeans mesh stunner is the perfect wedding dress for fall! chalks her advanced age up to stress — or, rather, on knowing how to bounce back from it. "You don't get to be 109 without life hurling a few curve balls at you, and Reichert has had more than her share. And after each, she dusts herself off and moves on," her doctor, Dr. Mark Lachs,we've made it our mission to find 30 of the canadagooseparka. told NPR in 2011. "A few years back, she had a modest stroke that affected her language abilities. I don't think I've seen a patient of any age tackle rehabilitation and speech therapy the way she did." She also knows how to indulge: She eats chocolate truffles, and her favorite beverage is Budweiser. "She once announced to me that she was thinking about smoking again," Lachs said. "When I protested, she reminded me that she has outlived several other physicians and told me to mind my own business."
Gun law a bigger deal for Ariz. than SB 1070 [ matches]
Gun law a bigger deal for Ariz. than SB 1070
Three years ago, SB 1070 went into effect in Arizona,Here you can take your pick from a wide selection of wintert-shirts. which empowers our law enforcement agencies to deal with a border invasion of epic proportions. But in its frenzy over that law, the media missed a far more important development.
Senate Bill 1108, for which I am as responsible as I am for SB 1070, was passed three years ago to repeal outrageous infringements to the Bill of Rights, reinstating wholesome fullness to the right to keep and bear arms.
Civil rights were reborn here on the same day SB 1070 took effect, but the media ignored that. “Constitutional carry" of firearms restored fundamental civil rights to anyone on the planet who enters the state of Arizona legally. This bill extends rights to all people.
The God-given right to protect your family, your property and yourself from immediate physical harm has been accepted since the dawn of civilization. It was ensconced in the Constitution when the Founding Fathers put the Second Amendment in our Bill of Rights. There was little controversy over this well understood, deeply rooted basic human right until recently, when forces of darkness began attacking many of the truths we hold to be self evident.
Arizona now has the most robust protection for the right to keep and bear arms anywhere on Earth. How could media pundits miss that?
Are they so blinded by imagined racism they find where there is none that they can't see what was put in front of them at a packed news conference the day before either law took effect?
In times just recently past, enactment of a law that frees every decent adult in the world to carry a gun with no prior permission would have led to a national uproar. Could it be that a law crafted to prevent illegal activity is more important than the historic renewal of a cherished human right?
Maybe the media is just tired of crying wolf? They screamed about imminent blood in the streets when Arizona's gun-permit law passed in 1994, but nothing ever happened (and they never apologized).
They convulsed recently about anticipated wild-west mayhem when a 30-year-old ban on gun possession was repealed for National Parks, but nothing happened (and they showed no remorse for the fear mongering).You'll be the queen of the room in this ssuniform evening gown.
When Arizona's restaurant gun ban was lifted a year and a half ago, we heard insane screeching about impending homicidal frenzy from "shotguns in nightclubs," but it turned out that breakfast at Denny's or lunch at Applebee's is really a mild-mannered affair.Kate Bosworth hasn't bought her burberryhandbags yet. No correction has been issued or is expected.
So why should the media pay any attention to a law that merely restores the Second Amendment, not just for citizens but for any law-abiding adult who legally visits?
Who really cares that amassed infringements on 10 percent of the Bill of Rights have finally been overturned, without bloodshed?
Why even bother covering a law that one other state, Alaska, passed in 2003?
Does it really matter that states all over the union are now seeking constitutional carry for themselves?
Could people care less if a place like Arizona frees its women to put handguns in their handbags, go about their business and return home without fear of arrest? How could feminists or the National Oorganization for Women complain about that?
Would it bore people if you told them Senator Pearce's bill and its chief advocates, the Arizona Citizens Defense League worked for the past five years to make statute conform to the state's Constitution?
No one wants to hear that all these crazies are carrying guns and no one is getting shot. How could that possibly be newsworthy?
And, perhaps most of all, people don't want to hear that government's exit from the enforced-training game is a business-stimulus plan.
This is Arizona: learn to shoot straight. Marksmanship matters. Teach your children well. Why would the news media ever cover that, even if it is going up on billboards statewide?
The constitutional carry law and TrainMeAZ campaign have ignited a firestorm of entrepreneurism and rekindled a burning desire to restore the nation of marksmen our Founders envisioned.Elegant authenticmonclerjackets features in chiffon. An entire state trained to arms -- what a concept.
I urge the nation to look at what we've done with defensive display, castle doctrine inside and outside the home, burden of proof, specious civil suit immunity, the Firearms Freedom Act, preemption and more. Make your legislatures emulate the freedom of spirit that thrives in the Grand Canyon State.
Come visit and feel what it's like to be a free adult instead of a ward of the state. You may not want to leave.If you still do not have an awesome cheapweddingdresses. And if you do leave, you'll take the spirit of freedom back home with you.
Transgendered bride attends rally at store she says refused to let her try dress [ matches]
Transgendered bride attends rally at store she says refused to let her try dress
Outrage over an accusation that a transgendered person was refused service at a bridal shop in Saskatoon has prompted dozens of people to rally outside the store.
Rohit Singh was looking for a bridal gown at Jenny’s Bridal Boutique late last month but says she was told that men weren’t allowed to try on the clothing.
Singh, who identifies as a woman, attended the Saturday rally and said the outpouring of support made her feel even happier than her wedding day.
“Everybody came to me, to shake hands with me, to take pictures with me. I was so happy,” Singh said.
Miki Mappin with the Gender Equality Society of Saskatchewan said her group organized the rally and circulated a petition that calls for gender identity and expression to be included in the province’s human rights legislation.
Mappin said many of the people at the rally expressed their support by cross-dressing, even if they weren’t transgendered.Browse hundreds of beautiful canadagooseyorkvilleparka and find the perfect fit for you!
“It was festive. It was fun. The store owner left. She closed her store quite early,” Mappin said.
No one at the store was available for comment. The phone was not answered.
Singh said she went to the store on April 21 with her fiancee and a friend and when they selected a dress, they asked to try it on. Singh said the person working at the store assumed that it was for her female friend.
When they explained that the dress was for Singh, the situation went downhill.
“She said, ‘Oh, I don’t allow men to wear dresses in my store.Shop for buywatches online.’ I explained to her that I’m not a man, I’m a transgender and my sex-change procedure is going on,” Singh said.
“She told me, ‘It doesn’t matter to me.’ And then she snatched that dress from my hand.”
Singh said she left the shop in tears.
Many people from across North America have expressed scorn for the bridal store on social media.
Singh said she intends to lodge a complaint with the Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission.
“I’m damn sure it was discrimination,” Singh said. “She told me, ‘You look like a man and I don’t think men can wear dresses as females’.”
Singh said she later found a dress at another store in Saskatoon, where she said staff were friendly and helpful.
Singh, who is originally from India, explained that she met her fiancee while she was doing a master’s in biotechnology at the University of Toronto.
They were married April 29.
Mappin said she was happy, and a little surprised, to see Singh at the rally. She said her group had been trying unsuccessfully to reach her since the first media report about the incident surfaced on Thursday. Organizers weren’t sure if they should hold the rally without talking to her, Mappin said.
“There was such a groundswell of support for her that we went ahead anyway,” Mappin said.
“She was radiant. She was just beautiful.”
The site, now part of the National Park Service, was nearly torn down for a parking lot in the 1960s when the old Wilcox mansion languished after its previous restaurateur ownerIt's the world's famous straplessweddingdress boy singer Justin Bieber. closed down. Its place on Delaware Avenue, a few doors away from the private women's “20th Century Club,” was a prime high-society location.
Soon the women from “prominent” families decided the site was the right place for clothes too old to wear and too fabulous to throw out. Hain remembers a Mrs. Notman and a Mrs. Heydt, who were among the first to drop things off – by the hundreds.
They were followed by Kate Butler, the late publisher of The Buffalo Evening News who married into this newspaper's founding family. Her old negligee, circa 1920, is one of the best things Hanavan has worn for one of the annual fashion shows devoted to undergarments. She tries to imagine the life that included a need for a cream-colored dressing gown with applique flowers, mink trim and drapery weights hidden in the back so it hung straight.
“It's things like that you're never going to see,” Hanavan said. “It's the upper echelon who had the money to spend in this way.”
So many dresses, undergarments, shoes, handbags, gloves and stockings piled in since those early donations that the CRC headquarters in the former maids' quarters is nearly out of space.
Clothes fill what once were small bedrooms along a hallway at the top of stairs that now lead to museum exhibits and rooms styled with Victorian furniture and curtains like the Wilcoxes would have had.
Bustles, hoops, crinolines and corsets were pressed together and balanced on hangers in one closet. Hats were piled on an open shelf, one ringed with pale pink ostrich feathers all in a line like blades of grass.
Most of all, there are racks and racks covered in sheets and labeled with signs, “Furs,” “Beaded garments,” “1870.” The first dress under the cover of “Before 1860” revealed a pink almost candy-striped dress with a narrow waist that tapered into a “V” framed with tiny gathers.
Corsets permanently squished rib cages, said Lynn Gerber, who wrote the script for the Downton Abbey fashion show that afternoon. Nowadays even naturally petite women and girls have a hard time fitting into a dress like that, she said.
At a corner nook where parasols, some too fragile to open, gathered, Gerber plucked out an engraved gold tipped cane – “William Anderson, presented by employees of AM&A's,We often offer free shipping and discounted items for your favorite paneraireplicas. May 29, 1882” – for one of the outfits that could use a walking stick.
The costume center has had to get more selective about donations it's willing to accept.
“We're still taking things,” said Gerber,All saxobankcycling and accessories are made with the same authentic materials as the originals. who was drawn in to the committee because of her personal collection of old purses, “but it's gotta be unusual.”
Take a walk in their shoes [ matches]
Take a walk in their shoes
Christine Somers, director of Campus Ministry at Misericordia University has a pair of handmade sandals she bought during one of her first service trips to Guyana.Made by a local shoemaker, the sandals cost her only $12 and they have been on mission and service trips with Somers everywhere from Peru, Jamaica and Haiti to El Salvador, Mexico and Texas.
“The shoes can tell a better story than I can,” Somers said, with a laugh.You'll be the queen of the room in this ssuniform evening gown.That was exactly what Colleen Newhart had in mind.Newhart is the access services manager at the Mary Kintz Bevevino Library at Misericordia University, and after attending a conference last year, she was inspired to host a program at which members of the community could tell their stories through displaying their shoes.
Twenty-nine pairs of shoes sit atop the library’s bookshelves, ranging from a bright red pair of high heels worn by Mrs. Pennsylvania, ballet toe shoes, soccer cleats, black Chuck Taylors, Hello Kitty boots and cowgirl boots, worn by faculty, staff, alumni and students, both traditional and non-traditional. Each pair of shoes is accompanied by a story describing where the shoes have been and how the owner of the shoes feels about their experiences.
The display was a part of National Library Week, which is celebrated by the university each year, but the shoes will remain on display until the end of April. This year’s theme is “Communities Matter.”
Newhart could not think of a better way to showcase what makes up the MU community than with unique,A bikesaddle is a style that many are using now!Fill your closet with barijaybridesmaiddresses and be ready to step out for any activity. personal stories told through someone’s shoes. “This is what our community is made of. It’s for people to get to know who they’re living with and who they are working with,” Newhart said.
After serving 23 years in the U.S. Army, Fred Allenbaugh retired and this past December received his first report card in 20 years. The 41-year-old Tunkhannock native is enrolled at MU and on track for a degree as a physician assistant.Allenbaugh said he joined the army at 17 because he wanted to “travel across mountains” and “get his feet dirty,” and he has had hundreds of pairs of boots that have seen more and been through more than he could ever describe.
He decided to donate these boots because he felt welcomed by the Misericordia community and he wanted to help with or participate in any program he could. He also admits to simply loving reading books and loving libraries.“I’ve always loved libraries,” said Allenbaugh. “I feel comfortable there.”
Sue Lazur,Buy Fashion alineweddingdresses with big discount! senior secretary at the Bevevino Library, walks in a Suicide Prevention Walk every year in memory of her brother who committed suicide eight years ago. She donated her white, gold and green sneakers to the exhibit because she hopes to raise awareness about mental illness and suicide.
“There isn’t enough education,” said Lazur. “If we can bring more awareness to this, maybe other families won’t have to go what we went through.”Lazur also said that helping out someone else just feels good. Lazur spoke of participants in the walk who, though they have not been directly affected by suicide, will walk to support those who have.“It gives a nice feeling that there’s a lot of humanity left in the world,” she said.
Jeffery Puckett is a freshman at Misericordia University and will go down in history as the school’s first quarterback. Being a part of the school’s first football team, Puckett felt donating his cleats had a special significance.
“If my cleats could tell a story, they would probably tell one of a journey from the beginning of my experience here in August, meeting all of my teammates, who have become my brothers, meeting all the coaches, and then working day in and day out to get to the first-ever MU football season,” he said.
Mark Van Etten is the director of budgets and accounting at Misericordia University and also the president of Back Mountain Regional Fire and EMS. He donated his fire boots,Find 2013 canadagoosemontebello for your wedding, look at these dresses. which have been to dozens of fires, walked over live power lines and protected him from extreme elements as a 20-year veteran of the department. He also works to get college students involved in local rescue services.
The Back Mountain Regional Fire and EMS serves 30,000 residents, including two universities and two school districts, so the more people willing to help is better for the community – that’s where the college students come in. Van Etten was a volunteer during his time as a Misericordia student and understands the importance of having college-age students working to help their communities.
“It worked out … that I was able to respond to calls during daytime hours when most volunteers were at work,” he said.
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