Do you suffer from G.O.D complex?

TiengAnhVui.Com

"Every time a modifier dangles, a communicator gets his wings."



A look at the symptoms of the scourge of professional communicators. (I do try to correct people gently.)

Đăng ký: Hoc tieng anh

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James Q. Wilson Changes Policing in America

James Quinn Wilson  là một học giả  và là nhà chính trị xã hội . Lý thuyết về “the broken windows “ có ảnh hưởng lớn đến nhiều thay đổi trong hệ thống trị an Hoa Kỳ.
Nghe Audio : Listen

From Wikipedia:
James Quinn Wilson (May 27, 1931 – March 2, 2012) was an American academic, political scientist, and an authority on public administration. A Ronald Reagan Professor of Public Policy at Pepperdine University and a senior fellow at the Clough Center for the Study of Constitutional Democracy at Boston College, he was a co-author of the 1982 article introducing the broken windows theory.

SCRIPT:
Welcome to This Is America with VOA Learning English.
Today, we are talking about political and social scientist James Q. Wilson. Wilson was interested in a great many subjects. But he was best known for his research into the behavior of criminals and police. He helped change the way policing is done is America.
Wilson died in March 2012 at the age of eighty. He had been receiving treatment for leukemia.


James Q. Wilson in 1972
This week on our program Bob Doughty and Faith Lapidus look back at Wilson’s influence on modern policing. They also look at some of the ways technology is leading law enforcement into the future.
In March 1982, the Atlantic magazine published an article that described a theory of community policing. That theory would come to influence a new direction in American law enforcement.
James Q. Wilson wrote the article with criminologist George Kelling. Crime and disorder in a community are usually linked, they said, and they used an example. "Social psychologists and police officers tend to agree that if a window in a building is broken and is left unrepaired, all the rest of the windows will soon be broken. This is as true in nice neighborhoods as in rundown ones," they wrote.
Broken Windows Lead To...
The idea was that keeping order in a community and fighting low-level crime can lead to a reduction in more serious crimes. The article was called "Broken Windows: The Police and Neighborhood Safety." The theory came to be known as the "broken windows" theory.
The ideas the authors presented were largely based on psychology and how people form opinions about the safety of a neighborhood. Their research showed that people base their opinions less on the actual crime rate and more on whether the area appears safe and orderly.
They said "one unrepaired broken window is a signal that no one cares." If a window is broken and then quickly fixed, it sends a message that people care enough to keep order in the neighborhood.
The link that the two researchers made between disorder and crime is indirect. Disorder leads to citizen fear, which leads to weakened social controls. And those weakened controls create conditions where crimes are more likely to occur.
The solution, the authors said, was a kind of community policing centered on preventing crimes rather than just reacting to them.
The broken windows theory represented a very different way to look at policing methods at a time when, in many cities, crime seemed out of control.
The Crack Wars Begin; Crimes Rates Rise
John DeCarlo is a professor of criminal justice at the University of New Haven in Connecticut. He says crime rates in the United States rose sharply from the 1960s to the middle of the 1990s.
"We had seen crime rates during the 80s that the country had literally never seen before. The violent crime rate and the property crime rate were exceptionally high. Criminologists across the United States had pretty much given up hope that police could have any effect on crime."
That crime wave included the so-called crack wars, the violent competition between drug dealers in the rise of crack cocaine.
In the 1990s, the mayor of New York, Rudolph Giuliani, began a crime reduction program in the city. His first police commissioner, William Bratton, used ideas similar to what James Q. Wilson had been writing about. These included putting more police officers on foot instead of in cars. More attention went into targeting low-level criminals and keeping order in neighborhoods.



Chief William Bratton
Professor DeCarlo says this was the beginning of a new way of operating within a police force.
"When Bratton came into New York he concentrated on low-level criminals rather than higher-level criminals, thinking that taking care of the low level criminals would automatically take care of the higher-level criminals because, indeed, they were the same people."
In 1990, New York had more than 2000 killings. That same year, William Bratton arrived as chief of the city's transit police. One of the things he did, says Professor DeCarlo, was to send more police officers into the subway system to arrest people for turnstile jumping. That is jumping over the fare gates without paying for a train ride.
"What happened was they started arresting people for the low-level crime of turnstile jumping, and what happened is they diminished the number of violent criminals because indeed they were the same people. As they started arresting that segment of the population, crime started coming down."
Turnstile jumpers were sometimes found carrying guns or knives. So arresting them prevented more serious crimes, Mr. Bratton would say. He served as transit police chief from 1990 to 1991. He left to lead the Boston police. But he returned three years later to become commissioner of the New York Police Department.
By 1998 - two years after he left that job - America's largest city had just 629 homicides. Mr. Bratton has credited his success in reducing crime rates to the methods he based on James Q. Wilson’s ideas of community policing.
William Bratton went on to serve as police chief in Los Angeles, where crime also fell sharply.
"Community Policing" Begins to Spread
The idea of community policing - of trying to work with the community being policed - has spread throughout the country.
Finding a balance is not always easy. If policing is seen as overly aggressive, it can deepen mistrust. Police may find more weapons by searching more people on the street. But they need a legal reason to stop someone. If not, they could be accused of violating a person's rights, or racial profiling— targeting people just because of their race.
Criminal justice professor John DeCarlo says paying attention to low-level crimes can mean different things in different communities. For example, police may focus on traffic violations like speeding. This may not only reduce accidents and improve the quality of life in a community. It also gives the police a chance to check the records and see if a speeder is wanted for more serious crimes.
Using Technology to Fight Crimes
Another change in policing that began in New York in the 1990s is greater use of information technology. CompStat is a name for the idea of using computers to map daily reports of crime and disorder in individual neighborhoods. Professor DeCarlo says this CompStat information can help police know where to target enforcement efforts and resources.
“It’s a policing management strategy. CompStat is about holding policemen accountable for the areas they work in."
CompStat has critics. They say officers and supervisors who feel pressure to show improvements may be tempted to think of dishonest ways to do it. There have been some cases like this. But experts say the use of CompStat is widely accepted as having revolutionized crime fighting.
James Q. Wilson was born in Denver, Colorado, in 1931. He earned advanced degrees in political science at the University of Chicago. Over his long career, he was a professor at Harvard University, the University of California, Los Angeles, and Pepperdine University.
His books ranged from "Negro Politics: The Search for Leadership," published in 1960, to "The Marriage Problem: How Our Culture Has Weakened Families." That book came out in 2002. He served on a number of national and presidential commissions. And in 2003 President George W. Bush awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Policing methods continue to evolve and change. New technology continues to be one of the biggest trends in law enforcement.
The Power of "Crime Mapping"
Tod Burke is a professor of criminal justice at Radford University in Virginia. He says improved crime mapping is a big help for police.
"This is taking police officers and placing them in the area where they’re really needed. This becomes critical particularly as resources and finances are problematic in many law enforcement departments across the United States, and probably throughout the world."

A U.S. Secret Service police car passes by the Syrian Embassy in Washington

A U.S. Secret Service police car passes by the Syrian Embassy in Washington
There are thousands of law enforcement agencies at the local, state and national level in the United States. Today improved CompStat systems are helping to connect departments across the country to share information.
Smile! You're on Camera
Surveillance cameras are a method of policing widely used in Britain. Cameras are also increasingly used by police in the United States. The trend has spread, especially in busy areas and areas with large populations, like New York.
Computer programs can recognize faces, watch for signs of trouble and attempt to locate gunshots.
In some law enforcement agencies, officers even wear small video cameras. The recordings may help settle any questions about the behavior of officers or the people they deal with.
The use of video cameras can raise privacy concerns, but Professor Burke points out that these days almost everyone has one.
"Let's face it, many people have video cameras themselves, many attached to their phones. And that is also aiding in law enforcement efforts — what I call video vigilantes. Everything is being videotaped, and much of it is going onto social networks such as YouTube and Facebook.
But officers worry that some people are just looking for a chance to try to make the police look bad while doing a dangerous job.
Officials are concerned about an increase in the killing of law enforcement officers in the United States, even as crime rates have dropped.
This program was written and produced by Brianna Blake.
Bob Doughty and Faith Lapidus were your presenters.

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http://www.fileduty.com/download/510/se-itn-chen-guangcheng-5may12.Mp3

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Is "Data" Singular or Plural?

The data are correct or The data is correct? 

Answered from Charles Carson, managing editor of the journal American Speech

The question seems easy enough: is data singular or plural? Unfortunately, the answer is that both usages are standard.
We could explain why grocery store signs should read 10 items or fewer instead of 10 items or less. Count nouns are used for objects that can be counted; that is, they're distinct objects that can be numbered. For example, in my refrigerator there are eggs, apples, and lemons. These are all count nouns. Count nouns can be singular or plural, and when you use them as the subject of a sentence, the verb must correctly reflect that number, as in

The last apple IS on the bottom shelf

or

The eggs ARE fresh.

Mass nouns, on the other hand, are used for things that don't have a natural boundary and can't be counted. Also in my fridge are butter, iced tea, and bacon. These are all mass nouns. Mass nouns always take a singular verb, as in:

 The iced tea IS already sweetened and They say bacon IS bad for you, but I love it.

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The labor market impact of mobility restrictions | Research

Learning by Reading .

This paper provides new evidence on the labor market effects of conflict-induced restrictions to mobility. To identify the effects, the analysis exploits the fact that the placement of physical barriers by Israel was exogenous to local labor market conditions and uses a measure of conflict intensity to control for the likely spurious correlation between local unrest, labor market conditions, and the placement of barriers.

The study finds that these barriers to mobility have a significant negative effect on employment, wages, and days worked per month. The barriers had a positive impact on the number of hours per working day. These effects are driven mainly by checkpoints while other barriers, such as roadblocks and earth mounds, have a much more limited impact. Only a tiny portion of the effects is due to direct restrictions on workers’ mobility, suggesting that these restrictions affect the labor market mainly by depressing firms’ production and labor demand.

Author Cali, Massimiliano; Miaari, Sami H.;

The labor market impact of mobility restrictions

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Today’s class :regular past tense verbs

Xem Video của Sarah về cách dùng động từ quy tắc thì quá khứ nhé.

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Reading News: Clegg pledges new regulation to tackle lobbying

Đọc Báo Tiếng Anh  | Nguồn : Daily Telegraph

Sau vụ bê bối gần đây của Quốc hội Anh , Phó thủ tướng Anh Nick Clegg thông báo Vận động hành lang sẽ được kiểm soát và các cử tri sẽ có nhiều quyền hơn để bãi nhiệm các nghị sĩ …

The Daily Telegraph reports Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg will announce lobbyists will be regulated and voters will get the power to sack their MPs after the latest sleaze scandal to hit Parliament.

VOCABULARY:

Sleaze :

You use sleaze to describe activities that you consider immoral, dishonest, or not respectable, especially in politics, business, journalism, or entertainment.

• The latest, depressing sleaze revelations are only going to increase public cynicism about politics and parliament.

NEWS: Cash for access: Clegg pledges new regulation to tackle lobbying By Peter Dominiczak, Political Correspondent

Lobbyists will be regulated and voters will get the power to sack their MPs after the latest sleaze scandal to hit Parliament, Nick Clegg will say. Following disclosures by The Telegraph about MPs and peers taking money from undercover reporters posing as lobbyists, the Deputy Prime Minister pledges to bring in laws to create a “cleaner, better politics”. Writing in The Telegraph, Mr Clegg says the lobbying scandal has again shown that our “political system has long been crying out for head-to-toe reform”. His comments came as a peer, Lord Laird, resigned from the Ulster Unionist Party. Two other peers were suspended by Labour after further cash-for-questions revelations. The MP Patrick Mercer has already quit the Tory party following an investigation by The Telegraph and BBC’s Panorama that revealed he tabled parliamentary questions and motions and offered lobbyists a security pass to the Commons after being paid thousands of pounds. Mr Clegg says the Government will now introduce laws to create a statutory register of lobbyists and give constituents the “powers of recall” to force a by-election if an MP engages in serious wrongdoing. In 2010, before he took office, David Cameron identified lobbying as “the next big scandal waiting to happen” in British politics. On taking office, the Coalition promised to create a statutory register of lobbyists, to ensure the industry was regulated. But after more than three years in office, the Government has yet to fulfil that pledge. “I know that the absence of the register from last month’s Queen’s Speech raised some concerns,” Mr Clegg says. “So let me be clear: it will happen. The detail is being looked at thoroughly.” Mr Clegg says he and Mr Cameron are “determined that the register should go ahead” as part of a broad package to clean up politics. Despite Mr Clegg’s claim of a united position with the Conservatives, many Liberal Democrats blame Mr Cameron’s party for blocking action on lobbying. Lord Newby, a Lib Dem minister, said that the Conservatives and Labour had blocked the creation of a register. “It’s totally depressing,” he said. “We haven’t met with universal support from other parties.” Mr Clegg says the “overwhelming majority of lobbying activity is legitimate”. However, “greater transparency” is needed to stop people abusing the system, he says. Mr Clegg also assures voters that the Government still intends to give them the power to remove MPs who break the law or Commons rules. Voters are likely to be able to force a by-election if a petition wins the backing of about 10 per cent of constituents. The Government has previously published a draft of a Bill it says would give voters the ability to sack MPs. But that draft has been dismissed as inadequate by many campaigners, including several MPs, who say party leaders would still have too much influence over a recall vote. Zac Goldsmith, the Conservative MP for Richmond Park, said the promises of action were inadequate. “The Government will bring in a version of recall that empowers party bosses not voters,” he said. “On every level, it’s a stitch up.” Francis Maude, the Cabinet Office minister, said he would be “astonished” if the Government did not introduce new legislation for a register of lobbyists by the 2015 election. “We all want it to happen,” Mr Maude told the Sunday Politics programme on BBC One. “It will come into effect.” While Mr Clegg praised The Daily Telegraph for disclosing the scandal, some politicians said the affair should lead to tougher rules on press regulation. Lord Soley, a Labour peer, said yesterday there was a “Leveson agenda” behind the investigations into MPs and peers willing to accept money from lobbyists. He told BBC Radio 4’s The World This Weekend that he had warned his colleagues to “be alert” because the press was “trying to target” MPs and peers. He said: “I’ve said it to both MPs and peers at times, 'Be very alert at the moment’ because there is a call for proper regulation of the press. “That doesn’t justify anything that may or may not have happened but I recognise there is a Leveson agenda here.”

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Denise Herzing: Liệu chúng ta có thể nói chuyện với cá heo?

Có cách nào tốt hơn để nghiên cứu một con vật hơn trong môi trường sống tự nhiên của nó? Từ năm 1985, Denise Herzing đã dành thời gian mỗi mùa hè để quan sát cá heo sống hoang dã ở Bahamas trên biển Đại Tây Dương . Công việc cho phép Herzing để hiểu rõ hơn về cấu trúc xã hội, hành vi, giao tiếp của cá heo hiệu quả hơn là trong môi trường sống giới hạn của một bể cá hoặc cơ sở nghiên cứu.
Rõ ràng cá heo , với trí thông minh cao có thể giao tiếp với nhau , nhưng liệu có thể và bằng cách nào con người có thể hiểu ngôn ngữ và giao tiếp với chúng là một câu hỏi thú vị . Denise chia sẻ và thảo luận về khả năng đó trong Video tại TED.

Denise Herzing: Dolphin researcher

Denise Herzing has spent almost three decades researching and communicating with wild dolphins in their natural setting and on their own terms. The book "Dolphin Diaries" tells her remarkable story.

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Today’s class | Compound words

A compound word is made when two words are joined to form a new word. Example “newspaper” from “news” and “paper” is compound word .
Learn lesson from Sarah in the video below about compound words.

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