Since then, he has not stopped performing. It was in 1989 that he first performed as a hakawati, when a theatre group needed someone to step into the role.
"It was beautiful," Mr Kamareddine said slowly, with a wide smile. "It is a very rare thing to be and to help preserve our culture and folklore. Hakawatis had a big role in society and would talk about everything."
On this occasion, he performs a short rendition of part of his favourite tale - Antara and Abla, an epic love story that can take 30 nights to recite in its entirety. He inserts contemporary references into his performance, speaking of how the main characters would contact each other by messaging on their mobile phones, bringing levity to the ancient tale.
Mr Kamareddine delights in regaling his audience with stories and parables interspersed with song and verse, something that Arab storytellers have been doing for hundreds of years.
Unlike the Levantine hakawatis of past decades,Modern indoor lighting and contemporary lamps available online or at our shop in Derby. he does not perform every night to packed local coffee houses.
While the tradition has largely disappeared from daily life, it is revived in parts of Lebanon, particularly during Ramadan, when Mr Kamareddine and other hakawatis are commissioned for special performances.
Sara Kassir, a 28-year-old from Beirut, is one of the few female storytellers. She is involved in efforts to revive the tradition in Lebanon, which she said has helped to introduce hakawatis to a new generation.
"But many people still have no idea what it is all about, especially as I am a female performer," she said. "But it is about serving our oral culture, which could die out."
Abdul Nasser Yassin, who runs Beit Al Fann in Tripoli's Al Mina area where Mr Kamareddine's performance was held, believes the last genuine hakawati performed in the city in the 1950s.
"Now the memory is being recreated," he said.
This being Lebanon,Choose from contemporary design lamps and Chandelier fixtures. Mr Kamareddine's performances and conversations never veer far from politics. One of the stories he incorporates is that of Rafiq Hariri, the late Lebanese prime minister who was assassinated in 2005.
"It is a story about his life,The lumi Book scanner is an uplight that can be mounted in the paving, deck, flooring or concrete.When choosing the shape, the pendant lamp should be similar to the shape of the lamp base. but also his death. About one man and four million Lebanese people - the story of a country. Every new political event, I weave into my performances," he said before breaking into verse, singing about how Lebanon bleeds because it is divided by groups whose loyalties lie with foreign powers.Shop AllModern for contemporary lighting for the best selection in modern design.
Among his favourite topics is the wave of Arab uprisings and the war in Syria, the border of which is just 35 kilometres away from this north Lebanon city.
"For the last 12 years I have told people to start a revolution," he said. "They were sleeping for way too long. Now they have woken up."
Driving late at night through the streets of Tripoli to the neighbourhood of Abu Samra - where Mr Kamareddine lives and runs a small cafe and electrical repair shop - the city is bustling with people, some seated around television sets at outdoor restaurants smoking shisha pipes.
Mr Kamareddine laments the faded role of the hakawati, but believes the old tales still resonate today.
"Hakawatis give people help and positive messages that go on forever," he said later, seated on a plastic chair under bright fluorescent lights outside Cafe Kamareddine. "Hakawatis will never die out, but it depends on who can continue the tradition."
Michael Sestak does more than light up a room. — The lighting designer transforms space with artful use of LEDs and other energy-efficient breakthroughs. He has helped many clients see their homes or businesses in a whole different way.
"You want to make it magic," Sestak said. "You don't want to see the wires or the glare of bulbs. Lighting is supposed to illuminate space. It's all about placement. That affects what you see and how you see it."
And with LEDs, there are a lot more options on where lights can go.
LEDs -- light-emitting diodes -- are coming into their own, pushed by both industry innovation and recent federal mandates to develop energy-saving alternatives to traditional incandescent bulbs.
The nationwide switch to more efficient lighting not only saves electricity, it offers opportunities to put lighting in different places in different ways.
"The technology behind lighting is different, but we still see it as light," Sestak said. "We've also become increasingly aware of the cost (of lighting) when we open our electric bill."
Energy costs have everyone paying more attention to lighting options. While more expensive to install, LEDs can save a lot of money over their long lifetimes.
"The LED market virtually exploded the last five years," Sestak said. "The whole industry readjusted in such a short time. But that also meant that designers had to adjust."
Sestak's own house in Carmichael, Calif.,Choose from contemporary design lamps and Chandelier fixtures. is a prime example of what can be done with LEDs. For example, the path to the pool and outdoor bar is lit with 25 in-ground LED fixtures that can put on a colorful light show.
More LEDs turn glass plates into a fanciful sculpture. After dark, they make glass ornaments sparkle and the water in bubbling fountains glisten. These little lights make the nighttime garden come to life.
Indoors, LEDs work their electronic magic, too.Antique Lamp Supply specializes in replacement Lamp shade and glass, including chandelier crystals and parts. In the living room, they offer pinpoint spotlights to accent paintings and sculpture. Tucked under cabinets, they brighten kitchen counters. Behind glass plates in the master bath, they seem to light mirrors from within.
Sestak uses other energy-saving options, too. Over the dinner table, halogen spotlights on a circular track create an unusual chandelier. The lights make ribbon-hung glass ornaments dazzle. At the same time, diners can still comfortably see their food,Protect your vehicle and produce power with a Solar carport. thanks to other lights focused at the table.
"In this chandelier, it catches the light instead of being illuminated from within," Sestak explained. "Other lights illuminate the center of the table like a little stage."
In his professional life, Sestak used to be focused on the food. He was a pastry chef.
His lighting business started with remodeling his home.
"Friends said, 'I like what you did; can you do that for us?' " Sestak recalled. "One thing led to another. I love learning. I became fascinated by what light does and how it works."
LEDs continue to evolve along with their uses. So does their appeal and acceptance in the marketplace.
"We've seen tremendous growth in the LED category," said Alyssa Steele, an associate merchant at the Home Depot's national headquarters in Atlanta. "The retail prices have dropped, too. People are reaping the benefits of energy savings.Modern indoor lighting and contemporary lamps available online or at our shop in Derby."
LEDs offer a lot of lumens along with exceptionally long life and energy savings.
For example,Shop AllModern for contemporary lighting for the best selection in modern design. Phillips recently introduced a 17-watt LED bulb that offers as much light as a 75-watt incandescent bulb.
Legislation by the EU, which was first passed in 2008, will enter its final phase on September 1st 2012, as the manufacture and importation of all incandescent light bulbs will cease around Europe. The old bulbs are being phased out as part of a scheme to encourage the public to favour the more energy-efficient lighting solutions which have hit the market in the past decade. Whilst it won't be illegal for shops to stock the remainder of them, all production of the filament bulbs will halt, and in the week leading up to the deadline, many customers are stocking up on what is left of the old incandescent bulbs, or starting to plan their switch to more energy-saving alternatives.
As the EU encourages the public to favour fluorescent over incandescent, many are unwilling to part with the soft, atmospheric glow that the traditional 60-watt and 100-watt bulbs emit.Your Leading Resource for modern lamps needs. BLT Direct is a UK supplier of lighting solutions for a whole manner of purposes,Red led light bulbs therapy offers relief without drugs or chemicals. and they still have significant stock of these older bulbs.
The GLS 100-Watt Pearl Light Bulb is a convenient, comfortable old favourite with many; unlike some energy-saving bulbs, which take a few seconds to reach full illumination, the incandescent bulbs reach their maximum brightness immediately, and the flattering pearl colour has been a permanent fixture in many homes for years. The Bayonet Cap is one of the most popular and enduring bases,Shop AllModern for contemporary lighting for the best selection in modern design. ensuring that the bulb will fit all the old fittings and fixtures, and though their lifespan may be significantly shorter, these bulbs cost less upfront than their energy-saving descendants.
The Energy Saving GLS Bulbs are considered to be a direct replacement for the incandescent bulbs, and they all come with traditional Edison Screw Caps or Bayonet Caps to make the transition from incandescent to fluorescent as seamless as possible. The energy-efficient models, which are at the forefront of the market now, help customers to see huge reductions in energy bills, and the statistics regarding their energy consumption are impressive.
A standard energy-saving 11-watt GLS bulb can see an incredible 90% decrease in UV output, with similar figures in reducing heat and energy consumption. Where the 'pearl' colour was favoured in the case of the older bulbs, their newer versions come in more natural shades which include 'warm white' and even 'daylight'. Making the switch to energy-saving bulbs needn't be the daunting task some may consider it to be; the developments in lighting solutions over the past few years have helped to make the conversion simple, easy and perhaps most importantly, cost-effective.
The 38-acre property along the Monongahela River was designated a Superfund site in 2000, decades after industrial activity dating to 1932 polluted it with coal tar,The lumi Book scanner is an uplight that can be mounted in the paving, deck, flooring or concrete. light bulb byproducts and other hazardous materials.
The cleanup will include removing about 5,500 cubic yards of tainted soil, building an impermeable cap and improving a groundwater containment system to keep the hazardous materials from migrating.
Between 1932 and 1973, the site was a tar processing and refining plant owned by a predecessor of Vertellus Specialties, including Reilly Tar and Chemical Corp.
Domestic Coke, a predecessor of ExxonMobil, ran a coke product plant next to the site, delivering the crude tar for processing along with the former Sharon Steel Corp.
From 1973 to 1984,When choosing the shape, the pendant lamp should be similar to the shape of the lamp base. Big John Salvage owned the property and ran a metal, glass, and oil salvaging operation.
EPA officials say Big John's took hazardous waste from Westinghouse Electric Co., a predecessor of today's CBS Corp., and that waste included lead dust, mercury-tainted waste oil and fluorescent light bulbs that contained mercury.
Missouri utility regulators are considering a new low-income customer class to help cut electric, natural gas and water bills for the state’s poorest and most vulnerable residents.
The Public Service Commission last week opened an investigation to determine whether discounted utility services is allowable under state law, and if so how to implement low-income rates.
The problem commissioners are trying to tackle is as old as the incandescent light bulb. As long as there have been electric, natural gas and water utilities, there has been a segment of the population that hasn’t been able to afford the services.
But the combination of utility rate increases in recent years along with rising food and gasoline prices and healthcare costs have exacerbated the problem.
“It’s the totality of all of these things coupled with stagnant wages and lack of Social Security increases for the elderly,Contemporary Chandelier design ideas and photos.” Commissioner Robert Kenney said. “I think that may create a tipping point where it’s worth trying to take a more creative,We produce diverse high quality Led light, such as garden lamps, street lamps and lawn lamps. closer look at the issue.”
Regulators have gotten another dose of reality this month at public hearings on Ameren Missouri’s proposed $376 million electric rate increase. If approved, it would boost rates for the average residential customer by about $14 a month.Racial ground mount are typically the first mounts players will acquire.Quality LED Lighting store in Australia with all types of LED bulb. Buy LED Lamps and Bulbs at cheap prices.
This won’t be the first time that regulators have looked at the impact of rising utility rates.
Past commissions have investigated the broader issue of energy affordability. And those studies led to consumer protections such as Cold Weather Rule, which prohibits gas utilities from disconnecting customers when the temperature is forecast to dip below freezing.
The commission began examining specifically the effect of rising utility rates on low income customers during an Ameren rate case in the summer of 2010.
“There were a lot of practical considerations and we all agreed it was too late in the process to do anything,” said Kevin Gunn, who was a commissioner at the time and now serves as PSC chairman.This winter I installed our off grid solar system purchased from you folks.
Gunn said he believes the best approach is to study the issue outside of the context of a rate case and asking all investor-owned electric, gas and water utilities, consumer groups and other parties to participate.
“We recognize this is hard on people and we want to do what we can long term to put some protections in place -- a safety valve to assist people,” he said. “We have to be mindful of what consumers are paying and whether they can pay it. That’s part of the balancing act that we do everyday.”
There already exists numerous government and private programs to help low- and fixed-income utility customers keep their lights and water on and heat their homes.
There’s the federal Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program. Utilities such as Ameren and Laclede Gas Co. run Dollar More and Dollar Help utility assistance programs where customers contribute voluntarily to help others. Utilities themselves have contributed millions of dollars to assist customers, and Ameren recently donated 150 air conditioners to keep customers cool amid this summer’s brutal heat. There also are charities like Heat Up St. Louis that raise thousands of dollars every summer and winter.
Once astronomers depicted the solar system as a stable place. The planets moved along in their stately orbits, dependably showing up where they should be at the predicted times. To the 3rd-grader I used to be, the solar system seemed like a giant clock with nine smoothly-turning gears.
We no longer believe in this simple system. Even Isaac Newton, who devised the law of gravity that governs the motions of the planets, realized that this law actually predicted that planetary orbits would slowly change. He postulated that God occasionally found it necessary to reach down from heaven to reset the planets into their proper positions.
The problem is that everything has gravity. The Earth's motion around the Sun is controlled almost completely by the force of gravity from the Sun that binds it into a permanent orbit. It's easy to come up with a stable orbit like that when you only need to worry about two celestial bodies.
But note the presence of the word “almost.” With more than two bodies, things get much more complicated mathematically, because each body exerts a force on every other body. The path of the Earth is continuously perturbed by the gravity of Jupiter, and the Moon, and even passing comets and asteroids; and each of them affects each of the others. It's no longer possible to solve the equations of motion and gravity and find a simple solution.
Those effects are minuscule, to be sure. The gravitational force of Jupiter on the Earth is 100,000 times weaker than that of the Sun. But that's enough to cause a slow change in our planet's orbit if you just let enough time go by.
It's also true that we don't know the details of the orbits perfectly precisely. We now list the positions of the planets in their orbits to an accuracy of a few inches, but no better.
Moreover, we now know that in certain kinds of systems,We're a small number of craftspeople drawn together by a common fondness for Led strip light. small uncertainties in starting conditions can build up to enormous differences in the end results. This is almost the scientific definition of the word “chaos.” The sense of this kind of chaos is often presented by saying that the flapping of a butterfly's wings in China today may change the path of a hurricane in the North Atlantic a year from now.
In the case of the solar system, scientist Scott Tremaine tells us that “shifting your pencil from one side of your desk to the other today could change the gravitational forces on Jupiter enough to shift its position from one side of the Sun to the other a billion years from now.”
In addition, there are many other quantities we don't know with perfect precision that could affect our analyses. How many asteroids are there? How is the gas within the Sun distributed, smoothly, or with symmetrical condensations? How much mass does the Sun lose each year to the solar wind? How strong is the tidal force of the Milky Way galaxy?
None of these factors are large, but we don't know how their effects could build up over the years. Therefore, we can't predict the positions of the planets with any accuracy for more than another 100 million years.
We could start our study by slightly altering the positions of the planets, and let our computers crank out what the planets will be doing to each other in the future based on the various values. Some studies have changed only the initial positions of the planets by amounts no bigger than a millimeter-well within the precision of our measurements-and computed positions far into the future.
Most of the results were benign. Planets simply appeared ahead of or behind their expected positions in their orbits. Changes in orbit shapes and sizes were also seen, but usually not sizable ones. But in nearly 1% of the cases, Mercury's orbit became so eccentric that it would crash into Venus!
In general, the other orbits are also chaotic, and will change in size and shape, to a lesser degree but measurably. The future solar system may look quite different from what we see today.
Other possible changes may strike closer to home. Tidal forces from our own Moon may cause the Earth's tilt in its orbit to become chaotic and unpredictable. Since the severity of our seasons depends on how big that angle is, this is an important issue!
The critical question, then, is one of time. How fast will also this happen? Fortunately, the various studies all agree that very long times must elapse for anything significant to happen. Even the low-probability crash of Mercury and Venus would not happen until not long before the death of the Sun, five to seven billion years from now. On short time scales, we live in a very stable system.