One of those most anticipated new shows is the highly touted prequel to Sex and the City—The Carrie Diaries. The show, starring Anna Sophia Robb begins on January 14th on the CW network. In it, a teenage Carrie Bradshaw is trying to get her footing in life and dreaming of becoming a writer in New York. She's also dealing with the common issues of high school students like who to date, what to wear and how to become a strong individual. All of that plays into what molds and shapes Carrie into the woman she eventually becomes. It's also when she begins to get a passion for fashion and a yearning for the opposite sex.
While there are obvious nods to the later Miss Bradshaw, The Carrie Diaries also offers something unique that the older show did not. If it can maintain that freshness, it stands a good chance of survival. However, if it tries too hard to mold itself into Sex and the City too early, it may quickly lose its audiences. A delicate balance must be achieved between the old and the new. Tune in to see if the show can achieve it.
NBC continues to try to strengthen its TV lineup with a new drama called Deception. Starting January 7th, the show centers on the suspicious death of a young socialite. An FBI agent played by Laz Alonso recruits the girl's former best friend, who also happens to be his girlfriend, to work undercover to break the case. It's Joanna's (played by Meagan Good) job to uncover whether the girl was murdered or committed suicide.
Fraught with enough twists and turns to keep the most dedicated thriller junkie happy, there will be a lot of information for the average viewer to retain and process. For that reason, the show may not be for everyone. However, those who love ABC's Revenge will probably like Deception as well. The tone of the plot is similar while being just different enough to intrigue as well as captivate.
NBC continues to try to strengthen its TV lineup with a new drama called Deception. Starting January 7th, the show centers on the suspicious death of a young socialite. An FBI agent played by Laz Alonso recruits the girl's former best friend, who also happens to be his girlfriend, to work undercover to break the case. It's Joanna's (played by Meagan Good) job to uncover whether the girl was murdered or committed suicide.
Fraught with enough twists and turns to keep the most dedicated thriller junkie happy, there will be a lot of information for the average viewer to retain and process. For that reason, the show may not be for everyone. However, those who love ABC's Revenge will probably like Deception as well. The tone of the plot is similar while being just different enough to intrigue as well as captivate.
The members of the memorably named Cosmic Slim and His Intergalactic Plowboys admit they are getting rather advanced in age, but this fact of life, that we all must encounter someday, has not vanquished their life-long love of music.
In fact, by all accounts, time has only made it more potent. They still have an unending passion, as their motto states, for "touring the cosmos for your listening pleasure."
They describe their brand of music as eclectic, and there is truly something for everyone. Ultimately, the band plays what they personally find interesting and fun, and that can become pretty much anything. For this reason, they joke, "one thing is for sure, we aren't in it for the big bucks."
"Some us come from Folk, Country, Jug-Band, and old-fashioned Rock 'n Roll. And sometimes we'll just jam away on some Grateful Dead stuff," says the band.
"For example," they continue, "in an old jug-bandy kind of song, which are usually pretty straightforward harmonically, the jazz guy will occasionally throw in some of those 'ambiguous' chord voicings. Or we'll be doing an old boogie-woogie kind of thing, and suddenly you're hearing a finger-picked electric guitar, or a bass line that feels more like a Texas Shuffle. And imagine the thrill of doing a sweet old Blues Ballad, when the Pedal Steel speaks up!"
The Pedal Steel player is Tim Bowles, who indeed has a "long and glorious history" around the Worcester music scene. He has been a member of such local acts as The Trailers, Prudence and the Plowboys, the Prairie Oysters, and Dave Pike's Good Old Boys. Two other members of the band are legends of the Worcester rock n' roll scene as well, Rick McCarthy on drums and the newest member Phil Nigro on guitar.
The rest of the band consists of the three friends who met while attending Clark University back in the late 60s. Guitarist Rick Levine, bassist Bill Fisher and keyboardist Sten Gustavson played together in college before going their separate ways. Rick and Bill went on to help form the Prairie Dogs, while Sten moved to Arizona. Despite the distance, they stayed in touch.
"We've reconvened off and on since then, and this 'Slim' thing happened."
This "Slim" thing happened in a perfectly ordinary fashion. Once again, the common story of a bunch of guys coming together out of a unitary desire to play fun music.
"You need to know that this whole thing started out as just a weekly jam. Yes, we always intended to bring it out, but basically this is about us having fun doing tunes we find interesting," they said.
As a young and quite unique creation with a non-traditional sound, they will play basically anywhere that will have them.
"We'd like to find that mix of fun and dancing rooms and 'listening' rooms. Something like a coffeehouse that would be happy with a 6-piece, all-electric-except-for-the-drums eclecto-improvisatory experiment that's always riding the line between art and a trainwreck!" they joke.
For those residents of the cosmos lucky enough to experience a performance by thw band, they can succumb to any number of possible emotions. Which one of the musical genres from their wide repertoire the band chooses to play depends on the context and setting in which they are placed.
"We do some tunes which are simply fun -- people out in a bar will dance and enjoy themselves," they said. "But then there are other things we do which are more for listening. We hope people enjoy them, but 'fun' would probably not be the right descriptor. These are the things you might more commonly hear in a coffeehouse or lounge setting."
But no matter what they choose to perform on a given night, they recognize the one important quality that unites all music, that truly makes music an art form in every sense of the word, i.e., its ability to stir special, potent feelings in both the listener and the musician, feelings that really can't be created by any other type of event.
"It's a fascinating exercise on a personal level. You're trying to bring technical skills to create or recreate an emotional event. We've been playing around with the idea for a long time now, and we still find ourselves asking 'How can that possibly work?' But it does. It's the almost magical part of artistic endeavors."
The band's music can be seen as purely improvisational, almost chaotic. They don't even consider any one individual a traditional 'frontman.' In other words, they are a 'band of sidemen.' But it is an organized and welcoming chaos that they bring to the music world, and after all, can't all music (and indeed the cosmos) ultimately be described in such a way?
"In a group context, the teamwork aspect is a thrilling kind of challenge. Our stuff is pretty improvisatory, but even when you're playing a tight arrangement, you're constantly listening and adjusting to what's going on. Lots of practice and repetitions make it more predictable, but you never quite lose that constant, unspoken sort of dialogue that's going on underneath the song," they explain in terms all true musicians can understand.
Our web platform is designed to provide product and assembly specifications for the purpose of assisting builders, architects and engineers in how to design our new assemblies against fire, mold, wood-rot, termites and high winds, providing protection up to nine feet above grade. The combination of Eco Red Shield ? lumber superstructure, encased with Eco Disaster Break? coatings, is the most defensive building innovation ever to hit the industry as we recognized that traditional felt paper and fabric are no longer good enough to protect against rising tides and high winds, let alone fire storms. ECOB building designed assemblies and products are now supported by the FDNY and California Fire Departments. Eco Disaster Break coatings applied to the exterior structure eliminate the need for outdated protection methods such as felt paper or vapor barriers around windows, doors and even under roofing and siding; decreasing the risk of water, fire, and termite damage for wood framed structures. Moreover, Eco Disaster Break coatings provide continual protection during high wind events, safeguarding the home's vulnerability against water penetration, and fire ignition.
Eco Disaster Break? is a Class A Fire Rated, UV Resistant, high-performance, non-toxic, acrylic coating that forms a waterproof and seamless monolithic membrane. When applied to Eco Red Shield? protected wood surfaces, Eco Disaster Break? forms the most advanced defensive construction assembly available against water penetration, fire ignition, mold, wood-rot and termites.
ECOB's subsidiary, E Build & Truss, will be one of the first companies to submit plans for the rebuild efforts from hurricane Sandy in Breezy Point, Rockaway, New Jersey and Staten Island next week; all of which are supported by firemen from coast to coast. ECOB has identified, and plans to open a core New Jersey facility by February 2013, positioning ECOB Products in the local market, so people do not have to rebuild using the same old building practices expecting a different result during future severe weather and super storm events without drastically increasing brick and mortar costs.
Saturday, December 29, 2012
How First Law Of Mad Science Became A Household Name
Things are about to get interesting. Probably. The world of independent comics – and yes, there is indeed a vibrant world out there – is experiencing something new. We can call it a digital revolution but I’ll get back to that in a second.
I co-write and publish First Law of Mad Science, a Lovecraftian horror meets Cyberpunk comic that was funded on Kickstarter and is now available for sale on ComiXology thanks to the brand new ComiXology Submit. The actual process of bringing First Law to readers has been four years in the making and is one that wouldn’t have been possible without these excellent websites. I mention this for subsequent anecdotal evidence. Also, and let’s face it, so I can plug my comic in hopes that you might give us the time of day.
Things are about to get interesting. Probably. The world of independent comics – and yes, there is indeed a vibrant world out there – is experiencing something new. We can call it a digital revolution but I’ll get back to that in a second.
I co-write and publish First Law of Mad Science, a Lovecraftian horror meets Cyberpunk comic that was funded on Kickstarter and is now available for sale on ComiXology thanks to the brand new ComiXology Submit. The actual process of bringing First Law to readers has been four years in the making and is one that wouldn’t have been possible without these excellent websites. I mention this for subsequent anecdotal evidence. Also, and let’s face it, so I can plug my comic in hopes that you might give us the time of day.
The role of physical endurance in shaping humankind has intrigued anthropologists and gripped the popular imagination for some time. In 2004, the evolutionary biologists Daniel E. Lieberman of Harvard and Dennis M. Bramble of the University of Utah published a seminal article in the journal Nature titled “Endurance Running and the Evolution of Homo,” in which they posited that our bipedal ancestors survived by becoming endurance athletes, able to bring down swifter prey through sheer doggedness, jogging and plodding along behind them until the animals dropped.
Endurance produced meals, which provided energy for mating, which meant that adept early joggers passed along their genes. In this way, natural selection drove early humans to become even more athletic, Dr Lieberman and other scientists have written, their bodies developing longer legs, shorter toes, less hair and complicated inner-ear mechanisms to maintain balance and stability during upright ambulation. Movement shaped the human body.
But simultaneously, in a development that until recently many scientists viewed as unrelated, humans were becoming smarter. Their brains were increasing rapidly in size.
Today, humans have a brain that is about three times larger than would be expected, anthropologists say, given our species’ body size in comparison with that of other mammals.
To explain those outsized brains, evolutionary scientists have pointed to such occurrences as meat eating and, perhaps most determinatively, our early ancestors’ need for social interaction. Early humans had to hunt as a group, which required complicated thinking patterns and, it’s been thought, rewarded the social and brainy with evolutionary success. According to that hypothesis, the evolution of the brain was driven by the need to think.
But now some scientists are suggesting that physical activity also played a critical role in making our brains larger.
To reach that conclusion, anthropologists began by looking at existing data about brain size and endurance capacity in mammals like dogs, guinea pigs, foxes, mice, wolves, rats, civet cats, antelope, mongeese, goats and elands. They found a notable pattern. Species like dogs and rats that had a high innate endurance capacity, which presumably had evolved over millenniums, also had large brain volumes relative to their body size.
Those particular early humans then applied their growing ability to think toward better tracking prey, becoming the best-fed and most successful from an evolutionary standpoint. Being in motion made them smarter, and that allowed them to move more efficiently.
And out of all of this came, eventually, an ability to understand higher math and invent iPads. But that was some time later. The broad point of this new notion is that if physical activity helped to mold the structure of our brains, then it most likely remains essential to brain health today, says John D Polk, an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and co-author, with Dr Raichlen, of the new article.
And there is scientific support for that idea. Recent studies have shown, he says, that “regular exercise, even walking,” leads to more robust mental abilities, “beginning in childhood and continuing into old age.”
Of course, the hypothesis that jogging after prey helped to drive human brain evolution is just a hypothesis, Dr Raichehlen says, and almost unprovable.
But it is compelling, says Harvard’s Dr Lieberman, who has worked with the authors of the new article. “I fundamentally agree that there is a deep evolutionary basis for the relationship between a healthy body and a healthy mind,” he says, a relationship that makes the term “jogging your memory” more literal than most of us might have expected and provides a powerful incentive to be active in 2013.
The role of physical endurance in shaping humankind has intrigued anthropologists and gripped the popular imagination for some time. In 2004, the evolutionary biologists Daniel E. Lieberman of Harvard and Dennis M. Bramble of the University of Utah published a seminal article in the journal Nature titled “Endurance Running and the Evolution of Homo,” in which they posited that our bipedal ancestors survived by becoming endurance athletes, able to bring down swifter prey through sheer doggedness, jogging and plodding along behind them until the animals dropped.
Endurance produced meals, which provided energy for mating, which meant that adept early joggers passed along their genes. In this way, natural selection drove early humans to become even more athletic, Dr Lieberman and other scientists have written, their bodies developing longer legs, shorter toes, less hair and complicated inner-ear mechanisms to maintain balance and stability during upright ambulation. Movement shaped the human body.
But simultaneously, in a development that until recently many scientists viewed as unrelated, humans were becoming smarter. Their brains were increasing rapidly in size.
Today, humans have a brain that is about three times larger than would be expected, anthropologists say, given our species’ body size in comparison with that of other mammals.
To explain those outsized brains, evolutionary scientists have pointed to such occurrences as meat eating and, perhaps most determinatively, our early ancestors’ need for social interaction. Early humans had to hunt as a group, which required complicated thinking patterns and, it’s been thought, rewarded the social and brainy with evolutionary success. According to that hypothesis, the evolution of the brain was driven by the need to think.
But now some scientists are suggesting that physical activity also played a critical role in making our brains larger.
To reach that conclusion, anthropologists began by looking at existing data about brain size and endurance capacity in mammals like dogs, guinea pigs, foxes, mice, wolves, rats, civet cats, antelope, mongeese, goats and elands. They found a notable pattern. Species like dogs and rats that had a high innate endurance capacity, which presumably had evolved over millenniums, also had large brain volumes relative to their body size.
I co-write and publish First Law of Mad Science, a Lovecraftian horror meets Cyberpunk comic that was funded on Kickstarter and is now available for sale on ComiXology thanks to the brand new ComiXology Submit. The actual process of bringing First Law to readers has been four years in the making and is one that wouldn’t have been possible without these excellent websites. I mention this for subsequent anecdotal evidence. Also, and let’s face it, so I can plug my comic in hopes that you might give us the time of day.
Things are about to get interesting. Probably. The world of independent comics – and yes, there is indeed a vibrant world out there – is experiencing something new. We can call it a digital revolution but I’ll get back to that in a second.
I co-write and publish First Law of Mad Science, a Lovecraftian horror meets Cyberpunk comic that was funded on Kickstarter and is now available for sale on ComiXology thanks to the brand new ComiXology Submit. The actual process of bringing First Law to readers has been four years in the making and is one that wouldn’t have been possible without these excellent websites. I mention this for subsequent anecdotal evidence. Also, and let’s face it, so I can plug my comic in hopes that you might give us the time of day.
The role of physical endurance in shaping humankind has intrigued anthropologists and gripped the popular imagination for some time. In 2004, the evolutionary biologists Daniel E. Lieberman of Harvard and Dennis M. Bramble of the University of Utah published a seminal article in the journal Nature titled “Endurance Running and the Evolution of Homo,” in which they posited that our bipedal ancestors survived by becoming endurance athletes, able to bring down swifter prey through sheer doggedness, jogging and plodding along behind them until the animals dropped.
Endurance produced meals, which provided energy for mating, which meant that adept early joggers passed along their genes. In this way, natural selection drove early humans to become even more athletic, Dr Lieberman and other scientists have written, their bodies developing longer legs, shorter toes, less hair and complicated inner-ear mechanisms to maintain balance and stability during upright ambulation. Movement shaped the human body.
But simultaneously, in a development that until recently many scientists viewed as unrelated, humans were becoming smarter. Their brains were increasing rapidly in size.
Today, humans have a brain that is about three times larger than would be expected, anthropologists say, given our species’ body size in comparison with that of other mammals.
To explain those outsized brains, evolutionary scientists have pointed to such occurrences as meat eating and, perhaps most determinatively, our early ancestors’ need for social interaction. Early humans had to hunt as a group, which required complicated thinking patterns and, it’s been thought, rewarded the social and brainy with evolutionary success. According to that hypothesis, the evolution of the brain was driven by the need to think.
But now some scientists are suggesting that physical activity also played a critical role in making our brains larger.
To reach that conclusion, anthropologists began by looking at existing data about brain size and endurance capacity in mammals like dogs, guinea pigs, foxes, mice, wolves, rats, civet cats, antelope, mongeese, goats and elands. They found a notable pattern. Species like dogs and rats that had a high innate endurance capacity, which presumably had evolved over millenniums, also had large brain volumes relative to their body size.
Those particular early humans then applied their growing ability to think toward better tracking prey, becoming the best-fed and most successful from an evolutionary standpoint. Being in motion made them smarter, and that allowed them to move more efficiently.
And out of all of this came, eventually, an ability to understand higher math and invent iPads. But that was some time later. The broad point of this new notion is that if physical activity helped to mold the structure of our brains, then it most likely remains essential to brain health today, says John D Polk, an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and co-author, with Dr Raichlen, of the new article.
And there is scientific support for that idea. Recent studies have shown, he says, that “regular exercise, even walking,” leads to more robust mental abilities, “beginning in childhood and continuing into old age.”
Of course, the hypothesis that jogging after prey helped to drive human brain evolution is just a hypothesis, Dr Raichehlen says, and almost unprovable.
But it is compelling, says Harvard’s Dr Lieberman, who has worked with the authors of the new article. “I fundamentally agree that there is a deep evolutionary basis for the relationship between a healthy body and a healthy mind,” he says, a relationship that makes the term “jogging your memory” more literal than most of us might have expected and provides a powerful incentive to be active in 2013.
The role of physical endurance in shaping humankind has intrigued anthropologists and gripped the popular imagination for some time. In 2004, the evolutionary biologists Daniel E. Lieberman of Harvard and Dennis M. Bramble of the University of Utah published a seminal article in the journal Nature titled “Endurance Running and the Evolution of Homo,” in which they posited that our bipedal ancestors survived by becoming endurance athletes, able to bring down swifter prey through sheer doggedness, jogging and plodding along behind them until the animals dropped.
Endurance produced meals, which provided energy for mating, which meant that adept early joggers passed along their genes. In this way, natural selection drove early humans to become even more athletic, Dr Lieberman and other scientists have written, their bodies developing longer legs, shorter toes, less hair and complicated inner-ear mechanisms to maintain balance and stability during upright ambulation. Movement shaped the human body.
But simultaneously, in a development that until recently many scientists viewed as unrelated, humans were becoming smarter. Their brains were increasing rapidly in size.
Today, humans have a brain that is about three times larger than would be expected, anthropologists say, given our species’ body size in comparison with that of other mammals.
To explain those outsized brains, evolutionary scientists have pointed to such occurrences as meat eating and, perhaps most determinatively, our early ancestors’ need for social interaction. Early humans had to hunt as a group, which required complicated thinking patterns and, it’s been thought, rewarded the social and brainy with evolutionary success. According to that hypothesis, the evolution of the brain was driven by the need to think.
But now some scientists are suggesting that physical activity also played a critical role in making our brains larger.
To reach that conclusion, anthropologists began by looking at existing data about brain size and endurance capacity in mammals like dogs, guinea pigs, foxes, mice, wolves, rats, civet cats, antelope, mongeese, goats and elands. They found a notable pattern. Species like dogs and rats that had a high innate endurance capacity, which presumably had evolved over millenniums, also had large brain volumes relative to their body size.
Thursday, December 27, 2012
The next generation local stores
With growing retail space and changing consumer behaviour, the retail market in India is poised for a strong growth. The sector is expected to grow at a CAGR of 13%, and according to the Investment Commission of India, it is likely to grow three fold from its current size to $660 bn by 2015. Organised retail is growing at a rate of 15-20%. Irrespective of the phenomenal growth in organised retail in recent years, local kiranas and traditional family-run stores in the unorganised sector still account for about 93% to 95% of Indian retail market. According to a recent report by consultancy firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), there are over 12 mn mom-and-pop stores in India’s unorganised sector. While mall-based shopping formats are gaining popularity in most cities, kirana stores offer credit and apply flexible conditions for product returns and exchange. Apart from these factors, neighbourhood locations, personal services etc are among the strengths of the unorganised retail sector.
That said, the unorganised sector lacks access to modern technology to run the business and adoption of information technology is still at a nascent stage in the sector. Traditionally, the sector has not adopted IT due to reluctance of the retail store owners to automate operations. According to a survey conducted by the Indian Council for Research, fewer than 10% of the unorganised sector retail outlets use billing software. Fewer still. have access to Internet and network connectivity. And less than 7% use a card-payment device.
However, rising competition is prompting the unorganised stores to change and go techy to tap the new opportunities. With the government amending rules to make way for foreign direct investment in the multi-brand retail, local retail shop owners now need a paradigm shift towards technology and process implementation. To compete in urban markets and middle-class neighbourhood, kirana owners must adopt at least basic automation, say experts.
According to Sachin Sharangpani, Vice President of Sales and Markets Manufacturing, Retail & Services, Atos India, there is a huge need for unorganised retailers to build processes and use technology to support their business processes. However, there is no specific one-size-fits-all technology package for retailers. Multiple factors -starting from basic technology knowledge and expertise to store location, products, size and online operations make the needs unique.
“Although a PC-running point-of-sale (PoS) software, barcode scanner and billing printer are basic requirements for a retail shop,” said S M Ramprasad, Deputy General Manager, Consumer Product Group, Epson India. “They also need to adopt a solid retail platform and back-office functionality. This will help them retrieve data on what is selling, what is contributing and what is not working,” he said. Most of these are offered by managed service providers and the cost of entry is negligible. Next, a reliable Internet connection and a low-end computer opens up a world of possibilities for the small merchant where a host of Cloud-based solutions can help manage assortments, inventory and replenishment as well as distribution, logistics and accounting.
Seeing the rising opportunity in this space, service providers and solution vendors have started offering solutions that integrate the value chain for kirana operators, connecting wholesalers and vendors. These solutions, which are often free to small merchants, help manage sales and inventory and replenishment. In exchange, service providers monetise their solutions by offering consolidation of kirana business volumes for wholesalers. Additionally, thanks to proliferation of consumer channels such as mobile and social applications, unorganised retailers have a unique opportunity to modernise their operations and engage their customer at a new level.
A retailer can start his IT journey with a simple PoS system. Karthik Shivasankaran, Proprietor of Chennai-based Ravi Pharmacy, felt that a PC-based PoS solution with bar-coding system will help retailers like him to improve stock management and control, and to get more in-depth cash and financial reporting. Understanding the specific problems of unorganised players, vendors have started to make tailour-made PoS solutions for the unorganised sector. “There are various new billing solutions used by retailers that benefit the unorganised sector. The customised computer-based billing solution is fast gaining importance for industry verticals such as retail,” said Narang. Low cost, easy to use, flexible solutions which can be installed easily are now available in the market.
For the store owners, Cloud computing is addressing two important barriers -making technology more affordable and eliminating the need to commit to ongoing maintenance and upkeep of these assets. “Relative ease of entry and widespread adoption of Cloud has unleashed innovation and enabled technology startups develop and deploy software solutions in record time with little capital investment. Computing resources are offered by services providers in shared hosted environment, which create economies of scale for users of technology. Software applications running in Cloud are typically available through web browsers running on inexpensive computers, mobile devices or tablets,” said Natasha Giannopoulos, Associate Vice President, International Operations, LoyaltyOne.
Another technology that is fast catching up in the retailing space is mobility. Mobile penetration is predicted to reach most of the population by 2015. At the same time according to IDC’s latest mobile phone tracker data, smart phone penetration has increased by 68% last year and will continue this trajectory for the next few years. These factors, together with low set up costs and little additional infrastructure investment create a natural opportunity for the retail operators to use mobile as the medium to communicate with customers. “Low-cost tablets are becoming available for unorganised retail sector along with accessories such as scanners and printers which can also be used as PoS. Many of the apparel stores are already adopting the same which also help the sales person in detailing the product, capturing the order and billing,” explained Sharangpani of Atos.
Although the use of IT is increasing in the unorganised retail sector, there are still certain challenges faced by the sector because the IT systems are widely dispersed in nature. For many players, computer literacy remains to be an obstacle. How does a player select, install, integrate and maintain the technology he/she needs? How will you train employees to operate it? How do you manage the online presence? Such queries remain a concern for many. Also, most shopkeepers are scared of ongoing costs of operating and upgrading technology. Resistance to change is another big trouble. “At the heart of the challenge facing the retail industry in India is a lack of effective mechanisms to maintain visibility of product flow from sourPortsmouth prepares for annual First Night eventsce to consumer.
That said, the unorganised sector lacks access to modern technology to run the business and adoption of information technology is still at a nascent stage in the sector. Traditionally, the sector has not adopted IT due to reluctance of the retail store owners to automate operations. According to a survey conducted by the Indian Council for Research, fewer than 10% of the unorganised sector retail outlets use billing software. Fewer still. have access to Internet and network connectivity. And less than 7% use a card-payment device.
However, rising competition is prompting the unorganised stores to change and go techy to tap the new opportunities. With the government amending rules to make way for foreign direct investment in the multi-brand retail, local retail shop owners now need a paradigm shift towards technology and process implementation. To compete in urban markets and middle-class neighbourhood, kirana owners must adopt at least basic automation, say experts.
According to Sachin Sharangpani, Vice President of Sales and Markets Manufacturing, Retail & Services, Atos India, there is a huge need for unorganised retailers to build processes and use technology to support their business processes. However, there is no specific one-size-fits-all technology package for retailers. Multiple factors -starting from basic technology knowledge and expertise to store location, products, size and online operations make the needs unique.
“Although a PC-running point-of-sale (PoS) software, barcode scanner and billing printer are basic requirements for a retail shop,” said S M Ramprasad, Deputy General Manager, Consumer Product Group, Epson India. “They also need to adopt a solid retail platform and back-office functionality. This will help them retrieve data on what is selling, what is contributing and what is not working,” he said. Most of these are offered by managed service providers and the cost of entry is negligible. Next, a reliable Internet connection and a low-end computer opens up a world of possibilities for the small merchant where a host of Cloud-based solutions can help manage assortments, inventory and replenishment as well as distribution, logistics and accounting.
Seeing the rising opportunity in this space, service providers and solution vendors have started offering solutions that integrate the value chain for kirana operators, connecting wholesalers and vendors. These solutions, which are often free to small merchants, help manage sales and inventory and replenishment. In exchange, service providers monetise their solutions by offering consolidation of kirana business volumes for wholesalers. Additionally, thanks to proliferation of consumer channels such as mobile and social applications, unorganised retailers have a unique opportunity to modernise their operations and engage their customer at a new level.
A retailer can start his IT journey with a simple PoS system. Karthik Shivasankaran, Proprietor of Chennai-based Ravi Pharmacy, felt that a PC-based PoS solution with bar-coding system will help retailers like him to improve stock management and control, and to get more in-depth cash and financial reporting. Understanding the specific problems of unorganised players, vendors have started to make tailour-made PoS solutions for the unorganised sector. “There are various new billing solutions used by retailers that benefit the unorganised sector. The customised computer-based billing solution is fast gaining importance for industry verticals such as retail,” said Narang. Low cost, easy to use, flexible solutions which can be installed easily are now available in the market.
For the store owners, Cloud computing is addressing two important barriers -making technology more affordable and eliminating the need to commit to ongoing maintenance and upkeep of these assets. “Relative ease of entry and widespread adoption of Cloud has unleashed innovation and enabled technology startups develop and deploy software solutions in record time with little capital investment. Computing resources are offered by services providers in shared hosted environment, which create economies of scale for users of technology. Software applications running in Cloud are typically available through web browsers running on inexpensive computers, mobile devices or tablets,” said Natasha Giannopoulos, Associate Vice President, International Operations, LoyaltyOne.
Another technology that is fast catching up in the retailing space is mobility. Mobile penetration is predicted to reach most of the population by 2015. At the same time according to IDC’s latest mobile phone tracker data, smart phone penetration has increased by 68% last year and will continue this trajectory for the next few years. These factors, together with low set up costs and little additional infrastructure investment create a natural opportunity for the retail operators to use mobile as the medium to communicate with customers. “Low-cost tablets are becoming available for unorganised retail sector along with accessories such as scanners and printers which can also be used as PoS. Many of the apparel stores are already adopting the same which also help the sales person in detailing the product, capturing the order and billing,” explained Sharangpani of Atos.
Although the use of IT is increasing in the unorganised retail sector, there are still certain challenges faced by the sector because the IT systems are widely dispersed in nature. For many players, computer literacy remains to be an obstacle. How does a player select, install, integrate and maintain the technology he/she needs? How will you train employees to operate it? How do you manage the online presence? Such queries remain a concern for many. Also, most shopkeepers are scared of ongoing costs of operating and upgrading technology. Resistance to change is another big trouble. “At the heart of the challenge facing the retail industry in India is a lack of effective mechanisms to maintain visibility of product flow from sourPortsmouth prepares for annual First Night eventsce to consumer.
What is the ‘security quotient’ for your child’s school?
The horrific tragedy in Newtown, Conn., illustrates the escalating anti-social, high-risk behavior that may expose our schools to personal injury, property damage and disruptions to the educational environment. This event may have pushed our society beyond its tolerance threshold, turning talk into real action that addresses our collective desire to give our children a safe environment in which they may develop socially and academically.
With a balanced approach, somewhere between siege mentality and general indifference, positive steps can improve school security.
Schools should implement strategies of cautionary vigilance. But they will have to overcome the perception that school security is a budgetary “add-on.” Our new paradigm dictates that school safety is an integral part of a school’s infrastructure as much as bricks and mortar. What can school districts do to approach this task systematically and analytically?
First, school leaders must reassure students and parents that their school is safe by implementing an actionable safety plan. Knowing that responsible adults are taking action to address safety issues is more encouraging for the school community than the notion of, “It won’t happen in our school.”
Maine should require every school to develop a multi-agency, crisis-management plan and provide the resources, guidelines and training. This kind of preparedness is sound public policy and is the least that we should expect of our schools.
Research has already identified the components of such an operational school safety plan for grades pre-kindergarten through 12, comprised of the following components:
1. Perform safety drills, which are mandated by law and are familiar to all. When was the last time your child’s school was subjected to a “stress test?” Annual school safety plan audits should consider: How current is our plan? Is all of the school staff knowledgeable about the plan and updated regarding any changes? Does the plan call for regular safety drills that include certified and noncertified staff? Do teachers, students, noncertified staff and school administrators have clearly defined roles and actions to take in the event of a school crisis? What is the training and practice frequency?
Every aspect of the plan should incorporate staff redundancy when assigning specific response tasks. Each school should review its physical plant and consider potential student safety zones. Lockdowns must be practiced frequently, and all schoolrooms should have two methods for communicating with the office.
2. Schools need regularly scheduled school safety audits that evaluate safety vulnerabilities due to structural characteristics of the school and patterns of building use. Staff should consider how to monitor and manage the location of schools’ entrances and exits. They should review interior and exterior surveillance capabilities.
3. There should be schoolwide disciplinary policies. Like parental expectations at home, school disciplinary policies should be consistent, predictable and perceived as fair by students. These policies should reflect the normative values and beliefs of the entire community. The policies should be made public and be implemented fairly and decisively.
4. Schools should monitor their campus. This is perhaps the easiest thing schools can do to improve their safety. Studies indicate that open campuses allowing upperclassmen to leave and return during the school day increases the level of difficulty in controlling contraband. Implementing an identification program, which acknowledges how students and other adults who belong in the school are recognized and identified, is essential.
5. Conduct an evaluation of the school’s safety. Every school should be obliged to conduct an annual evaluation of its relative safety. Within the context of their community, schools should perform a self-assessment of risk indicators associated with existing, problematic student issues and generate risk-reduction measures.
The information gleaned from reviewing these essential elements can provide a comprehensive profile of a school’s safety quotient, leading to an effective school safety plan. Can these measures guarantee violence-free schools? Obviously not, but they may deter, delay and discourage such attempts.
As part of ongoing proactive efforts to remove impaired drivers from our roadways, Troopers from Louisiana State Police Troop L will collaborate with the Tangipahoa Parish Sheriff’s Office and the Twenty-First Judicial District Attorney’s Office to conduct a no refusal DWI checkpoint on Thursday, Dec. 27 at an undisclosed location in Tangipahoa Parish.
The checkpoint will begin at approximately 88 p.m. In addition to increased DWI enforcement, Troopers will be focusing on motorists not wearing seat belts, unrestrained children in vehicles, and any dangerous driving behaviors such as speeding, following too close, and driving while distracted.
According to research conducted by the Louisiana Highway Safety Commission, 251 alcohol related fatalities were reported across Louisiana in 2011 with nearly 7000 suspected impaired drivers refusing to submit to a breath alcohol test. The No Refusal initiative addresses this issue through the cooperative efforts of law enforcement personnel, prosecutors, and district judges to quickly obtain search warrants for blood samples from suspected impaired drivers who refuse the breath test. During these specified enforcement efforts, prosecutors and judges make themselves available to streamline the warrant acquisition process and help build solid cases that can lead to impaired driving convictions.
The task of stopping impaired drivers is a joint effort of law enforcement agencies and the public. By never allowing an impaired driver to get behind the wheel of a vehicle and reporting dangerous drivers to law enforcement, the public can play an important role in the reduction of crashes caused by impaired drivers. Making poor decisions in a vehicle such as driving impaired, driving while distracted, or not wearing a seat belt leads to serious injuries and deaths every day across the state. Making the responsible decision can mean the difference between life and death.
With a balanced approach, somewhere between siege mentality and general indifference, positive steps can improve school security.
Schools should implement strategies of cautionary vigilance. But they will have to overcome the perception that school security is a budgetary “add-on.” Our new paradigm dictates that school safety is an integral part of a school’s infrastructure as much as bricks and mortar. What can school districts do to approach this task systematically and analytically?
First, school leaders must reassure students and parents that their school is safe by implementing an actionable safety plan. Knowing that responsible adults are taking action to address safety issues is more encouraging for the school community than the notion of, “It won’t happen in our school.”
Maine should require every school to develop a multi-agency, crisis-management plan and provide the resources, guidelines and training. This kind of preparedness is sound public policy and is the least that we should expect of our schools.
Research has already identified the components of such an operational school safety plan for grades pre-kindergarten through 12, comprised of the following components:
1. Perform safety drills, which are mandated by law and are familiar to all. When was the last time your child’s school was subjected to a “stress test?” Annual school safety plan audits should consider: How current is our plan? Is all of the school staff knowledgeable about the plan and updated regarding any changes? Does the plan call for regular safety drills that include certified and noncertified staff? Do teachers, students, noncertified staff and school administrators have clearly defined roles and actions to take in the event of a school crisis? What is the training and practice frequency?
Every aspect of the plan should incorporate staff redundancy when assigning specific response tasks. Each school should review its physical plant and consider potential student safety zones. Lockdowns must be practiced frequently, and all schoolrooms should have two methods for communicating with the office.
2. Schools need regularly scheduled school safety audits that evaluate safety vulnerabilities due to structural characteristics of the school and patterns of building use. Staff should consider how to monitor and manage the location of schools’ entrances and exits. They should review interior and exterior surveillance capabilities.
3. There should be schoolwide disciplinary policies. Like parental expectations at home, school disciplinary policies should be consistent, predictable and perceived as fair by students. These policies should reflect the normative values and beliefs of the entire community. The policies should be made public and be implemented fairly and decisively.
4. Schools should monitor their campus. This is perhaps the easiest thing schools can do to improve their safety. Studies indicate that open campuses allowing upperclassmen to leave and return during the school day increases the level of difficulty in controlling contraband. Implementing an identification program, which acknowledges how students and other adults who belong in the school are recognized and identified, is essential.
5. Conduct an evaluation of the school’s safety. Every school should be obliged to conduct an annual evaluation of its relative safety. Within the context of their community, schools should perform a self-assessment of risk indicators associated with existing, problematic student issues and generate risk-reduction measures.
The information gleaned from reviewing these essential elements can provide a comprehensive profile of a school’s safety quotient, leading to an effective school safety plan. Can these measures guarantee violence-free schools? Obviously not, but they may deter, delay and discourage such attempts.
As part of ongoing proactive efforts to remove impaired drivers from our roadways, Troopers from Louisiana State Police Troop L will collaborate with the Tangipahoa Parish Sheriff’s Office and the Twenty-First Judicial District Attorney’s Office to conduct a no refusal DWI checkpoint on Thursday, Dec. 27 at an undisclosed location in Tangipahoa Parish.
The checkpoint will begin at approximately 88 p.m. In addition to increased DWI enforcement, Troopers will be focusing on motorists not wearing seat belts, unrestrained children in vehicles, and any dangerous driving behaviors such as speeding, following too close, and driving while distracted.
According to research conducted by the Louisiana Highway Safety Commission, 251 alcohol related fatalities were reported across Louisiana in 2011 with nearly 7000 suspected impaired drivers refusing to submit to a breath alcohol test. The No Refusal initiative addresses this issue through the cooperative efforts of law enforcement personnel, prosecutors, and district judges to quickly obtain search warrants for blood samples from suspected impaired drivers who refuse the breath test. During these specified enforcement efforts, prosecutors and judges make themselves available to streamline the warrant acquisition process and help build solid cases that can lead to impaired driving convictions.
The task of stopping impaired drivers is a joint effort of law enforcement agencies and the public. By never allowing an impaired driver to get behind the wheel of a vehicle and reporting dangerous drivers to law enforcement, the public can play an important role in the reduction of crashes caused by impaired drivers. Making poor decisions in a vehicle such as driving impaired, driving while distracted, or not wearing a seat belt leads to serious injuries and deaths every day across the state. Making the responsible decision can mean the difference between life and death.
Tuesday, December 25, 2012
Barns tell the history of agriculture, from wheat and sheep to dairy
On your way south into Huntington center along Huntington Road, you’ll pass a barn with a sign high on the side reading “Liberty Head Post & Beam.” It is 40 feet by 30 feet, with two sliding doors on the long side abutting the road. The age-darkened clapboard siding is held in place with round, machined nails. The sliding doors open onto the second floor, while the lower floor is entered through iron-hinged doors at the bottom of the slope. A wooden cupola projects up from the roof, with a weather vane decorating the top.
If you peek through the crack between the doors, you can see piles of construction materials used in Liberty Head Post & Beam’s work — the company builds and restores timber frame buildings, like this barn.
But 150 years ago, if you’d peeked inside, you might have seen a farmer and his field hands swinging wooden clubs over their heads, beating the piles of wheat stalks on the floor to remove the seeds. Or you might have seen them stowing the threshed hay on one end of the barn, feeding the stabled horses and oxen on the other and shoveling the manure through a hole in the floor into the basement below. The farmer might have been sitting on a crate by the open doors, mending tack. Or he might have been down below, shoveling manure into a wagon to spread on the fields in springtime.
The Liberty Head Post & Beam barn is an English barn. This was the first kind of barn built in New England, based on a design used since the Middle Ages and brought over from England by the early colonists. In the 1830s to 1850s, after farmers over-taxed the rocky Vermont soils, it became common to build a basement under the barn to store manure until it was time to spread on the fields as fertilizer. Siting these barns on slopes, like the Liberty Head Post & Beam barn, made it easy for farmers to access both floors by wagon.
Thomas Visser, a professor of historic preservation at the University of Vermont, is a connoisseur of barns. Their saw marks, nail heads, and timber frames tell him stories. He says his barn fascination grew from digging through piles of junk in his family’s never-been-cleaned barn when he was a child. Eventually, he crafted a way to make sense of the clues he found. He wrote a book about it, so the rest of us can “read” barns, too. “A Field Guide to New England Barns & Farm Buildings,” (University Press of New England, 1997), is a thorough, heavily researched, yet user-friendly guide to what barns mean.
Barns morphed over time and space, accommodating the needs and whims of the people who made a living on the land, market pressures and the land itself.
On Route 15 in Jericho is an L-shaped red barn with large white diamonds on the doors. The offshoot of the L is an English barn, low-ceilinged and small. You can recognize it by its size and its sliding doors on the long, or eaves, side. The main part of the barn, with soaring rafters and sliding doors, is a gable-front barn, descendant of the English barn.
As Vermont farmers cleared the land and harvested nutrients from the soil, it became harder and harder to subsist off of a few wheat and oat fields and a handful of farm animals. In response, farmers enlarged their herds to sell cheese and then butter. In the 1830s, New England farmers adopted the gable-front barn, with the doors on the shorter, or gable, end. This allowed farmers to easily expand the barn as they expanded their herds. This is why many barns in Vermont are jumbles of different kinds of barns stitched together, like the Jericho barn.
Imagine waking up to milk the cows at three on a winter morning, stumbling outside in the wailing snow, with nothing but an oil lantern. The swinging lantern light illuminates huge snowflakes that swirl into your eyes. You stomp through the snow, hoping you are going the right direction, until—there—you see the diamonds glowing faintly white against an otherwise dark barn. You hurry to them, swing a door open and slip inside, into the warm and sudden stillness smelling of hay and animal breath. Barns were trimmed in white in an era when light pollution was unheard of and finding a barn quickly on a dark winter morning was a real concern.
Just north of Huntington Center, dominating the view as Huntington Road rounds a curve, is a behemoth of a barn. White clapboards trimmed in yellow, four stories tall, with a wooden cupola on the roof and windows dotting the sides, is the Jubilee Farm barn. An eye-catching feature of this barn is a projection off its back gable end, a sort of covered bridge from the third floor to the hillside behind. This is what’s called a high drive, and it allows farmers to drive wagons straight into the floors where hay is stored, and then toss it down to the cattle below — much more efficient than hauling it up a bale at a time.
Around 1850, the railroad opened up rapid commerce between the rich farmlands of the Midwest and the cities in the East; with refrigerated railroad cars, cheese and butter could make it to markets in Boston and New York without going bad. Vermont farmers did their best to compete. They specialized in dairy and built bigger barns to accommodate bigger herds. This is when farmers began to build high-drive barns, round barns and monitor barns. Many of Vermont’s barns are variations on the dairy barn theme.
Another barn on Huntington Road in Huntington is a mish-mash, with jumbled outbuildings and milkhouses, and a pole barn at its core. The pole barn is long, single-story, with a concrete floor. There’s no hay storage here, just stalls for cattle.
The pole barn, which became common after the 1940s, is the product of agricultural research on sanitation and efficiency. Farmers learned that they could store hay in the fields, rather than taking up space in the barn. They laid down concrete floors because they were easier to keep clean than earthen or wooden floors. Milk could now be shipped east quickly, and farmers added milkhouses, little shack-like additions, to their barns to keep the milk cool.
Gary Davis’ old barn in Jericho is one of those mish-mashes. He knows part of it was built in 1871—the rest, it’s hard to figure out. But it’s clear it’s a barn. It’s red, trimmed in white. Inside, the cows’ names are written above the stalls. Now the barn collects stuff: piles of kids’ toys, farm implements and snow tires.
Davis, with a weathered, kind face and a salt-and-pepper mustache, stands outside the old barn in olive green waders splattered with mud and cow manure, talking in a gentle voice about dairy farming. He’s frequently interrupted by a mandolin riff in his pocket; he pulls out his cell phone and gives instructions to the field hands who are milking cows across the field. It’s three in the afternoon, and Davis also milks at three in the morning.
What Davis finds most striking about his old barn is that back when it was new it couldn’t have housed more than 20 cows, yet those cows supported the farmer in the big house next door. Now, Davis is struggling to pay bills with a hundred cows, and “that’s an indication that things have changed,” he says.
Davis’ new barns are something else altogether. One is a giant, white, plastic-fabric-wrapped hoop house, squatting in the middle of a muddy field. The other is a wooden greenhouse frame roofed in plastic sheets, with beds of sand lining the aisles. Cows, having been milked, make themselves comfortable on these beds. Between the two barns is a wood-and-plastic milking house, where cows bury their heads in a feed trough while rubber cups are latched onto their teats. Davis and his field hands monitor the milking from a three-foot trough in the center of the building, raising their voices over the rhythmic whir of the milking machines.
Davis says the price of milk “has had, for the past few years, some wild swings,” while the price of everything else just keeps going up. That “makes it hard to plan,” he says.
Nonetheless, Davis is planning. He talks about a free-stall barn, which allows the cows to sleep wherever they like, just as they would in the fields. He’s interested in using compost as bedding instead of sand, because it helps the cows keep warm and could give him some added income. And he wants to help young farmers get started by exchanging cows for work.
In spite of his modern implements, Davis is not much different from Vermont farmers of the past. Vermont farmers have always struggled with a changing market. They’ve always adapted to innovations in technology and efficiency. And they’ve always left a legacy, both in the barns they built and the younger generations they taught. Davis himself is a third-generation farmer.
The stories of Vermont farmers pile up on each other, layering over and over on top of old and new barns, interleaving with the land. You can read these stories if you know what to look for. Visser’s field guide can help.
There comes a moment — maybe it’s standing in a raftered loft, breathing dust motes, maybe it’s wending home on a country road at the end of a day of reading barns, the sun drawing long shadows across the land, when the ground drops away and you’re perched on the very edge of a cliff, the gut-hollowing abyss of time yawing beneath you. This is the moment when you sense the land as a vessel, carrying ghosts and ghost stories, and your life takes its place alongside the farmers and field hands who wrenched a living out of the land, leaving their wooden skeletons, their barns, to slowly tumble down.
If you peek through the crack between the doors, you can see piles of construction materials used in Liberty Head Post & Beam’s work — the company builds and restores timber frame buildings, like this barn.
But 150 years ago, if you’d peeked inside, you might have seen a farmer and his field hands swinging wooden clubs over their heads, beating the piles of wheat stalks on the floor to remove the seeds. Or you might have seen them stowing the threshed hay on one end of the barn, feeding the stabled horses and oxen on the other and shoveling the manure through a hole in the floor into the basement below. The farmer might have been sitting on a crate by the open doors, mending tack. Or he might have been down below, shoveling manure into a wagon to spread on the fields in springtime.
The Liberty Head Post & Beam barn is an English barn. This was the first kind of barn built in New England, based on a design used since the Middle Ages and brought over from England by the early colonists. In the 1830s to 1850s, after farmers over-taxed the rocky Vermont soils, it became common to build a basement under the barn to store manure until it was time to spread on the fields as fertilizer. Siting these barns on slopes, like the Liberty Head Post & Beam barn, made it easy for farmers to access both floors by wagon.
Thomas Visser, a professor of historic preservation at the University of Vermont, is a connoisseur of barns. Their saw marks, nail heads, and timber frames tell him stories. He says his barn fascination grew from digging through piles of junk in his family’s never-been-cleaned barn when he was a child. Eventually, he crafted a way to make sense of the clues he found. He wrote a book about it, so the rest of us can “read” barns, too. “A Field Guide to New England Barns & Farm Buildings,” (University Press of New England, 1997), is a thorough, heavily researched, yet user-friendly guide to what barns mean.
Barns morphed over time and space, accommodating the needs and whims of the people who made a living on the land, market pressures and the land itself.
On Route 15 in Jericho is an L-shaped red barn with large white diamonds on the doors. The offshoot of the L is an English barn, low-ceilinged and small. You can recognize it by its size and its sliding doors on the long, or eaves, side. The main part of the barn, with soaring rafters and sliding doors, is a gable-front barn, descendant of the English barn.
As Vermont farmers cleared the land and harvested nutrients from the soil, it became harder and harder to subsist off of a few wheat and oat fields and a handful of farm animals. In response, farmers enlarged their herds to sell cheese and then butter. In the 1830s, New England farmers adopted the gable-front barn, with the doors on the shorter, or gable, end. This allowed farmers to easily expand the barn as they expanded their herds. This is why many barns in Vermont are jumbles of different kinds of barns stitched together, like the Jericho barn.
Imagine waking up to milk the cows at three on a winter morning, stumbling outside in the wailing snow, with nothing but an oil lantern. The swinging lantern light illuminates huge snowflakes that swirl into your eyes. You stomp through the snow, hoping you are going the right direction, until—there—you see the diamonds glowing faintly white against an otherwise dark barn. You hurry to them, swing a door open and slip inside, into the warm and sudden stillness smelling of hay and animal breath. Barns were trimmed in white in an era when light pollution was unheard of and finding a barn quickly on a dark winter morning was a real concern.
Just north of Huntington Center, dominating the view as Huntington Road rounds a curve, is a behemoth of a barn. White clapboards trimmed in yellow, four stories tall, with a wooden cupola on the roof and windows dotting the sides, is the Jubilee Farm barn. An eye-catching feature of this barn is a projection off its back gable end, a sort of covered bridge from the third floor to the hillside behind. This is what’s called a high drive, and it allows farmers to drive wagons straight into the floors where hay is stored, and then toss it down to the cattle below — much more efficient than hauling it up a bale at a time.
Around 1850, the railroad opened up rapid commerce between the rich farmlands of the Midwest and the cities in the East; with refrigerated railroad cars, cheese and butter could make it to markets in Boston and New York without going bad. Vermont farmers did their best to compete. They specialized in dairy and built bigger barns to accommodate bigger herds. This is when farmers began to build high-drive barns, round barns and monitor barns. Many of Vermont’s barns are variations on the dairy barn theme.
Another barn on Huntington Road in Huntington is a mish-mash, with jumbled outbuildings and milkhouses, and a pole barn at its core. The pole barn is long, single-story, with a concrete floor. There’s no hay storage here, just stalls for cattle.
The pole barn, which became common after the 1940s, is the product of agricultural research on sanitation and efficiency. Farmers learned that they could store hay in the fields, rather than taking up space in the barn. They laid down concrete floors because they were easier to keep clean than earthen or wooden floors. Milk could now be shipped east quickly, and farmers added milkhouses, little shack-like additions, to their barns to keep the milk cool.
Gary Davis’ old barn in Jericho is one of those mish-mashes. He knows part of it was built in 1871—the rest, it’s hard to figure out. But it’s clear it’s a barn. It’s red, trimmed in white. Inside, the cows’ names are written above the stalls. Now the barn collects stuff: piles of kids’ toys, farm implements and snow tires.
Davis, with a weathered, kind face and a salt-and-pepper mustache, stands outside the old barn in olive green waders splattered with mud and cow manure, talking in a gentle voice about dairy farming. He’s frequently interrupted by a mandolin riff in his pocket; he pulls out his cell phone and gives instructions to the field hands who are milking cows across the field. It’s three in the afternoon, and Davis also milks at three in the morning.
What Davis finds most striking about his old barn is that back when it was new it couldn’t have housed more than 20 cows, yet those cows supported the farmer in the big house next door. Now, Davis is struggling to pay bills with a hundred cows, and “that’s an indication that things have changed,” he says.
Davis’ new barns are something else altogether. One is a giant, white, plastic-fabric-wrapped hoop house, squatting in the middle of a muddy field. The other is a wooden greenhouse frame roofed in plastic sheets, with beds of sand lining the aisles. Cows, having been milked, make themselves comfortable on these beds. Between the two barns is a wood-and-plastic milking house, where cows bury their heads in a feed trough while rubber cups are latched onto their teats. Davis and his field hands monitor the milking from a three-foot trough in the center of the building, raising their voices over the rhythmic whir of the milking machines.
Davis says the price of milk “has had, for the past few years, some wild swings,” while the price of everything else just keeps going up. That “makes it hard to plan,” he says.
Nonetheless, Davis is planning. He talks about a free-stall barn, which allows the cows to sleep wherever they like, just as they would in the fields. He’s interested in using compost as bedding instead of sand, because it helps the cows keep warm and could give him some added income. And he wants to help young farmers get started by exchanging cows for work.
In spite of his modern implements, Davis is not much different from Vermont farmers of the past. Vermont farmers have always struggled with a changing market. They’ve always adapted to innovations in technology and efficiency. And they’ve always left a legacy, both in the barns they built and the younger generations they taught. Davis himself is a third-generation farmer.
The stories of Vermont farmers pile up on each other, layering over and over on top of old and new barns, interleaving with the land. You can read these stories if you know what to look for. Visser’s field guide can help.
There comes a moment — maybe it’s standing in a raftered loft, breathing dust motes, maybe it’s wending home on a country road at the end of a day of reading barns, the sun drawing long shadows across the land, when the ground drops away and you’re perched on the very edge of a cliff, the gut-hollowing abyss of time yawing beneath you. This is the moment when you sense the land as a vessel, carrying ghosts and ghost stories, and your life takes its place alongside the farmers and field hands who wrenched a living out of the land, leaving their wooden skeletons, their barns, to slowly tumble down.
BY THE BOOKS
The Plymouth Public Library is in full swing with Sunday hours at the South Street location. The library will be open Sundays from 12:30 to 5 p.m. through June. Enjoy a quiet read in the periodicals section, browse the Internet, check out the latest books and audio/video materials, or do your homework with the aid of the library’s vast resources available through its extensive Reference Department.
The Plymouth Public Library is pleased to announce that it now offers the Mango Languages online language-learning system to its patrons. This online resource is available free of charge to all Plymouth Public Library cardholders, and can be accessed from home over the Internet.
Mango Languages offers a fast and convenient solution for our community’s increasing language-learning needs. Each lesson combines real life situations and audio from native speakers with simple, clear instructions. The courses integrate components of vocabulary, pronunciation, grammar and culture. Two levels of courses are offered: Mango Basic, which teaches everyday greetings, goodbyes and helpful phrases in a short period of time, and is designed to appeal to a beginner in a new language. The Mango Complete courses are designed to provide a deep understanding of a language and its culture.
The Library’s subscription to Mango Languages covers eight foreign language and four English-as-a-second-language (ESL) courses. The foreign languages include French, Italian, Russian, Spanish, Mandarin Chinese, Arabic, Farsi (Persian) and Japanese. ESL courses are available for Brazilian Portuguese, Spanish, Arabic and Mandarin.
Recognizing the importance of real-time data on meteorological and oceanographic data for various operational weather and other advisory services, the Ministry has substantially augmented the observations networks during the last 3 years. As a part of modernization meteorological Services, Atmospheric Observing Systems has been strengthened through installation of 1500 state-of-the-art systems in various parts of the country for real-time monitoring meteorological parameters which include 955 Automatic Rain gauges and 552 Automatic weather stations in various parts of India. Ten Doppler Weather Radars have been installed in various cities viz., Delhi airport, New Delhi, Nagpur, Jaipur, Hyderabad, Lucknow, Patna, Patiala, Agartala, Mohanbari, Bhuj and Mumbai which has contributed for now casting. The augmentation of Ocean Observation Networks in the seas around India includes deployment of 19 moored buoys including 10 Tsunami buoys, 150 Argo Floats, 55 drifters, 7 wave rider buoys etc., for acquisition of real-time data from the seas around India.
Under the Meteorological Services, a district-level agro-meteorological advisory service, providing a 5-day weather forecast for farmers, in 585 districts, has been made operational. About 3,500,000 farmers have subscribed for the information through mobile for planning their agricultural activities. A location-specific weather and air quality forecast 24 hours in advance was provided successfully for the Commonwealth Games 2010 in National Capital Region, Delhi. Under the Ocean Science and Information Services, a unique system of Fisheries Advisories based on identification of potential fishing zones using remote sensing technology has been made operational along with a new Tuna fishery advisory to deep sea fishing industry. A Coral Bleaching Alert System has been set up for providing bimonthly status on 5 major coral environments of India viz., Andaman Nicobar, Lakshadweep, Gulf of Mannar, Gulf of Kutchchh. Under Disaster Mitigation Support, a state-of-the-art Tsunami Warning System was set up, in September 2007, which has been recognized as a Regional Tsunami warning centre for the Indian Ocean countries which has been recognized as a Regional Tsunami Service Provider for the Indian Ocean Region and started operation to the Indian Ocean Rim countries. Under the framework of Regional Integrated Multi-hazard Early warning System, a data-sharing arrangement has been established with the nine countries to provide 24 hour accumulated rainfall forecast for 3 days. The countries include Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Maldives, Mongolia, Myanmar, Nepal, and Sri Lanka. The departments of irrigation, agriculture, and other primary users of weather information also have become major beneficiaries.
Towards human resource development, an Advanced Training School was established with self contained facilities for training and research at Pune. The second batch of 20 students was inducted in August 2011 through a national selective process. To process the huge volume of data and run the weather forecasting models, the computation facilities have been substantially augmented by commissioning of a set of 4 High Performance Computing systems in various centres of the ministry which has a total combining capacity of 120 Tflops. The Third Station in Antarctic in the Larsemann Hills area has been completed. A dedicated centre for Climate Change Research was established at Pune to address various scientific issues relating to climate change. Setting up of National Knowledge Network connection to all the centres of MoES was accomplished for efficient communication and data transfer useful for various information services being rendered by the ministry. A dedicated Oceansat Satellite Ground Station was installed at Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services , Hyderabad for real time direct reception of satellite data for various operational Ocean Information Services
The progress of the ministry is satisfactory both in quantitative and qualitative terms. The performance of the ministry has been monitored objectively by the Performance Monitoring and Evaluation System of the Cabinet Secretariat. The Results-Framework Document submitted by the ministry for the years 2010-11 and 2011-12, had been evaluated and the performance were estimated to be 95.07% and 92.48% respectively. The efforts made by the ministry towards augmentation of observational networks and computation capability have lead to improved prediction of weather, and climate services. According to a recent survey, various services such as agromet for farmers, potential fishing zone for fisherman, ocean state forecast for shipping, aviation services, public weather services, etc., have been extremely useful and beneficial for society at large.
The Plymouth Public Library is pleased to announce that it now offers the Mango Languages online language-learning system to its patrons. This online resource is available free of charge to all Plymouth Public Library cardholders, and can be accessed from home over the Internet.
Mango Languages offers a fast and convenient solution for our community’s increasing language-learning needs. Each lesson combines real life situations and audio from native speakers with simple, clear instructions. The courses integrate components of vocabulary, pronunciation, grammar and culture. Two levels of courses are offered: Mango Basic, which teaches everyday greetings, goodbyes and helpful phrases in a short period of time, and is designed to appeal to a beginner in a new language. The Mango Complete courses are designed to provide a deep understanding of a language and its culture.
The Library’s subscription to Mango Languages covers eight foreign language and four English-as-a-second-language (ESL) courses. The foreign languages include French, Italian, Russian, Spanish, Mandarin Chinese, Arabic, Farsi (Persian) and Japanese. ESL courses are available for Brazilian Portuguese, Spanish, Arabic and Mandarin.
Recognizing the importance of real-time data on meteorological and oceanographic data for various operational weather and other advisory services, the Ministry has substantially augmented the observations networks during the last 3 years. As a part of modernization meteorological Services, Atmospheric Observing Systems has been strengthened through installation of 1500 state-of-the-art systems in various parts of the country for real-time monitoring meteorological parameters which include 955 Automatic Rain gauges and 552 Automatic weather stations in various parts of India. Ten Doppler Weather Radars have been installed in various cities viz., Delhi airport, New Delhi, Nagpur, Jaipur, Hyderabad, Lucknow, Patna, Patiala, Agartala, Mohanbari, Bhuj and Mumbai which has contributed for now casting. The augmentation of Ocean Observation Networks in the seas around India includes deployment of 19 moored buoys including 10 Tsunami buoys, 150 Argo Floats, 55 drifters, 7 wave rider buoys etc., for acquisition of real-time data from the seas around India.
Under the Meteorological Services, a district-level agro-meteorological advisory service, providing a 5-day weather forecast for farmers, in 585 districts, has been made operational. About 3,500,000 farmers have subscribed for the information through mobile for planning their agricultural activities. A location-specific weather and air quality forecast 24 hours in advance was provided successfully for the Commonwealth Games 2010 in National Capital Region, Delhi. Under the Ocean Science and Information Services, a unique system of Fisheries Advisories based on identification of potential fishing zones using remote sensing technology has been made operational along with a new Tuna fishery advisory to deep sea fishing industry. A Coral Bleaching Alert System has been set up for providing bimonthly status on 5 major coral environments of India viz., Andaman Nicobar, Lakshadweep, Gulf of Mannar, Gulf of Kutchchh. Under Disaster Mitigation Support, a state-of-the-art Tsunami Warning System was set up, in September 2007, which has been recognized as a Regional Tsunami warning centre for the Indian Ocean countries which has been recognized as a Regional Tsunami Service Provider for the Indian Ocean Region and started operation to the Indian Ocean Rim countries. Under the framework of Regional Integrated Multi-hazard Early warning System, a data-sharing arrangement has been established with the nine countries to provide 24 hour accumulated rainfall forecast for 3 days. The countries include Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Maldives, Mongolia, Myanmar, Nepal, and Sri Lanka. The departments of irrigation, agriculture, and other primary users of weather information also have become major beneficiaries.
Towards human resource development, an Advanced Training School was established with self contained facilities for training and research at Pune. The second batch of 20 students was inducted in August 2011 through a national selective process. To process the huge volume of data and run the weather forecasting models, the computation facilities have been substantially augmented by commissioning of a set of 4 High Performance Computing systems in various centres of the ministry which has a total combining capacity of 120 Tflops. The Third Station in Antarctic in the Larsemann Hills area has been completed. A dedicated centre for Climate Change Research was established at Pune to address various scientific issues relating to climate change. Setting up of National Knowledge Network connection to all the centres of MoES was accomplished for efficient communication and data transfer useful for various information services being rendered by the ministry. A dedicated Oceansat Satellite Ground Station was installed at Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services , Hyderabad for real time direct reception of satellite data for various operational Ocean Information Services
The progress of the ministry is satisfactory both in quantitative and qualitative terms. The performance of the ministry has been monitored objectively by the Performance Monitoring and Evaluation System of the Cabinet Secretariat. The Results-Framework Document submitted by the ministry for the years 2010-11 and 2011-12, had been evaluated and the performance were estimated to be 95.07% and 92.48% respectively. The efforts made by the ministry towards augmentation of observational networks and computation capability have lead to improved prediction of weather, and climate services. According to a recent survey, various services such as agromet for farmers, potential fishing zone for fisherman, ocean state forecast for shipping, aviation services, public weather services, etc., have been extremely useful and beneficial for society at large.
Sunday, December 23, 2012
Peace on earth
If there’s one thing I don’t mind us copying, or imitating, or aping America, it’s in drawing attention to the proliferation of guns in this country. It’s in our Congress bestirring itself to pass laws regulating gun ownership. It’s in our executive branch leading the way toward enforcing gun control.
Barack Obama is doing that in the United States right now, though why it had to take the massacre of the children at Sandy Hook for him to bestir himself to do it, only he can say. His government’s record in curbing the rise of Fortress America is dismal. Not wishing to go against the pro-gun sentiment in the United States, given strident voice by the National Rifle Association, and impair his chances of being elected and reelected, he has been less than sanguine in putting his weight behind gun control legislation. In fact, many of his fellow Democrats have been vigorous gun exponents.
During his first term, Obama failed to curb the proliferation of assault rifles and heavy weaponry. His current drive to control guns, quite incidentally, is aimed only at this, his argument being that they have no business inside America and in peace, they have a business only in foreign lands and in war. The drive has nothing to do with handguns and standard firearms, including hunting rifles, which you can get with ease in neighborhood gun stores, if not mom-and-pop groceries. Public sentiment continues to favor gun ownership, or indeed to oppose any effort to “infringe” on the constitutional right to bear arms, a deep-seated belief that has abated only somewhat with Sandy Hook. It did not abate after a crowd fell as the Dark Knight rose.
Theoretically, we should have an easier time legislating gun control since we do not have a Second Amendment, we do not have a long-cherished belief in the people’s right, and duty, to bear arms, we do not have a public demanding free access to guns. I suspect that if you put the thing to a vote, most Filipinos, unlike Americans, will not support a policy of free traffic in guns. We’ve seen enough of what guns can do to want them in unrestrained supply. We may not have the kind of senseless carnage that has been happening plentifully of late in America, but we do have runaway crime, massacres, and a culture of impunity plaguing us. The second is no more benign than the first.
Theoretically, because the problem is not the public, it is government. It is the congressmen, the judges, Malaca?ang itself. But that is formidable enough in itself, too. As Nandy Pacheco can testify: He has been waging a near-lonely crusade to control guns—not quite incidentally, he doesn’t oppose people having guns at home to defend themselves, he opposes people lugging them around, especially in cars—and while the public calls him courageous, the public officials call him outrageous. It’s all he can do to convince the congressmen, who own guns, who like guns, who like displaying guns, to even contemplate gun control. And it’s all he can do to convince Malaca?ang’s current residents, who own guns, who like guns, who like displaying guns, to push gun control.
At the very least, of course it’s true that the availability of guns by itself does not guarantee an explosion of mass destruction. It takes a certain kind of mentality, or the warping of it, for it to happen. But it’s also true that motive alone does not make a crime happen, you need means and opportunity to make it happen, too. There is no means and there is no opportunity, the crime will not happen. Particularly where the motive is spontaneous or sudden or fleeting, you do not have the means and opportunity, it will go away after a while. Road rages are the prime example of it. Without the gun tucked in the glove compartment of the assailant, many victims would still be alive.
You don’t have to go far to see how gun control can stop crime, even if the example is unfortunate. Shortly after he declared martial law, Marcos ordered everyone, warlords in particular, to give up their private arsenals. Rocky Ileto would later tell me he himself was astonished at how people complied with it, truckloads of firearms pouring into the camps for weeks on end. The result? Crime fell to near-zero. Of course, martial law itself was a crime and its executors criminals, and before long crime came back with a vengeance. Which is another story. But what if P-Noy were to order it?
At the very most, guns are not neutral things, they are a culture. At their worst, they are a fetish. The whole notion that you’re okay if you put guns only in the hands of the sane and responsible is silly. It presumes that the sane and responsible won’t stop being so while in the grip of road rage, while in the middle of a violent altercation. Guns represent power, guns display power, guns create an aura of power. And power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Nowhere does that apply more than in a culture steeped in machismo. Look at the pictures of hunters posing proudly beside the antelope and deer they’ve bagged, and see if guns by themselves have not created a mentality that says killing animals for sport is cool. Look at the stickers in the back of some of our cars that say “Baby on board” with an AK-47 above the words, and see if guns by themselves have not a created a mentality that says airily, “Don’t mess with this dude.”
His victory will not compel the US to accept any kind of responsibility, of course, but it joins the conviction of 22 CIA operatives and a senior US military official in Italy, for the kidnap and rendition to torture in Egypt of a cleric, Abu Omar, in February 2003, and it also provides hopes that other cases before the ECHR — against Poland, Romania and Lithuania, for their involvement in the Bush administration’s torture program — will lead to similar victories for those involved — in this case, the “high-value detainees” Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, who are currently in Guantánamo.
While Khaled El-Masri was securing his victory in Strasbourg, another victim of “extraordinary rendition” and torture, Sami al-Saadi, a Libyan and a former opponent of the former dictator Muammar Gaddafi, secured an important victory in the UK, when the British government agreed to pay him 2.23 million ($3.5 million) in an out-of-court settlement relating to the key role played by the UK, working with the US and Libya, in kidnapping Mr. al-Saadi and his family and rendering them to Col. Gaddafi, who then imprisoned and tortured him.
The British role in al-Saadi’s kidnapping and rendition to torture was confirmed in letters found in the office of Col. Gaddafi’s spy chief Moussa Koussa in Tripoli, during the fall of Gaddafi last year, and they cast the UK in a bleak light, not only in relation to Sami al-Saadi, but also in the case of Abdel Hakim Belhaj, another long-term Gaddafi opponent, who was also kidnapped (in Malaysia) and rendered to torture with British involvement. Both kidnappings took place in 2004, while Gaddafi was being courted to renounce terrorism, and grant the US and the UK access to his oil fields. Belhaj is still pursuing his claim against the British government through the courts, even though his friend al-Saadi accepted a settlement.
Al-Saadi explained, “My family suffered enough when they were kidnapped and flown to Gaddafi’s Libya. They will now have the chance to complete their education in the new, free Libya. I will be able to afford the medical care I need because of the injuries I suffered in prison.”
Barack Obama is doing that in the United States right now, though why it had to take the massacre of the children at Sandy Hook for him to bestir himself to do it, only he can say. His government’s record in curbing the rise of Fortress America is dismal. Not wishing to go against the pro-gun sentiment in the United States, given strident voice by the National Rifle Association, and impair his chances of being elected and reelected, he has been less than sanguine in putting his weight behind gun control legislation. In fact, many of his fellow Democrats have been vigorous gun exponents.
During his first term, Obama failed to curb the proliferation of assault rifles and heavy weaponry. His current drive to control guns, quite incidentally, is aimed only at this, his argument being that they have no business inside America and in peace, they have a business only in foreign lands and in war. The drive has nothing to do with handguns and standard firearms, including hunting rifles, which you can get with ease in neighborhood gun stores, if not mom-and-pop groceries. Public sentiment continues to favor gun ownership, or indeed to oppose any effort to “infringe” on the constitutional right to bear arms, a deep-seated belief that has abated only somewhat with Sandy Hook. It did not abate after a crowd fell as the Dark Knight rose.
Theoretically, we should have an easier time legislating gun control since we do not have a Second Amendment, we do not have a long-cherished belief in the people’s right, and duty, to bear arms, we do not have a public demanding free access to guns. I suspect that if you put the thing to a vote, most Filipinos, unlike Americans, will not support a policy of free traffic in guns. We’ve seen enough of what guns can do to want them in unrestrained supply. We may not have the kind of senseless carnage that has been happening plentifully of late in America, but we do have runaway crime, massacres, and a culture of impunity plaguing us. The second is no more benign than the first.
Theoretically, because the problem is not the public, it is government. It is the congressmen, the judges, Malaca?ang itself. But that is formidable enough in itself, too. As Nandy Pacheco can testify: He has been waging a near-lonely crusade to control guns—not quite incidentally, he doesn’t oppose people having guns at home to defend themselves, he opposes people lugging them around, especially in cars—and while the public calls him courageous, the public officials call him outrageous. It’s all he can do to convince the congressmen, who own guns, who like guns, who like displaying guns, to even contemplate gun control. And it’s all he can do to convince Malaca?ang’s current residents, who own guns, who like guns, who like displaying guns, to push gun control.
At the very least, of course it’s true that the availability of guns by itself does not guarantee an explosion of mass destruction. It takes a certain kind of mentality, or the warping of it, for it to happen. But it’s also true that motive alone does not make a crime happen, you need means and opportunity to make it happen, too. There is no means and there is no opportunity, the crime will not happen. Particularly where the motive is spontaneous or sudden or fleeting, you do not have the means and opportunity, it will go away after a while. Road rages are the prime example of it. Without the gun tucked in the glove compartment of the assailant, many victims would still be alive.
You don’t have to go far to see how gun control can stop crime, even if the example is unfortunate. Shortly after he declared martial law, Marcos ordered everyone, warlords in particular, to give up their private arsenals. Rocky Ileto would later tell me he himself was astonished at how people complied with it, truckloads of firearms pouring into the camps for weeks on end. The result? Crime fell to near-zero. Of course, martial law itself was a crime and its executors criminals, and before long crime came back with a vengeance. Which is another story. But what if P-Noy were to order it?
At the very most, guns are not neutral things, they are a culture. At their worst, they are a fetish. The whole notion that you’re okay if you put guns only in the hands of the sane and responsible is silly. It presumes that the sane and responsible won’t stop being so while in the grip of road rage, while in the middle of a violent altercation. Guns represent power, guns display power, guns create an aura of power. And power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Nowhere does that apply more than in a culture steeped in machismo. Look at the pictures of hunters posing proudly beside the antelope and deer they’ve bagged, and see if guns by themselves have not created a mentality that says killing animals for sport is cool. Look at the stickers in the back of some of our cars that say “Baby on board” with an AK-47 above the words, and see if guns by themselves have not a created a mentality that says airily, “Don’t mess with this dude.”
His victory will not compel the US to accept any kind of responsibility, of course, but it joins the conviction of 22 CIA operatives and a senior US military official in Italy, for the kidnap and rendition to torture in Egypt of a cleric, Abu Omar, in February 2003, and it also provides hopes that other cases before the ECHR — against Poland, Romania and Lithuania, for their involvement in the Bush administration’s torture program — will lead to similar victories for those involved — in this case, the “high-value detainees” Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, who are currently in Guantánamo.
While Khaled El-Masri was securing his victory in Strasbourg, another victim of “extraordinary rendition” and torture, Sami al-Saadi, a Libyan and a former opponent of the former dictator Muammar Gaddafi, secured an important victory in the UK, when the British government agreed to pay him 2.23 million ($3.5 million) in an out-of-court settlement relating to the key role played by the UK, working with the US and Libya, in kidnapping Mr. al-Saadi and his family and rendering them to Col. Gaddafi, who then imprisoned and tortured him.
The British role in al-Saadi’s kidnapping and rendition to torture was confirmed in letters found in the office of Col. Gaddafi’s spy chief Moussa Koussa in Tripoli, during the fall of Gaddafi last year, and they cast the UK in a bleak light, not only in relation to Sami al-Saadi, but also in the case of Abdel Hakim Belhaj, another long-term Gaddafi opponent, who was also kidnapped (in Malaysia) and rendered to torture with British involvement. Both kidnappings took place in 2004, while Gaddafi was being courted to renounce terrorism, and grant the US and the UK access to his oil fields. Belhaj is still pursuing his claim against the British government through the courts, even though his friend al-Saadi accepted a settlement.
Al-Saadi explained, “My family suffered enough when they were kidnapped and flown to Gaddafi’s Libya. They will now have the chance to complete their education in the new, free Libya. I will be able to afford the medical care I need because of the injuries I suffered in prison.”
Olivo Barbieri captures London from above
Olivo Barbieri began taking photographs in 1971, and his interest in the urban sprawl emerged early on - his first major body of work showed the glow of artificial lighting emanating from European and Asian cities. In 1999 he developed what would become a signature style, using a large format camera, plus the tilt-shift process to manipulate focus and perspective, rendering aerial views of cities and landscapes into what appeared to be miniature models. The already highly artificial fa?ade of Las Vegas became even more exaggerated, the skyscrapers of New York were rendered quaint rather than imposing, and the Iguazu Falls became a picturesque microcosm. Barbieri continued in this fashion until about 2008, when his own artistic focus began to shift.
"At first I was interested in the transformation of bits of cities into plastic models. It's a virtual process to bring into question their planning," he says. "Then I decided to go beyond - to start from the drawing, the planning." This new approach became a way to comprehend the exponential growth of urban centres, and to extrapolate forward to the future. "The purpose of this work is to go forward, to understand what will happen to the future of cities," he says. "Over the next 20 years it will be very interesting to see how they will cope with the amount of people they contain."
Viewing cities from above still affords Barbieri a unique perspective, however, and it's an approach he's still fascinated with. "It is a completely different view from the air - you can understand the real shape and size of a building," he says. "Florence, for example, is fantastic from the ground, but from above it looks like a broken theatre. When you go up in the air you don't so much see the meaning of a place, its context, but shapes, which give you a fresh understanding."
Barbieri shot site specific_LONDON 12 in early summer, before the Olympic Games began - just like he worked in Turin, shortly before the 2006 Winter Olympics. He enjoys photographing Olympic building projects because he likes to witness historical transformation in process, he says, but he's also interested in London because of its intriguing mix of old and new. This interest is evident in the 12 images he chose to include in the series, which record historic sites old and new - from St Paul's and Tower Bridge to the Shard and the Olympic Stadium. Barbieri researched artists past and present to choose his locations, and says Pink Floyd's classic album cover, from the 1977 release Animals, was the inspiration for shooting the Battersea Power Station.
Site specific_London 12 is a mix of monochrome and vibrantly coloured images, but Barbieri worked on all the shots for a long time in post-production, developing a visual language for the series. "I try to define the image's attractive points, like in a written page," he says.
Each image is meant to act independently but also function as part of a wider whole that is more than the sum of its parts. "The challenge is to succeed in building a story that perceptually discloses hic et nunc the location; then to relate it to other locations in order to draw a bigger picture that describes the shape of the contemporary city," explains Barbieri.
The result is a set of images that hardly resemble photographs - perhaps appropriate for Barbieri, who views photography as more than just a means to an end. Other photographers might lament the end of the ‘golden age' of photography, but he embraces its progress, and says the proliferation of photographs and photographers has made the confusion between photography and art much clearer. "It is much easier to understand what an artist using photography is doing," he says. "You don't have to prove that it relates to photography and artists can concentrate more on their work."
Londoners are now able to see their city through Barbieri's eyes, with large prints of the series on show at the Ronchini Gallery until mid-January. Barbieri hopes his images will allow locals to discover something new about their hometown, and in turn provoke questions about the nature of perception and the photographer's role in it. "We're not moving away from photography, it's photography that's leaving us," he says. "I've never been interested in photography, but in images. I believe my work starts when photography ends."
If the Farnsworth is awarded the grant — a decision will be made in July — the museum will offer Regional School Unit 13 teachers who teach in Rockland free year-round professional development opportunities in aesthetic education. Specifically, teachers at Rockland District Middle School and the South School will help students connect curriculum with art.
Past and current work between the museum and school have been a great benefit to students, said elementary school teacher Nancy Nickerson of the South School.
The current project has included giving each student a camera and allowing them to take photographs. Each classroom has a different focus including marine shipping and lobstering, the granite industry or as with Nickerson’s class — documenting family history.
“They’re learning the lost art of talking with their elders,” Nickerson said.
She said the project allows the children to do things that get them to believe in themselves.
The Rockland City Council gave its enthusiastic support for the grant at its Dec. 10 meeting. The council voted unanimously to support and partner with the museum on the grant application to the National Endowment for the Arts.
Roger Dell, the director of education for the Farnsworth, said the relationship with the schools has been a great fit.
“Math includes geometry which is about patterns, and that is found within art,” Dell said. “Any topic can find a connection in the art world.”
He said students also can examine paintings and analyze it and investigate its meaning. Investigation is a key to the study of science and math, Dell said.
The project also will focus specifically on the history of Rockland through a study of occupations such as lobstering, granite and limestone quarrying.
“In close collaboration, the museum and the teachers will develop a broad curricular project in which students explore and document Rockland’s history and local environment,” according to a letter from the Farnsworth’s development officer Kit Stone to the city council.
Museum educators, assisted by professional artist mentors, will spend several days a week throughout the school year demonstrating to teachers a variety of teaching-through-the-arts strategies by directly interacting with students and guiding their creative choices, where they may choose among photography, film, music, literature or the fine arts as their creative tool.
Students will also be brought to the museum free of charge for docent-led tours and hands-on gallery activities to reinforce and enhance what they learned in the classroom. The museum will also pay for transportation costs for the students.
At the end of each of the next three school years, the students work would be presented to the public at the historic Strand Theatre in downtown Rockland and then put on display in Farnsworth galleries. Video and film creations will be shown at the Farnsworth auditorium.
That was done in the past year with films shown at the museum and exhibits on display for the public.
In its statement in support of the Farnsworth grant, which is being submitted to the National Endowment for the Arts, Mayor William Clayton stated that the city is proud to have a world-class museum such as the Farnsworth in Rockland.
"At first I was interested in the transformation of bits of cities into plastic models. It's a virtual process to bring into question their planning," he says. "Then I decided to go beyond - to start from the drawing, the planning." This new approach became a way to comprehend the exponential growth of urban centres, and to extrapolate forward to the future. "The purpose of this work is to go forward, to understand what will happen to the future of cities," he says. "Over the next 20 years it will be very interesting to see how they will cope with the amount of people they contain."
Viewing cities from above still affords Barbieri a unique perspective, however, and it's an approach he's still fascinated with. "It is a completely different view from the air - you can understand the real shape and size of a building," he says. "Florence, for example, is fantastic from the ground, but from above it looks like a broken theatre. When you go up in the air you don't so much see the meaning of a place, its context, but shapes, which give you a fresh understanding."
Barbieri shot site specific_LONDON 12 in early summer, before the Olympic Games began - just like he worked in Turin, shortly before the 2006 Winter Olympics. He enjoys photographing Olympic building projects because he likes to witness historical transformation in process, he says, but he's also interested in London because of its intriguing mix of old and new. This interest is evident in the 12 images he chose to include in the series, which record historic sites old and new - from St Paul's and Tower Bridge to the Shard and the Olympic Stadium. Barbieri researched artists past and present to choose his locations, and says Pink Floyd's classic album cover, from the 1977 release Animals, was the inspiration for shooting the Battersea Power Station.
Site specific_London 12 is a mix of monochrome and vibrantly coloured images, but Barbieri worked on all the shots for a long time in post-production, developing a visual language for the series. "I try to define the image's attractive points, like in a written page," he says.
Each image is meant to act independently but also function as part of a wider whole that is more than the sum of its parts. "The challenge is to succeed in building a story that perceptually discloses hic et nunc the location; then to relate it to other locations in order to draw a bigger picture that describes the shape of the contemporary city," explains Barbieri.
The result is a set of images that hardly resemble photographs - perhaps appropriate for Barbieri, who views photography as more than just a means to an end. Other photographers might lament the end of the ‘golden age' of photography, but he embraces its progress, and says the proliferation of photographs and photographers has made the confusion between photography and art much clearer. "It is much easier to understand what an artist using photography is doing," he says. "You don't have to prove that it relates to photography and artists can concentrate more on their work."
Londoners are now able to see their city through Barbieri's eyes, with large prints of the series on show at the Ronchini Gallery until mid-January. Barbieri hopes his images will allow locals to discover something new about their hometown, and in turn provoke questions about the nature of perception and the photographer's role in it. "We're not moving away from photography, it's photography that's leaving us," he says. "I've never been interested in photography, but in images. I believe my work starts when photography ends."
If the Farnsworth is awarded the grant — a decision will be made in July — the museum will offer Regional School Unit 13 teachers who teach in Rockland free year-round professional development opportunities in aesthetic education. Specifically, teachers at Rockland District Middle School and the South School will help students connect curriculum with art.
Past and current work between the museum and school have been a great benefit to students, said elementary school teacher Nancy Nickerson of the South School.
The current project has included giving each student a camera and allowing them to take photographs. Each classroom has a different focus including marine shipping and lobstering, the granite industry or as with Nickerson’s class — documenting family history.
“They’re learning the lost art of talking with their elders,” Nickerson said.
She said the project allows the children to do things that get them to believe in themselves.
The Rockland City Council gave its enthusiastic support for the grant at its Dec. 10 meeting. The council voted unanimously to support and partner with the museum on the grant application to the National Endowment for the Arts.
Roger Dell, the director of education for the Farnsworth, said the relationship with the schools has been a great fit.
“Math includes geometry which is about patterns, and that is found within art,” Dell said. “Any topic can find a connection in the art world.”
He said students also can examine paintings and analyze it and investigate its meaning. Investigation is a key to the study of science and math, Dell said.
The project also will focus specifically on the history of Rockland through a study of occupations such as lobstering, granite and limestone quarrying.
“In close collaboration, the museum and the teachers will develop a broad curricular project in which students explore and document Rockland’s history and local environment,” according to a letter from the Farnsworth’s development officer Kit Stone to the city council.
Museum educators, assisted by professional artist mentors, will spend several days a week throughout the school year demonstrating to teachers a variety of teaching-through-the-arts strategies by directly interacting with students and guiding their creative choices, where they may choose among photography, film, music, literature or the fine arts as their creative tool.
Students will also be brought to the museum free of charge for docent-led tours and hands-on gallery activities to reinforce and enhance what they learned in the classroom. The museum will also pay for transportation costs for the students.
At the end of each of the next three school years, the students work would be presented to the public at the historic Strand Theatre in downtown Rockland and then put on display in Farnsworth galleries. Video and film creations will be shown at the Farnsworth auditorium.
That was done in the past year with films shown at the museum and exhibits on display for the public.
In its statement in support of the Farnsworth grant, which is being submitted to the National Endowment for the Arts, Mayor William Clayton stated that the city is proud to have a world-class museum such as the Farnsworth in Rockland.
Wednesday, December 19, 2012
Our resident critic answers your burning questions about pot
Attorneys have pointed out that there's not much the feds can do about the decriminalization aspect of it at the state level: If Colorado doesn't want to spend our money on prosecuting people for small amounts of pot, so be it. The personal-possession stuff? Same deal. A lot of people also seem to think that the federal government wouldn't waste its time busting and prosecuting private growers following state law. I tend to agree with that, though I don't think the Drug Enforcement Administration would forgo making a raid if it stumbles on a grow. Even with the small amounts allowed here, it's still a five-year stint in the pen and a $250,000 fine at the federal level.
Now, will the feds allow the recreational pot shops? Probably not. At least not right away. The feds could do something like pull all our highway funding if the state licenses even one of those shops, all in the name of keeping our nation safe from the menace of all you red-eyed drivers distracted by the smoldering bowl of Kurple Fantasy in your lap. That's pretty much what they did when they limited consumption of booze to people 21 and up back in the day.
“Lower the heat on the oven,” Meyers said. “If the directions say 350, reduce to 325 and place on the center rack and cook a minute or two longer.”
She also said to turn the oven off before the cookies are ready, five or so minutes prior, and leave the cookies baking in the oven.”
Pennsville native Dawnmarie Barnhart Castro said, before baking, place the cookie dough in the refrigerator after mixing.
“It always adds to the best taste and textures,” she said.
Dena Strickland Crump, formerly of Pennsville, said to not over-mix the cookie dough because that can lead to tough cookies, definitely use a thermostat in the oven and she uses Reynolds Release to make getting the cookies off the sheet much easier.
South Jersey Times editor Lauren Taniguchi said she is sure to move her chocolate cookies from the parchment to the cooling rack as soon as they are set to maintain the gooey, fudgey goodness of the treat.
Cassadee Pope came to seem like the inevitable winner of Season Three of The Voice. The young Florida singer, fresh out of her major-label contract with her previous band Hey Monday, sang her way into a career reboot and last night took the Voice title for Team Blake, champs now for the second season in a row.
Pope's win started to seem like a foregone conclusion after she scored a bona fide chart hit with her coach-penned song "Over You," which, given the new rules of ranking for this season, gave her what proved to be an insurmountable lead. Songs that chart in the Top 10 on iTunes being weighted (multiplied by 10) and counted toward a cumulative score, to insure against the whims of week-to-week performances (see also, infamously, Jennifer Hudson on Idol). The move seemed designed to insulate popular contestants against getting voted off the show after an off night by making clearer distinctions between who was capturing America's heart and who they wish would GTFO. The downside was less cruel drama of instant and unjust eliminations, which is kind of the whole reason to watch reality singing competitions.
On last night's epic two-hour blowout finale, there was much star-studded bluster, so many ghosts of eliminations past and legends being upstaged by show finalists as the show lurched toward its predictable end: Pope sodden with tears and coated in luminous metallic confetti. She is now $150,000 richer, back on a major and the proud owner of a new Kia, which was a surprise award to each of the three finalists in the show's denouement, with keys delivered by a bewigged Santa Cee Lo in a sleigh with shinin' rims. Third place finisher Nicholas David and runner-up Terry McDermott, fathers to young children both, looked as stoked about their new family wagons as we've seen them all season.
What was most notable about Season Three, and what separates The Voice from other singing competitions, is that the show makes room for, and values to a certain extent, quirky. It is a testament to America's tastes and desire for someone with genuine talent that a contestant who fits no real contemporary pop mold made it all the way to third place – and that he finished so close behind the familiar-sounding Pope, who could just as easily been a finisher on Idol or The X Factor, which goad their singers toward palatability. David was familiar sounding in that he sounded like the spawn of Bill Withers and Al Green.
Pope, for her big voice, was so Avril-esque that it was embarrassing to see her do "I'm With You" alongside her heroine on Tuesday's finale, giddily glancing sidelong as their two voices meshed into one UberAvril. Carson Daly mentioned what a big deal it was to Pope, a huge Lavigne fan, "as we learned all season long." It's doubtful he meant it as a burn; it was more like stating the obvious. She also performed alongside the Killers on "Here With Me," and the Kelly Clarkson on "Catch My Breath," on which Pope held her own.
Beyond David, there was precocious teen Melanie Martinez, complicated farm boy Cody Belew offering up curious and conceptual performances, sticking to their weirdest guns, rather than gunning for lowest common denominator pop appeals. And America was down for that. Which is where coach Christina Aguilera underestimated the voters. Or perhaps more aptly, underestimated America's interest in cookie-cutter pop singers stomping ferociously in diva heels and luxe weaves as they soul-yodel tortured melismatic note runs. That would explain why Xtina gamed her team for Top-10 pop and wound up player-less weeks before the finale.
It's also worth noting that Pope is the first woman to win The Voice. This season was rife with incredible, powerful women who went home too soon; Pope brought back Martinez, country gal Liz Davis and Pope-fave De'Borah for her curated ensemble performance – and even in her half-chorus return De'Borah was a potent reminder of what an energetic stand out she was. David's ensemble number wrangled Dez Duron,Amanda Brown and Trevin Hunte for one of the best group numbers of the entire season on the Boyz II Men prom favorite "End of the Road," which David said was a dedication to the indelible bonds of friendship formed by the competitors. McDermott's turn also brought back popular favorite Brown, swaggy grandpa Rudy Parris and punky homeschooler Michaela Page for Kiss' "Rock and Roll All Nite," which seemed like a wee gift from McDermott to his Kiss-fanatic roomie Parris.
As strong as guests Rihanna and Bruno Mars and their tender hits are, their cameos fell by the wayside. They seemed unrelated. They were way less weird than David owning "Cruisin'," though an alert-looking Smokey Robinson gave it his best. It was certainly less awkward than Peter Frampton looking way too excited to be on TV as he performed "Baby I Love Your Way" with McDermott, who seemed to downplay his capabilities out of respect. There were several more guest spots and performances, including the coaches doing "Time of Your Life," while a yearbook style slide show played behind them. It was supposed to be sentimental – Xtina's giggling threw that a bit.
Ending the season with two endless hours of loud, dramatic singing from too many people to keep track of was fitting: we spent weeks watching 64 singers make the ranks and then get dismissed in rapid succession, blurring into one long b-roll of corny adages and underdog struggles, from comas to coming out. And then, when the big moment finally arrived, the new pop princess was delivered exactly how America wanted.
Now, will the feds allow the recreational pot shops? Probably not. At least not right away. The feds could do something like pull all our highway funding if the state licenses even one of those shops, all in the name of keeping our nation safe from the menace of all you red-eyed drivers distracted by the smoldering bowl of Kurple Fantasy in your lap. That's pretty much what they did when they limited consumption of booze to people 21 and up back in the day.
“Lower the heat on the oven,” Meyers said. “If the directions say 350, reduce to 325 and place on the center rack and cook a minute or two longer.”
She also said to turn the oven off before the cookies are ready, five or so minutes prior, and leave the cookies baking in the oven.”
Pennsville native Dawnmarie Barnhart Castro said, before baking, place the cookie dough in the refrigerator after mixing.
“It always adds to the best taste and textures,” she said.
Dena Strickland Crump, formerly of Pennsville, said to not over-mix the cookie dough because that can lead to tough cookies, definitely use a thermostat in the oven and she uses Reynolds Release to make getting the cookies off the sheet much easier.
South Jersey Times editor Lauren Taniguchi said she is sure to move her chocolate cookies from the parchment to the cooling rack as soon as they are set to maintain the gooey, fudgey goodness of the treat.
Cassadee Pope came to seem like the inevitable winner of Season Three of The Voice. The young Florida singer, fresh out of her major-label contract with her previous band Hey Monday, sang her way into a career reboot and last night took the Voice title for Team Blake, champs now for the second season in a row.
Pope's win started to seem like a foregone conclusion after she scored a bona fide chart hit with her coach-penned song "Over You," which, given the new rules of ranking for this season, gave her what proved to be an insurmountable lead. Songs that chart in the Top 10 on iTunes being weighted (multiplied by 10) and counted toward a cumulative score, to insure against the whims of week-to-week performances (see also, infamously, Jennifer Hudson on Idol). The move seemed designed to insulate popular contestants against getting voted off the show after an off night by making clearer distinctions between who was capturing America's heart and who they wish would GTFO. The downside was less cruel drama of instant and unjust eliminations, which is kind of the whole reason to watch reality singing competitions.
On last night's epic two-hour blowout finale, there was much star-studded bluster, so many ghosts of eliminations past and legends being upstaged by show finalists as the show lurched toward its predictable end: Pope sodden with tears and coated in luminous metallic confetti. She is now $150,000 richer, back on a major and the proud owner of a new Kia, which was a surprise award to each of the three finalists in the show's denouement, with keys delivered by a bewigged Santa Cee Lo in a sleigh with shinin' rims. Third place finisher Nicholas David and runner-up Terry McDermott, fathers to young children both, looked as stoked about their new family wagons as we've seen them all season.
What was most notable about Season Three, and what separates The Voice from other singing competitions, is that the show makes room for, and values to a certain extent, quirky. It is a testament to America's tastes and desire for someone with genuine talent that a contestant who fits no real contemporary pop mold made it all the way to third place – and that he finished so close behind the familiar-sounding Pope, who could just as easily been a finisher on Idol or The X Factor, which goad their singers toward palatability. David was familiar sounding in that he sounded like the spawn of Bill Withers and Al Green.
Pope, for her big voice, was so Avril-esque that it was embarrassing to see her do "I'm With You" alongside her heroine on Tuesday's finale, giddily glancing sidelong as their two voices meshed into one UberAvril. Carson Daly mentioned what a big deal it was to Pope, a huge Lavigne fan, "as we learned all season long." It's doubtful he meant it as a burn; it was more like stating the obvious. She also performed alongside the Killers on "Here With Me," and the Kelly Clarkson on "Catch My Breath," on which Pope held her own.
Beyond David, there was precocious teen Melanie Martinez, complicated farm boy Cody Belew offering up curious and conceptual performances, sticking to their weirdest guns, rather than gunning for lowest common denominator pop appeals. And America was down for that. Which is where coach Christina Aguilera underestimated the voters. Or perhaps more aptly, underestimated America's interest in cookie-cutter pop singers stomping ferociously in diva heels and luxe weaves as they soul-yodel tortured melismatic note runs. That would explain why Xtina gamed her team for Top-10 pop and wound up player-less weeks before the finale.
It's also worth noting that Pope is the first woman to win The Voice. This season was rife with incredible, powerful women who went home too soon; Pope brought back Martinez, country gal Liz Davis and Pope-fave De'Borah for her curated ensemble performance – and even in her half-chorus return De'Borah was a potent reminder of what an energetic stand out she was. David's ensemble number wrangled Dez Duron,Amanda Brown and Trevin Hunte for one of the best group numbers of the entire season on the Boyz II Men prom favorite "End of the Road," which David said was a dedication to the indelible bonds of friendship formed by the competitors. McDermott's turn also brought back popular favorite Brown, swaggy grandpa Rudy Parris and punky homeschooler Michaela Page for Kiss' "Rock and Roll All Nite," which seemed like a wee gift from McDermott to his Kiss-fanatic roomie Parris.
As strong as guests Rihanna and Bruno Mars and their tender hits are, their cameos fell by the wayside. They seemed unrelated. They were way less weird than David owning "Cruisin'," though an alert-looking Smokey Robinson gave it his best. It was certainly less awkward than Peter Frampton looking way too excited to be on TV as he performed "Baby I Love Your Way" with McDermott, who seemed to downplay his capabilities out of respect. There were several more guest spots and performances, including the coaches doing "Time of Your Life," while a yearbook style slide show played behind them. It was supposed to be sentimental – Xtina's giggling threw that a bit.
Ending the season with two endless hours of loud, dramatic singing from too many people to keep track of was fitting: we spent weeks watching 64 singers make the ranks and then get dismissed in rapid succession, blurring into one long b-roll of corny adages and underdog struggles, from comas to coming out. And then, when the big moment finally arrived, the new pop princess was delivered exactly how America wanted.
Hague takes the helm at MAN
An additional 2m contract haul and growth in three key sectors is the aim of the new Chairman of the Midlands Assembly Network (MAN) it was announced today.
Tony Hague will head up the eight-strong collaboration of world class engineering businesses as it enters its seventh year and believes there has never been a better time for the group to secure more work.
Automotive, aerospace and electronics have already been identified as the three main sectors that could benefit most from its capabilities in mechanical, electrical and electronic engineering solutions.
“This is going to be an important year for MAN and one that we want to adopt a more aggressive approach to sales,” explained Tony, who is currently Managing Director of PP Electrical Systems in Cheslyn Hay.
“We’ve already established a proven track record for world class quality and security of supply, with over 12m of contracts already delivered for a high profile global customer base.”
He continued: “However, I know we can do more. We just need to be more pro-active and this will start with the recruitment of a dedicated sales consultant to represent the group.
“We’ll also be looking to develop a more sales driven website and marketing material and actively take the MAN message out to potential customers.”
First established in 2006, the Midlands Assembly Network is made up of eight members including Advanced Chemical Etching, Alucast, Brandauer, Barkley Plastics, FW Cables, PP Electrical Systems, SMT Developments and Westley Engineering.
Each company offers a different engineering solution, ranging from high volume precision pressings, electrical control systems and tooling to PCB assembly, wire harnesses and injection moulding.
Together, they boast nine world class manufacturing facilities, employ over 650 highly skilled professionals and hold industry quality accreditations, such as TS16949, AS9100, UL508 and SC21.
“There’s over 3bn of opportunities currently available in the automotive industry at present so it seems like a natural sector to target, especially when you consider our experience in Quality Cost Delivery (QCD) performances,” added Tony.
“Then you have the next generation of aircraft currently being developed…this offers some great opportunities to get involved in the design and prototype stage. Similar again with the latest electronics.”
Tony Hague takes over from Westley Engineering’s Gerry Dunne as Chairman of MAN.
In addition to the sales drive, he is also expecting to increase the membership of the Group to 10 companies by the start of 2013, as well as creating closer working links with key educational establishments such as local Universities – all geared towards developing collaborative innovation in new engineering and manufacturing disciplines.
Machine tool builder Mitsui Seiki is due to open technical center next month, concentrating on machining systems and techniques for the turbo machinery sector. The new Turbine Technology Center is situated at the company’s Franklin Lakes, N.J. operation. Mitsui Seiki offers a range of cutting and turning capabilities, extending from jig boring machines, jig grinders, horizontal and vertical machining centers, to 5-axis machining centers and screw grinders.
“Our existing and potential OEM and supply-chain customers in the turbo machinery industry will be able to conduct test cuts, apply different processes, experiment with cutting tool designs, and prove out CNC programs,” explained Mitsui Seiki vice president Tom Dolan. “They also will be able to try different integrated in-process quality control devices and software. The Center’s resources will help them determine the best strategies and solutions for their specific needs in their own factories.”
In addition, Mitsui Seiki will use the Center to further enhance its significant aerospace and power-generation turbine knowledge and applications expertise. Engineers will use the center like a lab to research and develop new, relevant technologies as they become available. The company will also use the Turbine Technology Center to refine its own machine designs.
“Our goal is to become our clients’ most responsive source to present, demonstrate, and evaluate new solutions so they can machine their turbine parts more efficiently and effectively,” according to Dolan.
The 3,000-sq. ft. Mitsui Seiki Turbine Technology Center will have three dedicated 5-axis machining centers that accommodate small and mid-size turbine components, including blades, blisks, and impellers.
Additionally, other related work like fuel system, disks, vanes, and ancillary parts can be processed.
The new Technical Center will be staffed by senior applications engineers with several years of experience in turbine component machining. Mitsui Seiki noted it is in discussion with certain industry and academic collaborators too, aiming to have them participate at the Center and contribute to its knowledge base and systems approach to CAD/CAM, tooling, inspection, and productivity software.
“GPP is pleased to become partners with the State of Tennessee and the residents of Lincoln County,” Mike Tucker, general manager, General Products Partners Inc., said. “This is an excellent opportunity and a win-win situation for all concerned. The state and local leaders have been most helpful; this is the type of environment that creates success.”
“We continue to work to make Tennessee the No. 1 location in the Southeast for high quality jobs, and I want to congratulate General Products Partners Inc. and Lincoln County on this great announcement,” Gov. Bill Haslam said. “The area will certainly benefit from these new positions, and I know this is the beginning of a strong partnership between General Products Partners Inc. and the state of Tennessee.” Information on tax incentives for which the firm might be eligible was not immediately available.
“I am pleased to welcome General Products Partners Inc. to Tennessee,” Bill Hagerty, Economic and Community Development Commissioner said. “Our business-friendly climate, central location and quality workforce will serve the company well. Under Gov. Haslam’s leadership, our department has worked hard to bring advanced manufacturing companies such as General Products Partners Inc. to our state.”
“We feel fortunate to have a growing company connected to NASA and Redstone Arsenal committed to making Lincoln County their home,” Lincoln County Mayor Peggy G. Bevels said. “They will bring new, good paying jobs with good benefits, and we look forward to adding them to our working family.”
Tony Hague will head up the eight-strong collaboration of world class engineering businesses as it enters its seventh year and believes there has never been a better time for the group to secure more work.
Automotive, aerospace and electronics have already been identified as the three main sectors that could benefit most from its capabilities in mechanical, electrical and electronic engineering solutions.
“This is going to be an important year for MAN and one that we want to adopt a more aggressive approach to sales,” explained Tony, who is currently Managing Director of PP Electrical Systems in Cheslyn Hay.
“We’ve already established a proven track record for world class quality and security of supply, with over 12m of contracts already delivered for a high profile global customer base.”
He continued: “However, I know we can do more. We just need to be more pro-active and this will start with the recruitment of a dedicated sales consultant to represent the group.
“We’ll also be looking to develop a more sales driven website and marketing material and actively take the MAN message out to potential customers.”
First established in 2006, the Midlands Assembly Network is made up of eight members including Advanced Chemical Etching, Alucast, Brandauer, Barkley Plastics, FW Cables, PP Electrical Systems, SMT Developments and Westley Engineering.
Each company offers a different engineering solution, ranging from high volume precision pressings, electrical control systems and tooling to PCB assembly, wire harnesses and injection moulding.
Together, they boast nine world class manufacturing facilities, employ over 650 highly skilled professionals and hold industry quality accreditations, such as TS16949, AS9100, UL508 and SC21.
“There’s over 3bn of opportunities currently available in the automotive industry at present so it seems like a natural sector to target, especially when you consider our experience in Quality Cost Delivery (QCD) performances,” added Tony.
“Then you have the next generation of aircraft currently being developed…this offers some great opportunities to get involved in the design and prototype stage. Similar again with the latest electronics.”
Tony Hague takes over from Westley Engineering’s Gerry Dunne as Chairman of MAN.
In addition to the sales drive, he is also expecting to increase the membership of the Group to 10 companies by the start of 2013, as well as creating closer working links with key educational establishments such as local Universities – all geared towards developing collaborative innovation in new engineering and manufacturing disciplines.
Machine tool builder Mitsui Seiki is due to open technical center next month, concentrating on machining systems and techniques for the turbo machinery sector. The new Turbine Technology Center is situated at the company’s Franklin Lakes, N.J. operation. Mitsui Seiki offers a range of cutting and turning capabilities, extending from jig boring machines, jig grinders, horizontal and vertical machining centers, to 5-axis machining centers and screw grinders.
“Our existing and potential OEM and supply-chain customers in the turbo machinery industry will be able to conduct test cuts, apply different processes, experiment with cutting tool designs, and prove out CNC programs,” explained Mitsui Seiki vice president Tom Dolan. “They also will be able to try different integrated in-process quality control devices and software. The Center’s resources will help them determine the best strategies and solutions for their specific needs in their own factories.”
In addition, Mitsui Seiki will use the Center to further enhance its significant aerospace and power-generation turbine knowledge and applications expertise. Engineers will use the center like a lab to research and develop new, relevant technologies as they become available. The company will also use the Turbine Technology Center to refine its own machine designs.
“Our goal is to become our clients’ most responsive source to present, demonstrate, and evaluate new solutions so they can machine their turbine parts more efficiently and effectively,” according to Dolan.
The 3,000-sq. ft. Mitsui Seiki Turbine Technology Center will have three dedicated 5-axis machining centers that accommodate small and mid-size turbine components, including blades, blisks, and impellers.
Additionally, other related work like fuel system, disks, vanes, and ancillary parts can be processed.
The new Technical Center will be staffed by senior applications engineers with several years of experience in turbine component machining. Mitsui Seiki noted it is in discussion with certain industry and academic collaborators too, aiming to have them participate at the Center and contribute to its knowledge base and systems approach to CAD/CAM, tooling, inspection, and productivity software.
“GPP is pleased to become partners with the State of Tennessee and the residents of Lincoln County,” Mike Tucker, general manager, General Products Partners Inc., said. “This is an excellent opportunity and a win-win situation for all concerned. The state and local leaders have been most helpful; this is the type of environment that creates success.”
“We continue to work to make Tennessee the No. 1 location in the Southeast for high quality jobs, and I want to congratulate General Products Partners Inc. and Lincoln County on this great announcement,” Gov. Bill Haslam said. “The area will certainly benefit from these new positions, and I know this is the beginning of a strong partnership between General Products Partners Inc. and the state of Tennessee.” Information on tax incentives for which the firm might be eligible was not immediately available.
“I am pleased to welcome General Products Partners Inc. to Tennessee,” Bill Hagerty, Economic and Community Development Commissioner said. “Our business-friendly climate, central location and quality workforce will serve the company well. Under Gov. Haslam’s leadership, our department has worked hard to bring advanced manufacturing companies such as General Products Partners Inc. to our state.”
“We feel fortunate to have a growing company connected to NASA and Redstone Arsenal committed to making Lincoln County their home,” Lincoln County Mayor Peggy G. Bevels said. “They will bring new, good paying jobs with good benefits, and we look forward to adding them to our working family.”
Sunday, December 16, 2012
Alcohol-related fatalities up this year
Actually, all year round is the season to drive sober and Highway Safety Administrator Fred Zwonechek said Nebraskans are getting that message, as shown by a long-term trend toward fewer alcohol-related traffic fatalities on the state’s roadways.
“Actually, we’re going to be up a little this year because we have 68 alcohol-related fatalities out of 200 fatalities overall and we’re still counting, compare to 51 alcohol-related fatalities out of 181 last year,” Zwonechek said.
But when viewed over a longer period of time, the trend is clear. Zwonechek’s office 22 years worth of statistics on both overall traffic fatalities in Nebraska and on alcohol-related traffic fatalities.
Total alcohol-related fatalities for the first 11 years of that period are 1,087, which is an average of nearly 99 alcohol-related traffic deaths per year. For the second 11 years in that period, alcohol-related fatalities totaled 922 deaths, which is an average of just under 84 alcohol-related traffic fatalities per year.
If the period of just the last seven years is examined, the difference is even more dramatic. The total alcohol-related traffic fatalities is 517, which is an average of just under 74 alcohol-related fatalities per year.
When asked the reason for the declines, Zwonechek answered, “It is a combination of several things.” One of the first things he mentioned was enhanced enforcement by law enforcement. Zwonechek said that includes setting up sobriety check-points and saturation patrolling, which he defined as heavy patrolling of roads and highways that law enforcement has identified as having a high number of alcohol-related accidents.
Those patrols also may be scheduled to coincide with the times that law enforcement has identified to be the most likely for alcohol-related traffic crashes, Zwonechek said.
He said one tactic law enforcement may use is to use saturation patrol for a particular section of highway or roadway that it has identified as having a higher probability of people driving while impaired, then switching later in the patrol shift to another location to try to catch impaired drivers.
He said enhanced penalties for people are caught driving under the influence is another reason why fewer people are dying in alcohol-related traffic accidents. People know fines are higher and suspensions are longer if they are convicted of driving under the influence.
That is part of the reason why The Independent looked at the seven-year period starting in 2005 to see how much lower the number of annual alcohol-related traffic fatalities have gone. Starting in 2005, several laws have been passed that were specifically designed to discourage drinking and driving. That includes two rounds of enhanced penalties for people convicted of DUI, passage of an underage dram shop law, and two rounds of ignition interlock laws.
Zwonechek specifically mentioned ignition interlock laws as being an effective method for trying to keep people who have been convicted of DUI from getting in a vehicle and once again driving under the influence.
So perhaps it is not mere happenstance that alcohol-related fatalities since 2005 have averaged about 74 per year.
Zwonechek said another factor that may be contributing to that trend may be all the public service advertising designed to discourage driving under the influence. He said some public service announcements stress that if people drink and drive while intoxicated, there is a high probability they will be caught by law enforcement and be prosecuted
Other public service advertising stresses the very real possibility that if people drink and drive, they could kill themselves or someone else, he said.
Zwonechek said all this advertising likely has changed public attitudes toward drinking and driving. He said drinking and driving have never been socially acceptable. But he said there may be even stronger social disapproval of people who drink and drive. Zwonechek societal attitudes can help change behavior.
However, he also said that is an on-going process because there is always a new generation of drivers being created. Zwonechek said young people — specifically between the ages of 18 and 34 and especially males — tend to be risk takers, which means the efforts to end drinking and driving must be on-going.
Zwonechek said it is a timely reminder in December for people to know how hard law enforcement works to prevent people from drinking and driving. He said Nebraska law enforcement often receives grants for DUI and traffic safety enforcement in general. He said right now is a period of “stepped-up enforcement.”
He said there are 55 law enforcement agencies in Nebraska who will put in 6,000 additional enforcement hours during the month of December though the New Year’s holiday to promote traffic safety, including trying to prevent people from driving under the influence.
Crowds on the busy streets of Mumbai Central were in for a pleasant surpriserecently when they realised that actor Shahid Kapoor was shooting in the bylanes there. But while the shoot promised thrilling moments for Shahid’s fans, the idea of shooting at a real location, and that too a crowded one, had kept the cast and crew on edge for several days.
A source reveals that the filmmakers were keen to shoot their film Phata Poster Nikla Hero at real locations around the city to keep the real flavour on reel. Just last week, Shahid had to shoot an intense scene in a crowded market area. And insiders reveal that shooting in the crowded bylanes of the place put forth several challenges.
“Even though the film makers managed to get permission from the authorities, the crowd was extremely difficult to handle and execution was becoming a hassle. Apart from keeping the crowds at bay, we realised that the lanes were too narrow to park Shahid’s vanity van,” reveals a member from the production unit of the Rajkumar Santoshi film.
“We were sceptical about it, but when we told Shahid about it, he was very sporting and simply asked us to make whatever temporary arrangements we could on the location. So, a local Udipi restaurant was finalised to double up as Shahid’s changing room and he offered to travel to the location nearby on a bike. Instead of throwing tantrums on the non-availability of a van, Shahid simply had the eating joint’s shutters pulled down while he changed,” says the source. Meanwhile, the crowds, who knew that some shooting was to commence, had no idea who was at the location.
“But the moment the restaurant’s shutters opened, and they saw Shahid step out, the crowds simply multiplied and soon the entire area was buzzing with excitement. We were worried because Shahid’s scene was an intense,emotionally charged one and with the distractions around, we were prepared to shoot for at least eight to ten hours,” adds the insider.
But Shahid surprised them when despite the commotion around, he managed to deliver all his scenes in a single take. “Santoshi is a stickler for perfection, and Shahid himself is very critical about his work. The shot was a long one and needed a degree of expertise to deliver the perfect emotion. But he gave a perfect shot in one take. And he kept doing that with every shot, so what was actually to take eight hours, was wrapped up in two hours’ time. The crew was amazed at his focus and preparation and unanimously stood up to give him a standing ovation. In fact, he even got an ovation from the crowds, who had actually quitened down as they were engrossed in watching Shahid perform,” says the crew member.
“Actually, we’re going to be up a little this year because we have 68 alcohol-related fatalities out of 200 fatalities overall and we’re still counting, compare to 51 alcohol-related fatalities out of 181 last year,” Zwonechek said.
But when viewed over a longer period of time, the trend is clear. Zwonechek’s office 22 years worth of statistics on both overall traffic fatalities in Nebraska and on alcohol-related traffic fatalities.
Total alcohol-related fatalities for the first 11 years of that period are 1,087, which is an average of nearly 99 alcohol-related traffic deaths per year. For the second 11 years in that period, alcohol-related fatalities totaled 922 deaths, which is an average of just under 84 alcohol-related traffic fatalities per year.
If the period of just the last seven years is examined, the difference is even more dramatic. The total alcohol-related traffic fatalities is 517, which is an average of just under 74 alcohol-related fatalities per year.
When asked the reason for the declines, Zwonechek answered, “It is a combination of several things.” One of the first things he mentioned was enhanced enforcement by law enforcement. Zwonechek said that includes setting up sobriety check-points and saturation patrolling, which he defined as heavy patrolling of roads and highways that law enforcement has identified as having a high number of alcohol-related accidents.
Those patrols also may be scheduled to coincide with the times that law enforcement has identified to be the most likely for alcohol-related traffic crashes, Zwonechek said.
He said one tactic law enforcement may use is to use saturation patrol for a particular section of highway or roadway that it has identified as having a higher probability of people driving while impaired, then switching later in the patrol shift to another location to try to catch impaired drivers.
He said enhanced penalties for people are caught driving under the influence is another reason why fewer people are dying in alcohol-related traffic accidents. People know fines are higher and suspensions are longer if they are convicted of driving under the influence.
That is part of the reason why The Independent looked at the seven-year period starting in 2005 to see how much lower the number of annual alcohol-related traffic fatalities have gone. Starting in 2005, several laws have been passed that were specifically designed to discourage drinking and driving. That includes two rounds of enhanced penalties for people convicted of DUI, passage of an underage dram shop law, and two rounds of ignition interlock laws.
Zwonechek specifically mentioned ignition interlock laws as being an effective method for trying to keep people who have been convicted of DUI from getting in a vehicle and once again driving under the influence.
So perhaps it is not mere happenstance that alcohol-related fatalities since 2005 have averaged about 74 per year.
Zwonechek said another factor that may be contributing to that trend may be all the public service advertising designed to discourage driving under the influence. He said some public service announcements stress that if people drink and drive while intoxicated, there is a high probability they will be caught by law enforcement and be prosecuted
Other public service advertising stresses the very real possibility that if people drink and drive, they could kill themselves or someone else, he said.
Zwonechek said all this advertising likely has changed public attitudes toward drinking and driving. He said drinking and driving have never been socially acceptable. But he said there may be even stronger social disapproval of people who drink and drive. Zwonechek societal attitudes can help change behavior.
However, he also said that is an on-going process because there is always a new generation of drivers being created. Zwonechek said young people — specifically between the ages of 18 and 34 and especially males — tend to be risk takers, which means the efforts to end drinking and driving must be on-going.
Zwonechek said it is a timely reminder in December for people to know how hard law enforcement works to prevent people from drinking and driving. He said Nebraska law enforcement often receives grants for DUI and traffic safety enforcement in general. He said right now is a period of “stepped-up enforcement.”
He said there are 55 law enforcement agencies in Nebraska who will put in 6,000 additional enforcement hours during the month of December though the New Year’s holiday to promote traffic safety, including trying to prevent people from driving under the influence.
Crowds on the busy streets of Mumbai Central were in for a pleasant surpriserecently when they realised that actor Shahid Kapoor was shooting in the bylanes there. But while the shoot promised thrilling moments for Shahid’s fans, the idea of shooting at a real location, and that too a crowded one, had kept the cast and crew on edge for several days.
A source reveals that the filmmakers were keen to shoot their film Phata Poster Nikla Hero at real locations around the city to keep the real flavour on reel. Just last week, Shahid had to shoot an intense scene in a crowded market area. And insiders reveal that shooting in the crowded bylanes of the place put forth several challenges.
“Even though the film makers managed to get permission from the authorities, the crowd was extremely difficult to handle and execution was becoming a hassle. Apart from keeping the crowds at bay, we realised that the lanes were too narrow to park Shahid’s vanity van,” reveals a member from the production unit of the Rajkumar Santoshi film.
“We were sceptical about it, but when we told Shahid about it, he was very sporting and simply asked us to make whatever temporary arrangements we could on the location. So, a local Udipi restaurant was finalised to double up as Shahid’s changing room and he offered to travel to the location nearby on a bike. Instead of throwing tantrums on the non-availability of a van, Shahid simply had the eating joint’s shutters pulled down while he changed,” says the source. Meanwhile, the crowds, who knew that some shooting was to commence, had no idea who was at the location.
“But the moment the restaurant’s shutters opened, and they saw Shahid step out, the crowds simply multiplied and soon the entire area was buzzing with excitement. We were worried because Shahid’s scene was an intense,emotionally charged one and with the distractions around, we were prepared to shoot for at least eight to ten hours,” adds the insider.
But Shahid surprised them when despite the commotion around, he managed to deliver all his scenes in a single take. “Santoshi is a stickler for perfection, and Shahid himself is very critical about his work. The shot was a long one and needed a degree of expertise to deliver the perfect emotion. But he gave a perfect shot in one take. And he kept doing that with every shot, so what was actually to take eight hours, was wrapped up in two hours’ time. The crew was amazed at his focus and preparation and unanimously stood up to give him a standing ovation. In fact, he even got an ovation from the crowds, who had actually quitened down as they were engrossed in watching Shahid perform,” says the crew member.
Who cares?
While the world mourns the loss of children in a senseless tragedy, there are others to be mourned for, too. This is the story of a woman who few would have noticed having passed away, even before the tragedy in Connecticut.
Paula Gomez died last week. She had a stroke on Thursday and ended up dying on Saturday. She was 40 years old and had no family and few friends to speak of. I found out what happened when her boyfriend Mike saw my number on her phone and called to tell me she had died. He said she had spoken of me positively as a friend.
I had the opportunity to meet Mike and interview him to get a better understanding of Paula’s life. He said she had been living with him and he was trying to arrange her final effects. He said he needed to raise $200 for the balance of her cremation and that he had arranged with a local priest to hold a small service. I was skeptical of the story at first, but then he told me if I wished to help out I could just call the funeral home and make a donation in her name.
I met Paula a couple of years ago at the restaurant in a local Shoreline casino. She looked worn out and disheveled but was gulping down a meal. I spoke with her to learn her story and found out that she was a local Aurora Avenue prostitute.
She had been addicted to drugs, had bad teeth, was not particularly attractive and just looked like she had lived a very hard life. She was quite open about her lifestyle and seem to be, overall, a nice person.
The food at the restaurant was cheap and the location convenient for where she plied her trade. I came to talk to her whenever I saw her and always showed concern and respect. She seemed to appreciate my concern even though I wasn’t a customer.
One time she asked for money as she claimed to be short for what she needed for a room for the night. When I saw her later that night she said she had spent some of the money on “a toot,” as she needed to do something to deal with her ordeal.
Another time, someone broke out the window of my car in the parking lot and stole my iPad. I knew that Paula knew most of the street people in the area, so I called and asked if she could be on the lookout for it. The next day she called and told me that she had found who had taken it and told them that it belonged to a friend of hers and she wanted it back. These are not nice people she was dealing with, but she convinced them to give it to her and she brought it back to me.
I tried to work with her to help her figure out how to beat her drug problem. I never again gave her cash but would instead bring her a meal or groceries or actually make a payment toward a room for her.
Unfortunately, I didn’t have the skill set to provide her the help she needed to resolve her addiction. I attempted to put her in communication with services that could help, but until she was ready to make her own effort my attempts proved futile.
As we talked, I learned a bit about her background. Abused as a child and deserted by her parents and family, she ended up on the street at age 17. Drugs became a part of her life not long after, and she made a long downhill journey from that point forward.
Ostracized for profession, she made a few friends who would make an effort to help her change her life. Combined with the lack of a family to provide support Paula was left with no place to go.
Mike came across her and tried to help. However, with her background she couldn’t comprehend why anyone would care about her. They continued their relationship for several years but she could never truly believe in him until just recently.
Mike’s life was no bowl of cherries either. His wife had died when he met Paula, and he was suicidal. He saw Paula across the room in a restaurant and went up to talk to her and befriend her, similar to me. However, in his state, he fell for her and tried to create a relationship. At this point she had been treated like dirt by everyone who knew her and she didn’t believe anyone could care for her.
When Mike told me that they had been living together for the past several months, I was pleased. Then he told me they had been living in his car. He didn’t like her lifestyle and says that she wanted out of it too. But since that was the only thing she had done, she had little marketable skills. She needed money to live, and working the streets was the only practical way to raise it. They lived not paycheck to paycheck, but day to day — literally.
As I got to know Paula, I could see that she wanted things to change but had neither the resources nor the support to make those changes. She talked of programs from the state to help her get her teeth fixed and deal with some of her other health issues. One day she got hit by a car and suffered severe bruising on her leg. However, she didn’t go to the hospital as she couldn’t deal with the psychological treatment of being indigent and therefore missed out on the physical treatment as well. The driver who hit her just drove away.
Paula worked on the same corner for the last 20 years. She tried to get customers who she knew and would call her, but if no one called she had to go out onto Aurora.
I saw her there several times and for the most part just drove by. Sometimes, when it was cold and dark and rainy, I would pull over and tell her she needed to get off the street. Her normal response was that she needed money to get a room. If I could, I would drive her to a motel and give her some money to pay for the room. I couldn’t stand seeing her out on that corner shivering.
She didn’t often come to the casino, so if I hadn’t seen her for a while I would call just to check out how she was doing. She always told me that she “was a survivor and not to worry.” Still, if I had the chance I would bring her some food or something else to help out.
Her death brings me great sadness. You never want someone you know to die, but more important it seemed like no one — outside of Mike — would notice that she was gone outside or even care.
On one hand, I was considering that it wouldn’t be a good idea for me to attend the funeral service for a prostitute. Luckily, my heart kicked in and told me Paula was a real person and she deserved to be honored. I will go and be there to honor her memory.
The more disturbing thing I think about is, how many other women are there out in the world facing a similar situation — drug addicted, selling bodies for day-to-day living expenses and with no support group? Paula recently told me that I was one of only one or two people who actually cared and treated her like a real person. Almost everyone else only cared about her for what they could get from her. It made me feel good that she felt that way about me, but it made me feel awful that I couldn’t and didn’t know what more I could do to help.
The point of this story is that we need to worry about people in Paula’s situation. There must be some way to prevent people from falling through the cracks. I am not quite sure what to do, but I am going to figure this out. Several friends have told me that it was her own fault, that she could have chosen a different life if she weren’t so weak. I don’t believe that people who have been raised in an upper-middle-class lifestyle can comprehend what it’s like to grow up in a situation with abuse and no loving relations.
Richard Cotton, Director, British Council, UAE said: "These striking artworks show how international partnerships between schools can play such an important role in building young people's understanding of different cultures, societies and environments. Rivers of the World is a great example of how education and the arts can combine successfully to give the chance to young people in different countries to share, explore and learn together."
He added: "The artworks on display have previously been exhibited at the Thames Festival in London this summer. The Festival formed part of UK's Cultural Olympiad, focusing on the power of arts to connect and inspire during the 2012 London Olympics and it is with great pride that we bring them here to Dubai. I would like thank our partners in the UAE, HSBC Bank Middle East, Dubai Culture & Arts Authority, Al Serkal Cultural Foundation and Sharjah Art Foundation, without whose support this exhibition would not have been possible."
Speaking of their partnership with the British Council on the UAE exhibition, Ammar Shams, Regional Head of Corporate Sustainability said, "HSBC Bank Middle East is proud to be supporting this initiative which aligns with our goals to enhance the experience of students in different aspects of their education process. This exhibition opens doors for young students to display their thoughts and ideas to the world through the language of art whilst encouraging learning from different cultures."
Mr Salem Belyouha, Director of Projects and Events in the PR, said: "Much like Dubai, the 'Rivers of the World' exhibition highlights the global collaboration and ambition, expressed creatively through the arts in the city. The exhibition further underlines the city's position as the cultural and artistic destination of the region. We are delighted to partner with the British Council to stimulate intercultural dialogue through the medium of art."
Artist Khalid Mezaina, the Emirati artist who worked with the UAE students said: "Rivers of the World is an incredibly exciting project which is constantly increasing in value. It is a wonderful opportunity to work with young people on the themes that we have developed over the lifetime of the project. The students are encouraged to explore the culture, history and environmental consequences of rivers, using a diverse visual language which produces incredibly imaginative pieces of work. It is an amazing opportunity for them to have the work exhibited globally and to reach such an international audience."
During the exhibition, from December to January, special art workshops will be taking place for children aged 8 to 14 years at Fahidi Historical Neighbourhood.
In December, participants will receive the opportunity to develop recognition and understanding of the self and the world. They will be able to actively participate in a creative process and interpret the concepts to form a personalized work of art. In January, four workshops closely related to the six themes presented by ROTW will help students learn and develop knowledge about the Dubai Creek.
Paula Gomez died last week. She had a stroke on Thursday and ended up dying on Saturday. She was 40 years old and had no family and few friends to speak of. I found out what happened when her boyfriend Mike saw my number on her phone and called to tell me she had died. He said she had spoken of me positively as a friend.
I had the opportunity to meet Mike and interview him to get a better understanding of Paula’s life. He said she had been living with him and he was trying to arrange her final effects. He said he needed to raise $200 for the balance of her cremation and that he had arranged with a local priest to hold a small service. I was skeptical of the story at first, but then he told me if I wished to help out I could just call the funeral home and make a donation in her name.
I met Paula a couple of years ago at the restaurant in a local Shoreline casino. She looked worn out and disheveled but was gulping down a meal. I spoke with her to learn her story and found out that she was a local Aurora Avenue prostitute.
She had been addicted to drugs, had bad teeth, was not particularly attractive and just looked like she had lived a very hard life. She was quite open about her lifestyle and seem to be, overall, a nice person.
The food at the restaurant was cheap and the location convenient for where she plied her trade. I came to talk to her whenever I saw her and always showed concern and respect. She seemed to appreciate my concern even though I wasn’t a customer.
One time she asked for money as she claimed to be short for what she needed for a room for the night. When I saw her later that night she said she had spent some of the money on “a toot,” as she needed to do something to deal with her ordeal.
Another time, someone broke out the window of my car in the parking lot and stole my iPad. I knew that Paula knew most of the street people in the area, so I called and asked if she could be on the lookout for it. The next day she called and told me that she had found who had taken it and told them that it belonged to a friend of hers and she wanted it back. These are not nice people she was dealing with, but she convinced them to give it to her and she brought it back to me.
I tried to work with her to help her figure out how to beat her drug problem. I never again gave her cash but would instead bring her a meal or groceries or actually make a payment toward a room for her.
Unfortunately, I didn’t have the skill set to provide her the help she needed to resolve her addiction. I attempted to put her in communication with services that could help, but until she was ready to make her own effort my attempts proved futile.
As we talked, I learned a bit about her background. Abused as a child and deserted by her parents and family, she ended up on the street at age 17. Drugs became a part of her life not long after, and she made a long downhill journey from that point forward.
Ostracized for profession, she made a few friends who would make an effort to help her change her life. Combined with the lack of a family to provide support Paula was left with no place to go.
Mike came across her and tried to help. However, with her background she couldn’t comprehend why anyone would care about her. They continued their relationship for several years but she could never truly believe in him until just recently.
Mike’s life was no bowl of cherries either. His wife had died when he met Paula, and he was suicidal. He saw Paula across the room in a restaurant and went up to talk to her and befriend her, similar to me. However, in his state, he fell for her and tried to create a relationship. At this point she had been treated like dirt by everyone who knew her and she didn’t believe anyone could care for her.
When Mike told me that they had been living together for the past several months, I was pleased. Then he told me they had been living in his car. He didn’t like her lifestyle and says that she wanted out of it too. But since that was the only thing she had done, she had little marketable skills. She needed money to live, and working the streets was the only practical way to raise it. They lived not paycheck to paycheck, but day to day — literally.
As I got to know Paula, I could see that she wanted things to change but had neither the resources nor the support to make those changes. She talked of programs from the state to help her get her teeth fixed and deal with some of her other health issues. One day she got hit by a car and suffered severe bruising on her leg. However, she didn’t go to the hospital as she couldn’t deal with the psychological treatment of being indigent and therefore missed out on the physical treatment as well. The driver who hit her just drove away.
Paula worked on the same corner for the last 20 years. She tried to get customers who she knew and would call her, but if no one called she had to go out onto Aurora.
I saw her there several times and for the most part just drove by. Sometimes, when it was cold and dark and rainy, I would pull over and tell her she needed to get off the street. Her normal response was that she needed money to get a room. If I could, I would drive her to a motel and give her some money to pay for the room. I couldn’t stand seeing her out on that corner shivering.
She didn’t often come to the casino, so if I hadn’t seen her for a while I would call just to check out how she was doing. She always told me that she “was a survivor and not to worry.” Still, if I had the chance I would bring her some food or something else to help out.
Her death brings me great sadness. You never want someone you know to die, but more important it seemed like no one — outside of Mike — would notice that she was gone outside or even care.
On one hand, I was considering that it wouldn’t be a good idea for me to attend the funeral service for a prostitute. Luckily, my heart kicked in and told me Paula was a real person and she deserved to be honored. I will go and be there to honor her memory.
The more disturbing thing I think about is, how many other women are there out in the world facing a similar situation — drug addicted, selling bodies for day-to-day living expenses and with no support group? Paula recently told me that I was one of only one or two people who actually cared and treated her like a real person. Almost everyone else only cared about her for what they could get from her. It made me feel good that she felt that way about me, but it made me feel awful that I couldn’t and didn’t know what more I could do to help.
The point of this story is that we need to worry about people in Paula’s situation. There must be some way to prevent people from falling through the cracks. I am not quite sure what to do, but I am going to figure this out. Several friends have told me that it was her own fault, that she could have chosen a different life if she weren’t so weak. I don’t believe that people who have been raised in an upper-middle-class lifestyle can comprehend what it’s like to grow up in a situation with abuse and no loving relations.
Richard Cotton, Director, British Council, UAE said: "These striking artworks show how international partnerships between schools can play such an important role in building young people's understanding of different cultures, societies and environments. Rivers of the World is a great example of how education and the arts can combine successfully to give the chance to young people in different countries to share, explore and learn together."
He added: "The artworks on display have previously been exhibited at the Thames Festival in London this summer. The Festival formed part of UK's Cultural Olympiad, focusing on the power of arts to connect and inspire during the 2012 London Olympics and it is with great pride that we bring them here to Dubai. I would like thank our partners in the UAE, HSBC Bank Middle East, Dubai Culture & Arts Authority, Al Serkal Cultural Foundation and Sharjah Art Foundation, without whose support this exhibition would not have been possible."
Speaking of their partnership with the British Council on the UAE exhibition, Ammar Shams, Regional Head of Corporate Sustainability said, "HSBC Bank Middle East is proud to be supporting this initiative which aligns with our goals to enhance the experience of students in different aspects of their education process. This exhibition opens doors for young students to display their thoughts and ideas to the world through the language of art whilst encouraging learning from different cultures."
Mr Salem Belyouha, Director of Projects and Events in the PR, said: "Much like Dubai, the 'Rivers of the World' exhibition highlights the global collaboration and ambition, expressed creatively through the arts in the city. The exhibition further underlines the city's position as the cultural and artistic destination of the region. We are delighted to partner with the British Council to stimulate intercultural dialogue through the medium of art."
Artist Khalid Mezaina, the Emirati artist who worked with the UAE students said: "Rivers of the World is an incredibly exciting project which is constantly increasing in value. It is a wonderful opportunity to work with young people on the themes that we have developed over the lifetime of the project. The students are encouraged to explore the culture, history and environmental consequences of rivers, using a diverse visual language which produces incredibly imaginative pieces of work. It is an amazing opportunity for them to have the work exhibited globally and to reach such an international audience."
During the exhibition, from December to January, special art workshops will be taking place for children aged 8 to 14 years at Fahidi Historical Neighbourhood.
In December, participants will receive the opportunity to develop recognition and understanding of the self and the world. They will be able to actively participate in a creative process and interpret the concepts to form a personalized work of art. In January, four workshops closely related to the six themes presented by ROTW will help students learn and develop knowledge about the Dubai Creek.
Wednesday, December 12, 2012
Let’s reimagine Yale education
Yale’s administration and faculty convened last Thursday to discuss “ways in which the University could expand online,” including having faculty “experiment” with Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). We the students, though, must pressure the University to quickly advance this agenda beyond basic “experimentation.” MOOCs enable us to get most of a Yale education for free, and to optimize our Yale campus experience around creativity and collaboration. Online education isn’t waiting for some grand Yale agenda; it has already arrived. If Yale wants to advance the future of education — both globally and here on campus — we need a bold vision.
MOOCs gained significant cultural traction in 2011, when Stanford professor Sebastian Thrun offered his “Introduction to Artificial Intelligence” class online — for free. Over 160,000 people around the world signed up to learn from him, take quizzes, complete homework assignments and engage online with their peers. Since then, interest in MOOCs has ballooned; Coursera, an online MOOC platform, now offers 208 courses.
Presuming these trends continue, what is the future role of brick-and-mortar Yale? Yale’s campus of the future should focus exclusively on hands-on creative learning, not passive knowledge absorption. Our campus should offer a purely generative education, leaving tethered education for the Net.
What are generative and tethered educations? These terms come from Jonathan Zittrain’s 2008 publication “The Future of The Internet — And How To Stop It,” in which Zittrain distinguishes between a generative device and a tethered device.
A tethered device is locked down and controlled entirely by the maker, such as your toaster. You use your toaster exactly how the manufacturers intended. Your iPhone is also a fairly tethered device; you only use it for what Apple allows via the App Store, and, at any point, Apple can reconfigure settings remotely.
A generative device, on the other hand, is open and accessible to modifications by the user, who has full control. Your laptop is a generative device; you can write and run code on it that the designers and manufacturers may never have imagined. The freedom to tinker and modify produces innovations independent of centralized, authoritative control. A user can take the resources of a generative device like the computer, and leverage them to implement new ideas.
Consider education in these terms. A tethered education is one that you consume as is, as the dictated by the maker. A generative education is participatory, one in which you leverage the resources of the University to experiment and test ideas. Yale has both of these on campus now, but it shouldn’t in the future. The tethered education should go online where it is cheapest — and arguably better — and Yale’s campus should exclusively focus on “generativity.”
The most egregious example of a tethered education is the lecture. The lecture invites no generativity: sitting, listening, memorizing and filling out exams doesn’t invite the student to tinker or modify knowledge to realize new ideas. It is my hope that the lecture goes the way of the horse and buggy — and as lecturers seek end-of-term feedback, they should heed Henry Ford’s famous quote: “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse.”
Every course that is more focused on disseminating knowledge than learning experientially should become a MOOC. If the course involves problem sets with clear right and wrong answers, it can be a MOOC. If the course has an exam, it can probably be a MOOC. This is consumable knowledge, and should be consumed as cheaply as possible: online. Students should take relevant MOOCs before coming to Yale, so that they have the foundation necessary to join a campus optimized for generativity.
Then, when you come to Yale, you are given access to buildings, professors, peers and other resources. This is like being given a computer; you are told to freely write and run your own code for this platform. Your sole responsibility should be to tinker, to create, to invent. The extracurriculars, small seminars, independent studies and thesis groups we currently have should all remain, and we would have more time for them. In each class, students would be assessed solely on their portfolio of creations: new research, engineered prototypes, architectural blueprints, feature films, books, software, sculptures. Our time here together is scarce, and should be optimized for this collaboration, research and creation.
MOOCs and the technology enabling them aren’t inconveniences; they enable a revolution that requires a reimagining of Yale education. With strong leadership, Yale can provide the best of both educations: top MOOCs that are free to the world, and the most innovative campus.
For my money, Teenage Engineering’s OP-1 synthesizer is about as good-looking as instruments get. Admittedly, it’s not beautiful in a classic sense, like a grand piano or a harp. It’s a small, button-strewn thing--like a wireless keyboard for a futuristic PC--and, at first glance, it doesn’t even really announce itself as a musical instrument at all. Instead of ivory keys, or plastic ones that resemble them, it’s got stubby gray buttons, with a row of small dots standing in for the black ones. It is, indeed, a high-end, professional-grade music-making tool, but you wouldn’t be wrong to think it looks a little bit like a toy.
That tension is something the Stockholm-based company embraces. It’s proud to be a lean, unorthodox hardware outfit in an industry dominated by giants. It’s a position that lets them sell $850 synthesizers that look like toys. And one that lets them release accessories for that instrument free of charge on their website, for anyone with access to a 3-D printer.
Teenage Engineering’s first forays into rapid manufacturing came as they were developing the OP-1 itself, a few years back. Building a compact synthesizer requires careful consideration of the available real estate, on both the inside and the outside of the instrument. That meant a lot of tweaking--and a lot of prototyping, for which they had to look outside their own team. David M?llerstedt, head of audio at Teenage Engineering, recalls:
"When we developed the synth, we were in a position where we had to prototype a lot of things. And I guess we started off like everyone else, going to different people for doing CNC metal, and doing plastic components, and all of those things. We found that process to be quite frustrating, both in terms of turnaround and time but also having somebody else to do your own work, basically, and not have that control and detail of that in our own hands."
The team decided to invest in a few rapid-prototyping machines for the office, which quickly became integral to their design process. Of course, this was a few years back, when the true usefulness of 3-D printing to a company like Teenage Engineering might not have been quite as much of a given, and when the technology came with a slightly higher price tag. "Looking back, it was totally good," M?llerstedt says, "but back then it was, like, lots of money!"
MOOCs gained significant cultural traction in 2011, when Stanford professor Sebastian Thrun offered his “Introduction to Artificial Intelligence” class online — for free. Over 160,000 people around the world signed up to learn from him, take quizzes, complete homework assignments and engage online with their peers. Since then, interest in MOOCs has ballooned; Coursera, an online MOOC platform, now offers 208 courses.
Presuming these trends continue, what is the future role of brick-and-mortar Yale? Yale’s campus of the future should focus exclusively on hands-on creative learning, not passive knowledge absorption. Our campus should offer a purely generative education, leaving tethered education for the Net.
What are generative and tethered educations? These terms come from Jonathan Zittrain’s 2008 publication “The Future of The Internet — And How To Stop It,” in which Zittrain distinguishes between a generative device and a tethered device.
A tethered device is locked down and controlled entirely by the maker, such as your toaster. You use your toaster exactly how the manufacturers intended. Your iPhone is also a fairly tethered device; you only use it for what Apple allows via the App Store, and, at any point, Apple can reconfigure settings remotely.
A generative device, on the other hand, is open and accessible to modifications by the user, who has full control. Your laptop is a generative device; you can write and run code on it that the designers and manufacturers may never have imagined. The freedom to tinker and modify produces innovations independent of centralized, authoritative control. A user can take the resources of a generative device like the computer, and leverage them to implement new ideas.
Consider education in these terms. A tethered education is one that you consume as is, as the dictated by the maker. A generative education is participatory, one in which you leverage the resources of the University to experiment and test ideas. Yale has both of these on campus now, but it shouldn’t in the future. The tethered education should go online where it is cheapest — and arguably better — and Yale’s campus should exclusively focus on “generativity.”
The most egregious example of a tethered education is the lecture. The lecture invites no generativity: sitting, listening, memorizing and filling out exams doesn’t invite the student to tinker or modify knowledge to realize new ideas. It is my hope that the lecture goes the way of the horse and buggy — and as lecturers seek end-of-term feedback, they should heed Henry Ford’s famous quote: “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse.”
Every course that is more focused on disseminating knowledge than learning experientially should become a MOOC. If the course involves problem sets with clear right and wrong answers, it can be a MOOC. If the course has an exam, it can probably be a MOOC. This is consumable knowledge, and should be consumed as cheaply as possible: online. Students should take relevant MOOCs before coming to Yale, so that they have the foundation necessary to join a campus optimized for generativity.
Then, when you come to Yale, you are given access to buildings, professors, peers and other resources. This is like being given a computer; you are told to freely write and run your own code for this platform. Your sole responsibility should be to tinker, to create, to invent. The extracurriculars, small seminars, independent studies and thesis groups we currently have should all remain, and we would have more time for them. In each class, students would be assessed solely on their portfolio of creations: new research, engineered prototypes, architectural blueprints, feature films, books, software, sculptures. Our time here together is scarce, and should be optimized for this collaboration, research and creation.
MOOCs and the technology enabling them aren’t inconveniences; they enable a revolution that requires a reimagining of Yale education. With strong leadership, Yale can provide the best of both educations: top MOOCs that are free to the world, and the most innovative campus.
For my money, Teenage Engineering’s OP-1 synthesizer is about as good-looking as instruments get. Admittedly, it’s not beautiful in a classic sense, like a grand piano or a harp. It’s a small, button-strewn thing--like a wireless keyboard for a futuristic PC--and, at first glance, it doesn’t even really announce itself as a musical instrument at all. Instead of ivory keys, or plastic ones that resemble them, it’s got stubby gray buttons, with a row of small dots standing in for the black ones. It is, indeed, a high-end, professional-grade music-making tool, but you wouldn’t be wrong to think it looks a little bit like a toy.
That tension is something the Stockholm-based company embraces. It’s proud to be a lean, unorthodox hardware outfit in an industry dominated by giants. It’s a position that lets them sell $850 synthesizers that look like toys. And one that lets them release accessories for that instrument free of charge on their website, for anyone with access to a 3-D printer.
Teenage Engineering’s first forays into rapid manufacturing came as they were developing the OP-1 itself, a few years back. Building a compact synthesizer requires careful consideration of the available real estate, on both the inside and the outside of the instrument. That meant a lot of tweaking--and a lot of prototyping, for which they had to look outside their own team. David M?llerstedt, head of audio at Teenage Engineering, recalls:
"When we developed the synth, we were in a position where we had to prototype a lot of things. And I guess we started off like everyone else, going to different people for doing CNC metal, and doing plastic components, and all of those things. We found that process to be quite frustrating, both in terms of turnaround and time but also having somebody else to do your own work, basically, and not have that control and detail of that in our own hands."
The team decided to invest in a few rapid-prototyping machines for the office, which quickly became integral to their design process. Of course, this was a few years back, when the true usefulness of 3-D printing to a company like Teenage Engineering might not have been quite as much of a given, and when the technology came with a slightly higher price tag. "Looking back, it was totally good," M?llerstedt says, "but back then it was, like, lots of money!"
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