The slow death of feature phones isn't putting a damper on Nokia's development plans. The Finnish company today revealed the new Nokia 207 and 208 (pictured) "candybar" devices, equipped with Internet access in a colorful package.
"For many, it will be their first phone with 3G Internet, social networks and multimedia," Nokia's Ian Delaney wrote in a blog post. "For others, it's an adaptable workhorse that can act as a second phone when it makes sense to leave your smartphone at home."
Though closely related, the two phones differ slightly: The Nokia 208 has a 1.3-megapixel camera with smart features like voice-guided self-portrait, sequential shot and Ceramic tile, and comes in dual SIM and single SIM flavors; the Nokia 207 is single SIM with no camera.
Just because they don't come with a touch screen and a virtual personal assistant, doesn't mean the new handsets are useless in this connected age. Full 3.5G HSPA Internet support provides fast online access for surfing the Web and streaming videos, as well as checking social networks and using chat services like Twitter, Facebook, and WhatsApp — all of which come pre-installed.
"The Nokia 207 and Nokia 208 are designed for people who like a classic phone and traditional keypad but don't want to miss out on smartphone experiences, like staying connected to social media and accessing the Internet," Timo Toikkanen, executive vice president of Nokia mobile phones, said in a statement.
Both versions carry a 2.4-inch display running on a 1020mAh battery; the single SIM variant offers more than a month's standby time, while available talk time lasts up to 12 hours on a 2G connection. The devices also include Bluetooth, micro USB, and an SD card that supports up to 32GB of storage.
All three phones — Nokia 207, Nokia 208, and Nokia 208 Dual SIM — come in red, cyan, white, and black, and will begin shipping in the third quarter for 52 Euros ($68). While the company mentioned a European release for the Nokia 207, it did not reveal details about any other regions.
Trainer David Jacobson entered Wednesday’s card just three wins shy of Todd Pletcher’s record 40 victories for a Belmont spring/summer meet.
Jacobson, whose 144 starters were 44 more than his nearest competitor, could move closer to that record Friday when he runs Sure Route in the $100,000 Magnolia Jackson Stakes, which goes as race 3 on a nine-race program that begins at 3 p.m. Eastern. The Magnolia Jackson, for fillies and mares, is run at 6 1/2 furlongs.
Jacobson’s barn has been under 24-hour surveillance from the New York Racing Association and state investigators since May 24, the day after he won four races from five starters at Belmont. Pre-surveillance, Jacobson won 19 races from 62 starters at this meet. Post-surveillance, he has won 18 races from 82 starters.
“I want NYRA to keep them here,” Jacobson said Wednesday. “I want to know when and if they’re ever going to leave. I want a heads-up. I enjoy the security.”Asked why he wants continued security, Jacobson said, “It would cost me a lot of money to have the security that I have that NYRA is paying for. Instead of having one night watchman, I have three, four, or five.”
Jacobson said that breaking Pletcher’s mark – set in 2003 –would be “very rewarding. Especially the spring meet, which is not supposed to be one of my stronger times of year.”
Sure Route has accounted for two of Jacobson’s 22 second-place finishes at the meet. Jacobson claimed Sure Route for $62,500 at Aqueduct on April 20 when Sure Route finished second in a turf race. She has raced twice on the dirt, getting beat a nose by Delightful Quality going seven furlongs on May 24 and finishing second to Royal Lahaina in the off-the-turf Mariensky Stakes on June 7.
“I pick her as one of the top two choices in there. She’s really doing well,” Jacobson said. “Six-and-a-half might be a little short for her, but at Belmont you can maybe overcome that with the wide turns. She has two really good races at seven-eighths, and she couldn’t be doing any better.”
Smart Stride returns from a near 13-month layoff for new trainer Pletcher. Part-owner Eric Fein said that Smart Stride has basically been ready to run for seven months, but races he and then-trainer Richard Dutrow Jr. were looking to run in haven’t filled. A similar problem existed recently for Pletcher, who has taken over the training of Smart Stride since Dutrow has been suspended.
“I don’t know what she’s going to do Friday,” Fein said. “Your guess is as good as mine. I don’t think Todd is crazy about her right now, but I’ve never heard anybody be crazy about her in the morning before.”
Click on their website www.tilees.com for more information.
2013年7月3日星期三
2013年6月27日星期四
Human Recognition Systems to launch platform
According to the company, this new system, built on its MVerify platform, allows the automated capture and verification of student identity documents, such as passports and visas. In addition, says the company, MVerify also automates the capture of student attendance during teaching sessions using fingerprint or smartcard technology built into handheld devices.
Student attendance reporting is increasingly significant for institutions with international students enrolled, as visa restrictions as well as UK Home Office Tier 4 student immigration rules have tightened.
“Tier 4 compliance is set to be one of the key topics of discussion at this yeara€?s UKCISA as universities seek to attract international students while navigating the complex Home Office reporting requirements,” Jon Busby, Business Development at HRS said. “With our extensive expertise in identity management, we have developed a cost-effective solution for the higher education sector that can simplify the Tier 4 reporting structure, reduce time spent on manual data administration and lower the associated costs. Operated from a handheld device that can be passed among students, MVerify also supports an improved student experience by enabling more time to be spent on teaching rather than taking registers.”
Well, I think the time has come to change the make-up of this current Phillies team and make some moves at the trade deadline that will help build the team for the future.
I'm not taking this point of view because the Phillies are too far out or can't make the playoffs because I've seen crazier things happen and teams get hot.I think it's time to give this team a make-over because I don't think this collection of players will get hot, and the time to take advantage of some deals that can bring some promising young talent is now.
Let's start with Jonathan Papelbon. Right now there are a number of teams that are in the playoff hunt and need closers. The Detroit Tigers need a closer! Fortunately they have three great prospects in their farm system, and I think the Phillies can get two of the three.
Nick Castellanos is listed as the top hitting prospect for the Tigers. Avisail Garcia is their best outfield prospect, and Bruce Rondon is the best arm in their system and future closer. If the Phillies could get one of the outfield prospects coupled with Rondon, they could have an outfielder to play alongside Dom Brown for a good number of years to go along with a quality arm who should be their future closer.
The next Phillies player that could get an impact prospect back in return would be Cliff Lee. The Texas Rangers are once again in the playoff hunt and need a starter. This might be a perfect fit for Lee who does have a no-trade clause in his contract but would likely not mind pitching in Texas. He pitched for the Rangers in 2011 when they went to the World Series. The Rangers have the best prospect in baseball, Jurickson Profar, a shortstop/second baseman who offers great middle-infield skills with a big bat. Unfortunately for Profar, he's playing behind two All-Stars in Texas. This deal needs to be done.
Jimmy Rollins is getting old and still has a couple years on a big contract. If Profar can be acquired, there is no need for Rollins. Send Rollins to a needy suitor, get a couple more prospects and save $11 million.
Lastly I would get rid of Carlos Ruiz, who will be a free agent at the end of the year. The Yankees could use a veteran catcher and a quality right-handed hitter. The Phils could get a catching prospect in return such as Austin Romine. The only question with this deal is if the Yankees would take on a player with a history of using a banned substance.
I would say that the Phillies need to trade Chase Utley, but I know too many Phillies fans who have named their kids Chase. This would be like trading Derek Jeter if you are a Yankees fan. You just have a talk with Utley when the time comes and make him a coach and keep him a Phil for life.
Thurles-based Andrew Slattery has yet to secure his first win of the current Turf campaign, but Ucanchoose can put that right in the five-furlong handicap. With 18 modest sorts chasing a first prize of less than €5,000, this is wide open.
Still, Ucanchoose is the most appealing option, having run his best race of the year when leading to the furlong pole over six at the Curragh last time. Declan McDonogh's mount eventually finished fifth, so he should have a live chance of getting back to winning ways over his optimum trip off a pound lower mark now.
In the 12-furlong maiden, McDonogh is also trusted to land the nap on Mick Halford's Zarkiyr at the chief expense of Ballydoyle's Waver. This is a pretty weak heat, and Waver's Curragh second to the selection's stable-mate Dabadiyan is at least encouraging, but Zarkiyr is slightly more progressive.
Stepped up to this trip for a first time in a handicap at headquarters the same day, he stayed on with great effect to lose out by just a nose to Levanto off a mark of 80. That's the single most robust piece of form, so Zarkiyr is fancied to collect.
Goolds Cross-based David Wachman might get proceedings under way in the opening juvenile maiden with Little Fastnet, a Fastnet Rock debutante that is out of Wachman's former top-class juvenile Damson.
Little Fastnet is a three-parts sister to Requinto, another smart two-year-old for the stable that won a Listed race here in 2011 before scoring twice in Group company in England. Of the three in the nine-runner affair that have been placed, Celtic Man is feared most for Bansha's David Marnane, but Little Fastnet is bred to be a bit special.
Nurse Ryan might also plunder a popular local win for Martin and Shane Hassett of Killenaule. The dual hurdle-winning mare will be suited by the fast ground and trip in the Gathering Handicap.
Click on their website www.tilees.com for more information.
Student attendance reporting is increasingly significant for institutions with international students enrolled, as visa restrictions as well as UK Home Office Tier 4 student immigration rules have tightened.
“Tier 4 compliance is set to be one of the key topics of discussion at this yeara€?s UKCISA as universities seek to attract international students while navigating the complex Home Office reporting requirements,” Jon Busby, Business Development at HRS said. “With our extensive expertise in identity management, we have developed a cost-effective solution for the higher education sector that can simplify the Tier 4 reporting structure, reduce time spent on manual data administration and lower the associated costs. Operated from a handheld device that can be passed among students, MVerify also supports an improved student experience by enabling more time to be spent on teaching rather than taking registers.”
Well, I think the time has come to change the make-up of this current Phillies team and make some moves at the trade deadline that will help build the team for the future.
I'm not taking this point of view because the Phillies are too far out or can't make the playoffs because I've seen crazier things happen and teams get hot.I think it's time to give this team a make-over because I don't think this collection of players will get hot, and the time to take advantage of some deals that can bring some promising young talent is now.
Let's start with Jonathan Papelbon. Right now there are a number of teams that are in the playoff hunt and need closers. The Detroit Tigers need a closer! Fortunately they have three great prospects in their farm system, and I think the Phillies can get two of the three.
Nick Castellanos is listed as the top hitting prospect for the Tigers. Avisail Garcia is their best outfield prospect, and Bruce Rondon is the best arm in their system and future closer. If the Phillies could get one of the outfield prospects coupled with Rondon, they could have an outfielder to play alongside Dom Brown for a good number of years to go along with a quality arm who should be their future closer.
The next Phillies player that could get an impact prospect back in return would be Cliff Lee. The Texas Rangers are once again in the playoff hunt and need a starter. This might be a perfect fit for Lee who does have a no-trade clause in his contract but would likely not mind pitching in Texas. He pitched for the Rangers in 2011 when they went to the World Series. The Rangers have the best prospect in baseball, Jurickson Profar, a shortstop/second baseman who offers great middle-infield skills with a big bat. Unfortunately for Profar, he's playing behind two All-Stars in Texas. This deal needs to be done.
Jimmy Rollins is getting old and still has a couple years on a big contract. If Profar can be acquired, there is no need for Rollins. Send Rollins to a needy suitor, get a couple more prospects and save $11 million.
Lastly I would get rid of Carlos Ruiz, who will be a free agent at the end of the year. The Yankees could use a veteran catcher and a quality right-handed hitter. The Phils could get a catching prospect in return such as Austin Romine. The only question with this deal is if the Yankees would take on a player with a history of using a banned substance.
I would say that the Phillies need to trade Chase Utley, but I know too many Phillies fans who have named their kids Chase. This would be like trading Derek Jeter if you are a Yankees fan. You just have a talk with Utley when the time comes and make him a coach and keep him a Phil for life.
Thurles-based Andrew Slattery has yet to secure his first win of the current Turf campaign, but Ucanchoose can put that right in the five-furlong handicap. With 18 modest sorts chasing a first prize of less than €5,000, this is wide open.
Still, Ucanchoose is the most appealing option, having run his best race of the year when leading to the furlong pole over six at the Curragh last time. Declan McDonogh's mount eventually finished fifth, so he should have a live chance of getting back to winning ways over his optimum trip off a pound lower mark now.
In the 12-furlong maiden, McDonogh is also trusted to land the nap on Mick Halford's Zarkiyr at the chief expense of Ballydoyle's Waver. This is a pretty weak heat, and Waver's Curragh second to the selection's stable-mate Dabadiyan is at least encouraging, but Zarkiyr is slightly more progressive.
Stepped up to this trip for a first time in a handicap at headquarters the same day, he stayed on with great effect to lose out by just a nose to Levanto off a mark of 80. That's the single most robust piece of form, so Zarkiyr is fancied to collect.
Goolds Cross-based David Wachman might get proceedings under way in the opening juvenile maiden with Little Fastnet, a Fastnet Rock debutante that is out of Wachman's former top-class juvenile Damson.
Little Fastnet is a three-parts sister to Requinto, another smart two-year-old for the stable that won a Listed race here in 2011 before scoring twice in Group company in England. Of the three in the nine-runner affair that have been placed, Celtic Man is feared most for Bansha's David Marnane, but Little Fastnet is bred to be a bit special.
Nurse Ryan might also plunder a popular local win for Martin and Shane Hassett of Killenaule. The dual hurdle-winning mare will be suited by the fast ground and trip in the Gathering Handicap.
Click on their website www.tilees.com for more information.
2013年6月23日星期日
Israel unequipped to handle high level soccer
Amsterdam hosted the Europa League final between Chelsea and Benfica a month ago. What an experience, in no small part due to the fantastic organization by the Dutch.
True, it wasn’t the biggest or most glitzy competition in the world, not even in Europe. But they understood that soccer at this level isn’t just 90 minutes on the pitch. The organizers set up special facilities for the fans around the stadium. There were souvenir stores, bars, snack bars and stands with activities and prizes.
Hours before the final, the area outside the stadium was a happening place. Trains efficiently delivered tens of thousands of fans to the Amsterdam Arena. The atmosphere was wonderful. Reaching the stadium two hours before the opening whistle wasn’t enough to enjoy everything the event had to offer.
Around 90 minutes before the beginning of the under-21 Euro semifinal between Spain and Norway last Saturday night, the area near the Netanya stadium was dullsville. Many fans came early ? not because of the special atmosphere but out of fear of getting stuck in traffic jams.
It was clear that no thought was put into the approaches to the stadium. No one greeted the fans. The Israel Football Association didn’t hire musicians or anyone to paint children’s faces. They didn’t invite photographers, didn’t set up food or drink stands, and didn’t offer contests or special deals.
There was just one small tent there, where a simple souvenir scarf was being sold at an exorbitant price. And some shirts were available at even more exorbitant prices. That’s it.
Israeli amateurism in organizing the under-21 tournament was apparent from the moment tickets went on sale. The sale opened at the end of March. Anyone who tried to order tickets during the first days for the games in Netanya discovered that on the website of the authorized ticket seller there was no map of the stadium.
“How can I know which ticket is closest to the center line?” I asked a ticket sales representative on the phone. She couldn’t help. After a few days I went to collect my tickets for the championship games in Netanya, but they weren’t available.
“We were unable to overcome a snag in the system,” someone explained to me. “Try again in a few days.” Oh well, I thought, it’s just a small screw-up.
The best tickets quickly ran out. Foreign fans who are not Hebrew speakers couldn’t obtain them. Over the first few days it was impossible to find a referral in English to the sales site, not even on the UEFA website.
Further on, it turned out that the Football Association had sold all the tickets to the championship in advance. Besides a few invitations to VIPs and cronies, no one set aside tickets for fans of the national team.
The Dutch said that after advancing to the semifinal they asked groups of fans to come to Israel, but to fly to Israel and stay outside the stadium without a ticket? There’s a limit to what people are willing to do for the under-21 Euro. They simply gave up. There were several empty seats in the stadium. That’s what happens when you give out tickets in a slew of deals to people who aren’t really interested in the tournament.
And maybe the Dutch did well by not coming and saving themselves sitting in traffic jams on the way to and from the stadium. There were 12,000 spectators at the Netanya stadium. That’s it. It’s a big event, but nothing exceptional. Still, it seems the Football Association and the police made every mistake possible. They promised to augment the trains and they didn’t; they promised efficient shuttles and didn’t come through.
On the way to the opening game between Israel and Norway, the shuttle from the Beit Yehoshua train station stood in a long traffic jam, like everybody else. After the game, hundreds of fans waited for the shuttle where it had dropped them off, and it simply never came. Ushers weren’t around, and the police had no idea what they were talking about.
Inside Moshava Stadium I was happy to see signs leading to the special exit for Highway 5. After 15 minutes of driving on an unpaved road, it turned out the exit led to a neighborhood and back all the way to the junction next to the stadium ? simply pathetic.
The situation was much worse in Jerusalem. The area around Teddy Stadium remained a construction site throughout the tournament. The access road has been under repairs for a long time, the new southern section of stands lacks a roof. It was really as if the Euro had taken everyone by surprise.
As if that weren’t enough, the police closed traffic lanes leading to the stadium before the game. Is there any greater absurdity than this?
An acquaintance of mine tried to reach the Israel-England game and didn’t make it, so he gave up and turned around. Next to Pat Junction, near the stadium, he asked the police where he could park and board a shuttle. “There’s no such thing here,” an officer answered. Dejected, he went home and didn’t watch the game on television. His seat remained empty.
Luck actually played into my hands. An hour and a half before that game, I managed with great difficulty to crawl into the Malha Mall parking garage. An hour after the game I returned to my car. Another hour passed until dozens of other frustrated fans and I managed to get out of the garage into an endless traffic jam.
We have to give credit to IFA chairman Avi Luzon. He brought to Israel a tournament of the highest level. The soccer was wonderful, and the fans came in droves to watch the stars of the future. Isco, Lorenzo Insigne, Adam Maher and others totally delivered the goods.
But it’s doubtful we’ll see here a sporting event of this order in the future. Israel’s facilities are unsuitable for hosting a World Cup, Euro, Champions League final or even Europa League final. It’s a shame the Football Association was satisfied with merely holding a championship in Israel and didn’t make an effort to produce an unforgettable show.
Click on their website www.tilees.com for more information.
True, it wasn’t the biggest or most glitzy competition in the world, not even in Europe. But they understood that soccer at this level isn’t just 90 minutes on the pitch. The organizers set up special facilities for the fans around the stadium. There were souvenir stores, bars, snack bars and stands with activities and prizes.
Hours before the final, the area outside the stadium was a happening place. Trains efficiently delivered tens of thousands of fans to the Amsterdam Arena. The atmosphere was wonderful. Reaching the stadium two hours before the opening whistle wasn’t enough to enjoy everything the event had to offer.
Around 90 minutes before the beginning of the under-21 Euro semifinal between Spain and Norway last Saturday night, the area near the Netanya stadium was dullsville. Many fans came early ? not because of the special atmosphere but out of fear of getting stuck in traffic jams.
It was clear that no thought was put into the approaches to the stadium. No one greeted the fans. The Israel Football Association didn’t hire musicians or anyone to paint children’s faces. They didn’t invite photographers, didn’t set up food or drink stands, and didn’t offer contests or special deals.
There was just one small tent there, where a simple souvenir scarf was being sold at an exorbitant price. And some shirts were available at even more exorbitant prices. That’s it.
Israeli amateurism in organizing the under-21 tournament was apparent from the moment tickets went on sale. The sale opened at the end of March. Anyone who tried to order tickets during the first days for the games in Netanya discovered that on the website of the authorized ticket seller there was no map of the stadium.
“How can I know which ticket is closest to the center line?” I asked a ticket sales representative on the phone. She couldn’t help. After a few days I went to collect my tickets for the championship games in Netanya, but they weren’t available.
“We were unable to overcome a snag in the system,” someone explained to me. “Try again in a few days.” Oh well, I thought, it’s just a small screw-up.
The best tickets quickly ran out. Foreign fans who are not Hebrew speakers couldn’t obtain them. Over the first few days it was impossible to find a referral in English to the sales site, not even on the UEFA website.
Further on, it turned out that the Football Association had sold all the tickets to the championship in advance. Besides a few invitations to VIPs and cronies, no one set aside tickets for fans of the national team.
The Dutch said that after advancing to the semifinal they asked groups of fans to come to Israel, but to fly to Israel and stay outside the stadium without a ticket? There’s a limit to what people are willing to do for the under-21 Euro. They simply gave up. There were several empty seats in the stadium. That’s what happens when you give out tickets in a slew of deals to people who aren’t really interested in the tournament.
And maybe the Dutch did well by not coming and saving themselves sitting in traffic jams on the way to and from the stadium. There were 12,000 spectators at the Netanya stadium. That’s it. It’s a big event, but nothing exceptional. Still, it seems the Football Association and the police made every mistake possible. They promised to augment the trains and they didn’t; they promised efficient shuttles and didn’t come through.
On the way to the opening game between Israel and Norway, the shuttle from the Beit Yehoshua train station stood in a long traffic jam, like everybody else. After the game, hundreds of fans waited for the shuttle where it had dropped them off, and it simply never came. Ushers weren’t around, and the police had no idea what they were talking about.
Inside Moshava Stadium I was happy to see signs leading to the special exit for Highway 5. After 15 minutes of driving on an unpaved road, it turned out the exit led to a neighborhood and back all the way to the junction next to the stadium ? simply pathetic.
The situation was much worse in Jerusalem. The area around Teddy Stadium remained a construction site throughout the tournament. The access road has been under repairs for a long time, the new southern section of stands lacks a roof. It was really as if the Euro had taken everyone by surprise.
As if that weren’t enough, the police closed traffic lanes leading to the stadium before the game. Is there any greater absurdity than this?
An acquaintance of mine tried to reach the Israel-England game and didn’t make it, so he gave up and turned around. Next to Pat Junction, near the stadium, he asked the police where he could park and board a shuttle. “There’s no such thing here,” an officer answered. Dejected, he went home and didn’t watch the game on television. His seat remained empty.
Luck actually played into my hands. An hour and a half before that game, I managed with great difficulty to crawl into the Malha Mall parking garage. An hour after the game I returned to my car. Another hour passed until dozens of other frustrated fans and I managed to get out of the garage into an endless traffic jam.
We have to give credit to IFA chairman Avi Luzon. He brought to Israel a tournament of the highest level. The soccer was wonderful, and the fans came in droves to watch the stars of the future. Isco, Lorenzo Insigne, Adam Maher and others totally delivered the goods.
But it’s doubtful we’ll see here a sporting event of this order in the future. Israel’s facilities are unsuitable for hosting a World Cup, Euro, Champions League final or even Europa League final. It’s a shame the Football Association was satisfied with merely holding a championship in Israel and didn’t make an effort to produce an unforgettable show.
Click on their website www.tilees.com for more information.
2013年3月14日星期四
Square’s expansion in Canada ‘beyond expectations’
If there’s anything Jack Dorsey has learned from bringing his mobile
payment company Square Inc. to Canada roughly five months ago, it’s that
most food trucks aren’t equipped with winter heaters.
When Mr. Dorsey first launched Square three years ago, the San Francisco-based company soon discovered many of the early adopters of its mobile credit card reader service were food trucks and other small outdoor businesses.
Since launching in Canada in October, Square has noticed the average size of a Canadian transaction using its service is $120, compared with an average of $70 after five months of operations in the U.S.
The discrepancy can likely be explained by the strong adoption of Square by brick-and-mortar retailers in Canada — Square’s technology is sold in Best Buy, Future Shop and Apple Store locations — where average transaction values are higher, compared with in the U.S., where there are more smaller transactions from individuals, thus dragging down the average.
While he waits for the weather to warm up, Mr. Dorsey said Square’s Canadian expansion — the first international market for the company — has gone “beyond expectations.”
“We’ve been really surprised and also impressed by the growth in the country,” Mr. Dorsey said in an interview with the Financial Post.
“When we first announced the company and when we first announced what we were doing, we found immediate resonance all over the United States, and we had a lot of interest from Canada. We’re happy that just really took root right away and we’re seeing an amazing velocity, and even more so than the U.S., and I think it really speaks to the power of local businesses.”
Regularly touted as one of the hottest startups in the technology industry, Square produces a small credit card reader that plugs into the headphone jack of a smartphone or a tablet, enabling even the smallest-scale business owners to accept credit card payments. The service offers free registration and Square takes a 2.75% fee from each transaction.
While Square officials declined to provide specific Canadian user numbers, its overall user base has grown from two million individuals and businesses in October to more than three million today, and Square is now processing US$10-billion in sales each year.
“We’ve always built the technology where we want something that works for the smallest customers — such as someone selling something on Craigslist or at a yard sale — all the way up to the largest organizations in the world, like Starbucks. It truly levels the playing field.”
Square’s technology supports Visa and MasterCard credit cards, however it does not support the chip and PIN technology employed by many of the credit cards and debit cards issued by Canadian banks and financial institutions.
Mr. Dorsey said Square is always looking to expand its offerings to incorporate services its customers want, but could not speak to any immediate plans to offer chip and PIN integration. “Our mindset and our philosophy is that we’re going to accept any form of payment that comes over the counter so that the merchant can always make the sale and buyer always gets what they want,” he said.
“There’s a lot of different payment devices in the world and they constantly evolve — sometimes in the right ways, sometimes in the wrong ways. But it’s a question of making sure we support where people are going to, and as we see more and more adoption of new technologies, such as chip and pin or chip and signature, we will build for that.”
While Square’s service is currently only available for devices running Apple’s iOS platform and Google’s Android software, Mr.A ridiculously low price on this All-Purpose indoortracking by Gordon. Dorsey didn’t rule out the possibility that the company might consider building a version of the service that works with BlackBerry 10, the new operating system from Canada’s smartphone maker, Research In Motion Ltd.A car parkingguidance is a mechanical device that multiplies parking capacity inside a parking lot., now known as BlackBerry.
That night, the defense had one of its best performances of the season in a convincing victory at Dartmouth. It allowed Quinnipiac to enter the postseason on a positive note. Rested and healed after an ECAC Hockey first-round bye, the Bobcats (24-5-5) are recharged for a best-of-3 quarterfinal round series with Cornell starting tonight at 7 (WQUN-1220.) All games are at High Point Solutions; Saturday’s game will be broadcast live by NESN.
In a season that’s brought enough firsts to fill a scrapbook, including the program’s first Cleary Cup, the opportunity to truly make history begins now. Quinnipiac,A smooth and lanyard not only looks bright and clean. which clinched its first NCAA berth since 2002, can wrap up the No. 1 overall seed and a spot in the East Regional in Providence,You've probably seen ultrasonicsensor at some point. R.I. this weekend.
“We were lucky enough to lock a playoff spot up pretty early,” senior captain Zack Currie said. “We had a lot of other stuff to play for along the way. But we’ve been looking forward to this a good amount of weeks now. For a lot of us, it’s our last kick at the can.”
Goaltender Eric Hartzell, a Hobey Baker Award candidate and shoo-in for the ECAC’s Ken Dryden Award, rightfully gets his share of attention. But Quinnipiac’s defensive core, led by Currie and fellow seniors Zach Davies, Loren Barron and Mike Dalhuisen, helped it finish the season as the nation’s stingiest at 1.59 goals-allowed per game. Junior Zach Tolkinen,We professionally produces and export all types of polishedtiles at low price. sophomore Danny Federico and freshman Alex Barron complete the unit. Defense wins championships. That core group will be tested in the postseason.
“Hartzell is the best player in our league and maybe one of the four best in college hockey,” Pecknold said. “But those guys do a nice job in front of him. They clear rebounds, they block shots, they puck up sticks. We don’t have a Bobby Orr type back there, but we’re seven deep. We play six, but all seven have contributed and been really good.”
While defense has always been Cornell’s calling card, the offense is peaking at the right time. The Big Red, behind senior forward Greg Miller, have scored four goals in six of the last eight games, all wins. That includes a two-game road sweep of Colgate in last weekend’s first round.
When Mr. Dorsey first launched Square three years ago, the San Francisco-based company soon discovered many of the early adopters of its mobile credit card reader service were food trucks and other small outdoor businesses.
Since launching in Canada in October, Square has noticed the average size of a Canadian transaction using its service is $120, compared with an average of $70 after five months of operations in the U.S.
The discrepancy can likely be explained by the strong adoption of Square by brick-and-mortar retailers in Canada — Square’s technology is sold in Best Buy, Future Shop and Apple Store locations — where average transaction values are higher, compared with in the U.S., where there are more smaller transactions from individuals, thus dragging down the average.
While he waits for the weather to warm up, Mr. Dorsey said Square’s Canadian expansion — the first international market for the company — has gone “beyond expectations.”
“We’ve been really surprised and also impressed by the growth in the country,” Mr. Dorsey said in an interview with the Financial Post.
“When we first announced the company and when we first announced what we were doing, we found immediate resonance all over the United States, and we had a lot of interest from Canada. We’re happy that just really took root right away and we’re seeing an amazing velocity, and even more so than the U.S., and I think it really speaks to the power of local businesses.”
Regularly touted as one of the hottest startups in the technology industry, Square produces a small credit card reader that plugs into the headphone jack of a smartphone or a tablet, enabling even the smallest-scale business owners to accept credit card payments. The service offers free registration and Square takes a 2.75% fee from each transaction.
While Square officials declined to provide specific Canadian user numbers, its overall user base has grown from two million individuals and businesses in October to more than three million today, and Square is now processing US$10-billion in sales each year.
“We’ve always built the technology where we want something that works for the smallest customers — such as someone selling something on Craigslist or at a yard sale — all the way up to the largest organizations in the world, like Starbucks. It truly levels the playing field.”
Square’s technology supports Visa and MasterCard credit cards, however it does not support the chip and PIN technology employed by many of the credit cards and debit cards issued by Canadian banks and financial institutions.
Mr. Dorsey said Square is always looking to expand its offerings to incorporate services its customers want, but could not speak to any immediate plans to offer chip and PIN integration. “Our mindset and our philosophy is that we’re going to accept any form of payment that comes over the counter so that the merchant can always make the sale and buyer always gets what they want,” he said.
“There’s a lot of different payment devices in the world and they constantly evolve — sometimes in the right ways, sometimes in the wrong ways. But it’s a question of making sure we support where people are going to, and as we see more and more adoption of new technologies, such as chip and pin or chip and signature, we will build for that.”
While Square’s service is currently only available for devices running Apple’s iOS platform and Google’s Android software, Mr.A ridiculously low price on this All-Purpose indoortracking by Gordon. Dorsey didn’t rule out the possibility that the company might consider building a version of the service that works with BlackBerry 10, the new operating system from Canada’s smartphone maker, Research In Motion Ltd.A car parkingguidance is a mechanical device that multiplies parking capacity inside a parking lot., now known as BlackBerry.
That night, the defense had one of its best performances of the season in a convincing victory at Dartmouth. It allowed Quinnipiac to enter the postseason on a positive note. Rested and healed after an ECAC Hockey first-round bye, the Bobcats (24-5-5) are recharged for a best-of-3 quarterfinal round series with Cornell starting tonight at 7 (WQUN-1220.) All games are at High Point Solutions; Saturday’s game will be broadcast live by NESN.
In a season that’s brought enough firsts to fill a scrapbook, including the program’s first Cleary Cup, the opportunity to truly make history begins now. Quinnipiac,A smooth and lanyard not only looks bright and clean. which clinched its first NCAA berth since 2002, can wrap up the No. 1 overall seed and a spot in the East Regional in Providence,You've probably seen ultrasonicsensor at some point. R.I. this weekend.
“We were lucky enough to lock a playoff spot up pretty early,” senior captain Zack Currie said. “We had a lot of other stuff to play for along the way. But we’ve been looking forward to this a good amount of weeks now. For a lot of us, it’s our last kick at the can.”
Goaltender Eric Hartzell, a Hobey Baker Award candidate and shoo-in for the ECAC’s Ken Dryden Award, rightfully gets his share of attention. But Quinnipiac’s defensive core, led by Currie and fellow seniors Zach Davies, Loren Barron and Mike Dalhuisen, helped it finish the season as the nation’s stingiest at 1.59 goals-allowed per game. Junior Zach Tolkinen,We professionally produces and export all types of polishedtiles at low price. sophomore Danny Federico and freshman Alex Barron complete the unit. Defense wins championships. That core group will be tested in the postseason.
“Hartzell is the best player in our league and maybe one of the four best in college hockey,” Pecknold said. “But those guys do a nice job in front of him. They clear rebounds, they block shots, they puck up sticks. We don’t have a Bobby Orr type back there, but we’re seven deep. We play six, but all seven have contributed and been really good.”
While defense has always been Cornell’s calling card, the offense is peaking at the right time. The Big Red, behind senior forward Greg Miller, have scored four goals in six of the last eight games, all wins. That includes a two-game road sweep of Colgate in last weekend’s first round.
2013年2月6日星期三
Coming to terms with Tasmania’s forgotten war
Some dark secrets run so deep that they slip from view. The hole left in our collective conscience is gradually plugged, with shallow distractions and awkward half-truths. Questions, if uttered, pass unheard. An uneasy and enduring silence prevails.
This was the first and only properly declared war fought by the British on Australian soil. Initiated by Governor George Arthur on November 1 1828, it was waged against an enemy once dismissed as a meagre scattering of “savage crows”. But the first Tasmanians were an enemy so committed to driving the settlers from their ancestral lands that neither ad hoc massacres on a lawless frontier, nor the ravages of disease that swept ahead of muskets and poisoned flour seemed capable of quelling their determination.
As their numbers fell, Aboriginal resolve seemed to increase. They simply could not give up their land.
This is a story about the consequences of such resolve and the marks it has left on the history and identity of today’s Tasmanians.
I have spent nearly 30 years seeking solutions to the injustice that persists for the Aboriginal community in Tasmania. Attitudes in Tasmania remained unaffected by what seemed pyrrhic victories. The Aboriginal community remained alienated from contemporary Tasmanian society, which in turn resisted the facts of the bloody history that we shared.
These were not simple prejudices, they grew out of penetrating mythologies, rooted in the oldest and most profound of themes; cultures in collision and the inexorable triumph of power.
My thesis: that a hand guided by a thousand years of European history held every pen and wielded every musket used in the campaign against the First Tasmanians. While the nations of Tasmania had lived in splendid isolation on their island for millennia, the invaders had already survived an eternity of war.
The story of Tasmania’s war is not part of the state’s ever-changing tourist brand. It is the one truth that can never be uttered – the source of an ancestral curse. There is a terrible history lurking beneath the surface of the island’s placid lakes. It stalks the shadows of each rainforest glade and casts a disquieting hue across the lurid vistas of wilderness upon which our fame is built.
Tasmania’s history is one of shameless deception that outraged even the citizens of the day. When the war was won a veil was drawn and a chapter closed. Saint and sinner could join in sombre lament. With inevitable necessity the Native threat had been banished.
To live in Tasmania today is to exist in the eye of a quiet, relentless storm. The island, politically and aesthetically, is a quintessential green. It is a destination of choice for Australians seeking an escape from the clutter of urban life. The cleanest of air and mildest of climates bestows on its small population a gourmet life; where fine wine and culinary delights accompany a thriving culture of literary and visual arts. These reassure both visitor and resident alike that, of all the places in the world, this must be closest to heaven.
Within a year of the first European settlement the die had been cast and the fledgling colony took its first confused steps toward conflict with the Tasmanian Aboriginal nations whose land it was to over-run. On 3 May 1804, the British at Risdon Cove had their first encounter with a large group of Aborigines. According to Henry Reynolds, the group, which included women and children, was “probably on a hunting expedition”. Frightened soldiers (some say drunk) fired on them in the commanding officer’s absence. Estimates made at the time of the carnage ranged as high as 50 killed.
In the coming decades, as the number of livestock grew, settlers demanded more land; inevitably increasing the number of destructive encounters with Aboriginal tribes. This culminated in Governor George Arthur issuing a series of proclamations placing the colony under martial law and calling for Aborigines to be expelled by force from the settled districts “by whatever means a severe and inevitable necessity may dictate”. James Boyce argues that the popular interpretation and overall effect of these proclamations was to provide legal immunity and state sanction for the killing of Aborigines wherever they could be found. The resulting slaughter became known as the Black War.
The thought of an ethnic cleansing in Tasmania fatally challenges the notion of an “Australia fair”. This might be Tasmania’s darkest secret, but it is also the least-kept. Raphael Lemkin, the Jewish scholar who first coined the term “genocide” in 1943, referred to Tasmania as a textbook example. The subject remains a disputed one. Henry Reynolds has long held that the term should not be applied in Tasmania.
Yet, the tolerance of active killing, forced exile and permanent detention are all consequences of Tasmanian policies between 1828 and 1864. The last detention facility at Oyster Cove was only abandoned when its inhabitants, left to die in miserable conditions, had reduced to a single old woman. Benjamin Madley, from Yale University’s Genocide Studies Program, concluded an exhaustive 2008 study thus, “Tasmania under British rule was clearly a site of genocide”.
Despite voluminous colonial documents and a wealth of visual records from the time, the Black War remains absent from Australian national remembrance. There was no glorious victory, no legendary loss on a far-flung beach. While our national imagination has churned heroes from slaughter on the fields of France during the Great War, the first war that Australians ever fought entrenched Tasmanian Aborigines as the archetypal enemy within.
This stands in contrast to the long European experience of war, where enemy and ally are fluid identities, and where treaty and reparation are the established guideposts of national relations. In Tasmania the standing of Aboriginal nations was simply swept from the table with an unspoken agreement that it should be raised no more.
Tasmanian colonial artists struggled with the unseemly haste by which any further discussion of the Black War was ceased.
In the early 1830s, John Glover presented his audience with a fanciful memorial to mark the end of conflict. Warriors who, armed with long spears, waddies and firesticks, had slain settlers and burned their barns and crops to the ground just months before, danced and sang in the whimsical scenes he created. They seem cast as a grotesque footnote to colonial accomplishment.
Others artists such as Thomas Bock and John Skinner Prout continued this sentimental acknowledgement. Their portraits provide a unique visual record of the ancestors of today’s Aboriginal community who had died before the introduction of photography to the colony. But this visual record offers little clue to their experience of war.
It was an ageing engraver and minor painter named Benjamin Duterrau who stood alone in his desire to directly confront the seriousness of the Black War. Arriving in Hobart from London in 1832, just months after its end, he was quick to produce a series of engravings, reliefs and portraits on the subject. These characterised a cast of “noble savages” that he would use to play out the drama of Australia’s first epic history painting. The Conciliation embedded an enduring melancholy into the mythology of Tasmanian wilderness, depicting a scene in which a hollow treaty is struck between the governor’s agent, George Augustus Robinson, and the last resistance fighters to oppose British rule. Robinson had travelled with a small group of Aborigines, including a woman called Truganini, traversing the whole island on foot in an effort to contact each of the tribes remaining free on their country. His mission was to end the war and spread his Evangelical Christianity to the survivors.
Dutterau’s painting of The Conciliation presents a complex tableau. It reveals his passion for Raphael and a theme recently revisited by the French revolutionary painter Jean-Jacques David with his painting The Sabine Women, first exhibited in 1799.
Duterrau is known to have had an intense interest in Raphael’s School of Athens and his Cartoons. He utilised these references to invest various characters in the composition with gesture, emotion and passion – among these, incredulity and suspicion. Raphael also supplies allusion to the Apostles as founders of the Christian church. In this way Duterrau describes a tense scene where the war is brought to an end with pious authority. The Aborigines find themselves under a new jurisdiction and are saved from their own ignorance, as the Apostles had saved Jews and Gentiles two thousand years before.
Elements found in David establish a counterpoint in the composition, as the Aboriginal woman known as Truganini pleads with outstretched arms for her reluctant husband to accept the truce. This emblematic figure recalls a similar one in The Sabine Women where Hersilia, wife of the Roman leader, Romulus, also intervenes with an appeal for peace.
Duterrau was aware that Robinson had deceived the Aborigines and that the treaty was immediately discarded by the governor once he had the fighters under his control. The wisdom of Truganini’s husband was proven and their fate was sealed. These are scenes hung heavily with the European history of moral conflict. An origin for David’s figure can be traced to Satan, Sin and Death, an earlier painting by William Hogarth. This work was created as an illustration to Milton’s gothic masterpiece Paradise Lost, a biblical epic of the Fall of Man, the Temptation of Eve, and expulsion from the Garden of Eden. It is an archetypal gothic tale, with Satan the greatest tragic hero in English literature – mingling humanity with hubris and rebellion.
Milton’s epic had a huge influence on the development of gothic literature, running to at least 60 editions between Duterrau’s birth and his arrival in Hobart. Its influence is most notable in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, where the creature reads Paradise Lost and suffers at its revelations.
Duterrau brought Tasmania under the same dark veil. In this analysis, Robinson fits perfectly the role of a tragic hero, alone in the wilderness, miraculously surviving both the rugged landscape and the treacherous Natives. He wrote of his journeys as a terrifying ordeal of the soul requiring virtue, bravery and self-sacrifice. With all the necessary elements of a gothic tale, he challenges the tyrant of war and saves the maiden Truganini (with whom he was romantically linked) from faithless savagery.
In crafting Australia’s first historical epic painting, Duterrau underpinned the drama that had played out on the island of Tasmania as a reiteration of the eternal battle between good and evil, and the profound consequences of betrayal. That he should have chosen such a theme to explore, and drew upon the art of the French Revolution is no surprise. Duterrau’s family history was steeped in war. He was a Huguenot – a French Protestant. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the Huguenots had been subject to missionaries, forced conversion, persecution, torture and massacre at the hands of French Catholics. When Louis XIV declared Protestantism illegal in 1685, tens of thousands of Huguenots fled to neighbouring Protestant countries, as their country was no longer their own.
For me, The Conciliation neatly weaves together the histories of French religious conflict and the Tasmanian colonial war against a backdrop of interminable bloodshed across Europe. My experience of the tangible artefacts of war that form the very fabric of monument and landscape in France make it clear that a mature society is one that lives with its past. An enduring legacy of war is to be reminded of past mistakes.
The Conciliation elaborates a theme that seems to have resonated powerfully for an artist of Duterrau’s background. That this might be so takes the events in Tasmania from being an inconsequential flurry on the edge of civilisation and places them among the mainstream of world events. It shifts the Aboriginal nations of Tasmania from anthropological curiosity to players on the world’s stage – with the same international rights to justice.
This was the first and only properly declared war fought by the British on Australian soil. Initiated by Governor George Arthur on November 1 1828, it was waged against an enemy once dismissed as a meagre scattering of “savage crows”. But the first Tasmanians were an enemy so committed to driving the settlers from their ancestral lands that neither ad hoc massacres on a lawless frontier, nor the ravages of disease that swept ahead of muskets and poisoned flour seemed capable of quelling their determination.
As their numbers fell, Aboriginal resolve seemed to increase. They simply could not give up their land.
This is a story about the consequences of such resolve and the marks it has left on the history and identity of today’s Tasmanians.
I have spent nearly 30 years seeking solutions to the injustice that persists for the Aboriginal community in Tasmania. Attitudes in Tasmania remained unaffected by what seemed pyrrhic victories. The Aboriginal community remained alienated from contemporary Tasmanian society, which in turn resisted the facts of the bloody history that we shared.
These were not simple prejudices, they grew out of penetrating mythologies, rooted in the oldest and most profound of themes; cultures in collision and the inexorable triumph of power.
My thesis: that a hand guided by a thousand years of European history held every pen and wielded every musket used in the campaign against the First Tasmanians. While the nations of Tasmania had lived in splendid isolation on their island for millennia, the invaders had already survived an eternity of war.
The story of Tasmania’s war is not part of the state’s ever-changing tourist brand. It is the one truth that can never be uttered – the source of an ancestral curse. There is a terrible history lurking beneath the surface of the island’s placid lakes. It stalks the shadows of each rainforest glade and casts a disquieting hue across the lurid vistas of wilderness upon which our fame is built.
Tasmania’s history is one of shameless deception that outraged even the citizens of the day. When the war was won a veil was drawn and a chapter closed. Saint and sinner could join in sombre lament. With inevitable necessity the Native threat had been banished.
To live in Tasmania today is to exist in the eye of a quiet, relentless storm. The island, politically and aesthetically, is a quintessential green. It is a destination of choice for Australians seeking an escape from the clutter of urban life. The cleanest of air and mildest of climates bestows on its small population a gourmet life; where fine wine and culinary delights accompany a thriving culture of literary and visual arts. These reassure both visitor and resident alike that, of all the places in the world, this must be closest to heaven.
Within a year of the first European settlement the die had been cast and the fledgling colony took its first confused steps toward conflict with the Tasmanian Aboriginal nations whose land it was to over-run. On 3 May 1804, the British at Risdon Cove had their first encounter with a large group of Aborigines. According to Henry Reynolds, the group, which included women and children, was “probably on a hunting expedition”. Frightened soldiers (some say drunk) fired on them in the commanding officer’s absence. Estimates made at the time of the carnage ranged as high as 50 killed.
In the coming decades, as the number of livestock grew, settlers demanded more land; inevitably increasing the number of destructive encounters with Aboriginal tribes. This culminated in Governor George Arthur issuing a series of proclamations placing the colony under martial law and calling for Aborigines to be expelled by force from the settled districts “by whatever means a severe and inevitable necessity may dictate”. James Boyce argues that the popular interpretation and overall effect of these proclamations was to provide legal immunity and state sanction for the killing of Aborigines wherever they could be found. The resulting slaughter became known as the Black War.
The thought of an ethnic cleansing in Tasmania fatally challenges the notion of an “Australia fair”. This might be Tasmania’s darkest secret, but it is also the least-kept. Raphael Lemkin, the Jewish scholar who first coined the term “genocide” in 1943, referred to Tasmania as a textbook example. The subject remains a disputed one. Henry Reynolds has long held that the term should not be applied in Tasmania.
Yet, the tolerance of active killing, forced exile and permanent detention are all consequences of Tasmanian policies between 1828 and 1864. The last detention facility at Oyster Cove was only abandoned when its inhabitants, left to die in miserable conditions, had reduced to a single old woman. Benjamin Madley, from Yale University’s Genocide Studies Program, concluded an exhaustive 2008 study thus, “Tasmania under British rule was clearly a site of genocide”.
Despite voluminous colonial documents and a wealth of visual records from the time, the Black War remains absent from Australian national remembrance. There was no glorious victory, no legendary loss on a far-flung beach. While our national imagination has churned heroes from slaughter on the fields of France during the Great War, the first war that Australians ever fought entrenched Tasmanian Aborigines as the archetypal enemy within.
This stands in contrast to the long European experience of war, where enemy and ally are fluid identities, and where treaty and reparation are the established guideposts of national relations. In Tasmania the standing of Aboriginal nations was simply swept from the table with an unspoken agreement that it should be raised no more.
Tasmanian colonial artists struggled with the unseemly haste by which any further discussion of the Black War was ceased.
In the early 1830s, John Glover presented his audience with a fanciful memorial to mark the end of conflict. Warriors who, armed with long spears, waddies and firesticks, had slain settlers and burned their barns and crops to the ground just months before, danced and sang in the whimsical scenes he created. They seem cast as a grotesque footnote to colonial accomplishment.
Others artists such as Thomas Bock and John Skinner Prout continued this sentimental acknowledgement. Their portraits provide a unique visual record of the ancestors of today’s Aboriginal community who had died before the introduction of photography to the colony. But this visual record offers little clue to their experience of war.
It was an ageing engraver and minor painter named Benjamin Duterrau who stood alone in his desire to directly confront the seriousness of the Black War. Arriving in Hobart from London in 1832, just months after its end, he was quick to produce a series of engravings, reliefs and portraits on the subject. These characterised a cast of “noble savages” that he would use to play out the drama of Australia’s first epic history painting. The Conciliation embedded an enduring melancholy into the mythology of Tasmanian wilderness, depicting a scene in which a hollow treaty is struck between the governor’s agent, George Augustus Robinson, and the last resistance fighters to oppose British rule. Robinson had travelled with a small group of Aborigines, including a woman called Truganini, traversing the whole island on foot in an effort to contact each of the tribes remaining free on their country. His mission was to end the war and spread his Evangelical Christianity to the survivors.
Dutterau’s painting of The Conciliation presents a complex tableau. It reveals his passion for Raphael and a theme recently revisited by the French revolutionary painter Jean-Jacques David with his painting The Sabine Women, first exhibited in 1799.
Duterrau is known to have had an intense interest in Raphael’s School of Athens and his Cartoons. He utilised these references to invest various characters in the composition with gesture, emotion and passion – among these, incredulity and suspicion. Raphael also supplies allusion to the Apostles as founders of the Christian church. In this way Duterrau describes a tense scene where the war is brought to an end with pious authority. The Aborigines find themselves under a new jurisdiction and are saved from their own ignorance, as the Apostles had saved Jews and Gentiles two thousand years before.
Elements found in David establish a counterpoint in the composition, as the Aboriginal woman known as Truganini pleads with outstretched arms for her reluctant husband to accept the truce. This emblematic figure recalls a similar one in The Sabine Women where Hersilia, wife of the Roman leader, Romulus, also intervenes with an appeal for peace.
Duterrau was aware that Robinson had deceived the Aborigines and that the treaty was immediately discarded by the governor once he had the fighters under his control. The wisdom of Truganini’s husband was proven and their fate was sealed. These are scenes hung heavily with the European history of moral conflict. An origin for David’s figure can be traced to Satan, Sin and Death, an earlier painting by William Hogarth. This work was created as an illustration to Milton’s gothic masterpiece Paradise Lost, a biblical epic of the Fall of Man, the Temptation of Eve, and expulsion from the Garden of Eden. It is an archetypal gothic tale, with Satan the greatest tragic hero in English literature – mingling humanity with hubris and rebellion.
Milton’s epic had a huge influence on the development of gothic literature, running to at least 60 editions between Duterrau’s birth and his arrival in Hobart. Its influence is most notable in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, where the creature reads Paradise Lost and suffers at its revelations.
Duterrau brought Tasmania under the same dark veil. In this analysis, Robinson fits perfectly the role of a tragic hero, alone in the wilderness, miraculously surviving both the rugged landscape and the treacherous Natives. He wrote of his journeys as a terrifying ordeal of the soul requiring virtue, bravery and self-sacrifice. With all the necessary elements of a gothic tale, he challenges the tyrant of war and saves the maiden Truganini (with whom he was romantically linked) from faithless savagery.
In crafting Australia’s first historical epic painting, Duterrau underpinned the drama that had played out on the island of Tasmania as a reiteration of the eternal battle between good and evil, and the profound consequences of betrayal. That he should have chosen such a theme to explore, and drew upon the art of the French Revolution is no surprise. Duterrau’s family history was steeped in war. He was a Huguenot – a French Protestant. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the Huguenots had been subject to missionaries, forced conversion, persecution, torture and massacre at the hands of French Catholics. When Louis XIV declared Protestantism illegal in 1685, tens of thousands of Huguenots fled to neighbouring Protestant countries, as their country was no longer their own.
For me, The Conciliation neatly weaves together the histories of French religious conflict and the Tasmanian colonial war against a backdrop of interminable bloodshed across Europe. My experience of the tangible artefacts of war that form the very fabric of monument and landscape in France make it clear that a mature society is one that lives with its past. An enduring legacy of war is to be reminded of past mistakes.
The Conciliation elaborates a theme that seems to have resonated powerfully for an artist of Duterrau’s background. That this might be so takes the events in Tasmania from being an inconsequential flurry on the edge of civilisation and places them among the mainstream of world events. It shifts the Aboriginal nations of Tasmania from anthropological curiosity to players on the world’s stage – with the same international rights to justice.
2013年1月21日星期一
Location of Joe Paterno statue remains a mystery
In the months after Paterno’s death, the site along Porter Road had become a makeshift memorial for distraught students and alumni seeking closure. But the university feared the statue became a lightning rod when the Louis Freeh report implicated Paterno and other top Penn State officials in a cover-up of child sexual abuse. The acts were perpetrated by longtime Paterno assistant and now-convicted pedophile Jerry Sandusky.
And so Penn State workers armed with jackhammers and a forklift removed the controversial statue from the public eye as the sun rose on July 22, while much of State College slept. Since then, the questions about where the statue was taken haven’t stopped.
“I get asked about it all the time,” said Lou Prato, a Penn State historian and the former director of the Penn State All-Sports Museum. “I just get asked about it as if I’m supposed to know.”
But Prato doesn’t know. In fact, there may be only a handful of people who can say with certainty where the statue rests — and they aren’t talking.
“The scope of the crime is so horrible, so huge that any mention of the statue just awakens feelings,” Di Maria said. “It’s too sensitive an issue, too horrible of a crime. The feelings are still running very hard.”
“I have to put my art on the back-burner,” he continued. “This thing is all about the children, the victims. That’s the priority. That healing has to happen. I can deal with the loss of the statue.”
But the decorated sculptor, who was born in Sicily, still believes his work will resurface one day. “It may be a while, maybe 25 years down the road,” he said.
When the statue first disappeared into Beaver Stadium, many assumed it would resurface at the All-Sports Museum. But Prato doesn’t see that happening in the immediate future.
Perhaps the university is concerned about safety, he said. Before the statue came down, a plane owned by an Ohio advertising agency flew over State College with a banner demanding the statue’s removal. “That was a real threat,” Prato said. “It wasn’t a joke.”
Still, with no official word from the university a year after Paterno’s death, many are left to simply speculate.
“If they destroyed it, that would be stupid because the trials (for former Penn State President Graham Spanier and administrators Gary Schultz and Tim Curley) haven’t even taken place,” Prato said. “They sure as heck didn’t put it in a tractor-trailer and move it out of the area. It’s probably in some building on campus. And if not, some secretive place.”
Congratulations to Alexander Tsiaras for communicating the beauty and complexity of fetal development. But the message he delivers -- "it's a mystery, it's magic, it's divinity" -- is mistaken.
Just watching a fetus develop, though a vital first step, can't by itself tell us how development comes about. In fact relying on visual appearances, as Tsiaras does, can be misleading. For example, the video states that the sex of the fetus is not determined until after 12 weeks, when you can actually see the difference between the male and female genitals. Yet the fetus's sex is already determined at conception -- by whether or not it inherits the sex-determining gene SRY, which is located on the Y chromosome. This discovery has made possible the use of IVF technology to implant, say, only female embryos -- a life-saving procedure if a couple's male offspring are at risk of some genetic disorder.
In fact -- although you'd never guess it from the video -- a great deal is already known about the actual mechanisms of development. Many Nobel prizes have been awarded for discoveries in this field. Molecular geneticists have identified genes that guide development, as well as their mechanisms of action and their evolution from similar genes in simpler organisms. Experimental embryologists, by transplanting cells or tissues from one bodily location to another, or from one animal to another, have deduced organizational rules by which tissues form. Many of the chemical signals and hormones and receptors that execute these rules have been identified. And contrary to Tsiaras' assertion that development lies beyond the possible comprehension of mathematicians, theoreticians (starting with Alan Turing) have developed computational models to explain how complex biological patterns and structures are organized.
Tsiaras is right when he says that the fetus' movements play a positive role in its development. But when he shows the emerging baby as launching itself from the birth canal with a forceful kick of its legs -- and already having jettisoned its umbilical cord -- he's presenting outright fantasy as fact. It's as if he wants to make a fetus the conscious captain of its own destiny, which it's not. In fact, calling a one-cell embryo a "baby," as Tsiaras does, projects his notion of conscious personhood back to the very day of conception.
When we gaze at the wonders of the natural world, be they growing fetuses or the scenery of Yosemite Valley or the stars over our heads, we should indeed be filled with awe. How could all this amazing beauty and complexity come about? Tsiaras believes that divine guidance must be at work. He not only says so in words, he also reinforces this message by his choice of religious music to accompany the video.
Fetal development is not completely understood, but much is known, and the rest is knowable, and none of it requires divine action. Does it diminish our admiration of Yosemite to know how cyclical changes in Earth's orbit brought on ice ages and glaciers that then carved out those spectacular cliffs? Does it make the night sky less radiant to know how gravity draws clouds of gas and dust into spinning balls of matter hot and dense enough to ignite nuclear fires? On the contrary, understanding how they came about makes them even richer objects of our admiration.
And so Penn State workers armed with jackhammers and a forklift removed the controversial statue from the public eye as the sun rose on July 22, while much of State College slept. Since then, the questions about where the statue was taken haven’t stopped.
“I get asked about it all the time,” said Lou Prato, a Penn State historian and the former director of the Penn State All-Sports Museum. “I just get asked about it as if I’m supposed to know.”
But Prato doesn’t know. In fact, there may be only a handful of people who can say with certainty where the statue rests — and they aren’t talking.
“The scope of the crime is so horrible, so huge that any mention of the statue just awakens feelings,” Di Maria said. “It’s too sensitive an issue, too horrible of a crime. The feelings are still running very hard.”
“I have to put my art on the back-burner,” he continued. “This thing is all about the children, the victims. That’s the priority. That healing has to happen. I can deal with the loss of the statue.”
But the decorated sculptor, who was born in Sicily, still believes his work will resurface one day. “It may be a while, maybe 25 years down the road,” he said.
When the statue first disappeared into Beaver Stadium, many assumed it would resurface at the All-Sports Museum. But Prato doesn’t see that happening in the immediate future.
Perhaps the university is concerned about safety, he said. Before the statue came down, a plane owned by an Ohio advertising agency flew over State College with a banner demanding the statue’s removal. “That was a real threat,” Prato said. “It wasn’t a joke.”
Still, with no official word from the university a year after Paterno’s death, many are left to simply speculate.
“If they destroyed it, that would be stupid because the trials (for former Penn State President Graham Spanier and administrators Gary Schultz and Tim Curley) haven’t even taken place,” Prato said. “They sure as heck didn’t put it in a tractor-trailer and move it out of the area. It’s probably in some building on campus. And if not, some secretive place.”
Congratulations to Alexander Tsiaras for communicating the beauty and complexity of fetal development. But the message he delivers -- "it's a mystery, it's magic, it's divinity" -- is mistaken.
Just watching a fetus develop, though a vital first step, can't by itself tell us how development comes about. In fact relying on visual appearances, as Tsiaras does, can be misleading. For example, the video states that the sex of the fetus is not determined until after 12 weeks, when you can actually see the difference between the male and female genitals. Yet the fetus's sex is already determined at conception -- by whether or not it inherits the sex-determining gene SRY, which is located on the Y chromosome. This discovery has made possible the use of IVF technology to implant, say, only female embryos -- a life-saving procedure if a couple's male offspring are at risk of some genetic disorder.
In fact -- although you'd never guess it from the video -- a great deal is already known about the actual mechanisms of development. Many Nobel prizes have been awarded for discoveries in this field. Molecular geneticists have identified genes that guide development, as well as their mechanisms of action and their evolution from similar genes in simpler organisms. Experimental embryologists, by transplanting cells or tissues from one bodily location to another, or from one animal to another, have deduced organizational rules by which tissues form. Many of the chemical signals and hormones and receptors that execute these rules have been identified. And contrary to Tsiaras' assertion that development lies beyond the possible comprehension of mathematicians, theoreticians (starting with Alan Turing) have developed computational models to explain how complex biological patterns and structures are organized.
Tsiaras is right when he says that the fetus' movements play a positive role in its development. But when he shows the emerging baby as launching itself from the birth canal with a forceful kick of its legs -- and already having jettisoned its umbilical cord -- he's presenting outright fantasy as fact. It's as if he wants to make a fetus the conscious captain of its own destiny, which it's not. In fact, calling a one-cell embryo a "baby," as Tsiaras does, projects his notion of conscious personhood back to the very day of conception.
When we gaze at the wonders of the natural world, be they growing fetuses or the scenery of Yosemite Valley or the stars over our heads, we should indeed be filled with awe. How could all this amazing beauty and complexity come about? Tsiaras believes that divine guidance must be at work. He not only says so in words, he also reinforces this message by his choice of religious music to accompany the video.
Fetal development is not completely understood, but much is known, and the rest is knowable, and none of it requires divine action. Does it diminish our admiration of Yosemite to know how cyclical changes in Earth's orbit brought on ice ages and glaciers that then carved out those spectacular cliffs? Does it make the night sky less radiant to know how gravity draws clouds of gas and dust into spinning balls of matter hot and dense enough to ignite nuclear fires? On the contrary, understanding how they came about makes them even richer objects of our admiration.
2013年1月4日星期五
Area growth continuing quickly
Early in the year, local government set about determining how to deal with anticipated growth in Charleston, Cleveland and Bradley County in January 2012. Now that the economy is developing, officials have been looking at planned growth.
Planning consultant Greg Dale, McBride Dale Clarion, of Cincinnati, explained the process to more than 50 people registered for the continuation of a look at the future they saw in the BCC2035 Strategic Plan.
Bradley County, Cleveland, Cleveland/Bradley Chamber of Commerce, Cleveland Utilities and Volunteer Energy began working on planning in October 2009, when it was announced the U.S. Economic Development Agency awarded the city of Cleveland a $50,000 grant to assist in the development of the BCC2035 Joint Strategic Plan to address anticipated regional growth.
The total cost of that study was about $221,720. The local share was paid by the participants. The end result of that six-month effort ended in the regional plan that looked 25 years into the future. The BCC Comprehensive Plan is paid for by a 50 percent matching grant of $125,000 from the U.S. Economic Development Agency. Bradley County and the city of Cleveland each contributed $60,000 and the city of Charleston contributed $5,000.
The BCC Comprehensive Plan takes a closer look at Charleston, Cleveland and unincorporated areas of Bradley County than the more generalized strategic plan. It includes a detailed look at the northern corridor around Mouse Creek Road and Interstate 75 Exit 33; the southern corridor around Exit 20, APD 40 and McDonald; the central city of Cleveland, and the soon to be vacated Whirlpool manufacturing plant.
According to Cleveland Development and Engineering Services Director Jonathan Jobe, the team of consultants is analyzing collected data for a draft presentation to the public by March 1.
McDonald residents considered zoning changes and zoning overlays as methods to stop development from swallowing up their rural lifestyle and polluting Brymer Creek.
In Charleston, discussion centered around ways to encourage truck drivers to use the interstate instead of passing through two school zones to get to Bowater, and discussions and in Cleveland, the topics were redevelopment of old industrial sites and infilling older neighborhoods.
Five guiding principles serve as overarching themes for all elements of the planning process and as a foundation for the goal statements:
n The community highly values private property rights and responsibilities. Tools to help the community manage the demands of growth will need to respect this value placed on private property rights;
n The community enjoys a relatively low-tax environment and the plan and recommended tools should be designed to maintain a low tax structure, while adequately providing for the safety and well-being of the current and future citizens;
n Given the strong possibility that the cities and county will continue to face a fiscally challenging future due to national economic trends, as well as the low-tax environment of this region, decisions about the issues addressed in this plan should be made with careful consideration of fiscal impacts;
n The community highly values citizen-driven initiatives, private investment, a market-based economy, and nongovernment approaches, rather than a focus on government-oriented approaches to community development;
n As a result, these multiple considerations should be balanced when making public decisions.
There are different people with different views, but that is the purpose of taking the time to go through a planning process. While there are concerns unique to each area of the county, there is concern the comprehensive planning effort is agenda-driven by outside consultants with “cookie-cutter” solutions to growth.
Local business owner Dan Rawls, who is with the Liberty Coalition and a member of the Bradley County Tea Party said, “My main issue here is that it seems to be an agenda-driven meeting. No matter how you answer most of these questions it always leads you back to their agenda.”
He said the county should not have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to bring in outside consulting firms loaded with bureaucrats “to give us a cookie-cutter plan that doesn’t fit Bradley County. I think these plans should be drawn up by the County Commission so we have elected representatives, people we pay and that we have the ability to deal with from an electoral standpoint. If we don’t like what the County Commission does, we can vote them out. If we don’t like what these guys do, what do we do there?”
Rawls said people think he is against planning, but the Florida native said he has seen unplanned growth. He simply thinks it would better if the plan was from within rather than from without.
Planning discussions continued throughout the year. Cleveland City Planner Greg Thomas reminded the Economic Development Council why planning for the future is important to local government and the people it serves.
The EDC is a selection of leaders from government, education, utilities, business and industry that meet bimonthly at the Cleveland/Bradley Chamber of Commerce to discuss development issues in those areas.
Thomas urged them to take an active role in the discussion because he said growth — planned or unplanned — is coming to Bradley County. Bradley County will grow by an estimated 33,000 people, 14,000 new households and 19,000 new jobs by the year 2035.
Bradley County growth is part of larger trends and patterns identified as “megaregions.” The county is part of the “Piedmont Atlantic Megaregion” anchored by Atlanta. However, it stretches east to Raleigh, N.C., and west to Birmingham, Ala.
“It has fingers reaching out to Chattanooga and Nashville which take in Cleveland,” he said.
The low cost of living and high quality of life in the Southeast are but two reasons for this region’s booming population growth. As a result, the area is facing traffic congestion, runaway land consumption and inadequate infrastructure.
Between 2010 and 2050, the population growth in the megaregion’s principal cities of Atlanta, Birmingham, Raleigh-Durham and Charlotte, N.C., is expected to increase from 17.611 million to 21.687 million in 2025 and 31.342 million by midcentury.
But not all of the discussions were pleasant. A flier anonymously distributed in June in neighborhoods south of the old Whirlpool Plant in downtown Cleveland warned homeowners of the impending loss of their property rights, if they didn’t immediately act.
The flier, written as an information handout by an unknown author, stated homes in the area around 18th Street S.E., between King Edward Avenue S.E. and Wildwood Avenue S.E. were targeted for demolition and redevelopment.
“That’s crazy,” Thomas said during an interview in June. It would make no sense for the city to move into a neighborhood and force everyone out. “It’s not true that we’re going to take people’s property. What is true is there will be a redevelopment of that Whirlpool site at the right time. It’s a large site. There will be a lot of change in that area.
“What I would anticipate is more infill type development — housing in that area with maybe some housing rehab.”
Some privately funded housing rehabilitation is occurring now, but other (public) rehab programs might be looked at in the future. However, that depends on needs identified by neighbors in the area and ongoing code enforcement.
“There are some rundown properties in the neighborhood. They are a source of complaint by neighbors and those neighbors have an expectation something will be done about it,” he said. “I think that kind of thing will happen going forward, but as far as the city going in and taking a whole bunch of houses away from people and them having to move — that would be crazy.”
In those three sites, there are 11 different floor elevations, which renders the property unsuitable for future manufacturing applications since most companies desire to be on one level.
Cleveland/Bradley Chamber of Commerce Vice President for Economic Development Doug Berry said the old plant was so widely spread that some parts traveled seven miles before they became an assembled stove. That was one of the reasons for moving to the new facility on Benton Pike.
Cleveland Mayor Tom Rowland established the Southside Redevelopment Task Force in 2011 to help lead the discussion and decision-making process, because he realized then the biggest issue facing the city was raising public awareness and participation.
That was also the consensus of the task force members who recognized that before redevelopment could occur, there was a need to establish a connection with adjoining neighborhoods.
Berry said at a MainStreet Cleveland meeting, “The first thing I would say is nothing is fixed. The city of Cleveland has not issued a directive to the housing authority to establish a redevelopment plan for a specific area, which is the first legal step. We will not be taking 300 homes. We will not be bulldozing them and that was never the intent — ever. I will tell you where that number came from because I’m the one that [originated the] 300 ‘lot’ number.”
When talks first began with Whirlpool about replacing its century-old manufacturing facilities, the company wanted to remain in the downtown area where there is historical linkage. It is a big issue for a company to break that attachment.
Planning consultant Greg Dale, McBride Dale Clarion, of Cincinnati, explained the process to more than 50 people registered for the continuation of a look at the future they saw in the BCC2035 Strategic Plan.
Bradley County, Cleveland, Cleveland/Bradley Chamber of Commerce, Cleveland Utilities and Volunteer Energy began working on planning in October 2009, when it was announced the U.S. Economic Development Agency awarded the city of Cleveland a $50,000 grant to assist in the development of the BCC2035 Joint Strategic Plan to address anticipated regional growth.
The total cost of that study was about $221,720. The local share was paid by the participants. The end result of that six-month effort ended in the regional plan that looked 25 years into the future. The BCC Comprehensive Plan is paid for by a 50 percent matching grant of $125,000 from the U.S. Economic Development Agency. Bradley County and the city of Cleveland each contributed $60,000 and the city of Charleston contributed $5,000.
The BCC Comprehensive Plan takes a closer look at Charleston, Cleveland and unincorporated areas of Bradley County than the more generalized strategic plan. It includes a detailed look at the northern corridor around Mouse Creek Road and Interstate 75 Exit 33; the southern corridor around Exit 20, APD 40 and McDonald; the central city of Cleveland, and the soon to be vacated Whirlpool manufacturing plant.
According to Cleveland Development and Engineering Services Director Jonathan Jobe, the team of consultants is analyzing collected data for a draft presentation to the public by March 1.
McDonald residents considered zoning changes and zoning overlays as methods to stop development from swallowing up their rural lifestyle and polluting Brymer Creek.
In Charleston, discussion centered around ways to encourage truck drivers to use the interstate instead of passing through two school zones to get to Bowater, and discussions and in Cleveland, the topics were redevelopment of old industrial sites and infilling older neighborhoods.
Five guiding principles serve as overarching themes for all elements of the planning process and as a foundation for the goal statements:
n The community highly values private property rights and responsibilities. Tools to help the community manage the demands of growth will need to respect this value placed on private property rights;
n The community enjoys a relatively low-tax environment and the plan and recommended tools should be designed to maintain a low tax structure, while adequately providing for the safety and well-being of the current and future citizens;
n Given the strong possibility that the cities and county will continue to face a fiscally challenging future due to national economic trends, as well as the low-tax environment of this region, decisions about the issues addressed in this plan should be made with careful consideration of fiscal impacts;
n The community highly values citizen-driven initiatives, private investment, a market-based economy, and nongovernment approaches, rather than a focus on government-oriented approaches to community development;
n As a result, these multiple considerations should be balanced when making public decisions.
There are different people with different views, but that is the purpose of taking the time to go through a planning process. While there are concerns unique to each area of the county, there is concern the comprehensive planning effort is agenda-driven by outside consultants with “cookie-cutter” solutions to growth.
Local business owner Dan Rawls, who is with the Liberty Coalition and a member of the Bradley County Tea Party said, “My main issue here is that it seems to be an agenda-driven meeting. No matter how you answer most of these questions it always leads you back to their agenda.”
He said the county should not have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to bring in outside consulting firms loaded with bureaucrats “to give us a cookie-cutter plan that doesn’t fit Bradley County. I think these plans should be drawn up by the County Commission so we have elected representatives, people we pay and that we have the ability to deal with from an electoral standpoint. If we don’t like what the County Commission does, we can vote them out. If we don’t like what these guys do, what do we do there?”
Rawls said people think he is against planning, but the Florida native said he has seen unplanned growth. He simply thinks it would better if the plan was from within rather than from without.
Planning discussions continued throughout the year. Cleveland City Planner Greg Thomas reminded the Economic Development Council why planning for the future is important to local government and the people it serves.
The EDC is a selection of leaders from government, education, utilities, business and industry that meet bimonthly at the Cleveland/Bradley Chamber of Commerce to discuss development issues in those areas.
Thomas urged them to take an active role in the discussion because he said growth — planned or unplanned — is coming to Bradley County. Bradley County will grow by an estimated 33,000 people, 14,000 new households and 19,000 new jobs by the year 2035.
Bradley County growth is part of larger trends and patterns identified as “megaregions.” The county is part of the “Piedmont Atlantic Megaregion” anchored by Atlanta. However, it stretches east to Raleigh, N.C., and west to Birmingham, Ala.
“It has fingers reaching out to Chattanooga and Nashville which take in Cleveland,” he said.
The low cost of living and high quality of life in the Southeast are but two reasons for this region’s booming population growth. As a result, the area is facing traffic congestion, runaway land consumption and inadequate infrastructure.
Between 2010 and 2050, the population growth in the megaregion’s principal cities of Atlanta, Birmingham, Raleigh-Durham and Charlotte, N.C., is expected to increase from 17.611 million to 21.687 million in 2025 and 31.342 million by midcentury.
But not all of the discussions were pleasant. A flier anonymously distributed in June in neighborhoods south of the old Whirlpool Plant in downtown Cleveland warned homeowners of the impending loss of their property rights, if they didn’t immediately act.
The flier, written as an information handout by an unknown author, stated homes in the area around 18th Street S.E., between King Edward Avenue S.E. and Wildwood Avenue S.E. were targeted for demolition and redevelopment.
“That’s crazy,” Thomas said during an interview in June. It would make no sense for the city to move into a neighborhood and force everyone out. “It’s not true that we’re going to take people’s property. What is true is there will be a redevelopment of that Whirlpool site at the right time. It’s a large site. There will be a lot of change in that area.
“What I would anticipate is more infill type development — housing in that area with maybe some housing rehab.”
Some privately funded housing rehabilitation is occurring now, but other (public) rehab programs might be looked at in the future. However, that depends on needs identified by neighbors in the area and ongoing code enforcement.
“There are some rundown properties in the neighborhood. They are a source of complaint by neighbors and those neighbors have an expectation something will be done about it,” he said. “I think that kind of thing will happen going forward, but as far as the city going in and taking a whole bunch of houses away from people and them having to move — that would be crazy.”
In those three sites, there are 11 different floor elevations, which renders the property unsuitable for future manufacturing applications since most companies desire to be on one level.
Cleveland/Bradley Chamber of Commerce Vice President for Economic Development Doug Berry said the old plant was so widely spread that some parts traveled seven miles before they became an assembled stove. That was one of the reasons for moving to the new facility on Benton Pike.
Cleveland Mayor Tom Rowland established the Southside Redevelopment Task Force in 2011 to help lead the discussion and decision-making process, because he realized then the biggest issue facing the city was raising public awareness and participation.
That was also the consensus of the task force members who recognized that before redevelopment could occur, there was a need to establish a connection with adjoining neighborhoods.
Berry said at a MainStreet Cleveland meeting, “The first thing I would say is nothing is fixed. The city of Cleveland has not issued a directive to the housing authority to establish a redevelopment plan for a specific area, which is the first legal step. We will not be taking 300 homes. We will not be bulldozing them and that was never the intent — ever. I will tell you where that number came from because I’m the one that [originated the] 300 ‘lot’ number.”
When talks first began with Whirlpool about replacing its century-old manufacturing facilities, the company wanted to remain in the downtown area where there is historical linkage. It is a big issue for a company to break that attachment.
2012年12月19日星期三
Five predictions for 2013
After riding out the economic storm that many of their OEM customers endured with some measure of success, moldmakers should be seeing some calmer waters. Many had high hopes at the beginning of 2012 for a banner year, but that didn’t materialize. Most now have a more realistic outlook that 2013 will be what they make it. Business over the last quarter of 2012 has been a bit slower, much of it due to the fact that tooling budgets are typically spent by October in preparation for the new year.
New business for the first quarter of 2013 appears to be spotty, depending on the markets being served and how much impact the various new taxes written into the Affordable Care Act (19 new taxes, to be exact) will have on their ability to hire and expand their business. Some moldmakers have commented to PlasticsToday that in light of the pull-back on new mold purchases over the past few years, many molds are on their last legs, and replacement molds are badly needed. An air of uncertainty still plagues many of these small-business owners as they take a “wait-and-see” stance with their OEM customers.
A Plante & Moran study of the North American Plastics Industry through 2011, and released in October, noted several interesting facts that favor moldmakers. Molders are seeing strong earnings. “Gross profits, which never varied more than a few percentage points for the past 13 years, increased almost 20% in 2010 and remained steady in 2011,” reported Plante & Moran. “We speculate that there are a number of reasons for the retention of the strong earnings in 2011.”
First, press utilization increased for a second year in a row, noted the Plante & Moran study. However, utilization is still “depressed” considering that average utilization is just 40% based on a 24/7 calculation. Typically, “increased utilization comes with increased complexity”—i.e. number of molds, part numbers and materials—“and thus with high labor costs.” Still, Plante & Moran’s report notes that this is only the fifth year out of the last 15 with an increase in utilization. “For those with good margins, any increase in utilization results in improved profits,” said the report.
Secondly, resin costs shrank an additional 1.6% in 2011, and again in 2012. Sales growth among molders “nearly doubled” in 2011, up 8.7% for the median processor. “The growth appears to have allowed processors to be more discerning with customer contracts as median complexity actually decreased from 2010,” said Plante & Moran. Larger molding companies enjoyed healthy growth, while smaller enterprises were still working to get back to pre-recession levels of production.
Third, business is strong for several industries, noted the Plante & Moran survey. For example, the automotive industry, which had a decent 2011 and an even better 2012, has managed to keep its Tier 1 and Tier 2 busy. They even softened their stance on payments for a while. However, Plante & Moran reported that it is “the aggressive supply chain practices that had taken a sabbatical during the recession that may have more impact on the desirability of the industry than a volume recovery.”
A number of mold manufacturers have found the aerospace industry to be a good fit with their automotive know-how as aircraft sales hit record highs in 2012, with builds out through 2015. That could mean good business for both molders/thermoformers and mold makers that specialize in this industry.
Other industries that are faring well include the industrial products sector that “enjoyed an increase in sales growth in 2011 for the first time in two years.” The construction and furniture industries, while still in the doldrums during 2011 when the Plante & Moran survey was being taken, has generally started on a slow upward trend in 2012.
Just when everyone thought it was safe (and profitable) to get into the medical industry to avoid the pitfalls of the automotive industry, medical and pharmaceutical are running into some headwinds. The medical device tax has many big OEMs in that sector rethinking their strategy, utilizing their foreign operations to a greater extent and even planning some “near-shoring” within North America.
A report from McKinsey & Company on the pharmaceutical industry said that “The good old days of the pharmaceutical industry are gone forever” as it heads “toward a world where its profit margins will be substantially lower than they are today.” With the rapid growth of generics, McKinsey noted that the expectation of “Big Pharma’s current level of R&D spending to become a luxury that investors no longer tolerate. . . as some investors and analysts believe that many of Big Pharma’s R&D investments destroy value.”
Given these new clouds on the horizon for both medical and pharmaceutical, moldmakers might be squeezed on price unless they provide the value proposition for molds with greater productivity for products sold in emerging markets.
Starborn Industries, a leading manufacturer and international distributor of premium fastening products, has introduced the new Smart-Bit for Fiber Cement Board. The tungsten carbide tipped pre-drilling and countersinking tool is designed to create a perfect hole and fit for matching fasteners, while ensuring consistently superior finishes.
Fiber cement board products are used in a wide variety of construction applications. The Smart-Bit for Fiber Cement is the first tool that makes it possible to pre-drill and countersink in one step at a consistent depth, without damaging the work surface. The Smart-Bit tool features a free spinning stop collar, which controls the depth of the drill and countersink. The stop collar is fitted with a rubber O-ring to prevent surface damage or marking. Once the stop collar stops spinning, the hole is complete. Additionally, the tool is able to keep debris away from the stop collar, with its built-in debris cavity, which allows for the tool to maintain a perfect and consistent depth compared to conventional flush mounted countersinks.
New business for the first quarter of 2013 appears to be spotty, depending on the markets being served and how much impact the various new taxes written into the Affordable Care Act (19 new taxes, to be exact) will have on their ability to hire and expand their business. Some moldmakers have commented to PlasticsToday that in light of the pull-back on new mold purchases over the past few years, many molds are on their last legs, and replacement molds are badly needed. An air of uncertainty still plagues many of these small-business owners as they take a “wait-and-see” stance with their OEM customers.
A Plante & Moran study of the North American Plastics Industry through 2011, and released in October, noted several interesting facts that favor moldmakers. Molders are seeing strong earnings. “Gross profits, which never varied more than a few percentage points for the past 13 years, increased almost 20% in 2010 and remained steady in 2011,” reported Plante & Moran. “We speculate that there are a number of reasons for the retention of the strong earnings in 2011.”
First, press utilization increased for a second year in a row, noted the Plante & Moran study. However, utilization is still “depressed” considering that average utilization is just 40% based on a 24/7 calculation. Typically, “increased utilization comes with increased complexity”—i.e. number of molds, part numbers and materials—“and thus with high labor costs.” Still, Plante & Moran’s report notes that this is only the fifth year out of the last 15 with an increase in utilization. “For those with good margins, any increase in utilization results in improved profits,” said the report.
Secondly, resin costs shrank an additional 1.6% in 2011, and again in 2012. Sales growth among molders “nearly doubled” in 2011, up 8.7% for the median processor. “The growth appears to have allowed processors to be more discerning with customer contracts as median complexity actually decreased from 2010,” said Plante & Moran. Larger molding companies enjoyed healthy growth, while smaller enterprises were still working to get back to pre-recession levels of production.
Third, business is strong for several industries, noted the Plante & Moran survey. For example, the automotive industry, which had a decent 2011 and an even better 2012, has managed to keep its Tier 1 and Tier 2 busy. They even softened their stance on payments for a while. However, Plante & Moran reported that it is “the aggressive supply chain practices that had taken a sabbatical during the recession that may have more impact on the desirability of the industry than a volume recovery.”
A number of mold manufacturers have found the aerospace industry to be a good fit with their automotive know-how as aircraft sales hit record highs in 2012, with builds out through 2015. That could mean good business for both molders/thermoformers and mold makers that specialize in this industry.
Other industries that are faring well include the industrial products sector that “enjoyed an increase in sales growth in 2011 for the first time in two years.” The construction and furniture industries, while still in the doldrums during 2011 when the Plante & Moran survey was being taken, has generally started on a slow upward trend in 2012.
Just when everyone thought it was safe (and profitable) to get into the medical industry to avoid the pitfalls of the automotive industry, medical and pharmaceutical are running into some headwinds. The medical device tax has many big OEMs in that sector rethinking their strategy, utilizing their foreign operations to a greater extent and even planning some “near-shoring” within North America.
A report from McKinsey & Company on the pharmaceutical industry said that “The good old days of the pharmaceutical industry are gone forever” as it heads “toward a world where its profit margins will be substantially lower than they are today.” With the rapid growth of generics, McKinsey noted that the expectation of “Big Pharma’s current level of R&D spending to become a luxury that investors no longer tolerate. . . as some investors and analysts believe that many of Big Pharma’s R&D investments destroy value.”
Given these new clouds on the horizon for both medical and pharmaceutical, moldmakers might be squeezed on price unless they provide the value proposition for molds with greater productivity for products sold in emerging markets.
Starborn Industries, a leading manufacturer and international distributor of premium fastening products, has introduced the new Smart-Bit for Fiber Cement Board. The tungsten carbide tipped pre-drilling and countersinking tool is designed to create a perfect hole and fit for matching fasteners, while ensuring consistently superior finishes.
Fiber cement board products are used in a wide variety of construction applications. The Smart-Bit for Fiber Cement is the first tool that makes it possible to pre-drill and countersink in one step at a consistent depth, without damaging the work surface. The Smart-Bit tool features a free spinning stop collar, which controls the depth of the drill and countersink. The stop collar is fitted with a rubber O-ring to prevent surface damage or marking. Once the stop collar stops spinning, the hole is complete. Additionally, the tool is able to keep debris away from the stop collar, with its built-in debris cavity, which allows for the tool to maintain a perfect and consistent depth compared to conventional flush mounted countersinks.
2011年6月12日星期日
My Whites playing days - Huckerby INTERVIEW
Darren Huckerby had spells at several big clubs, but his time at Leeds proved far from successful. Leon Wobschall chats with the striker who is now enjoying his retirement in Norfolk. speed merchant Darren Huckerby’s career took him to bona fide footballing giants in Yorkshire, the North East, North West and the East Midlands – with glorious stop-offs in East Anglia, the heart of England and sunny California along the way.
In a dashing career which was most definitely whirlwind in more ways than one, Huckerby had the proverbial joyride, right from the time he left Lincoln City as a teenage prodigy for £500,000 to join a club who were simply box office in the mid-1990s – Kevin Keegan’s Newcastle United.
So a breakneck journey began, which saw him later call in at Coventry City, Leeds United, Manchester City, Norwich City and San Jose Earthquakes, along with loan spells at hometown club Nottingham Forest and Millwall.
Looking back, Huckerby – now 35 and settled with his family in Norfolk – insists he wouldn’t change much save for a frustrating spell that never truly got off the ground at Elland Road when he spent so much time on the bench his team-mates would have been forgiven for nicknaming him “The Judge”.
Rated as one of the hottest young talents in English football with a penchant for the spectacular, United forked out a cool £4m to land Huckerby from the Sky Blues in August 1999.
most people thought United were on to a sure-fire winner at an enterprising club tipped to firmly threaten the entrenched top tier establishment of Manchester United and Arsenal at the time.
But not so, with the crowd-pleaser – alerted to United’s attention when he scored a stunning hat-trick for Coventry at Elland Road near the end of the 1997-98 season – starting a mere 15 games for David O’Leary’s buccaneering outfit.
He also made a gargantuan 42 substitute appearances before switching across the Pennines to the blue half of Manchester for £3.4m in December 2000.
United supporters will get their chance to see Huckerby again in the famous white jersey in the Northern Masters later this month, with the quicksilver wing man unquestionably Leeds’ stellar recruit when they take the stage at Sheffield’s Motorsport Arena on June 26.
It’s a fair bet that having just turned 35, Huckerby will give a few oldies the runaround – but expect sage Whites fans present to mutter “if only” if that’s the case.
Huckerby, who spent just 16 months in West Yorkshire, told the YEP: “Considering I started off in the old Division Four, I didn’t do bad and worked my way up to play in the Champions League and scored for Leeds. I’m quite happy with that for a 16 or 17-year career.
“I had good spells at Coventry and then at Norwich at the end of my career, where I think I played my best football. I had a good time at Man City as well, to be fair.
“When I look back at my career, probably my only real regret was not really doing myself justice at Leeds, which is kind of strange, considering the team we had.
“The move came out of the blue. I was playing for Coventry, week-in, week-out and the most difficult thing was going from that, being a regular in the best league in the world to being a bit-part player.
“it was a great time for the club and I played in the Champions League and Uefa Cup. But sometimes, as a player, things just don’t happen for you. I didn’t play as well as I could when I got the chance, although I didn’t get that many! There’s different ways to look at it.
“Maybe we bought too many big-name players at one time. When we were doing well we had a settled side with Bridgey (Michael Bridges) up front and Harry Kewell on the left.
“It was a bit of a feeling at the time of us buying some players just for the sake of it.
“But looking at it, we were a good bunch of young lads who gave it a go against the best, there’s no doubt about it.
“Maybe, we didn’t have enough to beat the Man Uniteds of this world (to win trophies), but we had a good go and you look at how things changed pretty quickly for Leeds after that.
“In my career, I was fortunate to play for some really big clubs, like Leeds and Man City. You look at City now and they have gone on to do something even crazier now!
“It shows what can happen; Leeds will always be a massive club in England because of their history and heritage and one day they will get back to where they belong in the Premiership.”
Settled in one of the most tranquil and picturesque areas of England, Nottingham-born Huckerby is happy to call Norfolk his home, with Norwich fans quickly bestowing idol status on the striker who they soon claimed as one of their own.
A love affair for the yellow-and-green hordes began in September 2003 when Huckerby joined the club, initially on loan, quickly earning the Division One player-of-the-month award.
fans got the perfect belated Christmas present on Boxing Day 2003 when the loan star signed permanently and it proved money well spent with the frontman widely seen as the main reason Norwich won promotion to the Premiership in 2003-04.
The following campaign, Huckerby was named player-of-the-season, scooping the award again in 2006-07, while finishing second in 2003-04 and 2005-06, testimony to the high regard he was held in – and still is – by the Canaries faithful.
Huckerby wound down his career in the states at San Jose and was named MLS Newcomer of the Year in 2008 before hanging up his boots in September 2009 and eventually returning to his adopted home of Norfolk.
His playing career may be over, but Huckerby is living his working life at the same hectic pace that frequented his life on the pitch.
His Darren Huckerby Trust has already raised pots of cash for charities and schemes in Norfolk, with Huckerby kept busy arranging events and publicity, while also finding time to run his own website and take his coaching badges – with the odd bit of recreational football thrown in!
On life after leaving Norwich in the summer of 2008, Huckerby said: “I went over to the States towards the end of my career and it was a good experience. There was maybe even a chance of coming back to Leeds when I got pushed out of Norwich, but I decided to try something a bit different.
“I’ve been lucky enough in my career to play for a few big clubs, but this was something different in terms of trying another culture, although it’s similar to England in some respects. It was quite easy to settle over there and the fans do like their soccer there – the game is coming on.
“After coming back to England after retiring, I started taking my coaching badges and have got a website up and running. I’ve also started a charity in Norfolk, so my diary is pretty full.
“I love it in Norfolk. I’ve been pretty lucky in that I’ve lived in a lot of nice places, but I’m really settled in Norwich, as are my family.”
Huckerby admits his competitive juices are starting to flow ahead of his debut in the Masters with Leeds, with the Whites also containing one familiar face to him in ex-Sky Blues team-mate and Leeds lad Noel Whelan.
In a dashing career which was most definitely whirlwind in more ways than one, Huckerby had the proverbial joyride, right from the time he left Lincoln City as a teenage prodigy for £500,000 to join a club who were simply box office in the mid-1990s – Kevin Keegan’s Newcastle United.
So a breakneck journey began, which saw him later call in at Coventry City, Leeds United, Manchester City, Norwich City and San Jose Earthquakes, along with loan spells at hometown club Nottingham Forest and Millwall.
Looking back, Huckerby – now 35 and settled with his family in Norfolk – insists he wouldn’t change much save for a frustrating spell that never truly got off the ground at Elland Road when he spent so much time on the bench his team-mates would have been forgiven for nicknaming him “The Judge”.
Rated as one of the hottest young talents in English football with a penchant for the spectacular, United forked out a cool £4m to land Huckerby from the Sky Blues in August 1999.
most people thought United were on to a sure-fire winner at an enterprising club tipped to firmly threaten the entrenched top tier establishment of Manchester United and Arsenal at the time.
But not so, with the crowd-pleaser – alerted to United’s attention when he scored a stunning hat-trick for Coventry at Elland Road near the end of the 1997-98 season – starting a mere 15 games for David O’Leary’s buccaneering outfit.
He also made a gargantuan 42 substitute appearances before switching across the Pennines to the blue half of Manchester for £3.4m in December 2000.
United supporters will get their chance to see Huckerby again in the famous white jersey in the Northern Masters later this month, with the quicksilver wing man unquestionably Leeds’ stellar recruit when they take the stage at Sheffield’s Motorsport Arena on June 26.
It’s a fair bet that having just turned 35, Huckerby will give a few oldies the runaround – but expect sage Whites fans present to mutter “if only” if that’s the case.
Huckerby, who spent just 16 months in West Yorkshire, told the YEP: “Considering I started off in the old Division Four, I didn’t do bad and worked my way up to play in the Champions League and scored for Leeds. I’m quite happy with that for a 16 or 17-year career.
“I had good spells at Coventry and then at Norwich at the end of my career, where I think I played my best football. I had a good time at Man City as well, to be fair.
“When I look back at my career, probably my only real regret was not really doing myself justice at Leeds, which is kind of strange, considering the team we had.
“The move came out of the blue. I was playing for Coventry, week-in, week-out and the most difficult thing was going from that, being a regular in the best league in the world to being a bit-part player.
“it was a great time for the club and I played in the Champions League and Uefa Cup. But sometimes, as a player, things just don’t happen for you. I didn’t play as well as I could when I got the chance, although I didn’t get that many! There’s different ways to look at it.
“Maybe we bought too many big-name players at one time. When we were doing well we had a settled side with Bridgey (Michael Bridges) up front and Harry Kewell on the left.
“It was a bit of a feeling at the time of us buying some players just for the sake of it.
“But looking at it, we were a good bunch of young lads who gave it a go against the best, there’s no doubt about it.
“Maybe, we didn’t have enough to beat the Man Uniteds of this world (to win trophies), but we had a good go and you look at how things changed pretty quickly for Leeds after that.
“In my career, I was fortunate to play for some really big clubs, like Leeds and Man City. You look at City now and they have gone on to do something even crazier now!
“It shows what can happen; Leeds will always be a massive club in England because of their history and heritage and one day they will get back to where they belong in the Premiership.”
Settled in one of the most tranquil and picturesque areas of England, Nottingham-born Huckerby is happy to call Norfolk his home, with Norwich fans quickly bestowing idol status on the striker who they soon claimed as one of their own.
A love affair for the yellow-and-green hordes began in September 2003 when Huckerby joined the club, initially on loan, quickly earning the Division One player-of-the-month award.
fans got the perfect belated Christmas present on Boxing Day 2003 when the loan star signed permanently and it proved money well spent with the frontman widely seen as the main reason Norwich won promotion to the Premiership in 2003-04.
The following campaign, Huckerby was named player-of-the-season, scooping the award again in 2006-07, while finishing second in 2003-04 and 2005-06, testimony to the high regard he was held in – and still is – by the Canaries faithful.
Huckerby wound down his career in the states at San Jose and was named MLS Newcomer of the Year in 2008 before hanging up his boots in September 2009 and eventually returning to his adopted home of Norfolk.
His playing career may be over, but Huckerby is living his working life at the same hectic pace that frequented his life on the pitch.
His Darren Huckerby Trust has already raised pots of cash for charities and schemes in Norfolk, with Huckerby kept busy arranging events and publicity, while also finding time to run his own website and take his coaching badges – with the odd bit of recreational football thrown in!
On life after leaving Norwich in the summer of 2008, Huckerby said: “I went over to the States towards the end of my career and it was a good experience. There was maybe even a chance of coming back to Leeds when I got pushed out of Norwich, but I decided to try something a bit different.
“I’ve been lucky enough in my career to play for a few big clubs, but this was something different in terms of trying another culture, although it’s similar to England in some respects. It was quite easy to settle over there and the fans do like their soccer there – the game is coming on.
“After coming back to England after retiring, I started taking my coaching badges and have got a website up and running. I’ve also started a charity in Norfolk, so my diary is pretty full.
“I love it in Norfolk. I’ve been pretty lucky in that I’ve lived in a lot of nice places, but I’m really settled in Norwich, as are my family.”
Huckerby admits his competitive juices are starting to flow ahead of his debut in the Masters with Leeds, with the Whites also containing one familiar face to him in ex-Sky Blues team-mate and Leeds lad Noel Whelan.
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