text:
Teacher Has Unique Opportunity
GLASGOW — A Glasgow educator will get a rare opportunity this summer that will help bring her a greater understanding of the Holocaust to her students.
Casi Owens, a Glasgow Middle School teacher, has been selected as one of 25 teachers from across the United States to attend a seminar at the Memorial Library in New York City from July 6 to 18. The library was established in the former home of Olga Lengyel, a survivor of Auschwitz concentration camp.
Owens teaches seventh-grade writing and eighth-grade literature at the middle school. She has just completed her fifth year at the school. It' s Owens first teaching position. The local woman graduated from Barren County High School and attended Western Kentucky University where she received her deg-ree in education. She also has her master' s degree in counseling.
Dr. John Haga-man, a professor at WKU and leader of the university' s writing project of which she is a member e-mailed an application to Owens and encouraged her to participate in the Holocaust Memorial Institute Seminar this summer.
She filled out the application and submitted a 10-page essay, which involved explaining what she teaches and how the Holocaust has impacted her work in the classroom and the different sources she uses — films, books, any type of media.
"My entire year is spent on tolerance and overcoming prejudice and we do a unit strictly on ' Diary of Anne Frank,' the play, so I get to take all those lesson plans, make copies and share those … while I' m in New York," she said.
Owens and the 24 other teachers chosen from across the country will stay in dorms at Columbia University, but classwork will take place in the library.
"I' m just really excited about getting to go," she said. "My students have already decided that they' re going to put themselves in my bag, in my luggage — they' re going to be stowaways."
She plans to use the opportunity to broaden her knowledge of the Holocaust and how other teachers are presenting the material to encourage her own students.
"I hope to bring back new information to share with my students to make them see how there' s always possibilities," she said. "Strength overcomes, so they' re very excited. I' m excited. They want to know more. They see Anne Frank, but they want to know more — who else was there — what else happened."
Owens said her inspiration for teaching stories from the Holocaust as a way of promoting tolerance comes from her own educational background when she learned of the history of the mid-20th century and the story of Anne Frank and others.
She said her students move from disbelief to empathy as she goes through the information with them. She uses a PowerPoint presentation with photographs and images they haven' t seen in regular textbooks.
"They just really seem engaged throughout the entire time," she said. "It' s good to reach them on any level, to get them motivated and encouraged. What better way to teach tolerance."
Owens will be working with Sondra Perl, director of the Holocaust Educators Network; Jennifer Lemberg, an instructor at NYU who is also working as the project coordinator; and Alice Braziller, a New York City high school teacher and Writing Project teacher-consultant.
The fellowship is funded by the Memorial Library in New York City. The seminar is offered by Lehman College of the City University of New York.
For more detailed information, visit the Web site at www.holocausteducators.org.


text:
Unbundling innovation: Samsung, PCs and China
July 10, 2014 by Benedict Evans in GAFA
It seems pretty clear now that the Android OEM world is starting to play out pretty much like the PC world. The industry has become unbundled vertically between components, devices, operating system and application software & services. The components are commoditised and OEMs cannot differentiate on software, so they are entering a race to the bottom of cheaper and cheaper and more and more commoditised products, much like the PC industry.
The funny thing about this is that part of the original promise of Android was that it would allow OEMs to avoid this. Part of the promise was that because Android was open, OEMs would be free to customise it to differentiate their products on top of a common platform. But of course, it hasn't really worked out like that. I think there are a couple of reasons why.
The first is that 'a common platform that OEMs can differentiate on' is very close to a contradiction in terms. Microsoft never pretended to allow OEMs to change Windows in that sense, and it quickly emerged that if you did change Android in any really important way it was no longer part of the common platform, but a fork. This is what Amazon has done with the Kindle Fire, and Google's reaction (as the sole arbiter of what is nor is not a fork) is that if you do that, you lose access to all Google's own apps, tools and APIs for Android. It wasn't entirely clear 4 and 5 years ago how big a deal that would be - how much of the value of a smartphone operating system would be in those embedded meta-services and cloud services from the platform provider. But now it's apparent that if you don't have those then you're really only selling a featurephone, at least as far as a normal consumer is concerned, and the only companies that have the assets and resources to build those things themselves (outside China, which is another world for Android) are Amazon (perhaps) and Microsoft.
So, as an Android OEM, you can't practically make fundamental changes to Android anymore than a Windows OEM can make them to Windows. What you can do is to try to add value on top. That hasn't worked either, for several reasons:
Most of these companies are simply not good at software and services: the operating structures and skills required are totally different and hard to build
Anything that they add, even if it's actually really good, is competing with everything on the app store and everything on the internet. So even if they're good at software and do make (or buy or partner with) something good, it's just another app amongst many. The whole point of open platforms and indeed the internet is permissionless innovation - you don't need the OEM's permission to innovate. Again, how can an OEM differentiate by adding things when a user can add anything they want themselves?
If they do anything cool that requires any sort of third party support they probably won't get it, because the ecosystem effects are at the platform level, not the OEM level. Hardly anyone will support something cool that only works on Samsung Android phones (or only some Samsung phones).
The general point here is that the differentiation moved from one part of the stack to another (or, perhaps, to a new layer). The OEMs' own software used to be a core part of the purchase decision - that was Nokia's advantage with Series 40. But now that way to differentiate has moved up the stack to a new layer that the OEMs struggle to access - it's controlled by Google.
There's another parallel here, I think, with what happened to the mobile operators. If you go back to 2000, they were all intensely aware of all the cool stuff that was going to happen with mobile and the internet. They predicted a great deal of it very accurately, but they thought that they would be doing all of it. And of course what happened was that again, that innovation and differentiation layer got unbundled - it moved up to a new layer at the top of the stack, and the handset OEMs and MNOs were equally unable to access those services. Just like the OEMs:
The MNOs were structurally bad at making services
Even if they were good those services were just one amongst many
The network effects for these services ran across the whole internet, not just their customers.
That is, MNOs tend to be bad at innovation in internet services, but even if they aren't, it isn't their place to provide it. It isn't their place in the stack to make a great video sharing site or a cool photo messaging app, even if they could. The analogy I often use in this case is that for an MNO to get into apps and content is like a municipal water company deciding to get into the soda business - because it knows water, and has trucks, and customers trust its brand. Even if it managed to come up with a great soda, it would still be just another can of soda amongst many. (Continuing the analogy, of course, it also makes little sense for soda companies to think they can get into the municipal water business - nor for tech companies to think they're going to disrupt mobile operators).
When you unbundle an industry, you get new and different types of innovation in different layers of the stack. The skills you had in the bundled world may well still apply in the layer you find yourself in. Hence Samsung carries on doing interesting and impressive things in components, and can innovate up to a point in handsets, with things like phablets, so long as they do not depend on concessions from other parts of the stack. Equally, for example, Dell created an entirely new type of PC company - the PC company as a highly specialised logistics business - without differentiating at the operating system layer at all.
But what's happened for PCs and smartphones and, to a large extent, mobile networks is that it's that top layer of the stack, that the PC and Android OEMs and operators struggle to play in, that's where most of the differentiation happens. That's the stuff that makes the difference between a commodity and something unique. This is obviously something of a wrench. After all, especially for the phone companies and mobile operators, this is what they always felt they should be doing, and now other people are doing it instead, free-riding on top of their work and their investment.
Samsung, Apple and Microsoft are all strong in two layers: Samsung in components and devices, Apple in devices and operating systems and Microsoft in operating systems and application software. Each of these companies has cross-leveraged these adjacent strengths to create better products and a stronger market position. Samsung has used the scale of the component business and access to those components to drive the devices business and vice versa, despite failing, mostly, to create compelling software differentiation. This leveraging of scale, combined with some great execution, has taken it to at least half of the total Android market.
The problem is that Samsung is increasingly competing with another sort of scale effect - it is competing with the entire Shenzhen ecosystem. Before, it was competing with individual companies (many of which happened to use that ecosystem), and like Nokia before it was fortunate in the relative weakness of most of its competitors. As for Nokia, that luck was bound to run out. Now Samsung is starting to face competition with new companies who are finding ways to build new types of handset businesses on top of that ecosystem - taking that ecosystem and using it to unbundle Samsung.
The company that everyone talks about here is Xiaomi, which has created the skills to build both good services and software and good handsets. Xiaomi has faced the fork problem by working out how to dance right up to the edge without going over - Hugo Barra described it as a 'compatible fork'. Rather than turning Android into a fork, it has, so to speak, polished it, adding features and services without breaking anything. And so it has created real differentiation at the operating system layer without losing access to Google services, which its devices outside China all use.
But there are lots and lots of other interesting Android companies unbundling, both within the price range, with some attacking the mid range and there the low end at under $100, and geographically, with companies like Micromax, Karbonn or Blu or Wiko peeling off particular geographies. In effect, this is the Dell innovation - not trying to get into the other parts of the stack (though Dell has moved into other businesses), but at being really really good at your own part.
This also reminds me a little of Facebook. Facebook's integrated social platform model has been unbundled by mobile, with the social graph that it owns on the desktop being replaced by the smartphone itself as a social platform that all social apps can plug into. Hence, there have been dozens of new and interesting services peeling off parts of the use case or creating new ones. Making good services in this space does not require a totally different type of company, in the way that making good services and running a mobile network require different types of companies, and Facebook's 'constellation' approach to unbundling its apps has resulted in some perfectly good products, but so far none of them has risen above the status of 'just another social app' - they're all just another can of soda.
Android, Samsung, Strategy
The explosion of imaging
The film camera business peaked in 1999. In that year, consumers around the world took 80bn photos (according to Kodak's 2000 annual report), and bought around 70m cameras (on GfK's estimate).
In 2014, perhaps 90m traditional cameras will be sold - and close to 2bn phones and tablets with cameras. There will be over 2bn iPhone and Android smartphones on earth by the end of this year: with perhaps 4bn people on earth with mobile phones, there are at least 3bn camera phones and probably over 3.5bn.
A total of around 1.2bn digital cameras have been sold since 1999 - there are 1bn Google Android smartphones in use today.
Over 1.5bn new photos are shared every day on Facebook, WhatsApp and Snapchat alone, which equates to about 550bn a year, and this is growing fast. Total sharing across all social networks, if we include Wechat and other platforms, is certain to be over 1 trillion this year - around 1.5 per smartphone per day. How many are taken in total? Several times that, certainly, but there's no real way to know - it could be 1tr, or 5tr, or 10tr.
More than 20 times more devices that can take pictures will be sold this year than in 1999 (>1.4bn versus 70m)
Any service doing more than 220m photos per day has higher volume than the global consumer camera industry in 1999 - there are probably half a dozen or more of these
More than 20x more photos will be taken this year than in 1999- possibly far more (2tr versus 80bn)
If you flex the assumptions, it is possible that more photos will be taken in the next year or two than were taken on film ever.
I've not found any statistics for consumer video shot before digital, but it seems like a pretty safe bet that more consumer video will be shot this year than was ever shot before camera phones.
We can't yet see how much this will change things. The proliferation of imaging is a profound change that bears comparison with the way vinyl and especially the transistor took music everywhere two and three generations ago, or the way the steam press and railways took print everywhere in the 19th century.
The difference with both of those, though, is that they were essentially top down: you still needed a factory, but this explosion of imaging is bottom up. Imaging becomes a universal form of conversation, rather than the freezing of a special moment or a piece of professional editorial content.
The transistor took music into the world, both spraying it everywhere and giving people private bubbles of sound wherever they are. Imaging works the other way: soaking up everything around you for sharing and remembering later, and for taking ownership of what you've seen and done. Maybe it's that sense of ownership that makes Google Glass cause such visceral, inarticulate fury.
The universal scope of the camera and the saturation of our lives with the photos we take also means that 'taking pictures' is now no more meaningful a term than 'writing'. Hence Snapchat, Instagram and Facebook or WhatsApp photo sharing are no more all 'photos' than Word, Indesign, Wordpress and twitter are all 'text'. Photos are no longer a category.
Messaging, Photos, Strategy
Digesting WWDC: cloudy
June 04, 2014 by Benedict Evans
I've spent the last couple of days sifting through the announcements at WWDC. Apple claims 4000 new APIs, and it certainly feels like it. Apple has been busy. But setting aside all the normal incremental improvements, there are a couple of interesting strands.
First, Apple is continuing the steady process of removing restrictions on what developers can do - but doing so in a very specific way. Almost all of these restrictions are necessarily trade-offs - on a smartphone more flexibility is ipso facto less security and less battery life. So multi-tasking was permitted only once Apple had created a way to do it while preserving control. The same now comes with Extensions. Apple has a model to allow apps to connect to each other and add functionality to other apps - but with clearly defined attach points and a clear control model. Like multitasking, the idea is to gain most benefits of being open while preserving most benefits of being closed. Rather than giving any app system access, you open up specific use cases - a new keyboard, for example, while controlling it tightly (no network access for that keyboard without permission) and dismissing other use cases entirely (no third party SMS apps). The same applies to the fingerprint scanner - apps can now ask for authentication but don't get the print data - they only get a 'yes/no' response back from the system. It's sandboxes all the way down. In addition, Apple is backing off the 'no documents' rule, which seems to have been a vision of a simpler and easier to use approach that was just too forward-thinking. Hence Cloud Drive, which is amongst other things an argument that DropBox really is just a feature (and in the new MacOS there are APIs specifically for file syncing services, addressing some of the heavy lifting OS hacking that Dropbox or Box have had to build themselves). The practical effect of these moves is that a lot of the specific use cases that might draw high-end users to Android (custom keyboards, say) get sliced off.
The second theme, and a very interesting one, is cloud, the big Apple weakness. The whole of WWDC is full of cloud. A very large proportion of the new user-facing features touch the cloud in some way, as a conduit or as storage. And the ones that don't use what you might call the personal cloud - the Bluetooth LE/Wifi mesh around you (such as HealthKit or HomeKit). So edit a photo and the edits are on all your devices, run out of room and your photos stay on the cloud but all but the previews are cleared off your phone, tap a phone number on a web page on your Mac and your phone dials it. But none of this says 'CLOUD™' and none of it is done in a web browser. Web browsers are for web pages, not for apps. Hence one could suggest that Apple loves the cloud, just not the web (or, not URLs). This is obviously a contrast with Google, which has pretty much the opposite approach. For Google, devices are dumb glass and the intelligence is in the cloud, but for Apple the cloud is just dumb storage and the device is the place for intelligence. And it's built a whole new set of APIs, CloudKit, to enable this for developers, which it is (for the first time, I believe) dogfooding, building the photos product on it.
There's a release cycle question in here. A phone that's refreshed every year or replaced every two can iterate and innovate much faster than a TV, car (or fridge, or, perhaps thermostat) that may be replaced only every five or ten years. So it seems like the place for the intelligence should be in the phone rather than the TV. But the extension of this is that a cloud product can iterate every day. This is the killer advantage of enterprise SaaS over on-premises software - you can improve things all the time. And Apple updates its OS once a year and, so far, the same is true for the cloud products it builds for developers, where Google can update all of its products every week.
You can see this dynamic clearly in smartphones: for the last couple of years, Apple has done an annual release (of both hardware and software) and taken the lead for 6-9m months, and then Android (Google and the OEMs collectively) catches up and overtakes for 3-6 months until the the next Apple release. It's a game of leapfrog. Is this a disadvantage for Apple? Again, there's a tradeoff, embodied in Facebook's old internal slogan, 'Move fast and break things". If you're Google and your products are mostly black boxes to the outside world then iterating fast is fine, but if you have millions of developers building on those APIs, changing things every week isn't necessarily a great idea. That is, there's an optimum API refresh frequency. (One could also point out that though Google refreshes Android frequently, the average Android user gets a new version of Android only every two years, when they replace their phone, where the average iOS user gets the new version once a year as it is released).
Going back to this 'Apple view of the cloud', though, there's a deeper and older dynamic starting to come into play now. Apple invented the smartphone as we know it 7 years ago and since then the concept has been built out. All the stuff that really should have been there has been added step by step by both Apple and Google, and the pace at which essential improvements are made is starting to flatten out. But as that happens, the two platforms start to converge. Copy & paste is copy & paste, but iBeacon is a very Apple sort of idea, just as Google Now is a very Google product. That is, as the core features are built out and commoditised, the changes are coming more and more in ways that reflect the very different characters of Apple and Google. I've described this before by saying that Apple is moving innovation down the stack into hardware/software integration, where it's hard for Google to follow, and Google is moving innovation up the stack into cloud-based AI & machine learning services, where it's hard for Apple to follow. This isn't a tactical 'this'll screw those guys' approach - it reflects the fundamental characters of the two companies. Google thinks about improving UX by reducing page load times, Apple thinks about UX by making it easier to scroll that page.
One effect of this is that it might get harder to make essentially the same app on both platforms. If a core, valuable thing you can do on one platform has no analogue at all on the other, what do you do? Ignore the stuff that isn't on both, and get a lowest common denominator product? Or dive into those tools, but end up having quite different experiences on iOS and Android? Things like Metal and Swift only accelerate this issue.
Another aspect of this issue is the stuff that Facebook announced at F8, especially deep linking. Facebook would clearly like, on some level, to put together a sort of meta-OS that sits on top of both iOS and Android, driving connections and engagement between apps and acting as a social plumbing layer. But it's not clear that that's its place in the stack. Apple's Extensions offer another and very compelling way to drive people between iOS apps. And in addition, Apple has quietly announced, as part of Cloudkit, its own identity layer. You can sign a user into your app using their iCloud account, and (with permission) use iCloud to see which of their friends are using the same app. And that would use the fingerprint scanner. Looking at the address book is a major driver of growth bethink many social apps on smartphones - Apple is trying to co-opt that, with less friction but also with total user privacy built in. And privacy was a very, very common theme throughout all the developer sessions. You could build an entire multi-player game in Cloudkit, and possibly even a social messaging app. So 'cloud' things become iOS things. But only for iOS.
And yet, on the other hand, all of the new extensions give Google and Facebook new places to embed their services within iOS.
This brings me to the macro point: Everything Apple does is about selling devices. Definitely iOS devices, and possibly an Apple TV or a wearable of its own. But for now, the device is the centre point. And that's a $600 device. Apple has a lock on the majority of this super-premium segment, with Android's attempts to break into it plateauing at about a third of the segment. This means that Apple sells about 10% of all the phones on earth and Android takes the next 50% or so, and that gives Apple perhaps a third of run-rate app downloads and the majority of the actual value. This is a now pretty stable situation, unless a premium alternative to Samsung emerges or the subsidy environment changes radically. But the only way for Apple to break out of that segment and sell 20% or 30% of the phones sold on earth is a cheaper phone. Until then the annual leapfrogging with Android will continue.
June 04, 2014 /Benedict Evans
Apple, Strategy
In mobile, everything is still wide open
The mobile platform horse race is very entertaining, and a very reliable way to get page views. But it's also, increasingly, a second-order question. So far, Apple and Google are both winning, in different ways. That may change over time - Apple may make a substantially cheaper phone or developers may shift to making Android apps first. But that's really not a very interesting topic anymore - everything that can be said has been said, and it wouldn't even necessarily change very much unless you're an Apple or Google shareholder.
To me, the first-order issue is the sheer scale of mobile. We're going from 1.5bn PCs on earth, either corporate and locked down or consumer and shared and in neither case really mobile, to perhaps 3bn smartphones, that are completely mobile and personal. This means that the internet, by whatever metrics you want to use, gets two or three or four times bigger. It also means the internet can 'eat' a lot of new sectors, across things like, say, retail or payments.
The platform wars are fun to talk about, but this is what matters. pic.twitter.com/g9F9RG4Vvc
— Benedict Evans (@BenedictEvans) March 31, 2014
Within this, complexity. I think there are three big differences between the desktop and mobile internet:
'Pre-Netscape' - the desktop internet resolved pretty quickly into 'the web, and everything else', and didn't change much for 20 years. Mobile does not have that single unifying interaction model. We have apps and app stores and messaging systems and iBeacon and a lot more besides, and none of this is finished yet - we do not have resolution into one settled way to do things. Everything is still changing.
'Pre-PageRank' - as a consequence of this complexity the door is wide open for ways for people to find and discover services and ways for companies to reach those people. After the early chaos of the web Google's PageRank gave a single unifying vector - we do not have such a vector for mobile services. Given the much greater complexity and sophistication of the smartphone platform versus the PC web browser, we may never even get that one unified tool.
Identity - a smartphone is a a social platform in a way that a PC never was - it has an address book and many other features that apps like WhatsApp can leverage. But it isn't clear what the point of identity that ties all of these together would be - is it the PSTN number? Email address? Facebook ID? Or some shifting mess of all of these? We have Facebook and Gmail, but it's almost as though we're waiting for them to be invented again.
As platform owners, Apple and Google will play roles in shaping some of these (or, at least, they will try to). But really, the platform wars are over and everything is wide open. What you look at and how you engage with it, share it, find and discover it are all wide open opportunities in a way that hasn't been true on the web for a long time. That makes this a really exciting time to be talking to entrepreneurs at a16z.
Notes on TV
March 27, 2014 by Benedict Evans in Television
One of the reasons it's difficult to talk about the future of TV is there are really several separate sets of issues that are in play, which are pretty much self-contained, and depend on quite different factors, and all of which need to move before things can change.
The US problem
First, the USA is a massively over-served Pay TV market. Pay penetration is very high (90%+), ARPUs are very high by international standards, bundling is very rigid, and so there are lots of people who feel obliged to buy much more than they really want.
Hence, there is a lot of pent-up demand for some sort of unbundled approach - to be able to get just the channels that you want and pay less. But the bundling model is very deeply embedded in the structure of the US TV market, at multiple levels of the value chain, and there are some very strong incentives for a lot of industry participants to continue with the status quo. In other words, everyone hates the way the US TV industry works, except for the US TV industry. This makes the current model very rigid, but also of course potentially very brittle.
Tech industry attacks on this model have tended to come from the distribution side - they put together a new distribution platform and then go and ask content owners to give them the content to offer an unbundled service. But they very quickly discover that coming to Hollywood with a distribution platform doesn't get you a cup of coffee - you need to propose a more profitable economic model, and back that up with cash on the nail. A physical distribution platform itself is not where the value is - it's the possession of a huge audience or valuable content that gives you power. And it's tough for a platform with no customers to offer better economics than a platform with tens of millions.
More broadly (i.e. beyond just the US bundling issues) it's helpful to think about TV as a virtuous circle. Audience gives revenue, revenue lets you buy great content, and great content gets you more audience. This is self-sustaining at each level. A big TV channel is big because it's big, not because it has access to a linear distribution path.
This is a little like orbital mechanics: if you want to go to orbit you need to burn a lot of fuel, and the higher you want to go the more you need to burn - and having a better-looking rocket doesn't make much difference. Money for content is the fuel of the TV business.
Hence, the interesting thing about Netflix is not so much the physical distribution platform as the use of data to attack the cost of content - if you can make hits more reliably you can get the same audience for less money spent, since you waste less of it. To the TV industry Netflix would look like just another TV channel without the use of data.
Finally, if the US TV market is over-served, most others are not. The UK is arguably a 'goldilocks' market - half of households have pay TV and are broadly happy with it, and half don't and are broadly happy with that. Meanwhile some European markets are probably underserved for pay TV - more people might like a pay TV product than are currently being given one. So the whole US 'cord cutting is the future' discussion is not necessarily broadly applicable. But the size of the US market (and the physical location of most of the tech industry) tends to shape the debate. It may also focus attention on the wrong problems.
The user experience problem
Next, there is the user experience. It seems pretty clear we're in a 'pre-iPod' phase at the moment. That is, all of the technology is in place, more or less, but no-one has quite managed to package it up in the right way to give the right user experience. There isn't yet a totally fluid way to browse, choose and display what you want on your TV. Lots of people are poking around it (including Apple and Google) but it doesn't seem like we have that magical 'aha' moment just yet.
There are also a bunch of route-to-market problems here. Integration inside a TV is great but TVs are only replaced every 5+ years. Pay TV tech, unlike mobile, is a balkanized mess of standards, with no GSM/UMTS that you can implement and sell globally. Pay TV operators are the gatekeeper to any other equipment in the living room (at least in markets where pay has a large share) unless you can make it really cheap - a couple of weeks before the Chromecast launched I suggested that the next Apple TV should be a $50 HDMI dongle, and the tech for that is moving forward in interesting ways. And of course we also have tablets themselves, which are certainly replacing second TV sets and may take a real share of primary set viewing too.
At the moment there are a lot of rumours that Apple has a new product - but the rumours mainly focus on how it would deal with the unique US content ownership and distribution structures, not the user experience, which is actually the real question. That is, in the US a big part of the user experience gap is the simple availability of content per se, but elsewhere that is much less of an issue. In the UK, for example, all the main broadcasters put the last 7 or 30 days of content online for free, on any device, with no restrictions or messing around. iPad, iPhone, Android, Smart TV, games console - anywhere, any device, any time. And yet peak streams on the BBC's iPlayer service are 600k or so, where peak linear TV viewing is over 20m, and linear TV viewing shows no sign at all of declining.
How do people really want to watch?
This in turn points to another question, and perhaps a slightly subversive one: how do people actually want to watch 'TV' (or whatever we call it)? Hundreds of millions of normal people really do just come home, turn on the TV and watch whatever's on - if you offered something less passive, do we really know how many would do it? That is, the idea that no-one would watch linear broadcast TV if on-demand worked 'properly' (whatever that might mean) is really just an assumption.
The really big question here is how TV viewing would change if you did move from the current model of TV as a largely undirected, passive experience, to one that required (/'allowed') you to make choices. If you come home and turn on a random piece of generic light entertainment you'll watch it, but you might never choose to watch it, much less search for it. So is that a bundling problem or a recommendation problem? Should we think of TV viewing hours as propped up by filler shows in the same way that CD albums were full of filler tracks, and that if we go to a fluid on-demand environment people might just stop watching that filler? Or would the right passive programming system - 'Pandora for TV' replace one passive experience with another, more tailored and targeted one, with the greater accessibility of long-tail content taking up the slack? Of course, a lot of TV channel branding and programming is about just this - in effect a lot of TV is 'Pandora for TV'. Either way, this is really about unbundling shows from TV channels, not unbundling channels (or on-demand channel brands) from cable TV subscriptions. And (looking back to Netflix) how would that cascade back though the TV production system? How many fewer shows might be made? How would they be funded? And what would happen to the 'golden age of TV'?
Google, TV, Apple, Strategy

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Roasted mixed nuts with infused cherries, fruit and chocolate covered raisins.
A luxury trail mix combining high quality, roasted mixed nuts with with the richness of infused cherries, fruit and chocolate-covered raisins. A delicious treat of a snack.
Ingredients: Roasted mixed nuts 45%, [(Peanuts, cashews, almonds), salt], dried fruit 44% [dried cranberries (cranberries, sugar, sunflower oil), dried cherries (sour cherries, sugar, sunflower oil), black raisins (raisins, sunflower oil)], dark chocolate raisins [raisins, sugar, cocoa mass, cocoa butter, whey (milk), palm oil, emulsifier: sunflower lecithin, glazing agents: shellac, gum arabic]. Palm oil from RSPO source.


text:
10 November 2016 at 6:12pm
Lest we forget: field of remembrance unveiled in Royal Wootton Bassett
World War II veterans, serving soldiers and the families of those who died in conflict came together today for the unveiling of a field of Remembrance in Royal Wootton Bassett.
It's one of only six in the country, and contains thousands of personal messages and tributes to the fallen.
And for veterans it is a chance to remember old friends and comrades.
There are 20,000 crosses, each one commemorating the 20,000 servicemen and women who lost their lives.
For one veteran Royal Wootton Bassett's field of remembrance is particularly poignant as he came face to face with the friends he lost on the battle field.
A few of the guys I seen in Afghanistan before they lost their lives a few of the guys I saw in Iraq before they lost their lives so all of a sudden we're in Royal Wootton Bassett and the pictures there are in the ground.
It's wonderful I can look at them - it still gets a bit emotional - and it's good to see their faces smiling back, and I can remember them and other people can remember them as well which is really important.
– Capt TOMMY ROBERTS Royal Marines
The market town became famous for its military repatriation processions during our most recent conflicts.
But today it was a service to remember all those who'd served.
Laura Carey, Royal British Legion
Each one of the crosses has a hand-written personal message from a member of the public - many simply saying thankyou to those who've made the ultimate sacrifice.
The field of remembrance at Lydiard Park is open to the public for 10 days.
A chance for people to reflect and never forget.
Last updated Fri 11 Nov 2016
11 updates
Poppy Appeal and Remembrance 2016
Poppy parade as soldiers take part in commemorations
Dozens of soldiers have paraded through Plymouth as part of the city's Poppy Day activities.
Warminster's waterfall of knitted poppies
Volunteers have created a cascade of poppies on St Lawrence Chapel in Warminster - each one includes the name of a fallen soldier
Stunning handmade poppy waterfall on display at Cathedral
Britain's longest-serving poppy seller dies days after being presented with MBE
Giant "Thank You" in honour of the First World War


Exactly What Does Advanced schooling Entrance Essay Authors Indicate?
The knowledge essential for a clean consumer bank account is elementary private information. Our workers are native The english language loudspeakers with significant sums adventure, meaning you could relaxation some specific you'll get extraordinary deliver the results. The Showdown About College Entry Essay Authors approaches to Secure It Despite the fact that you're not required to secure a college diploma in any assigned leading, naturopathic academic institutions could possibly have standards you have got to accomplish. There are various totally different various types of scholarships or grants designed to benefit potential university students protect their training. Otherwise, nurses students could very well be asked to create their unique circumstance scientific studies.
out for entry essay writing provider, take a look forget about. Consequently, it's needed to make sure your high school entrance essay is well organized. If you want to have the top admission essay freelance writer in India by your side, the odds are, you are likely to see. The foremost frequently experienced newsprint making company that the majority of our customers will need is helpful publishing. So let's speak somewhat more about front door essays and exactly how you need to publish them.
You need to have a minumum of a single year of advanced schooling keeping to are eligible and you ought to be a member of your local chapter with the NBNA. There are numerous forms of faculty scholarships and grants, and many people think about the most common that include sporting and scholastic. Should you choose decide to do the job, obtaining a scholarship offers being able to be a little more picky with regards to the occupations you are taking on. Nearly all our school entrance essay freelance writers happen to be doing work in the region for decades, letting them purchase angle that particular-time substantial faculty individuals just don't have. College applying essay services on the internet is offer from massive wide variety of men and women who would like to receive into exact schools. Our faculty document publishing service is the best service of remarkable university papers to pupils all over the world. Exactly what the In-Herd Won't Share With You University or college Entrance Essay Writers It is usually better off if you'll be the absolute most time consuming elements of your previous yr! All it will require really is a minimal prep together with an open mind. On the earth of nursing, the reality experiments focus on particular clientele and lengthen information with regard to their unique problems, their own health care and attention history and their investigations. An ambition affirmation, in any other case termed as a affirmation of goal, is definitely a frequent element of many college programs. Be descriptive but brief, and take into account your own personal purpose is to always restrain your recommendation note to a post. Just one of the primary minutes of the essay formulating is always that almost all people now neglect is searching out the motif features which will be demonstrated. Resumes start to look and sounds precisely the same to these people. Our qualified freelance writers can manage virtually every sort of authoring project, together with Math and Science challenges and a great deal extra. Personal pc art is incredible!


Image Title: Industrial Pendant Lights For Kitchen Drabinskygallery Com Inside Lighting Plan 10. Post Title: Industrial Kitchen Lighting. Filename: industrial-pendant-lights-for-kitchen-drabinskygallery-com-inside-lighting-plan-10.jpg. Image Dimension: 570 x 684 pixels. Images Format: jpg/jpeg. Publisher/Author: scarcream. Uploaded Date: Saturday - October 27th. 2018 05:27:17 AM. Category: Architecture. Image Source: houseandgarden.co.uk. 50 Gorgeous Industrial Pendant Lighting Ideas In Kitchen Plan 4. 49 Awesome Kitchen Lighting Fixture Ideas Inspiring Pertaining To Industrial Decor 1. Best Industrial Kitchen Lighting Vintage Style Intended For Ideas 12. 50 Gorgeous Industrial Pendant Lighting Ideas Throughout Kitchen Decor 8. 10 Industrial Kitchen Island Lighting Ideas For An Eye Catching Yet With Plan 13. Industrial Style Kitchen Island Lighting Operation Update In Decor 2. Industrial Style Kitchen Lighting Lendance In Ideas 7. 10 Industrial Kitchen Island Lighting Ideas For An Eye Catching Yet Regarding 6. 19 Home Lighting Ideas Christmas Decorations Pinterest With Industrial Kitchen Remodel 17. Guest Post Industrial Touches In The Kitchen Kitchens Pinterest Inside Lighting Decor 14.


Come help us celebrate Global Accessibility Awareness Day. The Access Board will hold a town hall meeting in Berkeley on May 9. The event will feature welcoming remarks from Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates, a panel discussion on promoting accessibility in architecture and urban planning, and an open dialogue on accessible design.
Participants in the panel discussion, "Architecture and Urban Planning for the 21st Century: How Can We Foster Accessibility?" will include Dennis Corelis, California's Deputy State Architect, Professor Raymond Lifchez of the University of California at Berkeley's Department of Architecture, Fred Collignon, Associate Professor of City and Regional Planning at U.C. Berkeley, and Victor Santiago Pineda, a Chancellor's Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of California. Board Member Michael Graves, FAIA will moderate the session.
The Board's Medical Diagnostic Equipment Accessibility Standards Advisory Committee will hold its next meeting May 7 and 8 at the Board's Conference Center. The Board chartered this committee to advance its development of new accessibility standards for medical diagnostic equipment which it proposed for public comment last year.
The meeting agenda and other details are posted on the Board's website. Committee meetings are open to the public.
The Board unanimously elected Karen L. Braitmayer, FAIA as its new Chair on March 13. Braitmayer is a registered architect and principal with Karen Braitmayer, FAIA in Seattle, an architectural consulting firm specializing in accessibility and accessible design that she co-founded 20 years ago. She regularly advises state agencies, local governments, school districts, other architects, and home builders and owners on accessibility under various laws, including the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Fair Housing Act, and on compliance with state codes in housing, commercial, retail, institutional and educational projects. President Obama appointed Braitmayer to the Board in September 2010.
Braitmayer succeeds Susan Brita of the General Services Administration who was elected Vice Chair. Board officers serve for a term of one year.
The next webinar in the Board's free monthly series will take place May 2 from 2:30 - 4:00 (ET) and will review requirements in the ADA and ABA Accessibility Standards for elevators and platform lifts. The session will cover scoping provisions and technical requirements for the various types of elevators and platform lifts addressed. A representative from the National Elevator Industry will join Board staff in conducting the session to highlight various requirements in the referenced American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) safety standards.
The following webinar on June 6 from 2:30 - 4:00 (ET) will cover accessible fire alarm systems, including requirements for visual and audible appliances in the ADA and ABA Accessibility Standards and the referenced National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) Fire Alarm Code. Board staff will be joined by a NFPA representative in presenting this material.
The webinar series is made available in cooperation with the ADA National Network. For more information, including registration instructions, visit www.accessibilityonline.org. Questions for the webinars can be submitted in advance through this website. Archived copies of previous Board webinars are also available on the site.
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has released a housing discrimination mobile application (app) for iPhones and iPads. Developed by HUD's Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity and Hewlett Packard, the free app provides the public and the housing industry a quick and easy way to learn about their housing rights and responsibilities under the Fair Housing Act. It also allows users to file housing discrimination complaints under the Act. The Fair Housing Act bans discrimination in housing on the basis of disability, as well as race, color, gender, and religion in the public and private sectors.
"Having this first fair housing mobile application equips people everywhere with the information they need to combat housing discrimination," said John Trasviña, HUD Assistant Secretary for Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity. "We are maximizing the latest technology to make the process for filing fair housing complaints faster and easier and arming our fair housing partners with the information they need to understand their fair housing rights and responsibilities."
In addition to facilitating real-time delivery of housing discrimination complaints to HUD, the app provides information about the fair housing complaint process and access to access HUD's toll-free discrimination hotline and fair housing website. The app is available free from the Apple App store.
The National Council on Disability (NCD), a federal agency that advises the President, Congress, and other federal agencies on disability policy, has issued a report on the accessibility of U.S. foreign assistance programs. The report, "Toward the Full Inclusion of People with Disabilities: Examining the Accessibility of Overseas Facilities and Programs Funded by the United States," summarizes NCD's findings from a review of federal disability laws, the U.S. Agency for International Development's (USAID) disability policy, and the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities as they relate to foreign assistance programs.
the Defense Department provide clear guidance to contractors on the application of the ABA Accessibility Standards to construction projects it undertakes in developing countries.
For further information, visit NCD's website.


Central Asia may have hosted deserts for longer than anywhere on the planet – and degreening continues in this inner part of the world's largest continent.
These are the findings of Jeremy Caves at Stanford University and his colleagues, who worked out the amount of vegetation in Central Asia over time by analysing carbon isotopes in ancient soils. The relative levels of different isotopes reflect take-up by vegetation.
Caves and his team found consistent and exceptionally high levels of carbon-13 stretching back more than 30 million years. A high ratio of this isotope indicates low plant productivity, and hence low rainfall.
"It appears that Central Asia has been dry much longer than many other regions of the planet," says Caves. The Sahara desert, for instance, has existed fitfully for 7 million years, but evidence suggests it was green and covered in great rivers as little as 6000 years ago.
The American West and the Australian desert were wet during the last Ice Age.
"The American West was much wetter 20,000 years ago, during the last glacial maximum, than it is today," says Daniel Breecker at the University of Texas at Austin. Australia also had a "hiatus from aridity" at that time.
But Central Asia, which hosts deserts such as the Gobi, Ordos and Taklamakan, seems to have stayed dry.
Three historical factors account for the region's extreme and long-standing dryness, Caves concludes.
First, from about 45 million years ago, the rise of the Himalayas and the Tibetan plateau started to block moisture-bearing monsoon winds from the south, drying out the interior of parts of western China.
Second, from about 10 million years ago, the rise of the Altai mountains to the north cut off the other route for rain-bearing winds, extending the arid zone across Mongolia and as far as Kazakhstan.
And third, a gradual cooling of the planet resulted in the spread of ice sheets at the poles from about 20 million years ago, further reducing the amount of moisture that the winds can carry.


text:
Home » Shopping » The Best Game Boy Games of All Time
The Best Game Boy Games of All Time
March 21, 2021 Sophia Vergara
As video games continue to evolve and improve with realistic graphics and other high-tech features, you might miss the excitement and simplicity of a device like the GameBoy every once in a while.
Maybe you're in the mood to play a little Tetris or experience the world of Super Mario Land again. It might just be time to dust your Game Boy off, and while you're at it, you might want to consider purchasing some of these classic games to play on it.
We've also gathered lists of the best Game Boy Color games and GBA games to help you get your nostalgia on.
Adventure Island 2: Aliens In Paradise
'Adventure Island 2: Aliens In Paradise'
The original Adventure Island as an NES game wasn't quite, well, original. It was a Nintendo adaptation of Sega's Wonder Boy, a fun but derivative platform-adventure title where you play Master Higgins on his quest to save his beloved Princess Leilani from the Evil Witch Doctor. In Adventure Island 2: Aliens In Paradise (which is really a Game Boy port of the third NES installment), Master Higgins must once again rescue his girlfriend, this time from aliens. He's got some help, however, in the form of dinosaurs, including a triceratops and a pterodactyl, which he can ride and use to attack enemies. The addition of Flintstones-esque vehicular dinos, along with an expanded inventory system (eight items instead of the NES version's five) and a more developed power-up element, made Adventure Island 2: Aliens In Paradise a classic title for the Game Boy.
'Bionic Commando'
Like many of the games on this list, Game Boy's version of Bionic Commando is a port of the NES original. There are a few minor differences: Instead of the contemporary military setting of the NES release, the Game Boy adaptation is futuristic, and — for some reason — your character is named Rad Spencer, not Ladd Spencer. Maybe Game Boy made him cooler? Those tweaks aside, the portable Bionic Commando features all the impressive platformer gameplay of the home-console predecessor. Instead of jumping, Ladd/Rad Spencer gets around using the grappling hook in his bionic arm. This might seem like a small adjustment from the usual script, but it gave the game unique mechanics and set it apart from other similar titles like Contra.
Castlevania 2: Belmont's Revenge
'Castlevania 2: Belmont's Revenge'
The first Castlevania game for the Game Boy, 1989's Castlevania: The Adventure, was an unoriginal and unimpressive misfire. For Castlevania II: Belmont's Revenge, the developers returned a couple of years later with a portable game worthy of sitting alongside the home-console titles in the Castlevania series. Set roughly a hundred years before the events of the original NES Castlevania, you play another member of the Belmont clan, Christopher, as he seeks revenge against Dracula for kidnapping his son and turning him into a demon. To save his son and the rest of humanity, Christopher Belmont jumps and whips his way through four castles, each representing a different element. Unlike Castlevania: The Adventure, Belmont's Revenge features sub-weapons like holy water and axes. It also boasts improved graphics and a great, atmospheric soundtrack, a staple of the Castlevania franchise. Castlevania II: Belmont's Revenge demonstrates that the Belmonts can kick, er, whip ass regardless of console size.
Contra: The Alien Wars
'Contra: The Alien Wars'
The Contra series began as a coin-op arcade game, then it moved into living rooms worldwide as an influential and infamous (considering its difficulty) run-and-gun title by Konami. Then, it migrated from home to handheld consoles with Contra: The Alien Wars, a Game Boy adaptation of Super Nintendo's Contra III: The Alien Wars, dropping the Roman numeral somewhere along the way. The developers dropped some other things too, like many of the enemy bosses, an entire level, and the ability to hold two weapons. Don't let these changes be a buzzkill, though! The game was still loads of run-and-gun fun, and this time you could take it to go.
'Donkey Kong'
By most accounts, Mario is the most famous video game character of all time. He first appeared, as "Jumpman," in the 1981 arcade game Donkey Kong, in which he must save a damsel in distress, Pauline, from the titular Donkey Kong, all while dodging barrels. The 1994 Game Boy version didn't mess with a winning formula, and simply took the super-influential arcade game's four stages and made them portable. Oh, wait–hold up! After you've "beat" the game and the victory theme begins, Donkey Kong wakes up, snatches Pauline, and runs away. What follows is 97 more stages across nine worlds, with a final battle against a mutated, gigantic Donkey Kong. Now that's a plot twist!
Donkey Kong Land
'Donkey Kong Land'
This — the Game Boy translation of Donkey Kong Country for the Super Nintendo console — looks remarkably good, especially considering that by 1995 the Game Boy was becoming an antique. Developed by the storied Rare company, Donkey Kong Land follows the Kong clan as they try to save their home from the dreaded Kremlings. It was also pretty meta, with Donkey and Diddy Kong reflecting on their video-game fame and setting out to prove that a game doesn't need "fancy [SNES] graphics" to be good. They were right.
'Dr. Mario'
Originally developed for the NES, Dr. Mario worked better as a Game Boy title, despite lacking the colorful visuals of the home version. Apparently, Mario got his MD and has to prescribe pills to patients, filling up bottles with your help (this angered a lot of parents at the time, concerned that the game was teaching their kids some informal pharmacology). This is all pretty much just window dressing to hide the fact that Dr. Mario is a rather blatant ripoff of Tetris. As far as material to crib from, though, Tetris is a stellar choice. So, by the transitive property, Dr. Mario was a fun and habit-forming puzzle game, just what the doctor ordered.
F-1 Race
'F-1 Race'
F-1 Race was perhaps most notable for its accompanying hardware. It was often sold alongside the Game Boy four-player adapter, which let you compete with three of your friends, and it was the first Game Boy game to include a battery backup, which allowed you to record your best times. These two features made F-1 Race a technical achievement, plus it was a solidly enjoyable racing game.
'Final Fantasy Adventure'
This action-RPG title is more like Zelda than a Final Fantasy game, featuring a top-down point of view and real-time battles. You could also kill townspeople if you were so inclined. Along with hack-and-slash elements, Final Fantasy Adventure emphasized player stats and leveling up, making it the best of both the action-adventure and role-playing worlds. It also sported an excellent soundtrack, crisp graphics, and hours of quality gameplay.
Final Fantasy Legend 2
'Final Fantasy Legend 2'
Now here is a Final Fantasy Game Boy game with all those classic RPG features: A world map and a focus on statistics and long and challenging gameplay. The storyline revolves around your character's quest to find his or her father while collecting shards of a broken goddess statue that contain magical properties. It all adds up to a sequel that outshines its predecessor.
Gargoyle's Quest
'Gargoyle's Quest'
What a journey: Firebrand, the gargoyle of Gargoyle's Quest, goes from being a stock villain in Ghosts 'n Goblins to being the hero of his very own adventure game, on a mission to stop an even badder bad guy, a demon called King Breager and his army of Destroyers. Gargoyle's Quest follows in the same vein as Ghosts 'n Goblins, featuring difficult side-scroller gameplay. As the game progresses, Firebrand becomes more powerful, gaining new abilities and new types of projectiles to shoot at enemies, making it the kind of game that rewards you for putting up with its difficulty.
Harvest Moon GB
'Harvest Moon GB'
Harvest Moon let indoor kids sit back and plant crops, raise livestock, and chop wood for fun. Though farming doesn't quite sound like the basis of a thrilling game, this simulator game somehow worked. In case farm chores didn't hold players' attention, ghosts of deceased relatives and harvest sprites were thrown in for good measure. This Game Boy release was followed mere months by the Game Boy Color version.
'Kid Dracula'
Kid Dracula is both a parody and spin-off of the much more serious-minded Castlevania series. While Castlevania is gothic and ominous, Kid Dracula is cartoonish and bouncy, a lively take on the franchise's vampire mythology. You play Kid Dracula, the pint-sized bloodsucker, who has to stop the villainous Garamoth. That name will sound familiar to Castlevania devotees: Garamoth, renamed Galamoth, appears as a boss in Castlevania: Symphony Of The Night for PlayStation, albeit a lot meaner-looking. With breezy mechanics and an emphasis on exploration, Kid Dracula was a fun and inspired homage to both Castlevania and the platform genre as a whole.
'Kid Icarus: Of Myths And Monsters'
The handheld sequel to the NES original, Kid Icarus: Of Myths And Monsters is just as good. Pit is back, armed with his trademark bow and unlimited supply of arrows, defending Angel Land from the evil Orcos and his army of demons. Like the original, it was a tough platformer, with fluid graphics and interesting enemy designs. Unfortunately, it wasn't a huge hit, and Nintendo wouldn't pick up the Kid Icarus series again until 2012, with Kid Icarus: Uprising for the 3DS.
Kirby's Dream Land
'Kirby's Dream Land'
The developers at HAL Laboratory grew to like the dummy character they'd drawn so much that when it came time to replace it with a more advanced image, they decided to stick with the stand-in. That dummy character, Kirby, is now one of the most iconic video game characters, a part of the Nintendo canon. Compared to the frenetic, intense platform titles of the period, Kirby's Dream Land is, appropriately, relaxing and dream-like. Alas, as fun and fluffy the game was, the cartridge had no save files, which meant that players had to beat the game in one sitting. Not an enormously difficult task, to be sure, but still–c'mon, guys, save files! Those are important.
Kirby's Dream Land 2
'Kirby's Dream Land 2'
As is the case with most sequels, Kirby's Dream Land 2 takes the formula of the original and adds more, more, more, featuring more worlds and more enemies. The developers also gave Kirby the ability to "borrow" the powers of the enemies he swallows, a skill that was introduced in Kirby's Adventure for the NES. In his quest to save his beloved Dream Land, Kirby's accompanied by his animal buddies — an owl, a hamster, and a sunfish — each with their own abilities. And this time around, they didn't forget about the save files.
Mario's Picross
'Mario's Picross'
This brain-teaser Mario game was huge in Japan and nowhere else, turning it into a bit of a cult classic in Europe and the United States. The game featured 256 Mario-branded logic puzzles in which players are guided by vertical and horizontal sets of numbers to mark boxes in a grid, which together form an image. This nifty puzzle game was perfect for folks who preferred Sudoku to Street Fighter.
'Mega Man 5'
The maniacal Dr. Wily is at it again! In the year "20XX AD," Mega Man, with a powered-up Mega Arm and a robot sidekick, must confront eight powerful robots called Stardroids, which he discovers are all part of Dr. Wily's latest plot to take over the world. Unlike previous Mega Man releases for the Game Boy, which were just portable rehashes of home-console titles, Mega Man 5 featured all-new bad guys (the Stardroids) and storyline, welcome changes to a series that was starting to show its age.
Mega Man: Dr. Wily's Revenge
'Mega Man: Dr. Wiley's Revenge'
Mega Man: Dr. Wily's Revenge was the first handheld title in the Mega Man series. As great a milestone as that is, it came with a cost: Instead of the typical eight levels, this portable iteration had only four, making it a relatively brisk endeavor. Well, maybe not so brisk, considering it retained the high difficulty that the Mega Man franchise is notorious for. Even though it wasn't exactly innovative, Mega Man: Dr. Wily's Revenge ought to be appreciated as a game that paved the way for bigger and better things.
Metroid 2: Return Of Samus
'Metroid 2: Return Of Samus'
Metroid 2: Return Of Samus dramatically polarized fans and critics. Some praised its level design, replay value, and final scene (more on that in a second), and others criticized it for bland and fuzzy graphics and unimpressive audio. Even its sharpest critics, however, give credit where credit is due. Metroid 2 sets up the rest of the series perfectly with its last scene, in which Samus is unable to bring herself to exterminate a baby Metroid, the last of its kind. This was heady stuff for a Game Boy title.
Ninja Gaiden Shadow
'Ninja Gaiden Shadow'
Set three years before the NES Ninja Gaiden, Ryu makes his handheld debut to stop Emperor Garuda from taking over New York City. Though this entry lacked the pizzazz of its home console brethren, Ninja Gaiden Shadow was nonetheless a rollicking ride, with clean graphics, straightforward controls, and Ryu in peak ass-kicking form.
Pokemon Red/Blue
'Pokemon Red/Blue'
Here it is, folks, the RPGs that launched a media empire of the best Pokemon games. Who could have guessed that when Nintendo released Pokemon Red and Blue — first in Japan in 1996, then in the U.S. in 1998 — they were the beginnings of a multibillion-dollar franchise, including more video games, a trading card series, a TV show, comic books, and feature films? Maybe the brainiacs at Nintendo and Game Freak (the company that developed the games) did, but still, it's an astounding achievement. And the games themselves are impressive as well, with a sprawling overworld littered with critters. The RPG format was tailor-made for the "catch 'em all" mindset as players sought to boost their stats and level-up their Pokemon. Pokemon Red/Blue, we salute you!
'Samurai Shodown'
Originally developed and published for SNK's Neo Geo console, then ported to numerous other consoles including the Game Boy, Samurai Shodown [sic] was released following the blockbuster success of Capcom's Street Fighter II. For the most part, the two games are similar, except for one key distinction: Samurai Shodown features weapons-based combat, as opposed to the hand-to-hand combat of Street Fighter II and its clones. It was also set in 18th century Japan, rather than in the present, and focused on quick, damaging strikes instead of racking up those combos. These small but meaningful differences made Samurai Shodown an underrated gem of a Game Boy title.
' 'Super Mario Land'
It's not really fair to the competition when you throw Mario into a "best Nintendo games" race. He's gonna come out on top, or close to it. Here he is, close to the top with Super Mario Land, a 1989 launch title for the Game Boy. Just as Super Mario Bros. introduced many to the NES and home consoles in general, Super Mario Land showed the world what handheld gaming could do. Yeah, the monochromatic graphics are way old-school now and so is its side-scrolling gameplay, but the game is still super fun.
'Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins'
The first Super Mario Land introduced us to a pocket-sized Mario, but there were a few weird things about this version: Odd power-ups, horizontal shooting levels, and goofy sound effects. For the sequel, the development team ironed out those wrinkles and went back to basics, delivering a title that was a lot like Super Mario World for the SNES. With creative level designs, an overworld map, and the ability to move right and left through a level, Super Mario Land 2 was a welcome re-introduction.
Super R.C. Pro-Am
'Super R.C. Pro-Am'
Developed by Rare as a follow-up to R.C. Pro-Am for the NES, Super R.C. Pro-Am was one of those few Game Boy titles that employed the console's four-player adapter, letting you race against three of your pals through 24 different tracks. Super R.C. Pro-Am was also notable for its visual and sound design, with its revving engines and screeching tires, which put players in the racing spirit.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Fall Of The Foot Clan
'Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Fall Of The Foot Clan'
As far as tie-in games go, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Fall Of The Foot Clan is a pretty good one. Developed and released in 1990, during the height of Turtlemania, the storyline and gameplay are both pretty basic stuff: The Ninja Turtles must side-scroll their way to victory against Krang and Shredder, as usual. But where Fall Of The Foot Clan lacks in imagination, it makes up for in execution. The game is simply well-made, with a keen visual style and fun, engrossing gameplay. It takes less than 30 minutes to beat, but you'll want to play it again and hang out with those pizza-loving turtles some more.
'Tetris'
Who knows how many hours have been wasted playing Tetris? Probably years' worth, but ya know, no regrets, because Tetris is an amazingly fun, simple and addictive puzzler, one that has imprinted itself onto our brains. Along with Super Mario Land, Tetris was a launch title for the Game Boy in 1989, making it synonymous with handheld gaming. Tetris has been re-imagined on numerous consoles — and even received the Battle Royale treatment with Tetris 99 — but it all started with this handheld game.
'The Legend Of Zelda: Link's Awakening'
What started as an after-hours experiment by the people of Nintendo's Analysis and Development division became a Game Boy port of SNES's The Legend Of Zelda: A To The Past.
This then turned into an original title, Link's Awakening, the first handheld Zelda release. It was notable for not being set in Hyrule — instead, finds himself stranded on an island guarded by something called the Wind Fish. The gameplay follows as he searches the island for eight musical instruments that will awaken the Wind Fish and allow him to escape from the island.
Link's Awakening was an engaging and memorable action-adventure game, even if it did have monochrome limitations. After more than 25 years since the first Zelda game's overwhelming success, Nintendo finally adapted it into a Nintendo Switch game version, giving credence to the age-old adage "better late than never."
Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3
'Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3'
Wario made his initial appearance in Super Mario Land 2, where he quickly gathered a good-sized fanbase. In fact, the character was so popular that Super Mario Land 3: Wario Land centers around him. The Mario franchise generally provides you with the standard entourage of unoffending good-guy characters. However, in the case of Wario Land, Super Mario provides a refreshing twist as you take on the character of the most notorious bad guy himself: Wario.
Villains are completely self-involved, so this game isn't about valiant displays of selflessness like rescue missions or helping Mushroom Kingdom inhabitants. Your task is simply to amass as much money as you can. Then you use that money to attempt to build a castle that puts Mario's to shame. You'll get a kick out of the novelty of being the villain.
https://www.digitaltrends.com/gaming/best-game-boy-games/
NIKE Men's Tanjun Sneakers, Breathable Textile Uppers and Comfortable Lightweight Cushioning
5 Ways to Save Money on Your Grocery Bill
Stunning Home Wine Cellars to Inspire Oenophiles
Previous: The Best Online Multiplayer Games for Android and iOS
Next: The Best Android Games You Can Play Offline


Here you can keep in the know, and find out about what is currently going on both in and around the college, and what is coming up in the near future.
Use this feature to view what exciting events we have here at Shooters Hill College.
An example includes, an exquisite evening of fine dining at our City View Restaurant.
View inspiring article-based information, published by individual departments to keep you familiarised with what the students here at Shooters Hill College are getting up to, and the thrilling trips and projects they get to participate in.
This is for both students and parents to allow you to have knowledge on when each of our terms at SHC start and finish.


We wish to inform you that the Library will be operating from 8.00AM – 9.00PM on Weekdays starting from Monday 1 April 2013. On Weekends, we will be operating from 8.00AM - 5.00PM and Closed on Public Holidays.
We wish you all the best and Good Luck.
Update: The Examination Week will end on April 23, 2013.


This filler is uniquely designed and developed as an useful filling machine applying for the varied types of bottling, achieving the reasonable system quite different from the conventional sending-blade method. The cost and time for replacement are eliminated without using the sending-blades. Switching of bottles is made by one-touch operation. Replacement parts are almost unnecessary. This filler is the most useful for liquid products such as liquors, portable water, liquid condiments (soy sauce, vinegar etc.).
●Filling ability change according to the size of nozzles.
TF-16〜24 type can have two different lines for filling two types of bottle by separating the tank.


text:
Q: Julia prints different results when calculating with variables The problem is difficult to describe (hence the bad titel), it is easier to show it:
matr =
[
1 1 3
2 1 10
3 2 3
13 8 10]

i=1

print(matr[:,2].==i .* matr[:,3].!=i)
x = matr[:,2].==i
y = matr[:,3].!=i
print(x .* y)

The first and the second print() should be equivalent. Regardless, the first one prints Bool[false, false, false, false] the second one prints Bool[true, true, false, false].
Since the first result is wrong, I am wondering how this problem arises and how it can be prevented.

A: This is an operator precedence issue. What you write in the first print is not what you intended.
print(matr[:,2].==i .* matr[:,3].!=i)

This is equivalent to (see the parentheses)
print(matr[:,2] .== (i .* matr[:,3]) .!=i)

which is a chaining comparison, so that both matr[k,2] == (i .* matr[k,3])) and matr[k,2] == (i .* matr[k,3])) must be true for the kth index in order for the chaining comparison to return true for the kth index.
Instead you can write the same term with explicit parentheses to take care of the precedence issue.
print((matr[:,2].==i) .* (matr[:,3].!=i))

Instead of multiplication, you can broadcast &.
print((matr[:,2].==i) .& (matr[:,3].!=i))

Both of these should give you the right answer.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
Home › Nourison 2000 2207 Beige Rug 01823
Nourison 2000 2207 Beige Rug 01823
Pale parchment takes on dramatic life when contrasted by an ebony black border in this delicate yet dynamic persian-influenced design. Stylized flowers burst into bloom and create a sense of pulsating energy that makes a room come to life. Enjoy the sensual beauty of its thick, lush pile.
Collection: Nourison 2000
Rug Type: Handmade Rug
Materials: 100% Wool, Silk
Shipping Dimensions: 5" w x 5" d x 24" h
2'3" x 8'
2'6" x 12'
Shipping Dimensions: 10" w x 10" d x 30" h
Shipping Dimensions: 10" w x 10" d x 102" h
Weight: 110 pounds
Choose Size 5'6" x 8'6" 2' x 3' 2'6" x 4'3" 4' x 4' 2'3" x 8' 3'9" x 5'9" 2'6" x 12' 6' x 6' 8' x 8' 7'6" x 9'6" 7'9" x 9'9" 8'6" x 11'6" 9'9" x 13'9"
5'6" x 8'6" 2' x 3' 2'6" x 4'3" 4' x 4' 2'3" x 8' 3'9" x 5'9" 2'6" x 12' 6' x 6' 8' x 8' 7'6" x 9'6" 7'9" x 9'9" 8'6" x 11'6" 9'9" x 13'9"


The holiday celebrations are upon us, and we are busy getting ready to receive a house-full of family and guests. To make room, we have been putting things away – only to discover in many cases that we have way more stuff already tucked away into closets, drawers, basements. garages, attics, cases, and other storage locations in our homes. We create a new year's resolution to purge ourselves of some of these excess items. How are we going to put all of our decorations away in a couple of weeks when there doesn't seem to be the room to do so?
The idea is not to be negative about all of the stuff we have amassed or to get down on ourselves for having so much stuff. It might be neatly organized but still a lot, or it might be jumbled together. We want to reduce the amount of stuff we have to make our homes safer and more livable. We need to have fewer items that can be located when they are needed without the hassle of sorting through piles of unimportant or unneeded items to find what we want.
This leads us to our resolution – to begin paring back on what we keep. It likely won't be an overnight process because we have to pick up and look at each item, although there are some items (broken, obsolete, or things we know we won't wear or use anymore) that can go in the toss or giveaway pile right now.
If our purpose is to find good homes for serviceable items that we just don't need or no longer want, and we don't want to try to sell them or really don't need the little amount of money that might be generated, we need to consider donating the items. "We" means us personally as well as our clients that we advise.
If we do decide that we want to sell a few of the items, or we want to place a donation value on something for tax purposes, we need to consider the current value versus what we paid for the items or what we think they are worth. Something that cost $200 new might only be worth a few dollars – if that – today because of the color, style, or age of it, We need to be realistic about pricing items. That is another reason many people just skip this option and go straight to the discard or donation.
If an item that we are considering donating to an organization for them to sell is not desirable enough, attractive enough, or appealing enough for us to want to acquire it (even though we clearly wouldn't want to because that is why we are getting rid of it), then it belongs in the trash. Sometimes even "free" is too high of a price for some items.


The Recliner Commentaries: Oprah afraid of Palin?
Is Oprah afraid that a interview with Sarah Palin will hurt Obama's campaign? Read Ed Morrissey for the story.
Hollywood and the media are scared stiff that if they do ANYTHING with the Republican party they might screw up Obama's chance to the presidency. The bias is so thick.
On a side note, it seems rather hypocritical that a powerhouse like the media can express their bias freely, but the church and religion are handcuffed behind their backs.


The practice of drinking tea is deeply ingrained in Chinese culture. It is believed that the practice originated there in 2737 BC.
Legends say that while Emperor Shennong was boiling water, a leaf from a Camellia sinensis tree fell into his pot and the tradition was born. In addition to rice, oil, salt, soy sauce, vinegar and firewood, tea is considered one of the necessities of life.
All Chinese teas come from the Camellia sinensis plant and can be categorised into four main categories – white, green, oolong and black. Initially, Chinese teas were used primarily for medicinal purposes such as purging the digestive tract of toxins and while most continue to believe in the curative powers of Chinese tea, it has also developed into a flavour loved by most Chinese. You will see green tea-flavoured ice cream and cakes as well as many local dishes.
The Chinese tea drinking ceremony is used for various cultural purposes in China. It can be employed to show respect, to apologise, in wedding ceremonies and as a means to express thanks.


text:
Report on Galeras (Colombia) — March 2006
Galeras
Bulletin of the Global Volcanism Network, vol. 31, no. 3 (March 2006)
Galeras (Colombia) Heightened seismicity through April 2006; increased lava dome volume noted
Global Volcanism Program, 2006. Report on Galeras (Colombia) (Wunderman, R., ed.). Bulletin of the Global Volcanism Network, 31:3. Smithsonian Institution. https://doi.org/10.5479/si.GVP.BGVN200603-351080
1.22°N, 77.37°W; summit elev. 4276 m
Galeras was last reported on in BGVN 31:01. During the first weeks of November 2005 seismometers recorded tornillo earthquakes (long-period events with seismic traces that look like screws in profile and are currently thought to be related to pressurized fluid flow at shallow depth). Minor deformation was also recorded at Galeras. The earthquakes were similar to those that occurred before eruptions in 1992-93. On 24 November at 0246 seismic signals indicated the beginning of an eruption. Ash fell in the towns of Fontibon, San Cayetano, Postobon, and in north Pasto. Activity decreased by the next day, so the Alert Level was reduced. Thousands of people were evacuated during the week prior to the eruption. Gas emissions continued through December 2005 and January and February 2006. During 23 January to 6 February, the lava dome in the main crater continued to grow; strong degassing occurred in several sectors of the active cone and around the lava dome. Galeras remained at Alert Level 3 ("changes in the behavior of volcanic activity have been noted") through February 2006.
During the last week of February, seismic stations detected an average of 280 small earthquakes per day. On 26 February a shallow M 4.8 volcano-tectonic earthquake below the volcano was recorded at 1009, followed by 35 smaller earthquakes. SO2 flux of about 600 metric tons per day was measured during February. Steam and gas rose to ~ 700 m above the volcano.
During 27 February to 6 March an increase in the volume of the lava dome located in the main crater was observed. During March, seismicity at Galeras decreased in comparison to the previous several weeks and deformation was measured at the volcano. Plumes of mainly steam, gas, and small amounts of ash were emitted from the volcano and rose to a maximum height of 1.2 km above the volcano.
Due to an increase in tremor at Galeras beginning on the morning of 28 March 2006, INGEOMINAS raised the Alert Level from 3 to 2 (likely eruption in days or weeks). On 28 March, energetic signals and tremor began and seismic instruments detected very shallow low-energy hybrid signals, similar to ones recorded during 1991-1993 when dome emplacement occurred on the main crater's floor.
The increase in seismic energy ended on 29 March. The number of earthquakes beneath the volcano decreased during 28 March to 3 April (an average of 66 earthquakes was recorded daily), in comparison to the previous week (an average of 89 earthquakes was recorded daily). Steam columns rose up to ~ 500 m above the volcano and the outer layer of the lava dome at the volcano's summit cooled in comparison to previous weeks.
During 5-24 April, decreases were observed in seismicity, deformation, gas emissions, and temperatures. According to INGEOMINAS, most of the explosive eruptions at Galeras in the past 17 years occurred when parameters were at similarly low levels. In addition, the current lava dome has a significantly greater volume than the dome that was destroyed during an eruption in 1992. The volume of magma in the interior of the volcanic system is greater than during 1989-1993. Galeras remained at Alert Level 2.
Geological Summary. Galeras, a stratovolcano with a large breached caldera located immediately west of the city of Pasto, is one of Colombia's most frequently active volcanoes. The dominantly andesitic complex has been active for more than 1 million years, and two major caldera collapse eruptions took place during the late Pleistocene. Long-term extensive hydrothermal alteration has contributed to large-scale edifice collapse on at least three occasions, producing debris avalanches that swept to the west and left a large open caldera inside which the modern cone has been constructed. Major explosive eruptions since the mid-Holocene have produced widespread tephra deposits and pyroclastic flows that swept all but the southern flanks. A central cone slightly lower than the caldera rim has been the site of numerous small-to-moderate eruptions since the time of the Spanish conquistadors.
Information Contacts: Diego Gomez Martinez, Observatorio Vulcanológico y Sismológico de Pasto (OVSP), INGEOMINAS, Carrera 31, 1807 Parque Infantil, PO Box 1795, Pasto, Colombia (URL: https://www2.sgc.gov.co/volcanes/index.html; Washington Volcanic Ash Advisory Center (VAAC), Satellite Analysis Branch (SAB), NOAA/NESDIS E/SP23, NOAA Science Center Room 401, 5200 Auth Road, Camp Springs, MD 20746, USA (URL: http://www.ospo.noaa.gov/Products/atmosphere/vaac/); El Pais (URL: http://elpais-cali.terra.com.co/paisonline/).


We were not the only "ship-in-the-bay"
and this luxury motor cruiser.
We started to walk, dodging poo, tourists and the aforementioned donkeys.
One of the photographers from our ship.
There is a rest stop for the donkeys at the top of the stairs.
One of the MANY cappuccinos that we enjoyed.
Home time for the "beasties"
We were told that Santorini offers wonderful sunsets.
Unfortunately, the weather did NOT play along.


From Top Left: Coffee and sunshine; Celebrating International Cat Day with my favorite feline; Girls Night Out (GNO) and live music with some friends; The epic Minecraft cake my MIL made for my eldest child's birthday.
I'm a little embarrassed that this is the first mention I've made on my blog about this, but as I've shared this on my social media feeds (follow me! I'm on Twitter and the Instagram!), I don't feel like this is a total failure to communicate. My work-in-progress is on the long list for Killer Nashville's Claymore Award.
I'll be making the trip down to Nashville later this month. I cannot express how thrilled and honored I was to be counted among my fellow nominees.
Listening: In no particular order: Patti Smith (read the touching tribute she penned to her former lover and longtime friend Sam Shepard here); Sturgill Simpson; and Gillian Welch.
Reading: Read Elizabeth Kostova's "The Shadow Lands." And it was marvelous. While Kostova's debut novel "The Historian" is one of my all-time favorites, her sophomore effort "The Swan Thieves" left a lot to be desired. In "The Shadow Lands" Kostova returns to familiar territory in Eastern Europe, telling the story of a modern day young woman who finds herself meshed in a mystery that has ties to the past.
Writing Life: Eeeeedddddiiiiittttsssss. Edits. Edits. Edits.
That's about it for me, friends … hope that this blog post finds you well and ready for the weekend!
Next postRecovering from a Killer (Nashville) weekend!


Will kicked his heels impatiently against the legs of the library table. If Charlotte were there, she would have told him to stop damaging the furniture, though half the furniture in the library already bore the marks of years of abuse — chips in the pillars where he and Jem had been practicing swordplay outside the training room, scuffed shoe-prints on the windowseats where he'd sat for hours reading. Books with turned-down pages and broken spines, fingerprints on the walls.
Of course if Charlotte were there, they wouldn't be doing what they were currently doing, either, which was watching Tessa Change form from herself to Camille and back again. Jem sat beside Will on the library table, occasionally calling out encouragement or advice. Will, leaning back on his hands with an apple he had stolen from the kitchen beside him, was pretending to be barely paying attention.
But paying attention he was. Tessa was pacing up and down the room, her hands clenched at her sides in concentration. It was fascinating to watch her Change: there was a ripple, as of the smooth water of a pond disturbed by a thrown pebble, and her dark hair would thread through with blond, her body curving and changing in such a way that Will found it impossible to pull his eyes away. It was not usually considered polite to stare at a lady in such a direct way, and yet he was glad of the chance . . .
He picked up the apple by his side and began ostentatiously polishing it on his shirtfront, hoping it would hide the sudden shaking in his hands. Feelings for Tessa Gray were not acceptable. Feelings for anyone were dangerous, but feelings for a girl who was actually living in the Institute — someone who had become an intricate part of their plans, who he could not avoid — were especially so.
He knew what he had to do in such a circumstance. Drive her away; hurt her; make her hate him. And yet everything in him rebelled against the idea. It was because she was alone, vulnerable, he told himself. It would be such a great cruelty to do it . . .
He felt Jem shake with laughter beside him. What Jem did not know was that Will's feelings about ducks — and yes, he knew it was ridiculous to have complicated feelings about waterfowl, but he could not help it — were caught up with his memories of his childhood. In Wales, there had been a duck pond in front of the manor. As a child, Will had often gone out to throw bits of stale bread to the ducks. It amused him to watch them quacking and fighting over the remains of his breakfast toast. Or it did, until one of the ducks — a particularly large mallard – upon realizing that Will had no more bread in his pockets, raced at the boy and bit him sharply on the finger.
Will had only been six years old, and had retreated posthaste to the house, where Ella, already eight and immeasurably superior, had burst out laughing at his story and then bandaged up his finger. Will would have thought no more about it had it not been that on the next morning, upon leaving the house through the kitchen door, meaning to play the back garden, he had been arrested by the sight of the same black mallard, its beady eyes fixed on him. Before Will could move, it had darted at him and bitten him viciously on his other hand; by the time he had an opportunity to yell, the offending bird had vanished into the shrubbery.
Ella gave him a doubting look. But that night, before Will went to bed, he drew back the curtains of his bedroom to look out on the stars — and saw, motionless in the middle of the courtyard, the small black figure of a duck, eyes fixed on his bedroom window.
His yell brought Ella running. Together they stared out the window at the duck, which appeared ready to remain there all night. Finally, Ella shook her head. "I shall manage this," she said, and with a toss of her black braids, she stalked downstairs.
Through the window, Will saw her come out of the house. She marched up to the duck and bent down over it. For a moment, they appeared to be in intense conversation. After a few minutes, she straightened up, and the duck spun round, and with a final shake of its tailfeathers, strode out of the courtyard. Ella turned and came back inside.
Will did, and the duck never bothered him again. For years afterward he would ask Ella what she had done to get rid of the blasted thing, and she would only shake with silent laughter and say nothing. When he had fled from his house after her death, and was halfway to London, he had remembered her kissing him on the forehead — an unusual gesture for Ella, who was not as openly affectionate as Cecily, who he could never seen to detach from clinging on to his sleeves — and the memory had been like a hot knife going into him; he had curled up around the pain and cried.
Throwing poultry pies at the ducks in the park had been helpful, oddly; he had thought Ella, Ella, at first, but Jem's laughter had blown away some of the pain of the memory, and he had only thought how glad his sister would have been to have seen him laughing there in that green space, and how he had once had people who loved him, and still did now, even if it was only one.
Tessa looked at him sideways, and for a single moment, Will had the unnerving feeling that perhaps she saw through him better than he had imagined. She was Tessa then; her eyes were gray as the sea, and for a long pause all he could do was look at her, all else forgotten — apples, vampires, ducks, and everything else in the world that was not Tessa Gray.


The Instacoll gilding adhesive is number one choice for sign writers. The gloss is suitable for both indoor & outdoor, however, the matt is only for indoor. They are two types: 1h open time and 48h (HA). Use the HA for big projects that cannot be finished within an hour. Both can be reactivated with the activator even months later.


All our skis courses are taught in English!
In the unique setting in the heart of Belle Plagne, Paradiski, ELPRO ski school offers a new concept in skiing for children of 3 to 6 years.
75% ski instruction with the opportunity to pass the ESF tests – Piou Piou, Ourson or Flocon….
In an exceptional setting, in the Ours valley, in the heart of a pine forest, a magical adventure to discover skiing. Lumberjack hut, campfires, Savoyard snacks…..
The ski and adventure garden is composed of three secure zones dedicated to skiing, a 16 meters moving carpet to get our adventurers back to the "top of their piste" and a roundabout for fun skiing and sledging. The theme of the garden, as you may well have guessed, is adventure and mountains! No more slaloming between Mickey and Minnie Mouse, now it will be Marmot's, chamois and other surprises…..
Come and join us this winter!


text:
Should we 'bee' banning pollinator-harming pesticides?
Maud Webster looks at the government's decision to reverse controversial pesticide use
Maud Webster
Credit: Wikipedia
At the beginning of March, the government decided to reverse its contentious decision to lift a ban on a bee-harming pesticide, because sugar beet crop was at risk of beet yellow virus. The past couple of months have shed light on the delicate balance between appeasing both farmers' and environmental concerns, and the government's role mediating between the two.
On 8 January, the government overturned a pesticide ban on a product containing a chemical thiamethoxam for use on sugar beet seeds, due to the potential threat of a virus. Extensive lobbying from the National Farmers' Union, and British Sugar, encouraged the government to authorise a temporary, short term (at most 120 day) lift of the ban, which the government's decision argued to appear "necessary because of a danger which cannot be contained by any other reasonable means".
Hundreds of thousands of people signed petitions to advocate for the pesticide ban
At the time, The Wildlife Trusts threatened to take legal action over the use of the pesticide, as studies show it damages both pollinators and aquatic life. Hundreds of thousands of people also signed petitions to advocate for the pesticide ban. The pesticide ban had initially come into place in 2018, after EU member states supported a near-total neonicotinoids ban.
Image Credit: Shalom Tse
Professor Dave Goulson, an ecological specialist of bees and other insects at the University of Sussex, slammed the decision as "foolish", arguing it puts "short term economic gain before the health of the environment".
Writing to MPs in protest and voting for parties with the greenest policies are concrete actions individuals can take to prevent future decisions in favour of damaging pesticides
Bees and other pollinators are essential to pollinate the majority of crops; trends suggest a third of British wild bees and hoverflies are in decline, which is a major concern. Thiamethoxam is a neonicotinoid, a type of insecticide chemically similar to nicotine, and is believed to pose a threat to pollinators including bees. According to Professor Goulson, even minute quantities of neonicotinoids can impair the navigation of bees and suppress bees' immune systems.
Our government has authorized use of neonicotinoids on sugar beet - so we can pollute the environment with insect-killing neurotoxins while growing a food with zero nutritive value. Whatever happened to Gove's "Green Brexit"?https://t.co/Kx8XKyR20u
— Dave Goulson (@DaveGoulson) January 8, 2021
As of this month, the product was banned again, as the colder weather puts sugar beet crops at less risk of the beet yellow virus. At the time, Dave Goulson suggested on Twitter that there was little action individuals could take against the specific decision to allow farmers to use the pesticide. However, he did note that writing to MPs in protest, and voting for parties with the greenest policies in the next election, are concrete actions you can take to prevent a similar situation occurring.
The uproar caused by the lifting of the ban, and the government's pragmatic decision to side with farming lobbyists, demonstrate how controversial and tricky these environmental choices are. Looking to the future, it will be important to ensure alternative measures are able to alleviate the threats to which vulnerable species are subjected. Ultimately, pesticide bans are incredibly important and the government should be ensuring they protect the environment, rather than protecting short term economic gain.
AUTHOR: Maud Webster
she/they | third year architecture & urban planning student @ newcastle | co-head of culture for the 21/22 academic year
A look at the bunnies that helped us get through 2020
Beauty: in the AI of the beholder?
Brickflats: The city artwork addressing our miserable housing crisis
Proposed Ouseburn housing threatens views
Does size really matter? Arguments for the perfect length of a film
Storm Arwen strikes the North East
Newcastle's coffee scene: Cafes for every occasion
BRIT Awards removes gendered categories
Latest urban rewilding project set to be UK's largest
Music streaming: more environmentally damaging than you'd think