text:
At least they don't do this any more . . .
Vandals at Oval
By Morrie Buckner
Vandals tried to burn down the grandstands at Middle Park soccer stadium on Friday night. Several rows of seats were charred. The vandals also chopped down both sets of goal posts. These had to be replaced before yesterday's Hakoah-Lions match. Anti-soccer slogans were daubed on walls and terraces in letters 18 inches high. These included 'Down with soccer'. 'Go home wogs'. South Melbourne police have questioned two youths.
Sun, 24 May 1965, p. 33.
FIFA and World Cups 2018 and 2022
by Roy Hay
Surprise, surprise. The FIFA inquiry into corruption in the bidding process for the World Cups in 2018 and 2022 has now been completed. The two countries whose media have been most vociferous in alleging improprieties in the bidding process, England and Australia, are castigated for engaging in nefarious practices, while of the two successful bidders, Russia, gets a slap on the wrist and Qatar is completely exonerated from any involvement. The full report on what FIFA believes went on is not released for legal reasons, so all we have is a very longwinded statement by the head of the adjudicating body, Hans Joachim Eckert, which considered the report and selected the items to be discussed.
The treatment of Russia is almost laughable. Apparently the Russian football authorities hired the computers on which the work was done, then returned them to the suppliers at the conclusion of the process and they have since been destroyed. So no evidence there. Then Google, which might have had some of the Russian data on its Gmail accounts 'had not responded request' (sic) to release it. Why an investigative body with no coercive powers should think it could get to the bottom of the behaviour by a country whose football body is overseen by a former official of the KGB is hardly a puzzle.
American lawyer Michael Garcia, who conducted the two-year inquiry on behalf of FIFA, said the Eckert commentary on his report 'contains numerous materially incomplete and erroneous representations'. Michael Garcia has been banned from entering Russia. He plans to appeal to FIFA though for precisely what is not clear. Several influential people have argued that his report should now be published in full.
In the case of Qatar all the financial shenanigans engaged in by Mohamed bin Hamman are attributed to his abortive campaign to run against Sepp Blatter in the election for President of FIFA in June 2011 and have nothing to do with the Qatari bid for the World Cup hosting, which is squeaky clean. Bin Hamman refused a request to speak to the Investigatory Committee. But the Committee found that Bin Hamman encouraged and offered to pay for an appeal against his suspension from football activities by the representative of Oceania, Reynald Temarii. Temarii had been instructed to vote for Australia by Oceania, but was not able to vote because of his suspension, or be replaced because he had appealed against the suspension. If that is not influencing the voting process then what is it? As it was that would only have given Australia two votes in the first round, and it needed four to have any chance of taking part in the subsequent rounds of voting.
Australia on the other hand is said to have been involved in dodgy deals with those well-known conmen Fedor Radmann and Peter Hargitay. Australia also tried to buy the support of Jack Warner, an Executive Committee member who was later suspended from football related activities for corruption. Australia was also complicit in deals to improve football facilities in Africa which were tied to the bid process in a way that was deemed inappropriate. Much of the evidence against Australia was already in the public domain and the whistleblowing of Bonita Mersiades, formerly part of the Australian bid team, but later sacked, was sidelined because she went public with her issues. There is no doubt that dealing with Radmann, Hargitay and Warner was a serious error of judgment on the part of Frank Lowy and his team and there may be repercussions, but the report concludes that the 'potentially problematic facts and circumstances identified by the report regarding the Australia 2022 bid were, all in all, not suited to compromise the integrity of the FIFA World Cup 2018/2022 bidding process as a whole'!
The England bid is also said to have involved corrupt behaviour by Warner and other members of the Executive Committee which the English bid team 'accommodated, or at least attempted to satisfy' in two cases. Most of the evidence relating to these matters came up in the House of Commons commissioned inquiry by James Dingemans, though the FIFA Committee claimed to have supplemented Dingemans' findings. Again the overall conclusion is that despite jeopardising the integrity of the bidding process, the English facts and circumstances were not suited to comprise the process as a whole!
So that's all right then.
Rohan Connolly: 100 years too late?
Barely over 100 years ago, the Melbourne Argus published a report (below left) on the growth of soccer in Melbourne. Written by an habitual follower of VFL, it acknowledged that soccer was going through a growth period, with more and more players and spectators being attracted to the game. The report spoke about the attractiveness of the game and the enjoyment of the spectators. It praised the skills of the players and suggested that VFL footballers might have something to learn from soccer's technical qualities. The article also put VFL in a poor light when comparing the 'gentlemanly' nature of soccer with the corruption suspected of inhabiting Australian rules at that time.
Two days ago: 100 years later, Age footy journalist Rohan Connolly wrote an article (below right) that was remarkably similar in both rhetorical terms and in the way it noticed the rise of soccer and the suggestion that AFL might have something to learn from it. As I said to Connolly on twitter, it was both thoughtful and respectful. It also refused to take the anti-sokkah knee-jerk line that others journos have when confronted with the 'evil' of flares. The articles do exhibit some differences of course. The Argus piece is focused largely on the soccer played at Middle Park in 1914 whereas Connolly's interest is in fan engagement. Another difference is that the first piece is followed by the local league results of the day. Hell will freeze over before Connolly's employer reports on state soccer again.
What I find most interesting though is that Connolly is able to write this kind of article; as if this crazy, funny game has only just started to emerge in this town; as if this is a game without local precedent, without local history. I'd love to take Connolly on a ride in my time machine, to Middle Park and Olympic Park and even the Fitzroy Cricket Ground and show him a real, existing, passionate soccer culture across Melbourne's history. I'd like to show him why articles like his, however positive and respectful, are re-inventions of a wheel that started turning in 1883 and has hardly stopped since.
I'd just love to know when we will stop seeing gobsmacked non-soccer writers writing about our long-standing culture as if it has just dropped in from planet UnAustraya. Articles like Connolly's are ultimately about the writer's own lack of knowledge and familiarity and not the phenomenon which he is observing. Good on him for taking this first step. Let there be more of them.
"SOCCER" FOOTBALL.
GROWING POPULARITY.
A PLAYERS' GAME.
Argus, June 29, 1914
Organised by a few enthusiasts from England, who found the Australian game, even as it was played several years ago, not at all to their liking, British Association football now draws from 2,000 to 4,000 people to Middle Park every Saturday. That the internal growth of the Victoria Amateur Football Association now affiliated with the governing body in England, has been equally steady is shown by the fact that there are 22 clubs in Victoria, with a roll of about 500 playing members, while New South Wales has 130 clubs. Most of those who are satisfied to stand in the open all the afternoon, threatened by batteries of artillery and stray horses, were keen followers of the game before they reached Australia, but there is a growing percentage of local "barrackers" who come down as curious sceptics, and soon find themselves fascinated by what is one of the prettiest and cleverest games in the world to watch. A game that will attract 100,000 Englishmen must necessarily have some good features, and these are beginning to be more and more recognised by many who are disgusted at the present condition of the Australian game. It might be thought that some of the supporters are won by the prospect of a free show, but no suggestion of that can be found in the appearance of the men and women round the side lines. To a great extent it is a family outing, and renewal of home ties.
Men who have seen the game at its best laugh when asked how the standard of play here compares with that in England, but the things that are done with the ballat Middle Park are eye-openers to followers of League football. The principles underlying British Association are the prevention of handling of the ball and the reduction of rules, and consequently interference by the umpire or referee, to minimum. The playing area is smaller than ours, and there are only eleven men a side, who stand all in their own half of the ground at the kick-off and play largely in their places, the attack being made by the five forwards—centre and inside and outside left and right. The goalkeeper is the only player allowed to handle the ball, and he may not run with it. This formation and the use of a spherical ball make the game clean and open. Passing becomes a feature of the play, and even the mediocre player seems able to direct the ball to any angle with any part of the foot, toe, or heel while running. Naturally, the round ball is easier than the oval to deal with but the precision with which it is got under control from the air and 'dribbled' along a few inches in front of the feet at top speed is only less surprising than the use made of the opposite end of the body. Meeting the ball on the full a player will "head" it across to the wing with the front of his skull farther than an Australian would pass with his hand. A man prominently connected with a sport once as popular as football, but killed by corruption, was keenly interested in the play on Saturday, and speculated as to the result if first-class League players acquired the same control over the ball as these amateurs. As he spoke an incident capped his remark. The ball flew high to the wing. A man "headed" it back. An opponent headed it out again. and a fellow of the first smothered it with his foot as it landed, and swung it hard towards the goal.
After the skill of the players the insignificance of the referees part is the most striking feature. Imagine a league umpire in boots and blazer, walking about the centre of the ground most of the time! The only penalties he has to inflict are for handling the ball or the man, charging in the back, tripping and kicking, and "offside." But when he speaks he speaks with authority. Any player can be ordered off the ground. An incident on Saturday showed the spirit of the game. A player was tripped and he turned and kicked his opponent. Shouts of "Play the game" came from both teams and as the referee merely warned the kicker and gave a penalty against him, a burly spectator growled "And he didn't order him off. No wonder the game doesn't get on in the colonies."
Still, it does get on and its supporters even prophesy that it will solve the problem of universal football. Australians are not yet excelling as players, for their speed is counteracted by a lack of restraint. That is why Victoria won all four matches against New South Wales recently. One has only to listen to the shouts of the players and the keenest supporters to discover where they hail from. But they hold that the morals of the game will win a way for it. Already the round ball has made its appearance in school playgrounds. The prime advantage claimed for British Association is that to achieve corruption one must buy most of the team. The referee has so little to do in comparison with the Australian umpire that he is a valueless asset.
What the AFL could learn from the A-League
Rohan Connolly
Age, October 27, 2014
In purely scoreboard terms, Saturday night's A-League derby between Melbourne Victory and Melbourne City was, in the finish, a bit of a rout. Yet the post-game talk universally was of a stunning night for local soccer. Why? It was the atmosphere.
I've been to something like 1500 AFL games in my lifetime and only a handful of A-League fixtures, but the different feel at Etihad Stadium on Saturday night was remarkable. The place simply buzzed.
The derby drew 43,729, more than for all but two of the 48 AFL games played at Etihad Stadium this year, but this was about more than numbers. It was about the noise, the colour and the excitement generated.
Which, heading towards 2015, and a season the AFL has unofficially dubbed "the year of the fan", is an example the indigenous code needs to study very carefully.
Soccer has always had it over the indigenous game for the quality of its crowd chants and singing, but this wasn't just about clever quips and taunts to opposition fans.
There were banners and waving flags aplenty, mass twirling of coloured scarves, and a constant wall of noise generated by the fans, not by ear-splitting and intrusive advertising booming across the PA system at the breaks, a staple of AFL on this occasion thankfully absent.
It was a salient reminder for us older football types of how AFL used to be as a live experience, and perhaps the extent to which the commercialisation and homogenisation of our own code has chipped away at it.
Watch any clips from the old VFL days and you're reminded again. For starters, there were up to eight or nine different venues, each with their own character and quirks, compared with just two in Melbourne now.
Have a look at any home-and-away game from the 1970s or '80s, let alone finals at the MCG or Waverley, and you'll see grounds decked out in club-coloured banners stretching around most of the stands.
They were works of art, slogans that borrowed from old verse or simpler rhymes, the lettering bold or in some memorable cases in Old English script.
Then there were the cheer squads, whose floggers stretched around the fence further than you'd ever see today. They threw copious amounts of crepe paper streamers and ripped up phone directories. Each week, the area behind each team's goals resembled a sea of colour and movement.
The reason you don't see these things any more is in most cases the same: overly draconian health and safety measures and corporatisation of the game to within an inch of its life.
First it was players tripping on streamers and a couple of silly escapades where floggers caught on fire, which led to restrictions on their size. Then came the complaints from sponsors about the streamers covering up the perimeter advertising that began to encase grounds. Good luck finding a square inch of an AFL ground these days not sold off to sponsorship.
There are a lot more AFL games per season than there were 30 years ago. But a lot less differentiation, too, as will happen when roughly 100 games are scheduled for just two multipurpose stadiums that a large contingent of clubs all call "home", though the term regarding Etihad and the MCG should be used loosely.
Social clubs remain anchored at the old suburban bases of those still retaining some connection with them. The grounds of today may have post-match function rooms for the clubs hosting games there, but there's a transient feel, the lack of club culture palpable.
Even beyond that, I hear consistent complaints from football fans about the "nanny state" intruding on their football-going experiences. Signs any more provocative than "Go Pies" being frowned upon or confiscated. And, believe it or not, supporters being warned by security staff for barracking too loudly.
The AFL has had enough trouble this year, amid confusing ticketing systems and unfriendly scheduling, convincing followers to actually turn up to games. The last thing it can afford is to make them feel like naughty schoolchildren when they do.
Which is why, for a hard-core AFL supporter, last Saturday night felt something like a trip back in time. Real passion and involvement, unstymied by over-officiousness. Loads of colour and movement. And lots of noise actually generated by fans rather than speaker stacks.
Of course soccer has its own cultural nuances, its own vibe. But occasions such as the Melbourne Victory-Melbourne City derby just serve to reinforce that, at this critical juncture in the AFL public's relationship with the game, it's a feel those running the show could do a lot worse than reacquaint themselves with.
Soccer registrations reach 600 in pre-WW1 Melbourne
This article is from The Winner, 5 August 1914, only just over 100 years ago. It demonstrates a number of things. First it shows the value of The Winner as an historical source for soccer historians and our good fortune that it has been digitised on Trove. The article also suggests that soccer in Melbourne in 1914 is a game in rude health - with: 600 players, a competitive Dockerty Cup competition, a strong league, a budding junior competition, willing and able officials and administrators and interstate representative trips. The only dull note is the complaint of limited availability of grounds (something that echoes down the years).
POPULARITY GROWING
600 PLAYERS IN VICTORIA
BY J. W. HARRISON
'The Victorian Amateur British Football Association Is now well established, and I can assure you that the game of 'soccer' has come to stay in Victoria, and this with all due respect to other branches of football.' Thus spoke a prominent official to the writer in the course of a recent interview. 'It is not generally known, I feel sure, that we have no fewer than600 players on our register, all connected with clubs in Melbourne and district.' I may point out that the Victorian British Football Association is under strictly amateur auspices, and that it has at its head a body of sportsmen whose one and only desire is to further the interests of this branch of athletics.
Their love for 'soccer' is full of enthusiasm, and bids well for the welfare of the game. Though to an extent hampered for the want of official playing grounds, the Association has surmounted many formidable obstacles, in the course of its efforts to bring the code to the forefront. And it is well to know that they promise to 'make good.'
Of all winter pastimes, 'soccer' has made great and rapid strides in England and Scotland, particularly having made wonderful progress in veritable hotbeds of Rugbyism. In fact, I number amongst some of my best football friends persons who are now well known officials with British Association clubs in the North of England, who years ago held high positions in Rugby circles. When I cast my mind's eye back, it seems almost perplexing to note the intense popularity the 'soccer' game enjoys where once only 'rugger' was spoken of.
FASCINATION OF THE GAME
It would truly seem as if when one becomes thoroughly initiated into theintricacies of British Association football, it possesses such a wonderful fascination that there is no forsaking itfor any other branch of the winter game. I well remember an old football acquaintance of mine, one of England's finest goal-keepers — J. W.Sutcliffe — remarking to me that 'soccer' was the ideal game so far as scientific football is concerned. Itcould not be well said that this illustrious player had a prejudiced mind, seeing that Sutcliffe is one of the few footballers in the world who enjoys the distinction of having represented his country at both 'soccer' and 'rugger.' He gained his Rugby international honor on the occasion of the first visit of the Maories to England, Sutcliffe being then a mere youth. After further successes inclass 'rugger,' he joined Bolton Wanderers, and whilst with that famed Lancashire organisation gained thecoveted blue riband of the 'soccer' football— an international cap, and a place in the English team! I simply make reference to the above as an in-stance of a crack player's love for this particular game after securing the highest possible honors at the sister code.
To revert, however, to our local clubs, it is interesting to note that the Victorian B. F. A. is affiliated with theparent body in England, no more powerful organisation that which exists in British sport. Victoria is represented on the Council of the v English F. A. by Mr E. Gibb, a player of the olden days, who is not altogether unknown in New Zealand football circles.
BRITISH ELEVENS ON TOUR
Chatting the other day with an enthusiast, he told me that there, was some hope in the not far distant future of organising a tour to Australia of acouple of 'crack' teams from England and Scotland respectively as a missionary enterprise to exhibit the niceties of the game. The undertaking would, of course, be a costly one, butat the same time, it might be money well spent.
CADETS AND A SOCCER LEAGUE
It is well to know that the Victorian Council have secured Government sanction from the Defence Department toformulate a scheme for the institution of a 'Soccer' league on behalf of the cadets. The project seems to be a commendable one. Mr R. C. M. Strachan, of Prahran, has made the Association an offer of either a challenge cup or shield to be put up for competition among the cadets.
REFEREES' ASSOCIATION
I am told also, officially, that thecode is making rapid headway in theYarraville district, and in Footscray and Spotswood a lot of enthusiasm is being shown. It is well, too, to knowthat the V.B.F.A. has no lack of efficient referees, which is a most important factor nowadays. The Referees' Association has as president Mr J. G. Hawes, an indefatigable worker in the interests of 'soccer.' Mr W. B. Gilbert is secretary and treasurer, and the examining council comprises Messrs Cummings, Palmer, and Gilbert.
All this goes to show that local 'soccer' is booming, and must eventually make that headway which has characterised its progress in Great Britain.
DOCKERTY CUP CONTEST.
The finalists for the Dockerty Cup competition is not as yet settled. At the second time of asking, the St. Kilda and Thistle teams failed to decide the issue, another pointless draw being played. The other semi-final, that between Wonthaggi and N. and D., saw a keen, strenuous game, with the last-named coming out on top by a goal to nothing. The game was brimful of incident, each side in turn being seen to advantage. The win may be said to have been of a somewhat flukey character, the winners' goal which gave them the victory being the result of an unlucky piece of play by one of the Wonthaggi backs, who turned the ball into his own goal.
In the concluding stages of the game excitement was intense, Wonthaggi testing the defence of the opposition to its utmost. Thevisitors had certainly a bad share of the luck of the afternoon.
The other games resulted:— League (Division I.) : Birmingham, 2; Burns,The goal-scorers were Taylor, Dodds, Anderson andRuddiman re spectively. Yarraville, 2 ; Prahran, 1.this game, Earthey (through owngoal), Blackburn and Staniforth werethe scorers. Spotswood and Preston scored a draw of a goal each, with Mobbs and Purcell as the respective goal-getters.
The present is a red-letter week for 'Soccerites.' Today (Wednesday) thefollowing players leave Melbourne by the s.s. Manuka for Hobart, under the management of Mr. E. Harvey: — Hamilton, H. Jones, Stranger, M. Gardiner, Woods, Rumbol, Fleming, Marsden, Jeffereys, G. Brown, and Weston.
SATURDAY'S INTERNATIONAL
Seeing that this issue of 'The Winner' contains the first official publication of the teams for next Saturday's international match — England v. Scotland — at Fitzroy, there will be some disappointment amongst those players whose names do not appear. The Football Council sat until a late hour, giving the many claims their most careful consideration.
In accordance with the traditions of international football, all the selected are of English or Scottish birth.
England — Robinson (N. and D.),Hyde (capt., Birmingham), F. Jones(Burns), Lamb (St. Kilda), Riley(Spotswood), Goodson (Thistle), Fisher(Thistle), Walsh (Spotswood), Kendall (St. Kilda), Dowker (Yarraville),Slade (St. Kilda), Allen (Birmingham), Church (St. Kilda), and Golding (Birmingham).
Scotland — Russell (Thistle), Kelly(Albert Park), Raith (Thistle), Tray-nor (Preston); M'Milian (capt., St.Kilda), Cox (Albert Park), Turner (Thistle), Lowe (St. Kilda), Spencer(St. Kilda), Hogg (Thistle), Guthrie(Thistle), Ruddiman (Burns), T. Anderson (Burns), W. Anderson (AlbertPark).
Mr C. R. Williamson is to officiate as referee, with Messrs Dempster and Meens as linesmen. The Football Council hold anothermeeting tomorrow (Thursday) evening, and finally decide on the two elevens to take the field.
Soccer's regeneration in Melbourne 1907[1908]. The First Committee
This photo and attached text are great material. They give us a sense of organisational energy and commitment to the game upon its regeneration in Melbourne. However, the article also shows the problem of memory, even relatively recent memory (Harrison is writing in 1914). In all likelihood the photo is from 1908 and not 1907. Unfortunately there is no corroborating evidence from 1907 to suggest these men had formed a committee at that stage. I'll keep an eye out though.
This fine looking group of gentlemen represents the first committee formed in soccer's regeneration
in Melbourne in 1907. It was published as a retrospective by the Winner on Aug 12, 1914.
ORIGINAL SOCCER COMMITTEE IN VICTORIA, 1907.
Soccer players, will be interested in the above illustration, representing the original committee formed to propagate the game in Victoria in 1907. Those in the group are, front row, reading from left to right:— H. H. Wood (sec.), H.L. Dockerty (president); H. Miller (Treasurer); back row: J. Holford, E. Harvey, W. Pitt, L. Fifer, A. Phillips, D. Evans, and P. Fraser. Of these gentlemen Mr Dockerty retains the presidential chair, Mr B. Harvey is now treasurer, while Mr L. Fifer has been secretary of the St. Kilda club since its inception. At the date of the formation of the committee there were only six clubs, which were formed into a league, in the State, comprising Carlton, St. Kilda, Prahran, Williamstown, Melbourne, and Fitzroy. The trophies consisted of one shield, held annually by the league premiers, and the Dockerty Cup being awarded on the 'knock-out' principle. There are now 22 clubsin the Melbourne district alone, while other clubs are Ballarat, Bendigo, Warrnambool, Wonthaggi, and other towns. There are two league trophies, for the first and second divisions, and there is further a junior cup to be played for on the same terms as the Dockerty Cup. Of the original players E. Forbes is still an active member, and J. Kerr, one of the most enthusiastic councillors.
Soccer Player Enlistments 1915. A vital founding document.
This is the article I've been searching for — a kind of foundation point for the database of Victorian soccer soldiers in WW1. Of the 500 or so who enlisted, 114 are named below, alongside their clubs, As the article suggests, the list is incomplete at the time. Also there are OCR errors and literal errors that need to be accounted for. Nonetheless it's a great starting point.
The article is in the Winner on the April 28, 1915 (3 days after the carnage of Gallipoli but before the facts were known). The fixtures referred to in the the article are here. The Winner has only recently been digitised and as Mark Boric suggested, it is a real boon for soccer historians. This was a paper that took the game seriously and gave it substantial coverage.
PLAYERS WHO RESPONDED TO COUNTRY'S CALL
The Victorian Amateur British Football Association, which opens its campaign on Saturday afternoon next has had both its playing and ordinary members' ranks seriously depleted by the call to arms since the outbreak of war. In consequence, the executive of the association have passed through a rather serious ordeal since the close of last season, but the clubs have rallied well to the occasion, and the prospects for season 1915 are by no means of the gloomy order. Though the list of those soccerites who have volunteered for active service with the Expeditionary Forces are not quite complete, the following names to be placed on The Winner's roll of honor, for which I am indebted to Secretary E. C. Crawford, will prove of interest : —
N. and D. — R. Martin. W. Knox, T. Norton. W. Richardson, J. Wallace, J. Maughan [?], J. Morgan. — Hutchinson, — Thompson, H. Weston, F. Harper, — Finch, J. Stubbs, —Derbyshire, P. Grogan.
Burns. — W. Lycett.
Preston. — R. C. May, . Geo. Hew...? Phelps, P. Minter, Geo. Latimer. F. Williams, Geo. Rumbol.
Yarraville. — R. Hamilton, E. Jones. ?.Vaughan.
St. Kilda. — F. Hopwood, H. Lowe, H. A. Lowe, T. E. Lowe, F. Waterhouse, F. Garwood, T. Spencer, J. Vass, J. Kemp[?]rey.
Thistle. — J. Guthrie, J. Parkinson, W. M'Laughlin, T. Jones, J. M'Kenzie, R.M'Lardy.
Albert Park. — G. Jeffrey, G. Fraser, J. Cox, H. Weston. T. Jennanway, T. Millar, W. Morrison, W. Fairweather, A. Dewar, J. Knight, T. Knight, T. Flowers, A. Stirrup, C. Price, H. Kelly.
Hawthorn. — H. Matthews, W. Matthews, G. Matthews, A. — Simmons, G. Foster, W. Foster.
Birmingham Victoria. — G. Talbot, F. Heywood, A. Hyde, D. Walker, L. Dymond, B.Golding, G. Sheppard, S. Dethridge, Jas. Greaves.
Footscray Thistle. — D. Smith, A. Stephens, J. Malcolm, D. M'Donald, B. Gow.
Prahran City. — C. Gray, — Impy, F. Helps, A. Baker, — Stretton, J. Brown, F. Wright,— Gottschild, — Asdown, F. Keating. —Witham, — Roberts, — Shalders, — Kennedy. — Lane, T. Hutton.
Spotswood. — W. Cattrall, R. Linn, — Price.H. Mobbs, — Thorpe, A. Taunton, H. Lomax, G. Catchpole, R. Catchpole, — Chorley, R.Blair, B. Issard.
Cambrian United. — J. M'Pettigrue, W. Glenister. F. Piggott, J. Lewis, H. Lewis, J. Evans, O. Thomas, W. Manderson, H. Jones, J.Roberts.
There are 19 entrants for the League this season, and, as will be seen from the fixture list given below, two new clubs — the H.M.A.S. Cerberus and Windsor — figure in the list. Thirteen entries were received for the first division of the League, which the Association management decided to divide into two sections as follows: —
Section A. — Spotswood, Northumberland and Durham United, Footscray Thistle, Yarraville, Albert Park and H.M.A.S. Cerberus.
Section B. — Burns, Birmingham Vics., St. Kilda, Thistle, Preston, Sandringham and Prahran.
THE PREMIERSHIP
It has been resolved that to decide the premiership, the first and second in the above sections shall do battle at the end of the season, and there is every promise of a big fight for the blue riband of Victorian Soccer. Clubs in the second division of the League are Cambrian United, Hawthorn, Spotswood A., Thistle A., St. Kilda A., and Windsor. Though the various teams have indulged in practice games of late, and many of the players have shown promising form. I do not intend so early in the season to attempt to forecast the prospects of the individual clubs. I know, however, that there have been transfers of some good players to clubs which will have a tendency to considerably weaken those organisations from which they have seceded. In the near future, I may have something to say on this important matter.
THE WORKING MANAGEMENT
The Football Council, under the presidency of Mr H. C. Dockerty, are determined to further the interests of the soccer code in the metropolitan area, and the indefatigable hon. secretary —Mr B. C. Crawford — seems to have a lot of hard work in front of him. I regret that the calls of business has necessitated the withdrawal of Mr W.B. Gilbert from the Council, as thatgentleman was a thorough and conscientious worker in the interests of the game.
Posted by Ian Syson at 11:54 4 comments:
Telling Fibs for Footy
John Silvester's piece in today's Age reminded me of the following piece I published in March 2013. Silvester spews out his usual self-loathing-pommy soccerphobic bile by making up stories about crowd segregation in Victorian soccer and bizarrely using examples of verbal and physical violence in footy to show that AFL crowds do indeed get on without verbal and physical violence.
The Victorian sports media has been ever thus. With a few honourable exceptions it has been the VFL/AFL's full-time shepherd and part-time attack dog.
Even as Victorian soccer entered the 1930s in a sorry state the VFL press remained wary of the threat the game had represented in the late 1920s, taking every opportunity to remind its readers what a weak and passionless game soccer was. For example, in a truly astounding piece of journalism, the VFL saw fit to publish G. Cathie's withering epistolary account of English soccer in (of all places) its 1934 Grand Final edition of the Football Record.'Australian Game Vastly Superior' is a fabricated (if not delusional) reminder for readers that Australian Rules is truly the game for Australia.
Some interesting and illuminating comments on the soccer code of football as played in England, compared with our own Australian game, is contained in a letter received this week from Mr G Cathie, a life member of the League, who is at present in England. The letter runs as follows:—
'Whilst in Newcastle I saw the opening match of the soccer season and to say I was disappointed is to put it very mildly. Believe me, soccer is not in the same street as our game and it made me feel proud to belong to an organisation that plays the Aussie code. There was little enthusiasm amongst the crowd, which numbered about 14,000, and the deliberate 'kicking-out' was atrocious and a blot on their game.
'The full backs are the only players allowed to touch the ball with their hands, and they are afraid, when in possession, to leave the goal by more than 15 yards. Then they punt the ball with a kick which as often as not goes in the opposite direction to where it is intended. What salaries would await some of our Aussie rules full backs if they were to come over here.
'They could learn all there is in the code in a week or two, and would become champions in a month!
'Think of players like Jack Regan, Frank Gill, Maurie Heahan, Ron Hillis, 'Jacka' Todd, Jack Vosti, and Bill Tymms and Bert Hyde in their prime, coming out with the ball from the goal mouth like a streak of lightning, vigorous, pacy, spectacular – and generally with only one man to pass. Then footing the ball to the other end – it would create a sensation in England. If we could only teach our English cousins the great charm and exhilaration of our national sport, it would be wonderful.'
The article claims that soccer is an inferior game for a number of reasons. It is less exciting and exhilarating. The crowd numbers are low and those who attend are not enthusiastic towards the game. The players are afraid to be adventurous and they are incompetent at what they do. The writer assumes (like Jack Dyer afterhim) that with a little bit of training VFL footballers would take soccer by storm. Ultimately Cathie's complaint is simply that soccer is guilty of the crime of not being Australian Rules football.
Significantly, the letter shifts mood midstream. Starting out as a hardnosed and prejudiced critique of soccer's faults, it suddenly transforms into a fantasy of Australian Rules internationalism. Coveting the salaries of the English game for Australian Rules champions and decrying the failure of 'English cousins' to be taught the merits of the game, the piece becomes a resentful hymn to the game's failure to belong anywhere beyond the southern half of Australia. Beneath the triumphalism lies a self-loathing xenophobia.
It seems unnecessary to go beyond one word – 'silly' – to summarise the article. However, when it is realised that the author is inventing material as well as leaving out crucial information then the piece shifts from the realms of silliness to propaganda.
Cathie can be forgiven for calling the goalkeepers full-backs, but he can't be forgiven for calling them cowardly for refusing to handle the ball illegally outside of the penalty area. Yet the more serious errors are ones of detail. The author claims to have gone to the opening game of the season in the Newcastle area. Problematically, Newcastle United were playing away on this day, hammered 5–1 by Nottingham Forest. The professional teams in the area who played at home on that day were Gateshead and Darlington (3rd division) and 1st division Sunderland who beat Huddersfield Town 4–1 at Roker Park – a game at which there would have been a few more than 14,000 given that Sunderland were in the upper echelons of English football in the mid-1930s. If the author is referencing a game he saw Newcastle United play (possibly their first home game on 1 September, beaten 5–2 by Brentford), he really needed to point out their 2nd division status. He might also have added that the club was in a shambles, having been relegated the previous season and only just avoiding relegation in 1934–35 on goal average. As he rightly pointed out, they weren't very good!
However, accuracy in reporting was not at the forefront of the writer's mind. The important work to be done on Grand Final day 1934 was simply to remind Australian Rules spectators that soccer was an illegitimate and uninspiring game compared with what they were about to receive, fare that deserved to be served to the world. The great tragedy of such propaganda is that in the 1930s there was almost no contradictory source for information on English football for readers of the Football Record. Such dishonest propaganda therefore found easy entry into the realm of 'truth' for generations of Victorian football aficionados and the stories they held and told.
The effect of this propaganda cannot be underestimated historically or politically. The process creates collective or social memory grounded in historical exclusion, marginalisation and untruth. Such social memory becomes an important tool for cultural-political elites to enhance legitimacy and control. In this way hegemony is achieved or solidified. The stories told about soccer in the name of the VFL are very much part of this process of maintaining cultural hegemony. While the dominance of Australian Rules football at this time is not in question, the lies it tells itself and its supporters about the world of sport point to a severe case of anxiety and insecurity.
The Footy Record could get away with this kind of propaganda then because there was no other source of information on English football for its readers. Imagine the flurry of refutations that would happen today if such blatant lies were told. While the propaganda remains as per Silverster's piece, it is far more subtle today.
Gallipoli Veteran Stuck With Soccer
This is a nice piece passed on by Roy Hay.
Keith Gilmour, 'Gallipoli veteran stuck with soccer', Soccer World, 7 October 1966, p. 2.
A new reason not to play soccer, from 1905
The Murrurundi Times and Liverpool Plains Gazette in 1905 found a reason to object to soccer that I have not seen before. It dilutes the strength of the other codes!
Sure it uses the old 'foreign money', 'poaching schoolboys', 'forcing the game on us' arguments, but this represents a new angle.
Once again I wish to protest against the attempt that is being made to force the 'Soccer' game down our throats. The endeavor has been a strenuous one, and what with the introduction of star Victorian teams to show us the trick, must cost the enthusiasts who are at the back of it no small amount of money. Even in our public schools there is a vigorous canvass to wean the youngsters from Rugby and run them on to the sister game. The idea is that in the next generation 'Soccer' will be the only game.That may be all right for the next generation, but it is hard on the present one. We were always a soft snap for any Rugby team that cared to come from any other country for the purpose of taking our scalps. But now that half of our best men are playing the other game we are not able to put a decent team in the field.The result is that both games are ruined. The Rugby play this season is not worth mentioning.
NPLVIC Round 24 and 22
NPL ROUND 24
Bentleigh Greens SC 1 Oakleigh Cannons FC 4(HT 1-3)
Pascoe Vale SC 0 Dandenong Thunder SC 0(HT 0-0)
Green Gully SC 1 Port Melbourne Sharks SC 2(HT 0-0)
Ballarat Red Devils SC 1 Werribee City FC 2(HT 0-0)
Hume City FC 0 Heidelberg United SC 2(HT 0-0)
Melbourne Knights FC 3 Goulburn Valley Suns FC 0(HT 3-0)
NPL1 ROUND 22
Springvale White Eagles FC 2 FC Bendigo 1(HT 0-1)
Dandenong City SC 0 Avondale Heights SC 2(HT 0-1)
North Geelong Warriors FC 2 Whittlesea Ranges FC 0(HT 1-0)
Brunswick City SC 1 St Albans Saints SC 2(HT 0-1)
Box Hill United SC 2 Sunshine George Cross SC 2 (HT 1-0)
SHORT TABLES
11 Dandenong Thunder SC 24 7 12 5 27 4 -17 26
14 Goulburn Valley Suns FC 23 2 17 4 22 61 -39 10
2 North Geelong W FC 21 14 6 1 49 25 24 43
3 St Albans Saints SC 22 13 5 4 40 25 15 40
10 Kingston City FC 21 8 11 2 42 38 4 26
11 Springvale WE FC 22 7 12 3 40 52 -12 24
12 FC Bendigo 21 5 12 4 33 46 -13 19
14 Brunswick City SC 22 3 18 1 24 79 -55 10
Daniel Orbach, rising football media star?
Daniel Orbach, a year 12 student in Melbourne, has put together this short documentary video about the perception of soccer in the media and society generally. Technically it is excellent with great editing and very high quality footage. It moves from interview to interview in a smooth fashion without ever having to adopt a controlling narrative voice. The interviewees and footage used are allowed to tell the whole story.
The doco is probably not hard enough on the wannabee hool culture that still infects the game. But it does historicise the problems pretty well. (I would say that given that I am one of the interviewees!).
Have a look at the video and comment below if you see fit.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2BR8cupkPk
10,000 people at the footy, July 1875
One thing that has always puzzled me is the assertion that high scoring leads to excitement and the popularity of a sport. This is an argument used against soccer (in which the average goals-per-game total is around 3). In Melbourne, high scoring is put forward as an explanation for the immense popularity of Australian rules football.
Yet, when we look back at the origins of the game we see a confusing fact. The scoring in the first 20 years or so of Australian rules tended to be similar to the scores in English Association football of the time. Indeed, it is possibly the case that more goals were scored in English football matches in the 1870s than there were in Australian rules matches around the same period.
This article, published in the Queenslander 31 July 1875, makes it clear that Victorian rules was a very popular code of football. The reported game between Melbourne and Carlton attracted a crowd of 10,000. Yet it resulted in the narrowest of 1-0 victories to Carlton. This fact did little to deter the writer from predicting 20,000 at the next week's game.
The principal football match of the season ; between the two crack clubs of the colony— Melbourne and Carlton—which I alluded to in my last as about to take place, resulted in a splendid game. There were about 10,000 persons present, who evinced the greatest degree of excitement in the struggle. The only goal obtained during the afternoon was kicked by Carlton in the first twenty minutes' play, and though this gave that club the victory, the Melbourne men had by far the best of the fight. The return match comes off next Saturday on the Melbourne ground, when there is bound to be 20,000 persons present. The Melbourne men have been hard at work practising since their defeat, and they are confident they will turn the tables on the victors in the next match.
It seems to me that a grievous historical error is made when the relatively high-scoring games of today or the recent historical past are used as an explanation of why footy became so popular. It was something else: the tussle; the opportunity to gather in support of your local team; the spectacle of violent contact—maybe all of these and more. One thing it was most definitely not was the game's reputedly high-scoring nature.
NPL results and tables Rounds 22 and 20
Bentleigh Greens SC 2 South Melbourne FC 1(HT: 0-0)
Port Melbourne Sharks SC 0 Melbourne Knights FC 1 (S. Andrijasevic 1)(HT: 0-0)
Green Gully SC 0 Hume City FC 1(HT: 0-1)
Heidelberg United SC 2 Bentleigh Greens SC 2(HT: 0-0)
Ballarat Red Devils SC 0 Dandenong Thunder SC 1(HT: 0-0)
Goulburn Valley Suns FC 1 Northcote City FC 3(HT: 1-2)
Oakleigh Cannons FC 3 Pascoe Vale SC 0(HT: 1-0)
Richmond SC Seniors 0 Avondale Heights SC 1(HT: 0-1)
Springvale White Eagles FC 2 FC Bulleen Lions 2(HT: 1-1)
Dandenong City SC 4 FC Bendigo 1(HT: 0-0)
North Geelong Warriors FC 2 Sunshine George Cross SC 1(HT: 0-0)
Brunswick City SC 3 Moreland Zebras FC 2(HT: 2-0)
St Albans Saints SC 3 Whittlesea Ranges FC 0(HT: 1-0)
Box Hill United SC 1 Kingston City FC 0(HT: 0-0)
5 Hume City FC 21 11 9 1 28 27 1 34
9 Pascoe Vale SC 21 7 9 5 23 31 -8 26
11 Port Melbourne Sharks SC 22 6 11 5 29 39 -10 23
6 Richmond SC Seniors 19 10 7 2 43 34 9 32
8 Dandenong City SC 20 8 7 5 38 35 3 29
9 Sunshine George Cross SC 20 7 9 4 31 44 -13 25
NPLVIC Round 21/20/19
Pascoe Vale SC 0 Werribee City FC 2(HT: 0-1)
Dandenong Thunder SC 1 Northcote City FC 1(HT: 1-1)
Port Melbourne Sharks SC 3 Ballarat Red Devils SC 1(HT: 0-0)
Green Gully SC 1 Heidelberg United SC 1(HT: 0-1)
Pascoe Vale SC 0 South Melbourne FC 3(HT: 0-1)
Green Gully SC 2 Ballarat Red Devils SC 1(HT: 1-0)
Bentleigh Greens SC 2 Goulburn Valley Suns FC 2(HT: 2-0)
Werribee City FC 2 Dandenong Thunder SC 1(HT: 0-0)
Northcote City FC 1 Oakleigh Cannons FC 3(HT: 1-1)
Melbourne Knights FC 0 Heidelberg United SC 2(HT: 0-0)
Hume City FC 2 Port Melbourne Sharks SC 1(HT: 1-0
Whittlesea Ranges FC 1 Moreland Zebras FC 2(HT: 1-0)
Avondale Heights SC 2 St Albans Saints SC 2(HT: 1-1)
Sunshine George Cross SC 0 Richmond SC Seniors 6(HT: 0-3)
Springvale White Eagles FC 4 Brunswick City SC 2 (M. Tancevski 1, S. Mazzolini 1)(HT: 1-2)
FC Bendigo 0 North Geelong Warriors FC 2(HT: 0-1)
Soccer registrations reach 600 in pre-WW1 Melbourn...
Soccer's regeneration in Melbourne 1907[1908]. The...
Soccer Player Enlistments 1915. A vital founding d...


The Minister Responsible for Citizenship and Minister Responsible for External Affairs of the Antigua and Barbuda government have been sued in the lawsuit filed by Choksi.
Absconding diamantaire Mehul Choksi has sued the Antigua and Barbuda government as its Ministry of External Affairs is examining the plea by Indian authorities to extradite him. A letter dated November 7 from the office of Deputy Solicitor General to the Prime Minister's office indicates that the Minister Responsible for Citizenship and Minister Responsible for External Affairs of the Antigua and Barbuda government have been named in the lawsuit filed by Choksi.
The letter asks the named parties to be present in the court for hearing in the lawsuit, or send the Permanent Secretary within their ministries. The matter will be heard on the morning of November 14 at the High Court before Justice Rita Joseph Olivetti.
Although it is not clear why Choksi has decided to take the Antiguan government to the court, it could be related the fact that the same government is weighing the proposal of handing him over to India. The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and Enforcement Directorate (ED) have submitted an extradition plea before the Antigua and Barbuda authorities which now being looked into by the Ministry of External Affairs there.
Indian External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj had met Foreign Minister of Antigua and Barbuda E P Chet Greene in September on the sidelines of the 73rd session of the UN General Assembly and raised the issue of extradition of Choksi. Greene had assured Swaraj on behalf of his Prime Minister that their government will fully cooperate in the matter of extradition of Choksi to India.
This could very well be enough to make Choksi nervous, who had fled to Antigua and Barbuda after orchestrating the Rs 14,000-crore scam at Punjab National Bank with his nephew Nirav Modi. He became a citizen of the Caribbean country by the way of Citizenship by Investment after his Indian passport and citizenship were revoked on account of the banking fraud charges against him. Since then, India has been looking to extradite Mehul Choksi under the Antiguan laws that allow it for Commonwealth countries.
Choksi still has some breathing space though, as the Department of Public Prosecutions (DPP) is yet to take a call on his extradition. It is now up to the DPP to take a call on whether Choksi is in the wrong or not, and not the Antiguan Solicitor General.
As per earlier reports, the Antiguan government has also stated that Choksi has the right to defend himself against the charges levelled against him like any other Antiguan citizen.


This model is similar to this one in that it carries out the geochemical calculations directly in GoldSim. In some cases, however, it is not necessary to include all chemical processes and a simplified approach can be taken. In particular, this model provides an example of how to to calculate saturation indices for gypsum and calcite using fundamental aqueous chemistry principles. These two minerals are common causes of scaling in pipes or formation of precipitates due to the mixing of solutions. Saturation indices are a convenient indicator of the potential for precipitate formation due to conditions of solubility oversaturation.


text:
ProtonMail is launching an encrypted Google Calendar competitor
Nobody will know about your next dentist checkup.
Sasun Bughdaryan/Shutterstock
Thor Benson
The popular encrypted email service ProtonMail just launched its own calendar tool. ProtonCalendar is in the beta stage, and it is now available to those who use ProtonMail's premium service. The company claims this will help you keep your plans safe from prying eyes—including corporations.
"A calendar is more than just a tool. It's a record of the moments that make up your life — your big meetings, your gatherings with friends, and children's birthdays," the company wrote in a recent blog post. "For the longest time, to easily organize these events, you had to let large corporations monitor these special moments. These companies snoop on your calendar and use that information to inform their advertising."
The company claims this is the "first fully encrypted calendar app." The tool uses end-to-end encryption, and it encrypts the event title, the description, the location and everything else. Even ProtonMail can't see the event details, so basically you'll be the only one who sees your calendar events.
"No other calendar keeps as much data private as ProtonCalendar," the company claims. "As our thorough security model demonstrates, we worked hard to ensure that you have all the convenience you need from a calendar app along with the security and privacy you expect from Proton."
The company says a calendar app was one of its "most requested products." A Google Drive competitor, ProtonDrive, is also on the way. ProtonCalendar will be available to all on iOS and Android at some point in 2020.
Sandro Lonardi, a ProtonMail spokesman, tells Inverse that ProtonCalendar will benefit all kinds of people.
"ProtonCalendar will benefit anyone who doesn't like the idea of big corporations knowing everything they do," Lonardi says. "Because ProtonCalendar is end-to-end encrypted, no one can access your events but you. This is one more step toward a private and secure Internet for all. And for people with heightened security needs, such as activists and journalists targeted by authoritarian regimes, ProtonCalendar can literally save lives."
As Londardi notes, this secure calendar is useful for activists and journalists who live in countries run by authoritarian regimes. That said, it's also useful for activists and journalists in the United States—who are often the target of government surveillance. Furthermore, lawyers, whistleblowers and a whole range of other kinds of people can benefit from using encryption to avoid surveillance.
Sex workers are another group that tend to utilize encryption. The Electronic Frontier Foundation actually published an encryption "how-to" guide for sex workers back in 2014. Being able to securely arrange their schedule would obviously be a priority for them.
See also: The U.S. has more surveillance cameras per person than China, new study shows
Even if you don't need encryption for your day-to-day job, you should be concerned with the government and massive corporations collecting mountains of data on you. You never know how that information will be misused or taken out of context.
Whether you're trying to avoid government surveillance or corporate surveillance, encryption is a powerful tool. More and more of our data is being vacuumed up on a constant basis by corporations and governments every year, so being able to fight back against that is a great thing.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Laserspots and lasercells! Can you light them all? Watch out for anti-laserspots as well as moveable blocks! Can you solve the laserworx?
Use the mouse to click and drag laser spots.
Light up all the lasercells to complete the level.


text:
First-Ever Aerial Map of Hawaii's Coral Creates Groundbreaking Conservation Tool
Olivia Rosane
Dec 15, 2020 5:53AM EST Oceans
The Arizona State University Global Airborne Observatory on a mapping mission over north Maui Island coast. Center for Global Discovery and Conservation Science / Arizona State University
A team of scientists has created the first-ever aerial map of the coral reefs surrounding the main Hawaiian Islands, in a breakthrough researchers hope will assist reef conservation in the islands and beyond.
The map, written up in a Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences article Monday, was able to show the geographic distribution of live coral around the island chain at 16 meters (approximately 52 feet) of depth and also pinpoint where the corals were more or less impacted by human activity.
"Never before has there been such a detailed and synoptic view of live corals at this scale," study co-author Jamison Gove of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration told ASU Now.
The research was led by the Arizona State University's (ASU) Center for Global Discovery and Conservation Science (GDCS). The scientists sought to resolve several challenges with mapping coral reefs as they face unprecedented challenges.
Because of ocean acidification and coral bleaching caused by the climate crisis, as well as problems like runoff from coastal development, 75 percent of the world's coral reefs could face critical threats by 2050. But, in order to protect these reefs, it is important to know where they are. On-the-ground mapping is inherently limited in scope, while satellite images do not provide enough detail.
This is the problem GDCS researchers sought to solve with their Global Airborne Observatory. This is an airborne lab that combines two processes to create detailed maps, Courthouse News Service explained. These techniques are laser-guided imaging spectroscopy, which is often used to map complicated landscapes like forests, and artificial intelligence.
"We undertook this first-ever mapping of a large archipelago to determine where corals live in Hawaiian waters despite repeated heatwaves and problematic coastal development issues," lead study author and GDCS Director Greg Asner told ASU Now. "It's this basic information that is needed by partner organizations to drive more cost-effective protections, restoration activities, and public engagement."
Hawaii's reefs, like reefs worldwide, face major challenges. Marine heatwaves in 2015 and 2019 caused bleaching events, while coastal development and fishing have also harmed reefs through factors like pollution and sedimentation. The mapping found that on Oahu, for example, only 12 percent of the island's reefs still had live coral. There was likely three times as much living coral surrounding the island 200 years ago, Asner told Honolulu Civil Beat.
The study found that around 60 percent of the presence or absence of living coral could be explained water depth, wave power or coastal development. Overall, the biggest human impacts on Hawaii's coral were nearshore development, water quality, sea surface temperature and non-commercial fishing, in that order, Asner tweeted.
The distribution of live corals in the main Hawaiian Islands was determined by mapping and AI-driven analyses. In descending order of importance:
– Nearshore development
– Water quality
– Sea surface temperature
– Non-commercial fishing
— Greg Asner (@greg_asner) December 14, 2020
But the mapping also turned up places, known as refugia, where coral proved to be resilient to human impacts, ASU Now reported. Asner told Honolulu Civil Beat that the map could be used to help policymakers determine which reefs, like the refugia, to protect; which areas would be ideal for restoration; and which were so degraded that perhaps it is not worth the effort to restore them given limited resources.
"Operational mapping of live coral cover within and across Hawaii's reef ecosystems affords opportunities for managers and policymakers to better address reef protection, resilience and restoration," study coauthor and head of Hawaii's Division of Aquatic Resources Brian Neilson told ASU Now. "With these new maps, we have a better shot at protecting what we have while focusing on where to improve conditions for corals and the myriad of species that depend upon corals."
Coral Reefs Are Still Growing Atolls Despite Sea Level Rise ...
Coral Reef Tipping Point: 'Near-Annual' Bleaching May Occur ...
Scientists Discover Massive Coral Reef Taller Than Empire State ...
NFL Green Tackles Coral Restoration Project in Florida - EcoWatch
Scientists Discover Why Coral Reefs Are Turning White, Informing Restoration Possibilities - EcoWatch
This map is the first-ever to show every single coral reef in the Cari
biodiversityclimate changeclimate crisisconservationcoral bleachingcoral reefshawaiimarine lifeoceanspollutionsciencescientists


Queensland's racing minister has praised Racing Queensland's outgoing CEO just hours after he delivered a spray in parliament over the lengthy delays in upgrading one of Brisbane's major tracks.
Dr Eliot Forbes resigned today, shortly after Racing Minister Stirling Hinchliffe unloaded on the body in Parliament over the lengthy closure of Eagle Farm racecourse.
He called on RQ to fix the track as soon as possible.
But following Dr Forbes' departure, Mr Hinchliffe issued a statement praising the racing boss.
"His is a positive legacy for Queensland's racing industry, and I wish him well for the future," Mr Hincliffe said in a statement.
General manager of racing Simon Stout will be the interim chief executive while Dr Forbes will remain in an advisory role.
The Eagle Farm track closed in 2014 for a nine-month upgrade and re-opened in 2016 but was closed again during the winter carnival last May.
It has been closed for all but one year of the last four.
Mr Hinchliffe said he had instructed RQ to give him weekly briefings about the status of the upgrades, as well as providing similar briefings to industry stakeholders.
He said in the meantime he was disappointed but supported RQ's decision to hold the upcoming Winter Carnival at nearby Doomben racecourse.
A national recruitment process is underway to fill Dr Forbes' position.


It was marvellous to open the New Zealand Herald this morning and find, instead of the usual photographs of distressed celebrities and mangled cars, an image of Visesio Siasau standing staunchly in front of some of the painted ngatu panels that have won him the big prize at this year's Wallace Art Awards. Siasau's win gives him a trophy, six months in New York City, and name recognition across the New Zealand art world.
The Herald describes Siasau's entry for the Wallace awards as a 'huge tapa bark cloth depicting traditional figures of divinity within a Christian context', but these words hardly capture the ambition and strangeness of the artist's work. Any reader of the Herald who examines the photograph of Siasau's ngatu carefully will notice that the image of Christ on one of his panels is decorated, or defaced, by a dollar sign. In previous works, including a series of sculptures made from glass and a type of plastic, Siasau has crucified the Tongan god Tangaloa and placed Catholic icons like Mary and Joseph on a sort of chessboard where members of the pantheon of old Polynesian gods lurk.
For all their originality, the images that Visesio Siasau makes today can be understood in relation to his Tongan childhood. Siasau grew up in Haveluloto, a poor suburb on the edge of Nuku'alofa where roads of dusty coral run down to a polluted lagoon. He is a cousin of Tevita Latu, the dissident and painter who has created an avant-garde movement called the Seleka Club in a lagoonside shack.
Like most of the citizens of Haveluloto, Siasau could track his ancestry to Ha'apai, the now-remote archipelago that was once, for a century or so, the political and cultural capital of Tonga. The islands of Ha'apai are small and low, and their people have always been known as boatbuilders and woodworkers and navigators. Many of Siasau's older male relations built and carved.
To grow up in Haveluloto in the 1980 and '90s was to inhabit two worlds. Around the kava bowl young men like Visesio heard stories about epic sea journeys and ancient battles. On the streets of Nuku'alofa, though, they encountered convenience stores with barred windows, gangs filled with high school dropouts and deportees, and homeless beggars slumped outside salubrious churches. The riot which destroyed much of downtown Nuku'alofa in 2006 only dramatised a crisis that Siasau had observed many years earlier.
Siasau's art can be seen as an attempt to reconnect the streets of Nuku'alofa with the Tonga of his ancestors. Using not only oral tradition but the work of palangi scholars like the late great Roger Neich, he has tried to recover and redeploy the culture of pre-Christian, pre-capitalist Tonga.
In 2013, when I lived in the Friendly Islands, I drove with Siasau out of Nuku'alofa and into the Tongan countryside, as he searched for the locations of the godhouses where shaman-priests of the old religion would down bowls of green kava, quiver with piety, and channel the voices of gods like Tangaloa and Hikule'o. When Christianity came to Tonga at the point of a gun, the godhouses were burned and their carvings were either smashed or handed to missionaries as captives. Pigs were run through the sacred grounds around the razed houses.
Using local rumours, old kava bowl stories, and the details that scholars like Neich had prised from missionary letters and diaries, Siasau was trying to map the sacred landscape of old Tonga. As our car wallowed in the potholes of roads built over ancient walking tracks, he gestured at the locations of the vanished godhouses, and pointed out traces of the past that had survived the depredations of Christian fundamentalism and commercial agriculture: burial mounds, sacred boulders, and a deep, thistle-filled gully that once been a saltwater canal where ships from 'Uvea and Fiji waited to be emptied of their koloa.
It would be easy, but also wrong, to dismiss Visesio Siasau as a sentimental antiquarian, a sort of Tongan version of Frank Leavis, the English literary critic who deplored modern life and longed for the 'organic community' that supposedly existed in medieval Europe. But a look at Siasau's art shows that he lacks Leavis' morbid nostalgia, as well as the typically palangi habit of dichotomising past and present. Rather than lamenting an idealised past, he wants to suggest how ancient Tongan culture can play a part in the country's twenty-first century life. His syncretic gods are supposed to shock Tongans and palangi alike into pondering how apparently opposed religious and philosophical systems might be reconciled and combined.
The series of ngatu paintings that have won Visesio Siasau the Wallace Award were created in Havleluloto last year, after the artist had conducted a succession of interviews with the inhabitants of the suburb. He listened to his relatives and neighbours talk about their beliefs, preoccupations, and problems, then searched for images capable of conveying what he had heard. The painting that adorns Christ with a dollar sign is Siasau's sardonic but not unsympathetic response to stories about the excesses of some Tongan churches.
The sources of Visesio Siasau's images might seem exotic, and even esoteric, to many New Zealanders, but I would argue that his art has parallels with the work of some of our greatest twentieth century painters. Siasau's mixture of dissatisfaction with twenty-first century capitalist civilisation and fascination with ancient Polynesian religion might remind us of Tony Fomison and Emily Karaka, those great and greatly disturbing rebels against both the commercialism and the secularism of late twentieth century New Zealand. Siasau's urgent and unashamed asking of religious questions reminds me of the stark graffiti Colin McCahon left on his last canvases. And the syncretic deities that Siasau exhibits surely recall the intricate and enchanted goddess paintings of Rita Angus.
Like McCahon and Fomison and Angus in their day, Visesio Siasau has sometimes encountered prejudice and misunderstanding. Some conservative Tongans have condemned his godmaking as impious and impudent; others have criticised him for painting on ngatu, a medium traditionally associated with women. I hope that the Wallace Award will encourage these Tongan critics to revisit their judgments, and also win Siasau a much wider audience in New Zealand.
Footnote: this is only a quick and off the cuff response to Sio's victory, and I apologise in advance for its inevitable oversights and simplifications. I wrote in more detail about the artist's god-hunting back at the beginning of last year.
It's great he won that prize. Looks like a challenging work he has undertaken. I should go to the Pah Homestead. I went there on my birthday in 2013 with my daughter etc I took a lot of photographs of art there, but I am not always sure which artist is which.
The tapa cloth with drawings etc worked well for John Pule.
Interesting links to Fomison and Rita Angus. When the US Poet Creeley was here giving lectures (I think it was 1995) he kept going back to a Fomison exhibition that disturbed and moved him. Fomison I met once or twice at some gallery openings. A rather quiet, unassuming fellow (Wystan Curnow I think expressed once to me that he wasn't much interested in his work for 'complex reasons'...but I don't think that we can dismiss the complex that is art. It is not some theorist idea of what art is - not that theory is bad - but it is a large project. It wasn't the 'darkness' that disturbed Creeley (one thinks of his early poems, his Auckland poems I don't think were much good, and by the way his diaristic dialogue in several volumes (I once picked up most of them from a shop in Howick that fortunately knew nothing of Creeley or Olson - recall though that Olson and say Saul Bellow did degrees in Anthropology): and ironically there is a picture of Wystan and his mother done by Rita Angus. Her god-women are haunting indeed. And Curnow also extols in catalogs etc the work, even the 'religious' works of McCahon. McCahon has to be one of our great artists like such as Hotere.
So interesting connections there. People are ambiguous about Paul Gauguin but I think he saw something of the mystery and dark beauty of pre-Christian religion or mythology etc and it entered his works. He was also at odds with the Christian and other authorities.
And it I wonder if, given time, Bloom would concede that, wonderful as those Western artists are, there is no centre as such. 'Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold...' Or "the centre" is everywhere.
That might be what the art in the US can convey - McCahon made one visit that influenced his works, although he went his own way, and his use of religion or philosophy or 'spirituality' is interesting (but he seems to be in now way contesting the status quo, so perhaps just working with the mystery.
I meant that it 'wasn't the darkness that disturbed Curnow, but it did Creeley of 'the darkness surrounds us', but he also kept worrying (aloud) about Ed Dorn's 'Abhorrences': I think also that that time 1994 was the resultant of the Rogernomic and eventually ACT and the political climate at the time that affected at the social level. Creeley seemed aware of a general malaise. But of course the Fomison exhibition was not a 'political' one but was on at the time Creeley was here.
Certainly Fomison's vision is or was not a particularly popular one. It was dark in many ways, but not altogether. He also 'bridged the divide' somewhat.
Yes, it's a big win for Sio and for Tongan visual art, Richard. I'm very pleased for him, because he really hasn't had the easiest road as an artist. He's had to live in a frugal and improvisational way, moving from house to house and making art wherever he can, whilst at the time trying to maintain a family life. He's an idealist who has been disinclined to compromise his artistic vision to move his career forward. But talent and vision and hard work sometimes win out over birth and networking and cynicism!
I don't mean to knock artists who were born in the West, with silver spoons in their mouths. I'm no horny-handed son of the working class! But if ever an artist deserved an award, it is Sio.
Have you read Martin Edmond's Dark Night, about McCahon's last visit to Sydney? Sad and interesting. Sio has something of the high modernist seriousness of McCahon and Angus - the sort of intensity and intolerance for ephemera that has been easy to mock in the era postmodernism, but which may now once again be fascinating audiences. Or so I'm hoping!
Are you coming to the Titus launch next week? Good to see Olivia publishing again.
Ho! My comment about silver spoons...! All arises! But must it converge and the violent bear it away?! [Couldn't resist some mish mash Taylorization...] Re silver spooners, or those who at least acquired such spoons in mouths...I was reading about Stevens via Harold Bloom, and he is an interesting example, almost of a 'pure artist', which I think I saw Sio allude to, he was able to be relatively angst ridden: but they are unfair who attack (such as) Woolf (for being a snob) or Merrill (for being in a family that was incredibly rich, but the 'mother' he most loved was his German nanny, not his very rich parents so much): silver spoons or not all artists struggle in their own ways, (as the poet-artist is always an outsider, regardless of how 'successful'). I agree though of most said above, and it is good to see him win from hard work, I didn't know he was struggling in that sense. Good to see his career get a kick start or a boost.
I recall when that book came out by Edmond. I have only read some of one of his works and his book about Clairmont, as well as a small book he wrote. Interesting writer for sure. McCahon I didn't always like (I always liked his I AM though...took longer to get into his numbers etc) but I read about three books about his art, I think 2 were by Peter Simpson: very good. These increased my interest. Lloyd Geering, the intransigent religious rebel (even radical) from the fold wrote about McCahon. McCahon is one of the 20th Century greats for sure. No one in the world is quite like him, there is a rawness he has, a strength, darkness, depth: as well as knowledge.
Yes, I must come to the launch, I like Olivia and her work, and Christie: but I don't know Painter's work (there's another Holly Painter in the US I think it is). So it will be interesting.
5 pm Thursday week, at the Alleluyah. Halleluyah!


What do I need to take on the Camino?
As a general rule, no matter the distance and difficulty of your Camino, you should travel light. The less you carry the more you will enjoy the experience.
Planning what to take with you will largely depend on your accommodation and whether you are going to be carrying everything you need or using a baggage transfer service.
By using a baggage transfer service and choosing hotels and guesthouses your kit list will be altered, though making provisions for longer stages of a Camino are necessary, you will only carry what you would typically carry on a day walk.
Adjust your kit according to the time of year and the route you are taking.


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Improving Early ANC Attendance and IPT Uptake through Community Health Volunteers
Community health workers are playing an increasing role in maternal health programming. Augustine Ngindu, Susan Ontiri, Gathari Ndirangu, Beth Barasa, Evans Nyapada, David Omoit, Johnstone Akatu, and Mildred Mudany of The Matewrnal and Child Survival Program, The Kenya Ministry of Health and Jhpiego share their experiences in Kenya at the 66th Annual Meeting of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene in Baltimore on 2017-11-06. If you are in Baltimore, hear more at Scientific Session 13. Below is an abstract of their presentation
Kenya adopted the use of intermittent preventive treatment with sulfadoxine pyrimethamine in 1998 but the proportion of pregnant women receiving at least two doses (22% (2010) and 56% (2015) has remained below the national target of 80%. In 2015, the country adopted an IPTp3 indicator for monitoring IPTp uptake; that year, the proportion of women taking at least 3 doses was 38% (2015).
Some of the factors leading to low IPTp coverage include poor knowledge on the need for early antenatal care (ANC), distances to health facilities, sociocultural practices and a lack of financial resources. In 2012, community health volunteers (CHVs) were enlisted through a pilot program in one county to deliver messages aimed at increasing the proportion of women starting ANC ? 20 weeks of gestation and thus expand the proportion of women receiving IPTp early in the second trimester.
A community survey in 2013 showed an increase in IPTp2 from 22% in 2010 to 63%. The practice was considered a success story, and was subsequently replicated in 30 sub-counties, in 4 out of 14 malaria endemic counties. The rollout involved training of 9,042 CHVs, in 761 community units. Between 2015 and 2016, the CHVs reached 86,433 women with MiP messages. During this time, there was an average increase in IPTp1 from 51% to 68%, and IPTp2 increased from 42% to 55% (p? 0.001). This could be attributed to early ANC attendance, which increased from 32% to 48% in the same period.
The use of CHVs to sensitize pregnant women to start IPTp early in the second trimester and continue with scheduled ANC visits increases the probability that women will receive the recommended IPTp-SP doses. The rollout of the practice to other malaria endemic counties is likely to have contributed to increase in IPTp uptake in the four target counties.
Published November 5, 2017 By Bill Brieger
Categorized as CHW, IPTp, Malaria in Pregnancy
Online Survey to Elicit Views of Technical Support from Endemic Country Neglected Tropical Disease Managers
Performance assessment of laboratory technicians on Malaria Microscopy in 5 high endemic districts of Rwanda


Lock in a great price for Hostel Shappy – rated 9.2 by recent guests!
We were nicely welcomed by the staff and had a great experience there. Everything was very clean, there was never a queue at the bathrooms (and they were also very clean). The hostel staff was very helpful. Parking was provided as promised.
Great stay with very friendly and helpful staff. Free coffee and biscuits in the morning. Good wifi. Clean.
Great stay as usual. Shappy is excellent for short stay. The location is perfect. It offers free parking. Great value for money.
Location was amazing - close to Gornji and Donji grad. The staff was very nice and helpful.
Great location for a really decent price. I upgraded from a full 5 person dorm to a private room with private bath, for an extra 25€, so a pretty good deal.
The staff were extremely friendly and helpful, rooms were spotless!
Very close to public transportation. Staff told me which tram to ride and how to get to the property before arriving. Upon arrival staff was very friendly and helpful with any questions. Rooms and facilities were very clean. Free coffee and tea in the morning.
Prime location, comfy rooms, great location - highly recommend and thanks!
Featuring free Wi-Fi and a terrace in Zagreb's center, Hostel Shappy offers free computer use and a lounge area featuring an LCD cable TV. Its air-conditioned rooms are individually decorated and secured by a card lock system.
The 24-hour front desk can provide tourist information, including customized city tours and tips on where to eat and drink. The hostel offers a shared cooking area that consists of a microwave, a kettle and a fridge.
Located in a pedestrian zone, Shappy Hostel is right next to the Cvjetni Trg Shopping Center. The hostel is 650 feet from the nearest tram stop and just 800 feet from the central Ban Jelačić Square.
Numerous bars, night clubs, museums and galleries can be found in the city center. The funicular leading up to the historic Upper Town is 650 feet away.
Main Train Station is just 0.6 mi away, while Zagreb Airport is at a distance of 9.9 mi. A shuttle bus leaves from the airport and takes 25 minutes to get to the Main Bus Station, which is within 1.6 mi from the hostel.
When would you like to stay at Hostel Shappy?
Air-conditioned room featuring a bunk bed and a private bathroom with shower.
This air-conditioned room features a private bathroom with a shower. It is well lit through a skylight.
This rate is for a bunk bed in an air-conditioned dormitory room with 4 sleeping places. Guests have access to a shared bathroom.
This air-conditioned dormitory room features 2 bunk beds with 2 sleeping places each, as well as 1 single bed. Guests have access to a shared bathroom.
This air-conditioned dormitory room features 5 bunk beds with 2 sleeping places each. Guests have access to a shared bathroom.
The room has bunk beds, a shared bathroom, free security lockers, air conditioning and free Wi-Fi.
This air-conditioned room features a private bathroom with a shower and includes a free parking place.
Situated in the very heart of the city, Hostel Shappy provides its customers with an opportunity to fall in love with Zagreb. Surrounded with the town's finest offerings, the hostel is situated in the pedestrian zone with its own parking area (reservation needed) and just a minute walk from the Zagreb main square. Thanks to its wonderful location, customers are given a great chance to explore the best of what Zagreb has to offer. The city's best cafes, restaurants and nightclubs are all at hand, including numerous cultural sites. Hostel Shappy consists of 14 originally decorated rooms, each personalized in a unique style, and offers 43 beds. We offer the lovely Romantic Room, designed for couples who want a bit of their own space and privacy. The Green Room and the Stripey Room offer a vivid touch of design, while Happy Room and Swag Room are designated for bigger groups. The Cool Suite consists of two separate bedrooms and has its own private bathroom. In the summer of 2013, we have upgraded our hostel with eight new rooms. All of them are deluxe category and have their own private bathroom. They are an ideal choice for business people and families with children.
House Rules Hostel Shappy takes special requests – add in the next step!
Hostel Shappy accepts these cards and reserves the right to temporarily hold an amount prior to arrival.
Please note that in the period from 1st of October until 1st of April it is necessary to pre-announce the arrival after midnight.
The hostel is amazing, everything super cozy and new. Super well located and the staff is incredibly helpful. I would book here if ever visiting Zagreb again.
Very conveniently located - walking distance from all the main sights as well as surrounded by heaps of coffee shops and restaurants! Prompt, friendly staff. Good wifi.
Very small indoor common area that's located at the reception desk.
Great for travelling by car, walking distance to public garage. Polite staff of the hostel will reduce a price of your stay for the amount paid for the garage. Best recommendations!
Staff were extremely attentive and helpful, and went out of their way to assist me with organising a more complicated transfer for my onward travel. I will not hesitate to stay here again.
Only thing would be not enough (i.e no) cupboard space, but that's only negative.
Extremely friendly and helpful staff. Great location easy to access public transport.
Sadly there's nothing you can do about people you end up in the room with. I just wish some travellers had a minimum decency towards other people sleeping and avoid having loud conversations at 5am while packing.
Could perhaps do with more showers (could get busy in high season). WiFi wasn't working in the rooms only reception although someone was working on it while I was staying there. Quite big lockers but a bit narrow. No communal kitchen. Despite all this I really rate this hostel as the staff are really accomodating.
The staff here are amazing. The rooms are clean and the towels get changed frequently. The cleaning lady is also lovely. Good central location. The free coffee in the morning is the best I've ever tasted (and I drink buckets of the stuff!). It's got a nice relaxing vibe and is pretty quiet. It's not a party hostel. You will get some sleep here. The staff are such an asset to the place it's worth mentioning again. Thanks to them for everything.
In double room would appreciate a second smaller towel and cups.
Location is in the heart of the city. Staff is outstanding, there for all of your needs. Free parking close to the hostel. In the morning you are offered with coffee and cookies. Room is cozy and clean. Definitely would recommend and definitely will stay on my next visit to Zagreb.
Hostel Shappy is very clean and modern.


This Potent Cream Works Magic Men's On Aging Skin.
A fantastic, lightweight facial crème formulated with alpha hydroxy acids (AHAs), Hyaluronic Acid (HA), multi-fruit acids and Pure Vitamin A (Not Retinol). This formula delivers a top- to-bottom emollient-rich experience.
Men's skin is thicker and oilier than women's. Hormones, the very things that make men men, make men's skin oilier and as much as 20 percent thicker than women's. "Testosterone production overwhelms the skin's sebum glands, which then produce more oil," said Scott Michelle, a chemist who helped develop Solutions Based. That also makes men's pores larger and more prominent and their wrinkles deeper. Therefore their skin needs special attention and different anti aging ingredients than women.
They need an anti aging program that reduces oil, yet moisturizes.
The very first thing people notice is your FACE, not your ABS!
This Anti-Aging Formula offers the most advanced ingredients to significantly reduce and prevent the signs of aging. Alpha Hydroxy, Hyaluronic Acid, Vitamin A Cream protects cells from free radical damage, improving the overall structure of skin, and visibly diminishing damage caused by biological and environmental aging factors.
It utilizes the combination of the purest form of Vitamin A, AHA and HA to provide visible long-term results.
By combining these powerful anti-aging ingredients, this formula helps prevent damage caused by the body's oxidation process and support production of collagen and elastin (two key supporters of the skin), which in turn helps reduce the appearance of wrinkles and fine lines.
AHA, HA, Vitamin A Cream To Exfoliate & Cleanse Acne, Rosacea, Blemishes!
Alpha Hydroxy, Hyaluronic Acid, and Vitamin A has been recommended by dermatologists and estheticians because of it's ability to exfoliate (loosen and slough away), purify and cleanse acne-laden skin to reveal newer skin cells. Skin appears healthier and rejuvenated that is why it is such a fantastic face cream. This a one-step formula sheds dead skin and opens up pores to prepare for other active ingredients to absorb into the skin.
Alpha Hydroxy, Hyaluronic Acid, and Vitamin A all combined to improve hydration, reduce bacteria and infection, improve softness and encourage healthy skin development! Effective in treating acne, rosacea, skin rash, redness, and skin irritation. This AHA, HA, Vitamin A face cream is a fantastic all around cream.
Alpha Hydroxy Acid increases the rate of exfoliation (shedding of dead skin cells). It is a group of plant-derived acids used to smooth fine lines and surface wrinkles, to improve skin texture and tone, unblock and cleanse pores. A-Hydroxy Acids, or Alpha Hydroxy Acids (AHAs), are a class of chemical compounds that consist of a carboxylic acid substituted with a hydroxy group on the adjacent carbon...any one of several natural acids (glycolic, lactic, citric, malic). They can help reduce ingrown hairs and improve the look of skin. AHAs are present in a board spectrum of skin care products.
AHAs can be pretty strong, so combining them with hyaluronic acid is a great way to replenish the skin at the same time to make sure that the acids aren't too harsh on the skin.
Whether for mature skin rejuvenation, or rough, bumpy, troubled skin support and rebalancing, AHA's help encourage your skin to look it's very best. Working as natures retexturizing masters, it helps refine and brighten, leaving skin feeling soft, supple and revived.
Effective results through continuous treatment have resulted in AHAs being a successful & developmental method of curbing harsh ageing effects in the skin & cosmeceutical industry. Anyone concerned with looking younger, longer should consider adding an alpha hydroxy product to their skincare routine.
Glycolic acid is the gold standard. That's because it's the most researched and has the best track record of impressive results for all ages and all skin types.
Tartaci Acid: Although tartaric acid can exfoliate skin when used in roughly the same concentrations as glycolic or lactic acids, it functions best in helping to maintain the pH range that other AHAs need to work their magic. In certain formulas, it helps provide more targeted exfoliation, as each size of AHA has its layer-by-layer benefits.
Malic acid is larger than glycolic and lactic acids, but is still able to exfoliate, and it also delivers antioxidant benefits. Malic acid in concentrations of 1% to 2% is a good supporting player when included in AHA exfoliants led by glycolic and lactic acids—you get a nice multi-level exfoliation.
Hyaluronic acid is part of the body's connective tissues, and is known to cushion and lubricate. A powerful humectant (aka moisture-binding ingredient) that keeps skin plump and hydrated and, yes, young-looking. Hyaluronic acid keeps collagen synthesis up, as well as retaining skin moisture, contributing to the anti-aging benefits to the skin.
AHA, Hyaluronic Acid & Vitamin A when combined is the Holy Grail of cosmetics.
• Significantly reduces the appearance of wrinkles and fine lines and visibly promotes firmer skin.
• Contains the most powerful antioxidants to help neutralize the damaging effects of free radicals.
• Helps support the production of collagen and elastin: two biological elements that facilitate cell renewal and improve skin's texture and elasticity.
Apply Alpha Hydroxy, Hyaluronic Acid Vitamin A Cream on a clean, shaven and dry face. In order to be fully effective, the active ingredients of Alpha Hydroxy, Hyaluronic Acid Vitamin A Cream must be in direct contact with the skin, so wait a minute or two before applying another skincare product on top.
Alpha Hydroxy, Hyaluronic Acid Vitamin A Cream can be used on both the neck and face area to moisturize, diminish signs of aging and protect against future signs.


Struggling with what to get friends or family members this holiday season? Don't know what to ask for yourself (apart from a device that will help you get over 2018's considerable sleep deficit)? The Editors at TGA have put together a holiday guide of the geeky and academic offerings on the market this year we'd like, in addition to more affordable conferences.
The best scholarship — archaeological or otherwise — should help us better understand our present world, as well as the past. Roller's book, which blends archaeology, history, and ethnography to examine a historic Pennsylvania coal mining town and a late 19th century massacre of immigrant laborers, also explores "how the archaeology of the recent past can uncover the deep foundations of today's social troubles." It's an intriguing premise and suggests a fascinating read.
I'm fascinated by pseudoarchaeology and always discussed it when teaching anthropology, since it is an easy (and interesting) access point for scientific thought and how knowledge is created. Card's latest book explores the relationships between antiquarianism, archaeology, pseudoarchaeology, and pop culture archaeology through their historical and modern intersections with science, mysticism, the supernatural, and occult. It promises to be an interesting history of archaeology as a discipline and why it (and the unknown) has long captivated our attention.
A regular on one of my favorite podcasts, Monstertalk, Richard Sugg has made a name for himself investigating the history, folklore, and medico-scientific discourses that inform supernatural beliefs and creatures like the vampire. Sugg's latest book tackles fairies (or faeries, depending on who you ask), creatures with a dark and often twisted relationship with the human world, portrayed best in recent works like the Gentleman with the Thistledown Hair in the BBC's adaptation of Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell and The Fairy Queen in SyFy's The Magicians. Fairies: A Dangerous History promises to provide a cultural history of the fae, from A Midsummer Night's Dream to the Cottingly fairy hoax.
As sf (science fiction, speculative fiction) has grown increasingly diverse, so too has scholarship about the work that such fabulations expanded. Drawing upon the work of authors such as Octavia Butler and N.K. Jemisin (who recently won her third Hugo award for best science fiction novel), Dr. Schalk's book articulates well with the recent genre-bending futurism of Janelle Monae's Dirty Computer by blending Black feminism and disability studies, pulling readers into crip theory and consider the intersecting linkages between racism and sexism.
Embed with Games is, by far, my favorite read of the year so far. Cara Ellison is woman in the game industry, a writer, and she decided to embark on a year long journey, which could certainly be categorized as ethnographic, but falls in the realm of game journalism. She spent a year staying with various game designers around the world from North America to Europe to Asia. She lived with them, laughed with them, and watched them as they worked. Originally this work was a blog, the entire project crowd-funded with the promise of blog posts as she explored the world of the game industry, and each chapter takes us on a different adventure, as she made her way from one designer to the next. As an anthropologist of play who has recently began designing and developing games of my own, this read brought me into heads and the worlds of those individuals I currently find most fascinating.
The idea of watching others play games is not new to either broadcasting or human activity generally, however, the idea that we might watch each other play video games is a fairly new phenomena. Its start has its infant beginning in 2005, however, we have seen the rise of its teen years in Twitch.tv, with Amazon's buy out of the site possibly marking its moving out and going to college, even though maturity level might still be that of an 18-year-old who still doesn't know how to do laundry. T. L. Taylor, explores the rise of Twitch.tv, having spent the last five years completing ethnographic fieldwork with streamers, viewers, and those behind the scenes at Twitch.tv headquarters. She obtained a broad understanding of the communities involved with this platform and about the platform itself, and uses the theoretical frame of broadcasting and television (as an overarching category, to explore streaming games more broadly.
You might wonder what a role-playing game is doing on my "academic" wishlist, but I've increasingly come to believe in games' potential not just as objects of study but as tools that can help us think through anthropological concepts. Dialect seems like that kind of game. Through play, the players "define and explore an isolated community through its beginning, rise, and end." Pitch for a panel at next year's AAA: Get four anthropologists to record a playthrough of this game, then have each member of the panel present their reflections.
I'm late to the party with this game (which has been out since early October), but I'm very much looking forward to it. Recent offerings in the series (Origins, Syndicate, Black Flag) have been strong, and as a classical archaeologist, it was a treat to run around Egypt in Origins (and the educator in me loved the Discovery Tour mode, which allowed players to explore and go on virtual tours of historic sites). So I can't wait to see Odyssey's version of ancient Greece, a cultural group with which I am more familiar, and as a female gamer, I love the game's option of a male or female playable character. I also like that players get to determine the genders of their character's love interests and, while any Greek historian will explain how sexual orientation in Greece differs from today, I'll be interested to see how this feature plays out in this setting.
Batman the Animated Series has a special place in my heart since it is the Batman that I grew up on, so I was excited to discover this board game. I have several other Batman board games, but these are competitive, rather than co-op, so I'm interested to see this type of mechanic in motion. And unlike some other Batman games (I'm looking at you Gotham City Strategy and Road Trip), Gotham Under Siege includes Batman's rich cast of female heroes and villains, letting players choose between Batman, Catwoman, Robin, Batgirl, and Gordon / Montoya in their quest to defeat the city's notorious male and female masterminds.
Tales from the Loop is a TTRPG made in Sweden written Fri Ligan using Simon Stålenhag's art, is a Swedish RPG, with the a feel like Dark (German Netflix TV Show) or Stranger Things (American Netflix TV Show). The game is set in 1980's Sweden suburbia, which seems to be very close to my own American lived experience. However, Ligan added the fantastic beasts and strange machines of Stålenhag's art to the world. Here you play kids and teenagers, solving mysteries from the seat of your bicycle. If you ever wanted to be Eleven, play this game. I must admit, with some of my own work being based in Sweden, I am a bit biased.
I found The Sparrow at my public library this summer, and have already been thinking about re-reading it. I could tell right away it would check a lot of my boxes: sci-fi written by an anthropologist? Check. The anthropologist is not a white male? Check. The protagonist is not a white male? Check. Features a nuanced portrayal of Jesuits in space, trying to avoid repeating the mistakes of colonialism? Check to a box I was not aware I had but is apparently a theme, according to a tweet I stumbled on last week about "international space communism under the benevolent guidance of the Jesuit order." The book begins with the sole survivor of a Jesuit first contact mission returning to earth, and uses that as the structuring tentpole for exploring the shared being-ness and intense misunderstandings that led to the failure of the mission. I loved the structure of the book, the way it approaches questions of suffering, and the lovely xenoanthropology that went into how Russell created the aliens.
Gary Con is a old school game convention held as a living memorial to Gary Gygax, and every year during my dissertation research I got to make the pilgrimage to Lake Geneva, Wisconsin to experience its magic. There are bigger conventions, like Gen Con, but nothing else comes close to Gary Con in terms of getting to play and hang out with "the great old ones" of gaming. I miss it, and if you go, you'll miss it until the next time you get to go.


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HomeNewsCity of Williams Lake council declines temporary homeless option
City of Williams Lake council declines temporary homeless option
By Tanner Wallace-Scribner
Friday, Dec. 11th, 2020
The City of Williams Lake has declined a local communities group call to provide short-term temporary housing for the City's homeless population.
At a Committee of the Whole Council meeting late last month, Council received a presentation on behalf of several community groups advocating for action to provide temporary shelters (tents) for homeless people in Williams Lake.
They also requested that the City provide garbage bins and pick-up on this site and port-a-potties, fire pits and potentially snowplough access to the site.
The proposal was based on temporary housing that the community of Smithers had supplied its homeless population previously.
Mayor Walt Cobb said after City staff review the proposal and contacted Smithers; he feels it just isn't the best option.
"If you look at the history wherever they've had tent town and tent operations, they have never been successful. They've always created health issues along with a whole lot of other things," he said. "Also, if we set it up as a City and allow some people in there, then it is deemed for us providing their home. If, in fact, there were problems, we would have to get an injunction to get them moved because it would be like moving somebody out of their house."
"Another one of the reasons is there not conducive to any neighbourhood that we could find," Cobb continued. "We just made the decision that we didn't need a short term fix; there is lots of hotel rooms available there are other things that could be available for proper housing, rather than have to set up some tents."
Cobb added that they would be looking for longer-term housing options for the homeless population in Williams Lake.