text:
Saying goodbye to ourselves
In which I spend way too much money at Amazon UK
Historical novel title changes...
The 50-page rule
Idle observations on shelving
Tuesday afternoon, random notes
Deep thoughts on reviewing...
Book sale alert
Words fail me ...
I can procrastinate anything
Amusing Amazon matches
[Preface: I wrote this essay for the November 2004 issue of the Historical Novels Review. Since the fall semester has just begun at Eastern Illinois U., and the freshmen are looking younger than ever, it seemed an appropriate time to repost it. This was meant to be a discussion on why we shouldn't pigeonhole ourselves in our definitions of "historical fiction," but also why we can't help doing it; it can be read as a sequel of sorts to the definition article/conference talk that's posted on the HNS website (which I wrote two years earlier, in 2002).
If you want to read the current Mindset List, published annually by Beloit College in Wisconsin, you can find it here. Enjoy.]
As some of you know, I work full-time as a reference librarian in a university library. Each autumn, when the freshmen arrive on campus, the librarians remark on how much younger the new students look than last year's crop. Of course, they're the same age as always, while we're the ones who are growing older. Nobody really wants to admit that. Still, it is true that the age gap between the library staff and brand new university students gets wider all the time.
Each year, academics across the United States refer to the famous "Mindset List," produced by Beloit College in Wisconsin, to put themselves in the shoes of the young people that they're instructing. The list takes elements of history and popular culture and views them from the perspective of the younger generation. At my library, we print out each new edition as it's published, and place it at the reference desk for our own edification.
Most of today's new university students were born in 1985 or 1986, and are considered the Class of 2008. Here are some history-based examples from recent years' Mindset Lists that describe their viewpoints. The details given in parentheses are my additions. For these students:
- Most of them know someone who was born with the help of a test tube. (Louise Brown, first test tube baby, born July 25, 1978)
- They have no idea that Americans were ever held hostage in Iran. (Last hostages freed January 20, 1981)
- They have no meaningful recollection of the Reagan era, and did not know he had ever been shot. (March 30, 1981)
- There has always been an heir to the heir to the British throne. (Prince William born June 21, 1982)
- The drinking age has always been 21 throughout the country (USA). (National Minimum Drinking Age Act of 1984, signed into law on July 17)
- The precise location of the Titanic has always been known. (Wreck discovered September 1, 1985)
As its co-editor Tom McBride, Keefer Professor of the Humanities at Beloit College, states: "The Mindset List, among other things, is a reminder of that [new] world—a world that makes education a tougher yet more fascinating job than ever. In saying hello to the new generation, which [educators] labor mightily to understand, but with mixed results, they are saying good-bye to themselves."
Today's new university students have a vastly different perspective on the past than even people of Generation X – those individuals born in the 1960s and 1970s – do. Each generation has its own perspective on what connotes history, and it can be a very personal definition. It's an odd kind of culture shock. As historical novel readers, we're used to envisioning the lives of people who lived generations, or at least one generation, earlier than ourselves. It can be disconcerting to realize, via publications such as the Mindset List, that younger generations might feel about us the way we feel about, well, characters in historical fiction.
According to the official HNS definition, a historical novel should have been written at least fifty years after the events described, or have been written by someone who wasn't alive at the time. We acknowledge that this definition is arbitrary, because we can't please everyone. It benefits us to be precise. After all, we can't review everything. But the more I think about people's varying definitions of "history," particularly those of the younger generation, it occurs to me that it benefits us just as much to be flexible.
This point became clearer to me when looking through the backlist catalogue of Scholastic, a major publisher of children's and young adult fiction. They publish four series of fictionalized diaries of teenagers and older children who lived in different historical periods. I recently spotted one of the latest entries from the Dear America series, Ellen Emerson White's novel Where Have All the Flowers Gone: The Diary of Molly McKenzie Flaherty. Set on the American home front in 1968 Boston, Massachusetts, it describes one teenage girl's personal Vietnam-era experience as she volunteers in a military hospital, sees war protests firsthand, and fears for her brother, fighting for his country on the other side of the world. Is it set more than fifty years in the past? No. Was the author alive at the time the novel depicts? Yes. But is it historical fiction? Members of the novel's teenage audience, who were born nearly twenty years after the novel takes place, would probably think so.
I can also recall, while growing up, being fascinated by Judy Blume's 1977 children's novel Starring Sally J. Freedman As Herself, about a ten-year-old Jewish girl from New Jersey who winters in Miami Beach with her mother and brother. Like any child of her age, her curiosity runs away with her at times. She dreams of swimming as beautifully as movie star Esther Williams, with her elegant bearing and super-white teeth. Having been deeply affected by the death of her cousin Lila in the Holocaust, Sally seriously wonders if her next-door neighbor may be Adolf Hitler in disguise. Back then, I didn't really care whether Blume's novel was "historical fiction" or not – I just thought it was a good story. But it did make me consider how World War II influenced the day-to-day lives of Jewish Americans, many of whom lost family members in concentration camps overseas. They didn't teach you about this sort of thing in school – how average people were changed by historical events – and they probably still don't. But this is what historical fiction is all about.
Lest anyone feel I'm being pedantic by selecting two children's books as examples, take Charlotte Bingham's The Moon at Midnight, a fairly new saga set in the fictional English fishing village of Bexham in 1962, over forty years ago. One of Bingham's main points was to show the contrasting values between members of the Greatest Generation and their children, who don't seem to care about the sacrifices their parents made for them during World War II. Reading this novel, its historicity is well evident, at least to a reader (like me) who didn't live through those events firsthand.
All of these thoughts were brought home to me via a discussion on the Internet discussion group rec.arts.books.hist-fiction, on which fans of the genre post messages about their interests. Several readers agreed that they couldn't conceive of "historical fiction" as anything set during or after World War II, because it was an event they lived through. On the other hand, historical fiction can be a valuable tool in demonstrating the differences between now and then, even if the "then" isn't that far away in actual years. Reading these novels can be a real eye-opener, showing us how many things – social conditions, politics, and the influence of contemporary events in our daily lives – have changed.
It may be true, as an HNS member suggested in a recent letter to the editor, that many readers of this magazine prefer to read about eras long past. I enjoy this type of setting myself, and they're certainly popular with reviewers. But occasionally reading a novel set within the last forty years, one with significant historical content, brings home to me the fact that times have changed considerably more than I might believe.
Of course, there's another advantage to reading these novels. Thanks to historical novelists who write about the recent past, a past that many of us still remember well, we don't have to "say good-bye to ourselves," as the Mindset List suggests. We can relive those times just as often as we'd like – and we can introduce the younger generations to them, too.
Posted by Sarah Johnson at 10:01 PM 14 comments
Yes, most of the money I make on my writing projects goes to support my book-buying habit...
This morning while browsing Fay Sampson's website, I noticed she has a new book out. One I've never seen mentioned anywhere else. Hmph. The Land of Angels, about Queen Bertha of Kent and the coming of St. Augustine of Canterbury, as her website reports, was published on July 31st by Robert Hale. Given that her earlier The Flight of the Sparrow went out of print before I could buy it, and it took me five more years of searching before I found a copy of the darn thing, I went right to Amazon UK and ordered her latest. Despite the outrageous price, which included a £1.99 "sourcing fee" because it's a special order. I almost suspect it's out of print already, because Hale novels normally aren't this hard to obtain...
Did I mention it has a really cool cover?
To assuage my guilt at the £2.99/book shipping price plus the £3.49/order shipping price, which I'd be paying regardless, I added a copy of Edward Charles's In the Shadow of Lady Jane to my shopping cart.
Now I just have to wait until mid-October until my books arrive, and my credit card gets charged the $80 or so I paid for both of these. I must be nuts.
(Anyone else see that Seinfeld episode?)
After attempting and setting aside four novels in rapid succession, I've come to the conclusion that the problem is neither the novels, nor the authors' skills - it's me. Yikes. This is the first time in maybe 7-8 years that I haven't had a novel on the coffeetable, nightstand, etc., waiting to be picked up and read. I have several thousand sitting on my bookshelves, but they don't appeal at the moment. It's a weird feeling.
Basically, I think I need to read something besides fiction for a short time (if I read anything at all). Fiction in general, that is, not just historical fiction - as one of the four was a contemporary chick lit/mystery that I read 3/4 of the way through before skimming to the end. (As an aside, the one novel that managed to hold my attention within the last week and a half was Megan Abbott's excellent Die a Little, a crime/noir set in 1950s LA. I'll write up a summary of that one for my next NoveList column.)
What have I been reading instead, you ask. The answer is - linguistics essays. This may seem like the most boring topic in the world to you, but au contraire, they're fascinating reading for anyone interested in how language works, and is used. Back when I was in grad school, I bought a book of essays by Geoffrey K. Pullum called The Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax, and Other Irreverent Essays on the Study of Language. I read a few of them back then, but am reading the rest of them now.
The essays are hilarious, if you enjoy dry humor as well as the author's successful attempts at making fun of stuffy people. (Linguists are not snobs.) For the title essay, Pullum explains why the myth of Eskimos having countless (200? 400? how many really?) words for snow is completely false. And why writers should stop using that cliché in trying to describe quantities that are, quite simply, indescribable.
Pullum's also a contributor to the lively and popular Language Log, a collaborative blog hosted at the University of Pennsylvania. (One of my former profs is another contributor, but I won't name drop... too much.) If you enjoy writing, or words in general, it's worth checking out and bookmarking.
But bringing the topic back to historical fiction and other writerly stuff: here are some entries from the Language Log that may appeal.
Novelist Frank Delaney (the multi-period epic Ireland) says that the Irish language has no word for sex. The linguists prove him wrong.
The bane of the author's life, copy editors, and their false claims about what is and isn't grammatical.
Dorothy Dunnett has been cleared of anachronism. Ditto for Patrick O'Brian. (Not surprising.)
Ever try to analyze Dan Brown's writing style? They've done it for you, and it's not pretty.
TGIF and all that. I'm going to read another of those essays now. (BTW, the Cookson and Lewis novels - that wasn't just me. I don't think.)
I've been browsing older historical novel deals in Publishers Marketplace and have come across some interesting data on title changes. As I'm sure you know, titles of novels are occasionally changed after they're sold, usually for marketability purposes.
The following are examples of this phenomenon: when the publishers bought these novels from the authors' agents, they had different titles than the ones you'd recognize. Do you prefer the newer titles, or the older ones?
Diana Gabaldon's Lord John and the Chamber Pot became Lord John and the Private Matter
Jenni Grizzle's Beyond the Mists of Midnight became Jennifer St. Giles's The Mistress of Trevelyan
Linda Holeman's Linny Gow became The Linnet Bird
Deborah Larsen's Two Falling Voices became The White
Kate McCafferty's Cot became Testimony of an Irish Slave Girl
Lilian Nattel's The Theater of Consolation became The Singing Fire (not The River Midnight as I originally reported, sorry - my mistake)
Mary Rourke's Mary and Joanna became Two Women of Galilee
Jed Rubenfeld's The Name of Action became The Interpretation of Murder
Frances Sherwood's Threshold became The Book of Splendor
Anne Easter Smith's Of Blood and Roses became A Rose for the Crown
Debbie Taylor's The Mistress and the Dwarf became The Fourth Queen
Edmund White's The Life of Frances Wright by Mrs. Trollope became Fanny: A Fiction
I tend to agree with all of them, with the exception of the Larsen - Two Falling Voices sounds like the more evocative and appealing title to me.
How long do you continue to read an unenjoyable book before giving up?
Nancy Pearl - reader's advisor extraordinaire, author of Book Lust, and model for the librarian action figure - came up with the Rule of 50: "If you still don't like a book after slogging through the first 50 pages, set it aside. If you're more than 50 years old, subtract your age from 100 and only grant it that many pages."
More and more, I'm discovering that life's too short to read novels that I'm not enjoying, or simply am not in the mood to read, even if I feel I should read them. Until recently, I kept bookmarks to mark my place in novels I never got around to finishing. For example, my copy of Dorothy Dunnett's King Hereafter still boasts one of these, ten years after my valiant attempt at reading it (please don't send me hate mail because of this). I got about halfway through. I don't know if I do this to assuage any possible feeling of guilt on my part, or if it's my lame attempt to avoid the obvious truth - that there are so many other books out there that, most likely, I'll never get around to picking these novels up again.
I don't have a hard and fast rule for these things. Review books, I'll slog through regardless of enjoyment (but fortunately, I do enjoy most). And I'm occasionally rewarded for my efforts - sometimes novels surprise me and turn out to be better than originally anticipated.
My latest two rejectees are Catherine Cookson's The Silent Lady and Hilda Lewis's I, Jacqueline. The former was Cookson's final novel, which she dictated to her husband from her sickbed - she was very ill at the time. I found the plot convoluted and the characters unappealing, and I really wonder if it would have been published if Cookson wasn't the author. I made it through about 30 pages. I, Jacqueline, a biographical novel of Jacqueline, Countess of Hainault, started off well, but the heroine was of the TSTL type - so naive and wishy-washy that I spent most of the novel (the half I read, anyway) cringing from her poor decisions.
It's possible I just wasn't in the right mood to read any of these novels. But I'll probably never know.
I'm writing today from Newington, Connecticut (my hometown), where I'll be until tomorrow. En route to Boston yesterday, we stopped at the New England Mobile Book Fair in Newton Highlands, which a friend had told me about - despite living in the area for years, I'd never been there before. Contrary to its name, the bookstore is not mobile; it resembles a warehouse, with no windows, high ceilings, and books absolutely everywhere.
The interesting part is that aside from new arrivals and nonfiction, which are mostly grouped by category, adult fiction was arranged by publisher rather than by genre. Ace to Zebra, in other words (although Zebra was probably with other books from Kensington; I didn't pay attention). Books from different but related imprints (part of the same company division, maybe?) were shelved together - Ballantine and Del Rey, for instance. Those from Knopf and Crown, on the other hand (both Random House imprints, different divisions), are not. Within each publisher group, books are grouped by format (hb, pb, tpb), and then arranged alphabetically by author.
Yes, I tried to figure out the system; it's the librarian in me, I admit. I think it's probably based on how books arrive at the store, so it makes unpacking easy.
The store has a self-service kiosk where you can look up a book and find out who the publisher is, plus a customer service counter, where you could ask a human being about it. The shelves themselves were of the utilitarian, tall, metal, open-backed type. The overall selection was excellent, once you dug deep enough.
I was bemused by the arrangement, since it doesn't facilitate browsing for the majority of folks (who won't know the details on who-owns-who in the publishing industry, and don't care who published what, either). It allows for an odd sort of serendipity, and I guess it must work - the place has been in business for years - but I didn't see anyone else, besides me, browsing the shelves.
I'm starting to dislike Blogger's insistence on titles, but I do like the Moody Blues... and it fits. Just sitting here figuring out what to make for dinner, UPS is pulling up outside, and I'm about to start cataloging (via Librarything and Readerware) the piles of books that arrived recently. Oh, and the Donati review has been written and turned in, on the same day, even (this is not typical) - 200 words exactly, and not another review book in sight. Yet.
The burning question Entertainment Weekly has on the upcoming Sofia Coppola film Marie Antoinette is: "Will audiences buy the blend of period detail and deliberate anachronism (for example, Coppola's Marie is a sneaker-wearing punk who listens to Siouxsie and the Banshees)?" Um, what? But the Wikipedia article agrees with this raucous auditory image, so of course it must be right... I thought A Knight's Tale - which uses a similar technique - was amusingly unpredictable in a campy sort of way, but it wasn't based on a historical character. I'm not sure I'm going to like Marie Antoinette - maybe I'm too old for this "modernizing the historical character" business.
In other historical film notes, I saw Tristan and Isolde on DVD this weekend and turned it off about halfway through. Gorgeous scenery, but slow-moving, and I didn't care for Tristan much at all.
I don't often mention children's books here, but this one looks interesting (from Publishers Marketplace):
Sibert Honor author and illustrator James Rumford's BEOWULF, a retelling of the classic tale of good and evil using only Anglo-Saxon words, to Kate O'Sullivan at Houghton Mifflin Children's, in a nice deal, by Jeff Dwyer at Dwyer & O'Grady (NA).
I studied Anglo-Saxon once upon a time - took a semester-length course while I was in undergrad at Drew University, circa 1989. I wish I could remember more of it, but we did read Beowulf in the original.
Here's an ethical issue I've been struggling with recently. Deep thoughts for a Saturday morning, I know, but I'm mostly awake for a change and am not going to question it.
Generally, I believe - have always believed, as far as my own reviews are concerned - that book reviews should stand on their own; that regardless of requirements in length, they should be written so that every word counts; and, as a consequence of this, that I don't feel right about going into detail on my thoughts about a book before (and, to a lesser degree, after) the actual review is written and/or published.
(Yes, that was a long sentence. If I remembered even 1/4 of what I learned in my linguistics grad program, I could probably diagram it, but I don't, so I won't...)
I even feel a little funny about mentioning the books I'm in the process of reviewing, which may be going too far even for some people. I have no problem discussing these things in private email, generally. But I know the number of hits that come to this site because people are searching for book reviews, and I'm concerned that casual surfers - and even egosurfing authors - will pick up on my thoughts about a book before the review's published. And that goes against my feeling that a review should stand on its own, etc.
On the other hand, the folks at Booklist (their blog, Likely Stories, is linked from the left-hand sidebar here) regularly list the books in their to-be-reviewed pile. They go into detail about their opinions on passages within novels, as well as their general approach to a review they're still writing. I have a lot of respect for the staff there (and not only because they asked me to review for them). They've also been in the "review" business far longer than I have, which is a mere seven years so far. I find their blog fascinating because it goes into the little details that I also deal with often, though don't talk about much here. Like the problems with reviewing and quoting from uncorrected proofs, my dislike of reviewing from photocopied galleys (sometimes necessary), the challenge of staying original even when reviewing similar books... and so forth.
Also, talking about good books in a public forum (like a blog) does give them additional publicity. This isn't, and shouldn't be, the ultimate goal of the book reviewer, though as a reader, I certainly do like to spread the word about worthwhile novels. The converse, I suppose, could be said for my going into greater detail (than a review allows) on what I didn't like about a book.
And finally, given that reviews are just one person's opinion, namely my opinion in this case, how much does this matter in the grand scheme of things anyway? (Probably not a good excuse, here.)
Anyway, if they are comfortable with posting details on reviews-in-progress, who am I to question it? Is it time for me to start rethinking my own position on the issue?
I have been testing the waters, to some degree, by not-so-subtly hinting at the book I'm currently reading for review. I still feel a little not-right about it, I admit, which is one of the real reasons why I deleted my earlier post about Hudson Lake, the novel I covered for HNR Online last week.
What do you think - should reviews stand on their own? Is it appropriate, or helpful, to post thoughts about them in advance of the review's publication? Or, third option, am I simply thinking about this issue way too much?
I've been surfing around this morning - as usual - and noticed that Greenwood is having an up-to-50%-off sale on a number of history (and other) titles from 2005 and earlier. They publish the "Daily Life Through History" series, the volumes of which have potential use for historical novelists looking for an introductory reference. My library owns a number of them. Details here.
As a disclaimer, I'll mention that another imprint of Greenwood published my book, though they didn't ask me to post about this sale, and I don't benefit financially (or otherwise) from mentioning it. Just thought it would be of possible interest to readers and writers.
I'm home today, about 300 pages into my 550-page review book (not 600pp, as I originally said), and it looks like a rainforest outside - lovely, don't know if I'm up for running out to the bank and PO today after all.
Normally when I read a novel for review, I keep a pen and sheet of paper nearby so that I can jot down little notes, impressions, phrases to use in the review. So far with this current review book, though, I haven't written down a single thing. This is both good and bad - good, because it means I've been too wrapped up in the novel to do so, but bad, because a 210-word review will be the end result of this process, like it or not, and I'm not doing myself any favors by failing to think about what I want to write.
For some reason (and maybe this indicates something deep and meaningful about my character, I don't know) I've nearly always found it easier to write critical reviews than glowing ones. When I think about it, it's probably because I'm nearly always able to pinpoint what I don't like about a novel, what doesn't work for me, but it's harder to focus on exactly what does work - especially if nearly everything in the novel does work.
So I took this afternoon off work in the hopes I'd settle down and read my latest 600-page review book, but it just wasn't happening. Nothing against the book, which really is quite good (Sara Donati's latest). Instead, I ended up going through Amazon and collecting info on forthcoming historical novels for 2007, which you'll see if you click on the link. Yesterday, I did the exact opposite, reading the review book rather than posting all of the forthcoming title info I'd collected over the past few weeks. No, this is not my normal means of motivation, but it seems to be working at the moment.
I spotted these on Publishers Marketplace today, and they look good:
Edgar Award-winning Eliot Pattison's BONE RATTLER, a new mystery series featuring a Scottish-born indentured servant and sleuth, who solves related murders and suicides in a colonial New England backdrop of the often violent collision of Native American, European, and African cultures while providing startling insights into the founding of the United States, to Keith Wallman at Carroll & Graf, in a two-book deal, by Natasha Kern at Natasha Kern Literary Agency (NA).
And hey, a librarian novel involving intrigue:
Emilio Calderon's debut novel THE CREATOR'S MAP, about a Spanish architect in the 1930s caught in a web of intrigue involving a librarian, a prince and a map, to Scott Moyers at Penguin Press, for six figures, in a pre-empt, by Thomas Colchie, on behalf of the Antonia Kerrigan Literary Agency (NA).
Back from Chicago, some $500 poorer (hotel, dinners out, shopping...) and enjoying the last two weeks of, er, getting lots of work done, before the students return on the 21st.
Very occasionally I check my book ranking on Amazon, but I see today that it's down to #810,304, which doesn't really bother me because (1) most libraries buy it from Baker & Taylor, Ingram, etc., rather than Amazon, and (2) there are a bunch of used copies on Amazon that people would probably buy first, including the cheapest one, with this description: "2005 Hardcover. Has considerable wear and/or hi-lighting/underlining. Your purchase benefits the Brooklyn Public Library." Which makes me wonder what the story is behind that. (And who'd want to buy it, anyway?) Did some reader go crazy with a highlighter in the library, with my book? Shame.
But it's this set of matches that amuses me the most:
The Economic Implications of Aging Societies: The Costs of Living Happily Ever After by Steven A. Nyce
Supremely American: Popular Song in the 20th Century by Nicholas E. Tawa
African American Literature: A Guide to Reading Interests by Alma Dawson
Genreflecting: A Guide to Popular Reading Interests Sixth Edition by Diana Tixier Herald
Inside the Minds of Mass Murderers: Why They Kill by Katherine Ramsland
Books 3 and 4 in this list are part of the same series as mine. The connections between my book and 1, 2, and 5 on that list, though, not quite as clear.
I've barely blogged anything all week, and here it is Thursday night, I work tomorrow, then we're leaving for a weekend in Chicago right after...
Anyway, if you were fortunate (?) enough to catch the post from last weekend that I deleted, you can find the novel I was talking about here, reviewed on the Historical Novels Review Online page - I posted all of these reviews earlier today, after the HNR Online editor sent them to me. The review in question is the one at the very end. Excellent novel overall, despite the aforementioned issues with the lack of a clear plotline until partway through. I read it from an ARC, which was in POD format, though I later discovered (after checking the publisher's website, and double-checking with the author) that the paperback won't be officially released until next February. Until then, you can purchase the e-book version. If you think a novel set in 1926 rural Indiana sounds like it would be boring, think again. I don't know many other novels that convey the Roaring '20s quite so well.


text:
China Permits Families To Have 3 Children In Major Policy Change
China announced that each couple could have up to three children, a major policy change from the current limit of two children after according to recent data, there is a dramatic decline in births in the world's most populous country.
The shift was approved during a committee meeting chaired by President Xi Jinping, as an official news agency 'Xinhua' reported.
In 2016, China discards its decades-old policy of one child which was initially imposed to stop a population surge with a two-child limit. However, it failed in a sustained rise in births owing to the high cost of raising children in Chinese cities and prevented many couples from starting families.
"To further enhance the birth strategy, China will implement a one-married-couple-can-have-three-children policy," stated Xinhua in a report.
The strategy change will be implemented with 'supportive measures', which will help improve the country's population structure. It would also be beneficial in fulfilling the country's policy of actively coping with an ageing population and maintaining endowment of human resources", Xinhua elaborated. But 'supportive measures' were not specified.
After the announcement, there was a chilly response on Chinese social media, where according to many people, they could not afford to have even one or two children.
"I am willing to have three children if I am given five million yuan ($785,650)," a user posted.
Earlier this month, as per China's 'once-in-a-decade census', since the 1950s, the population raised at its slowest rate during the last decade to 1.41 billion.
Data also depicted a fertility rate of just 1.3 children per woman for the year 2020 alone, equal to ageing societies like Japan and Italy.
Read more: Chinese Envoy 'Nong Rong' Sees CPEC Project Progressing
On Monday, China's committee also stated it would introduce delays in the country's retirement ages, however, did not provide any details.
China new policy to have 3 children
China permits families to have 3 childre
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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


The State Government manages the state forests on my behalf as a Victorian. I do not recall ever giving them the go-ahead to destroy my forests and turn them into paper at a net loss (20/1).
Surely, if we live in a democracy, more than 50% of people would have to want our forests logged before Brumby gave the go-ahead. Why does he not ask us what we want done with our forests?


text:
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Harry Styles, Billie Eilish, Ye Announced as Coachella 2022 Headliners
Musicmusic festivalsTop Story January 13, 2022
Coachella dropped its 2022 lineup on Wednesday night, naming Harry Styles, Billie Eilish and Ye as its headlining performers for April. The festival is scheduled for April in California, and expected to be run at full capacity with over 100,000 in attendance after COVID dashed both the 2020 and... Read more
Jingle Ball in Miami Called Off Due to COVID-19 Concerns
ConcertsMusic December 20, 2021
Amid rising concerns regarding the transmission rates of COVID-19 and the emerging Omicron variant, Sunday's iHeart Radio Jingle Ball show in Miami was called off. The event at FLA Live Arena in Sunrise, Florida was to be the closing event of the Jingle Ball tour, but was cancelled early... Read more
Post Malone, Tame Impala Among Hangout Festival 2022 Headliners
Musicmusic festivals December 7, 2021
Hangout Festival will return to Gulf Shores, Alabama in May, announcing its headliners on Monday afternoon. The 3-day event touts a diverse group of performers that it says will "serve as the official kick-off to summer," in its first event since 2019. Headliners for Hangout 2022 include Post Malone,... Read more
Doja Cat, Twenty One Pilots to Perform at College Playoffs Concert
ConcertsFootballMusicSports November 19, 2021
Indianapolis is set for three days of concerts in the lead-up to the College Football Playoffs Championship in January, leading up to the kickoff of the national championship game on January 10 at Lucas Oil Stadium. Doja Cat and AJR are scheduled to perform on January 8, with Twenty... Read more
Pop Superstars Lined Up for iHeart Radio Jingle Ball Dates
ConcertsMusicTour Dates October 6, 2021
A who's who of pop stars will perform at the 2021 run of iHeart Radio Jingle Ball tour stops, which run from November 30 through December 19th at venues across the U.S. Ed Sheeran, Dua Lipa, Jonas Brothers, Doja Cat, Lil Nas X, Megan Thee Stallion and many more... Read more


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#9 Tigers Take Two-Stroke Lead into Sunday's Final NCAC Round
Mansfield, Ohio - Ninth-ranked DePauw shot a second-round 323 and stayed in first place at the North Coast Athletic Conference Championships with a tournament total of 643. Wittenberg is just two shots off the pace at 645.
Larisa Luloff is currently in second at 155 after shooting an 80 today. Anna Foley and Rachele Miller are tied for third as each are at 162. Miller shot a 78 in the second round and Foley finished with an 82. Cristal Chan is seventh at 164 following today's 83, while Danielle Smith is 10th at 172 including today's 85.
Wittenberg's Jane Hopkinson-Wood leads the field by 11 strokes at 144 after shooting a second straight 72.


McNabb or Kolb was founded in 2010, when those two quarterbacks actually mattered in Philadelphia. It continues on, though, providing news, analysis, statistics, and opinion to Eagles fans from Broad Street to Bangladesh.
And there are no plans to change the name.
Brian Solomon was a full-time reporter for Forbes Magazine, but he couldn't help but also write about the Eagles. Brian founded McNabb or Kolb back in the glorious offseason of 2010 when debate swirled around those two eponymous quarterbacks. He was also the editor and publisher of the Eagles Almanac. Brian previously contributed to NBC Philadelphia.
You can follow him on Twitter at @Brian_Solomon.


Without decisive action by Beijing, the illegal wildlife trade will never be reduced to reasonable limits.
After a 58-year hiatus, Japan reentered the Special Operations arena and made a lot of people nervous.
I may be the only American ever to get drunk with Muslims in the aftermath of a djinn attack.
I gathered the team together and told them we would mount a hostage rescue mission that night.
…why, after 40 years of US training in basic infantry skills, did the Thai Army suddenly become capable of such complexity?
Who was this man that could deliver access to a Thai air base at the simple request of an active foreign officer he never met?


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2012 Greenbrier Classic: Tiger Woods And Phil Mickelson Out, Tom Watson In As Third Round Gets Underway
By Matt Conner Jul 7, 2012, 1:13pm CDT
Share All sharing options for: 2012 Greenbrier Classic: Tiger Woods And Phil Mickelson Out, Tom Watson In As Third Round Gets Underway
The 2012 Greenbrier Classic sure lost a lot of star power heading into the weekend's third and final rounds, but that doesn't mean there's not reason to watch. It just means that some of the more recognizable faces won't be around after both Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson missed the cut after the second round.
Tiger specifically was the closest of the two at Old White TPC, but too many bogeys on the back nine to make it into today's action.
"I didn't quite have it," said Woods. "I drove it really good today and I just did not have the right feel for the distances. The ball was just going forever. I know we're at altitude but I just couldn't get the ball pin high no matter what I did, and subsequently I made some bogeys."
Tom Watson is not only the Pro Emeritus for the weekend, but he's also a player and the Kansas City native made the cut. He's the only golfer with his position at the West Virginia resort, along with Sam Snead. Watson finished at two-under heading into Saturday's third round.
Troy Kelly currently leads the pack with ten-under.
KC's Tom Watson One Of The Hosts For This Week's PGA Tour Stop At Greenbrier
Greenbrier Classic 2012: TV Schedule, Tee Times For Final Round
2012 Greenbrier Classic: TV Times, Leaderboard And More


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Q: How to use Evolutions in Play Framework 2.0? For play 1.x, we can use play evolutions:apply, How can I do it in play-2.0-beta?

A: Evolution:apply is run automatically upon application start up. What is missing in Play 2.0-rc1 is a way to generate the evolutions scripts, and to manually apply them from the SBT console.
But here is how to create them manually.
Say you have the following definition in application.conf
db.mydb.driver=org.h2.Driver
db.mydb.url=jdbc:h2:mem:play

Play2 will look for evolution in the following folder: application/db/evolutions/mydb/
In this folder, evolutions shall be stored as sql file, using the evolution step as the file name.
For instance:
application/db/evolutions/mydb/1.sql
application/db/evolutions/mydb/2.sql
application/db/evolutions/mydb/3.sql

Now the sql itself has the following structure:
# --- !Ups
create table company (
  id                        bigint not null,
  name                      varchar(255),
  constraint pk_company primary key (id));
# --- !Downs
drop table if exists company;

!Ups are used to upgrade the model to the next evolutions
!Downs are used to revert the !Ups
Like I said in the intro, evolutions will be magically applied upon application startup.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


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Review: A Wish in the Dark by Christina Soontornvat
March 23, 2020 March 23, 2020 inautopiastateofmind 3 Comments
I love re-tellings and A Wish in the Dark is a fabulous MG retelling of Les Mis in a Thai inspired setting. It retains all these fabulous character interactions and questions of privilege, while also being a touching middle grade. If you've been looking for more diverse MG recs and re-tellings, check this review out!
A boy on the run. A girl determined to find him. A compelling fantasy looks at issues of privilege, protest, and justice.
All light in Chattana is created by one man — the Governor, who appeared after the Great Fire to bring peace and order to the city. For Pong, who was born in Namwon Prison, the magical lights represent freedom, and he dreams of the day he will be able to walk among them. But when Pong escapes from prison, he realizes that the world outside is no fairer than the one behind bars. The wealthy dine and dance under bright orb light, while the poor toil away in darkness. Worst of all, Pong's prison tattoo marks him as a fugitive who can never be truly free.
Nok, the prison warden's perfect daughter, is bent on tracking Pong down and restoring her family's good name. But as Nok hunts Pong through the alleys and canals of Chattana, she uncovers secrets that make her question the truths she has always held dear. Set in a Thai-inspired fantasy world, Christina Soontornvat's twist on Victor Hugo's Les Miserables is a dazzling, fast-paced adventure that explores the difference between law and justice — and asks whether one child can shine a light in the dark.
(Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher. This has not impacted my review which is unbiased and honest.)
At first I was skeptical of how A Wish in the Dark could pull off a Les Mis re-telling for middle grade audiences, but I had no reason to be. A Wish in the Dark tackles the same issues of privilege, justice, and corruption in thoughtful ways for middle grade audiences. It asks us the price of staying quiet, of being complicit in a system that is unfair. Retaining elements of Les Mis, A Wish in the Dark is delightfully Asian and full of heart. It has such a fabulous and tender friendship between two boys, Pong and his friend, which I think is so important to see in a middle grade.
At the same time, A Wish in the Dark retains the heart, emotions, and important questions. Both characters, Pong and Nok – there are dual perspectives for each child – have this heart even though they are on complete different sides. Pong is impulsive, but has a good heart even though he is weighed down by guilt. Whereas Nok has a strong heart, but a strong idealism in justice that doesn't function in our real world. Even though it may be harder for some to empathize with Nok, I found her relatable. We can be so trusting, so driven by this mentality of absolute right and wrong, that we fail to see the shades of grey, the pieces of humanity.
The setting of A Wish in the Dark is amazing and the characters bring life to a story of emotions, guilt, and forgiveness. With its rich setting and important themes it has sky rocketed into one of my favorite middle grade reads. Examining privilege, and the way the system lets people down, A Wish in the Dark is thoughtful and emotional. It's a great conversation starter about the cycle of poverty and crime, morality, and our drive to change the world.
Find A Wish in the Dark on Goodreads, Amazon, Indiebound & The Book Depository.
Do you know any other MG retellings?
Fantasy, Middle Grade
Review: The Library of the Unwritten by A.J. Hackwith
Recent Library Book Reviews
3 thoughts on "Review: A Wish in the Dark by Christina Soontornvat"
Pingback: A Wish in the Dark [MG Review] - Falling Letters
Jenna @ Falling Letters says:
I just reviewed this as well – such a great book! I didn't realize it is a Les Mis retelling until after I read it, haha. More to the Story by Hena Khan was another middle grade novel that I read without realizing it's a retelling (of Little Women).
inautopiastateofmind says:
OMG I need to read that! Yeah it's funny because I basically only saw that, like that's all it was described to me. But yeah it's such a clever way of retelling the story!


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Ballard Acquires Fuel Cell Assets From AFCC to Support Planned Growth
Company Profile | Careers | Follow Company
Burnaby, BC, July 6, 2018--(T-Net)--Ballard Power Systems (NASDAQ: BLDP; TSX: BLDP) today announced that it has acquired certain strategic assets of Automotive Fuel Cell Cooperation Corporation ("AFCC"), a private company owned by Daimler AG and Ford Motor Company
As part of a planned wind-down of AFCC's operations in Vancouver, which are co-located with Ballard at its headquarters, Daimler and Ford have in-housed and relocated their fuel cell stack development activities to Germany and the U.S., respectively.
As a result, Daimler and Ford have agreed to sell AFCC assets to Ballard.
Randy MacEwen, Ballard's President & CEO said, "This acquisition supports and accelerates our growth plans in two key respects. First, it immediately provides needed expansion of our product and material testing capabilities that will be used to support new and existing programs, products, as well as customers. In addition, we have acquired key production equipment that provides much of the incremental capacity needed to meet forecasted growth over the next five years."
Ballard Power Systems Inc is hiring.
View their Open Jobs
Mr. MacEwen added, "With these valuable assets already in place and functioning within Ballard's existing Vancouver facilities, this transaction accelerates the expansion of our fuel cell testing, production and lab capacity at a lower cost, compared to acquiring new equipment. We view this acquisition as a high value and capital efficient transaction from a Ballard shareholder perspective, enabling us to accelerate production growth objectives more efficiently compared to the expected cost of procuring and installing new equipment with long associated lead times."
The extensive array of testing, production and lab assets acquired - with a footprint of approximately 11,000 square feet of floor space - includes:
Testing Equipment - Test stands, Core Automotive Test (CAT) equipment as well as other stations and equipment used in the testing of materials, fuel cell stacks and power modules;
Prototype Production Equipment - Key prototype production equipment used in the manufacture of membrane electrode assemblies (MEAs), a core technology component used in fuel cell stacks; and
Lab and Quality Inspection Equipment - A broad range of measurement, testing and inspection equipment underpinning the analysis and understanding of critical fuel cell and MEA materials.
About Ballard Power Systems
Ballard Power Systems (NASDAQ: BLDP; TSX: BLDP) provides clean energy products that reduce customer costs and risks, and helps customers solve difficult technical and business challenges in their fuel cell programs. To learn more about Ballard, please visit www.ballard.com.
This release contains forward-looking statements concerning anticipated market growth drivers, product attributes and corresponding value propositions for our customers. These forward-looking statements reflect Ballard's current expectations as contemplated under section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. Any such forward-looking statements are based on Ballard's assumptions relating to its financial forecasts and expectations regarding its product development efforts, manufacturing capacity, and market demand.
These statements involve risks and uncertainties that may cause Ballard's actual results to be materially different, including general economic and regulatory changes, detrimental reliance on third parties, successfully achieving our business plans and achieving and sustaining profitability. For a detailed discussion of these and other risk factors that could affect Ballard's future performance, please refer to Ballard's most recent Annual Information Form. Readers should not place undue reliance on Ballard's forward-looking statements and Ballard assumes no obligation to update or release any revisions to these forward looking statements, other than as required under applicable legislation.
This press release does not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy securities. The Ballard Common Shares have not been registered under the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended, or the securities laws of any other jurisdiction and may not be offered or sold in the United States absent registration or an applicable exemption from registration requirements.
Ballard Power Systems Inc
Burnaby, BC (CleanTech & Energy)
275 Employees In BC (275 Total)
Founded: 1979 | Revenues: $76.00 Million
Ballard Power Systems, Inc. is a global leader in PEM (proton exchange membrane) fuel cell technology. We provide clean energy fuel cell products enabling optimized power systems for a range of applications.
Company Careers
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Failure Analysis Engineer/Scientist
Burnaby, BC - CleanTech & Energy Tech - Today
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Burnaby, BC - CleanTech & Energy Tech - Jan 14, 2020
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Ballard Signs Equipment Sales Agreements for Fuel Cell Stacks to Support Backup Power Systems at German Radio Towers
Deloitte-Ballard Joint White Paper Assesses Hydrogen & Fuel Cell Solutions for Transportation
Ballard-Powered Fuel Cell Tram-Buses From Van Hool Now in Revenue Service in France
Want More Ballard Power Systems Inc News? 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Burnaby, BC (CleanTech & Energy Tech)
Posted: Jul 6, 2018


text:
Q: JOIN codition in SQL Server After applying join condition on two tables I want records which is maximum among records of left table
My query
SELECT a1.*,
       t.*,
       ( a1.trnratefrom - t.trnratefrom )AS minrate,
       ( a1.trnrateto - t.trnrateto )    AS maxrate
FROM   (SELECT a.srno,
               trndate,
               b.trnsrno,
               Upper(Rtrim(Ltrim(b.trnstate)))   AS trnstate,
               Upper(Rtrim(Ltrim(b.trnarea)))    AS trnarea,
               Upper(Rtrim(Ltrim(b.trnquality))) AS trnquality,
               Upper(Rtrim(Ltrim(b.trnlength)))  AS trnlength,
               Upper(Rtrim(Ltrim(b.trnunit)))    AS trnunit,
               b.trnratefrom,
               b.trnrateto,
               a.remark,
               entdate
        FROM   mstprodrates a
               INNER JOIN trnprodrates b
                 ON a.srno = b.srno)a1
       INNER JOIN (SELECT c.srno,
                          trndate,
                          d.trnsrno,
                          Upper(Rtrim(Ltrim(d.trnstate)))   AS trnstate,
                          Upper(Rtrim(Ltrim(d.trnarea)))    AS trnarea,
                          Upper(Rtrim(Ltrim(d.trnquality))) AS trnquality,
                          Upper(Rtrim(Ltrim(d.trnlength)))  AS trnlength,
                          Upper(Rtrim(Ltrim(d.trnunit)))    AS trnunit,
                          d.trnratefrom,
                          d.trnrateto,
                          c.remark,
                          entdate
                   FROM   mstprodrates c
                          INNER JOIN trnprodrates d
                            ON c.srno = d.srno) AS t
         ON a1.trnstate = t.trnstate
            AND a1.trnquality = t.trnquality
            AND a1.trnunit = t.trnunit
            AND a1.trnlength = t.trnlength
            AND a1.trnarea = t.trnarea
            AND a1.remark = t.remark
WHERE  t.srno = (SELECT MAX(srno)
                 FROM   a1
                 WHERE  srno < a1.srno)

A: If you mean to say,
you want Records exist in Left table but not in right then use LEFT OUTER JOIN.


text:
Toni Iuruc Wiki, Age, Net Worth, Wife, Simona Halep Boyfriend, Family, Bio
Celebrity Wiki By Jeevan Shetty On December 27, 2019
Toni Iuruc Wiki
Toni Iuruc is 40 years old businessman from Macedonia and owns several companies in Romania. He is popularly known as the Boyfriend of Simona Halep who is a Romanian professional tennis player and has been ranked world No. 1 in singles twice between 2017 and 2019.
Moreover, this couple is planning to take their relationship to the new level and this duo is ready to get married. Iuruc is originally from North Macedonia, but he owns six companies in Romania and has connections in the upper echelons of society.
According to the source, Toni asked Simona Halep's father Stere Halep for permission to marry his daughter and Stere said ok but with one condition that the wedding has to be after next year's US Open, as he wants Simona to play all four Grand Slams in 2020.
In an Interview with TVR1, Simona Halep spoke about her relationship with Toni Iuruc, while also asking them to respect their privacy. She said "Now I am more relaxed and open. I have a dear person. We have a normal relationship, I feel very well. But I would like it to stay personal. I belong to Romania when it's about tennis. Love and tennis can coincide, but I think personal life is the most important one. I am dating someone and I would never be able to sacrifice my family for tennis."
Toni Iuruc was Married Twice.
Yes, Toni Iuruc has already married twice in his lifetime, he first married to a model Arina for a short period and then married to a woman named Liana and their marriage didn't last very long.
According to the tabloid Cancan, the businessman separated from his last wife because of her infidelity. But his Ex-Wife is pregnant and Toni is waiting to find out if the child belongs to them.
On one hand, Simona Halep was rumored to be dating former Romanian tennis player Radu Barbu but this duo never mentioned anything about their relationship publicly. Curently, she is a relationship with Billionaire Businessman.
Simona Halep has have been No. 1 for 64 weeks, which ranks tenth in the history of the Women's Tennis Association (WTA) rankings. Halep's father played lower-division football for AS Săgeata Stejaru and worked as a zootechnics technician before becoming the owner of a dairy products factory.
Who is Toni Iuruc.
Iuruc is originally from North Macedonia and he owns six companies in Romania and has connections in the upper echelons of society.
On December 26, 2019, she shared the picture of Toni on Instagram and captioned "I wish you a Merry Christmas with your loved ones!."
Va doresc Craciun fericit alaturi de cei dragi! ☺
A post shared by Simona Halep (@simonahalep) on Dec 25, 2019 at 12:36pm PST
Recently, the media also spotted them having fun and kissing each other on a jetski in the Black Sea. This couple has been dating since 2018 and they will get married in the next year. Halep underwent breast reduction surgery at the age of 17 primarily to improve "her ability to react quickly" as a tennis player. While she has said "I would have gone for surgery even if I hadn't been a sportswoman", she has also called this surgery the biggest sacrifice she made to become a world No. 1 player.
Emanuela Postacchini Wiki, Age, Height, Husband, Family, Net Worth, Bio
By Jeevan Shetty On February 5, 2020
Peter Whittingham Wiki, Age, Bio, Height, Wife, Net Worth, Family
By Jeevan Shetty On March 19, 2020


text:
Home Business Limited porogress
Limited porogress
on: March 01, 2001 In: Business, Economics & TradeTags: No Comments
In preparation for China's entry into the World Trade Organisation (WTO), the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress has approved certain amendments to the 1988 law on Sino-foreign cooperative joint venture enterprises and the 1986 law on wholly foreign-owned enterprises.
The amendments, effective from October 31, 2000, remove existing requirements on the purchase of foreign exchange, preferential treatment to domestic enterprises in purchasing raw materials, as well as export quotas. Amendments to the law on Sino-foreign joint equity enterprises are expected to be adopted at this month's full session of the National People's Congress.
One of the amendments to the law on cooperative joint ventures (CJVs) concerns the purchase of raw materials, goods and other materials. Under these amendments, CJVs are no longer required to export a certain percentage of their products in order to maintain a balance between their foreign income and expenditure; nor will they be required to give preference to domestic enterprises when purchasing these goods.
CJVs may now purchase raw materials, goods and other materials from domestic or international markets ?in accordance with the principles of fairness and reasonableness.? However, opinion is divided as to whether the insertion of this phrase is a liberalisation or a further restriction in respect of the autonomy that CJVs may enjoy in managing their own businesses. It is likely that its intent is to grant greater autonomy.
A related change is the removal of the requirement for CJVs to balance foreign exchange income and expenditure. Since December 1996, when the Chinese authorities announced that the yuan would thereafter be convertible on the current account, foreign investment, enterprises have been able to purchase foreign exchange to acquire raw materials and parts, and to pay wages, dividends and profits. Whether foreign exchange balancing is no longer a cause for concern among foreign investors is not yet clear. Although the requirements have officially been removed from the law, the potential exists for foreign exchange balancing to become a back-door issue for investors.
WFOE law amendments
Four amendments were made to the law on wholly foreign-owned enterprises (WFOEs), including the removal of requirements on foreign exchange balancing and purchase of raw materials.
Previously, WFOEs could be established only if they utilised advanced technology or exported a minimum of 50 per cent of their products. The revised law now provides that ?the establishment of WFOEs must benefit the development of the Chinese national economy? and ?encourages the establishment of export-oriented or technologically advanced WFOEs.?
Consequently, it should now be possible for foreign investors to establish WFOEs – the preferred type of foreign investment enterprise – for a wider range of projects. However, it is still unclear whether companies will face practical difficulties in obtaining approval for WFOEs that are neither technologically advanced nor export-oriented. However, the approval authorities in Beijing have stated that the changes do in fact mean that WFOEs will no longer be limited to the previous categories.
Under the amendments, WFOEs no longer need to submit production plans to the authorities and, like CJVs, they are now free to purchase raw materials from non-Chinese companies. The previous provision was intended to benefit domestic industrial development in China and was in conflict with the WTO's principle of national treatment.
An article that previously required WFOEs to balance their own foreign exchange has been deleted in its entirety. The result is that, as is the case with the CJV law, the legal requirement for foreign exchange balancing has now been removed.
The amendments to China's foreign investment laws help to bring China into greater compliance with WTO requirements, particularly with regard to the application of national treatment to equipment and materials purchases. The changes also seem to offer greater flexibility in the area of foreign exchange management as a step towards eventual full convertibility of the yuan.
Overall, however, it is unlikely that these minimal changes will have much of an impact on foreign investment flows into China, especially since certain changes merely memorialise what is already common practice. For investors who already have a presence in the mainland, China has agreed in the Sino-US Market Access Agreement not to enforce provisions of contracts imposing foreign exchange balancing and trade requirements. However, it is still unclear how this will be implemented.
Given the amount of speculation preceding these amendments, the meagre results do not inspire hope that China's entry into the WTO will result in a sudden liberalisation of the investment environment. Instead, the march to a full opening of China's markets under the WTO is likely to be long and slow.
This article was written by Freshfields Bruckhous Deringer, an international law firm. For more details, contact Lucille Barale in Hong Kong (tel. +852 2846 3400) or by email (lbarale@freshfields.com).
New era for STDM
Statistics found to be flawed


You would think that adding youtube video's to an infobubble using Google's MyMaps would be easy. It turns out that unless you follow a series of undocumented steps, the youtube video will not embed successfully. Here are the steps needed in order to embed a video successfully into an infowindow.
Go to the Youtube page that has the video you want to embed.
For example, check out this video of Randy Newman's tour of Sunset Blvd.
Add "http:" to the "src="//www.youtube.com/"parameter.


US stocks extended their climb, powering through 26K on the Dow and 2,800 on the S&P for the very first time. Trading resumed following the MLK break with a key reversal in US equity indices which spawned some hope for the bears, but as has been seen so often markets sprang back to new all-time highs within 24 hours. Economic data faded into the background while corporate headlines came into focus. Earnings season picked up in intensity while preannouncements dotted the landscape. Though it is early in the year, it has become increasingly clear that analysts have more work to do to reconcile their estimates for corporation earnings impacted by the tax reform package passed late last year. For their part, firms continued to release details on how they intend to put the expected tax windfalls to work for both investors and employees. By Friday, even the real threat of a US government shutdown did little to dent the momentum. For the week the S&P500 gained 0.9%, while the DJIA and Nasdaq each added 1%.
The US dollar stayed under siege with a dysfunctional Washington DC doing no favors for the Greenback. Rates moved up led by the bellwether 10-year yield testing what many view as the key post-election high of 2.65%. Nevertheless the Euro made another run at 1.23 as some analysts tweaked their rate hike calendar forward ahead of next week's ECB meeting. WTI crude prices continued to consolidate above $60/bbl. Both the IEA and OPEC hiked their forecasts for non-OPEC supply significantly, indicating that they expect rising oil prices to result in a surge of US production. Doctor copper fell to the 38% fiboncacci retracement level from the Dec break above $3.25.
In corporate news this week, earnings season kicked off as major financial companies began to report. Bank of America shares dropped after notching a revenue miss, while Goldman fell on disclosure of its first quarterly earnings loss since 2011. IBM reported some encouraging top-line numbers, but reduced margins and reported zero growth in its cognitive solutions sector. CSX reported a larger than anticipated revenue miss as service issues led to some lost business. Schlumberger traded lower on Friday despite beating Q4 forecasts and offering upbeat management commentary. GE shares saw its worst five-day decline in 9 years after the company announced $6.2B in charges and a rigorous review of strategic alternatives.


Very strongly pigmented artists quality wax pastels, perfect for mixing with medium to create your encaustic colour palette.
A little goes a long way !
– White, Black, Yellow, Orange, Brown, Scarlet, Purple, Violet, Cobalt Blue, and Emerald Green.
Use to colour clear encaustic medium or melt on hot palette with medium to paint directly.
Fantastic as they can be used initially to draw directly onto your chosen ground or wax surface and then coated with encaustic medium – luscious !


Contains: novyhyqocycifybyr This article contains a video.
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Contains: fynyzyheju This article contains a video.


By Gregory M. Lamb Gregory M. Lamb is special projects editor of the Monitor.
CNN: THE INSIDE STORY by Hank Whittemore, Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 319 pp. $19.95 TO a large extent, the story of Cable Network News is the story of flamboyant entrepreneur Ted Turner. The creation of CNN was an act of will by ``Captain Outrageous, The Mouth of the South,'' as he's been called, the project of a man with a need to succeed so strong that it wouldn't let him fail.
But the rise of CNN is also the story of a whole band of scrappy TV pioneers risking their all on the crazy idea that, somehow, they could not only compete with the big boys at ABC, CBS, and NBC, but actually change the face of television news.
So says author Hank Whittemore in ``CNN: The Inside Story.'' Whittemore, a magazine and television writer, has packed this volume with lively quotes and plenty of drama, humor, and pathos. But he's also succumbed to the temptation to write in the popular quasi-novelistic style, as though his tape recorder was able to somehow plug straight into the inner thoughts of his subjects. Even the lengthy spoken quotes, pasted together by narrative transitions, read more like a script for a TV documentary than a book.
In the early years, we learn, Turner and his band of mavericks are only a step ahead of chaos and bankruptcy. In a single night, the ringleaders sketch plans for the CNN newsroom building on a grocery bag. When an addition is needed later, a bulldozer is ordered to begin digging the next day - before construction plans or permits are obtained. In the world of CNN, haste is not waste: It's the only way to survive.
Despite long hours and hard work, most of the CNN insiders interviewed now look back with nostalgia on the early years when crises seemed to hit the fledgling operation in waves.
Some of that sense of mission, the fun and challenge of starting something new, was lost as CNN outbattled and eventually bought out the rival Satellite NewsChannel and became ``legitimate,'' say these insiders. For Turner, success has meant turning his gaze toward ever-more-cosmic goals, like world peace. For many of the young staffers, it has meant moving on to better-paying jobs at the three networks and elsewhere.
Though Whittemore takes a stab at assessing what the advent of CNN means, it's clear that even it's founders aren't sure of much - only that CNN, and electronic news gathering in general, will continue to grow and change, and at a dizzying pace.


text:
Q: Deploying CherryPy apps: Standalone, WSGI Server or NGinx? I intend to use a single VPS to deploy multiple low-traffic CherryPy apps as subdirectories; eg: example.com/app1, example.com/app2, etc.
After researching on WSGI deployment, it looks like the preferred method for deploying apps is to use a WSGI server (Gunicorn, uWSGI, etc) and NGinx in a reverse-proxy setup. It seems like overkill to use two webservers in tandem — especially since my CherryPy app is itself a webserver — but I don't want to dismiss the idea as it appears everywhere. I'm certainly not an expert so I'd like to discuss it.
I see three options:

*

*Deploy CherryPy by itself.

*Deploy beneath Gunicorn or another WSGI server.

*Deploy beneath a WSGI server and reverse-proxy to NGinx, which seems to be everyone's solution.

My questions:

*

*What's the main reason I see this pattern everywhere? Is NGinx just that good?

*For low-traffic apps, is the native CherryPy server good enough, or should I not even try?

Any and all advice is appreciated, thank you.

A: The reason everyone puts nginx (or another server such as Apache) in front of their app servers is that everyone has static content such as images, CSS and JavaScript, and strange requirements which are unique to their application.
Your app server (CherryPy, gunicorn, whatever) is optimized to run your app and serve its output. While the app server can also serve static content, they are almost never well optimized for this task, since it's secondary to the main purpose of the app server. (Some app servers will also help by minifying and compressing your CSS and JS, so that the web server in front can serve these resources even faster.)
In addition, the actual web server can do much more than high performance content serving. Things like caching, header manipulation, URL rewriting, geolocation, and many other features that would just bloat the app server to no good purpose.
Typically you would run the app server alone only when developing the application, when you are the only user, and performance is not an issue. Even if your site is low traffic, you would like it to be faster, right? Low traffic sites which are slow don't generally grow into high traffic sites...

A: Why do people put Nginx in the front?

*

*Nginx is an asynchronous web-sever. It means it doesn't dedicate a thread or a process per connection. Instead it uses OS' preferred socket polling library and thus is able to handle hundred thousands of connections. Why should you, as an application developer, care? Because Nginx buffers connections and only passes the request to your CherryPy upstream instance when the request is fully read. The same for responses. This way your CherryPy application, which is a threaded server, behind Nginx in many senses, becomes asynchronous. Specifically, you wave a hand to a slow client problem and slow loris DOS attacks.

*Nginx has connection rate limiting out of the box. Say, I don't want more than 8 simultaneous connection from the same IP.

*CherryPy has SSL problem. Nginx doesn't.

*Python can send bytes back and forth almost as good as C. Python's zlib is just a wrapper around the C library. But because Nginx handles connection effectively it's a good idea to relieve your CherryPy worker threads from serving static content in production and dedicate only on dynamic content.

*Multiplexing several CherryPy instances on the same port, domain, path, etc. Generally additional flexibility of another configuration level.

Is it safe to use CherryPy on its own?
According to one of the original authors, yes. Most of web-relevant things you can do with CherryPy on its own.
CherryPy has notion of an application and you can serve several applications with one CherryPy instance. CherryPy also can serve other WSGI applications.
Deploying CherryPy
In a traditional *nix-style deployment you write init script, daemonise you process, drop its privileges, write its PID, etc. It's not a big deal when you have a couple of CherryPy instances. When you have dozens, it becomes tedious and it makes sense to hand over process management to Gunicorn or uWGSI and switch your CherryPy instances from HTTP to WSGI.
I wrote a tutorial/project skeleton, cherrypy-webapp-skeleton, which goal was to fill the gaps for deploying (traditional) a real-world CherryPy application on Debian for a web-developer.
Wrap up

*

*Low-traffic, no special requirements → CherryPy * 1 ⇐ HTTP ⇒ Client.

*High-traffic, special requirements → CherryPy * n ⇐ HTTP ⇒ Nginx ⇐ HTTP ⇒ Client.

*Dozens of separate CherryPy instances on same server, eager for overkill of everyone's solution → CherryPy * n ⇐ WSGI ⇒ Gunicorn ⇐ HTTP ⇒ Nginx ⇐ HTTP ⇒ Client.


text:
Q: Function to remove certain rows from dataframe I am attempting to write a function which removes certain rows from the dataframe.
For simplicity, let us assume that the condition for removal is that there is atleast one NA in the row.
    df = data.frame(c("A","B","C"),c(1,NA,3))
fn = function (d) {

  for (x in 1:nrow(d)) { for (y in 1:ncol(d)) {
if(is.na(d[x,y])) d = d[-x,]
 }}}

fn(df)

PS: I am aware that there are better ways to remove rows with atleast one NA, i.e. df = df[-which(!complete.cases(df)] but I am interested to find out why the code I wrote does not work.

A: You need to explicitly return d from your function
df <- data.frame(X1 = c("A","B","C"), X2 = c(1,NA,3))
fn <- function (d) {
  for (x in 1:nrow(d)) {
    for (y in 1:ncol(d)) {
      if(is.na(d[x,y])) d = d[-x,]
    }
  }
d # return d
}

fn(df)

> fn(df)
  X1 X2
1  A  1
3  C  3

R implicitly returns the result of the last operation, but this is the result of evaluating if (...) for the third row, which returned NULL
> foo <- fn(df) # using your fn()
> foo
NULL

You can explicitly call return(d) at the end of the function, but that as R is also calling return() on the last statement, this is like calling return(return(d)). As a result, you can just use d on the last line of the function and R does the right thing.
The main exception to not using return() (i.e. when you should use it) is in situations where you may want to return early from a function.
Finally, rather than loop over both the rows and the cols of the object, consider just working row-wise. R is vectorised so you can do is.na() (for example) on an entire row, and then your if() statement would be if (any(is.na(d[i, ])) where i is the loop index, for example:
fn2 <- function (d) {
  for (i in 1:nrow(d)) {
    if (any(is.na(d[i,]))) {
      d <- d[-i, ]
    }
  }
d # return d
}

> fn2(df)
  X1 X2
1  A  1
3  C  3

There are more efficient ways to do even this, but if you think in a vectorised way, you'll start writing simpler and quicker R code.

A: Functional programming style
I think that what OP is missing is that you cannot modify a variable passed as argument directly. That's functional programming style.
Visit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_programming
In fact the variable in the body of the function is a copy of the one passed as argument. So you are working on a copy.
That's why you have to return the copy and re-assign it to the variable.
df <- data.frame(X1 = c("A","B","C"), X2 = c(1,NA,3))
fn <- function (d) {
        for (x in 1:nrow(d)) {
          for (y in 1:ncol(d)) {
            if(is.na(d[x,y])) d = d[-x,]}}
         d} # return d

df <- fn(df)

df is now as OP wishes


text:
Esta é uma lista dos governadores das 27 unidades federativas do Brasil durante o mandato 1991-1995.

Para efeito de informação foi considerada a extensão dos mandatos originalmente previstos em lei. No caso em tela eles se estenderam de 15 de março de 1991 a 1º de janeiro de 1995. No caso do Amapá, Distrito Federal e Roraima, estes governaram de 1º de janeiro de 1991 a 1º de janeiro de 1995 conforme previa a Carta Magna.

Pela primeira vez na história todas as unidades federativas brasileiras elegeram seus governadores mediante o sufrágio popular, pois além dos vinte e três estados existentes nas eleições de 1986, houve uma nova eleição em Tocantins e com a ampliação da representatividade política do Distrito Federal e a transformação dos territórios federais do Amapá e de Roraima em estados, a escolha de seus respectivos mandatários se deu pela via direta.

Dentre os eleitos predominou a escolha recaiu sobre nomes com passagens anteriores pelo Executivo: sete governadores (incluindo Hélio Garcia que foi efetivado após a renúncia de Tancredo Neves) eleitos em 1982 retornaram ao cargo, além de dois antigos governadores biônicos e no caso das novas unidades federativas os escolhidos já haviam também exercido o cargo de governador.

Quinze dos governadores eleitos pertenciam a partidos alinhados ao presidente Fernando Collor (os outros doze pertenciam ao PMDB, PDT, PSDB e PRS). Ao contrário dos pleitos de 1982 (marcado pela disputa entre aliados e adversários dos militares) e 1986 (devido aos efeitos do Plano Cruzado), as eleições de 1990 não apresentaram qualquer circunstãncia político-econômica excepcional.

A realização do segundo turno em Alagoas foi adiada para 20 de janeiro de 1991 em face de ocorrências de fraude.

Em abril de 1994 Leonel Brizola renunciou ao cargo para se candidatar a presidente e em setembro Ciro Gomes assumiu o Ministério da Fazenda no governo Itamar Franco.

Alceu Collares, governador eleito do Rio Grande do Sul e Albuino Azeredo, governador eleito do Espírito Santo, foram os primeiros governadores negros da história política do país

Ver também
 Lista de presidentes do Brasil
 Eleições estaduais no Brasil: 1990 e 1994
 Lista de governadores das unidades federativas do Brasil

Listas de governadores do Brasil

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


text:
State insurer LIC seeks to raise $8 billion in India's biggest IPO – Techdoxx
Deepak Gupta February 14, 2022
Indian state insurer Life Insurance Corporation of India submitted preliminary documents to the market regulator on Sunday, announcing its plans to sell 5% of its shares to raise nearly $8 billion in the country's biggest IPO.
The government of Narendra Modi plans to sell around 316 million shares of the wholly-owned insurance company, prospectus draft said. His IPO is the latest in Modi's privatization campaign to fund his expansionist budget. The company's so-called "embedded value," a key metric among insurers, is valued at $71.56 billion. The market value of insurers is typically between three and five times the embedded value. In the initial public offering, LIC does not plan to issue new shares, he said.
LIC's initial public offering, which is being compared to India's Aramco, comes at a time when the Sensex, the country's benchmark stock index, is still trying to recover of the recent liquidation and many tech companies, including Paytm, which filed for a $2.2 billion IPO last year (which at the time was the largest in the country), Zomato, Policybazaar and Nykaa fell to record levels in last weeks. It also doesn't help that the three previous government-run companies with large IPOs have lost more than half their market value since they were listed.
Total premium growth for the Indian life insurance industry (LIC)
But New Delhi may be counting on the strong familiarity of the LIC brand for a strong debut. The company, a household name in the South Asian market and which describes "the President of India, acting through the Ministry of Finance, Government of India" as its promoter on record, has over 2,000 branches and employs over 105,000 individuals. The 65-year-old Mumbai-based company holds more than $530 billion in assets and has 286 million policies in place, it said in the preliminary prospectus. Its profit rose to $191 million in the six months ending in September last year, he said.
"Our corporation has been providing life insurance in India for over 65 years and is the largest life insurer in India with 64.1% market share in terms of premiums (or GWP), a market share of 66.2 % in terms of new business premiums (or NBP), a market share of 74.6% in terms of the number of individual policies issued, a market share of 81.1% in terms of the number of group policies issued to fiscal year 2021, as well as the number of individual agents, which amounted to 55% of all individual agents in India as of March 31, 2021," it said in the prospectus.
Its IPO bookrunners include Kotak Investment Banking, Goldman Sachs Securities, JP Morgan, Axis Capital, ICICI Securities, SBI Capital Markets and Bank of America Securities.
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This short post is concerned with the attempt by a non-profit organisation to inject some much needed responsibility and care into the credit rating industry. Based on a published article that is available here in its final form in The Company Lawyer, and here in its pre-published and different form, this post will look at the International Non-Profit Credit Rating Agency (hereafter INCRA) and its aims, as well as some of its shortfalls. Ultimately, it is concluded that whilst the endeavour is incredibly worthy and should be praised, the environment is skewed against newcomers to the rating marketplace, and especially those trying to reduce the impact of the venal 'Big Two' – Moody's, and Standard & Poor's.
INCRA was initially developed by the Bertelsmann Foundation in 2011, organically as a result of its research into the quality of nation states' quality of governance via its Transformation Index. As such, the newly-imagined rating agency set its sights on analysing the creditworthiness of sovereign states, but by different methods to those utilised by the established rating agencies. We have already seen in Financial Regulation Matters that the issue of creditworthiness in the sovereign debt market is of pressing concern, with yesterday's post discussing the potential disaster that may be looming if one of the constituent 'dominoes' falls i.e. Greece, Spain, or any other E.U. country that is financially on the brink. The fundamental call of INCRA is that a more comprehensive set of indicators and tools for research are required, so that the long-term socioeconomic and political aspects are further embedded into the rating process, far more than they are now. This difference is repeated throughout the fabric of the agency, particularly in terms of how it hopes to be financed; rather than submitting to the conflict-of-interest that is at the heart of the current failings of the ratings industry – the issuer-pays conflict – INCRA aims to be funded by a number of concerned but ultimately independent bodies, like the IMF and the G20.
More detail can be found on INCRA in the article and online. The issues facing the prospective agency however are great. The issue of funding is a major hurdle, because the prospective $400 million required is a) unlikely to be garnered from nation states who have their aims to influence the process, as will be discussed in a future post based upon a recently published article by this author, available in a pre-published and different form here and in its final form here, and b) the prevalence of the Big Three rating agencies mean that supplying an alternative is not likely to succeed. The article goes onto to suggest that the agency needs to merge with another endeavour that is concerned with rating in the correct way, the Credit Research Initiative, and that they should take advantage of a gap in the regulations so that the imagined merger would serve as a 'check' on the actions of the Big Three, free from any perceived conflicts of interest.
Ultimately, the issue is clear to see – the Big Two rating agencies in particular are engrained into the fabric of the economy. According to a work in progress by this author, available here, the credit rating agencies have been jostling for position throughout their history and the current era represents their most successful yet. As such, worthwhile and humanistic-based endeavours rarely get off the ground because of the might and the interwoven nature of the established order. However, rather than be disheartened, it is important that such endeavours are supported, amended as appropriate to meet the task ahead of them, and are ultimately put in a position to question the established order and provide clear-cut evidence of its failures – clear-cut evidence of its failures was abundant after the Financial Crisis, but unfortunately time washed away the disdain that should be directed towards the agencies; these endeavours can help return the spotlight to these agencies that were, and may be again at the heart of a financial crisis.


text:
Developers Start to Surf Google Wave, And Love It
Weeks ago, when Google Wave was first announced, we explained why you should be terrified of it. Now Google's opened Wave up to developers, and their first impressions are being published. Wave, it seems, is a wild ride.
By Kit Eaton 3 minute Read
If you've never heard of it, Wave is Google's dynamic hybrid of email and IM chat with images and video thrown in. It turns conversations into fast-moving group streams-of-consciousness. As developer Ben Rometsch describes it, it's best to think of it as "a bunch of shared IM conversations that are organized like email messages and stored on the server for time immemorial."
It looks like the services real strength will be its flexibility: You can use it for data-enriched group chatting, which will have Campfire's developers nervous, you can limit it to a strung-out email like exchange between two people, or use it as a simple Wiki thanks to the group-enabled editing.
Rometsch does a good job of describing the features.
Widgets. These are smart coded plug-ins that let you drop far more than movies and images into a streaming Wave conversation–think of plopping a chess game into the stream, for example. They'll likely find use as connectors to third party services.
Real time conversation. Apparently feels very different indeed to both IM and email. That's because your keystrokes are displayed more or less real time, complete with all your miss-spells and robbing you of the chance to rethink your sentences mid-flow and keeping them a secret. As a result people seem to be using minimalist sentences, more like in an SMS, to keep things simple and efficient. Though this will likely evolve as users get more used to Wave's interface, it means it's a very different style of net-based communication.
User Interface. This currently feels surprisingly conventional, and seems to be set out like Outlook–a surprise for such a dynamic and alternative communication tool. I suspect this will evolve, and things are kept simple and highly tweakable for current developers.
Robots. This is possibly Wave's biggest strength and weakness. There's a Swedish Chef widget that's out now apparently, hijacking Waves and spouting "rubbish" which Rometsch notes is annoying to many. Once Wave is out in the public domain, this sort of thing will only expand–and the potential for spam is enormous. But the amazing power of in-conversation widgets hasn't even begun to be explored yet–they'll probably find uses we can't even imagine, in the same way it would've been impossible to imagine Twitter before it hit.
In-Cloud Existence. Apparently it feels very natural for Wave to exist in a browser-only environment, which makes Chrome OS suddenly "make a whole lot of sense." Though it's beset by Javascript bugs at the moment, it is early days and these won't affect the end-user ultimately. Just possibly, Wave could evolve into having a desktop client, much like the many Twitter clients out there, but that would rely on Google fixing the API.
All in all the developer crowd seem enthusiastic about Wave–it's just possibly a real paradigm shifter that will change how we think about email. But that's assuming several things, that tie up neatly with some of the points in our "Five Reasons to Be Terrified" post.
Wave mustn't get over-complicated–the strength and appeal of Twitter for me, in contrast, is how simple it is: Robots and widgets would get in the way of the pure communication experience.
Wave must integrate with browsers of all types, and really work well on smartphones–which will be one of the ways it could be most useful. Until now Google's approached the smartphone app market with only varying degrees of success.
Third-party developers need to invent clever and useful widgets that really give Wave a raison d'être and set it apart as a totally new thing–until that point email and IM ain't broken, and don't need fixing.
[via Solid State Group]
Five Reasons to Be Terrified of Google Wave
Google I/O: The Next Android OS–Google Donut, Looks Tasty
Google's News Site Will Flip to Make a Splash This Summer
I'm covering the science/tech/generally-exciting-and-innovative beat for Fast Company. Follow me on Twitter, or Google+ and you'll hear tons of interesting stuff, I promise. I've also got a PhD, and worked in such roles as professional scientist and theater technician...thankfully avoiding jobs like bodyguard and chicken shed-cleaner (bonus points if you get that reference!)


text:
Encouraging signs for Shropshire before rain eventually curtails friendly against a Worcestershire XI
August 17, 2020 /in News /by Stuart Dunn
Director of Cricket John Abrahams was encouraged by Shropshire's performance during Sunday's friendly against a Worcestershire XI featuring several players with first-team experience.
The Pears ultimately emerged winners by nine runs under the DLS method after rain halted Shropshire's run chase with 10 overs remaining.
Skipper Sam Whitney had earlier taken five Worcestershire wickets before opening batsman Ryan Lockley compiled an unbeaten half century against a visiting attack led by England T20 international Pat Brown.
Abrahams said: "I think initially when we agreed the fixture it was obviously one that everyone, especially the players, was looking forward to.
"Despite the inclement weather, we were fortunate to have a good game of cricket, albeit curtailed.
"What was very pleasing from our point of view was that during the practice games we had identified areas we had to look to address for improvement and I think there were genuine signs of that happening.
"Another pleasing aspect was the attitude and commitment of all the players when we were fielding – I thought that stood out."
Rain meant a delayed start at Bridgnorth, with the club's ground staff working hard to ensure play was able to begin at 1.15pm, as the match was reduced to 40 overs per side.
Leg spinner Whitney, captaining Shropshire at his home club ground, claimed 5-47 as Worcestershire totalled 206-9.
Sentinel's David Laird also played his part by taking 2-29, removing Ollie Westbury, who has previously played for Shropshire, and Alex Milton, the first two wickets to fall.
Ross Whiteley, a man with plenty of first-team experience for Worcestershire, top scored for the visitors, hitting 45 from 36 balls, while Ben Twohig (41), Westbury (31) and Rehaan Edavalath (22) also chipped in.
Shropshire, in reply, were handily placed at 134-5 with 10 overs remaining when the rain, which had been threatening to arrive for some time, eventually intervened.
Lockley, back in familiar surroundings as a former Bridgnorth player, was still unbeaten on 60, having faced 88 balls and hit six fours.
Opening partner Will Parton struck 21, his Shrewsbury team mate Dan Humes hammered two towering sixes in a quickfire 18, while Ross Aucott added 17 during a fifth-wicket stand of 53 with Lockley.
Worfield's Ben Parker, who lined up for Shropshire's Academy side last season and also featured for the county in a first-team friendly against the RAF, took 2-10 from five lively overs for Worcestershire.
Abrahams added: "We all know enough about one-day cricket to have an idea that potentially anything could have been feasible, anything could have been possible over those last 10 overs.
"We're fortunate that we have a long batting line-up, so there were players still capable of scoring runs lower down the order."
On the contributions of Whitney and Lockley, he said: "Sam certainly used his knowledge of a pitch that he knows very well, and what was pleasing about Ryan's efforts was his positive intent. He didn't seem to be overawed by both the situation or the opposition."
Abrahams also thanked Bridgnorth for their efforts in impressively hosting the fixture: "Bridgnorth were absolutely brilliant, especially the ground staff who made the game possible," he added. "A lot of hard work had obviously gone in prior to the day, but also on the day as well, with the weather conditions they had to encounter.
"I thought they did a magnificent job and we thank them for their efforts."
Report by Stuart Dunn
Pictured: Ross Aucott bowling for Shropshire during Sunday's friendly against a Worcestershire XI at Bridgnorth. Picture by James Baylis
http://www.shropshireccc.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Ross-Aucott-v-Worcestershire-website-pic.jpg 437 1030 Stuart Dunn http://www.shropshireccc.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/SCC-Website-Logo-340x156-WhiteText.png Stuart Dunn2020-08-17 14:11:502020-08-17 18:12:13Encouraging signs for Shropshire before rain eventually curtails friendly against a Worcestershire XI
Shropshire County Cricket Club's Director of Cricket John Abrahams provides an update https://t.co/m4XHckpnVX https://t.co/AU2KUC86wz6 days ago
Wishing everyone a happy and healthy 2⃣0⃣2⃣1⃣ 19 days ago
RT @NCCA_uk: Happy New Year to all of our cricketers, the committee members of our 20 Counties and all of our supporters, without forgettin…19 days ago
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Sam Whitney to captain Shropshire in Sunday's friendly against a Worcestershire... Shropshire hand opportunities to a host of players to impress in Sunday's...